silicon valley and technology
After the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the value of the Syrian currency increased against the U.S. dollar, but the price of goods remains high. Residents say that traders are exploiting this situation and that official monitoring institutions are not properly preventing this.
Click here to see the full story in Kurdish.
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ZURICH — The Financial Stability Board (FSB) on Wednesday pitched recommendations for governments to reduce risks around hedge funds, insurers and other non-bank financial intermediaries, which now account for almost half of global financial assets.
The sector of non-bank financial intermediation has grown by around 130% between 2009 and 2023, making markets more vulnerable for stress events, according to the Basel-based FSB, which acts as the G20’s financial risk watchdog.
“This growth comes with an increase in complexity and interconnectedness in the financial system, which, if not properly managed, can pose substantial risks to financial stability,” said FSB Secretary-General John Schindler.
In its consultation report, the FSB proposed member governments and institutions enhance their focus on non-banks and ensure they manage their credit risks adequately.
One set of recommendations calls for the creation of domestic frameworks to identify and monitor financial stability risks related to non-bank leverage.
Another group proposes that policy measures be selected, designed and calibrated by governments to mitigate the identified financial stability risks.
A third group deals with counterparty credit risk management, calling for a timely and thorough implementation of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s revised guidelines.
The FSB also proposed stepping up private disclosure practices in the non-bank sector and addressing any regulatory inconsistencies by adopting the principle of “same risk, same regulatory treatment.”
A last recommendation calls for improved cross-border cooperation and collaboration.
With the consultation report, the FSB is inviting comments from member governments and institutions on its policy recommendations.
A final report is planned for release in mid-2025.
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BANGKOK — Japanese automakers Nissan Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. confirmed Wednesday that they are discussing closer collaboration but denied reports they have decided on a merger.
Nissan’s share price soared more than 22% in Tokyo after reports citing unnamed sources said it might merge with Honda to form the world’s third-largest automaking group. Honda’s share price fell as much as 3%.
The reports said that Nissan alliance member Mitsubishi Motors Corp. was included in the talks.
All three Japanese automakers announced in August that they planned to share components for electric vehicles like batteries and jointly research software for autonomous driving to adapt better to dramatic changes in the auto industry centered around electrification. A preliminary agreement between Honda, Japan’s second-largest automaker, and Nissan, third largest, was announced in March.
Trading in Nissan’s shares was suspended but then resumed after the companies jointly issued a statement saying they were “considering various possibilities for future collaboration, but no decisions have been made.”
A merger could result in a behemoth worth about $55 billion based on the market capitalization of all three automakers.
Joining forces would help the two companies gain larger scale to compete with Japan’s market leader Toyota Motor Corp. and with Germany’s Volkswagen AG.
Nissan has an alliance with Renault SA that is under review. Last month, it said it was slashing 9,000 jobs, or about 6% of its global work force, and reducing global production capacity by 20% after reporting a quarterly loss of $61 million.
Earlier this month it reshuffled its management and its chief executive, Makoto Uchida, took a 50% pay cut to take responsibility for the financial woes.
He said Nissan needed to become more efficient and respond better to market tastes, rising costs and other global changes.
Honda reported its profits slipped nearly 20% in the first half of the April-March fiscal year from a year earlier, as sales suffered in China.
The ascent of Chinese automakers is shaking up the industry at a time when manufacturers are struggling to shift from fossil fuel-driven vehicles to electrics.
Toyota made 11.5 million vehicles in 2023, while Honda rolled out 4.2 million and Nissan produced 3.4 million. Mitsubishi Motors made just over 1 million. Even after a merger, Toyota would remain the biggest Japanese automaker.
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Paris — The Democratic Republic of Congo has filed criminal complaints against Apple subsidiaries in France and Belgium, accusing the tech firm of using conflict minerals in its supply chain, lawyers for the Congolese government told Reuters.
Congo is a major source of tin, tantalum and tungsten, so-called 3T minerals used in computers and mobile phones. But some artisanal mines are run by armed groups involved in massacres of civilians, mass rapes, looting and other crimes, according to U.N. experts and human rights groups.
Apple does not directly source primary minerals and says it audits suppliers, publishes findings and funds bodies that seek to improve mineral traceability.
Apple last year said it had “no reasonable basis for concluding” its products contain illegally exported minerals from conflict-hit zones. The tech giant has insisted it carefully verifies the origin of materials in its output.
Its 2023 filing on conflict minerals to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said none of the smelters or refiners of 3T minerals or gold in its supply chain had financed or benefited armed groups in Congo or neighboring countries.
