Tag: South Africa

AI-powered Intelligent Director enhances connection and optimizes the conference room experience for hybrid work, using multiple cameras to give every participant their own space in Zoom Meetings

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 27, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) announced the launch of the award-winning Intelligent Director for Zoom Rooms. For hybrid meetings with a Zoom Room, Intelligent Director uses AI and multiple cameras to provide the best image and angle of participants in the room so remote participants can see each person clearly, even in large conference rooms.

“As more people return to the office, it’s no longer enough to deliver the best remote worker experience; every business needs a solution to deliver the best hybrid meeting experience,” said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom. “Even with some employees in the office, oftentimes other team members are dispersed, so meeting equity and inclusion become more important than ever. Intelligent Director is the solution that can bring employees together, regardless of location, so they can truly connect face-to-face.”

Intelligent Director is specifically designed for medium- to larger-sized rooms and helps avoid the “bowling alley effect.” Intelligent Director can individually frame up to 16 participants in a Zoom Room using multiple cameras, choosing the best video stream via a Zoom-designed AI, and send that stream to the gallery view of the Zoom Meeting.

An evolution of Zoom’s Smart Gallery feature, which uses a single camera and AI to give each person in a small to medium-sized room their own space in a Zoom Meeting, Intelligent Director takes this same technology to the next level for larger conference rooms.

For bigger meeting spaces, it is easier to be hidden by others when only using a single camera, so Intelligent Director’s multi-camera configuration and use of video AI technology provide meeting equity to everyone in the room, selecting the best view of each individual, even if they move around or turn their heads. Remote participants can now have face-to-face conversations with each Zoom Rooms participant, allowing in-room participants to be seen and heard.

Intelligent Director is made possible through the support of Zoom’s hardware partner ecosystem. Manufacturers, including Apple, AVer, Dell, HP | Poly, Intel, Logitech, and Yealink have supported Zoom with the computer, controller, and camera solutions necessary to produce this major advancement.

About Zoom
Zoom is an all-in-one intelligent collaboration platform that makes connecting easier, more immersive, and more dynamic for businesses and individuals. Zoom technology puts people at the center, enabling meaningful connections, facilitating modern collaboration, and driving human innovation through solutions like team chat, phone, meetings, omnichannel cloud contact center, smart recordings, whiteboard, and more, in one offering. Founded in 2011, Zoom is publicly traded (NASDAQ:ZM) and headquartered in San Jose, California. Get more info at zoom.com.

Zoom Public Relations
Lacretia Taylor
[email protected]

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8865322

New York, June 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — New research supported by the Open Society Foundations shows that increasing delays in resolving sovereign debt crises in some of the world’s poorest countries are significantly adding to the human cost of defaults—cutting economic growth, reducing life-expectancy, and worsening child mortality rates.

The analysis, The Human Costs of the Failing Global Debt System, builds on research published last year that showed how going into default leads to economic and human damage that worsens over subsequent years.

Sovereign debt defaults occur when countries fail to pay their debts on time. This can be interest or principal payments to domestic or international creditors. This typically forces a renegotiation of lending terms. The research looked at data from 131 sovereign debt defaults around the world since 1900.

The new paper’s authors, economists Clemens Graf von Luckner and Juan P. Farah-Yacoub, conclude that, in addition, the longer it takes a country to reach a new agreement with its creditors, the greater the increase in human costs:

• When a country’s debt crisis is resolved in less than three years, infant mortality ten years after a default is declared as 2.2 percentage points higher than would have been expected. But when the default continues for more than three years, the difference rises to a staggering 11.4 percentage points higher.
• For the countries studied, on average, life expectancy ten years after default drops by more than one year relative to where it would have been without the default.
• In addition, the shortfall in the rate of increase in real economic output per capita (against what it could have been without default), jumps by 2.5 percentage points in the first year of default, against what it would have been had there been no default. It then continues to grow by 1.5 percentage point on average each year thereafter. Over a decade the gap grows to roughly 14.5 percentage points.

