29/04/2020
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) has bought cameras to take temperatures of workers during the coronavirus pandemic from a firm the United States blacklisted over allegations it helped China detain and monitor the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
China’s Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co Ltd (002236.SZ) shipped 1,500 cameras to Amazon this month in a deal valued close to $10 million, one of the people said. At least 500 systems from Dahua – the blacklisted firm – are for Amazon’s use in the United States, another person said.
The Amazon procurement, which has not been previously reported, is legal because the rules control U.S. government contract awards and exports to blacklisted firms, but they do not stop sales to the private sector.
However, the United States “considers that transactions of any nature with listed entities carry a ‘red flag’ and recommends that U.S. companies proceed with caution,” according to the Bureau of Industry and Security’s website. Dahua has disputed the designation.
The deal comes as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned of a shortage of temperature-reading devices and said it wouldn’t halt certain pandemic uses of thermal cameras that lack the agency’s regulatory approval. Top U.S.-based maker FLIR Systems Inc (FLIR.O) has faced an up to weeks-long order backlog, forcing it to prioritize products for hospitals and other critical facilities.
Amazon declined to confirm its purchase from Dahua, but said its hardware complied with national, state and local law, and its temperature checks were to “support the health and safety of our employees, who continue to provide a critical service in our communities.”
The company added it was implementing thermal imagers from “multiple” manufacturers, which it declined to name. These vendors include Infrared Cameras Inc, which Reuters previously reported, and FLIR, according to employees at Amazon-owned Whole Foods who saw the deployment. FLIR declined to comment on its customers.
Dahua, one of the biggest surveillance camera manufacturers globally, said it does not discuss customer engagements and it adheres to applicable laws. Dahua is committed “to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19” through technology that detects “abnormal elevated skin temperature — with high accuracy,” it said in a statement.
The U.S. Department of Commerce, which maintains the blacklist, declined comment. The FDA said it would use discretion when enforcing regulations during the public health crisis as long as thermal systems lacking compliance posed no “undue risk” and secondary evaluations confirmed fevers.
Dahua’s thermal cameras have been used in hospitals, airports, train stations, government offices and factories during the pandemic. International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) placed an order for 100 units, and the automaker Chrysler placed an order for 10, one of the sources said. In addition to selling thermal technology, Dahua makes white-label security cameras resold under dozens of other brands such as Honeywell, according to research and reporting firm IPVM.
Honeywell said some but not all its cameras are manufactured by Dahua, and it holds products to its cybersecurity and compliance standards. IBM and Chrysler’s parent Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCHA.MI) did not comment.
The Trump Administration added Dahua and seven other tech firms last year to the blacklist for acting against U.S. foreign policy interests, saying they were “implicated” in “China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups.”
More than one million people have been sent to camps in the Xinjiang region as part of China’s campaign to root out terrorism, the United Nations has estimated.
Dahua has said the U.S. decision lacked “any factual basis.” Beijing has denied mistreatment of minorities in Xinjiang and urged the United States to remove the companies from the list.
A provision of U.S. law, which is scheduled to take effect in August, will also bar the federal government from starting or renewing contracts with a company using “any equipment, system, or service” from firms including Dahua “as a substantial or essential component of any system.”
Amazon’s cloud unit is a major contractor with the U.S. intelligence community, and it has been battling Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) for an up to $10 billion deal with the Pentagon.
Top industry associations have asked Congress for a year-long delay because they say the law would reduce supplies to the government dramatically, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that policies clarifying the implementation of the law were forthcoming.
FACE DETECTION & PRIVACY
The coronavirus has infected staff from dozens of Amazon warehouses, ignited small protests over allegedly unsafe conditions and prompted unions to demand site closures. Temperature checks help Amazon stay operational, and the cameras – a faster, socially distant alternative to forehead thermometers – can speed up lines to enter its buildings. Amazon said the type of temperature reader it uses varies by building.
To see if someone has a fever, Dahua’s camera compares a person’s radiation to a separate infrared calibration device. It uses face detection technology to track subjects walking by and make sure it is looking for heat in the right place.
