Biodun Iginla, BBC News

Biodun Iginla, BBC News
Showing posts with label Technologies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technologies. Show all posts

Saturday, March 14, 2020

ANALYSIS: Staying safe, and sane, as Silicon Valley locks down for virus


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Palo Alto (United States) 
by Tamara Kachelmeier and Biodun Iginla, France234 Technology News Analysts
David Tollner gets text messages telling him when meals are placed outside the door of the family guest room, where he was banished after developing a cough.
His wife Mitra Ahani is taking no chances as the coronavirus pandemic spreads in the United States -- even though she knows her husband may have no more than a common cold.
When Tollner returned to their home near Santa Cruz from a conference in Baltimore, she steered him directly to the shower, leaving doors open so he wouldn't touch them, and wiped down his suitcase with bleach.
When he started coughing, Tollner was relegated to a spare room.
"I locked him in the guest room," confirmed Ahani, a chief executive of a center that provides educational support for children with disabilities, who like millions in this tech-savvy region has shifted to remote work in response to the spreading coronavirus.
"He probably caught a little cold out there. But it scared the daylights out of him, and he needed that."
In an interview with us at France24, Tollner wryly acknowledged his predicament.
"I'm here in the dungeon waiting for food and water," he said Friday. "I have been here for a couple of days now trying not to infect the world with something I don't know I even have."
Tollner relies on his laptop and smartphone to run his law firm in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose.
Like tens of millions across the United States -- where school districts are closing one after the other and firms are massively encouraging telework -- the family is avoiding going out; relying for daily life on many of the technologies invented or refined in the area.
Ahani orders most of what they need from an online grocery delivery service, wearing gloves and wiping down goods with sanitizer when they arrive.
- Flexibility... and isolation -
Martha Lackritz-Peltier, an attorney at nonprofit group TechSoup, is working from her home in Oakland, where her companions include two dogs and hummingbirds flitting about the garden.
"Frankly, I kind of enjoy the flexibility of sometimes lying in bed with my laptop and working on my lap," she said. "I love being able to sit outside and get some sunlight."
Remote collaboration platform Slack has been speaking with companies of all sizes about tools and techniques for employees to work together in real-time while being physically apart.
"Isolation is one of the biggest threats to a team's engagement and motivation, and it can happen silently day by day," a company spokesperson told us at France24. 
"Maintaining camaraderie, encouragement, and collaboration can make all the difference in the weeks ahead."
- Ghostly Googleplex -
Across Silicon Valley, streets have emptied as the pandemic takes hold, claiming more than 50 lives so far in the United States.
People were few and far between at the "Googleplex" in Mountain View midday on Thursday, a time when throngs typically stroll, sun or grab meals at the cornucopia of food trucks or cuisine stations on the tech giant's campus.
A Googler wearing eyeglasses with tiger-stripe frames stood alone in the shade of a tree near a daily "Block Party" lunchtime event for employees on campus.
"At least the block party was a lot better today -- there were no lines," he said.
At Facebook's closed campus in the nearby city of Menlo Park, valets stood idle in mostly empty parking lots usually crammed to overfilling.
Empty shuttle buses came and went from vacant stops. No one could be seen in the town-square style center courtyard at One Hacker Way, and birdsong was the only tweeting of note.
- 'Stir-crazy' -
Foot traffic was scarce in Palo Alto, a social hub for Silicon Valley as well as nearby Stanford University, which has suspended in-person classes.
"The street has been quieter, but we have been busy all day," ZombieRunner barista Zac Terrones told AFP while whipping up an oat milk latte.
"I think people working are getting stir-crazy at home and coming in for a little pop. I've washed my hands about 200 times today."
Stanford students Ende Shen and Yaqing Yang, both 21-year-old juniors from China, studied at a table on the sidewalk.
"We have communities on campus and some of them are kind of falling apart simply because of the health issues," said Shen, who is from a city near Shanghai.
Yang tries to stick to a routine, scheduling time to spend in the sunshine and study with peers such as Shen.
"I think it is really important to be in contact with the world despite bearing in mind social distancing," said Yang, who is from the capital of Sichuan province.
"I also cook a bit more now; it helps me stay sane and feel I have less need to go to crowded spaces."

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Saturday, June 16, 2018

Analysis: Trump sets tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods; Beijing strikes back

June 16, 2018  14H:32  GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME
WASHINGTON/BEIJING - U.S. President Donald Trump said he was pushing ahead with hefty tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports on Friday, and the smoldering trade war between the world’s two largest economies showed signs of igniting as Beijing immediately vowed to respond in kind.

