Under the plan, Qatar Airways would take a minority stake in Virgin for an undisclosed sum.
Qatar Airways unveiled a bid to take a 25 percent stake in troubled airline Virgin Australia on Tuesday, a deal that could shake up Australia’s Qantas-dominated market.
The airlines, along with Virgin owner Bain Capital, announced details of the long-rumored agreement before markets opened in Sydney.
Under the plan, Qatar would take a minority stake in Virgin for an undisclosed sum.
The firms said it would spell more direct flights from Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney to Doha, which would better link Australia with Europe and elsewhere.
That could significantly rebalance Australia’s air travel market, which is currently dominated by Qantas, a pseudo-flag carrier beset by allegations of price gouging and deliberate overbooking.
“This will ensure Australian consumers have access to even better value airfares and greater choice,” the companies said in a joint statement.
The deal could also pave the way for Virgin to relist on the stock market. However, it will be subject to regulatory approval and fierce political debate.
Virgin Australia started bankruptcy proceedings at its financial nadir in 2020, laying off hundreds of staff as the COVID-19 outbreak wrought havoc on international travel.
US private equity giant Bain Capital came to the airline’s rescue later that year after the Australian government refused to bail out the majority foreign-owned company.
Qantas would have assumed a virtual monopoly over many Australian routes if its competitor went under.
Political clout
Qatar Airways has been looking for ways to increase its foothold in the Australian market.
Rival Qantas—along with its low-cost brand Jetstar—has a more than 61 percent share of the domestic air market and strong political clout.
In 2023, Qatar launched a bid to put on 21 extra international flights to and from Australia each week.
The Australian government snubbed that request, citing a 2020 strip search scandal at Doha Airport as a “factor”.
Qatari authorities pulled women off 10 planes at Doha Airport in 2020 and forced them to take invasive gynecological exams, a move that sparked international outrage.
Three Australian women lodged legal action against Qatar Airways following the ordeal, although the case was dismissed by an Australian court earlier this year.
Political opponents accused the government of trying to shield Australian carrier Qantas from competition despite its record profits, resulting in high fares for international flights.
Qatar Airways CEO Badr Mohammed Al-Meer said the proposed Qatar-Virgin tie-up would be good for Australians.
“We believe competition in aviation is a good thing and it helps raise the bar, ultimately benefiting customers,” he said.
“This agreement will also help support Australian jobs, businesses and the wider economy.”
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Google plans to invest $1 billion to build digital infrastructure in Thailand, including a new data center, the US tech giant has announced, saying the move would support 14,000 jobs in the kingdom.
The new hubs in Bangkok and the industrial area of Chonburi are intended to help meet growing demand for cloud computing in Southeast Asia, the company said in a Monday statement.
Google’s investment comes after Microsoft announced in May that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
“These investments will empower Thai businesses, innovators, and communities to harness the power of cloud and AI technology,” Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Google and its parent company Alphabet, said.
The investment’s details were unveiled after a Bangkok meeting between Porat and Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who hailed the move as proof Thailand was becoming a major digital hub in Southeast Asia.
The data center will be located in Chonburi, a major industrial area southeast of Bangkok, while the cloud facilities will be in the capital itself.
Google’s expansion in Thailand will add $4 billion to the kingdom’s GDP by 2029 and support 14,000 jobs between 2025 and 2029, the company said, citing a report from consultancy Deloitte.
The announcement comes a year after Shinawatra’s predecessor Srettha Thavisin made a major push for investment from US tech giants during a trip to New York, seeking finance from Google, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s Tesla.
Thailand is Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, but its tech sector has lagged behind the likes of Singapore and Indonesia.
The Thai economy, long focused on traditional manufacturing, agriculture and tourism, has struggled to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The government hopes investment from Google, Microsoft and their ilk will diversify and modernize the kingdom’s economy.
Thailand’s Office of the National Digital Economy and Society Commission has said the digital economy could contribute as much as 30 percent of GDP by 2027.
Across the region, governments are vying for US tech dollars, with Vietnam making a drive to move up the value chain from its traditional base as a hub for producing shoes, clothes and furniture.
Vietnam hopes to cash in on the US move to become less dependent on China for key resources including high-tech chips.
And last week, Vietnamese state media reported that Musk’s SpaceX plans to invest $1.5 billion in the communist country.
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A leading tech industry group on Tuesday called on G7 nations to harmonize cloud security certification across the world’s richest nations, in an effort to stoke cooperation and counter calls that data should stay within national borders.
Industry group BSA The Software Alliance, which represents tech giants including Microsoft and IBM, argues that its initiative would reduce compliance burdens for cloud service providers while maintaining robust security standards.
