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Business

Ransomware Disrupts Meat Vegetation in Newest Assault on Crucial U.S. Enterprise

Ransomware Disrupts Meat Plants in Latest Attack on Critical U.S. Business

A cyberattack on the world’s largest meat processor forced the closure of nine beef factories in the United States and interrupted production in poultry and pork factories, according to union officials on Tuesday. The attack could shake the country’s meat markets and raise new questions about the vulnerability of critical American companies.

JBS said most of its plants would reopen on Wednesday. But even a one-day disruption to JBS could “significantly affect” wholesale beef prices, according to analysts for the Daily Livestock Report.

The attack at JBS was a ransomware attack, the White House said – the second recent attack of its kind to freeze a critical US business. Last month, a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which carries gas to nearly half of the east coast, sparked gas and kerosene bottlenecks and panic buying.

JBS, which is based in Brazil and accounts for one-fifth of the US daily cattle harvest, said in a statement late Tuesday that it has made “significant strides in solving the cyberattack.”

“Our systems are coming back online and we are not sparing resources to combat this threat,” said Andre Nogueira, CEO of JBS USA, in the statement.

The Department of Agriculture announced Tuesday that it is working with other producers to minimize bottlenecks.

All nine JBS beef factories in the United States closed on Tuesday, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents workers at JBS beef and pork factories. The company’s poultry and pork factories in the US posted on Facebook that they had canceled shifts scheduled for Monday or Tuesday or changed production, some citing “IT problems”.

In addition to the company’s U.S. plants, the shutdowns affected 2,500 workers at a beef factory in Brooks, Alberta, according to Scott Payne, a spokesman for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 in Canada. “All shifts were canceled yesterday,” he said on Tuesday. “The morning shift was canceled today. But the afternoon shift has been postponed to today. “

When the plants went online, at least one beef factory delayed the start of production on Wednesday and another changed one of its shifts, according to the factories.

With restaurants and retail customers starting to buy beef in the summer, the wholesale market was “extremely tight,” the analysts for the Daily Livestock Report wrote in a report released on Tuesday. They discovered that a small restaurant in southern Utah had started charging an additional $ 4 for dishes that included carne asada.

“Retailers and beef processors are coming back from a long weekend and need to catch up on orders and make sure the meat crate is full,” the analysts wrote. “If you suddenly get a call that the product may not be delivered tomorrow or this week, it will create very big challenges when it comes to keeping the equipment up and running and keeping the retail case in stock.”

In business today

Updated

June 1, 2021, 12:59 p.m. ET

A prolonged hiatus, the analysts warned, “could add gasoline to an already large flame”.

JBS said it was the target of an “organized cybersecurity attack” that affected systems in North America and Australia, that its backup servers were unaffected, and that it did not expect customer, supplier or employee information to be leaked.

Karine Jean-Pierre, a White House deputy press secretary, told reporters at Air Force One Tuesday that JBS had told the Biden government that it was a ransomware attack and that the ransom was from “a criminal organization based in Russia “came.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the hack, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was also involved, Ms. Jean-Pierre said.

“The White House is working directly with the Russian government on this matter, sending the message that responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals,” she said.

In two weeks’ time, President Biden is due to meet Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Geneva for a summit that puts a multitude of cyberattacks, many of which originate from Russia, at the top of the American agenda.

A recent security breach used SolarWinds software to infiltrate more than 250 federal agencies and companies. It was considered the worst attack because it raised the question of whether the United States could trust its software supply chain. SolarWinds, according to the United States, is the work of the SVR, one of the leading Russian intelligence agencies.

Last week, the SVR was blamed for a breach that hijacked the company that distributes emails on behalf of the US Agency for International Development and sent links containing malware to organizations criticizing Putin.

But ransomware attacks have become more urgent after hackers hit the Colonial Pipeline last month. The pipeline operator shut down its systems after the attack, which led to price rises, panic buying and a shortage of jet fuel. The company later admitted it paid $ 4.4 million to restore its data.

The attack on the Colonial Pipeline was the work of a ransomware operator called DarkSide, which Biden said was based in Russia.

The perpetrator behind the JBS attack has not been publicly identified. Cybersecurity specialists said Tuesday blogs and online channels frequented by large ransomware groups have gone silent – most likely because the group in charge was waiting to see if JBS would pay.

The US government does not know how to deal with the attacks, as many of the responsible groups operate from Russia, where they largely enjoy a safe haven. Russia has refused to extradite its hackers and frequently attacks them for sensitive intelligence operations.

Mr Biden said after the attack on the Colonial Pipeline that Russia was partly responsible, although there was no evidence that the government was involved.

