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tv   Asia Business Report  BBC News  July 5, 2023 2:30am-2:45am BST

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the owner of facebook gears up to launch its rival platform to twitter as the social media giant battles its latest controversy. plus, china sees its car exports jump in the first five months of this year and it's partly because of the war in ukraine. happy mid week. welcome to asia business report with me, marika oi. it's been described as twitter�*s biggest threat yet. meta's new app is called threads and it'll be launched on thursday but it is already available for preorder on apple's app store. screen grabs show a dashboard that looks very, very similar to that of twitter�*s.
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meta, which owns facebook, says threads will be part of its instagram platform so it'll be connected to hundreds of millions of accounts to begin with. but the app has already been criticised for the amount of data it may collect. ray wang is a principal analyst constellation research and explained why threads could be a serious threat to twitter. it's a massive threat if you think about twitter, it only has one of 150 million active users. if you see what's going on with facebook and instagram, we are talking 2.96 billion users, so let's look at this in simple terms. 50 million is the number we used to say mass adoption of technology has occurred, chatgpt did it in 30 days, facebook live in 2a hours. mark zuckerberg can get the 50 million users in probably less than hours and probably get 150 million users in less than two months. that means it's a direct threat to twitter. at the same time some users
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aren't happy with recent restrictions like the number of tweets you can look at. why is elon musk doing this? part of the challenge is twitter is the last publicly available data set out there and that means you don't normally have the login to access twitter. that ended about 48 hours ago and that meant everybody was scraping twitter data to find social feeds to get things that could train artificial intelligence and machine language models and that he wanted to put an end to. there were two things going on. one, really about keeping ai out of its public domain, the second was different. there is an internal problem with the software creating a cursive loop which means something is impacting the performance of the software that they had to limit the number of users. both happened at the same time from what our sources say and why there were some limits going on but that's led to people to go to bluesky and a lot of interested folks going to this new facebook product, threads. part of the reason for that is
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it's got similar architecture as mastodon, being used to power things like twitter and other social networks. i spoke to you just after linda took over as the boss of twitter and you're optimistic about leadership. to these latest moves show that there might be some internal tensions between the two? flat might be some internal tensions between the two?— between the two? not really. it looks like on — between the two? not really. it looks like on the _ between the two? not really. it looks like on the surface - between the two? not really. it looks like on the surface that i looks like on the surface that there might be tensioned but these are things that have to be done to keep twitter in the forefront because they don't want the information publicly available and used the same time windows working on advertising and capabilities at willard to bring advertisers back, getting twitter to be a much more safe community and figuring out where where they sit on the web between free—speech and advertising. those things are still happening but i'd say that threads is the biggest threat to twitter. threads is the biggest threat to twitter-— to twitter. how will it bring back those _ to twitter. how will it bring back those advertisers? - to twitter. how will it bring | back those advertisers? we to twitter. how will it bring - back those advertisers? we saw the numberfourjust
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back those advertisers? we saw the number fourjust after back those advertisers? we saw the number four just after the elon musk took over. are the number fourjust after the elon musk took over. are they cominu elon musk took over. are they coming back? _ elon musk took over. are they coming back? there _ elon musk took over. are they coming back? there is - elon musk took over. are they coming back? there is a - elon musk took over. are they coming back? there is a longl coming back? there is a long road ahead advertisers to come back. part of it is getting more users on board and with threads popping up, let's say it gets 250 million users in less than 60 days, people want to advertise directly on facebook and instagram, these corporations would prefer that over twitter and that will be the challenge linda faces. ray wang speaking to me a little earlier. as you heard, ray and i talked about twitter�*s new temporary tweet cap and the company's new chief executive, linda yaccarino, defended the move, tweeting that with a mission like twitter you need to make big moves to keep strengthening the platform. twitter said only a small percentage of its users have been affected by this new limit, with minimal impact on advertising. now to the uk with the largest water supply has been fined just over $4 million for polluting rivers. it was after
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it discharged millions of litres of sewage back in 2017, killing over 1,000 fish. the fine heaps more pressure on the company as it struggles with that over $70 billion. jonah fisher has the story. a stretch of river near gatwick airport once popular with local handlers full of dead fish. this was the aftermath of the sewage spill in october 2017. investigators counted more than 1400, the realfigure is likely to have been much higher. the fish died when raw sewage was pumped out of this water treatment facility. it was a mistake but the environmental agency with cattle walked over as they had made before and after the spell. warning signs were ignored, infrastructure inadequate. and in the days after the incident, britton�*s
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biggest water company deliberately misled investigators.- deliberately misled investi . ators. , . , investigators. they taught us several times _ investigators. they taught us several times nothing - investigators. they taught us - several times nothing happened, and when they did accept responsibility they then submitted a formal challenge asking us to remove the incident from our records. having been fined £35 million, thames water says it's now cleaned up its act.— cleaned up its act. this incident _ cleaned up its act. this incident happened - cleaned up its act. this incident happened six i cleaned up its act. this - incident happened six years ago. that was then, this is now. we've had a new chief executive who came in and has spent three years devising a turnaround plan.— turnaround plan. that chief executive _ turnaround plan. that chief executive left _ turnaround plan. that chief executive left last - turnaround plan. that chief executive left last week - turnaround plan. that chief executive left last week as | turnaround plan. that chief. executive left last week as the extent of thames water's problems became clear. the new one and a statement apologised for what she said were the arrows and poorjudgement that led to the misleading the environment agency. the fine of £35 million is a tiny when compared to the £14 billion of
