Month: July 2021

North Korea’s coronavirus lockdown has taken a major toll on its economy. Its leader, Kim Jong Un, has hinted at a humanitarian crisis. Some fear the situation could get much worse, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Seoul.
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A However, 64% of vaccinated Americans believe the government is accurately describing the dangers of the delta variant.Iran fighting COVID 5th wave
The variant is having a global impact. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has warned that the country is on the brink of a “fifth wave” of a COVID-19 outbreak. The delta variant of the virus, first identified in India, is largely responsible for the rising number of hospitalizations and deaths in Iran, officials say.All non-essential businesses have been ordered closed in 275 cities, including Tehran, the capital. Travel has also been restricted between cities that are experiencing high infection rates.Reports say only about 5% of Iranians have been vaccinated. Women hold their arms after receiving the Covishield vaccine against the coronavirus at a vaccination center in Mumbai, India, July 4, 2021.India may be undercounting COVID casesOn Monday, India’s health ministry reported 39,796 new COVID cases in the previous 24-hour period. Just a few weeks ago India was reporting a daily tally of a least 50,000 new cases. Public health officials have warned, however, that the country is likely undercounting its COVID cases. Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Monday that there are 183.8 million global COVID cases. The U.S. has the most with 33.7 million, followed by India with 30.6 million and Brazil with 18.8 million. Johns Hopkins said more than 3 billion vaccines have been administered.   This report includes information from the Associated Press.
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Experts say coronavirus lockdowns anywhere in the world can trigger stress, irritability, fear and fatigue. There can be a disconnection from extended family and friends, causing loneliness. Uncertainty is another corrosive factor.In Australia, mental health charities estimated that about a third of people in Melbourne suffered some sort of depression during the nation’s longest and strictest lockdown last year. Research has also found that lockdowns are making some Australian children too anxious to go to school.Life in Australia was beginning to return to normal. But recently, the highly contagious delta variant was detected in several states and territories threatening progress. Lockdowns were imposed in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Darwin — subjecting millions of Australians to stay-at-home orders.Professor Susan Rossell, a cognitive neuropsychologist at Swinburne’s Centre for Mental Health, compares mental health consequences of the coronavirus crisis to a conflict.“There are very few pandemics that have lasted this long. So, the comparison to wars, especially wars that last a very long time, is a good one,” Rossell said. “During the conflict times, so, during the pandemic time, it elevated stress and anxiety, loneliness, confusion, poorer quality of life — all the things that we are seeing at the moment.”   Mental health experts have said anxiety will “haunt” many Australians in the future as uncertainty surrounds a slow vaccination rollout and the likelihood that international borders will stay closed for another year, separating families from relatives overseas.The lockdowns in Perth, Brisbane and Darwin were lifted in recent days, but Sydney, Australia’s most populous city, remains under a stay-at-home order until at least Saturday. Authorities are racing to contain a COVID-19 outbreak linked to a limousine driver thought to have been infected with the delta variant after transporting an international flight crew at Sydney Airport.Residents in lockdown can leave their homes for work, to buy groceries, to exercise, care for a relative or to receive a coronavirus vaccine.Australia has recorded just under 31,000 COVID-19 infections since the pandemic began. 910 people have died.Only about 7% of the population of 25 million are fully vaccinated. 
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Dozens of COVID-19 patients died in Indonesia over the weekend when a hospital in Yogyakarta ran out of oxygen.
 
The Dr. Sardjito General Hospital tried switching oxygen cylinders during the outage but failed to save 63 of its COVID patients as cities across the country are facing a surge in coronavirus cases.
 
“The hospital switched to oxygen cylinders, including the 100 cylinders donated by the Yogyakarta regional police. However, all efforts were too late,” hospital director Rukmono Siswishanto said in a statement Sunday morning.
 
Siswishanto said that he had informed multiple authorities including the minister of health that the hospital was due to run out of oxygen on Saturday evening.
