July 21, 2022

Huawei: Shaping Smarter, Greener Finance Together

SINGAPORE, July 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — July 20, the three-day Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit 2022 officially begins at Sands Expo and Convention Centre. Under the theme of “Shaping Smarter, Greener Finance”, the summit is bringing together financial industry leading figures, KOLs, academic experts, and innovative practitioners from more than 30 countries around the world to discuss the future development of the financial industry, exploring how to build smarter and greener finance together.

Huawei proposed three core elements for gaining competitiveness in the financial industry, upon the arrival of the super digitalization era

With the fully connected intelligent world on its way, both the economy and society are transforming towards two major trends of digitalization and sustainable development. In face of changing financial service scenarios and business models in the digital era, the financial industry is met with a growing demand for rapid business innovation and ultimate customer experience, which further speeds up its pace of transformation. To cope with the complex and dynamic nature of digital transformation, it is necessary for the financial industry to rebuild its core competitiveness amidst the digital era in order to realize the vision of intelligent finance.

“Better connections, stronger intelligence, and more scenarios are the key to building competitiveness of digital finance,” Ryan Ding, President of the Huawei Enterprise BG, pointed out, “Following the concept of co-creation, sharing, and win-win, we are working with our customers and partners in finding a way towards Shaping Smarter, Greener Finance, Creating New Value Together.”

Huawei announced three strategic initiatives, advancing the digitalization of the financial industry in the new era.

Jason Cao, CEO of Huawei Global Digital Finance said in his speech, “Technology, especially the connection and intelligence, continues to drive the development of the financial industry. In 2022, we have officially entered into the ZFLOPS era for AI computing power. With the development of AI, we will embrace super-personalization. By 2025, more than 100 billion physical connections will lead to financial services for ‘things’. In the future, smart contract will enable intelligent decision-making possible everywhere. New service and product models will emerge one after another. However, end-to-end user experience, real-time processing of massive data, and O&M and management of more complex networks and multi clouds will all become challenges for the financial industry. We are facing opportunities as well as challenges. ”

To build smarter and greener finance based on better connections, stronger intelligence, and more scenarios, Huawei announced three strategic initiatives for the financial sector during the summit.

Smarter: smarter customer engagement solutions to improve digital experience; data and intelligent converged platform to build real-time data capabilities; hybrid multi-cloud architecture to make cross-cloud management easier and services more agile.
Greener: autonomous digital infrastructure to help financial institutions achieve high efficiency, availability, and performance and facilitate collaboration of multi-technology, heterogeneous technology, and hybrid multi-cloud.
Together: Build a global ecosystem cooperation platform and put forward three upgraded initiatives for the Financial Partner Go Global Program 2.0 (FPGGP): develop more solution partners; expand FPGGP to global consulting and service partners; develop local sales and service partners for providing FPGGP solutions locally.

Working with global clients and partners, shaping smarter and greener finance

During the summit, Huawei and DBS announced the establishment of the Innovation Showcase at DBS Newton Green.

Huawei also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with OCBC Bank to bolster the bank’s digital transformation in Southeast Asia and the Greater Bay Area in three key initiatives: Green Branch and Buildings with Smart IoT; Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Innovation and Cloud Adoption Acceleration.

Meanwhile, Huawei released the Digital Banking 2.0 Solution leveraging Temenos open platform. The solution supports the quick launch of digital banks and helps larger banks accelerate their modernization in the cloud. This greatly improves the rollout efficiency and customer satisfaction.

In the coming days, Huawei will sign a number of cooperation agreements with several financial institutions, and unveil a wide variety of products and solutions jointly created with partners, covering various business scenarios.

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July 21, 2022

Huawei Releases Digital Banking 2.0 Solution Leveraging Temenos Platform

SINGAPORE, July 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — During Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit 2022 — Huawei, launched the Digital Banking 2.0 solution leveraging Temenos open platform, and discussed with customers and top partners in the financial industry about how to build a cloud-native architecture to achieve business agility and industry innovation.

Digital banking is a global trend

Facing fierce competition with Internet giants, banks are transforming from providers of traditional financial services to those of new digital financial services based on the industry ecosystem. New technologies — such as cloud-native, open API, and big data — as well as the new economic environment have been driving digital banking to be open, intelligent with seamless integration capability.

Banks have to go digital to meet the various new requirements in new scenarios, and digital banking is an inevitable choice. Indeed, global digital banks have undergone explosive growth in recent years. According to the statistics of Simon-Kucher’s new bank database, 153 digital banks emerged in 2020 and 2021, and this number will continue to rise in the future.

