FDA warns dengue test kits not for personal use
PUBLISHED : 19 Jul 2023 at 04:00
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned the public not to purchase dengue test kits to identify the disease themselves because the kits are for expert use.
FDA deputy secretary-general Lertchai Lertwut said the FDA had approved dengue testing kits that are quite active in identifying patients.
However, the kits must be used only by doctors, he said.
This is because dengue diagnosis requires not only virus detection tools but also other diagnostic and clinical assessments from a doctor.
He said there are several methods to identify if a person is infected by the dengue virus, such as RT-PCR, antibody tests, Dengue Virus Antigen Detection (NS1), and dengue testing kits.
However, the FDA has not yet approved the dengue testing kits for consumers’ personal use, he said.
Mr Lertchai suggested consumers who suspected themselves of having symptoms of the dengue virus, such as a high fever (40°C), muscle, bone or joint pain, and a rash, among others, visit the doctor. The Public Health Ministry expects the number of dengue patients this year will rise.
According to the Department of Disease Control, 36,470 people were infected with dengue from January to July this year. Total fatalities were 33. Last week, 5,428 people fell ill because of the virus, a jump from about 3,000 the week before.
North Korea fires two missiles after US submarine arrives in South Korea
TOKYO: North Korea launched two ballistic missiles eastward early on Wednesday (Jul 19), Japan’s and South Korea’s militaries said, just hours after an American ballistic missile submarine arrived in a South Korean port for the first time in four decades. Both of the missiles appeared to have fallen outside Japan’s exclusiveContinue Reading
North Korea fires two ballistic missiles, Japan says
TOKYO: North Korea launched two ballistic missiles eastward early on Wednesday (Jul 19), and both of them appeared to have fallen outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, the Japanese Defence Ministry said. The US military said it was aware of the missile launches and was consulting closely with its allies andContinue Reading
North Korea fires ballistic missile, Japan says
North Korea launched a suspected ballistic missile early on Wednesday (Jul 18), the Japanese prime minister’s office said, and South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the projectile landed in the sea. Citing South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Yonhap reported that the missile had been launched into the sea betweenContinue Reading
US limits investment curbs against China
In a bid to ease tensions with Beijing, the United States will limit the scope of its coming investment curbs against China to the semiconductor, artificial intelligence and quantum computing sectors – not extending those sanctions into biotechnology and clean energy industries.
The restrictions will be “narrowly targeted”; they will not be broad controls that would affect US investment broadly in China or have a fundamental impact on the investment climate for China, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday.
Bloomberg reported that the investment curbs against China will be announced by the end of August but won’t take effect until next year as “the policy grinds through Washington’s bureaucracy.”
The tone of the response from Chinese officials, while far from enthusiastic, is milder than that of Beijing’s response on April 21, which called the US “selfish” and its move a “blatant act of economic coercion and sci-tech bullying.”
“China opposes US politicizing and weaponizing of trade and tech issues,” Mao Ning, a spokesperson at China’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday. “It is in no one’s interest to place arbitrary curbs on normal technology cooperation and trade, violate the market economy principles and destabilize global industrial and supply chains.”
Mao said China hopes that the US will follow through on President Joe Biden’s commitment of not seeking to “decouple” from China, halt China’s economic development or contain China. It should create a sound environment for China-US economic cooperation and trade, Mao said.
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing the US chips industry, in a statement called on both the Chinese and US governments to ease tensions and seek solutions through dialogue.
“Repeated steps to impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions risk diminishing the US semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty, and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China,” said the SIA.
The SIA urged the Biden administration to refrain from further restrictions until it engages more extensively with industry and experts to assess the impact of current and potential restrictions to determine whether they are narrow and clearly defined, consistently applied, and fully coordinated with allies.
Some commentators said the US curbs may not create much impact as China has its own AI and quantum computing technologies.
Media reports said Huawei Technologies launched Ascend 910, an AI chip using TSMC’s 7nm technology, in 2019, and that the chip now has a 79% market share in mainland China. Huawei also established an AI cloud hub in Guizhou.