 
The surge of daily new cases in Indonesia has pushed hospitals to build makeshift intensive care units and dedicate new quarantine centers. At least three new cemeteries for those who had COVID-19 have been set up in the capital of Jakarta.  
In one neighborhood of Jakarta, residents in need of oxygen line up as early as 6 a.m. to fill tanks for their loved ones.Indonesians, fortunate to have their own oxygen tanks, line up at an oxygen supply station in Tebet, Jakarta, July 4, 2021, after a hospital ran out of supplemental oxygen, asking patients’ families to bring their own. (Indra Yoga/VOA-Jakarta)Over the past week, Indonesia has seen its highest number of new cases and deaths from the coronavirus. The country recorded 3,298 deaths over the past week, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
 
In India, officials have announced that thousands of residents have been given fake vaccines.  Officials say the shots were given in fake vaccine camps set up in several cities, including Mumbai and Kolkata.  Officials say six people, so far, have been arrested in connection with the fake shots.   
 
India’s health ministry said Sunday that it had recorded more than 43,000 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24-hour period.  
 
In Iran, officials are shutting down a number of businesses as the Delta variant continues to spread and vaccination rates continue to lag. Barely a third of Iran’s population has been vaccinated against the virus.
 
Meanwhile, Britain, which has fully vaccinated nearly half of its population, is expected to announce an end to mask requirements.  
 
British media reported Sunday that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans for “Freedom Day” on July 19th will scrap legal mask requirements, in addition to fully opening businesses and social interactions currently restricted.
 VOA’s Indonesian Service contributed to this story. Some information came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
 
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A car with wings recently completed a test flight in Slovakia. Its designers say the successful journey brings us one step closer to flying cars, but experts aren’t so sure that’s happening any time soon. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.Produced by:  Arash Arabasadi
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Two astronauts made the first space walk on Sunday outside China’s new orbital station to work on setting up a 15-meter-long robotic arm.Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo were shown by state TV climbing out of the airlock as Earth rolled past below them. The third crew member, commander Nie Haisheng, stayed inside.The astronauts arrived June 17 for a three-month mission aboard China’s third orbital station, part of an ambitious space program that landed a robot rover on Mars in May. Their mission comes as the ruling Communist Party celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding.The station’s first module, Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, was launched April 29. That was followed by an automated spacecraft with food and fuel. Liu, Nie and Tang arrived June 17 aboard a Shenzhou capsule.On Sunday, Liu and Tang were completing installation of a robotic arm that will be used to assemble the rest of the station, according to state media. State TV said their space suits are designed to allow them to work in the vacuum of space for up to six hours if needed.The space agency plans a total of 11 launches through the end of next year to add two more modules to the 70-ton station.Liu is a veteran of the Shenzhou 7 mission in 2008, during which Zhai Zhigang made China’s first space walk. Nie is on his third trip into space while Liu is making his first. All are military pilots.  