“We were in direct communication with Moscow to get responsible countries to take decisive action against these ransomware networks,” said Biden. “We will also take action to disrupt their operability.”

He did not rule out the possibility of the US launching a cyber attack against the criminals responsible for the pipeline attack. Following Mr Biden’s remarks, DarkSide criminals said they would close, despite cybersecurity experts warning that they would likely be renamed and reappear.

David E. Sanger and William P. Davis contributed to the coverage.

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Politics

Concentrating on ‘Important Race Concept,’ Republicans Rattle American Faculties

Targeting 'Critical Race Theory,' Republicans Rattle American Schools

Still, he acknowledged that Republicans had “figured out how to message this.”

The messaging goes back to Mr. Trump, who, in the final weeks of the 2020 campaign, announced the formation of the 1776 Commission, set up explicitly to link what he said was “left-wing indoctrination” in schools to the sometimes violent protests over police killings.

A report by the commission was derided by mainstream historians; Mr. Biden canceled the project on his first day in office, but its impact endures on the right.

Media Matters for America, a liberal group, documented a surge of negative coverage of critical race theory by Fox News beginning in mid-2020 and spiking in April, with 235 mentions. And the Pew Research Center found last year that Americans were deeply divided over their perceptions of racial discrimination. Over 60 percent of conservatives said it was a bigger problem that people see discrimination where it does not exist, rather than ignoring discrimination that really does exist. Only 9 percent of liberals agreed.

Some Democratic strategists said the issue was a political liability for their party. Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, recently wrote, “The steady march of ‘anti-racist’ ideology” into school curriculums “will generate a backlash among normie parents.”

In an interview, he criticized leading Democrats for not calling out critical race theory because of their fear that “it will bring down the wrath of the woker elements of the party.”

In Loudoun County, Va., dueling parent groups are squaring off, one that calls itself “anti-racist” and the other opposed to what it sees as the creep of critical race theory in the school district, which enrolls 81,000 students from a rapidly diversifying region outside Washington.

After a 2019 report found a racial achievement gap, disproportionate discipline meted out to Black and Hispanic students, and the common use of racial slurs in schools, administrators adopted a “plan to combat systemic racism.” It calls for mandatory teacher training in “systemic oppression and implicit bias.”

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World News

Planet set to hit crucial temperature restrict quickly

Planet set to hit critical temperature limit soon

A family walks across dry cracked earth that used to be the bottom of Lake Mendocino on April 22, 2021 in Ukiah, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

The likelihood of the planet reaching a key temperature limit within the next five years has doubled, according to a study by climate scientists, with the world on track to witness the hottest year on record in that same time frame.

“There is about a 40% chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5° Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial level in at least one of the next five years — and these odds are increasing with time,” the World Meteorological Organization said on Thursday. The WMO, a specialized agency of the United Nations, said this had doubled from 20% in the last decade.

That 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level is the lower target of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. The climate accord is widely recognized as critically important to avoid an irreversible climate crisis.

In 2020 — one of the three hottest years on record — the global average temperature was 1.2 °C above the pre-industrial baseline, the WMO reported in April. The Paris Agreement aims to keep the rise in global temperature significantly below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels this century.

“There is a 90% likelihood of at least one year between 2021-2025 becoming the warmest on record,” the WMO said in its press release.

Between now and 2025, high latitude regions like Europe, the northern U.S. and Canada, and Russia, as well as the Sahel in Africa, are likely to become wetter and the Atlantic is expected to see more tropical cyclones compared to the recent past, which the WMO defines as the 1981-2010 average. 

“These are more than just statistics,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. 

“Increasing temperatures mean more melting ice, higher sea levels, more heatwaves and other extreme weather, and greater impacts on food security, health, the environment and sustainable development,” he said.

Still, the WMO says that it is “very unlikely,” with just a 10% probability, that the five-year mean annual temperature of the planet will be 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels for the entire 2021-2025 period. The 90% likelihood refers to that temperature rise in any one of the next five years.  

Speaking about the report, senior Met Office scientist Leon Hermanson told BBC News on Thursday: “We’re approaching 1.5 C – we’re not there yet but we’re getting close. Time is running out for the strong action which we need now.”

Worse extreme disaster events

Governments around the world have launched ambitious targets to cut carbon emissions and major energy companies are now beginning to feel the impact of the climate movement as some heavyweight investors pressure firms to decrease their fossil fuel use.

But substantially lowering emissions will be an extremely challenging endeavor, scientists warn. The WMO notes that the Paris Accords’ “nationally determined contributions,” or states’ commitments to emissions reductions, “currently fall far short of what is needed to achieve this target.”

