Samsung blames Google Discover for One UI 6.1's touchscreen issues
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Some Galaxy S23 users had touchscreen issues after updating their phones to One UI 6.1, and now Samsung is blaming the Google Discover feed.
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posted at: 12:00am on 06-Apr-2024
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U.S.-Guatemala High Level Economic Dialogue
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On March 18, the Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose W. Fernandez led the U.S. delegation to the first High Level Economic Dialogue with Guatemala to advance the Biden-Harris Administration's Root Causes Strategy and Vice President Harris' Central America Forward initiative. President Arvalo led the Guatemalan government delegation along with Vice President Herrera. Guatemalan representatives from the following ministries were also in attendance: Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Ministry of Finance; Ministry of Economy; Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance; Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food; Ministry of Communications, Infrastructure, and Housing; Ministry of Labor; Ministry of Energy and Mines; Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources; and the National Commission against Corruption. The U.S. delegation also noted the Vice President would further discuss our bilateral cooperation with President Arvalo at the White House on March 25. Across various thematic discussions, the United States and Guatemalan counterparts underscored their shared interest in deepening the bilateral partnership in order to stimulate sustainable, inclusive, and equitable economic development and accelerate the creation of good jobs that would benefit Guatemala and the region. The United States affirmed its collaboration with the Arvalo administration and the Guatemalan people in expanding inclusive, equitable economic prosperity through good governance; increased investment, competition, and infrastructure; supply chain resiliency; greater food security; and a more resilient energy sector. These efforts support the prosperity of all Guatemalans and contribute to a more stable and prosperous region. What is good for Guatemala is good for the United States. Advancing the White House's Root Causes Strategy and its Central America Forward initiative emphasizes inclusive equitable growth in marginalized populations to help those who have been left behind fully benefit from Guatemala's growth and development. Good Governance Integrity/Probity Units. In line with President Arvalo's commitment to eliminate corruption, USAID intends to provide technical assistance to establish, expand, and/or strengthen targeted ministries and executive branch entities’ Integrity Units. These units will address corruption internally, while also improving efficiency and effectiveness, which will improve their ability to fulfill their obligations to the people. This assistance includes organizational and operational assessments to determine how corruption occurs, identify perpetrators, and issue recommendations to improve existing units, enhance staff capacity, and strengthen the institutions. Open Government Partnership. In line with President Arvalo's efforts to enhance transparency, the Department of State and USAID intend to expand the Open Government Partnership. This includes capacity building for government and civil society groups, assistance for procurement transparency to improve legal and operational processes, and support for digitization efforts across the executive branch and transparency initiatives that make data publicly accessible. Building Capacity for Equitable Growth. The Inter-American Foundation (IAF), which currently supports 34 Guatemalan organizations, is announcing new funding of $1.1 millionmatched by grantee co-investment for a total value of $2.2 millionto develop the capacity of four Guatemalan organizations to bolster local economic growth. The organizations are led by and serving marginalized populations disproportionately impacted by economic inequality: women, youth, and Indigenous people. The organizations will advance Indigenous youth leadership, constructive engagement with local officials on community development priorities for durable economic solutions, as well as community-based responses to promote economic inclusion key to growth. Investment Promotion: Competition, Infrastructure, and Supply Chains Metro System. In line with President Arvalo's vision to establish a metro system in Guatemala City to reduce congestion, improve mobility, and control emissions, the State Department's Transaction Advisory Fund (TAF) intends to provide $650,000 to advance a Guatemalan metro system. TAF support is intended to provide international expertise to conduct engineering and design services for the construction of bridges and underpasses needed for the new metro line in Guatemala City. Climate Resilient Infrastructure. With $5 million, USAID