Tag Archives: Coronavirus

U.S. accuses Chinese nationals of hacking spree for COVID-19 data, defense secrets

By Raphael Satter and Christopher Bing

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday indicted two Chinese nationals over their role in what the agency called a decade-long cyber espionage campaign that targeted defense contractors, COVID researchers and hundreds of other victims worldwide.

U.S. authorities said Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi stole terabytes of weapons designs, drug information, software source code, and personal data from targets that included dissidents and Chinese opposition figures. The cyber criminals were contractors for the Chinese government, rather than full-fledged spies, U.S. officials said.

U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said at a virtual press conference the hackings showed China “is willing to turn a blind eye to prolific criminal hackers operating within its borders.”

“In this manner, China has now taken its place, alongside Russia, Iran, and North Korea, in that shameful club of nations that provides safe haven for cyber criminals in exchange for those criminals being on call for the benefit of the state.”

Messages left with one of several accounts registered in the name of Li’s digital alias, oro0lxy, were not immediately returned. Reuters could not immediately locate contact details for Dong. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment, although Beijing has repeatedly denied hacking the United States.

The indictment mostly did not name any companies or individual targets, but U.S. Attorney William Hyslop, who spoke alongside Demers, said there were “hundreds and hundreds of victims in the United States and worldwide.” Officials said the investigation was triggered when the hackers broke into a network belonging to the Hanford Site, a decommissioned U.S. nuclear complex in eastern Washington state, in 2015.

Li and Dong were “one of the most prolific group of hackers we’ve investigated,” said FBI Special Agent Raymond Duda, who heads the agency’s Seattle field office.

A July 7 indictment made public on Tuesday alleges that Li and Dong were contractors for China’s Ministry of State Security, or MSS, a comparable agency to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The MSS, prosecutors said, supplied the hackers with information into critical software vulnerabilities to penetrate targets and collect intelligence. Targets included Hong Kong protesters, the office of the Dalai Lama and a Chinese Christian non-profit.

As early as Jan. 27, as the coronavirus outbreak was coming into focus, the hackers were trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine research of an unidentified Massachusetts biotech firm, the indictment said.

It is unclear whether anything was stolen but one expert said the allegation shows the “extremely high value” that governments such as China placed on COVID-related research.

“It is a fundamental threat to all governments around the world and we expect information relating to treatments and vaccines to be targeted by multiple cyber espionage sponsors,” said Ben Read, a senior analyst at cyber-security company FireEye.

He noted that the Chinese government had long relied on contractors for its cyber-spying operations.

“Using these freelancers allows the government to access a wider array of talent, while also providing some deniability in conducting these operations,” Read said.

(Reporting by Chris Sanders; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Richard Chang)

LinkedIn cuts 960 jobs as pandemic puts the brakes on corporate hiring

By Supantha Mukherjee

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp’s professional networking site LinkedIn said on Tuesday it would cut about 960 jobs, or 6% of its global workforce, as the coronavirus pandemic is having a sustained impact on demand for its recruitment products.

California-based LinkedIn helps employers assess a candidate’s suitability for a role and employees use the platform to find a new job.

Jobs will be cut across sales and hiring divisions of the group globally. Announcing the plan in a message posted on LinkedIn’s website, Chief Executive Ryan Roslansky said the company would provide at least 10 weeks of severance pay as well as health insurance for a year for U.S. employees, and will hire for newly-created roles from laid-off staff.

“I want you to know these are the only layoffs we are planning,” Roslansky said in his message. Affected staff, who have not yet been told, would be able to keep company-issued cell phones, laptops, and recently purchased equipment to help them work from home while making career transitions, he said.

As lockdowns to contain the coronavirus have hit businesses around the world, LinkedIn’s business has been hit as companies lay off staff or sharply curtail hiring.

LinkedIn said employees affected by its job cuts will be informed this week and they will start receiving invitations in the next few hours to meetings to learn more about next steps.

“If you don’t receive a meeting invite, you are not directly impacted by this change,” Roslansky said.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee; Editing by Susan Fenton)

U.S. COVID-19 deaths rise for second week in a row

By Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – U.S. deaths from COVID-19 rose for a second week in a row to more than 5,200 people in the week ended July 19, up 5% from the previous seven days, a Reuters analysis found.