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Businesses around the world rushed Saturday to contain a ransomware attack that has paralyzed their computer networks, a situation complicated in the U.S. by offices lightly staffed at the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend. It’s not yet known how many organizations have been hit by demands that they pay a ransom in order to get their systems working again. But some cybersecurity researchers predict the attack targeting customers of software supplier Kaseya could be one of the broadest ransomware attacks on record.  It follows a scourge of headline-grabbing attacks over recent months that have been a source of diplomatic tension between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin over whether Russia has become a haven for cybercriminal gangs. Biden said Saturday he didn’t yet know for certain who was responsible but suggested that the U.S. would respond if Russia was found to have anything to do with it.  “If it is either with the knowledge of and or a consequence of Russia then I told Putin we will respond,” Biden said. “We’re not certain. The initial thinking was it was not the Russian government.” Cybersecurity experts say the REvil gang, a major Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, appears to be behind the attack that targeted the software company Kaseya, using its network-management package as a conduit to spread the ransomware through cloud-service providers. “The number of victims here is already over 1,000 and will likely reach into the tens of thousands,” said cybersecurity expert Dmitri Alperovitch of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank. “No other ransomware campaign comes even close in terms of impact.” The cybersecurity firm ESET says there are victims in least 17 countries, including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Kenya and Germany. In Sweden, most of the grocery chain Coop’s 800 stores were unable to open because their cash registers weren’t working, according to SVT, the country’s public broadcaster. The Swedish State Railways and a major local pharmacy chain were also affected. Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola said in a statement that the company believes it has identified the source of the vulnerability and will “release that patch as quickly as possible to get our customers back up and running.” Voccola said fewer than 40 of Kaseya’s customers were known to be affected, but experts said the ransomware could still be affecting hundreds more companies that rely on Kaseya’s clients that provide broader IT services.John Hammond of the security firm Huntress Labs said he was aware of a number of managed-services providers — companies that host IT infrastructure for multiple customers — being hit by the ransomware, which encrypts networks until the victims pay off attackers. “It’s reasonable to think this could potentially be impacting thousands of small businesses,” said Hammond, basing his estimate on the service providers reaching out to his company for assistance and comments on Reddit showing how others are responding. At least some victims appeared to be getting ransoms set at $45,000, considered a small demand but one that could quickly add up when sought from thousands of victims, said Brett Callow, a ransomware expert at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft. FILE – An “Out of Service” bag covers a gas pump as cars line up at a Circle K gas station near uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, May 11, 2021, after a ransomware attack shut the Colonial Pipeline, a major East Coast gasoline provider.Callow said it’s not uncommon for sophisticated ransomware gangs to perform an audit after stealing a victim’s financial records to see what they can really afford to pay, but that won’t be possible when there are so many victims to negotiate with. “They just pitched the demand amount at a level most companies will be willing to pay,” he said.  Voccola said the problem is only affecting its “on premise” customers, which means organizations running their own data centers. It’s not affecting its cloud-based services running software for customers, though Kaseya also shut down those servers as a precaution, he said. The company added in a statement Saturday that “customers who experienced ransomware and receive a communication from the attackers should not click on any links — they may be weaponized.” Gartner analyst Katell Thielemann said it’s clear that Kaseya quickly sprang to action, but it’s less clear whether their affected clients had the same level of preparedness. “They reacted with an abundance of caution,” she said. “But the reality of this event is it was architected for maximum impact, combining a supply chain attack with a ransomware attack.” Supply chain attacks are those that typically infiltrate widely used software and spread malware as it updates automatically. Complicating the response is that it happened at the start of a major holiday weekend in the U.S., when most corporate IT teams aren’t fully staffed. That could also leave those organizations unable to address other security vulnerabilities, such a dangerous Microsoft bug affecting software for print jobs, said James Shank, of threat intelligence firm Team Cymru. “Customers of Kaseya are in the worst possible situation,” he said. “They’re racing against time to get the updates out on other critical bugs.” The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a statement that it is closely monitoring the situation and working with the FBI to collect more information about its impact. CISA urged anyone who might be affected to “follow Kaseya’s guidance to shut down VSA servers immediately.” Kaseya runs what’s called a virtual system administrator, or VSA, that’s used to remotely manage and monitor a customer’s network. The privately held Kaseya is based in Dublin, Ireland, with a U.S. headquarters in Miami.  REvil, the group most experts have tied to the attack, was the same ransomware provider that the FBI linked to an attack on JBS SA, a major global meat processor that paid an $11 million ransom, amid the Memorial Day holiday weekend in May. Active since April 2019, the group provides ransomware as a service, meaning it develops the network-paralyzing software and leases it to so-called affiliates who infect targets and earn the lion’s share of ransoms. U.S. officials have said the most potent ransomware gangs are based in Russia and allied states and operate with Kremlin tolerance and sometimes collude with Russian security services.  Asked about the attack during a trip to Michigan on Saturday, Biden said he had asked the intelligence community for a “deep dive” on what happened. He said he expected to know more by Sunday. 
