I. Technology
7. AI steps up in battle
against Covid-19
Oxford-based Exscientia, the
first to put an AI-discovered drug into human trials, is trawling through
15,000 drugs held by the Scripps Research Institute in California. And Healx, a
Cambridge company set up by Viagra co-inventor Dr. David Brown, has repurposed
its AI system developed to find drugs for rare diseases.
The system is divided into three
parts that:
(i) trawl through all the current literature relating to the disease,
(ii) study the DNA and structure of the virus,
(iii) consider the suitability of various drugs.
Drug discovery has traditionally
been slow. But AI is proving much faster. It is extremely unlikely that one
single drug would be the answer. That means detailed analysis of the eight
million possible pairs and 10.5 billion triple-drug combinations stemming from
the 4,000 approved drugs on the market.
AI remains one of our strongest
paths to achieve a perceptible solution but there is a fundamental need for
high-quality, large and clean data sets. To date, much of this information has
been siloed (or cocooned) in individual companies such as big pharma, or
lost in the intellectual property and old lab space within universities. Now
more than ever before, there is a need to unify these disparate drug discovery
data sources to allow AI researchers to apply their novel machine-learning
techniques to generate new treatments for Covid-19 as soon as possible.
(Source: bbc.com)
8. Freebies from IT vendors
that you can grab right now
As CIOs are struggling to support
business continuity while managing their technology budgets, IT vendors are
doing their best to help them in this Covid-19 crisis. From global giants to
mid-scale IT vendors, support is pouring in in the form of free tools,
services, deferred payments, training, 24/7 remote support, zero-cost licensing
and more.
Meanwhile, here’s a look at some
of the biggest offers from vendors to help enterprises through the Covid-19
crisis.
Cisco’s free deferred payments – Cisco
announced a financing plan that will let customers defer 95% of their payments
for new products until 2021. The move will cost the company $2.5 billion to
cover the financing. By allowing customers to defer payments, Cisco is helping
them preserve cash amid reduced economic activity.
IBM supporting businesses with
free offerings in cloud – IBM is helping enterprises to tackle the
pandemic while maintaining business continuity with free offerings in cloud and
associated tools and software. Big Blue is giving nine free cloud offers to
ease the burden of businesses across the globe. These cloud offers span AI,
data, security, integration, remote learning and more – all via the IBM public
cloud to support their clients and help them maintain business continuity. For
90 days, free of charge, IBM is offering companies the ability to build virtual
server configurations; providing access to their cloud service for high-speed
file sharing and team collaboration; and also offering their event management
solution to help teams prioritise, diagnose and resolve incidents.
Oracle offers free HR tool – Oracle
is providing free access to its Workforce Health and Safety solution to current
Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud customers until the pandemic is over. The
module will help customers manage key workplace health and safety issues and
monitor requirements accordingly. Employees can access required information
wherever and however they need it – from mobile to desktop devices.
Free
security tools from Micro Focus – As
businesses in India are transforming and working remotely, Micro Focus is
helping customers with secured digital platforms with free access. Micro Focus
is offering several free-of-cost services so that customers can secure their
users coming in through VPN, RADIUS, web portals, etc. and for other network
and operational requirements. It has announced a Covid-19-specific license
which enables the use of all advanced authentication features till 31st July,
2020.
(Source: Economictimes.com)
II. World News
9. Ex-EY whistleblower wins
$10.8m in damages
Accountancy firm EY has been
ordered to pay $10.8m in damages to a whistleblower who claimed that it covered
up evidence of money laundering. Auditor Amjad Rihan sued EY after being forced
out of his job in 2014. A year earlier, he had led an audit that discovered
Dubai’s biggest gold refiner Kaloti had paid out a total of $5.2 billion (£4
billion) in cash in 2012.
Mr. Rihan argued that it was
evidence of money laundering, but EY didn’t report the activity to the
authorities. EY then helped to cover up a crime – the export to Kaloti in Dubai
of gold bars that had been disguised as silver to avoid export limits on gold.
A BBC Panorama
investigation last year revealed that the smuggled gold Mr. Rihan uncovered at
Kaloti was owned by a criminal gang that laundered money for British drug
dealers. The gang had collected cash from drug dealers in the UK and other
European countries. They then laundered the dirty money by buying and selling
black market gold. Twenty seven members of the money laundering gang were
jailed in France in 2017. Kaloti denies any wrongdoing.
Panorama saw a
number of drafts of a Kaloti compliance report to a Dubai regulator. In the
initial report, Kaloti seemed to admit buying gold coated with silver. It said:
‘We acknowledge an incident… with the bars coated with silver.’ But EY rewrote
the report so that it said: ‘We acknowledge transactions… in which there were
certain documentary irregularities.’ The accountancy firm turned the crime into
a ‘documentary irregularity’.
Mr. Justice Kerr ruled that EY’s
behaviour amounted to professional misconduct and that EY bosses were
‘responsible for suggesting to Kaloti that it should draft its compliance
report in a manner that masked the reality of the Morocco gold issue’.
