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Sunday, January 29, 2023

A New Zealand story that Asean can learn from

New Zealand - Wikipedia

Wellington

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reacts following the announcement of her resignation at the War Memorial Hall in Napier, New Zealand, on Jan. 19. (Reuters/AAP Image/Ben McLay)

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won the hearts of Muslims across the globe when she, wearing a headscarf, comforted the families of victims of the massacre in two mosques by a white supremacist in Christchurch in 2019. Last Thursday, she again astonished an even larger audience with her abrupt resignation, although she stands a great chance to win the upcoming election in October.

The mother of four-year-old Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford has undoubtedly made a name for herself as an icon of statesmanship. She has played a role model of a leader who not only does her best for her nation, but also knows when to fade away to ensure a sustainable succession. She could have sought a third term, but she shows she is not hungry for power.

"The responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It's that simple," the 42-year-old politician said of her reason to step down.

With a population of 5 million, New Zealand is a tiny nation. But its economic size ranks the country among the world’s richest. The country is a permanent dialogue partner of ASEAN along with the United States, China, the European Union, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Russia and India. Unlike close neighbor Australia, which acts as the deputy sheriff of the US, New Zealand has distanced itself from the rivalry of major powers.

Through her exemplary decision, Ardern has taught politicians, male and female, a lesson that they should be ready to leave office when the public do not want them anymore, or else the people will force them to go. Some leaders are willing to step down but prepare their own men or children as successors, but this is clearly not the case in New Zealand under Ardern.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo may have to ask his die-hard supporters who have been pushing for his term extension to reflect on Ardern’s bold decision. To prevent rampant abuse of power, which was rampant during the New Order authoritarian rule, the Constitution was amended in 1999 to limit presidential tenure to only twice.

In fact, Indonesian political culture knows no resignation. Politicians or officials tend to cling on power as long as possible by justifying all means.

Ardern won the Labor Party leadership shortly before she won the 2017 election. Her party further won the 2020 election. At that time she was facing at least three major challenges which she could overcome: The 2019 shooting spree of Muslims, the COVID-19 pandemic and the eruption of the White Island Volcano. Her strict lockdown policy to contain the COVID-19 transmission was much criticized, but later she proved she was right and her critics wrong.

The Labor Party elected Education Minister Chris Hipkins as Ardern’s successor on Sunday. The party hopes Ardern’s graceful exit will help it win the October election.

The world loves to see her as a true mother of New Zealand. Her ability to simultaneously perform her state and personal responsibilities, as a mother and wife, inspired and was looked up to by women all over the world. From the beginning, she has proven that women can break the glass ceiling when it comes to the highest office, which in advanced democracies like the US has not yet happened.

She has taught a precious lesson to world leaders that they should know when to call it quits. A true leader will not wait until his or her people force them to go. And we all owe it to Ardern’s beautiful mind.

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Saturday, January 28, 2023

U.S. wants others to fight war with China, says ex-diplomat

THE U.S. WANTS WAR WITH CHINA – but with other people doing the fighting, a whistleblowing Australian diplomat revealed this week.

“The United States is NOT preparing to go to war against China: the United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China,” said John Lander, a former senior ambassador.

He believes China has no intention of invading the southern continent. But a different narrative was foremost in people’s minds because the Americans have a tight grip on Australian government and media, he argued.

BUT AUSTRALIA IS BEING INVADED

Yet there was a hidden irony that people weren’t seeing.

These IS a country making a massive push into Australia: that country was the United States, not China. Australia’s citizens were “unaware or uncaring that almost every major Australian company across resources, food, retail, mass media, entertainment, banking and finance sectors, has majority American ownership,” Lander said.

John Lander

“Australians fret about China buying up the country but American investment is ten times the size,” he added.

Comments by Lander, one of the country’s top China experts, received wide attention from citizens in Asia and Australia – but virtually no coverage from the media. The ambassador is retired and unafraid to speak openly.

TRAINED BY CIA

Citizens of his country, Lander said, were continually warned about China through reports in the media from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI. But it was really “the American Subversive Propaganda Institute”, Lander said. “It has lobbyists from American arms manufacturers on the board, which is headed by an operative trained by the CIA.” ASPI has taken a leading role in spreading the Chinese “concentration camps” story, along with Radio Free Asia, which presents itself as an Asian journalism group, but is actually a CIA-founded operation based in Washington DC.