The findings underline the grave damage being caused by the failure of the existing global financial system to deliver prompt resolution to countries in default due in part to the involvement of an increasingly complex mix of creditors—including international financial institutions such as development banks, commercial banks, sovereign lenders including China, and private commercial creditors.

The report also highlights the case of Zambia, which defaulted on its external debt in November 2020 under the economic strains of the Covid pandemic. It has yet to secure a comprehensive debt agreement among all of its public and private creditors and the International Monetary Fund, with its total debt now estimated at over $18 billion.

The authors of this new report calculated that, based on a calculation using Zambia’s birth rates in 2016, the country’s current debt default would result in an additional 3,079 annual deaths of infants before their first birthdays by the year 2030, if the default is prolonged further.

Mark Malloch-Brown, president of the Open Society Foundations, said: “The findings here starkly illustrate how a dysfunctional global financial system is causing tragic but entirely avoidable human suffering. The leaders meeting in Paris need to commit to the urgent reforms the world needs to face both deepening poverty and the worsening climate crisis.”

The Open Society Foundations, together with a broad range of civil society groups, are pushing for the leaders gathered at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris to commit to policies that will significantly reform the international debt restructuring process to allow for a just and sustainable resolution to a country’s default delivered in a timely manner. These steps include:

1. States establishing a clear process with firm timetables for getting agreement to “cure” defaults—no more three years in limbo like Zambia.
2. The IMF must more aggressively use its authority to “lend into arrears”—which means they can launch their funding support program to indebted countries even if some creditors refuse to accept new debt relief terms. These hold out creditors loans would not get paid, but everyone else participating does.
3. Private creditors (including sovereign bond holders) should not be allowed to refuse to accept debt settlements that creditor countries agree to, and then expect to be paid with the benefits of that relief, or to use the courts to get full repayment. In the United States, the New York State legislature has before it legislation that would end this practice.
4. The International Financial Institutions need significantly more funding from the Global North to give them the resources needed to properly fund recovery from defaults and allow the economic growth needed to avoid defaults in the future.

Office of Communications
Open Society Foundations 
(212) 548-0378
media@opensocietyfoundations.org

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8862959

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — FreedomPay, a global leader in Next Level Commerce, announces a partnership with Visa to integrate Visa’s network tokenization capabilities within FreedomPay’s global identity and tokenization framework. The true omnichannel global tokenization product will provide network tokens across card brands, helping to keep merchants compliant with cross-border and in-region data and privacy regulations, while helping merchants qualify for lower interchange rates for certain Visa network tokenized transactions.

“With the growing number of connected devices, changing consumer behaviors and shifting privacy regulations, the benefits of utilizing network tokens are many. Using the Visa Acceptance Platform, Visa has the scale and flexibility to seamlessly provision them for FreedomPay’s clients around the globe, helping to improve customer experience, improve authorization rates and reduce fraud,” said Bill Dobbins, SVP, Head of Acquiring and Enablement at Visa.

Network tokenization will also help streamline the customer journey, providing a seamless experience across borders and merchant locations. The new capabilities will be integrated into FreedomPay’s larger identity suite, offering a 360-degree view of the customer to the merchant, creating a more personalized checkout experience through data-driven loyalty and incentives.

“FreedomPay is trusted by the largest brands across hospitality, retail, F&B and more to provide repeatable and scalable next level solutions for security, data management and compliance, and to create a personalized and seamless customer journey around the globe,” said David Knowlton, CTO at FreedomPay. “By partnering with Visa for network tokenization, FreedomPay will provide merchants with more flexibility and geographic coverage, including in harder-to-access regions, when managing customer and card data.”

Additional features will also be supported without any changes to the merchant’s systems such as supporting card on file use cases with digital wallet taps as well as token life cycle management.