An IT writer says Huawei will stack up 16,000 Ascend 910 chips in a cluster that can train a chatbot equivalent to GPT3.0 later this year.
Besides, Origin Quantum, a Hefei-based quantum computer maker, launched its 6-qubit superconducting chip, known as KF-C6-130, in 2020. It also unveiled a 24-qubit quantum chip, KF-C24-100, in 2021.
China’s five demands
The US Treasury’s Yellen visited Beijing between July 6 and 9. By then Sino-US relations had fallen to the lowest point in decades after a Chinese spy balloon was spotted in North American airspace in late January. Beijing has been more willing to talk since media reports said in mid-April that Biden would sign an executive order that would restrict US firms and funds from investing in China’s high technology sectors.
During Yellen’s visit to Beijing, Chinese officials called for the cancellation of the extra tariffs, company sanctions, investment restrictions, export controls and Xinjiang product bans imposed by the US on China in recent years.
“The tariffs were put in place because we had concern with unfair trade practices on China’s side — and our concerns with those practices remain,” Yellen told reporters during her trip to the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) meeting in India on Sunday.
“Perhaps over time this is an area where we could make progress but I would say it’s premature to use this as an area for de-escalation, at least at this time,” she said.
She said the United States’s chip export controls and investment restrictions against China were driven by national security considerations, not aimed at cutting ties with the country.
Besides, she said, she had discussed with Chinese officials about the Chinese economic slowdown, which will affect many other countries that export products to China. She said she thinks Chinese officials are anxious to communicate that the business environment in China is open and friendly.
She said the US will continue to push forward its “friend-shoring” policy of reshaping global supply chains to reduce over-reliance on China. Departing from India on Tuesday, Yellen is heading to Vietnam. The US treats both India and Vietnam as “friend-shoring” countries and Mexico as its top “near-shoring” place.
De-sinicization
Chinese commentators said “friend-shoring” and “near-shoring” are the real threats to the global economy.
“For some time, the US has been advocating ‘decoupling,’ ‘friendly-shoring’ and ‘near-shoring,’ and seeking to de-sinicize the global supply chain,” Qiu Haifeng, a commentator at the People’s Daily, says in an opinion piece published on Monday. “These acts artificially split the world’s supply chains, severely disrupted market rules and the international economic and trade order, and were widely criticised by the global community.”
“The term ‘de-risking’ is confusing and deceptive,” says Qiu. “Some US politicians are playing new tricks, trying to embellish their wording to boost their discourse power and avoid criticism.”
He says the US only wants to deceive the international community and lures allies to further “decouple” with China. He says “de-sinicization” will not help resolve the problems in the US but slow the world’s economic development.
“‘De-risking’ seems to be milder than ‘decoupling’ but it actually broadens the definition of ‘risk’ and exacerbates the chaos of the global economic system,” Ma Xue, a researcher at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a unit of the Ministry of State Security, says in an article published on Monday.
“National security is a broad and vague concept, which covers not only cover a large number of US manufacturing products and firms but also civil-use research and communication tools,” her article says.
She adds that the US tries to label China as a risk and persuade its allies to join its de-sinicization plan. She says the restructuring of the supply chain will polarize the world and seriously obstruct global economic development.
In the first four months of this year, trade between the US and Mexico reached US$263 billion. Mexico surpassed China and Canada to become the United States’ top trade partner.
Read: China’s June exports hit by weak Western demand
Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3
PAP holds meeting with members to address controversies, boost morale
As Mr Chan walked towards the building around 7.20pm, he was asked by reporters if Tuesday’s meeting was being held under any special circumstances. The Education Minister offered brief remarks. He said the PAP has always had meetings, adding: “This is our HQ, right?” He declined comment when approached after the meeting.Continue Reading
China will focus on supply-side tech policy at Politbureau meeting
China will focus on supply-side productivity measures for economic stimulus: Goldman Sachs economists wrote in a July 17 report, “Industrial policy will likely remain as a key policy focus for the authorities in the July Politburo meeting statement. The July Politburo meeting statement will likely continue to demonstrate the leadership’s commitment to promoting manufacturing upgrading, technology self-reliance and innovation. We summarized President Xi and Premier Li’s recent domestic field trips and noticed that promoting technology development and high-quality growth continue to be senior policymakers’ priorities.”