But international lawyers representing Congo argue that Apple uses minerals pillaged from Congo and laundered through international supply chains, which they say renders the firm complicit in crimes taking place in Congo.
In parallel complaints filed to the Paris prosecutor’s office and to a Belgian investigating magistrate’s office on Monday, Congo accuses local subsidiaries Apple France, Apple Retail France and Apple Retail Belgium of a range of offenses.
These include covering up war crimes and the laundering of tainted minerals, handling stolen goods, and carrying out deceptive commercial practices to assure consumers supply chains are clean.
“It is clear that the Apple group, Apple France and Apple Retail France know very well that their minerals supply chain relies on systemic wrongdoing,” says the French complaint, after citing U.N. and rights reports on conflict in east Congo.
Belgium had a particular moral duty to act because looting of Congo’s resources began during the 19th-century colonial rule of its King Leopold II, Congo’s Belgian lawyer Christophe Marchand said.
“It is incumbent on Belgium to help Congo in its effort to use judicial means to end the pillaging,” he said.
The complaints, prepared by the lawyers on behalf of Congo’s justice minister, make allegations not just against the local subsidiaries but against the Apple group as a whole.
France and Belgium were chosen because of their perceived strong emphasis on corporate accountability. Judicial authorities in both nations will decide whether to investigate the complaints further and bring criminal charges.
In an unrelated case in March, a U.S. federal court rejected an attempt by private plaintiffs to hold Apple, Google, Tesla, Dell and Microsoft accountable for what the plaintiffs described as their dependence on child labor in Congolese cobalt mines.
Minerals fuel violence
Since the 1990s, Congo’s mining heartlands in the east have been devastated by waves of fighting between armed groups, some backed by neighboring Rwanda, and the Congolese military.
Millions of civilians have died and been displaced.
Competition for minerals is one of the main drivers of conflict as armed groups sustain themselves and buy weapons with the proceeds of exports, often smuggled via Rwanda, according to U.N. experts and human rights organizations.
Rwanda denies benefiting from the trade, dismissing the allegations as unfounded.
Among the appendices to Congo’s legal complaint in France was a statement issued by the U.S. State Department in July, expressing concerns about the role of the illicit trade in minerals from Congo, including tantalum, in financing conflict.
The statement was a response to requests from the private sector for the U.S. government to clarify potential risks associated with manufacturing products using minerals extracted, transported or exported from eastern Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.
Congo’s complaints focus on ITSCI, a metals industry-funded monitoring and certification scheme designed to help companies perform due diligence on suppliers of 3T minerals exported from Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.
Congo’s lawyers argue that ITSCI has been discredited, including by the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) of which Apple is a member, and that Apple nevertheless uses ITSCI as a fig leaf to falsely present its supply chain as clean.
The RMI, whose members include more than 500 companies, announced in 2022 it was removing ITSCI from its list of approved traceability schemes.
In July, it said it was prolonging the suspension until at least 2026, saying ITSCI had not provided field observations from high-risk sites or explained how it was responding to an escalation of violence in North Kivu province, which borders Rwanda and is a key 3T mining area.
ITSCI criticized the RMI’s own processes and defended its work in Congo as reliable. It has also rejected allegations in a 2022 report by campaigning group Global Witness entitled “The ITSCI Laundromat,” cited in Congo’s legal complaint in France, that it was complicit in the false labeling of minerals from conflict zones as coming from mines located in peaceful areas.
Apple mentioned ITSCI five times in its 2023 filing on conflict minerals. The filing also made multiple mentions of the RMI, in which Apple said it had continued active participation and leadership but did not mention the RMI’s ditching of ITSCI.
In its July statement, the U.S. State Department said flaws in traceability schemes have not garnered sufficient engagement and attention to lead to changes needed.
Robert Amsterdam, a U.S.-based lawyer for Congo, said the French and Belgian complaints were the first criminal complaints by the Congolese state against a major tech company, describing them as a “first salvo” only.
Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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LONDON — European Union regulators said Tuesday they’re investigating whether TikTok breached the bloc’s digital rulebook by failing to deal with risks to Romania’s presidential election, which has been thrown into turmoil over allegations of electoral violations and Russian meddling.
The European Commission is escalating its scrutiny of the popular video-sharing platform after Romania’s top court canceled results of the first round of voting that resulted in an unknown far-right candidate becoming the front-runner.
The court made its unprecedented decision after authorities in the European Union and NATO member country declassified documents alleging Moscow organized a sprawling social media campaign to promote a long-shot candidate, Calin Georgescu.