About FreedomPay

FreedomPay’s Next Level Commerce platform transforms existing payment systems and processes from legacy to leading edge and enables merchants to unleash the power of pay. As the premier choice for many of the largest companies across the globe in retail, hospitality, lodging, gaming, sports and entertainment, foodservice, education, healthcare and financial services, FreedomPay’s technology has been purposely built to deliver rock solid performance in the highly complex environment of global commerce.

The company maintains a world-class security environment and was first to earn the coveted validation by the PCI Security Standards Council against Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE/EMV) standard in North America. FreedomPay’s robust solutions across payments, security, identity, and data analytics are available in-store, online and on-mobile and are supported by rapid API adoption. The award winning FreedomPay Commerce Platform operates on a single, unified technology stack across multiple continents allowing enterprises to deliver an innovative Next Level experience on a global scale. www.freedompay.com

Jennifer Tayebi
Hill+Knowlton Strategies for FreedomPay
+1 734 395 0780
jennifer.tayebi@hkstrategies.com

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8862332

Zoom extends free signup period for Zoom Scheduler to July 20

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, Zoom announced general availability for its new Zoom Scheduler tool and the extension of the free signup period. Zoom Scheduler makes finding the perfect meeting time easier by sharing availability for others to conveniently book appointments.

“We heard again and again from our customers that they were looking for a convenient way to book appointments without leaving the Zoom platform,” said Joseph Chong, Head of Product, Solutions, and Industry Marketing, Zoom. “With Zoom Scheduler, they can. Based on positive feedback, we will be offering Zoom Scheduler for free for anyone to try for one more month.”

Zoom is known for simplifying collaboration tools, and its latest product has taken on everyone’s least favorite meeting task: aligning calendars. Sharing availability windows back and forth manually takes up valuable time and adds more friction to a workday. Meeting with potential customers or clients often compounds this problem, as external participants lack visibility into one another’s calendars. Zoom Scheduler allows hosts to generate windows of availability that others can use to book appointments. With Zoom Scheduler, users will be able to grow their businesses faster and get more done so they can spend more time on what matters: preparing for the meeting or taking a break.

Get together with Zoom Scheduler

Now generally available, Zoom Scheduler places a meeting on the host’s calendar with a Zoom Meetings link already included, saving both participants time. Hosts can use their preferred calendar: Zoom Scheduler works seamlessly with Zoom Meetings and Zoom Mail and Calendar and integrates with both Google Calendar and Microsoft 365.

Features of Zoom Scheduler include:

• Ability to schedule one-on-one meetings or one-to-many group meetings and specify how many people can attend any available slot.
• Choose recurring availability or custom availability for one-off meetings.
• Generate slots of availability when any or all team members are available.
• Automate and customize email notifications.
• Collect preferred information during the attendee booking process.

Beta customers love how Zoom Scheduler saves time and consolidates meeting scheduling where it makes the most sense: in the middle of the communication platform they know and love.

“Zoom Scheduler offers an easy, no-effort integration with the rest of the Zoom platform,” said Gabe Moronta, Visla. “It has all the features, settings, and capability I need.”

Zoom Scheduler integrates with Zoom Calendar, which has become a resource for meetings both before and after. Zoom Calendar offers a sidebar view alongside the Zoom desktop client, so attendees can maximize their time by seeing if others have joined the meeting yet. After the meeting, shared files live in the Calendar invite for future reference.

Free and paid Zoom users can try out Zoom Scheduler for free anytime before July 19, 2023. On July 20, 2023, Scheduler will be available as an add-on for purchase for $5.99/month per user on Zoom’s website (add to any existing legacy Zoom plan or Zoom One plan), and will be included in the Zoom One Business Plus and Enterprise Plus plans.

About Zoom
Zoom is an all-in-one intelligent collaboration platform that makes connecting easier, more immersive, and more dynamic for businesses and individuals. Zoom technology puts people at the center, enabling meaningful connections, facilitating modern collaboration, and driving human innovation through solutions like team chat, phone, meetings, omnichannel cloud contact center, smart recordings, whiteboard, and more, in one offering. Founded in 2011, Zoom is publicly traded (NASDAQ:ZM) and headquartered in San Jose, California. Get more info at zoom.com.