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One of Sweden’s biggest supermarket chains said Saturday it had to temporarily close around 800 stores nationwide after a cyberattack blocked access to its checkouts.”One of our subcontractors was hit by a digital attack, and that’s why our checkouts aren’t working any more,” Coop Sweden, which accounts for around 20 percent of the sector, said in a statement.”We regret the situation and will do all we can to reopen swiftly,” the cooperative added.Ransomware Hits Hundreds of US Companies, Security Firm Says The REvil gang, a major Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, appears to be behind the attackCoop Sweden did not name the subcontractor or reveal the hacking method used against it beginning on Friday evening.But the attack comes as a wave of ransomware attacks has struck worldwide, especially in the United States.Ransomware attacks typically involve locking away data in systems using encryption, making companies pay to regain access.Last year, hackers extorted at least $18 billion using such software, according to security firm Emsisoft.US IT company Kaseya on Friday urged customers to shut down servers running its VSA platform after dozens were hit with ransomware.In recent weeks, such attacks have hit oil pipelines, health services and major firms, and made it onto the agenda of US President Joe Biden’s June meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
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North Korea this week reported a mysterious “grave incident” that suggested a major lapse related to its coronavirus response.Its leader, Kim Jong Un, recently acknowledged food shortages, comparing the situation to a devastating 1990s famine.The North now acknowledges on a regular basis that it faces a worsening pandemic-related crisis, even as it continues to claim it is free of COVID-19.Just how severe a crisis is unknown because North Korea has shut itself off from the outside world in an all-encompassing 17-month coronavirus lockdown.What is increasingly clear, though, is that North Korea is dragging its feet on accepting the international vaccines that offer the best way out of its predicament.Talks stalledNorth Korea has done little to advance the process to receive vaccines from COVAX, the United Nations-backed program meant to ensure fair global vaccine distribution.Negotiations between North Korea and Gavi, a vaccine alliance that helps run COVAX, have stalled for months, with North Korea completing only two of the seven required administrative steps, according to a source familiar with the talks.“If the DPRK had been swift with the paperwork, they would have gotten some vaccines. It’s hard to say how much, but if they complied with the request from Gavi we would be well underway now,” said the source, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussion, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.In a statement, Gavi did not comment on the status of the negotiations.“Work is ongoing and discussions continue with DPRK,” a Gavi spokesperson said. “As we get closer to a potential delivery, we’ll be able to share more information on timetables.”Multiple obstaclesGavi announced in March that it planned to distribute 1.7 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to North Korea by May.Several barriers have delayed the shipment, though, including North Korean concerns about the safety and efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine, reluctance to sign a liability waiver in case of side effects, and refusal to allow international workers into the country to facilitate the shipment.Global supply shortages are also to blame. India, a major producer of the AstraZeneca vaccine, earlier this year suspended vaccine exports amid its own explosion in COVID-19 cases.North Korea appears to see the vaccine shortage as a main obstacle. In a May statement to the World Health Organization, North Korea accused countries of selfishly hoarding vaccine supplies, creating a “bottleneck” in global production.Refrigeration issuesA big hurdle is North Korea’s antiquated and uneven health care system, which limits its ability to handle many types of COVID-19 vaccines.The country does not have a consistent electricity supply, much less the network of ultra-cold refrigerators and specialized delivery trucks needed to handle vaccines such as those produced by Pfizer and Moderna, which utilize advanced mRNA technology.According to the source familiar with the talks, North Korea has not yet accepted international offers to help upgrade its cold supply chain network.That means Pyongyang may be forced to choose between the AstraZeneca vaccine, or those made in China or Russia, all of which can be stored at higher temperatures. It is not clear whether North Korea has considered the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which also does not require super cold storage.At a briefing last week, a Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson refused to say whether China has provided any vaccines to North Korea, saying only Beijing was prepared to help “should there be such a need.”China’s foreign ministry on whether it has provided any COVID-19 help to North Korea: pic.twitter.com/Re6F4K9jxP— William Gallo (@GalloVOA) June 