“Following serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections by using TikTok, we are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has violated the Digital Services Act by failing to tackle such risks,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a press release. “It should be crystal clear that in the EU, all online platforms, including TikTok, must be held accountable.”
The European Commission is the 27-nation European Union’s executive arm and enforces the bloc’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of regulations intended to clean up social media platforms and protect users from risks such as election-related misinformation. It ordered TikTok earlier this month to retain all information related to the election.
In the preliminary round of voting on Nov. 24 Georgescu was an outsider among the 13 candidates but ended up topping the polls. He was due to face a pro-EU reformist rival in a runoff before the court canceled the results.
The declassified files alleged that there was an “aggressive promotion campaign” to boost Georgescu’s popularity, including payments worth a total of $381,000 to TikTok influencers to promote him on the platform.
TikTok said it has “protected the integrity” of its platform over 150 elections around the world and is continuing to address these “industry-wide challenges.”
“TikTok has provided the European Commission with extensive information regarding these efforts, and we have transparently and publicly detailed our robust actions,” it said in a statement.
The commission said its investigation will focus on TikTok’s content recommendation systems, especially on risks related to “coordinated inauthentic manipulation or automated exploitation.” It’s also looking at TikTok’s policies on political advertisements and “paid-for political content.”
TikTok said it doesn’t accept paid political ads and “proactively” removes content for violating policies on misinformation.
The investigation could result in TikTok making changes to fix problems or fines worth up to 6% of the company’s total global revenue.
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Tokyo — Japan wants renewable energy to account for up to 50% of its electricity mix by fiscal year 2040 with nuclear power taking up another 20%, according to a draft of its revised basic energy policy, as it makes a clean energy push while meeting rising power demand.
As the world’s second-largest importer of liquefied natural gas and a major consumer of Middle Eastern oil, Japan and its basic energy plans are drawing global attention from oil, gas and coal producers.
Thermal power usage, particularly from inefficient coal-fired power plants, is set to decrease to between 30% and 40% by 2040 from 68.6% in 2023, although the draft energy policy does not specify the breakdown of coal, gas and oil.
“It is necessary to utilize LNG-fired power as a realistic means of transition, and the government and the private sector must jointly secure the necessary long-term LNG contracts in preparation for risks such as price hikes and supply disruptions,” the draft said.
The industry ministry’s policy draft unveiled on Tuesday proposes increasing renewables to between 40% and 50% of power supplies in the 2040 fiscal year, roughly doubling the 22.9% share in the 2023 fiscal year and exceeding the 2030 target of between 36% and 38%.
Japan’s 2040 nuclear power target is in line with the 2030 target of between 20% and 22%, despite the challenges faced by the industry after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Nuclear power accounted for 8.5% of the country’s power supply in 2023.
The new energy plan removes the previous target of “reducing reliance on nuclear power as much as possible” and includes plans to build innovative next-generation reactors at nuclear power sites owned by operators who have decided to decommission existing reactors.
GENEVA — Migrants play a crucial role in the global economy by filling essential jobs in foreign countries and sending much-needed remittances to their home countries, according to a report released Monday by the International Labour Organization.
The report’s release comes as President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to deport millions of undocumented migrants from the United States. During his presidential campaign, he accused them of draining economic resources and taking jobs from native-born Americans.
The ILO report says migrants usually bring a net economic benefit to the countries they enter and those from which they depart.
“Migrants drive economic growth in destination countries, and they support home countries through their remittances and skills transfer,” Sukti Dasgupta, director of the ILO’s conditions of work and equalities department, told journalists at a briefing in Geneva on Monday.
Rafael Diez de Medina, chief statistician at ILO, said the report debunks the assertion by some that “migrants are taking away [the] jobs of nationals.”
“I would like to say that migrant workers often fill specific roles in low-wage or specialized jobs, and often as seasonal workers, and that they complement, rather than displace, the national labor force.
“There might be competition in specific contexts, but we do not really have evidence of migrants taking away jobs from nationals,” he said.
“In this report, migrants in the labor force include all foreign-born persons in the labor force of a host country who are employed or unemployed regardless of their legal status in the country,” Diez de Medina added. “So, documented and undocumented, regardless of the employment permission to the host country, are included in our figures.”
The report presents global and regional estimates of migrants in the labor force covering 189 countries and territories for 2022, representing 99% of the world population at that time.
Migrant labor force increases
The report says 167.7 million migrants were part of the international labor force as of 2022, accounting for 4.7% of the working force worldwide.