will work to catalyze investments in climate resilient infrastructure projects across the country. This initiative will enhance the regulatory environment, boost investment, promote climate-adaptive practices, and foster a model for sustainable infrastructure growth and economic development in the country. The initiative will provide technical assistance and capacity-building efforts to boost climate resilience and stimulate economic progress. This initiative connects government agencies with private sector stakeholders, to improve infrastructure quality, foster economic growth, and ensure climate resilience to secure Guatemala's future prosperity. The private sector has already committed to match the U.S. investment, by supporting a revolving fund to finance feasibility studies. Competition Law Technical Assistance. Guatemala is one of the only countries in Latin America without a competition law. This stifles the growth of domestic companies as well as foreign direct investment. In response to a request from the Ministry of Economy, and to advance President Arvalo's vision of establishing Guatemala as a regional economic powerhouse, USAID anticipates providing technical assistance as Guatemala drafts a new competition law, including hiring a local consultant and providing expert analysis from the Federal Trade Commission. The United States stands ready to assist with other legislative priorities where we can provide technical assistance. Investment Promotion Technical Assistance. In support of President Arvalo's vision to improve infrastructure and investment in Guatemala, the Department of Commerce's Commercial Law Development Program is finalizing an agreement with the State Department to help improve the transparency, effectiveness, competition, and sustainability of Guatemala's public procurement regimes for the development, acquisition, and management of goods, services, and infrastructure. Additionally, USAID anticipates providing technical assistance to the Ministry of Economy on restructuring the investment promotion authority to increase the Guatemalan government's capacity to design and drive competition and investment initiatives and bring Guatemala in alignment with the region. Agriculture and Food Security Deepening Food Security. In line with President Arvalo's vision for ensuring sustainable, inclusive development for the communities most in need, the United States announced an expansion of the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) to the Western Hemisphere, starting with Guatemala, through a new partnership with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) that builds on the U.S. government's existing efforts in the region through the Feed the Future initiative. The United States and IICA anticipate collaborating with Guatemalan stakeholders to develop a VACS strategy that builds more resilient agricultural systems through a focus on diverse, climate-adapted crops and healthy, fertile soils. The resulting VACS strategy will propose areas to mobilize resources from across the public and private sectors to make future investments that advance VACS goals in Guatemala. Energy Security Sustainable Electricity Access. In alignment with President Arvalo’s commitment to connect all Guatemalan households to energy services, with $3.8 million, USAID seeks to increase electricity access, promote productive uses of electricity, and improve local and national capacity for the energy transition. The activity will target priority rural areas including the Western Highlands, Alta Verapaz, and others as selected. Coalition for Climate Entrepreneurship Hub in Guatemala City. Over the next two years, the Department of State intends to work with the PVBLIC Foundation, Colombian startup accelerator Cleantech Hub, and Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala City to collectively generate more than 100 climate and sustainability-focused business plans, select at least 30 high-potential startups from the hubs to participate in a regional Climate Acceleration Program, and work with additional partners to raise at least four times the total value of the program through public grants. The hubs aim to have 90 percent of participating startups launch products or secure funding within one year and abate at least 50,000 tons of CO2 per year across the program, driving sustainable economic growth in Central and South America. The hubs also anticipate engaging at least 450 students to drive academic commitment toa cleaner future and emphasize representation of previously underserved climate entrepreneurship communities, including women and Indigenous peoples.
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posted at: 12:00am on 19-Mar-2024
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Singapore seeks expanded governance framework for generative AI
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Looking to balance user security with innovation, Singapore wants feedback on proposed updated to the country's existing artificial intelligence governance framework.