The court found that EY breached
the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants and that it had a duty of care
to take reasonable steps to protect Mr. Rihan ‘against economic loss, in the
form of loss of future employment opportunity, by providing an ethically safe
work environment, free from professional misconduct’. The court awarded Mr.
Rihan $10,843,941 (in US dollars) and £117,950 in damages.
Mr. Rihan said: ‘Almost seven
years of agony for me and my family has come to an end with a total vindication
by the court. My life was turned upside down as I was cruelly and harshly
punished for insisting on doing my job ethically, professionally and lawfully
in relation to the gold audits in Dubai. I really hope EY will use this
judgment as an opportunity to improve – to avoid such events happening again in
the future’.
(Source: bbc.com)
10. UK accounting industry faces worst crisis in decade
The UK
accounting industry was plunged into its worst crisis in more than a decade as
the ‘Big Four’ firms slashed partners’ pay by up to a quarter and their
mid-tier rivals furloughed junior staff to cope with the coronavirus fallout.
London-headquartered KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and EY have reduced the amount of
profits that are distributed to their partners each month by between 20 and 25%
to build up cash reserves and help survive a downturn in work. Partners at the
UK arms of the four firms, which between them employ about 74,000 people,
earned an average of £720,000 last year and undertake activities including
company audits, tax and restructuring advice and consulting on transactions.
The economic blow to the
professional services industry follows years of corporate failures and
accounting scandals that have hurt their reputations. Despite this, overall
revenues at the UK firms have soared over the past decade as they have expanded
beyond their roots in audit, resulting in increasingly large sums of money paid
out to their highest earners. EY told its 17,000 UK staff recently that
partners’ pay would be cut by 20% and said that it would ‘do everything
possible’ to navigate the coronavirus crisis without redundancies, furloughs or
reducing employee salaries. Steve Varley, Chairman of EY UK and Ireland, said:
‘Reducing partner profit distributions is a further prudent move in a time of
economic uncertainty and will provide additional flexibility and improve
financial strength.’
Deloitte UK Chief Executive
Richard Houston also announced a 20% hit to partner profits for 2020. He said
distributions to partners would be ‘deferred’ and pay rises, bonuses and
promotions would be put on hold. ‘The measures align with our commitment that
the highest earners in our firm, our partners, should shoulder the greater
proportion of the financial burden,’ said Mr. Houston. The measures by EY and
Deloitte follow similar moves by ‘Big Four’ rivals PwC and KPMG, which last
week announced a reduction in partner pay of 20 and 25%, respectively.
(Source: ft.com)
III. Politics &
Arthashastra
11. Vidur Niti –
Some useful tips to make life easier
The word ‘Vidur’ in Sanskrit
carries the meaning of skilled, intelligent and wise. These were the exact
qualities possessed by the sage Vidur from the Mahabharata which
portrays him as the half-brother of King Dhritarashtra and minister to the
fabled kingdom of Hastinapur.
He is celebrated for being a
great scholar who was an epitome of truthfulness, unbiased judgment,
dutifulness and unfaltering faith to Dharma. However, he is more prominently
known for his Nitis, chronicled in the form of conversations with his
brother Dhritarashtra which took place prior to the war of Kurukshetra. While Vidur
Niti is mainly grounded in politics, it can be widely used even in our
daily lives. Here are some useful tips from Vidur Niti to help you make
your life easier.
(1) Characteristics of a wise
person
A wise person does not deviate
from the higher goals of life because his actions are based on qualities like
self-knowledge, endeavour, patience and devotion to dharma.
(2) An aware person is unbiased
in action
In order to be wiser one needs to
be unbiased and to lose all emotions, attachments; it is the key for succeeding
in work and in life itself. A wise person’s actions and undertakings are not
affected by cold, heat, love, fear and affluence or poverty.
(3) Focus on goals
It is foolish for a person to
long and work for things which are unattainable, as one would be wasting one’s
time and efforts. Similarly, a person who worries and loses his sense in
difficult times cannot achieve his goals because he will lose his vision. A
wise man doesn’t waste his efforts and time after unattainable goals, does not
worry about things he has lost, and does not lose his sense in difficult times.
(4) Commitment to task in hand
and time management
A wise person committed to his
endeavours beforehand does not take long
breaks before completion of the task, does not waste time and has control over
his mind. We all tend to keep making the mistake of running after temporary
goals and end up abandoning them. In order to succeed, we need to take
pre-emptive action of being committed to the task ahead of us. This will help
us to be focused on our ends and goals; likewise, if we waste time and take
long breaks during work, we may forget our short-term goals and halt the work
itself. Thus, we shouldn’t take long breaks and waste time. In order to develop
the aforementioned qualities, we need to have control over our minds. Control
over the mind is the key because we tend to get attracted to ease and leisure.
