President Muhammadu Buhari’s wife, Aisha has received a donation of N60million from The People’s Republic of China, for her pet project.
Aisha’s spokesman, Suleiman Haruna, in a statement explained that the donation to Future Assured, was in recognition of her efforts towards improving lives.
Haruna said the Senior Special Assistant to Buhari, Dr. Hajo Sani, thanked China for the support and goodwill and promised that the money will get to its intended beneficiaries.
Presenting the donation, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Chinese Embassy, Mr. Lin Jin, said: “The embassy pays great attention that its bilateral relationships should benefit people from all walks of life.”
Aisha’s pet project seeks to cater for children and women in the North-East, who have been affected by Boko Haram insurgency.
China has applied for 15,745 Artificial Intelligence patents, ranking second worldwide, according to Liu Lihua, vice minister of industry and information technology.
Over the past week, the Internet has yet again been buzzing about the future of artificial intelligence (AI).
And once again, the heat was generated by AlphaGo, Google’s AI program, which completed a 3-0 clean sweep Friday over Ke Jie, the current world No.1 Go player.
In contrast to the generally negative reactions to AlphaGo’s 4-1 victory over South Korean master Lee Se-dol in March last year, people are now more optimistic towards the future of AI.
“AlphaGo was not designed just to play Go,” said Qian Jianlun, a Go teacher in east China’s Zhejiang Province. “As an AI project, it will change a lot of aspects of our lives.”
Qian’s words echoed the overall positivity shown by the status quo of China’s AI industry.
According to data from iiMedia Research, a major research institution, China’s AI industry increased by 43.3 percent in 2016, surpassing 10 billion yuan (1.47 billion U.S. dollars), and is expected to reach 15.21 billion and 34.43 billion yuan in 2017 and 2019 respectively.
The numbers were driven by a boom in the amount of research taking place in the industry.
Favorable policies came as a consequence. Over 40 robotics industry parks have now been or are currently being set up around the country, and for the first time ever, AI was included in the government work report Premier Li Keqiang presented to the Fifth Session of the 12th National People’s Congress in March.
“We will accelerate research and development, and commercialization of new materials, artificial intelligence […] and develop industrial clusters in these fields,” the report read.
“AI has become a key driving force behind Chinese companies,” said Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu, China’s Internet giant.
“In the AI era, China can innovate not only in products, but also in technologies,” he added.
For insiders, the further development of China’s AI industry will continue to count largely on data.
“The core of AI development lies in the massive amounts of data,” said Li Kaifu, chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital company aiming to create successful Chinese start-ups.
“In China, we have a huge database, and it has proved to be quite valuable for us,” he continued.
Bai Chunli, president of Chinese Academy of Sciences, agreed. “By 2020, China will hold 20 percent of the global data, which is expected to reach 44 trillion gigabytes,” he stated at an expo on big data Monday.
AI has been playing a bigger role in people’s everyday lives. For example, an AI system monitoring vehicles to intelligently control traffic was applied in east China’s Hangzhou, and increased vehicle passing speeds by up to 11 percent during its trial last year.
“China is already leading the world in fields such as computer vision and automatic speech recognition,” Liu Lihua added.
“We believe that AI presents the most favorable opportunity for us to lead the world,” Li resonated.
However, for some, what has been transpiring in the industry is not enough for it to successfully achieve sustainable development.
Despite predicting that China’s AI market will enjoy a 50-percent annual increase, way above the global rate of 20 percent, McKinsey and Company, a worldwide management consulting firm, also noted that less than 25 percent of the AI industry insiders in China have over ten years of experience in the business, while in the United States that number is 50 percent.
Also, the country’s AI companies are yet to join forces.
“There’s been a lack of technical collaboration in our AI industry,” said Wen Xiaojun from CCID Wise, a major Chinese think tank. “The inter-connectibility of products is poor, and there is no efficient coordination between upstream and downstream producers.”
e believes an industry service platform needs to be set up to boost functions including research and development, application and product examining.
“We need such an incubation center for AI to prosper,” he added.
The Federal Government has reiterated its commitment to supporting Nigerian farmers to produce rice that would compete with the ones produced from countries like India, China and Thailand.
This assurance was given by Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo in Abuja on Wednesday during an interactive session with some middle level civil and public servants on the ease of doing business in the country.
According to him, Nigerians would soon start seeing the manifestation of some of the reforms taken by the Federal Government in the agricultural sector as the country would soon start producing local rice.
He said if Nigerians can consume what the country produces locally, poverty and unemployment would be easily tackled.
He said the government was mindful of this development and would do everything within its powers to encourage local farmers to improve the output and quality of local price.
Osinbajo said, “It is worrisome that locally produced rice is still expensive than imported rice from India, China and Thailand.
“Rice produced in these countries, are subsidized by their respective governments making rice from the region cheap and affordable.”