Huawei releases Digital Banking 2.0 Solution leveraging Temenos open platform supporting banks’ architecture transformation and business innovation

Jason Cao, CEO of Huawei Global Digital Finance & Jimmy Ng, CIO and Head of Group Technology & Operations, DBS

During the summit, Huawei released the Digital Banking 2.0 Solution leveraging Temenos open platform. This new Digital Banking solution is an upgraded solution and uses Temenos open platform for composable banking to provide cloud-native, core banking functionality and data capabilities. The solution supports the quick launch of digital banks and helps larger banks accelerate their modernization in the cloud. This greatly improves the rollout efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Digital Banking 2.0 Solution enables fast service integration and rollout based on a cloud-native architecture, providing core banking functions for banks. The solution has the following key capabilities:

Pre-integrated: The solution certified with Temenos and other partners in the industry offers a complete and comprehensive function stack of digital banking for customers in different business scenarios, such as retail, corporate and Islamic banking, etc.
Agile: The solution provides composable banking services that allow new services to be developed and iterated through simple assembly. At the same time, the cloud-native system is highly scalable and cost-effective, requiring less initial investment.
Open: The platform provides open APIs for third-party invoking and integration. It enriches the ecosystem and supports more business scenarios. All of this results in improved system operational efficiency and user satisfaction.

Neo Gong, Senior Solution Director of the Huawei Enterprise BG Digital Finance, introduced, “Digital Banking 2.0 can be delivered in the SaaS or cloud foundation model. This solution helps customers improve their efficiency of business operations and cost management, so that they can focus more on service innovation and ecosystem development. Based on the collaboration with Temenos, a leading open platform for composable banking, this solution provides rich core banking functionality for banks.”

Through building an agile, elastic, secure and reliable cloud foundation, and integration with partners to build scenario-based financial solutions, Huawei is committed to further promote the development and innovation of financial services, shaping smarter, greener finance together.

About Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit 2022

Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit is Huawei’s annual flagship event for the global financial industry. HiFS 2022 runs from July 20 to 22 in Singapore. With the theme of “Shaping Smarter, Greener Finance”, Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit brings together leading figures, KOLs, academic experts, and innovative practitioners in the global financial industry to discuss how to shape green and digital finance in light of the future development trend of the financial industry. For more information, please visit: https://e.huawei.com/en/special_topic/Industry/finance/2022-finance-summit

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1863833/image.jpg

July 21, 2022

Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair set to showcase works from over 1,500 First Nations artists, represented by a record 76 community Art Centres from across Australia

DARWIN, Australia, July 21, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creatives will be celebrated in Darwin, Australia, from 2-7 August in an unmissable showcase of art, design and culture at Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair (DAAF) Foundation’s series of iconic events.

The Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair (DAAF) is Australia’s largest and most celebrated First Nations visual art event, which will return for the 16^th year to run both online and in person this 5-7 August.

The internationally celebrated art fair sits alongside the Foundation’s two Indigenous Fashion Projects events, Country to Couture on the 2 August, and the National Indigenous Fashion Awards on the 3 August, bringing Australia’s most acclaimed and vibrant First Nations artists and designers to the national and global stage.

As the only Australian event of its kind, DAAF has secured a reputation as one of the country’s most significant and internationally recognised arts events, creating a unique opportunity to connect with, and ethically purchase art directly from Art Centres, as well as meeting the artists and learning firsthand about their cultural heritage, stories, history and traditional artistic practices through a range of masterclasses, talks and demonstrations.

DAAF 2022 is on track to be the most successful and widest reaching yet, with a record 76 Art Centres participating in the Foundation’s inaugural hybrid delivery of the event. In 2021, the Fair achieved a record $3.12 million AUD in sales with 100 per cent of profits going back to the Art Centres and their communities. The Fair itself takes no commission from artwork sold.

DAAF Foundation are proud to be part of a collective of organisations championing music, arts, and ideas from the world’s oldest living cultures. Taking place in Australia’s Top End each July-August, alongside DAAF Foundation’s renowned Fair and fashion events, will be:

Garma Festival | Yothu Yindi Foundation | 29 July – 1 August
Salon des Refusés | Salon Art Projects | 3-13 August
Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards | Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory | 5 August 2022 – January 2023
National Indigenous Music Awards | Music NT | 6 August

The first week of August is predicted to be one of the biggest showcases of First Nations talent in the world. Music, art and culture will collide as The Collective unifies to bring the public a unique experience across the creative industries in the Northern Territory.

For more information about the 16th Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair and for priority access to the digital Art Fair, visit daaf.com.au/register.

Georgina Dawson
georginad@bastionagency.com

A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking on the image or link below:

July 21, 2022

WHO to decide on sounding highest alarm on monkeypox; 14,000 cases reported by 70 countries

GENEVA— The World Health Organization will reconvene its expert monkeypox committee on Thursday to decide whether the outbreak now constitutes a global health emergency — the highest alarm it can sound.

