A group of over 50 of the largest European tech and industrial firms have criticized EU members for lagging behind other countries in the rollout of 5G networks, calling for urgent measures before it is too late to close the gap.

The latest analysis by the European Round Table for Industry (ERT), released on Friday, shows that the 27-nation bloc’s progress on the development of the next-generation networks is too slow, compared to other parts of the world, especially South Korea, Switzerland and China.

“Concern is growing that Europe is far behind other world regions, in spite of being home to two globally leading mobile infrastructure companies,” the report read.

The ERT outlined setbacks in both commercialization and infrastructure deployment. According to its data, more than half of the EU member states have not yet launched 5G commercial services, while the EU countries as a whole have fewer than ten 5G base stations per million citizens. The report added there were “equally poor” rates of upgrading 4G infrastructure to 5G.

To put this in perspective, South Korea had around 1,500 5G towers per million last year. China previously announced plans to install an additional 600,000 5G base stations by the end of the year.

“It is not too late to close the gap with the United States, South Korea and China,” the group of business leaders noted. However, Brussels needs to act fast, they added.

The group's statement on the poor state of Europe’s 5G sector came the same day the European Commission met to discuss how to boost the rollout of the super-fast networks. The officials had to admit that the 5G development is not going as planned, and the deployment is being delayed due to coronavirus lockdowns.

“We must therefore work together towards fast network rollout without any further delays,” said Margrethe Vestager, executive vice-president of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age.

The Mongolian Sustainable Cashmere Platform, established early in 2020 at UNDP Mongolia, is aimed at facilitating several key activities with close collaboration of core stakeholders including:

To build consensus on the definition of Sustainable Cashmere;

Sustainable recovery of the cashmere sector after Covid-19 applying a Systems thinking approach;

Building a strong community of dedicated and committed stakeholders, nationally and globally.

The Steering Committee of the Mongolian Sustainable Cashmere Platform met and agreed today, September 18, on the date of the Plenary Meeting as 20 November 2020. The Plenary Meeting is a consensus building multi-stakeholder forum with the aim to kick start and accelerate collective action in the Mongolian cashmere sector to make it sustainable and competitive.

Elaine Conkievich, UNDP Resident Representative delivered the opening remark highlighting the importance of sustainability for Mongolia’s cashmere sector stating “Cashmere is essential for the livelihoods of herders and for Mongolia’s economy as well as an important aspect of Mongolia’s nomadic tradition and culture. The establishment of this Platform therefore we believe is an essential factor in making cashmere sustainable for the benefit of the Mongolian people and Mongolia’s future.”

As transparency and traceability in supply chains improve, global buyers are demanding demonstration of sustainability in all forms including environmental, social and economic. Therefore, among expected outcomes of the first Plenary Meeting on 20 November will be the consensus on Sustainable Cashmere definition, consensus on shared vision and signing Letter of Intent by stakeholders on collective action.

MSCP is enabling diverse stakeholders – including herders, traders, international buyers, government and civil society to discuss key issues surrounding sustainable cashmere supply chain in a systemic way.

Background

Desertification and land degradation threaten 77 percent of Mongolia’s land, largely caused by overgrazing by livestock. Rising temperatures make matters worse, with a 2°C increase over the past 70 years. Quota restrictions limited herd growth until they were lifted in 1990, when the goat population soared from 5.1 million to today’s 27 million. They are looked after by 233 thousand nomadic herder households or, some 25% of the country's population.

UNDP helps developing economies around the world accelerate their progress on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. A key part of this is supporting the systemic transformation of agricultural commodity sectors, which are an essential economic driver for the country. UNDP is working with governments to transform this, supporting smallholder farmers within commodity supply chains in a systemic fashion, changing the dynamic by bringing stakeholders to work together to create meaningful change.

About UNDP

UNDP is the leading United Nations organization fighting to end the injustice of poverty, inequality, and climate change. Working with our broad network of experts and partners in 170 countries, we help nations to build integrated, lasting solutions for people and planet.

A judge has blocked a US government attempt to ban the Chinese messaging and payments app, WeChat.

US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler said the ban raised serious questions related to the constitution's first amendment, guaranteeing free speech.

The Department of Commerce had announced a bar on WeChat appearing in US app stores from Sunday, effectively shutting it down.

The Trump administration has alleged it threatens national security.

It says the app could pass user data to the Chinese government.

Both WeChat and China have strongly denied the claim. Tencent, the conglomerate that owns WeChat, had previously described the US ban as "unfortunate".

The ruling comes just after TikTok, which was also named in the Department of Commerce order, reached a deal with US firms Oracle and Walmart to hopefully allow them to keep operating.

What happened in court?

The case came to court after a group of US WeChat users challenged President Donald Trump's executive order that sought to shut WeChat down in the country.

The US Justice Department argued that blocking the executive order would "frustrate and displace the president's determination of how best to address threats to national security".

However Judge Beeler, sitting in San Francisco, noted that "while the general evidence about the threat to national security related to China (regarding technology and mobile technology) is considerable, the specific evidence about WeChat is modest".