“We encourage governments to look at where their cloud requirements are effectively the same, but using different language,” said Aaron Cooper, senior vice president of global policy at BSA.
Greater unity among G7 nations could also “hopefully lead to a recognition that localization doesn’t aid with security,” he added. “But that’s not specifically what this proposal is about.”
The G7 nations are the United States, Britain, Canada, Japan and EU member states France, Germany and Italy.
Reliance on cloud computing, instead of companies or governments running software on-site, is regarded as computing’s new reality.
This has been further cemented in recent years due to the intense processing needed to deliver artificial intelligence capabilities, with few companies able to alone provide the data infrastructure necessary.
The growth in-cloud computing has sparked governments worldwide to implement cloud security certification requirements to mitigate risks associated with widespread cloud adoption, such as cyber attacks, data theft or legal problems.
While these certifications have a lot in common, some countries, notably G7-member France, are insisting that cybersecurity standards come with strict geographic requirements in order to not leave sensitive or private data in foreign hands.
France’s position has helped cause the delay of the EU’s long promised cybersecurity standard, known as EUCS, with several EU member countries opposing Paris.
BSA also opposes that stance, instead arguing that cybersecurity agencies across friendly nations should find ways to cooperate.
Closer cooperation could also offer cloud companies easier market access and provide customers with a wider array of secure cloud options, BSA said.
BSA members also include Oracle, Siemens and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
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The first major study of social media behavior during wartime has found that posts celebrating national and cultural unity in a country under attack receive significantly more online engagement than derogatory posts about the aggressors.
University of Cambridge psychologists analyzed a total of 1.6 million posts on Facebook and Twitter (now X) from Ukrainian news outlets in the seven months prior to February 2022, when Russian forces invaded, and the six months that followed.
Once the attempted invasion had begun, posts classified as expressing Ukrainian “ingroup solidarity” were associated with 92% more engagement on Facebook, and 68% more on Twitter, than similar posts had achieved prior to Russia’s full-scale attack.
While posts expressing “outgroup hostility” towards Russia only received an extra 1% engagement on Facebook after the invasion, with no significant difference on Twitter.
“Pro-Ukrainian sentiment, phrases such as Glory to Ukraine and posts about Ukrainian military heroism, gained huge amounts of likes and shares, yet hostile posts aimed at Russia barely registered,” said Yara Kyrychenko, from Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab (SDML) in its Department of Psychology.
“The vast majority of research on social media uses US data, where divisive posts often go viral, prompting some scholars to suggest that these platforms drive polarization. In Ukraine, a country under siege, we find the reverse,” said Kyrychenko, lead author of the study published in Nature Communications.
“Emotions that appeal to ingroup identity can empower people and boost morale. These emotions may be more contagious, and prompt greater engagement, during a time of active threat—when the motivation to behave beneficially for one’s ingroup is heightened.”
Previous research from the same Cambridge lab found that going viral on US social media is driven by hostility: posts that mock and criticize the opposing sides of ideological divides are far more likely to get engagement and reach larger audiences.
The new study initially used the same techniques, finding that—prior to the invasion –social media posts from pro-Ukrainian as well as pro-Russian news sources that contained keywords of the “outgroup”—opposing politicians, placenames, and so on— did indeed generate more traction than posts containing “ingroup” keywords.
However, researchers then trained a large language model (LLM)—a form of language-processing AI, similar to ChatGPT—to better categorize sentiment and the motivation behind the post, rather than simply relying on keywords, and used this to analyze Facebook and Twitter posts of Ukrainian news outlets before and after the invasion.
This deeper dive revealed a consistently strong engagement rate for solidarity posting—higher than for “outgroup hostility”—in the lead up to Russia’s attack, which leaps even further after the invasion, while interactions with derisive posts about Russia flatline.
Lastly, a separate dataset of 149,000 post-invasion Tweets that had been geo-located to Ukraine was fed into a similar LLM, to test this effect on social media posts from the Ukrainian population, rather than only news sources.
Tweets—now X posts—from the Ukrainian public containing messages of “ingroup solidarity” championing Ukraine were likely to get 14% more engagement, while those expressing antagonism to Russians were likely to gain only a 7% increase.
“Social media platforms allow expressions of the national struggle that would otherwise have been private to reach millions,” said Kyrychenko.
“These moments echo solidarity and resistance from a first-person account, which can make them more powerful than traditional media rooted in impersonal reporting.”
Researchers acknowledge these trends may result from algorithms used by social media companies, but say the fact that similar effects were detected on two separate platforms, and with posts from both Ukraine’s news sources and its citizenry, suggests much of this information-sharing dynamic is driven by people.