MASSIVE ARMS SPENDING

The former ambassador’s comments, made in an Salon interview on Sunday, January 22, 2023, are in line with those of other whistleblowers who note that the United States has been working to militarize Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, while western media demonizes China. These two processes together are triggering massive spending on arms in the region, and creating the conditions for war—which would further boost the arms industries in the west.

Lander said that the eight nuclear-powered submarines Australia had been prodded to buy from America for defence were actually for “hunter killer operations in the Taiwan strait”.

LOSS OF SOVEREIGNTY

John Lander was Australia’s Director of the China Section of the Department of Foreign Affairs on three separate occasions, and personally negotiated Consular relations between Australia and China, having worked as a bridge between the two nations for the best part of 30 years.

Lander said he had become increasingly alarmed at the spreading of the notion that war against China is “inevitable”.

While mainstream commentators in Australia took an anti-China stance and pushed the line that that militarization “enhances Australian sovereignty”, the truth was that “these arrangements arguably accede Australian sovereignty to America”, he said.

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From conspiracy theories about the origins of the COVID-19 to the claims of "genocide" in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, many external forces are spreading outright lies in an attempt to smear and ultimately contain China. This section aims to dig into hot-button issues and dissect lies and conspiracy theories with GT's own investigation and objective reporting.

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Friday, January 27, 2023

US targets Google's online ad business monopoly

U.S. targets Google's online ad business monopoly in latest Big Tech lawsuit

WASHINGTON, - The U.S. Justice Department accused Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google on Tuesday of abusing its dominance in digital advertising, threatening to dismantle a key business at the heart of one of Silicon Valley's most successful internet companies.

The government said Google should be forced to sell its ad manager suite, tackling a business that generated about 12 percent of Google's revenues in 2021, but also plays a vital role in the search engine and cloud company's overall sales.

"Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies," the antitrust complaint said.

Google, whose advertising business is responsible for about 80% of its revenue, said the government was "doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow."

The federal government has said its Big Tech investigations and lawsuits are aimed at leveling the playing field for smaller rivals to a group of powerful companies that includes Amazon.com (AMZN.O), Facebook owner Meta Platforms (META.O) and Apple Inc (AAPL.O).

"By suing Google for monopolizing advertising technology, the DOJ today aims at the heart of the internet giant’s power," said Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director at Public Knowledge. "The complaint lays out the many anticompetitive strategies from Google that have held our internet ecosystem back."

Tuesday's lawsuit by the administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, follows a 2020 antitrust lawsuit brought against Google during the term of Donald Trump, a Republican.

The 2020 lawsuit alleged violations of antitrust law in how the company acquires or maintains its dominance with its monopoly in online search and is scheduled to go to trial in September.

EIGHT STATES IN LAWSUIT

Eight states joined Tuesday's lawsuit, including Google's home state of California.

California State Attorney General Rob Bonta said that Google's practices have "stifled creativity in a space where innovation is crucial."

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said that Google's dominance had led to higher fees for advertisers and less money for publishers with ad space to offer. "We are taking action by filing this lawsuit to unwind Google’s monopoly and restore competition to the digital advertising business," he said in a statement.

Google shares were down 1.9 percent on Tuesday.

Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center, in Paris

[1/2] A logo of Google is seen at its exhibition space, at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France June 15, 2022. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

In addition to its well-known search, which is free, Google makes revenue through its interlocking ad tech businesses. The government asked for the divestiture of the Google Ad Manager suite, including Google's ad exchange, AdX.

Google Ad Manager is a suite of tools including one that allows websites to offer advertising space for sale and an exchange that serves a marketplace that automatically matches advertisers with those publishers.

Advertisers and website publishers have complained that Google has not been transparent about where ad dollars go, specifically how much goes to publishers and how much to Google.

The lawsuit raises concerns about certain products in the ad tech stack, where publishers and advertisers use Google's tools to buy and sell ad space on other websites. That business was about $31.7 billion in 2021 or 12.3 percent of Google’s total revenue. About 70% of that revenue goes to publishers.