Zoom Public Relations
Lacretia Taylor
[email protected]

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8862086

Curia signs license agreement with MilliporeSigma to support production of proteins and antibodies

ALBANY, N.Y., June 20, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Curia, a leading contract research, development and manufacturing organization, today announced it has signed a licensing agreement with MilliporeSigma, the North American Life Sciences Business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, that enables Curia and its clients to use the CHOZN® GS^-/- cell line for production of therapeutic proteins and antibodies. Following the agreement, the CHOZN GS^-/- cell line has been integrated into Curia’s cell line development workflow and is immediately available to Curia customers.

CHOZN® platform is a Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) mammalian cell expression system that allows for faster, simpler selection and scale-up of high-producing clones for production of biologics and therapeutic recombinant proteins. It includes high-performing CHO cell lines, paired media and feeds, optimized expression vectors and robust protocols. The glutamine synthetase GS knockout (GS-/-) cell line of the CHOZN platform is specially designed to help streamline selection, identification and scale-up of high-producing clones ideal for GMP manufacturing of recombinant protein drugs.

“We continue to strengthen our biologics development offerings from discovery through clinical manufacturing,” said Christopher Conway, President R&D, Curia. “The CHOZN GS^-/- cell line platform adds a widely accepted and commercially viable cell line to our capabilities. Our integrated offering accelerates therapeutic protein and antibody production and offers seamless tech transfer for optimal flexibility.”

Curia’s protein and antibody development experts offer a track record of accelerating progress, with a timeline in as little as 12 months from cell line development to phase I drug substance, depending on the manufacturability of the candidates.

The addition of the CHOZN platform strengthens Curia’s offerings as a complement to its existing proprietary CHO cell line, providing customers with a highly versatile and broadly applicable solution.

About Curia
Curia is a leading contract research, development, and manufacturing organization providing products and services from R&D through commercial manufacturing to pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical customers. Curia’s nearly 4,000 employees at 29 locations across the U.S., Europe, and Asia help its customers advance from curiosity to cure. Learn more at CuriaGlobal.com.

Curia Contact Information:
Viana Bhagan
+1 518 512 2111
corporatecommunications@CuriaGlobal.com

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8859845

The investment marks a significant milestone and signals a new era in the development of the future of global circular e-commerce fulfillment services.

HONG KONG, June 19, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Leading global circular supply chain solutions provider, Floship, has announced today that it has received an investment from FedEx Innovation Lab (FIL). This investment by FIL will strengthen Floship’s capabilities to extend its service offering to new markets. Floship is poised to collaborate with FedEx to build an end-to-end digitalized fulfillment and return solution that will create smart logistics for all.

This partnership will give FedEx e-commerce customers access to Floship’s global network of warehouses and powerful logistics platform’s capabilities to streamline their e-commerce fulfillment operations. At the same time, Floship’s customers will be able to leverage FedEx global networks as well as a full range of FedEx extensive transportation options to optimize their operations.

FedEx Innovation Lab makes early-stage investments in rising start-ups to bring additional value in terms of capabilities and speed to market to start-up firms through the FedEx global network, resources, and customer base.

Josh Tsui, CEO of Floship, commented on the investment, “It’s an honor for Floship to be collaborating with FedEx. This is a significant milestone in Floship’s journey to becoming the leading circular supply chain and fulfillment solution provider worldwide. It is a testament to our e-commerce clients about the future strategic direction of Floship and enhancements to our service offering,” said Tsui.

About Floship

Floship’s global circular supply chain ecosystem solutions cover all aspects of the global supply chain, ensuring minimal operation effort for e-commerce businesses, and allowing business owners to concentrate on driving growth with investment flexibility while gaining peace of mind.

Learn more at www.floship.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

For more information about Floship, please contact:

James Linacre, PR & Communications Lead

Phone: (+852) 5333 9420

Email: [email protected]

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8860144