The country reported over 460,000 new coronavirus cases last week, up nearly 15% from the prior week, according to the analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.

Nineteen states have reported increases in deaths for at least two straight weeks, including, Arizona, Florida and Texas.

Testing for COVID-19 rose by 9% in the United States last week and set a new record high on Friday, with over 850,000 tests performed, the Reuters analysis found.

Nationally, 8.5% of tests came back positive for the novel coronavirus, down from 8.8% the prior week but still higher than the 5% level that the World Health Organization considers concerning because it suggests there are more cases in the community that have not yet been uncovered.

Thirty-one states had positivity test rates above 5%, according to the analysis, including Arizona at 24%, Florida and Nevada at 19%, and Idaho and Alabama at 18%.

Nationally, new COVID-19 cases have risen for seven straight weeks. Forty-three states reported more new cases of COVID-19 last week compared to the previous week, the analysis found.

For the first time since April, cases rose in New York State week over week, breaking a 13-week streak of declines. New Jersey now leads the nation with cases falling for two weeks in a row. The other six states have only seen cases decline for one week.

(Reporting by Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Graphic by Chris Canipe in Kansas City, Missouri; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

California reports nearly 12,000 COVID cases, biggest increase since pandemic started

By Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – California reported a record increase of more than 11,800 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, according to a Reuters tally of county data, as the Trump administration pushes for schools to reopen to help businesses return to normal.

If California were a country, it would be rank fifth in the world for total cases at nearly 400,000, behind the United States, Brazil, India and Russia.

This is the first time California has reported over 10,000 new infections since setting a record with 10,861 cases on July 14.

Florida has reported over 10,000 new cases a day for the last six days in a row and Texas has reported over 10,000 cases for five out of the last seven days.

California’s daily increases have already surpassed the highest daily tally reported by any European country during the height of the pandemic there.

The biggest outbreak in the state is in Los Angeles County, which has nearly 160,000 total cases on Monday. Hospitals are filling with COVID patients and Los Angeles reported record numbers of currently hospitalized coronavirus patients for the second day in a row on Monday.

To combat the pandemic, California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is shutting down California again.

In addition to closing bars, he ordered restaurants, movie theaters, zoos and museums to cease indoor operations. Gyms, churches and hair salons must close in the 30 hardest-hit counties.

State prisons are releasing up to 8,000 inmates early to reduce the risk of virus transmission after large outbreaks in several correctional facilities.

California is home to both tech companies in Silicon Valley, Hollywood movie studios and Walt Disney Co’s Disneyland Resort in Anaheim.

The entertainment company has indefinitely suspended plans to reopen the California theme park but it did reopen Disney World in Florida on July 11.

(Reporting by Christine Chan in New York; Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Georgia judge to hear arguments over governor’s bid to stop Atlanta mask mandate

By Rich McKay

ATLANTA (Reuters) – A Georgia judge is scheduled Tuesday to hear arguments in an emergency motion brought by Governor Brian Kemp to stop the city of Atlanta from enforcing a mandate that people wear masks in public to help stop the spread of coronavirus.

The motion, pending before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kelly Ellerbe, is the latest salvo in a clash between some Georgia mayors and Kemp over the issue of mask mandates, which the Republican governor opposes.

It asks the judge to halt Atlanta’s efforts while a lawsuit Kemp filed Thursday works its way through the courts.

Earlier this month, Kemp issued an order that bars local leaders from requiring people to wear masks, but a handful of Georgia cities, including Democratic-led Atlanta, Savannah and Athens, have bucked the governor and continued to require them in public.

The governor’s office filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and the city council that argues local officials lack the legal authority to override Kemp’s orders.

“Kemp must be allowed, as the chief executive of this state, to manage a public health emergency without Mayor Bottoms issuing void and unenforceable orders which only serve to confuse the public,” the 16-page complaint reads.

The governor’s office has not yet filed lawsuits against the other mayors.

Kemp, one of the first governors to ease statewide stay-at-home orders and business closures following the early stages of the U.S. outbreak, has suggested that mandating masks would be too restrictive.

Bottoms has said she planned to defy Kemp’s order and enforce a mandatory mask ordinance.

