France won't ban Huawei, but encouraging 5G telcos to avoid it: Report

The US government has urged its allies to exclude the Chinese telecoms giant from the West's next-generation communications, saying Beijing could use it for spying. Huawei has denied the charges.

The head of the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI said there would not be a total ban on using equipment from Huawei in the rollout of the French 5G telecoms network, but that it was pushing French telcos to avoid switching to the Chinese company.

"What I can say is that there won't be a total ban," Guillaume Poupard told Les Echos newspaper in an interview. "(But) for operators that are not currently using Huawei, we are inciting them not to go for it."

The US government has urged its allies to exclude the Chinese telecoms giant from the West's next-generation communications, saying Beijing could use it for spying. Huawei has denied the charges.

Sources told Reuters in March France would not ban Huawei but would seek to keep it out of the core mobile network, which carries higher surveillance risks because it processes sensitive information such as customers' personal data.

France's decision over Huawei's equipment is crucial for two of the country's four telecoms operators, Bouygues Telecom and SFR, as about half of their current mobile network is made by the Chinese group.

"For those that are already using Huawei, we are delivering authorisations for durations that vary between three and eight years," Poupard said in the interview.

State-controlled Orange has already chosen Huawei's European rivals Nokia and Ericsson.

Poupard said that from next week, operators which have not received an explicit authorisation to use Huawei equipment for the 5G network can consider a non-response after the legal deadline as a rejection of their requests.

Trump threatens to cut intelligence sharing ties with nations over Huawei

Washington has been pressing allies to ban Huawei, one of the world's largest tech firms, from next-generation 5G mobile data networks, saying it is a security risk.

The United States' ambassador to Germany said Sunday that President Donald Trump had threatened to cut off intelligence-sharing with countries that dealt with Chinese tech firm Huawei.

Washington has been pressing allies to ban Huawei, one of the world's largest tech firms, from next-generation 5G mobile data networks, saying it is a security risk.

Ambassador Richard Grenell said Trump "instructed me to make clear that any nation who chooses to use an untrustworthy 5G vendor will jeopardize our ability to share intelligence and information at the highest level."

Grenell said on Twitter that the president had called him on Sunday from Air Force One, the presidential plane, to convey the message.

Key US allies in Europe, notably Britain and France, have said they will not ban Huawei from building 5G networks but will impose restrictions.

Publicly, the US has been restrained in its response, but Trump was reportedly furious with London.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that Huawei was a "Trojan horse for Chinese intelligence."

The tech company vehemently denies the US allegations, and Beijing has characterized its treatment as "economic bullying."

A US indictment on Friday laid more criminal charges against Huawei related to theft of intellectual property, adding to earlier allegations that the company stole trade secrets from American carrier T-Mobile.

Having just one time-zone costs India Rs 29,000 crore, finds study

Some countries such as the US and France have multiple time zones and DST.

Each evening, the sun sets more than 90 minutes later in western India than in the east of the country, yet the entire country follows the same time zone. Later sunset means people stay awake longer, which induces sleep deprivation among children and negatively affects their study efforts, a new study by a research scholar at Cornell University has found.

As a result of sleeping late, children are less likely to complete primary and middle school, and this effect is most pronounced among poor households, says the study, ‘Poor Sleep: Sunset Time and Human Capital Production’, which analysed the consequences India faces by operating under a single time zone.

“Back-of-the-envelope estimates suggest that India incurs annual human capital costs of roughly $4.1 billion (nearly Rs 29,000 crore) or 0.2% of nominal GDP [gross domestic product] due to the existing policy regulating time zone boundaries,” Maulik Jagnani, the author of the study, told IndiaSpend in an email interview.

How time zones work

As per convention, each time zone is spaced by 15 degrees’ longitude, which divides countries around the globe into 24 time zones to enable coordination--for railway and flight services, for example.

Many countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil use multiple time zones across their territories. As many as 70 countries in Africa and North and South America use daylight saving time (DST)--by setting their clocks forward, usually by an hour, from the standard in summer and back in winter--to make better use of daylight.

Some countries such as the US and France have multiple time zones and DST.

Some 70 countries use neither DST nor multiple time zones, and India is among them.

Early sunrise, late sunset

Geographically, there is a 30-degree longitudinal difference between Arunachal Pradesh in the east and Gujarat in the west of India. This qualifies for a twin time-zones setup.

Before Independence, India had two time zones--Bombay Time and Calcutta Time--in large part to help traders make use of daylight.

However, when policies were made for independent India, the government decided to go with a single time zone, at longitude 82.5 degree east and 5.5 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Business Standard

Meet Zora, the robot companion, caregiver for elderly patients in France

The experience at Jouarre provides a window into a future when we will rely more on robots to help care for loved ones as they age.

This is Zora.

It may not look like much — more cute toy than futuristic marvel — but this robot is at the center of an experiment in France to change care for elderly patients.

When Zora arrived at this nursing facility an hour outside Paris, a strange thing began happening: Many patients developed an emotional attachment, treating it like a baby, holding and cooing, giving it kisses on the head.

Zora, which can cost up to $18,000, offered companionship in a place where life can be lonely. Families can visit only so much, and staff members are stretched.

Patients at the hospital, called Jouarre, have dementia and other conditions that require round-the-clock care.

The nurse at Jouarre who oversees Zora controls the robot from a laptop. He often stands out of view so patients don’t know it’s him at the controls.