30, 2021The Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, has also not been delivered to North Korea, according to an April report in the state-run TASS news agency, which quoted Russian Embassy officials in Pyongyang.No foreignersAnother problem is North Korea’s severe lockdown, which has prevented virtually any foreigners from entering the country.According to the source who spoke with VOA, North Korea is refusing to allow international aid workers into the country to help facilitate the shipment, ostensibly because of fears about outsiders bringing COVID-19 into the country.However, Gavi procedures require that international staff must be present, the source said. Gavi “won’t just ship it,” the source said.United Nations agencies’ employees, who might have been able to help with the vaccine shipment, have left North Korea amid worsening lockdown conditions.Will it change anytime soon?It does not seem that North Korea will retreat from its hunkered-down position anytime soon. Kim has repeatedly warned of a “prolonged” lockdown, saying his country must maintain “perfect” anti-epidemic measures.Many officials and diplomats in the region now privately concede that it may be years before North Korea reopens to many foreigners.However, some analysts speculate that North Korea may have been hinting at a different pandemic approach this week when it acknowledged a “grave incident” in its pandemic stance.Kim did not say what the lapse was, but he lambasted senior officials during a politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, even replacing several of them, presumably over the situation.The move could amount to North Korea laying the groundwork for eventually accepting international help, said Ramon Pacheco-Pardo, a Korea expert at King’s College London.“The insistence on this being an international crisis, plus now admitting that this is affecting North Korea, as well, opens the door to international cooperation,” Pacheco-Pardo said.Rachel Minyoung Lee, a Seoul-based Korea specialist at the Stimson Center, though, questioned that conclusion.“If North Korea wants to accept vaccines it can just do so,” she said. “Convening a politburo meeting to do that seems unnecessarily convoluted,” she added.Meanwhile, North Korea appears to be managing expectations at home. In a May editorial, the state-run Rodong Sinmun warned of a long battle against the virus, adding the vaccines produced overseas were “no universal panacea.”  
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Amateur or “ham” radio operators sometimes take their two-way radios to remote locations and talk to people around the world using battery power and portable antennas.  As Mike O’Sullivan reports, they are making friends and preparing for emergencies.
Camera: Mike O’Sullivan
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The German Standing Committee on Vaccination recommended this week that people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine as their first COVID shot should be inoculated with either the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine for their second shot in the battle against the delta variant of the coronavirus.The panel said the immune response to the mixed dose protocol is “clearly superior” to a double dose of the AstraZeneca shots. Medical experts began looking at the mixed-dose approach after young women reported side effects with the AstraZeneca shots.German Chancellor Angela Merkel has received mixed vaccines. While the German leader’s first vaccine was AstraZeneca, her second shot was a Moderna.The director-general of the World Health Organization warned Friday that the delta variant is “dangerous and is continuing to evolve and mutate, which requires constant evaluation and careful adjustment of the public health response.”Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “Delta has been detected in at least 98 countries and is spreading quickly in countries with low and high vaccination coverage.”He said, “Public health and social measures like strong surveillance, strategic testing, early case detection, isolation and clinical care remain critical. As well as masking, physical distance, avoiding crowded places and keeping indoor areas well ventilated are the basis for the response. And second, the world must equitably share protective gear, oxygen, tests, treatments and vaccines.”“I have urged leaders across the world to work together to ensure that by this time next year, 70% of all people in every country are vaccinated,” the WHO leader said. “This is the best way to slow the pandemic, save lives, drive a truly global economic recovery and along the way prevent further dangerous variants from getting the upper hand. By the end of this September, we’re calling on leaders to vaccinate at least 10% of people in all countries.”On Saturday, India’s health ministry reported 44,111 new COVID cases, the sixth straight day that the South Asian nation has reported fewer than 50,000 new cases. The ministry also reported 738 deaths.India has a total of 30.5 million COVID cases, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Only the U.S. has more cases, with 33.7 million.Early Saturday, Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported more than 183 million global COVID cases.   