And energy demand is expected to rise dramatically in the coming years as the world’s population continues to grow, with most of that need still set to be met by fossil fuels, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The COP26 Summit scheduled for November of this year in Glasgow, Scotland is being described by many in the scientific and policymaking community as a crucial “make or break” moment for governments to stem what many warn will be a climate disaster as sea levels and global temperatures rise. 

In the U.S. alone, intensifying rainfall fueled by climate change has caused nearly $75 billion in flood damage in the past thirty years, Stanford University researchers found in a study published in January. Those researchers warned that passing warming levels outlined in the global Paris Climate Accord will worsen extreme disaster events.

And developing nations are most exposed to climate risk — especially those in coastal areas and those highly dependent on predictable weather patterns for agricultural production.

Morgan Stanley in 2019 reported that climate-related disasters have cost the world $650 billion over the last three years, with North America shouldering most of the burden.

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Business

As Covid Outbreak Rages, India Orders Essential Social Media Posts to Be Taken Down

As Covid Outbreak Rages, India Orders Critical Social Media Posts to Be Taken Down

NEW DELHI – With a devastating second wave of Covid-19 across India and lifesaving oxygen starvation, the Indian government on Sunday ordered Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to remove dozens of social media posts critical of how the pandemic was dealt with are .

The order addressed itself in around 100 places that contained criticism from opposition politicians and called for the resignation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The government said the posts could cause panic, use images out of context and hinder their response to the pandemic.

For the time being, the companies have complied by making the posts invisible to those using the websites in India. In the past, companies have republished some content after determining that it wasn’t breaking the law.

The shutdown orders come as India’s public health crisis turns into a political spiral, setting the stage for an increasing battle between American social media platforms and Mr Modi’s government over who decides what can be said online.

On Sunday, the country reported more than 349,691 new infections and 2,767 deaths. This was the fourth day in a row that it set a world record in daily infection statistics, though experts warn that the real numbers are likely much higher. The country now accounts for almost half of all new cases worldwide. His health system seems to be fluctuating. Hospitals across the country have been working hard to get enough oxygen for patients.

In New Delhi, the capital, hospitals turned away patients this weekend after running out of oxygen and beds. Last week at least 22 patients were killed in a Nashik city hospital after a leak cut their oxygen supply.

Online photos of corpses on plywood hospital beds and the countless fires of overhauled crematoria have gone viral. Desperate patients and their families have sought help from the government online, appalling an international audience.

On Sunday evening, in one of many solicitations for help on social media, Ajay Koli took to Twitter to find an oxygen bottle for his mother in Delhi, who he said had tested positive 10 days ago. Mr Koli said he lost his father on Saturday. “I don’t want to lose my mother now.”

Mr Modi has been attacked for ignoring expert advice on the risks of easing restrictions after holding large political rallies without regard to social distancing. Some of the content now offline in India has highlighted this contradiction by using garish images to contrast Mr. Modi’s rallies with the flames of the pyre.

In a radio address on Sunday, Mr. Modi tried to contain the fallout. He said the “storm” of infections “rocked” the country.

Updated

April 25, 2021, 1:06 p.m. ET

“To win this fight, we must prioritize experts and scientific advice,” he said.

One of the out of view tweets was posted by Moloy Ghatak, a labor minister in the opposition-ruled state of West Bengal, where Mr Modi’s party hopes to make big wins in the current election. Mr. Ghatak accused Mr. Modi of “mismanagement” and held him directly responsible for the deaths. His tweet included pictures of Mr Modi and his election campaigns alongside those of the cremations and compared him to Nero, the Roman emperor for choosing to hold political meetings and export vaccines during a “health crisis”.

Another tweet from Revanth Reddy, a seated MP, used a hashtag blaming Mr. Modi for the “disaster”. “India records over 2 lakh cases daily,” it says using an Indian numbering unit which means 200,000 cases. “Shortages of vaccines, shortages of drugs, increasing numbers of deaths.”

The new steps towards the confluence of the online language deepen a conflict between American social media platforms and the government of Mr. Modi. The two sides have argued over the past few months over an urge by the Indian government to monitor what is being said online more closely. A policy that, according to critics, serves to silence critics of the government.

“This is a trend that is increasingly being enforced for online media rooms,” said Apar Gupta, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights group. He added that the orders were used to “cause censorship” under the guise of making social media companies “more accountable”.

The battle for control of the gruesome images and online anger over a raging public health disaster is only one front in a wider conflict that is unfolding around the world. Governments around the world have tried to contain the power of the biggest tech companies like Twitter and Facebook, whose policies far from their California headquarters have huge political implications. At best, it can be difficult to untangle government efforts to deter misinformation from other motivations, such as tilting the online debate in favor of a political party.