An ad tech divestiture "may not be a game changer but it could be sneaky important to Google's ad targeting capability," said Paul Gallant with the Cowen Washington Research Group.

"It connects to all of Google's other businesses and ties them together. I think Google might be more concerned about losing ad tech down the road than people might think," Gallant said.

The company made a series of purchases, including DoubleClick in 2008 and AdMob in 2009, to help make it a dominant player in online advertising.

'PROJECT POIROT'

While Google remains the market leader by a long shot, its share of the U.S. digital ad revenue has been eroding, falling to 28.8% last year from 36.7% in 2016, according to Insider Intelligence.

The Justice Department asked for a jury to decide the case, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The lawsuit lays out a number of Google's attempts to dominate the advertising market.

The complaint discussed header bidding, which was a way that companies could bypass Google to bid on ad space on websites.

It lays out a series of projects including one dubbed "Project Poirot" named after Agatha Christie’s master detective, Hercule Poirot. The project "was designed to identify and respond effectively to ad exchanges that had adopted header bidding technology."

The 149-page complaint said Google doubled down after Project Poirot's initial success in manipulating its advertisers' spending to reduce competition from rival ad exchanges. Rivals AppNexus/Xandr lost 31% of DV360 advertiser spending, Rubicon would lose 22%, OpenX would lose 42%, and Pubmatic would lose 26%, the complaint said.

Reporting by Diane Bartz and David Shepardson; additional reporting by Sheila Dang; editing by Chris Sanders and Grant McCool

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U.S. targets Google's online ad business monopoly in latest ...

US targets Google's online ad business ... - The Straits Times

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Hello Health Minister - Dr Zaleha Mustafa, Crisis at hospital emergency units !

Bursting at the seams: The Emergency Department at most public hospitals are packed and there are hardly any beds available. — SHAARI CHEMAT/The Star

PETALING JAYA: It’s like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie: patients holding on to their own IV bags, in pain from their illness or wounds, some standing while others sit on the hard hospital floor.

They’re all waiting long hours to be treated or to be admitted into a government hospital ward.

Some have allegedly been turned away from inpatient treatment due to a lack of beds.

These are among the claims shared by the public on social media as people experienced overcrowding in government hospitals when seeking treatment, as public healthcare facilities are stretched to bursting point with a high number of patient arrivals.

ALSO READ: Groups: GPs can help ease emergency dept case load

On Jan 18, the Twitter account of the group championing rights for contract doctors, @HKontrak (HartalDoktorKontrak), shared a picture of fully occupied beds and a packed emergency department at Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL).

“Received this picture from someone who went to the HKL emergency department. I believe this happened somewhere else as well.

“Patients coming in nonstop. Overcrowded. Doctors? Obviously not enough. We are still waiting for action from @Zaliha_DrZ @KKMPutrajaya,” the caption read, referring to Health Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa’s social media handle.

The post claimed that there a was more than 24-hour wait to be admitted into a ward, with almost 100 patients stranded in the emergency department during peak hours.

ALSO READ: Ministry: We will seek comprehensive solutions to tackle the problems

“Are we going to do something or just leave it to collapse?” the tweet said.

Another Twitter user, @hippochan94, said she saw a similar occurrence at another government hospital in the Klang Valley.

“Just yesterday I had a patient with acute appendicitis sitting on the floor with a bottle of drip in his hands, and a three-year-old kid with dengue who had to stand with the drip in her father’s hands. It is that bad. Medical officer to patient ratio 1:30,” she tweeted on Jan 18.

ALSO READ: Hospital emergency depts need sustainable system to ease congestion, ministry told

Azimah Abdullah Zawawi, in a Facebook post on Jan 17, said she was disappointed by the poor treatment of her son at Hospital Pasir Mas in Kelantan after he was involved in an accident.

She claimed that her son was not given proper treatment and the family told to take him home with only an outpatient follow-up scheduled for the next day, despite his poor condition.

She said the doctor refused to give inpatient treatment as the hospital was packed and didn’t have any beds available.

“An hour after I received a call that my son was involved in an accident, I arrived at the hospital and saw my son sitting in a wheelchair, with his face bleeding, vomit [on his front] and looking frail, with his clothes covered in blood.