Why does the US want the apps banned?

In a statement, the US Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the decision to block the app was taken "to combat China's malicious collection of American citizens' personal data".

The department said WeChat collected "vast swathes of data from users, including network activity, location data, and browsing and search histories".

Friday's statement from the commerce department said the governing Chinese Communist Party "has demonstrated the means and motives to use these apps to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and the economy of the US".

Tencent, which owns WeChat, has said that messages on its app are private.

More than just an app

WeChat is used by nearly 20 million people in the US - and pretty much exclusively by the Chinese and South East Asian diaspora.

It is hard to describe how important it is in people's lives. It is not just an app, for many people WeChat IS their mobile phone. It is like Amazon, Facebook, WhatsApp, Tinder and much more, rolled into one.

One Malaysian expat told me she would "cry" if the app was blocked. She told me her family had spent time showing her elderly mother how to use WeChat - and worried she would be unable to communicate with her if the ban came into force.

Interestingly though, we have not heard much from WeChat's owners - Tencent. Why? Well, Tencent is one of the biggest games companies in the world - and has a huge market in America. If President Trump were to go further and target that section of the business it would really sting.

What is WeChat?

WeChat was set up in 2011. It is a multi-purpose app allowing users to send messages, make mobile payments and use local services. It has been described as an "app for everything" in China and has more than one billion monthly users.

Like all Chinese social media platforms, WeChat must censor content the government deems illegal. In March, a report said WeChat was censoring key words about the coronavirus outbreak from as early as 1 January.

But WeChat insists encryption means others cannot "snoop" on your messages, and that content such as text, audio and images are not stored on its servers - and are deleted once all intended recipients have read them.

LONDON (Reuters) - Some of the world’s biggest companies on Monday backed growing calls for governments to do more to reverse the accelerating destruction of the natural world and support broader efforts to fight climate change.

More than 560 companies with combined revenues of $4 trillion including Walmart WMT.N, Citigroup C.N and Microsoft MSFT.O signed up to a statement calling for action over the next decade.

The call comes as the United Nations prepares to host a biodiversity summit later this month, aiming to build momentum towards forging a new global pact to ward off threats to nature exemplified by recent fires in the Amazon and California.

While many of the companies said they were already taking steps to make their operations greener, governments needed to provide the policies that would allow them to do more.

“Healthy societies, resilient economies and thriving businesses rely on nature. Governments must adopt policies now to reverse nature loss in this decade,” the companies said in a statement.

"Together let's protect, restore and sustainably use our natural resources," they added. Others to sign included IKEA [IKEA.UL], Unilever ULVR.L and AXA AXAF.PA.

Business for Nature, the coalition which organised the statement, said it was the first time so many companies had issued a joint call emphasising the crucial role healthy ecosystems play in human well-being.

“Many businesses are making commitments and taking action. But for us all to live well within the planet’s finite limits, we need to scale and speed up efforts now, not tomorrow,” said Eva Zabey, executive director, Business for Nature.

Last year the IPBES international panel of scientists said a million species were at risk of extinction.

About two-thirds of the world’s animals - mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles - have vanished over the last 50 years, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by David Holmes

The Power of Siberia pipeline is finally shipping Russian gas to China as of December 2019, after nearly thirty years of discussion. Despite this dilatory timeline, plans for a second Russia-China pipeline, to be completed by 2030, are coalescing. The new project, Power of Siberia 2, would channel up to 50 billion cubic meters of gas from the Yamal Peninsula in the Russian Arctic to eastern China via Mongolia through a 6,000 km (3,728 miles) long pipeline. On August 25, 2020 Gazprom Chairman Alexei Miller signed a Memorandum of Intent with Mongolian Deputy Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh to establish a company that would execute a feasibility study for the Mongolian portion of the pipeline. The pipeline is likely to be discussed at the Russia-China-Mongolia trilateral meeting that typically occurs at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, postponed until November 2020.

For the past five years, Gazprom and China have talked about the Altai route, which would involve a pipeline from Russia via the mountainous Altai region across the narrow border to western China. While China prefers the security of a direct pipeline with no transit countries, other gas pipelines already flow from Central Asia to western China. Moreover, the greatest demand for gas in China is in its more developed eastern regions.

In November 2014, Gazprom and the China National Oil Corporation signed a Memorandum of Understanding about building a second gas pipeline along the Altai route, but the project later stalled as Russia and China focused on Power of Siberia and Arctic LNG projects.

In the interim, Ulaanbaatar has been lobbying for a trans-Mongolian route--according to Foreign Minister Tsogtbaatar Damdin it took thirty years for Mongolia to earn a seat at the negotiating table with China and Russia to discuss such a pipeline. The opportunity first arose at the 2018 Far East Economic Forum in Vladivostok, where President Khaltmaagiin Battulga outlined his proposal for a trans-Mongolian pipeline. In 2019, Putin backed Mongolia's bid for a trans-Mongolian route while Xi agreed to consider it. The pipeline venture would breathe new life into the Russia-China-Mongolia Economic Corridor, the only trilateral Belt and Road corridor, which has 32 projects on paper but has seen little progress. For Mongolia, the pipeline would bring in transit revenue and also encourage a shift to natural gas to help reduce its tremendous pollution problem stemming from coal power.