An additional recording device keeps snapshots of faces the camera has spotted and their temperatures, according to a demonstration of the technology in San Francisco. Optional facial recognition software can fetch images of the same subject across time to determine, for instance, who a virus patient may have been near in a line for temperature checks.
Amazon said it is not using facial recognition on any of its thermal cameras. Civil liberties groups have warned the software could strip people of privacy and lead to arbitrary apprehensions if relied on by police. U.S. authorities have also worried that equipment makers like Dahua could hide a technical “back door” to Chinese government agents seeking intelligence.
In response to questions about the thermal systems, Amazon said in a statement, “None of this equipment has network connectivity, and no personal identifiable information will be visible, collected, or stored.”
Dahua made the decision to market its technology in the United States before the FDA issued the guidance on thermal cameras in the pandemic. Its supply is attracting many U.S. customers not deterred by the blacklist, according to Evan Steiner, who sells surveillance equipment from a range of manufacturers in California through his firm EnterActive Networks LLC.
“You’re seeing a lot of companies doing everything that they possibly can preemptively to prepare for their workforce coming back,” he said.
Source: Reuters
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28/04/2020
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s factory activity likely rose for a second straight month in April as more businesses re-opened from strict lockdowns implemented to contain the coronavirus outbreak, which has now paralysed the global economy.
The official manufacturing Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI), due for release on Thursday, is forecast to fall to 51 in April, from 52 in March, according to the median forecast of 32 economists polled by Reuters. A reading above the 50-point mark indicates an expansion in activity.
While the forecast PMI would show a slight moderation in China’s factory activity growth, it would be a stark contrast to recent PMIs in other economies, which plummeted to previously unimaginable lows.
That global slump, caused by heavy government-ordered lockdowns, as well as the cautious resumption of business in China, suggests any recovery in the world’s second-largest economy is likely to be some way off.
“The recovery so far has been led by a bounce-back in production, however, the growth bottleneck has decisively shifted to the demand side, as global growth has weakened and consumption recovery has lagged amid continued social distancing,” Morgan Stanley said in a note.
“The expected slump in external demand has likely capped further recovery in industrial production.”
The latest official data showed 84% of mid-sized and small business had reopened as of April 15, compared with 71.7% on March 24.
Hobbled by the coronavirus, China’s economy shrank 6.8% in the first quarter from a year earlier, the first contraction since current quarterly records began.
That has left Chinese manufacturers with reduced export orders and a logistics logjam, as many exporters grapple with rising inventory, high costs and falling profits. Some have let workers go as part of the cost-cutting efforts.
A China-based brokerage Zhongtai Securities estimated that the country’s real unemployment rate, measured using international standards, could exceed 20%, equal to more than 70 million job losses and much higher than March’s official reading of 5.9%.
Sheng Laiyun, deputy head at the statistics bureau, said on Sunday migrant workers and college graduates are facing increasing pressures to secure jobs, while official jobless surveys show nearly 20% of employed workers not working in March.
Chinese authorities have rolled out more support to revive the economy. The People’s Bank of China earlier in April cut the amount of cash banks must hold as reserves and reduced the interest rate on lenders’ excess reserves.
Source: Reuters
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18/04/2020
- Young people starting out in the jobs market face a hit to their prospects that could endure years after the Covid-19-induced downturn has run its course
- A generation of angry youth raises the spectre of political instability
Freelance filmmaker Anita Reza Zein had grown used to jam-packed production schedules requiring her to put in long hours and run on little sleep. Until Covid-19 struck.
Today, the talented Indonesian is suddenly free. With five projects on hold and many more potentially cancelled, she now spends her time working on a personal project, doing research for her work and occasionally going for a ride on a bicycle.
“I feel calm and patient although I’m jobless. Maybe because it’s still the third week [of social distancing] and I still have enough savings from my previous work,” said the 26-year-old, who is from Yogyakarta. “But I imagine life will become tougher in the next few months if the situation gets worse.”
Like her, millions of youths are now part of a job market in Southeast Asia that has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic. They are the unlucky cohort of 2020 whose fortunes have changed so drastically, so quickly.
Freelance filmmaker Anita Reza Zein now spends most of her time at home as her projects have all been frozen due to the spread of Covid-19. Photo: Anita Reza Zein
Just three months ago, many eager graduates were about to partake in a strong economy and possibly land decent pay cheques.