“During treatment [to stitch her son’s mouth injuries], my son was left alone without supervision and with his mouth open for about 30 to 40 minutes,” she said.

ALSO READ: Health clinics operating beyond office hours to reduce hospital congestion

She said she later took her son to be treated at another hospital after failing to persuade the attending doctor to admit him.

At the second hospital, her son’s stitches were redone and a wound on the stomach, which was overlooked at the previous hospital, was cleaned. She said she will submit a formal complaint to the Health Ministry via the Public Complaints Management System.

Public healthcare expert Datuk Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar, who went for a follow-up medical examination at a government specialist clinic last month, said it took him more than three hours to finish the examination, after taking a number to queue for his turn at 9am.

“Everything finished at 12.30pm. Many people were queueing up and many were also standing because there were not enough seats.

“The specialist room was also shared with medical officers. It was crowded too,” he said in a Facebook post on Dec 22 last year.

He said some examinations not available at the hospital were outsourced to a private facility at an estimated cost of RM120.

“The staff was not sure whether the cost of outsourced service is paid by the hospital or not,” he said.

Dr Zainal said he hopes the government will transform the national healthcare service system by taking into account all aspects, including services, resources, environment and financing.

On Jan 14, Yong Peng assemblyman Ling Tian Soon said Hospital Sultanah Aminah in Johor Baru is among government hospitals facing constant overcrowding.

“The hospital is full of patients even early in the morning as patients come with their families to get treatment.

“With the assistance provided by the Johor state government in placing additional chairs, it has provided comfort for patients and families as they wait for their turn,” he said.

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Sunday, January 22, 2023

Quantum tech for cybersecurity; Baidu launches quantum computer in China and gives people ...

A safer future: Crucial to enhance cybersecurity with quantum technology. -123rf.com

THE launch of quantum computer Qianshi is a milestone in the development of quantum technology.

For the first time, a quantum computer is accessible in the public ICT network, and people are able to connect to it using their personal devices. It has only 10 quantum bits (qubits), with capabilities of a traditional computer (Baidu launches quantum computer in China and gives people access via PC, smartphone or the cloud, The Star, Aug 26, 2022).

Quantum computers can be far more powerful than any supercomputer, capable of breaking any conventional encryptions within a short period. In the lab, quantum computers with performance matching the supercomputers on specific problems have been realised.

This should be alarming to the fintech and banking sectors as the current encryptions in financial transactions based on the RSA cryptosystem are no longer secure.

The capability of the quantum computer is attributed to the way it computes that is different from conventional computing algorithms.

Making use of quantum entanglement or the superposition of a number of possibilities (called quantum states) from many qubits, one can search everywhere for an answer “at once” and get the answer almost instantaneously, without having to go through multiple searches in sequence.Scientists around the world are actively engaged in the education, research and innovation of quantum information science and technology, driven by awareness of its awesome potentials.

The race for developing quantum technology has started long ago, focusing mainly on quantum computation, quantum communication and quantum sensing or metrology. In December 2013, the United Kingdom government invested £370mil (RM1.96bil) in quantum technologies over five years.

The European Commission followed suit in 2016, and invested £1bil (RM5.30bil) over the next 10 years. China launched a quantum satellite in August 2016 and initiated a big plan to connect cities with secure communication networks. In December 2018, the United States Senate passed the National Quantum Initiative, allocating US$1.275bil (RM5.47bil) over five years for quantum information science research and education. Our neighbour Singapore is far ahead, having started the Centre for Quantum Technologies since 2007. In September 2020, Thailand announced US$6mil (RM25.73mil) to develop quantum technology over eight years.

The global investment in quantum science and technology has reached almost US$30bil (RM128.64bil) with a projected global quantum technology market of US$42.4bil (RM181.81bil) by 2027.

Notable companies like Microsoft, IBM, Google and D-Wave that have invested heavily in developing quantum computer have made rapid advancements and breakthroughs, with some having been listed in the stock markets. In November 2021, IBM unveiled its 127-qubit quantum processor Eagle, claimed to be capable of solving complex problems that a traditional computer is unable to solve. Just recently, in 2022, the University of New South Wales, Australia, and Quantinuum have made major strides to improve the reliability of quantum computation process.

