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Huawei will be completely removed from the UK's 5G networks by the end of 2027, the UK government announced on Tuesday after a review by the country's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on the impact of US sanctions against the Chinese telecommunications giant.

In the lead up to this complete removal of all Huawei kit from UK networks, there will be a total ban on the purchase of any new 5G kit after December 31, 2020.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the UK's National Security Council (NSC) chaired by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in response to new US sanctions against the telecom major imposed in May which removed the firm's access to products which have been built based on US semiconductor technology.

5G will be transformative for our country, but only if we have confidence in the security and resilience of the infrastructure it is built upon, said Oliver Dowden, UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

Following US sanctions against Huawei and updated technical advice from our cyber experts, the government has decided it necessary to ban Huawei from our 5G networks. No new kit is to be added from January 2021, and UK 5G networks will be Huawei free by the end of 2027. This decisive move provides the industry with the clarity and certainty it needs to get on with delivering 5G across the UK, he said.

The minister, who laid out the details of the UK's ban on Huawei in the House of Commons, said the government will now seek to legislate with a new Telecoms Security Bill to put in place the powers necessary to implement the tough new telecoms security framework.

By the time of the next election (2024) we will have implemented in law an irreversible path for the complete removal of Huawei equipment from our 5G networks, said Dowden.

The new law will give the government the national security powers to impose these new controls on high risk vendors and create extensive security duties on network operators to drive up standards, DCMS said.

Technical experts at the NCSC reviewed the consequences of the US sanctions and concluded that Huawei will need to do a major reconfiguration of its supply chain as it will no longer have access to the technology on which it currently relies and there are no alternatives which we have sufficient confidence in.

They found the new restrictions make it impossible to continue to guarantee the security of Huawei equipment in the future.

After a ban on the purchase of new Huawei kit for 5G from next year, the aim is to completely remove the Chinese vendor's influence on 5G networks across the UK by the end of 2027.

The DCMS said Tuesday's decision takes into account the UK's specific national circumstances and how the risks from these sanctions are manifested in the country.

The existing restrictions on Huawei in sensitive and critical parts of the network remain in place, it highlighted.

The DCMS said the US action also affects Huawei products used in the UK's full fibre broadband networks. However, the UK has managed Huawei's presence in the UK's fixed access networks since 2005 and we also need to avoid a situation where broadband operators are reliant on a single supplier for their equipment.

As a result, following security advice from experts, DCMS is advising full fibre operators to transition away from purchasing new Huawei equipment. A technical consultation will determine the transition timetable, but it is expect this period to last no longer than two years.

The government said its new approach strikes the right balance by recognising full fibre's established presence and supporting the connections that the public relies on, while fully addressing the security concerns.

It stressed that its new policy in relation to high risk vendors has not been designed around one company, one country or one threat but as an enduring and flexible policy that will enable the UK to manage the risks to the network, now and in the future.

Tehran, Feb 28: The coronavirus epidemic in Iran has cost 26 lives, the health ministry announced Thursday, with a vice president becoming the latest top official to be infected as the spread appeared to accelerate.

Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour told a news conference that the tally of infections had risen to 245 with 106 more cases confirmed -- the highest number for a single day since Iran announced its first infections on February 19.

The Islamic republic has the highest death toll from the virus outside China, where COVID-19 first emerged.

Among the latest coronavirus sufferers is one of Iran's seven vice presidents, Massoumeh Ebtekar, who oversees women's affairs.

Ebtekar, a former spokeswoman for students who took 52 Americans hostage at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, is being treated at home and members of her team have been tested, state news agency IRNA reported.

Mojtaba Zolnour, head of parliament's national security and foreign affairs committee, also contracted the virus, appearing in a video posted by Fars news agency saying he was in self-quarantine.

The cleric is a deputy for the Shiite holy city of Qom in central Iran where the country's first cases were detected.

According to media reports, among the deceased in Qom on Thursday was theologian Hadi Khroroshahi, who in 1981 was named Iran's first ambassador to the Vatican.

The announcement by Zolnour comes two days after another top official, deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi, head of the government's coronavirus task force, said he too had contracted the virus.

On Wednesday, Iranian authorities announced domestic travel restrictions for people with confirmed or suspected infections.