The report finds that the migrant global labor force has increased by more than 30 million since 2013, but notes that from 2019 to 2022, “the rate of growth slowed down to less than one percent annually.” This is attributed largely to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While migration patterns have changed in some regions of the world, the ILO said the overall composition of migrant workers has remained relatively stable, with men accounting for about 61% percent and women making up 39%.
About 68% of international migrants in the labor force, the report noted, were concentrated in high-income countries located in northern, southern and western Europe, North America, and the Arab states.
“Migrants were concentrated in high-income countries drawn by higher living standards and more job opportunities,” said Dasgupta, who added that most migrants work in the service sector.
“This is where we find 70 percent of all working migrants, and this is particularly true for women,” she said.
Diez de Medina said the estimates presented are based on a new and improved methodology that allows for more detailed breakdowns than before.
In 2022, the ILO reported that more migrants faced a higher unemployment rate of 7.2% compared to the rate of 5.2% for non-migrants, with more migrant women than men out of work.
According to the report, “This disparity may be driven by factors such as language barriers, unrecognized qualifications, discrimination, and limited childcare options.”
Migrants and legal protections
Diez de Medina stressed the importance of ensuring that migrant workers have access to social and labor protection and “are covered by the country’s labor laws, particularly for domestic workers.”
Instead of being a drain on society, he said, migrant workers are a benefit and “are essential for the global economy, particularly in certain sectors such as services, manufacturing and agriculture.”
“If there were to be major restrictions on the movement of migrant workers, there would be labor shortages in particular sectors in the destination countries,” he said.
Dasgupta agreed that migrants contribute significantly to host economies through taxes, social security payments and other means.
“Their employment to population ratios are often higher,” she said, noting the report finds that “migrants contribute more than they withdraw, particularly for the second-generation migrants.”
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On the U.S. West Coast, conservationists for the world’s largest dam-removal project are both celebrating initial successes and encountering short-term obstacles. VOA’s Matt Dibble has our story from the Klamath River on the border between California and Oregon.
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In the Pacific Northwest, the world’s largest river restoration project has removed hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River to help migrating salmon. The project emptied a lake beloved to its surrounding community. VOA’s Matt Dibble went to the former Copco Lake to see how residents are adjusting.
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President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates communications in the United States. Carr, an FCC commissioner since 2017, has taken aim at big tech and China’s influence on U.S. communications. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports.
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Hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island residents’ personal and bank information, including Social Security numbers, were likely hacked by an international cybercriminal group asking for a ransom, state officials said on Saturday.
In what Rhode Island officials described as extortion, the hackers threatened to release the stolen information unless they were paid an undisclosed amount of money.
The breached data affects people who use the state’s government assistance programs and includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and healthcare purchased through the state’s HealthSource RI, Governor Dan McKee announced on Friday.
Hackers gained access to RIBridges, the state’s online portal for obtaining social services earlier this month, the governor’s office said in a statement, but the breach was not confirmed by its vendor, Deloitte, until Friday.
“Deloitte confirmed that there is a high probability that a cybercriminal has obtained files with personally identifiable information from RIBridges,” the governor’s office said in a statement on Saturday.
A representative from McKee’s office was not immediately available to Reuters for comment.
Anyone who has applied for or received benefits through those programs since 2016 could be affected.
The state directed Deloitte to shut down RIBridges to remediate the threat, and for the time being, anyone applying for new benefits will have to do so on paper applications until the system is back up.
Households believed to have been affected will receive a letter from the state notifying them of the problem and explaining steps to be taken to help protect their data and bank accounts.
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The economy was one of the biggest issues for voters in this year’s U.S. presidential election. As they await Donald Trump’s return to power, many Americans say they expect improving the economy will be one of his first priorities. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns has our story.
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WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court on Friday rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest the short-video app by January 19 or face a ban on the app.
TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make its case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Friday’s ruling means that TikTok now must quickly move to the Supreme Court in an attempt to halt the pending ban.
The companies had warned that without court action, the law will “shut down TikTok — one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms — for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users.”
“The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court,” the D.C. Circuit said.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Under the law, TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance divests it by January 19. The law also gives the U.S. government sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise concerns about collection of Americans’ data.
The U.S. Justice Department argues “continued Chinese control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security.”
TikTok says the Justice Department has misstated the social media app’s ties to China, arguing its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the U.S. on cloud servers operated by Oracle while content moderation decisions that affect U.S. users are made in the U.S.
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PARIS — Credit ratings agency Moody’s unexpectedly downgraded France’s rating on Friday, adding pressure on the country’s new prime minister to corral divided lawmakers into backing his efforts to rein in the strained public finances.