Today, job offers are being withdrawn and hiring halted, leading to a spike in regional youth unemployment in the short term. In the long term, the effects on the Covid-19 cohort could lead to wider social and political problems.
JOB MARKETS SHUT
The virus’ impact on economies and the job market in the region has been swift and devastating. Borders have been slammed shut, workers ordered to stay at home, and thousands of companies closed every week.
The biggest problem is the lack of certainty about how long this will last – the longer the governments keep their countries on lockdown, the worse the economic impact.
In
Indonesia, for example, the virus has caused almost 2.8 million people to lose their jobs, according to the Manpower Ministry and the Workers Social Security Agency. Likewise, in
Malaysia, an estimated 2.4 million people are expected to lose their jobs, going by data from the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER).
is bracing itself for a 5.3 per cent contraction in GDP for the full year, the worst since the Asian financial crisis in 1997.
“We think about seven million jobs have been lost already, and the figure will hit 10 million if the outbreak drags on for two to three more months,” said Kalin Sarasin, council member and head of the Thai Chamber of Commerce.
Lockdown for 34 million people in capital Jakarta as Indonesia fights surge in coronavirus deaths
For young jobseekers, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic could hurt even more, with companies unwilling to open up new jobs for them.
“My clients who were open to fresh graduates previously have realigned searches [for candidates] who have at least one year of experience, as it’s a lot faster for someone with experience to scale up quickly and contribute,” said Joanne Pek, a recruiter at Cornerstone Global Partners’ Singapore office.
For many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) such as Singapore-based restaurant chain The Soup Spoon, saving jobs – rather than recruiting – is the priority.
“We don’t want to let anyone go during this period, so we’re focused on protecting jobs,” said co-founder and director Benedict Leow, who employs some 250 workers.
THE COVID-19 COHORT
The looming economic downturn could have distinct consequences for the Class of 2020 that will outlast the economic downturn itself.
For one thing, the paucity of jobs could result in the Covid-19 cohort becoming a “lost generation” of sorts, said Achim Schmillen, a senior economist at the World Bank Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice.
“Research from around the globe shows that graduating in a recession can have significant and long-lasting impacts that can affect the entire career. In particular, it can lead to large initial earnings losses which only slowly recede over time,” he said.
Coronavirus: why there’s no quick fix for a Covid-19 vaccine
Economics professor Jeff Borland of the University of Melbourne said that international studies showed that what happened to people when they first entered the labour market would affect them for the rest of their working lives.
“Many international studies have shown that trying to move into employment during a major economic downturn cuts the probability of employment and future earnings for a decade or more.
“Why this occurs is less well-established. Reasons suggested include being forced to take lower-quality jobs, losing skills and losing psychological well-being,” he said in a piece published on The Conversation website.
Malaysia sets up Covid-19 test zones in the capital to hunt for ‘hidden’ coronavirus cases
This could create “lasting scarring” on the graduates this year, said labour economist Walter Theseira.
“If their careers start badly, it would affect their earnings for a number of years because they would lack the same experience as peers who started in a more secure position,” the associate professor of economics at Singapore University of Social Sciences said.
Shrinking salaries and the downsizing of companies mean that graduates might have to seek out professions outside their areas of study to survive, said Grace Lee Hooi Yean, head of the Economics Department at Monash University, Malaysia.
She said youth unemployment in the country, which stands at 11.67 per cent, could rise sharply.
“This looming crisis could trap a generation of educated and capable youth in a limbo of unmet expectations and lasting vulnerability if the graduates are not ready to face reality and adapt to the new challenges,” she said.
How long will a coronavirus vaccine take? A Q&A with Jerome Kim
This is fast becoming the reality for final-year medical student Rebecca K. Somasundaram, who has been left without a job due to the pandemic.
After being offered a residency programme at a top specialist hospital in Kuala Lumpur, she was notified a month ago that her placement had been made void until further notice. This has thrown the 24-year-old’s plans into disarray as she was hoping to enter the workforce soon to pay off her student debts. Her plans to get married next year have also been put on hold temporarily.