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Indonesian police threw up roadblocks and more than 400 checkpoints on the islands of Java and Bali to ensure hundreds of millions of people stayed home on Saturday, the first day of stricter curbs on movement to limit the spread of COVID-19.As it battles one of Asia’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, the world’s fourth-most-populous nation has seen record new infections on eight of the past 12 days, with Friday bringing 25,830 cases and a high of 539 deaths.”We are setting up (patrols) in 21 locations where typically there are crowds,” Istiono, the head of national traffic police, who goes by one name, told a news conference late on Friday. “Where there are street stalls and cafes, we will close those streets, maybe from around 6 p.m. until 4 a.m.”Saturday’s more stringent curbs, from tighter travel checks to a ban on restaurant dining and outdoor sports and the closure of non-essential workplaces, will run until July 20, but could be extended, if needed, to bring daily infections below 10,000.More than 21,000 police officers as well as military will fan out across Indonesia’s most populous island of Java and the tourist resort island of Bali to ensure compliance with the new curbs, a police spokesperson said.At the roadblocks and checkpoints on the islands, police will conduct random tests and enforce curfews. Vaccinated travelers with a negative swab test will be permitted to make long-distance journeys, however.The highly infectious delta variant first identified in India, where it caused a spike in infections, is spreading in Indonesia and pushing hospitals across Java to the brink.Indonesia is set to receive vaccines donated by foreign countries to help speed its vaccination drive, which has covered just 7.6% of a target of 181.5 million people by January.Until now, it has relied mainly on a vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech.Indonesia’s tally of infections stands at 2.2 million, with a death toll of more than 59,500.
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A ransomware attack paralyzed the networks of at least 200 U.S. companies Friday, according to a cybersecurity researcher whose company was responding to the incident.  The REvil gang, a major Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, appears to be behind the attack, said John Hammond of the security firm Huntress Labs. He said the criminals targeted a software supplier called Kaseya, using its network-management package as a conduit to spread the ransomware through cloud-service providers. Other researchers agreed with Hammond’s assessment. “Kaseya handles large enterprise all the way to small businesses globally, so ultimately, [this] has the potential to spread to any size or scale business,” Hammond said in a direct message on Twitter. “This is a colossal and devastating supply chain attack.”  Such cyberattacks typically infiltrate widely used software and spread malware as it updates automatically. It was not immediately clear how many Kaseya customers might be affected or who they might be. Kaseya urged customers in a statement on its website to immediately shut down servers running the affected software. It said the attack was limited to a “small number” of its customers.’SolarWinds with ransomware’Brett Callow, a ransomware expert at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, said he was unaware of any previous ransomware supply-chain attack on this scale. There have been others, but they were fairly minor, he said. “This is SolarWinds with ransomware,” he said. He was referring to a Russian cyberespionage hacking campaign discovered in December that spread by infecting network management software to infiltrate U.S. federal agencies and scores of corporations. Cybersecurity researcher Jake Williams, president of Rendition Infosec, said he was already working with six companies hit by the ransomware. It’s no accident that this happened before the Fourth of July weekend, when IT staffing is generally thin, he added. “There’s zero doubt in my mind that the timing here was intentional,” he said. Hammond of Huntress said he was aware of four managed-services providers — companies that host IT infrastructure for multiple customers — being hit by the ransomware, which encrypts networks until the victims pay off attackers. He said thousands of computers were hit. “We currently have three Huntress partners who are impacted with roughly 200 businesses that have been encrypted,” Hammond said. JBS attackHammond wrote on Twitter: “Based on everything we are seeing right now, we strongly believe this [is] REvil/Sodinikibi.” The FBI linked the same ransomware provider to a May attack on JBS SA, a major global meat processor. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a statement late Friday that it was closely monitoring the situation and working with the FBI to collect more information about its impact. CISA urged anyone who might be affected to “follow Kaseya’s guidance to shut down VSA servers immediately.” Kaseya runs what’s called a virtual system administrator, or VSA, that’s used to remotely manage and monitor a customer’s network. The privately held Kaseya says it is based in Dublin, Ireland, with a U.S. headquarters in Miami. The Miami Herald recently described it as “one of Miami’s oldest tech companies” in a report about its plans to hire as many as 500 workers by 2022 to staff a recently acquired cybersecurity platform. Brian Honan, an Irish cybersecurity consultant, said by email Friday that “this is a classic supply chain attack where the criminals have compromised a trusted supplier of companies and have abused that trust to attack their customers.” He said it can be difficult for smaller businesses to defend against this type of attack because they “rely on the security of their suppliers and the software those suppliers are using.” Recovery might be easierThe only good news, said Williams, of Rendition Infosec, is that “a lot of our customers don’t have Kaseya on every machine in their network,” making it harder for attackers to move across an organization’s computer systems. That makes for an easier recovery, he said. Active since April 2019, the group known as REvil provides “ransomware as a service,” meaning it develops the network-paralyzing software and leases it to so-called affiliates who infect targets and earn the lion’s share of ransoms.  REvil is among ransomware gangs that steal data from targets before activating the ransomware, strengthening their extortion efforts. The average ransom payment to the group was about $500,000 last year, said the Palo Alto Networks cybersecurity firm in a recent report. Some cybersecurity experts predicted that it might be hard for the gang to handle the ransom negotiations, given the large number of victims — though the long U.S. holiday weekend might give it more time to start working through the list. 
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As the World Health Organization draws up plans for the next phase of its probe of how the coronavirus pandemic started, an increasing number of scientists say the U.N. agency it isn’t up to the task and shouldn’t be the one to investigate.Numerous experts, some with strong ties to WHO, say that political tensions between the U.S. and China make it impossible for an investigation by the agency to find credible answers.They say what’s needed is a broad, independent analysis closer to what happened in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.The first part of a joint WHO-China study of how COVID-19 started concluded in March that the virus probably jumped to humans from animals and that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely.” The next phase might try to examine the first human cases in more detail or pinpoint the animals responsible — possibly bats, perhaps by way of some intermediate creature.But the idea that the pandemic somehow started in a laboratory — and perhaps involved an engineered virus — has gained traction recently, with President Joe Biden ordering a review of U.S. intelligence within 90 days to assess the possibility.Earlier this month, WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Michael Ryan, said that the agency was working out the final details of the next phase of its probe and that because WHO works “by persuasion,” it lacks the power to compel China to cooperate.Some said that is precisely why a WHO-led examination is doomed to fail.“We will never find the origins relying on the World Health Organization,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights at Georgetown University. “For a year and a half, they have been stonewalled by China, and it’s very clear they won’t get to the bottom of it.”Women wait to receive the vaccine for COVID-19 in New Delhi, India, July 2, 2021.Gostin said the U.S. and other countries can either try to piece together what intelligence they have, revise international health laws to give WHO the powers it needs, or create some new entity to investigate.The first phase of WHO’s mission required getting China’s approval not only for the experts who traveled there but for their entire agenda and the report they ultimately produced.Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, called it a “farce” and said that determining whether the virus jumped from animals or escaped from a lab is more than a scientific question and has political dimensions beyond WHO’s expertise.The closest genetic relative to COVID-19 was previously discovered in a 2012 outbreak, after six miners fell sick with pneumonia after being exposed to infected bats in China’s Mojiang mine. In the past year, however, Chinese authorities sealed off the mine and confiscated samples from scientists while ordering locals not to talk to visiting journalists.Although China initially pushed hard to look for the coronavirus’s origins, it pulled back abruptly in early 2020 as the virus overtook the globe. An Associated Press investigation last December found Beijing imposed restrictions on the publication of COVID-19 research, including mandatory review by central government officials.Jamie Metzl, who sits on a WHO advisory group, has suggested along with colleagues the possibility of an alternative investigation set up by the Group of Seven industrialized nations.Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, said the U.S. must be willing to subject its own scientists to a rigorous examination and recognize that they might be just as culpable as China.“The U.S. was deeply involved in research at the laboratories in Wuhan,” Sachs said, referring to U.S. funding of controversial experiments and the search for animal viruses capable of triggering outbreaks.“The idea that China was behaving badly is already the wrong premise for this investigation to start,” he said. “If lab work was somehow responsible (for the pandemic), the likelihood that it was both the U.S. and China working together on a scientific initiative is very high.”  