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debt that thames water has a cumulated since privatisation. servicing the debt remains a huge headache at the date out of the water regulator said too much money had been borrowed and efforts are still continuing to try to find the money to shore up the finances of britton�*s biggest water company. jonah fisher, bbc news, reading. let's turn to china because it has overtaken japan as the world's biggest car exporter. their numbers surged 80%, year—on—year in the first five months of 2023 thanks to a jump in sales to russia following its invasion of ukraine. combustion engines still represent the majority of these exports but there is also growing global momentum behind china's electric cars. earlier i spoke to bill russo of consulting company automobility. he explained if thejump in
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sales to russia surprised him. that's a major good guide for this year in terms of the tailwind for china but it has been on the rise for the last three years. since 2020 chinese exports have more than tripled, quadrupled if you look at the full year this year. a lot of what's driving it is frankly the slowdown in demand in china which creates a whole lot of excess capacity in china for producing cars which the pressure then is relieved by exporting to other countries. you talked about weakening domestic demand and we've been getting quite a lot of weak economic data from china. how worried are you that especially things like high unemployment rate among youth could affect car sales going forward? that's certainly a drag on demand. last year we had supply chain restrictions which constrained the growth in the market, but frankly since 2017 the market for automobiles has
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not been a growth market, it peaked that year at 28.9 million, last year was 26.9 million so the demand has gone down and in particular the shift to electrification has caused the gasoline—powered vehicles to decline significantly. are geared up to sell those vehicles and if you can't sell them in china, the outlook for other markets. you mentioned the shift to electric cars so does that mean the majority of those cars exported are still combustion engines? more than three quarters. i think the world is waiting for the affordable chinese evs to arrive but before that happens you'll get a lot of affordable gasoline powered vehicles. seven of the top ten chinese exporters are state owned, not ev disruptors. byd, arguably the most
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powerful ev company in the world, even in the top ten list this just year, nine so far this year, so they haven't prioritised exports yet because they've had enough domestic demand. that's likely to change as the market saturates. companies will look for other places to sell. the maker of quantitative ice—cream and dove soap has defended its decision to continue operating in russia more than a year after invaded ukraine. unileversaid more than a year after invaded ukraine. unilever said was quote not straightforward because the operation would have been taken over by russia if it left. this is after campaign group called the moral rating agency estimated the company contributed some $730 million to the country's economy each year. alec japan's market. flights are lowered. profit—taking is going on. that's it for asia business report. join us tomorrow if you can. for now, thanks for
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watching. voice-over: bbc news, v0|ce—0ver: bbc news, bringing you different stories from across the uk. i actually thought at the time i must be dying or something, because i couldn't breathe, i had lights in my eyes, i thought i was going to pass out. i was brought up to the doctors and i was like, "i need "some help, i don't know what is going on." andrew had no idea he was suffering from anxiety and panic attacks while working hard running his construction company. i had ignored it for so long, so that's where i ignored it for about a year because i didn't know that i needed it, i didn't think i needed any help. the gp dealt with the physical symptoms but andrew was finally able to talk when he met kerry from the charity mind, who he is now working with to encourage his staff to be more open about their mental health. gareth twohey has worked in the construction industry for decades and says there is what he calls a lads culture, where men don't feel comfortable talking about their mental health.
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we want to build infrastructure, we want to build the building, get thejob done, work in the rain and snow, tough it out and suck it up. and there is a stigma in the industry that admitting mental health problem might affect theirjob. momentum is building towards a change in the industry that many feel has been quiet on mental health for too long. v0|ce—0ver: for more stories from across the uk, head to the bbc news website. hey, i am zoff with the catch up. tonight, a rival to twitter, rental nightmares, and a trip down memory lane. we start with another new social media app, if you have any space left on your phone. this is threads, due to go live on thursday, described as a textbased conversation app. these screenshots show a dashboard that looks a bit similar to another huge
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social giant, twitter. threads is owned by meta, which you might know as the company behind facebook and instagram. meta says the app will be linked to instagram appears will be free. it follows another dramatic week for twitter after billionaire owner elon musk announced a cap on how many people could see each day. popular user dashboard tweetdeck will also go behind a pay wall in 30 days' time. if you are a renter you probably know how tough things are now, from rent increases to difficulty finding a place. the bbc has found that thousands of rental ads say children and pets aren't welcome. it's not illegal but it can make things harder for certain groups. 0ne homelessness charity, shelter, says 1—in—5 families are barred because of their children. this includes many single parents. mps are considering more protections for renters in england. they'll be part of a bill
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that is currently in the house of commons called the renters (reform) bill. for ten seconds of a pretty sight in the sky, it is called a full buck supermoon and looks a bit bigger and brighter than normal because it is closer to earth than usual. 21,000 kilometres, that is, in fact. you are all caught up now. see you later.

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