While the true power of quantum computers has not been demonstrated yet, the days of public concern for data security are not far away.

Fortunately, quantum physics provides us with an unconditionally secure technique against hacking by a quantum computer. Known as quantum key distribution (QKD) technology, it is now available in the market.

It uses quantum properties of light to transfer information in the form of encrypted keys that cannot be eavesdropped by anyone.

This technology protects confidential information against any potential hacking. The current effort is to extend the secure communication distance to hundreds of kilometres via existing fibre optics network.

We can expect to have a regional-scale quantum Internet and a long-distance quantum communication network that promises secure links for government agencies, financial hubs between cities and the possibility of epolling.

As the way people work and businesses operate has transformed to be more reliant on ICT and online communications since the Covid-19 pandemic, boosting the level of cybersecurity with quantum technology is becoming more important than ever.

C.H. RAYMOND OOI

Professor Quantum & Laser Science group

Department of Physics, Faculty of Science

Universiti Malaya

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Baidu launches quantum computer in China and gives people access via PC, smartphone or the cloud

Chinese tech giant Baidu launched a self-developed quantum computer in Beijing on Friday.

In addition, it built a system enabling everyone to gain access to the quantum computer with any device, including a smartphone.

The computer has just 10 qubits, fewer units for quantum computing than more advanced systems built by China’s top universities and Western companies, such as Google and IBM.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

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But China’s leading quantum scientist said there were high hopes for the new system because it was a brave first step towards bringing the futuristic technology out of the laboratory.

“We have already achieved superiority with the performance of quantum computers surpassing supercomputers on specific problems and further progress, such as programmable quantum computers, needs cooperation from industry leaders and academic researchers,” said Pan Jianwei, a leading quantum scientist with the University of Science and Technology of China.

“I’m glad to see investment from China’s enterprises promote exploration,” said Pan, who led the development of the world’s first quantum satellite, Mozi.

The quantum computer is called Qianshi and can be accessed by a Baidu app from the Apple, Huawei or Xiaomi stores. Users can download the software and send their own computing task, such as a quantum circuit experiment, to “Qianshi”.

The Baidu quantum computer uses superconducting materials to generate an extremely low temperature for the quantum processor unit, which is similar to a CPU in a traditional computer.

Chinese companies embrace quantum technology

The superconducting fridge cools the QPU to near absolute zero degree through a multi-cascade cooling system, so the coherent quantum bit is not affected by thermal noise caused by high temperatures.

“It is the world’s first integrated solution for both the hardware and software of quantum calculation,” said Duan Runyao, director of the Institute for Quantum Computing, Baidu.

“The system is accessible from PC, phones and cloud. While users could enjoy the convenience of the software framework provided by Baidu, they could choose a suitable hardware for their calculation,” he said.

For now, apart from the Qianshi QPU, two separate chips – from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology – are also connected to the system.

China condemns new US law aimed at boosting domestic semiconductor manufacturing

The new system may accelerate fundamental research in this area, according to Duan.

“Integration, automation and visualisation are the main technical features. The system helps with the standardisation of daily operation, and the chip initialisation efficiency is improved at least 100 times for researchers,” he said.

Progress on hardware also provides opportunities for commercial and industrial users.

“In the past, we had limited options for hardware and some online services from the US were not open to Chinese researchers. We hope Baidu’s device will promote our research in the academic world,” said Ji Zhengfeng, an expert in quantum computing theory with Tsinghua University.

Chinese team produces quantum computing ingredients with record efficiency

Quantum computing has many applications. The classic computer, for instance, takes more than 100,000 years to solve the RSA public key password, a widely studied password algorithm. A fully functioning quantum computer in the future will only take 1 second to find the password, according to some estimates.

According to Duan, the industrial scale of quantum computing in the world will reach 800 billion yuan (US$116 billion) by 2031, and most large global enterprises will adapt quantum computing technology within a decade.

“In the future, when scientists use 100 qubits, problems in AI and portfolio optimisation could be solved. With 1,000 qubits, cryptographic security and chemical pharmacy will be possible. With 10,000 qubits, global weather forecasting and big data processing will become common,” Duan said.

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