“By subsiding rice production for farmers, more jobs are created. We are planning to introduce some kinds of assistance to our farmers in due course. Our rice will have to compete with any rice in the world. We will hold meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture every day”, the Acting president said.
International investigators hunted Saturday for those behind an unprecedented cyber-attack that affected systems in dozens of countries, including at banks, hospitals and government agencies, as security experts sought to contain the fallout.
The assault, which began Friday and was being described as the biggest-ever cyber ransom attack, struck state agencies and major companies around the world — from Russian banks and British hospitals to FedEx and European car factories.
“The recent attack is at an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits,” said Europol, Europe’s police agency.
Europol said a special task force at its European Cybercrime Centre was “specially designed to assist in such investigations and will play an important role in supporting the investigation”.
The attacks used ransomware that apparently exploited a security flaw in Microsoft operating systems, locking users’ files unless they pay the attackers a designated sum in the virtual currency Bitcoin.
Images appeared on victims’ screens demanding payment of $300 (275 euros) in Bitcoin, saying: “Ooops, your files have been encrypted!”
Payment is demanded within three days or the price is doubled, and if none is received within seven days the files will be deleted, according to the screen message.
But experts and government alike warn against ceding to the hackers’ demands.
“Paying the ransom does not guarantee the encrypted files will be released,” the US Department of Homeland Security’s computer emergency response team said.
Manhunt for hackers behind global WannaCry Ransomware cyberattack underway
“It only guarantees that the malicious actors receive the victim’s money, and in some cases, their banking information.”
Experts and officials offered differing estimates of the scope of the attacks, but all agreed it was huge.
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at the Helsinki-based cyber security company F-Secure, told AFP it was the biggest ransomware outbreak in history, saying that 130,000 systems in more than 100 countries had been affected.
He said Russia and India were hit particularly hard, largely because Microsoft’s Windows XP — one of the operating systems most at risk — was still widely used there.
French police said there were “more than 75,000 victims” around the globe, but cautioned that the number could increase “significantly”.
The virus spread quickly because the culprits used a digital code believed to have been developed by the US National Security Agency — and subsequently leaked as part of a document dump, according to researchers at the Moscow-based computer security firm Kaspersky Lab.
Microsoft said the situation was “painful” and that it was taking “all possible actions to protect our customers”.
It issued guidance for people to protect their systems, while taking the highly unusual step of reissuing security patches first made available in March for Windows XP and other older versions of its operating system.
US software firm Symantec said the majority of organisations affected were in Europe, and the attack was believed to be indiscriminate.
The companies and government agencies targeted were diverse.
In the United States, package delivery group FedEx said it was “implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible,” while French carmaker Renault was forced to stop production at sites in France, Slovenia and Romania.
Russia’s interior ministry said some of its computers had been hit by a “virus attack” and that efforts were underway to destroy it. The country’s banking system was also attacked, although no problems were detected, as was the railway system.
Germany’s rail operator Deutsche Bahn said its station display panels were affected. Universities in Greece and Italy also were hit.
China’s network information safety working group sent a warning to universities about the cyber-attack and the National Internet Emergency Center suggested that users update Windows security patches.
Shanghai’s Fudan University received reports that a large number of school computers were infected with the virus.
Kaspersky said it was “trying to determine whether it is possible to decrypt data locked in the attack — with the aim of developing a decryption tool as soon as possible.”
On Saturday, a cyber security researcher told AFP he had accidentally discovered a “kill switch” that could prevent the spread of the ransomware.
The researcher, tweeting as @MalwareTechBlog, said registering a domain name used by the malware stops it from spreading, though it cannot help computers already affected.
“If you have anything to patch, patch it,” the researcher said in a blog post. “Now I should probably sleep.”
A hacking group called Shadow Brokers released the malware in April claiming to have discovered the flaw from the NSA, Kaspersky said.
“Unlike most other attacks, this malware is spreading primarily by direct infection from machine to machine on local networks, rather than purely by email,” said Lance Cottrell, chief scientist at the US technology group Ntrepid.
G7 finance ministers meeting in Italy vowed to unite against cyber crime, as it represented a growing threat to their economies and should be tackled as a priority. The danger will be discussed at the G7 leaders’ summit next month.
In Britain, the attack disrupted care at National Health Service facilities, forcing ambulances to divert and hospitals to postpone operations.
“There will be lessons to learn from what appears to be the biggest criminal cyber-attack in history,” Interior minister Amber Rudd said.
“But our immediate priority as a government is to disrupt the attack, restore affected services as soon as possible, and establish who was behind it so we can bring them to justice.”
The Minister of Communication, Mr Adebayo Shittu, has described the Internet as a resourceful tool that could be employed to transform Nigeria’s education sector and contribute to economic transformation of the continent.
Minister of Communications, Mr. Adebayo Shittu.