“I take this very seriously and I will continue to do everything in my power to protect the people of Atlanta,” the mayor said on NBC News’ “Today” on Friday, and she added that the lawsuit is “a waste of taxpayer money.”

Bottoms, who has announced publicly that she and members of her family have tested positive for COVID-19, remains in quarantine at her home office. Judge Ellerbe’s hearing will be conducted by video conference later Tuesday morning.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Trump to resume coronavirus briefings after hiatus

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump, under fire over his administration’s response to the surging coronavirus, said on Monday he will resume holding news briefings on the pandemic after a lengthy hiatus.

He told reporters in the Oval Office the resumption was prompted by a “big flareup in Florida, Texas, a couple of other places.” The virus has killed 140,000 Americans and infected some 3.7 million, both figures leading the world.

White House debate has centered on whether Trump should risk doing daily briefings after he was mocked for musing that people might inject household disinfectants as a way to protect themselves from contracting the virus.

The briefings ended in early May after the new White House of chief staff, Mark Meadows, sought a new focus for the president’s messaging on the subject.

Trump said he expected the first new briefing would take place about 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) on Tuesday.

“We’re going to give you a lot of briefings over the next week and the next few weeks,” he said.

He said he would bring in the heads of some companies involved in the search for vaccines and other treatments for the virus, such as Johnson & Johnson.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Howard Goller)

With U.S. under coronavirus siege, Chicago cracks down, Florida cases soar

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – The city of Chicago reimposed some coronavirus restrictions on Monday and the state of Florida reported more than 10,000 new cases for the sixth day in a row, as the pandemic showed few signs of abating in the United States.

In a rare ray of hope, New York state reported the fewest hospitalizations from the coronavirus in four months and New York City entered a new phase of reopening on Monday, but the progress, in the very city and state that were once the epicenter, was eclipsed by the grim news nearly everywhere else.

Metrics for the country have grown worse including a rising number of cases, deaths and hospitalizations along with rates of positive test results. The virus has killed 140,000 people in the United States and infected some 3.7 million, both figures leading the world.

Florida reported 10,347 new cases on Monday, the sixth day in a row the state has announced over 10,000 new infections. Another 92 people died in Florida, increasing the state’s death toll to 5,183.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced new restrictions due to take effect on Friday including a ban on indoor service at bars and shutdown of personal services such as shaves and facials that require the removal of masks.

“While we aren’t near the peak of the pandemic from earlier this year, none of us wants to go back there,” Lightfoot said in a statement.

The city of Los Angeles is on the brink of issuing a new stay-at-home order and at least 14 states have reported record hospitalizations so far in July, including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Texas.

Meanwhile, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing for schools to reopen in a few weeks and resisting a federal mandate that people wear masks in public, part of what New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called an “incompetent” federal government response.

“I’ve said to the president from Day One: This virus does not respond to politics,” Cuomo told a news conference. “The solution is medicine and science.”

WHITE HOUSE BRIEFINGS RESUME

The country remained “totally unprepared,” Cuomo said, as other states lagged in testing, contact tracing, and personal protective equipment for doctors and nurses.

“Their mistake was they listened to the president,” Cuomo said, while also blasting “stupid and reckless” people in his own state who persistently gather in large groups.

On Monday Trump, under fire over his administration’s response to the surging virus, said he would on Tuesday resume holding news briefings on the pandemic after a lengthy hiatus.

White House debate has centered on whether Trump should risk doing daily briefings after he was mocked for musing that people might inject household disinfectants as a way to protect themselves from contracting the virus.

Last Friday Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters she favored a return of the briefings, which she said had bolstered his approval ratings.

New York state, where the virus took hold early this year before spreading to other states, recorded only eight deaths on Sunday while the total number of people hospitalized for the disease fell to 716, the fewest since March 18, Cuomo said.

However a Reuters analysis of data from the COVID Tracking Project showed cases rose by more than 5,000 in the past week, the first week-over-week increase since April, breaking a 13-week streak of declines.

New York City entered a new phase on Monday that will allow low-risk outdoor activity, entertainment at 33 percent capacity and professional sports events. But Major League Baseball’s Yankees and Mets will start their seasons in empty New York City ballparks, indoor dining in restaurants is still prohibited, and bars are subject to social distancing rules.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta, Maria Caspani, Doina Chiacu and Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Howard Goller)

Delta, Southwest draw strong demand for pilot early departure deals

By Tracy Rucinski and David Shepardson

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines have each received strong demand from pilots for early departure packages aimed at slimming their workforces to weather the coronavirus pandemic, according to preliminary numbers.