The downgrade, which came outside of Moody’s regular review schedule for France, brings its rating to “Aa3” from “Aa2” with a stable outlook for future moves and puts it in line with those from rival agencies Standard & Poor’s and Fitch.
It comes hours after President Emmanuel Macron named on Friday veteran centrist politician and early ally Francois Bayrou as his fourth prime minister this year.
His predecessor, Michel Barnier, failed to pass a 2025 budget and was toppled earlier this month by left-wing and far-right lawmakers opposed to his $63 billion (60 billion euro) belt-tightening push that he had hoped would rein in France’s spiraling fiscal deficit.
The political crisis forced the outgoing government to propose emergency legislation this week to temporarily roll over 2024 spending limits and tax thresholds into next year until a more permanent 2025 budget can be passed.
“Looking ahead, there is now very low probability that the next government will sustainably reduce the size of fiscal deficits beyond next year,” Moody’s said in a statement.
“As a result, we forecast that France’s public finances will be materially weaker over the next three years compared to our October 2024 baseline scenario,” it added.
Barnier had intended to cut the budget deficit next year to 5% of economic output from 6.1% this year with a $63 billion (60 billion euro) package of spending cuts and tax hikes.
But left-wing and far-right lawmakers were opposed to much of the belt-tightening drive and voted a no confidence measure against Barnier’s government, bringing it down.
Bayrou, who has long warned about France’s weak public finances, said on Friday shortly after taking office that he faced a “Himalaya” of a challenge reining in the deficit.
Outgoing Finance Minister Antoine Armand said he took note of Moody’s decision, adding there was a will to reduce the deficit as indicated by the nomination of Bayrou.
The political crisis put French stocks and debt under pressure, pushing the risk premium on French government bonds at one point to their highest level over 12 years.
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Rovaniemi, Finland — Shuffling across icy ground on a cold December afternoon, lots of tourist groups poured into Santa Claus Village, a winter-themed amusement park perched on the edge of the Arctic Circle.
They frolic in the snow, take a reindeer sleigh ride, sip a cocktail in an ice bar or even meet Saint Nick himself in the capital of Finnish Lapland, Rovaniemi, which happily calls itself the “official hometown of Santa Claus.”
The Santa Claus Village theme park, which attracts more than 600,000 people annually, is especially popular during the holiday season.
“This is like my dream came true,” beamed Polish visitor Elzbieta Nazaruk. “I’m really excited to be here.”
Tourism is booming in Rovaniemi — which has hotel and restaurant owners, as well as city officials, excited as it brings lots of money to the town. However, not everyone is happy about the onslaught of visitors, 10 times the town’s population, each year at Christmas time.
“We are worried about the overgrowth of tourism. Tourism has grown so rapidly, it’s not anymore in control,” said 43-year-old Antti Pakkanen, a photographer and member of a housing network that in September organized a rally through the city’s streets.
It’s a feeling that has been echoed in other popular European travel destinations, including Barcelona, Amsterdam, Malaga and Florence.
Across the continent, locals have protested against “over-tourism” — which generally describes the tipping point at which visitors and their cash stop benefiting residents and instead cause harm by degrading historic sites, overwhelming infrastructure and making life markedly more difficult for those who live there.
Now, it seems to have spread north, all the way to the edges of the Arctic Circle.
Rovaniemi counted a record 1.2 million overnight visitors in 2023, almost 30 percent growth on 2022, after rebounding from pandemic travel disruptions.
“Nordic is a trend,” Visit Rovaniemi CEO Sanna Karkkainen, said as she stood in an ice restaurant, where snow carvers were working nearby.
“People want to travel to cool countries to see the snow, to see the Northern Lights, and, of course, to see Santa Claus,” she added.
Thirteen new flight routes to Rovaniemi Airport opened this year, bringing passengers from Geneva, Berlin, Bordeaux and more. Most tourists come from European countries like France, Germany and the UK, but Rovaniemi’s appeal has also spread further.
Hotel availability is scarce this winter, and Tiina Maatta, general manager of the 159-room Original Sokos Hotel, expects 2024 to break more records.
Local critics of mass tourism say many apartment buildings in Rovaniemi’s city center are also used for accommodation services during peak season and are thus no longer available for residential use. They say the proliferation of short-term rentals has driven up prices, squeezed out long-term residents, and turned its city center into a “transient space for tourists.”
Finnish law prohibits professional accommodation services in buildings intended for residential use, so campaigners are calling on authorities to act.