Shittu stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Kigali on Friday.
He was commenting on a report of a new study on internet released at the African Regional Internet and Development Dialogue in Kigali by the Internet Society.
The minister, who commended the study, stressed that internet was not only the future of education but of other sectors such as commerce, transportation, health, governance among others.
Shittu said Nigeria was putting in place mechanism to take its rightful place on the continent and world’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
He said that the present administration had invested and still investing in the development of ICT and had also created favourable environment to attract investors to the sector.
The study, which results were released in Kigali, showed that internet offers an opportunity for addressing the learning needs of diverse groups in Africa.
This, it stated, included the bulk of learners that are currently out of school.
The study titled: “Internet for Education in Africa,” stated that a blended learning environment that leverages internet could potentially help connect education to work and improve the skills that allow youths to access employment.
“It could also help empower lifelong learners, and importantly, support women, girls and disabled people to participate in learning without space, time and other cultural and social barriers.”
It described blended learning as an education system that combines online digital media with traditional classroom methods.
“The participation in the global economy is now dependent on 21st century skills, which includes the ability to navigate in the digital world.
‘‘Progress in countries like India, China and South Korea shows that connectivity serves as a foundation for access to information economy jobs and advancing innovations,” it stated.
The study shows that in Africa, using internet for learning is a real possibility.
It added that more than a quarter of the African population (334 million) has access to internet, the majority of which are young people.
According to the study, there are 147 million Facebook users in Africa as of June 2016.
It, however, noted that such access to internet and use of social media had not been harnessed systematically to advance education and learning at individual and institutional levels.
The study said there was hope that internet and ICT can transform the education landscape in Africa, but that there are still challenges blocking internet use in education in Africa.
These, it stated, included limited literacy and skills that are needed to participate in the Internet economy and lack of infrastructure to host and exchange locally available content.
Others, it stated, are inadequate supportive infrastructure such as electricity, and high taxes on ICT hardware and software, among others.
Dr Lishan Adam, one of the lead researchers behind the study, said it was also part of reviewing the position of Africa in global education commitments.
“As internet is growing, educational challenges are advancing and normally the two are not supposed to be intersecting.
‘‘What we are trying to do is to look at where we are in terms of providing access to quality education, which is in line with the global education commitments under Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
‘‘The education targets of the SDGs, among others aim to ensure universal pre-primary, primary and secondary education, achieve gender equity among learners, ensure disabled learners attain equal education, and foster youth employability,” he said.
To achieve this, Adam stated that improved connectivity in the region and the vast learning resources that are available over the internet are useful.
According to him, while access to mobile broadband has increased in urban areas, last-mile connectivity remains a challenge.
‘‘With about half of the population more than 25kilometres from the nearest fiber connection, broadband connection in rural areas remains very low.
‘‘With over 70 per cent of the population living in rural areas, the majority who need internet the most, such as rural schools, do not have it,” he said.
China has finally deported an American businesswoman whom it convicted of spying a few days earlier.
TheNewsGuru gathers that Sandy Phan-Gillis spent more than two years in Chinese custody after being detained in March 2015 during a business trip with officials from Houston.
According to a CNN report, Phan-Gillis arrived back home in the U.S. late Friday, according to revelations by her lawyer, Shang Baojun in China.
According to the report, a court in the southern Chinese city of Nanning on Tuesday had sentenced her to three-and-a-half years in prison and ordered her deported. But it wasn’t immediately clear at the time how much longer Chinese authorities would keep her in detention before her deportation.
Phan-Gillis pleaded guilty to espionage charges in the closed court hearing in Nanning, according to Shang.
Her husband, Jeff Gillis, campaigned from their home in Houston for her release, maintaining that his wife is not guilty. He has said in the past that he has documents that show she was in the U.S. during the period in the 1990s when she is alleged to have spied for the American government in China.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas welcomed the news of her return home, saying the charges against her were “baseless”. He praised the State Department and said President Donald Trump had provided “leadership” in securing Phan-Gillis’ release.
“The United States welcomes her home,” a State Department official said Sunday.
China hasn’t publicly released details of the allegations against her. Shang said he wasn’t permitted to reveal further information about the case without official approval because it concerns national security.
Authorities in western China are prohibiting parents from naming their children Islamic names.
This is in the latest effort to dilute the influence of religion on life in the ethnic Uighur minority heartland.
“Muhammad,” ”Jihad” and “Islam” are among at least 29 names now banned in the heavily Muslim region.
If a parent chooses one of the barred names, the child will be denied government benefits, Fox News reports.
The names listed on the government document disseminated by Uighur groups include several related to historic religious or political figures and some place names.
“Imam,” ”Hajj,” ”Turknaz,” ”Azhar” and “Wahhab” are on the list, as well as “Saddam,” ”Arafat,” Medina” and “Cairo.