The robot can have a conversation because the nurse types words into a laptop for the robot to speak. Some patients refer to Zora as “she,” others “he.”

Zora often leads exercises and plays games.

Not everyone is enamored.

Robotics still has a long way to go before there’s a realistic chance of having a humanoid nurse.

Zora doesn’t dispense medicine, take blood pressure or change bedsheets. At Jouarre, Zora was viewed by some as a superfluous tool that just “keeps the patients busy,” according to a nurse, Sophie Riffault.

Another nurse, Nathalie Racine, said she wouldn’t let a robot feed patients even if it could. Humans shouldn’t delegate such intimate moments to machines. “Nothing will ever replace the human touch, the human warmth our patients need,” she said.

The experience at Jouarre provides a window into a future when we will rely more on robots to help care for loved ones as they age.

Zora Bots, the Belgium-based provider of the robot at Jouarre, says it has sold over 1,000 of the robots to health care facilities around the world, including in the United States, Asia and Middle East. It is part of a growing emphasis on robotics focused on care. A robot dog made by Sony has been marketed as a companion for older adults.

“We need to help with loneliness,” said Tommy Deblieck, the co-chief executive of ZoraBots.

Giving robots more responsibility to care for people in the twilight of their lives may seem like a dystopian prospect, but many see it as an inevitability.

In nearly every country, the population of older adults is rising. The number of people over 60 will more than double to 2.1 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations.

Business Standard

Rafale twist: Why did France refuse to give India a sovereign guarantee?

Documents reveal how two core conditions of a government-to-government contract were diluted in the run-up to purchasing 36 Rafale jets.

The Narendra Modi government has consistently claimed that the Rafale aircraft deal was between two governments – India and France – and therefore there was hardly any possibility of India’s interests being compromised in any way.

However, government documents accessed by The Wire reveal the Ministry of Law and Justice had opined that the “core elements of Government-to-Government (G-to-G) character” of the Rafale deal were not acceptable to France and consequently had to be diluted and waived in the final inter-governmental agreement (IGA) signed between the two governments in September 2016.

So what were the two core G-to-G elements that France did not accept? The law ministry gave a clear view to the Ministry of Defence that in G-to-G contracts, “the responsibility for the supply of equipment and related industrial services and performance of the entire contract remains with the foreign government”.

The second condition cited by the law ministry was that “the dispute resolution mechanism remained at Government-to-Government level only”.

However, in the course of negotiating the IGA, certain sensitive issues arose whereby the French government sought to transfer its own direct responsibilities and obligations to the industrial supplier – in this case Dassault Aviation.

For instance, in the event of a future breach of contract or any other dispute, France insisted India would have to enter arbitration proceedings with the equipment-supplying company, Dassault. Consequently, the French government shied away from providing a direct sovereign guarantee for the performance of the contract. The law ministry saw a direct sovereign guarantee from France as core to the G-to-G character of the deal to purchase 36 Rafale fighter aircraft. This sovereign guarantee was, however, not forthcoming.

The law ministry, though, managed to have one fresh clause introduced in the IGA which mentioned “joint and several responsibility” of the French government and the industrial supplier.

But this too fell way short of its advice that the French government take direct responsibility for its future obligations on the performance of the contract by providing a sovereign guarantee.

The French government eventually agreed to provide a letter of comfort which, in legal terms, is much weaker than a sovereign guarantee.

The defence ministry’s main concern was whether the proposed international arbitration in Geneva under the rules of UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Laws) was legally tenable because there was no direct contract between the government of India and the French supplier Dassault... Read More

Business Standard

Zidane, Mbappe star in multi-cultural French team, but race tensions remain

Some commentators have discussed the 2018 success of Les Bleus as a return to the joys of "black, blanc, beur" multicultural national celebration, acceptance and celebration of ethnic diversity.

Fifa World Cup 2018 : The French football team has won the 2018 World Cup, 20 years after it triumphed on home soil in 1998. “Les Bleus”, as they’re called, are back in the nation’s good books, celebrated for their excellent performance in this year’s tournament, right through the 4-2 win over Croatia in the final. Out of the limelight and the glare of success in Russia 2018, however, a question continues to dog French football – the role of race and class in the selection of national players.

On the surface, this may seem strange with the attention given to the multicultural harmony of the 1998 World Cup-winning team. The straight-talking former captain of the French national team, Zinedine Zidane, recently said of his country’s 1998 win: "It was not about religion, the colour of your skin, we didn’t care about that, we were just together and enjoyed the moment."

This echoed the sentiment of the times, that a multicultural team of united “black, blanc, beur” (black, white or Arab) players had united under the cause of the French national team to lift the World Cup for the first time. Triumph, on the football field, demonstrated that integration had been successful in France and anyone could reach the top of French society.

Zidane, the star of France’s 1998 World Cup-winning team, was born to Berber Algerian parents. He grew up in Marseille’s infamous “La Castellane” estate, seen as one of the toughest estates in one of France’s toughest cities. Two decades later, Kylian Mbappé – a 19-year-old of Cameroonian and Algerian heritage – who grew up in the Bondy suburbs of Paris, is the star of the French team.

Some commentators have discussed the 2018 success of Les Bleus as a return to the joys of “black, blanc, beur” multicultural national celebration, acceptance and celebration of ethnic diversity. Yet others have been critical of the way politics, integration and football have been mixed together again.

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