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posted at: 12:00am on 17-Jan-2024
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Secretary Blinken's Remarks at a World Economic Forum Event: Treating Soil as a Precious Resource
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Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of StateDavos, SwitzerlandWorld Economic ForumSECRETARY BLINKEN:John, thank you very much.(Applause.)Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. John, my old friend, thank you very, very much. And as always, here, it's particularly good to be with leaders from across government, business, civil society. So when you think about soil, the U.S. Secretary of State is probably not the first person who comes to mind. (Laughter.) But the truth is soil is literally at the root of many pressing national security challenges that we face.You all know this, and we know this increasingly with every passing day: without good soil, crops fail, prices rise, people go hungry. Eroding soil also worsens the impact of droughts, of floods, of other climate-driven extreme weather, making crop yields even lower - and as a result, food even scarcer. As we meet here today, 700 million people do not know if they will have enough food to eat tomorrow.This hunger fuels instability, and instability fuels hunger. A parent who can't put food on the table for their children picks up the family and moves because it's the most basic thing, the most important thing that they can do, and they will do it however they have to do it. And if that means moving halfway around the world, they will. But that contributes to unprecedented migration flows that we're facing around the world. Shifting climate patterns force neighbors to compete for dwindling resources, further straining ethnic tensions, destabilizing entire communities.Meanwhile, Russia's attacks on fields, on granaries, on ports in Ukraine, the world's breadbasket, have disrupted global markets, making food harder to afford and harming the poor and most vulnerable most of all. In the Red Sea, through which 15 percent of the world's commerce passes, Houthi attacks have forced ships to take longer, more expensive routes, further raising the price of food and energy.The United States has been and is working intensely to tackle this food crisis and support those who are most affected by it. Going back to January of 2021, the U.S. Government has devoted $17.5 billion to provide vital sustenance to people in need. We are honored to fund over one third of the World Food Programme's budget. Now I had a chance to see some of these efforts just last week at a World Food Programme warehouse in Jordan, where I met with UN staff that is working relentlessly, often at great personal risk, to get aid to Palestinians in Gaza, over 90 percent of whom are facing acute food insecurity.Too many people already go to sleep hungry, and it's set to get worse. If you project out to 2050, global demand for food is projected to rise by 50 percent. But over that same period, climate change could reduce yields by as much as 30 percent. So do the math and it doesn't balance out. In short, we need to feed more people as growing food becomes harder.That's why the United States is partnering to adapt and transform agriculture and food systems, because as vital as emergency assistance is, if we don't get at the underlying infrastructure, if we don't get at a way to produce better, stronger, more resilient crops, then we won't solve the problem. But we joined a pledge with over 130 countries signing the Emirates Declaration at COP 28 to address a big part of this. Our Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate initiative with the UAE has mobilized $17 billion to invest in efforts like regenerating degraded crop land and capturing carbon in soil. Through the global partnership for infrastructure and investment, we are working with dozens of countries - from India to Zambia - to scale climate-smart agriculture and bolster supply chains.And together with the African Union and the Food and Agriculture Organization, we've launched a new initiative. It's called Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils, or VACS, and VACS is part of the USAID's flagship Feed the Future initiative. This is our comprehensive response in the U.S. Government to food insecurity around the world, and the approach that we have is two-pronged. And it really boils down to this, two very basic things: First, we're investing above ground, identifying the indigenous African crops that are most nutritious and most resilient to climate change, improving these varieties, delivering them to the world; at the same time, we're investing below ground, mapping, conserving, building healthy soils. If you get this right, if you get the seeds right, if you get the soil right, then you have your agricultural foundation for the future.We've been incredibly fortunate at the State Department to have one of the world's leading experts, Dr. Cary Fowler, lead our efforts in helping develop this initiative. We've committed $150 million thus far toward VACS. We're also rallying a broad coalition of governments around the world to advance this work: Japan, Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, as well as leading nonprofits and corporations. Just to cite one example, IBM is expanding access to its OpenHarvest platform, which is using AI and climate modeling to deliver tailored farm and field management recommendations right to farmers' cell phones. We have the capacity as we're doing this with all of this technology to literally map the soil any place in the world, any given field, to tell whether the soil is good, bad, deficient, and then to figure out how we can make it as productive as possible.So, this is something that I believe is genuinely revolutionary - seeds and soil, we put them together, and we can begin to answer a lot of the challenges that our world is going to face over the next 25 or 30 years. And so my simple pitch to you today is this: Join us. This is a powerful investment. It has extraordinary, even transformational returns.Some of you may know that the word human comes from the Latin term for earth, for soil. There are a few things that are more human, more and more important to humanity, than figuring out how to cultivate this planet so that it can feed and support all of us. We have an opportunity in this moment to actually deliver better for people today while actually building a sustainable tomorrow.So part of the reason - and John said at the outset - this event in and of itself is unusual for Davos. Having foreign policy types participate in it may also seem a little bit unusual, but it only underscores the importance that all of us attach to both this challenge but also this incredible, incredible opportunity to get maybe the most fundamental thing in life that we need to sustain us right going forward into the future, and that's the food to feed everyone on this planet and to feed them well.So those of you who have the interest and the opportunity, please join us in this initiative, join us in this effort. We can make a huge difference together. Thanks very much. (Applause.)
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posted at: 12:00am on 17-Jan-2024
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