Judgment calls about which names are deemed to be “overly religious” will be made by local government officials.
The naming restrictions are part of a broader government effort to secularize Xinjiang, which is home to roughly 10 million Uighurs, a Turkic people who mostly follow Sunni Islam.
Top officials including Xinjiang’s Communist Party chief have publicly said that radical Islamic thought has infiltrated the region from Central Asia, protracting a bloody, years long insurgency that has claimed hundreds of lives.
Aside from the prohibition on Islamic names, local Xinjiang officials strongly discourages Islamic veils, while government-linked commentators have called for bans of mosques with domes or other Middle Eastern architectural styles.
Uighur activists and human rights groups say that radical thought had never gained widespread traction, but restrictions on religious expression are fueling a cycle of radicalization and violence.
Prof. Zhang Yong-Peng, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences(CASS), in Beijing, China on Tuesday said that for more Chinese development assistance to be extended to Nigeria, both countries should become active partners.
Yong-Peng told a Delegation of visiting Nigerian Journalists in Beijing, while making clarification on “The Belt and Silk Road: Creating New Development in Africa,’’ that it was imperative for Nigeria to become more active with China.
“China knows Nigeria as a major power in Africa and would continue to create more opportunities to access her development assistance and funds. Let me say that Nigeria can benefit a lot more from the Chinese government.
“The Chinese Government’s Belt and Road Initiative currently covers 100 countries, including Ethiopia, South Africa and Egypt.
“Nigeria should give us good development plans, because China is ready to provide more support to Nigeria. Therefore, Nigeria needs to be more active with the Chinese government.
“China is today rising as a political power and needs to extend her political and economic power. And China also needs protection where her political and economic interest is,’’ he said.
The Professor of International Politics at the Institute of West, Asian and African Studies at CASS said that many other African countries had been benefiting from the agreements reached on the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation(FOCAC).
Yong-Peng said that the Silk Road Economic Belt was proposed in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa, along the ancient trade routes.
According to him, more than 100 countries, including European countries, have already signed the Silk Road Economic Belt with the Chinese government, with many roads already built by Chinese companies in the European countries.
He said that the initiative was meant to promote peaceful co-existence, mutual respect for other countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression and mutual non-interference in others’ internal affairs between countries.
China has warned the US against using military force against North Korea, after a surprise redeployment of an aircraft carrier group. Washington’s regional allies said they expect it to consult with them before any action.
Tension is mounting in the region as US President Donald Trump said he would solve the “North Korean problem” with or without China’s help. The warning came amid the diversion of the aircraft carrier group ‘USS Carl Vinson’ to the Korean Peninsula and a week after Trump ordered the US Navy to fire a barrage of 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase as punishment for an alleged chemical attack in Idlib province.
We are sending an armada’: Trump ready to eliminate N. Korean ‘menace’ with or without China
Responding to US belligerence, Beijing called against using force against Pyongyang.
“Military force cannot resolve the issue,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing. “Amid challenge there is opportunity. Amid tensions we will also find a kind of opportunity to return to talks.”
An editorial in the influential newspaper Global Times, which is published by the Chinese Communist Party’ People’s Daily, said the situation on the Korean Peninsula could not be compared to that of Syria.
“Taking military actions against North Korea is much more risky than launching a missile strike on Syria. Pyongyang is able to deal a heavy blow to South Korea. Regardless of Pyongyang’s nuclear capability, a radiological dispersal device, or a ‘dirty bomb,’ if thrown on the South, will cause nuclear pollution, which will be unbearable to this US ally,” the newspaper warned.
The paper said Washington needs to accept the reality that it “has no power to put global affairs in order at the moment” and work with other leading world powers on the Korean situation through the UN Security Council, a body that the US has shun by the unilateral attack against Syria.
A total of 18 live streaming apps have been closed for broadcasting illegal content, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced on Sunday.
A number of app operators were punished for a lack of a mechanism to censor content.
A number of anchors spread illegal content, dressed in military or police uniforms or were scantily dressed and acted flirtatiously, according to CAC.
Some anchors announced their WeChat or QQ accounts during live streaming to induce fans to engage in prostitution.
“The online behaviour of the anchors violated relevant Internet information service or live streaming laws and regulations, offended socialist core values and brought negative impact to the healthy growth of the young and teenagers,’’ CAC said.
In November, CAC published a regulation banning the use of live streaming to undermine national security, destabilise society, disturb social order, infringe people’s rights and interests and disseminate inappropriate content, including pornography.
According to the regulation, service providers are obliged to censor content before releasing it and have a system that allows them to immediately block improper live streams.
CAC said it had previously joined hands with two other departments to blacklist 1,879 anchors, who had severely violated relevant regulations and banned them from registering on live streaming platforms again.
The administration vowed to step up inspection and law enforcement.