(5) Be good to friends and be
safe from enemies
Only a fool makes an enemy his
friend, hurts and kills his friend and involves himself in misdeeds. Like ants,
we humans are social living beings; we need help from people to succeed. Thus,
we need to be friendly to people and be good to everyone. It will help us make
friends who will help even in difficulty. Likewise, we must learn to be far
from enemies and should not be close to them, as they carry tendencies to hurt
us.
(6) Importance of taking in
groups
One should
not think on the substance of matter alone. We are biased towards our ideas and
tend to think that they are good, missing out the flaws in them. Thus, Vidur
Niti suggests taking important decisions with a group of people.
(7) Some good qualities for
success
These six qualities should never
be abandoned – truthfulness, giving, not being lazy, not finding fault even in
something bad, forgiveness, and determination or courage. A person can only be
successful if he is true to everyone; liars are not considered good people.
Similarly, giving and forgiving and a forgiving nature can take a person a long
way because those who give are considered well by people and the quality of
forgiving prevents people from having grudges which give rise to negative emotions.
Positive nature is beneficial, it prevents people from being sadistic and
depressed; thus one should involve oneself in positivism by seeing only the
positive side. One should be determined if one wants to succeed. Determination
is the key to remaining focused on the task in hand, in a world full of
distractions. Laziness makes the mind lethargic and the ability to work
actively and thoughtfully decreases.
(8) Keeping emotions under
control
A person who
gets over-excited in joy will suffer from harm; heightened emotion of happiness
often shrouds the senses and undermines the ability to think properly.
Similarly, extreme level of unhappiness also affects the unbiased way of
soaking in things. One needs to develop the ability of doing work and living
life in such a manner that one is not affected by emotions. A wise one is not
too happy when honoured, he does not feel sad when dishonoured, and he is not
affected by emotions even in difficult times.
(9) Keep away from envy
Envy is a
negative emotion, and like every other negative emotion, it causes more harm
than good. Envy gives rise to other negative emotions like anger, hate and
over-thinking. A person who envies others’ wealth, beauty, family reputation,
noble birth, happiness, fortune or respect in society, is a sick person; there
is no cure for him.
(10) Forgiveness
For a weak person patience
(forgiveness) is a quality; for the strong person patience (forgiveness) is an
invaluable quality. Forgiveness in the current world is a very important value
for a person. It is an act of deciding to let go the feelings of resentment or
vengeance to persons who have harmed us. The health and psychological benefits
of forgiveness are huge. Forgiveness is often associated with a reduction of
anger, anxiety and depression. Further, it is also associated with benefits of
decrease in blood pressure levels, leading to a healthy life.
(Source: detechter.com)
IV. Good News
12. Covid-19 Lockdown: Farmers’ Groups in Akola Earned Rs. 8.50
Crores by Directly Selling Produce to Customers
During the lockdown caused by the
corona virus (Covid-19) pandemic, except essential service providers, everyone
is staying at home. Seeing an opportunity in this, farmers in Akola district in
Maharashtra used direct marketing to sell their produce to customers and earned
almost Rs. 8.50 crores.
The farmers from Akola have
worked out an inspiring model of direct marketing in which 69 farmer groups
joined hands and sold crops worth Rs. 8.50 crores directly to customers during
the lockdown period, says a release from the Press Information Bureau (PIB).
One of the farmers from the Akola
group says, ?We have already sold 850 metric tonnes of crops including fruits
and vegetables so far. In order to save time and effort, our groups also use
methods like online payments and order-on-phone service’.
Under the guidance of the
district agriculture department, the farmers have been selling fresh vegetables
and fruits directly to the customers at reasonable prices through 93 direct
selling outlets. These outlets are located in urban areas of Akola as well as
in nearby districts. Apart from these organised selling outlets, the farmers
have put up small stalls at important spots in the area and are also providing
door-to-door delivery.
Since the beginning of the
lockdown period due to the outbreak of Covid-19, the department of agriculture,
co-operation and farmers’ welfare in the Central government has been taking
several measures to facilitate farmers and farming activities at the field
level.
The lockdown coincides with the
harvest season of the rabi crops. The department has been making
concerted efforts so that farmers do not face any difficulties in selling their
produce. To assure better returns especially for perishable crops like fruits
and vegetables, the department encourages farmers to engage in ‘direct
marketing’. To promote the concept of direct marketing among farmers, the
department assists farmers, group of farmers, farmer producer organisations and
co-operatives in selling their produce to bulk buyers, big retailers and
processors.
Mohan Wagh, project officer,
agricultural technology management agency (ATMA) at Akola says, ?With the
implementation of the model, we have ensured that the farmers do not suffer due
to the lockdown and are able to sell their produce at a decent price. Our
department issues identity cards and passes for the farmers and vehicles for
the smooth management of the system.’
To prevent
the spread of Covid-19, the district agriculture department has advised farmers
to use masks, sanitizers and practice social distancing on the farms and in the
mandis.
(Source:
www.moneylife.in 29th April, 2020)