“I am in constant talks with the hospital to see if there is any way I can join them soon but seeing how things are unfolding so quickly, I am slowly losing hope,” she said.
Over in Indonesia, the pandemic will trigger job losses on a national scale. To combat this, the government would need to introduce strong fiscal measures and beef up its social protection policies, said the country’s former minister of finance Muhamad Chatib Basri.
Many people on lower incomes tend to work in the extraction industry, such as mining and palm oil, and these are the first industries hit due to the global slowdown.
“The rich will be able to brave the storm, but the poor have no means to do so,” he said.
Singapore migrant workers under quarantine as coronavirus hits dormitories
SPECTRE OF 1997
With partial lockdowns imposed in the capital of Jakarta, more needs to be done to ensure that vulnerable citizens have access to food and financial support.
Without government intervention, economic woes could soon translate into political instability, a scenario last seen in the Asian financial crisis.
In 1997, waves of discontent sparked racial riots in Indonesia that toppled the country’s long-time strongman Suharto, while in Thailand a political crisis created the conditions for populist leader Thaksin Shinawatra to rise.
Rising discontent could have serious implications at the ballot boxes, warned Basri, who said young voters were a key voting bloc for President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
Coronavirus: food security, Asia’s next battle in a post-Covid world
In last year’s general elections, Jokowi proved a hit among the lower-educated youth who had benefited from the creation of largely unskilled jobs during his tenure.
“With more young people expected to become unemployed in the coming months, things will only get worse from here,” said Basri, who added that the country’s youth unemployment stood at almost 20 per cent in 2018.
Indonesia, which has 268 million people and is Southeast Asia’s largest economy, had 133 million workers as of last August, according to official data.
Close to 10 per cent or about 12.27 million are university graduates but among this group, about 5.67 per cent or some 730,000 were unemployed. This was higher than the country’s overall unemployment rate at that time, which was 5.28 per cent.
‘Ghosts’ deployed to scare Indonesians into staying home to slow spread of the coronavirus
GETTING IT RIGHT
Economists say, however, that all is not lost. Much will depend on policy and how governments focus on battling the virus on the public health and economic fronts. They point to Singapore, which has launched a robust response to the crisis.
On April 6, the Singapore government announced its third budget in two months to help companies and households tide over the crisis. In all, Singapore’s total stimulus package, which aims to save jobs and keep funds flowing to companies, will cost the government a massive S$59.9 billion (US$42 billion).
The Singapore government was also preparing for a labour market that would be reluctant to hire fresh graduates on a full-time basis, said Theseira.
“There are plans to implement large-scale subsidised traineeships, which may be more palatable to companies which are worried about taking on permanent headcount this year,” he noted. “As the economic situation improves, they can be converted to permanent positions.”
The next coronavirus: how a biotech boom is boosting Asian defences
While jobs were being created for fresh graduates, many would still have to temper their expectations, such as taking jobs with lower starting pay, said DBS Bank economist Irvin Seah.
“There are still some jobs to go around. There are still some companies that may need workers. But they will need to be realistic,” he said.
For instance, despite the downturn, Singapore telco Singtel expects to recruit over 300 fresh graduates for various permanent positions this year, according to Aileen Tan, the company’s Group Chief Human Resources Officer. Many of the new hires will be in new growth areas such as the Internet of Things, analytics and cloud.
The Singtel Comcentre building in Singapore. Photo: Roy Issa
Other companies that continue to hire include those in tech across the region, including e-commerce giant Shopee, food-delivery service Foodpanda and Amazon.
In Australia, Borland suggested helping young people to remain plugged into the labour market through government-funded paid internships, or even offering them loans to go for further studies and prevent a spell of unemployment.
For now, while some young jobseekers are taking a wait-and-see approach, the reality is hitting hard for others.
Final-year National University of Singapore student H.P. Tan had all but secured a job at a public relations firm last month, after three rounds of interviews.
The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences undergraduate was rejected via an email from the agency, which said that they could no longer hire after Covid-19 started to drastically cut business.
“When I got that rejection, it was a turning point. I didn’t think I would be directly impacted,” said the 23-year-old.