The union representing Delta pilots said 2,235 pilots had volunteered for a voluntary early out program ahead of a Sunday deadline, up from 1,700 on Friday, when Delta told pilots it would avoid furloughs if they agreed to reduced guaranteed minimum pay.

At Southwest, around 24% of pilots and 33% of flight attendants have agreed to early retirement or long-term leaves of absence, a person familiar with the matter said.

There is a period for employees at both Delta and Southwest to rescind their decision, so the numbers are not final.

Delta and Southwest did not comment.

U.S. airlines, which received a $25 billion bailout in March to cover payroll for six months, are trying to encourage employees to accept voluntary exit deals in the hope of avoiding involuntary furloughs in the fall, when a government ban on forced job cuts expires.

They had hoped that air travel demand would recover by October, but have warned that bookings that began to rise from historic lows in May and June have now leveled off or even fallen due to a rise in COVID-19 cases in some parts of the country.

(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski and David Shepardson; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Uber offers COVID-19 contact tracing help amid chaotic U.S. response

By Tina Bellon

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Uber Technologies Inc has quietly launched a service to give public health officials quick access to data on drivers and riders presumed to have come into contact with someone infected with COVID-19, company officials told Reuters.

The service, offered free of charge, could help burnish the image of the ride-hailing giant, which recently launched a new ad campaign spotlighting its “No Mask, No Ride” policy in the United States.

Now being promoted to government health officials in all the countries where it operates, the service provides health departments with data about who used Uber’s services and when and allows health agencies to urge affected users into quarantine, the company officials said.

Information on an individual can be accessed in a few hours, the officials said, with the company considering COVID-19 an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury.

Though Uber has provided the data for months now, it has not been put to use in many U.S. virus hotspots.

A recent Reuters review of contact tracing policies by 32 U.S. state and local health departments found most did not use ride-hailing data to track the virus spread. Among those neglecting the data are Texas and Florida, states that have seen a surge in new infections.

Unlike several other countries, the United States has no federal program or mobile application to trace the contacts of people with coronavirus infections, a measure deemed crucial by the World Health Organization in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not respond to requests for comment.

Dozens of U.S. states in recent weeks began hiring thousands of workers to interview infected patients, identify people they have been in contact with and then order those individuals to isolate. Ride-hailing data could play an important role in that effort, health officials and experts said, because it identifies a larger set of people outside the direct social circle of an infected individual.

“This data could be potentially life-saving in cities where many people use those services,” said Mieka Smart, an epidemiology professor at Michigan State University and a member of the COVID-19 contact tracing work group in Flint.

Uber has long provided data to U.S. law enforcement officials in emergencies or criminal investigations, companies officials said. It first began to focus on health-related issues in 2019, when a resurgence of U.S. measles cases prompted several health departments to request data, the officials said.

In January, company executives flew to Los Angeles to meet with the local health department and CDC officials to discuss how Uber’s data could best be used, according to Uber’s chief of global law enforcement, Mike Sullivan.

The discussion quickly turned to the novel coronavirus, which at the time was only beginning to spread outside of China.

“Our timing ended up being beneficial in that it allowed us to get ahead before COVID started ramping up globally,” said Sullivan, a veteran U.S. prosecutor who leads a team of 100 Uber employees handling data requests around the clock.

In the first half of the year, Uber received a total of some 560 coronavirus-related requests from public health departments in 29 countries, most of which were processed by the company within two hours, company officials said. That compares to only 10 requests from health departments globally in 2019.

Out of the total, 158 requests were filed by health authorities in nearly 40 locations around the United States.

Using the new portal, designed for exclusive use by public health departments, data can be sought based on trip receipts or passenger names. Health officials are prompted to specify what action they want Uber to take as part of the service.

“We want to make sure that they are the experts and we follow their recommendations” on whether to block temporarily a driver, rider or courier from using Uber’s service, Sullivan said. Uber customers with a confirmed infection are automatically blocked from the platform for at least 14 days.