“The rules must be enforced better,” said Pakkanen.
Not everyone agrees. Mayor Ulla-Kirsikka Vainio notes some make “good money” on short-term rentals.
Either way, stricter regulations likely won’t be in place to impact this winter season, and despite the unease expressed by locals, mass tourism to Rovaniemi is probably only going to grow in 2025 — as visitors want to experience the unique atmosphere up north, especially during the holiday season.
“It’s Christmas time and we would love to see the Northern Lights,” says Joy, a visitor from Bangkok. “Rovaniemi seems to be a good place.”
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SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — From plastic surgery clinics to tour firms and hotel chains, South Korea’s hospitality sector is wary of the potential impact of a protracted political crisis, as some overseas travelers cancel trips following last week’s brief bout of martial law.
South Korea’s travel and tourism industry, which generated $59.1 billion in 2023, around 3.8% of GDP, has held up through previous bumps in the road, including a 2016 presidential impeachment and periodic tensions with North Korea.
But more than a dozen hospitality and administrative sources said the army’s involvement in the latest political crisis was a serious development that could deter leisure and business travel, when the sector is approaching a full recovery in visitor numbers, which stood at 97% of pre-COVID levels as of October.
“There are concerns that safety issues in Seoul would throw cold water on the tourism industry,” Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon said on Wednesday while meeting tourism industry officials to discuss a fall in travel demand.
“There is a growing number of examples of foreign tourists canceling visits to Seoul and shortening their stays,” Oh said, before declaring “Seoul is safe,” in English, Chinese and Japanese to the media.
Daily life and tourist activities have continued as usual, despite ongoing large protests, since President Yoon Suk Yeol rescinded his six hours of martial law on December 4 after parliament voted it down, with analysts noting that South Korea’s institutional checks and balances seem to be holding up.
Some tourists have since canceled bookings, albeit not in great numbers, while others are enquiring whether they could pull out should the situation change, travel and hospitality sources said.
Accor hotel group, which includes the Fairmont and Sofitel brands, said it noted a “slight increase” in cancellation rates since December 3, around 5% higher than in November.
The Korea Tourism Start-up Association said on Friday bookings for the first half of 2025 already had seen a sharp decline.
Rooms in previously fully booked hotels in the capital, Seoul, have become available due to cancellations with some hotels “even lowering their rates and offering special deals to attract more bookings,” said an inbound travel agency that asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
A plastic surgery clinic in Seoul’s upmarket Gangnam neighborhood also said some foreign patients had canceled visits since the martial law incident.
“We are not worried now, but if this situation continues, that would have an impact on foreign visitors,” a clinic representative said, declining to be named.
South Korea is a top global destination for medical and plastic surgery tourism.
Soft power
The latest political crisis also threatens to deal a major blow to the country’s brand, which has been improving thanks to Korean culture and economic success, said Kim Wou-kyung, head of a government brand promotion agency.
The explosion to global prominence of South Korean drama, music and beauty, known as the “Korean Wave,” plus a reputation for safety, and global brands such as Samsung, are key forms of soft power that the government leverages to grow tourist numbers.
South Korea hopes to almost double the number of annual tourists by 2027 from 2019 levels, to 30 million.
Part of the strategy also is to focus on group business travel for events including conferences and exhibitions, a sector known as MICE tourism, which could be impacted if the political crisis continues into early next year, said Ha Hong-kook, secretary-general at Korea MICE Association.
The parliament plans to vote on a motion to impeach Yoon on Saturday, a week after its first impeachment vote was defeated.
“If we get through this immediate, unprecedented period … into a clear route to new elections, then I think actually the impact won’t be that bad,” said Andrew Gilholm, director at risk consultancy Control Risks Group.
He said the country’s reputation “might even be improved” long-term by displaying how it comes through the problems.
Su Shu, founder of Chinese firm Moment Travel in Chengdu, is also sanguine about travel demand for South Korea.
“No matter where there is chaos, there will be people who dare not go,” Su said.
China is the largest source of foreign visitors to South Korea, followed by Japan and the U.S.
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SYDNEY — Australia’s center-left government said on Thursday it planned new rules that would charge big tech firms millions of dollars if they did not pay Australian media companies for news hosted on their platforms.
The move piles pressure on global tech giants such as Facebook-owner Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google to pay publishers for content or face the risk of paying millions to continue operations in Australia.
“The news bargaining initiative will … will create a financial incentive for agreement-making between digital platforms and news media businesses in Australia,” Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones told a news conference.