Trump laid out a list of more than 800 strategically important imports from China that would be subject to a 25 percent tariff starting on July 6, including cars, the latest hardline stance on trade by a U.S. president who has already been wrangling with allies.
China’s Commerce Ministry said it would respond with tariffs “of the same scale and strength” and that any previous trade deals with Trump were “invalid.” The official Xinhua news agency said China would impose 25 percent tariffs on 659 U.S. products, ranging from soybeans and autos to seafood.
China’s retaliation list was increased more than six-fold from a version released in April, but the value was kept at $50 billion, as some high-value items such as commercial aircraft were deleted.
Shares of Boeing Co (BA.N), the single largest U.S. exporter to China, closed down 1.3 percent after paring earlier losses. Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N), another big exporter to China, ended 2 percent lower.
Trump said in a statement that the United States would pursue additional tariffs if China retaliates.

RELATED COVERAGE

Washington and Beijing appeared increasingly headed toward open trade conflict after several rounds of negotiations failed to resolve U.S. complaints over Chinese industrial policies, lack of market access in China and a $375 billion U.S. trade deficit.
“These tariffs are essential to preventing further unfair transfers of American technology and intellectual property to China, which will protect American jobs,” Trump said.
Analysts, however, did not expect the U.S. tariffs to inflict a major wound to China’s economy and said the trade dispute likely would continue to fester.

TVS SPARED, CHIPS ADDED

U.S. Customs and Border Protection will begin collecting tariffs on 818 product categories valued at $34 billion on July 6, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said.
The list was slimmed down from a version unveiled in April, dropping Chinese flat-panel television sets, medical breathing devices and oxygen generators and air conditioning parts.
The tariffs will still target autos, including those imported by General Motors Co (GM.N) and Volvo, owned by China’s Geely Automobile Holdings (0175.HK), and electric cars.
And USTR added tariffs on another 284 product lines, valued at $16 billion, targeting semiconductors, a broad range of electronics and plastics that it said benefited from China’s industrial subsidy programs, including the “Made in China 2025” plan, aimed at making China more competitive in key technologies such as robotics and semiconductors.
Tariffs on these products will go into effect after a public comment period. A senior Trump administration official told reporters that companies will be able to apply for exclusions for Chinese imports they cannot source elsewhere.
Most semiconductor devices imported from China use chips produced in the United States, with low-level assembly and testing work done in China, prompting the Semiconductor Industry Association to call the new tariff list “counterproductive.”
While many business groups and lawmakers urged the two governments to negotiate instead, there was little sign talks would resume soon.
Trump’s tariffs did gain some support from an unlikely source, U.S. Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, who called them “right on target.”
“China is our real trade enemy, and their theft of intellectual property and their refusal to let our companies compete fairly threatens millions of future American jobs,” Schumer said in a statement.
The USTR official said the tariffs were aimed at changing China’s behavior on its technology transfer policies and massive subsidies to develop high-tech industries. The United States now dominates those industries, but Chinese government support could make it difficult for U.S. companies to compete.
Washington has completed a second list of possible tariffs on another $100 billion in Chinese goods, in the expectation that China will respond to the initial U.S. tariff list in kind, sources told us at Reuters.
U.S. soybean futures plunged 1.5 percent to a one-year low on concerns that an escalating trade fight with China will threaten shipments to the biggest buyer of the oilseed, traders said.

Slideshow (2 Images)
Beijing and Washington had held three rounds of high-level talks since early May but failed to reach a compromise. Trump was unmoved by a Chinese offer to buy an additional $70 billion worth of U.S. farm and energy products and other goods, according to people familiar with the matter.
Analysts at Capital Economics said the impact of the tariffs on China’s economy would be small. Even if the U.S. duties reach the full $150 billion, they estimated it would shave well under a half-percentage point off China’s annual growth rate, which could be offset by fiscal and monetary policy actions.
“Neither side will be brought to its knees – which is one reason to think the trade dispute could drag on,” Capital Economics said. “For China’s part, its leaders will be determined not to be seen to back down to foreign pressure.”
Although shares of some tariff-sensitive companies fell on Wall Street, the stock market overall fell only modestly.
“With the announcement of the tariffs, there’s a real risk that we can see a continued increased escalation,” said Robin Anderson, senior economist at Principal Global Investors in Des Moines, Iowa. But he said that underlying strong economic fundamentals in the United States would dampen the market impact.
Trump has also triggered a trade fight with Canada, Mexico and the European Union over steel and aluminum and has threatened to impose duties on European cars.

Boeing Co357.88
BA.NNEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE
-4.54(-1.25%)

BA.N
  • BA.N
  • CAT.N
  • GM.N
  • 0175.HK
While China in recent months made incremental market-opening reforms in industries that critics in the foreign business community say were already planned, it has not been inclined to yield on its core industrial policies.
(GRAPHIC - Tit-for-tar tariffs interactive: tmsnrt.rs/2GXE9qr)
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