They also placed curbs on access to major Shiite pilgrimage sites, including the Imam Reza shrine in second city Mashhad and the Fatima Masumeh shrine in Qom.

Visitors to the shrines will be allowed to visit on condition they are provided "with hand-washing liquids, proper (health) information, masks", Health Minister Saeed Namaki said.

They must "not gather together in groups but just pray and leave", he said.

In a rare move, authorities announced the cancellation of the main Friday weekly prayers in Tehran, Qom and Mashhad as well as in the capitals of 22 of Iran's 31 provinces and other infected areas.

"All of these decisions are temporary and if the situation changes, we might intensify or ease them," Namaki said.

London, Apr 30: The coronavirus is roiling global job markets, but the picture is not all gloomy. Finance, technology and consumer goods firms are hiring tens of thousands in the United States and other countries, according to data from Microsoft Corp's professional networking site LinkedIn.

Across seven countries in North America, Europe and Asia, healthcare providers are among the busiest recruiters given the ongoing battle against the novel coronavirus, which has killed over 200,000 people and infected over 3 million people worldwide, LinkedIn said. But lifestyle changes during lockdown are also driving demand for financial consultants, factory workers, animators and game designers, and delivery workers.

Overall, the hiring rate has plunged in the first quarter from the year-ago period, and in late April remains lower than a year ago across most countries surveyed by the platform. But the data offer a glimmer of hope with a gradual uptick in China, where the coronavirus emerged last year and which leads the world in surfacing from a months-long lockdown.

LinkedIn, with over 690 million users worldwide, counts new hires when people add a new employer to their profile. The rate is the number of new hires divided by the total number of LinkedIn members in a country.

The figures, tracked since mid-February, are not corroborated by official jobs data and do not represent the actual number of jobs in an economy. Government figures are usually released with a time-lag of several weeks.

"We are confident that our data is directionally correct in that there has been a huge decline in hiring in the U.S. and abroad," Guy Berger, principal economist at LinkedIn in California, told Reuters.

Hiring in China plummeted 50% during the height of its coronavirus crisis in mid-February from 12 months earlier. Since restrictions were eased in early April, the hiring rate has inched up, and for the week ending April 24 was 3% lower than the same period in 2019.

Hiring in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Italy - which lead the world in coronavirus-related deaths - remains hugely depressed, but is falling less rapidly than a few weeks ago as the countries pass the peak of their epidemics.

Retailers including Walmart Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Instacart have said they would hire a total of over 700,000 workers to meet a surge in demand for groceries and household essentials during the coronavirus outbreak.

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Consumer goods manufacturers such as Unilever, whose products include soap and shampoo, confirmed on Wednesday it was hiring to fill 300 jobs globally, but declined to elaborate.

Nestle told Reuters it was looking to fill 5,000 full-time U.S. positions in "a variety of levels across corporate and frontline."

Fidelity Investments, a Boston-based financial services firm, said it had accelerated recruitment because of the pandemic and was looking to fill at least 2,000 full-time roles for financial consultants, software engineers and customer service staff in the United States in 2020.

Companies hiring in the United States and other countries also include Apple Inc; ByteDance, the Chinese parent of video-sharing social network TikTok; Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd; and aerospace and defence company Lockheed Martin Corp. These companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

DIRE WARNINGS

The International Labour Organization warned on Wednesday that 1.6 billion workers, or nearly half of the global workforce, especially in the informal economy, could lose their livelihoods.

Record numbers of people have applied for U.S. jobless benefits since mid-March, and the unemployment rate is expected to soar to 16%, White House economic adviser Kevin Hasset said this week, from a 50-year low of 3.5% before the pandemic hit.

Both Italy and France, in lockdown for nearly two months, have seen hiring rates drop by around 70% from a year ago, according to LinkedIn.

Since China is ahead of other countries on the pandemic timeline, improvements there could suggest the same is in store elsewhere, Berger said. Several American states and European countries have begun allowing some non-essential businesses and schools to reopen in the hopes of restarting the economy and allowing a gradual return to normal life.

"It's still slightly early to call it a firm recovery," Berger said, referring to improving prospects in China. "We're not expecting a full recovery but rather it's an indication that parts of the economy will switch on as lockdowns are eased, at least relative to the worst point of the pandemic."