Category:

Eco/Invest/Demography

The worst for aviation industry is probably ahead of it, rather than behind

Airlines burned through $51 billion in the June quarter and will eat a further $77 billion in cash in the six months through December, according to analysis this week by the International Air Transport Association. That makes up roughly 80 per cent of the $162 billion of bailout money they’ve already received, and airlines won’t return to pre-Covid traffic levels until 2024. During 2021, they’ll still be going through $5 billion to $6 billion of cash a month, according to IATA.

read more

Only 1 in 4 global orgs keep Cardholder Payment Data Secure: Report

Payment data remains one of the most sought after and lucrative targets by cybercriminals with 9 out of 10 data breaches being financially motivated, as highlighted by the recent Verizon Business 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report (2020 DBIR). Within the retail sector alone, 99 percent of security incidents analyzed by the 2020 DBIR were focused on acquiring payment data for criminal use.

read more

Potential Covid-19 vaccines not affected by recent mutations: Report

There had been fears the G-strain, within the main protein on the surface of the virus, would negatively impact on vaccines under development.

“This is good news for the hundreds of vaccines in development around the world, with the majority targeting the spike protein as this binds to the ACE2 receptors in our lungs and airways, which are the entry point to infect cells,” said Professor Seshadri Vasan, who holds an honorary chair in Health Sciences at the University of York.

read more

U.S., AstraZeneca strike deal for COVID-19 antibody treatment touted by Trump

The treatment has come under the spotlight after Trump was treated with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ antibody drug last week. The president has also released a video on Twitter touting its benefits.

In a call earlier on Friday, a top U.S. health official said the government was expecting to provide more than 1 million free doses of antibody treatments to COVID-19 patients, similar to the one that was administered to Trump.

read more

India can be AI capital, policy framework for technology can accelerate development: Chandrasekaran

“Solving for data governance, specifically what should be the global standard for data residency — localisation, privacy and security — are very important steps for our long term success. I think developing a policy framework will accelerate development of AI and AI based solutions in a significant way,” Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said.

read more

‘Food is the best vaccine against chaos’; U.N. food agency WFP wins Peace Nobel

“There is an estimate within the World Food Programme that … there will be 265 million starving people within a year, so of course this is also a call to the international community not to underfund the World Food Programme.”

WFP runs a logistics service that has dispatched medical cargoes to over 120 countries throughout the pandemic to help governments and health partners fighting COVID-19.

It also has provided passenger services to ferry humanitarian and health workers where commercial flights were unavailable.

read more

Central banks sketch out digital currency as China forges ahead

Central banks began looking closely at digital currencies after Facebook last year announced its yet-to-be-launched digital token Libra that would be backed by a mixture of major currencies and government debt. The body behind Libra has since tweaked plans and now hopes to launch several “stablecoins” backed by individual currencies.Central banks need to keep up to avoid the private sector plugging payments gaps in unsuitable ways,Bank of England (BoE) Deputy Governor and chair of a BIS committee on payments Jon Cunliffe said.

read more