“The Kremlin has long tried to sow division in Ukraine, but fails to understand that the Euromaidan revolution and Russia’s attempted invasion have only spurred Ukrainian identity towards national unity,” said Dr. Jon Roozenbeek, study senior author from Cambridge’s SDML as well as King’s College London.
“We can trace through social media posts this fortification of Ukrainian group identity in the face of extreme Russian aggression,” said Roozenbeek, who published the book Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian–Ukrainian War earlier this year.
Kyrychenko, a Cambridge Gates Scholar born and raised in Kyiv, recalls the critical role Facebook and Twitter played in the Euromaidan protests in 2014, some of which she participated in as a teenager, and her surprise at the attitude towards social media she encountered in the US after moving there to study in 2018, during the Trump presidency.
“By the time I arrived in the US, social media was seen as toxic and divisive, whereas my experience of these platforms in Ukraine had been as a force for positive political unity in the fight for democracy,” said Kyrychenko.
While Kyrychenko points out that hate speech and conspiracy theories still thrive online in Ukraine, she argues that the solidarity fostered on social media reflects some of the early promise these platforms held for uniting people against tyranny.
“The Ukrainian experience reminds us that social media can be used for good, pro-social causes, even in the direst of situations.”
“Thanks to the KALUSH ORCHESTRA band for their support! Glory to Ukraine! 🇺🇦” got 4434 retweets.
“Our flag will fly over all of Ukraine, said General Valery Zaluzhnyi.” got 5577 favorites and 767 retweets.
“Ukrainian soldiers congratulate students with September 1 and remembers their first bells 💔🔔” … got 92381 shares and 482896 likes on Facebook.
“In a Polish church, they decided to sing the song “Oh, there’s a red viburnum in the meadow” right during the service! 🇺🇦 ❤️🇵🇱” … got 34897 shares and 68847 likes on Facebook.
A further description from lead author Yara Kyrychenko of an example of Ukrainian ‘ingroup solidarity’ social media content:
“On New Year’s Eve 2022, a family in the then recently de-occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson watched Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidential address over WhatsApp with their relatives in the still-occupied territories.
“A video of the entire family crying—as Zelensky states Ukraine will liberate and rebuild—quickly went viral across platforms. It captured something so powerful and deeply emotional that watching it makes many cry, even months later.
“The sense of unity despite barriers, the tender cherishing of the national tradition, and the human connection—all distilled into one TikTok. Posts like these evoke similar feelings of solidarity in countless Ukrainians, even though each has seen a different face of the war.”
Outgroup hostility examples include:
“Boris Johnson: negotiating with Putin is like negotiating with a crocodile” got 425 retweets and 4957 favorites.
“It hurts to understand that these bastards shoot absolutely everything. It doesn’t matter if the military is there or not. Hospitals, schools….” got 21728 Shares and 25125 Likes.
“❗️Russians don’t want to fight for Putin. The story of a soldier captured in Kharkov. ‘Bastards! I hate them! They are making propaganda!'” … got 65409 shares and 79735 Likes.
More information:
Social identity correlates of social media engagement before and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52179-8
Citation:
Solidarity drives online virality in a nation under attack, study of Ukrainian social media reveals (2024, October 1)
retrieved 1 October 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-solidarity-online-virality-nation-ukrainian.html
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Facebook parent Meta will produce its next-generation virtual and augmented reality headsets in Vietnam, creating more than 1,000 jobs, the company said Tuesday.
The announcement comes as Vietnam looks to boost its attractiveness as a destination for investment by the world’s biggest companies and a key part of the global supply chain.
Speaking at a tech conference in Hanoi, Meta’s global affairs president Nick Clegg said the firm would focus on the production of the Quest 3S headset in the Southeast Asian country.
“We will, with our local partners, be manufacturing them here in Vietnam, and we estimate that this will create well over 1,000 new jobs,” he said.
Communist Vietnam—long a low-cost destination to make clothes, shoes and furniture—is eyeing a rapid climb up the global supply chain and last week the government said Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to invest $1.5 billion in the country.
Vietnam’s top leader To Lam used a trip to New York last month to meet bosses from Apple, Meta and IT firm Supermicro.
He also met President Joe Biden, a year after the US leader made a high-profile state visit to Vietnam to boost diplomatic and trade ties.
Vietnam is particularly intent on developing its capabilities in the lucrative chip industry, with global supply chain shocks and fears about US reliance on China for key resources boosting investment there.
Meta’s Facebook is widely used in Vietnam and Clegg said the nation was among the global leaders in using its Messenger platform “not just to send messages to family and friends, but actually communicate with businesses and so foster trade and commerce across the country”.
But Facebook has also faced criticism from human rights groups in recent years for blocking content deemed illegal by the country’s government.
Facebook is a popular platform for activists in Vietnam, where all independent media is banned.
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