The US is monitoring intelligence that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is in grave danger after a surgery, according to a US official with direct knowledge.
Kim recently missed the celebration of his grandfather’s birthday on April 15, which raised speculation about his well-being. He had been seen four days before that at a government meeting.
Another US official told CNN Monday that the concerns about Kim’s health are credible but the severity is hard to assess.
#Hackers are seeking to exploit the roll-out of government financial relief plans to fill their own pockets at the expense of businesses and affected workers, Israeli cyber researchers have revealed.
Hackers are exploiting the rollout of governmental financial relief to fill their pockets at the expense of businesses and affected workers, according to Israeli cyber researchers.
In recent weeks, governments have sought to ease cash-flow shortages and avoid a recession with ambitious stimulus packages and grants to households, including a massive $2 trillion economic package in the United States.
According to researchers at Israeli cybersecurity giant Check Point, a major increase in malicious and suspicious domains related to relief packages has been registered in recent weeks. The hackers aim to scam individuals into providing personal information, thereby stealing money or committing fraud.
“To do this, they are evolving the scam and phishing techniques that they have been using successfully since the start of the pandemic in January,” the researchers wrote in a recent report.
From China’s theft of intellectual property, including “one in five corporations saying China has stolen their intellectual property within the last year;” to Chinese influence and espionage in academia as exemplified by the recent criminal complaint against the Chair of the Harvard Chemistry and Biology Department; to Chinese investment in U.S. tech with “Chinese investor-backed deals with U.S. tech startups jumping as much as 185-percent” — China’s strategy has been fully exposed.
Retired Admiral William McRaven probably had it right when he said this is a “holy s— moment” for the United States.
U.S. policymakers now see China’s strategy for what it is — a not-so-subtle attempt to influence and ultimately control U.S. tech. The government of China has been engaged in a deliberate campaign to re-orient U.S. technology companies towards China.
Europe’s largest steel mill is in the city of Taranto in southern Italy. In its heyday, the ILVA steel plant produced more than 10 million tons of steel every year—about 40 percent of all the steel made in Italy—and it currently employs about 12,000 people.
This is no small deal in an area where unemployment is north of 20 percent; indeed, the local economy of Taranto, population 200,000, is almost entirely dependent on the steel mill —which is also one of the biggest and most deadly polluters of anywhere in the Mediterranean.
The plant is a notorious source of dioxin, and dust from the plant is believed to be the reason why Taranto has a lung cancer rate 30 percent higher than the national average. It’s so toxic that farmers have been forbidden from raising livestock within a 20-kilometer radius of the plant; in 2008, the government ordered the slaughter of thousands of sheep and other animals that were found to have excessively high levels of dioxin.
Talk being ahead of the curve;
Event 201 was a 3.5-hour pandemic tabletop exercise that simulated a series of dramatic, scenario-based facilitated discussions, confronting difficult, true-to-life dilemmas associated with response to a hypothetical, but scientifically plausible, pandemic. 15 global business, government, and public health leaders were players in the simulation exercise that highlighted unresolved real-world policy and economic issues that could be solved with sufficient political will, financial investment, and attention now and in the future.
The exercise consisted of pre-recorded news broadcasts, live “staff” briefings, and moderated discussions on specific topics. These issues were carefully designed in a compelling narrative that educated the participants and the audience.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, World Economic Forum, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation jointly propose these recommendations.
Of the spread of COVID-19 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and the subsequent relief of its Commanding Officer has highlighted the tension that exists between maintaining military readiness and the need to safeguard the health of members of the armed forces in the face of a pandemic.
The disease has been a feature of war for the vast majority of human history – from the plague that ravaged Athens early in the Peloponnesian War, killing the Athenian strategos Pericles; to the diseases that European settlers brought with them to the New World, devastating local populations; to the host of tropical diseases that caused appalling casualties in the China-Burma-India and Southwest Pacific theaters in World War II. The fact that we were surprised by the emergence, growth, and spread of COVID-19 reflects the false conceit of 21st century life that we have “conquered” disease.
In fact, pandemics are but one class of low-probability but high-impact contingencies that we could face in the coming years, including an earthquake or other natural disaster in a major urban area, regime change in an important state, and the collapse of financial markets leading to a global depression. When I served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning between 2006 and 2009, we explored a series of such “shocks” as well as the role the Defense Department could play in responding to them as a way of helping the Department’s leaders address such contingencies. During my time in the Pentagon, we also held a series of wargames with members of Congress and their staff, governors of several states and their cabinets, and the government of Mexico, to explore in depth the consequences of a pandemic. Much of what we found then resonates with what we are experiencing now.
Moderna Inc. said the U.S. government has agreed to pay as much as $483 million for the company to develop and test its Covid-19 vaccine now in an initial clinical trial.
Editor’s note: The story has been updated.
Japan could see some 850,000 people seriously sickened by the coronavirus and almost half of them dying if no social distancing or other measures are followed, according to an expert estimate released Wednesday.
Japan has the world’s oldest population, which is a particular concern since COVID-19 can be especially serious and fatal in the elderly. And there are concerns that Japan’s government has done too little and acted too late to stave off high numbers of seriously ill patients.
A majority of people say they would resume at least some level of normal activities if the federal government announced a coronavirus reopening, but more than a third say they would remain in quarantine, a survey from CivicScience provided first to Axios shows.
Why it matters: An economic recovery is much more dependent on people’s willingness to go out and spend money than it is on whether the government has issued a proclamation.