Kazakhstan also proposed connecting to any new Russia-China gas export project, but in March 2019, Putin officially authorized Gazprom to begin exploring a trans-Mongolian gas pipeline option. In a September 2019 meeting with the Gazprom chairman, Putin requested a feasibility study of a project to pipe Yamal gas to China via Mongolia. According to the Russian president, "the Chinese partners are also inclined to this." Petroleum Economist reported that Putin's intervention was necessary to move the trans-Mongolian option forward, due to internal opposition in Gazprom, which was committed to the Altai option.

For Gazprom, the Altai route would be longer, more expensive and complex to build due to the terrain and fragile environment, but had the advantage of enabling the company to use excess gas from Western Siberia and reduce the need for additional upstream investment to supply the new pipeline. However, Yamal gas also is piped to Europe, and the new route would enable Gazprom to connect its westbound pipeline grid to the Power of Siberia 2. This would put Gazprom within range of acquiring the leverage of a swing producer, which would be able to reorient its gas exports more easily from Europe to Asia.

Unlike the Altai Route, the trans-Mongolian route circumvents the politically volatile Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), as well as the UNESCO World Heritage area in the Altai region. The new route would be even more expensive than the $1 trillion Power of Siberia--estimates on the new pipeline range from $1.3-$1.5 trillion--and would require external investment. Power of Siberia 2 is slated for completion by 2030, though negotiations with China over gas pricing are likely to be lengthy and to delay the project.

According to China National Petroleum Corporation (writing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic), China's gas consumption is likely to double to 15% of China's energy mix by 2050. The company projects gas demand to increase to 650 billion cubic meters per year, which would leave China with a shortfall of 300 billion cubic meters. While these figures may need to be adjusted in the short-term to account for pandemic-related slowdowns, pipeline gas from Russia has its appeal during the present period of tension in China's relations with LNG suppliers such as Australia and the United States. According to a Russian analyst, China still lacks the technology for storing enough LNG to meet seasonal peak demand, making pipeline gas from neighboring countries more appealing.

Chinese analysts are more skeptical of the trans-Mongolian option, which introduces a transit risk for China. Moreover, some Chinese experts highlight the potential security risks involved, especially considering Mongolia's good relations with the United States, and contend that Mongolian democracy is used to legitimate what they see as extremist ultranationalist positions at odds with Chinese policies, such as invitations to the Dalai Lama to visit.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who just completed a visit to Ulaanbaatar today, was greeted by Mongolian demonstrators opposing China's restriction of Mongolian language instruction in Inner Mongolia. Considering that a trans-Mongolian pipeline would need to traverse Inner Mongolia, the increased attention to threats to language rights there creates a new political risk for both China and Mongolia.

Global Risk

Risk assessments are distorted by the tendency of each respective country to see the others enjoying closer energy ties than perhaps they have in actuality. For the United States, a second Power of Siberia pipeline would only serve to confirm a consolidating perception of a tightening Sino-Russian strategic partnership. Additional gas supplies would also provide China with alternatives to (already considerably lagging) U.S. LNG imports, which are a part of the trade deal negotiated with the United States.

Meanwhile some Russia experts see Mongolia as excessively dependent on China, increasing the former's risk as a transit country. Former Mongolian Ambassador to Russia Luvsandandar Khangai speaks of the country's future as linked to cooperation with both Russia and China, but Jargalsaikhan Dambadarjaa, a political observer and columnist, fears that Sino-Russian cooperation may not be longlasting, potentially leaving Mongolia with an unusable pipeline as well as a damaged environment.

Mongolia reported one more COVID-19 case, bringing the total caseload in the country to 312, the country's health ministry said Sunday.

The latest case is a Russian transport driver who has recently entered Mongolia via Altanbulag border point, the ministry said in a statement.

So far, Mongolia has registered no local transmissions or deaths. Most infections were imported from neighboring Russia.

The ministry noted that 302 people have recovered, and 10 are under medical care at the country's National Center for Communicable Diseases, three of them in severe condition. Enditem

The Premier League has agreed a new broadcast deal in China to cover the rest of the 2020-21 season.

A contract has been signed with Tencent Sports after its previous £564m deal with PPTV was terminated with immediate effect earlier this month.

Viewers in China will have access to matches from this weekend.

The previous agreement with PPTV, signed in 2019 and due to run until 2022, ended after a £160m payment due in March was not received.

Financial details of the new deal have not been disclosed.

China has been the English top flight's most lucrative overseas television rights territory.

It is understood the reasons for the termination were financial rather than political.

More than half of this season's remaining 372 matches will be made available free-to-air in China, with the rest accessible via subscription.

Clubs will also be able to share short in-play clips to engage with supporters, the first such deal the Premier League has done anywhere in the world.

"We and our clubs have an extremely passionate fanbase in China and are looking forward to working with the team at Tencent to engage with fans in new ways over the coming season," said Premier League chief executive Richard Masters.