A second meeting of the WHO’s emergency committee on the virus will be held to examine the evidence on the worsening situation, with nearly 14,000 cases reported from more than 70 countries.

A surge in monkeypox infections has been reported since early May outside the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic.

On June 23, the WHO convened an emergency committee of experts to decide if monkeypox constitutes a so-called Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) — the UN health agency’s highest alert level.

But a majority advised the WHO’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the situation, at that point, had not met the threshold.

Now a second meeting will be held, with case numbers rising and spreading to six more countries in the past week.

If the committee advises Tedros that the outbreak constitutes a PHEIC, it will propose temporary recommendations on how to better prevent and reduce the spread of the disease and manage the global public health response.

But there is no timetable for when the outcome will be made public.

Ninety-eight percent of reported cases “are among men who have sex with men (MSM) — and primarily those who have multiple recent anonymous or new partners,” Rosamund Lewis, the WHO’s technical lead for monkeypox, told a press conference on Wednesday.

They are typically of young age and chiefly in urban areas, according to the WHO.

The committee will look at the latest trends and data, how effective the countermeasures are and make recommendations for what countries and communities should do to tackle the outbreak.

Regardless of the committee’s PHEIC decision, the “WHO will continue to do everything we can to support countries to stop transmission and save lives,” Tedros told the press conference.

He said the WHO was validating, procuring and shipping tests to multiple countries, but said one of the most powerful tools in the fight against monkeypox was information.

“That’s why WHO is continuing to work with patients and community advocates to develop and deliver information tailored to the affected communities,” Tedros said.

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said the LGBTQ community was one of the most engaged and responsible, having worked hard over decades to combat HIV, “so therefore we have full confidence that this community can, and will, and is, engaging very closely”.

A viral infection resembling smallpox and first detected in humans in 1970, monkeypox is less dangerous and contagious than smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said that as of Monday, 7,896 confirmed cases had been reported from 27 countries in the European Economic Area.

The worst affected were Spain (2,835), Germany (1,924), France (912), the Netherlands (656) and Portugal (515).

“Particular sexual practices are very likely to have facilitated and could further facilitate the transmission of monkeypox among MSM groups,” it said.

Danish company Bavarian Nordic is the lone laboratory manufacturing a licensed vaccine against monkeypox and jabs are currently in scarce supply.

New York, the epicentre of the US outbreak with more than 460 cases, had either administered or scheduled 21,500 vaccines by Sunday, with long lines of men aged 20 to 40 queueing to get a shot.

Loyce Pace, the US assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said it was “very hard” for the world to handle monkeypox on top of Covid-19 and other health crises.

“I know it can be scary… and, frankly, exhausting,” she told reporters at the US mission in Geneva.

However, “we know a lot more about this disease, we’ve been able to stop outbreaks previously and we, importantly, have medical counter-measures and other tools available.”

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

July 21, 2022

Africa Prepares Rollout of World’s First Malaria Vaccine

Preparations are underway for the mass rollout of the world’s first malaria vaccine to protect millions of children in Africa.

The rollout is being funded by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for nearly $160 million.

The World Health Organization said Gavi’s multimillion-dollar funding marks a key advance in the fight against one of Africa’s most severe public health threats. It noted that countries in sub-Saharan Africa bear the brunt of the yearly toll of more than 240 million global cases of malaria, including more than 600,000 reported deaths. The main victims are children under age 5.

WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said one child dies every minute in Africa, with catastrophic consequences for families, communities and national development.

The vaccine was introduced in Africa in 2019. Since then, more than 1.3 million children have benefited from the lifesaving inoculations in three pilot countries — Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Moeti said those countries have reported a 30 percent drop in hospitalizations of children with severe malaria and a 9% reduction in child deaths.

“If delivered at scale, millions of new cases could be averted, and tens of thousands of lives saved every year,” Moeti said. “We were encouraged to see that demand for the vaccine is high, even in the context of COVID-19, with the first dose reaching between 73% to over 90% coverage.”

Thabani Maphosa, managing director of country programs at Gavi, called the vaccine the most effective tool in the fight against malaria, one that will save children’s lives. However, he said, demand for the lifesaving product will outstrip supply.

“Our challenge during this critical phase is to ensure the doses we have available are used as effectively and equitably as possible,” Maphosa said. “With this is mind, Gavi today is opening an application window for malaria support.”

He said the three pilot countries, which already have experience in rolling out the vaccine, will get first crack at applying for and receiving funding. So, practically speaking, Maphosa said, they will require little help in setting up their systems to get the operation underway.

Maphosa said a second round of funding will take place at the end of the year. At that time, he said other countries with moderate to high cases of severe malaria can submit applications for support.

Source: Voice of America