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COVAX, the World Health Organization initiative for the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, is urging countries to recognize as fully vaccinated all people who have received COVID-19 vaccines that COVAX has recognized as safe and effective.“Any measure that only allows people protected by a subset of WHO-approved vaccines to benefit from the re-opening of travel,” COVAX said, would only serve to further widen “the global vaccine divide.”  Such a move would also intensify “the inequities we have already seen in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines,” the COVAX statement said.India said Friday it has sent teams to six states to contain high COVID infection rates.  The states receiving the teams are Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Manipur.India’s health ministry said Friday it had recorded 46,617 new cases and 853 deaths in the previous 24-hour period.On Thursday, Washington announced it is dispatching “surge response” teams to U.S. areas hard hit by the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, recently said the variant first identified in India poses the “greatest threat” to bringing an end to the COVID outbreak in the U.S.Also Thursday, Johnson & Johnson announced that “its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine generated strong, persistent activity against the rapidly spreading delta variant and other highly prevalent SARS-CoV-2 viral variants. In addition, the data showed that the durability of the immune response lasted through at least eight months, the length of time evaluated to date.”The World Health Organization’s African region is facing a serious third wave of COVID-19 cases, driven by variants throughout the continent.In a virtual briefing with reporters Thursday, WHO Africa Regional Director Matshidiso Moeti said new cases have increased in Africa by an average of 25% for six straight weeks to almost 202,000 in the week ending June 27, with deaths rising by 15% across 38 African countries to nearly 3,000 in the same period.“The speed and scale of Africa’s third wave is like nothing we’ve seen before,” Moeti said. “The rampant spread of more contagious variants pushes the threat to Africa up to a whole new level.”Meanwhile, WHO European Regional Director Hans Kluge said Thursday that region’s streak of 10 straight weeks of declining COVID-19 cases has come to end. During his weekly briefing in Copenhagen, he said cases in the region’s 53 countries increased 10% last week.Kluge attributed the rise to “increased mixing, travel, gatherings and easing of social restrictions,” which he said is taking place amid “a rapidly evolving situation” – the emergence of the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, a situation aggravated by the region’s slow rate of vaccinations.Women stand in a line to get tested for COVID-19 in New Delhi, India, July 2, 2021.Elsewhere in Europe, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer called the decision by the organizers of the Euro Cup 2020 soccer championships “utterly irresponsible” for holding their tournament during a pandemic.Seehofer said the decision by the Union of European Football Associations to hold games in stadiums around Europe with largely unmasked crowds of up to 60,000 people was clearly more about commerce than protection. He said that while some localities put restrictions on the crowds, the organization should have made those decisions itself.Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced Thursday that new emergency measures will go into effect Saturday for the islands of Java and Bali to blunt the rise of new cases in the world’s fourth most-populous country.The measures, which include tighter restrictions on movement and air travel, a ban on restaurant dining and the closure of nonessential offices, will last through July 20, a period that includes the Muslim holiday of Eid.Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said Friday that it has recorded 129.6 million global COVID cases and nearly 4 million deaths.The United States has remains the world leader in COVID cases with 33.7 million cases, followed by India with 30.4 million and Brazil with 18.6 million.Johns Hopkins says more than 3 billion vaccines have been administered. 
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