Friday, December 7, 2018

Six In The Morning Friday December 7

Japan needs immigrants, but do immigrants need Japan?


Updated 0733 GMT (1533 HKT) December 7, 2018
One of the first concepts Linh Nguyen learned while studying Japanese was "uchi-soto."
It refers to the practice of categorizing people into one of two groups -- insiders or outsiders. Family, friends and close acquaintances are insiders, referred to as "uchi," while "soto" is for those relegated to the periphery.
For this Japan-obsessed student in Vietnam, it felt like a warning: she could be about to enter a deeply closed society that would always consider her an outsider.


Huawei: Chinese media accuses US of 'hooliganism' over Meng Wanzhou arrest

State-run papers label Washington a ‘despicable rogue’ as Japan moves to ban telecoms company from government contracts

Chinese media have lashed out at the US over the arrest of senior Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, accusing the country of using “hooliganism” to suppress the Chinese telecom giant at the centre of what is turning into a major diplomatic incident.
State-run China Daily said the arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer appeared to be part of US efforts to contain the company, which is the world’s largest telecoms equipment provider, as well as its second-largest mobile phone maker.
“One thing that is undoubtedly true and proven is the US is trying to do whatever it can to contain Huawei’s expansion in the world simply because the company is the point man for China’s competitive technology companies,” the editorial said.

Undocumented cleaner at Trump gold club speaks out about working for the president: 'We are tired of the abuse'

Victorina Morales says she decided to speak out when Mr Trump when referred to refugees and migrants arriving from Latin America as 'criminals'

An apparently undocumented immigrant who says she has cleaned Donald Trump’s residency at his New Jersey golf club for more than five years has revealed what it is like working for the president in a remarkable new interview. 
Risking dismissal from her job and deportation from the United States, Victorina Morales expressed frustration over the president’s frequently divisive comments about undocumented immigrants despite the “outstanding” support White Houseofficials have told her she provided during his visits to the golf course. 
“We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him make money,” she said in an interview with the New York Times. “We sweat it out to attend to his every need and have to put up with his humiliation.”

France boosts security amid fear of new 'yellow vest' protest riots

Officials warned that "major violence" could hit Paris as "yellow vest" protesters plan to gather again this weekend. Teens have also blocked hundreds of schools, while several unions called for solidarity strikes.
Authorities across France are bracing for another weekend of "yellow vest" protests. The movement's members are known for wearing yellow safety vests carried by French motorists.
The protests began as demonstrations against the fuel tax, which started in November but turned violent in Paris last Saturday, with some of the worst rioting in France in decades. Three weeks of protests have led to four deaths and left hundreds injured.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EXPERTS ISSUE URGENT WARNING AGAINST FACIAL SCANNING WITH A “DANGEROUS HISTORY”



December 7 2018
FACIAL RECOGNITION has quickly shifted from techno-novelty to fact of life for many, with millions around the world at least willing to put up with their faces scanned by software at the airport, their iPhones, or Facebook’s server farms. But researchers at New York University’s AI Now Institute have issued a strong warning against not only ubiquitous facial recognition, but its more sinister cousin: so-called affect recognition, technology that claims it can find hidden meaning in the shape of your nose, the contours of your mouth, and the way you smile. If that sounds like something dredged up from the 19th century, that’s because it sort of is.
AI Now’s 2018 report is a 56-page record of how “artificial intelligence” — an umbrella term that includes a myriad of both scientific attempts to simulate human judgment and marketing nonsense — continues to spread without oversight, regulation, or meaningful ethical scrutiny. The report covers a wide expanse of uses and abuses, including instances of racial discrimination, police surveillance, and how trade secrecy laws can hide biased code from an AI-surveilled public. But AI Now, which was established last year to grapple with the social implications of artificial intelligence, expresses in the document particular dread over affect recognition, “a subclass of facial recognition that claims to detect things such as personality, inner feelings, mental health, and ‘worker engagement’ based on images or video of faces.” The thought of your boss watching you through a camera that uses machine learning to constantly assess your mental state is bad enough, while the prospect of police using “affect recognition” to deduce your future criminality based on “micro-expressions” is exponentially worse.

69 foreign technical interns died in Japan between 2015 and 2017: Justice Ministry

A total of 69 foreigners, mainly in their 20s, working as part of Japan's technical intern program died between 2015 and 2017, according to a Justice Ministry tally made available by a main opposition lawmaker on Thursday.
While the ministry has not confirmed the contents, the document states the deaths were due to traffic accidents, illness, suicide or other reasons, but it does not describe the circumstances of all of the cases.
The document was disclosed by Yoshifu Arita of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan during a parliamentary committee session ahead of the likely passage of a controversial bill aimed at bringing more foreign workers to the country.


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