“I also applied to a few other agencies but the response has been slow, so I am now freaking out at the possibility of not being able to find a job after graduation.”
Source: SCMP
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12/02/2020
BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – China reported on Wednesday its smallest number of coronavirus cases since January, lending weight to a prediction by its top medical adviser for the outbreak to end by April, but a global infectious diseases expert warned of the spread elsewhere.
Financial markets took heart from the outlook of the Chinese official, epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan, who said on Tuesday the number of new cases was falling in some provinces, and forecast the epidemic would peak this month, even as the death toll in China rose to more than 1,100 people.
World stocks, which had seen rounds of sell-offs over the virus, surged to record highs on hopes of a peak in cases. The Dow industrials, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all hit new highs, and Asian shares nudged higher on Wednesday.
But the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the epidemic poses a global threat akin to terrorism and one expert coordinating its response said while the outbreak may be peaking at its epicentre in China, it was likely to spread elsewhere in the world, where it had just begun.
“It has spread to other places where it’s the beginning of the outbreak,” the official, Dale Fisher, head of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network coordinated by the WHO, said in an interview in Singapore.
“In Singapore, we are at the beginning of the outbreak.”
Singapore has reported 47 cases and worry about the spread is growing. Its biggest bank, DBS (DBSM.SI), evacuated 300 staff from its head office on Wednesday after a confirmed coronavirus case in the building.
Hundreds of cases have been reported in dozens of other countries and territories around the world, but only two people have died outside mainland China – one in Hong Kong and another in the Philippines.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday the world had to “wake up and consider this enemy virus as public enemy number one” and the first vaccine was 18 months away.
In China, total infections have hit 44,653, health officials said, including 2,015 new confirmed cases on Tuesday. That was the lowest daily rise in new cases since Jan. 30.
The number of deaths on the mainland rose by 97 to 1,113 by the end of Tuesday.
But doubts have been aired on social media about how reliable the figures are, after the government last week amended guidelines on the classification of cases.
‘STAY HOPEFUL’
The biggest cluster of cases outside China is aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined off Japan’s port of Yokohama, with about 3,700 people on board. Japanese officials on Wednesday said 39 more people had tested positive for the virus, taking the total to 175.
One of the new cases was a quarantine officer.
Thailand said it was barring passengers from another cruise ship, MS Westerdam, from disembarking, the latest country to turn it away amid fears of the coronavirus, despite no confirmed infections on board.
“We try to stay hopeful,” American passenger Angela Jones told Reuters in a video recording. “But each day, that becomes a little bit more difficult, when country after country rejects us.”
Echoing the comparison with the fight against terrorism, China’s state news agency Xinhua said late on Tuesday the epidemic was a “battle that has no gunpowder smoke but must be won”.
The epidemic was a big test of China’s governance and capabilities and some officials were still “dropping the ball” in places where it was most severe, it said, adding: “This is a wake-up call.”
The government of Hubei, the central province at the outbreak’s epicentre, dismissed the provincial health commission’s Communist Party boss, state media said on Tuesday, amid mounting public anger over the crisis.
China’s censors had allowed criticism of local officials but have begun cracking down on reporting of the outbreak, issuing reprimands to tech firms that gave free rein to online speech, Chinese journalists said.
The pathogen has been named COVID-19 – CO for corona, VI for virus, D for disease and 19 for the year it emerged. It is suspected to have come from a market that illegally traded wildlife in Hubei’s capital of Wuhan in December.
The city of 11 million people remains under virtual lockdown as part of China’s unprecedented measures to seal infected regions and limit transmission routes.
Travel restrictions that have paralysed the world’s second-biggest economy have left Wuhan and other Chinese cities resembling ghost towns.
Even if the epidemic ends soon, it has taken a toll of China’s economy, with companies laying off workers and needing loans running into billions of dollars to stay afloat. Supply chains for makers of items from cars to smartphones have broken down.
ANZ Bank said China’s first-quarter growth would probably slow to 3.2% to 4.0%, down from a projection of 5.0%.
The likely slowdown in China could shave 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points off both euro zone and British growth this year, credit rating agency S&P Global estimated.
Source: Reuters
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 