The platforms at risk will be significant social media platforms and search engines with an Australian-based revenue in excess of $160 million, he said.
The charge will be offset for any commercial agreements that are voluntarily entered into between the platforms and news media businesses, Jones said.
Tech companies condemned the plan.
“The proposal fails to account for the realities of how our platforms work, specifically that most people don’t come to our platforms for news content and that news publishers voluntarily choose to post content on our platforms because they receive value from doing so,” a Meta spokesperson said after Jones’ remarks.
A spokesperson for Google said the government’s decision “risks ongoing viability of commercial deals with news publishers in Australia.”
The proposed new rules come as Australia toughens its approach to the mostly U.S.-domiciled tech giants.
Last month it became the first country to ban children under the age of 16 from social media, in a move seen as setting a benchmark for other governments’ handling of Big Tech.
Canberra also plans to threaten the companies with fines for failing to stamp out scams.
Google, ByteDance through TikTok, and Meta through its various platforms, would fall within the scope of the charges under the new rules. However X, formerly Twitter, would not be covered, Jones said.
Blocking news
In 2021, Australia passed laws to make the U.S. tech giants, such as Google and Meta, compensate media companies for the links that lure readers and advertising revenue.
After the move, Meta briefly blocked users from reposting news articles, but later struck deals with several Australian media firms, such as News Corp and national broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corp.
It has said since it will not renew those arrangements beyond 2024.
Meta, which also owns Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, has been scaling back its promotion of news and political content globally to drive traffic, and says news links are now a fraction of users’ feeds.
This year it said it would discontinue the news tab on Facebook in Australia and the United States, adding that it had canceled the tab last year in Britain, France and Germany.
In 2023, Meta blocked users in Canada from reposting news content after its government took similar action.
Australia news organizations, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, are expected to benefit from the new rules.
Following Jones’ announcement, News Corp Australia Executive Chairman Michael Miller said he would contact Meta and TikTok immediately to seek a commercial relationship with News Corp Australia.
“I believe news publishers and the tech platforms should have relationships that benefit both parties on commercial and broader terms,” he said in a statement.
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NAIROBI, KENYA — The United Nations, Microsoft and Kenya’s Ministry of Information last week launched a digital and artificial intelligence center in Nairobi to train African public servants and accelerate the development and use of online services.
Officials said the program — the Timbuktoo GreenTech Hub and Africa Centre for Competence for AI and Digital Skilling — aims to improve the skills of 100,000 government workers.
U.N. Development Program Regional Director Ahunna Eziakonwa said at the launch that better digital skills and resources will enable Africa to achieve technological progress.
“An inclusive public sector digital transformation drives efficiency and effectiveness and helps governments to enhance coordination of resources and information and strengthen data and code policymaking and implementation,” she said.
Kenyan President William Ruto said that more than 20,000 government services can be accessed online and that the digital transformation has made government work easier.
“This will help us streamline public service delivery and enhance transparency and efficiency, minimize opportunities for corruption and maximize visibility and mobilization of public revenue,” he said. “The transformative impact of this single initiative on citizens’ experience in accessing public services, along with the government’s capacity to effectively manage public resources, clearly illustrates the immense value of digital transformation.”
Governance experts say digital services offered online have improved citizens’ trust in public services and made the work of government employees faster, more accurate and more transparent.
However, the frequent power and internet blackouts that plague some African countries sometimes force government workers to resort to traditional paper and file systems.
Some workers have little experience with computers and feel that online glitches are slowing them down.
Michael Niyitegeka, team leader at Refactory, a software academy in Uganda that prepares youth for global tech work, said authorities must push workers to use the technology.
“Leadership has to be extremely firm in knowing how they want to use these technologies and invest in ensuring that people are working with it,” Niyitegeka said.
“We need to work on the entire system so the citizens can be brought to speed, and different users of these technologies as we are building need to be brought on board so that we are building together,” he said. “Otherwise, it will probably become a white elephant.”
Tech experts say that if developed correctly and with proper investment, then digital technology and artificial intelligence can transform communities.
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Yaounde, Cameroon — Officials in Sub-Saharan Africa countries have agreed it is important to reduce over-dependence on imported fish and seafood from North Africa and the European Union and instead they should strive to cultivate fish-farming, which will create jobs for unemployed youth. The officials, meeting in Cameroon, said their goal is to invest some of what they collectively spend on importing fish each year, and put that funding into developing local fish farms. They hope to re-direct to local fish farmers a large amount of the $7 billion spent annually on importing seafood.