Uber has seen an increase in contact tracing requests from countries credited for their initial success in containing the virus, such as Australia and New Zealand, Sullivan said. He added that contact tracing was also much more coordinated in several European countries than in the United States, including in the UK.

U.S. contact tracing efforts vary from region to region. In some areas, the effort is coordinated on the state level, while cities or counties take charge in others, requests from health departments show.

In Massachusetts, for example, local health departments gather trip details if an infected person tells investigators they have taken a ride-hailing trip. That information is then transferred to the state’s health department, which reaches out to Uber or Lyft to request data.

Lyft said it provided data to U.S. and Canadian health officials through its Law Enforcement Request system, but declined to provide further details, citing privacy reasons.

In California, local officials handle the entire contact tracing process. San Francisco so far has requested ride-hailing data related to the coronavirus pandemic in a handful of cases, according to Michael Reid, a physician who heads the city’s contact tracing program.

“In the end, we need all the data we can to be effective,” said Reid. “Whether it’s Uber or Lyft, or the priest telling you who was in church on Sunday.”

(Reporting by Tina Bellon; Editing by Tom Brown)

U.S. companies fear workplace coronavirus precautions do not address airborne risk

By Caroline Humer

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. companies are raising new questions about how they can make workplaces safe after the world’s top public health agency acknowledged the risk that tiny airborne droplets of the novel coronavirus may contribute to its spread, industry healthcare consultants said.

About two weeks ago, the World Health Organization called for more scientific study into airborne transmission of COVID-19. The move raised awareness of an issue excluded from U.S. government back-to-work guidelines, adding to the challenge of keeping people safe in offices, stores and work sites, these consultants said.

Many companies devised strategies based on WHO guidance that large respiratory droplets of the virus could infect people when first emitted and after they landed on surfaces. Now the concern over infection is focused on the idea that tiny droplets could linger in the air for hours.

Companies are reviewing if they have gone far enough with policies on mask-wearing, sealing off conference rooms and upgrading ventilation systems. Some, like retailers who have installed plexiglass barriers in their stores between cashiers and customers, are wondering what else they can do if the larger droplets those barriers aim to contain are just one piece of respiratory transmission, consultants said.

Neal Mills, chief medical officer at healthcare benefits group Aon, began fielding questions last week about the WHO’s decision to investigate aerosol transmission, and said employers were slowing the return of remote workers back to their offices.

“They are doing due diligence around how are you going to reduce the transmission of the virus in light of the proposed aerosol nature of COVID-19,” Mills said.

The slowdown comes as some employers, such as Texas energy companies Halliburton Co and Chevron Corp, had already begun delaying plans to bring back office workers due to rising coronavirus cases.

Employers are asking whether public health recommendations that individuals remain 6 feet apart and wear masks to limit transmission through large droplets are enough.

They also wonder about air conditioning systems that do not have filtration systems and the effectiveness of plexiglass partitions against a virus floating in the air, said David Zieg, a lead consultant on clinical services at Mercer, another healthcare services companies.

Consultants are advising employers to go beyond their existing plans, which may also include temperature checks, health questionnaires and frequent restroom cleanings.

“The concept here is risk reduction. It’s not 100%. You add in all the little things you can to reduce the risk,” Zieg said.

Months after U.S. companies sent all but essential workers home due to the global new coronavirus pandemic, many are still struggling to bring their workforce back.

For some employers, the cost of not putting in effective precautions goes beyond that of workers missing days while they are sick. There are concerns about legal liability and healthcare costs, many of which are paid for by large employers.

Some corporations moved early and began integrating the possibility of airborne transmission of COVID-19 into their plans as evidence began emerging of transmission at indoor bars and restaurants.

General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV maximized ventilation in their manufacturing facilities before restarting production on May 18 because of the potential for aerosol transmission, the companies said.

But others are more than halving the number of workers they bring back to the office to 10 percent of staff and rethinking how many people can safely ride in an elevator or attend an in-person meeting, Willis Towers Watson health practice co-leader Jeff Levin-Scherz said.

“Once you start limiting how many people can be in a conference room, the imperative to bring some types of workers back to the office, if they have to attend meetings virtually anyway, is much lower,” Towers Watson’s Levin-Scherz said.

(Reporting by Caroline Humer in New York, additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)