While corporations attempt to adhere to guidelines that they say are based on the principles of free speech, their responses to government power games have been inconsistent and have often been based on business pragmatism. In Myanmar, Facebook cut ties with military-linked accounts because of violence against demonstrators. In China, Facebook is doing brisk business with government-sponsored media groups that have been busy denying the widespread internment of ethnic minorities that the US has labeled genocide.

In India, businesses are faced with a tough choice: obey laws and risk repressing political debates, or ignore them and face harsh sentences, including jail sentences for local employees, in a potentially huge growth market.

Disputes over online language in India are becoming more common. The Indian government, controlled by Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, has become increasingly aggressive in suppressing dissent. She has arrested activists and journalists and pressured media organizations to stick to her line. It cut off mobile internet access in crisis areas. A number of apps from Chinese companies were blocked following a stalemate with China.

In February, Twitter relented to government threats to arrest its employees and suspended 500 accounts after the government accused them of making inflammatory remarks about Mr. Modi. However, Twitter declined to remove a number of journalists ‘and politicians’ accounts, pointing out that the order to ban them appeared to be inconsistent with Indian law.

In a statement on Sunday, the Indian government said the posts it targeted were “spreading false or misleading information” and “panic over the Covid-19 situation in India through the use of unrelated, ancient and out of context images or images “. It pointed to photos in several posts that were alleged to be of bodies unrelated to the recent outbreak.

In a statement sent via email, Twitter said that if content is “found to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction but doesn’t violate Twitter’s rules, we may only deny access to the content in India,” adding that in this case users would be notified. Facebook did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.

The moves did little to quell a wider chorus of online anger.

“If most citizens do everything they can to organize hospital beds, oxygen and logistics support for loved ones, what exactly is the Indian government doing?” wrote Mahua Moitra, a politician and MP from West Bengal.

Aftab Alam, professor at the University of Delhi, was more direct.

“Because you know it’s easier to remove tweets than to ensure oxygen supply,” he wrote on Twitter.

Categories
Health

‘Every Day Is Vital’: South Korea’s 11th-Hour Battle with Covid

‘Each Day Is Critical’: South Korea’s 11th-Hour Battle with Covid

SEOUL, South Korea – Intensive care beds are unavailable in several provinces in South Korea to treat the rapidly increasing number of Covid-19 patients. As of Monday, the government confirmed that only 42 beds were available nationwide. There were just six in the Seoul metropolitan area, which is home to half the country’s population and the majority of recent infections. If you

The recent explosion of coronavirus cases in South Korea has put the country at risk in ways it has not seen since the pandemic began. When cases cannot be brought under control and the burden on hospitals continues to worsen, the government can, for the first time, impose Level 3 restrictions, which are the highest level of socially distant rules before a lockdown in South Korea.

In a country that was a role model for the rest of the world for most of the year, a silent fear has spread. The streets of Seoul are getting emptier every day. Supermarkets have reported brisk sales of instant noodles and meal sets. Restaurant owners are concerned that they will be forced to close their doors to customers who only order takeout.

And now the virus is even harder to contain.

“Unlike in the past, this time around, the virus seems to be popping up everywhere and no place is safe,” said Myeong Hae-kyung, a head nurse at Yeungnam University Medical Center in Daegu who served on the front lines when the city was the epicenter of the city first coronavirus outbreak in the country earlier this year.

“In the last few days my life has only switched between hospital and home. I’m scared of going anywhere, ”she said.

This wave focuses on hospitals in South Korea. The country’s goal is to have hospital beds available to patients within one day of being diagnosed with the disease.

However, as of Sunday, 368 patients were waiting at home in the Seoul metropolitan area to be assigned to beds. Last week, a patient died at home in Seoul while waiting for a hospital bed. Another died at home in Seoul on Sunday.

The number of intensive care patients tripled this month to 274 on Monday. At the weekend, South Korea reported more than 1,000 new Covid-19 patients for five consecutive days, a record.

“We must secure hospital beds for seriously ill patients as if we were waging a war,” Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Sunday. “Every day is critical.”

The rise in infections has created a bottleneck as health officials struggle to allocate a limited number of beds to patients. The government has ordered state and private general hospitals to convert at least one percent of their licensed beds to treat critically ill Covid patients.

Updated

Dec. Dec. 22, 2020 at 5:18 am ET

Health officials expect the bottleneck to decrease significantly in the coming week as more beds become available. The success of the effort will help determine whether the government increases social distancing restrictions to level 3, below which more than 2 million additional businesses would close or dramatically curtail their operations.