Fish farmer Tanyi Hubert demonstrates how every day he catches and sells at least 10 kilograms of fresh fish from his pond in Nkolbisson, a neighborhood in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.
He told government officials from 12 African countries, who were in Cameroon on Monday, that he makes at least $40 each day since he started selling fish one year ago from his riverside fish pond, in which he farms fish.
Hubert said he is one of several hundred youths the government of Cameroon trained, and provided financial assistance of about $4,000 each, to begin a fish farming business.
Eta Collins Ayuk is the director of the Limbe National Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture created by the government of Cameroon to train fish farmers. He said several hundred unemployed Cameroonians who have received training in fish farming are today supplying fish to local markets and raising enough money to take care of their families.
“The catch we get from the wild is rapidly declining and the only way to ensure fish and fish products availability for local consumption should be through the farming of fish, which is aquaculture. We train people to create jobs. We don’t train people to go and search for employment,” said Collins.
Eta said efficient local fish farming will reduce the large amounts of money Cameroon spends each year on importing fish from North Africa and Europe.
The government of this central African country says it has spent about $200 million in 2024, to import 60% of the 550,000 tons of fish and seafood it needs this year to feed its 30 million civilians.
Officials and fish farmers from Sub-Saharan African countries meeting in Yaounde on Monday said Africa alone accounts for close to 13% of the world’s total fish imports.
The continent spends close to $7 billion to import fish and seafood from Europe and North African countries, including Morocco, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, officials said.
Olodayo Ganiyu, chief executive officer of Aquapet Ventures, a Nigerian company that promotes local fish farming, said it is unfortunate that, despite its huge potential of abundant natural resources including oceans, rivers, lakes, waterways and coasts, Africa still spends huge sums of money to import fish.
“We [Nigeria] import thousands of tons of fish every year, that cost us $1.2 billion. Now the government of my country is encouraging so many people to come into fish farming. A time will come in Nigeria when you will not see any imported fish again. Many people are now encouraged to invest more in aquaculture so that the scarce dollars used in importation of frozen fish into the country will be channeled into health, education and other infrastructure,” he said.
Olodayo said participants at the Yaounde meeting this week agreed to try to guide their countries to soon invest about 60% of the money they normally use to import fish, to instead pursue local fish farming development and production. The plan aims to create jobs for African youths who, due to widespread poverty and joblessness, are leaving their countries to seek work in Europe.
The participants said Africa has over 30,000 kilometers of untapped coastline to gradually expand the fishing industry, which has the potential to drive economic growth, ensuring food security and creating jobs.
Cameroon’s livestock minister, who goes by only one name, Taiga, said the African Continental Free Trade Area, alongside global initiatives, has prepared a blueprint for Africa to use its vast fishing resources to fight hunger and propel development.
Taiga said Cameroon and Sub-Saharan countries will succeed to stop the importation of fish and seafood from North Africa and Europe, just as they succeeded to stop the importation of frozen chicken and pork from developed countries. He said the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development is presently assisting African countries to produce fish locally and reduce dependence on imports.
Taiga spoke on Cameroon state TV. He said African nations are fighting to stop illegal fishing on their coastal waters but did not say how.
The United Nations reports that Africa this year accounted for 13.1 million tons of fisheries and aquaculture production, which is six percent of the world’s annual total. At the conference Monday, officials said they hope that by 2026, some 60% of money they use to import fish will be invested in local production.
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WASHINGTON — The United States slapped sanctions on a Chinese cybersecurity company and one of its employees Tuesday, accusing it of compromising more than 80,000 firewalls in a 2020 attack.
The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that it had sanctioned Sichuan Silence Information Technology Company and an employee named Guan Tianfeng over the April 2020 attack, which targeted firewalls around the world, including critical infrastructure in the U.S.
Over a three-day period, Guan exploited a vulnerability in a firewall product and proceeded to deploy malware against some 81,000 businesses around the world with the aim of stealing data, including usernames and passwords, while also attempting to infect the computers with ransomware, according to the Treasury Department.
More than 23,000 firewalls were in the United States, of which 36 were protecting “critical infrastructure companies’ systems,” the Treasury said.
“Today’s action underscores our commitment to exposing these malicious cyber activities … and to holding the actors behind them accountable for their schemes,” Bradley Smith, Treasury acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.
The Treasury, he said, “will continue to leverage our tools to disrupt attempts by malicious cyber actors to undermine our critical infrastructure.”
Alongside the sanctions, the Department of Justice has also unsealed an indictment against Guan and announced a reward of up to $10 million for information about the employee or company, according to the Treasury Department.
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