Telecom equipment stocks plunge in West, surge in China
5G fades in the West, surges in China: China’s number-two telecom infrastructure maker ZTE has double its stock price in the past year while the leading Western competitors, Nokia and Ericsson, are down about 30%. On July 14, the stock price of the two Western firm nosedived by about 20% after Ericsson announced a second-quarter loss and both firms issued gloomy guidance. As a consumer technology, 5G is a bust. The American variety barely downloads data faster than the old 4G LTE and has no native apps. It’s too slow for augmented reality and too slow to respond for autonomous vehicles. China’s 5G is about twice as fast (300 Mbps vs. about 150 Mbps in the US), and the telecom companies are focused on so-called 5G2B – 5G to business. Huawei claims 6,000 contracts to build standalone 5G networks for Chinese businesses, vs. about three dozen in Europe and fewer than 10 in the US.
Pita worried about attempt to block second vote
Move Forward PM candidate says ruling could set a precedent that would affect others in the future
PUBLISHED : 18 Jul 2023 at 21:59
Move Forward Party leader Pita Limjaroenrat has expressed concern that any attempts to block him from being nominated as prime minister again on Wednesday will affect the entire parliamentary system in the future.
He also reiterated on Tuesday that would step aside and allow the Pheu Thai Party to take the lead in forming a government if he failed to secure enough support in the second round of voting for prime minister on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, a meeting of representatives of the coalition allies, other political parties and senators could not reach a conclusion on whether Mr Pita could legally be renominated for prime minister on Wednesday, after the joint session rejected him on July 13.
Mr Pita said the eight coalition parties earlier discussed the legal aspects of the question during their meeting on Monday. They concluded that a vote for a prime minister is related to the constitution and the citation of parliamentary regulations was not related. The nomination of a prime minister was not a parliamentary motion, he noted.
However, he admitted he was worried that any attempts to use parliamentary procedure to block him from being nominated a second time would affect the entire system because it would be politically binding and that may affect other parties.
”If it binds me, binds my party, then it will bind the second, third and fourth parties,” he explained. “ … After this, the nominations of political office holders would be (parliamentary) motions.
“Even courts or parliament, if such a thing happens, it will … be a problem in the future for those who assume political positions. It’s a big issue. Today, we must be clear in our minds — it’s the difference between a nomination and a motion.”
Speaker Wan Muhamad Noor Matha said on Tuesday that he would not rule on the issue until after parliament debates it on Wednesday.
Mr Pita said earlier that he would need to see a significant increase in the number of votes in the second round of voting to justify another attempt. Asked to clarify what he meant, he said the vote must be increased by 10% or to between 340 and 350.
Last Thursday he received 324 votes in favour and 182 against, with 199 abstentions, from the 705 members participating. He needed 375 votes — a simple majority of the 749 combined House and Senate seats — to win the office.
He received 311 votes in favour from MPs and 148 against, with 39 abstentions. He received just 13 votes in favour from senators, 34 against and 159 abstentions. Forty-three senators were absent.
Asked whether the eight coalition parties would adjust the memorandum of understanding (MoU) they signed in May in order to win more support for forming a government, Mr Pita said the MoU remained unchanged and he had not yet been contacted by any party to make changes.
He confirmed that Move Forward would stay with Pheu Thai if the latter took the lead to form a coalition government, saying it was what people wanted as the two parties and the six other allies had signed the MoU.
“If I in my capacity as being in the winning party cannot continue, I will give way to the first runner-up. I think we will stay in the same boat because we have joined hands to form a government of people’s hope,” he said.
Iswaran questioned by CPIB for 10 hours
SINGAPORE: Transport Minister S Iswaran was questioned for around 10 hours by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) on Tuesday (Jul 18), the first time he has been spotted at the anti-graft agency since news of his connection to an investigation broke last week. National daily The Straits Times reportedContinue Reading