“As you can see, people don’t come in,” said Lee Jeong-ae, a restaurant owner in north Seoul, as she pointed to empty tables in her restaurant. “People who suffer most from social distancing are small business owners like us.”

Ms. Lee sells fish soups, fried pork, and other Korean dishes. She recently began preparing for new restrictions by addressing bulk orders for plastic containers, as restaurants like hers are only allowed to sell take-away under Level 3 guidelines.

The Seoul metropolitan area is still below level 2.5, schools, gyms, karaoke rooms, bars and other high risk facilities are closed. Restaurants, cinemas, hairdressing salons and many other shops remain open but must close before 9 p.m.

As of Monday, South Korea has reported 698 deaths in 50,591 cases. The aggressive campaign to “test, track and treat” patients has kept death rates comparatively low. But epidemiologists have urged the government to put level 3 restrictions in place before it’s too late.

Unlike previous waves of the virus with large clusters that officials could target and track, the most recent wave has spread across numerous small clusters in nursing homes, churches, prisons, saunas, and small private gatherings, making it difficult to contain.

Dr. Eom Joong-sik, who treats Covid-19 patients at Gachon University’s Gil Hospital in Incheon, a populous port city west of Seoul, said the current problems were due to the government, despite its reputation as a leader in being the EU could not plan ahead pandemic.

“Experts had already warned that if there was a wave in the Seoul metropolitan area, which is home to half the country’s population, hospital beds could become scarce and the government would have to develop a plan for this scenario,” said Dr. Eom. “Right now, not only are we struggling to secure hospital beds in the metropolitan area, but we’re also struggling to move patients to hospitals as we see hundreds of new patients every day.”

President Moon Jae-in, proud of his administration’s strategy of keeping as much of the economy going while fighting the pandemic, was reluctant to approve Level 3. Instead, the government has stepped up its testing and isolation campaigns and gradually introduced new social distancing rules.

67,000 people were tested for the virus every day over the past week, ten times more than in October. In Seoul and the surrounding cities, the government has added 134 temporary test stations to encourage people to get free tests even when they have no symptoms, in hopes of “preventively” isolating asymptomatic cases.

As part of the government’s efforts to stop people from spreading the disease over Christmas and New Years, birthday parties and other private gatherings of five or more people will be banned in the Seoul metropolitan area from Wednesday.

An annual Christmas Eve gathering around a Christmas tree in Seoul City Hall Square has been canceled. Large churches have put up their usual Christmas decorations but appear abandoned as prayer services with more than 20 people have been banned. The United Christian Churches of Korea have urged believers to celebrate the holidays at home by sharing Christmas carols with friends on social media.

“We will prepare carefully to introduce Level 3 if necessary,” said Son Young-rae, a health ministry spokesman. “But we hope the government and the people can work together to control the wave without going there.”

Categories
Health

Shares of Penumbra tank after brief vendor releases important report

Shares of Penumbra tank after short seller releases critical report

Penumbra’s shares were down about 17% Tuesday after short seller Quintessential Capital Management released a critical report on the California-based medical device maker. The stock halted shortly after 2 p.m. ET due to outstanding news.

Quintessential Capital is short in Penumbra, which means they are betting that the stock will fall. The company first began targeting penumbra last month, releasing a report of more than 100 slides claiming, among other things, its JET 7 catheter had been linked to at least 18 deaths and 39 injuries. Quintessential Capital also alleged penumbra misled doctors and investors alike.

In its most recent report, Quintessential Capital claims that an “essential part” of the company’s scientific research was carried out by a fake person named Dr. Antique Bose. “This person is a fake. We have no doubts,” said Gabriel Grego, managing partner of Quintessential Capital, on Tuesday in CNBC’s “mid-term report”.

Quintessential Capital directed its allegations of misconduct to the US Food and Drug Administration and wrote to the regulator on Tuesday to open an investigation. According to records that Grego shared with CNBC, the company has also given the SEC a whistleblower tip.

Penumbra has a market cap of around $ 7 billion as of Tuesday afternoon. At the time of Quintessential Capital’s November report for the company, its market cap was approximately $ 9.4 billion.

In a statement accompanying the Mid-Term Report, Penumbra denied Quintessential Capital’s claims, saying that its “innovative medical devices have helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from life-threatening diseases since its inception in 2004”.

“This attack by bad QCM short sellers reads like an internet conspiracy written by teenagers. It is impossible to deny the facts because there are no facts,” the company said in an email. “Penumbra is very comfortable finding that none of the claims made in the diatribe of these short sellers are true. The claims are nothing more than a baseless campaign of shameless short sellers willing to risk lives for a quick profit. “

– CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.