RUSSIAN HACKING ACCUSATIONS —
Ukraine says Russia hacked its document portal and planted malicious files

Ukraine says Russia also backed massive DDoS attack using never-before-seen methods.

DAN GOODIN - 2/24/2021 ARS TECHNICA


Ukraine has accused the Russian government of hacking into one of its government Web portals and planting malicious documents that would install malware on end users’ computers.

“The purpose of the attack was the mass contamination of information resources of public authorities, as this system is used for the circulation of documents in most public authorities,” officials from Ukraine’s National Coordination Center for Cybersecurity said in a statement published on Wednesday. “The malicious documents contained a macro that secretly downloaded a program to remotely control a computer when opening the files.”


FURTHER READING

Six Russians accused of the world’s most destructive hacks indicted

Wednesday’s statement said that the methods used in the attack connected the hackers to the Russian Federation. Ukraine didn’t say if the attack succeeded in infecting any authorities’ computers.

FURTHER READING

Found: “Crash Override” malware that triggered Ukrainian power outage

A large body of evidence has linked Russia’s government to several highly aggressive hacks against Ukraine in the past.

 The hacks include:

A computer intrusion in late 2015 against regional power authorities in Ukraine caused a power failure that left hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity in the dead of winter.

Almost exactly one year later, a second attack at an electricity substation outside Kyiv that once again left residents without power.

A malicious update for widely used tax software in Ukraine that distributed disk-wiping malware to users. The so-called NotPetya worm ended up shutting down computers worldwide and led to the world’s most costly hack.

Elsewhere, Russia’s SVR intelligence agency has also been accused of carrying out the recently discovered hack that targeted at least nine US agencies and 100 companies in a supply chain attack against customers of the SolarWinds network management software.

Wednesday’s statement didn’t identify which of several known Russian hacking groups was accused of the breach.

FURTHER READING

Microsoft president calls SolarWinds hack an “act of recklessness”

Macro attacks like the one mentioned in the statement typically work by tricking Microsoft Office users into enabling macros, often under the guise that the macro is required for the document to display properly. The macros then download malware from an attacker-controlled server and install it.

The statement provided no details on how or when Ukraine’s System of Electronic Interaction of Executive Bodies—a portal that distributes documents to public authorities—was hacked or how long the intrusion lasted.

Indicators that someone has been compromised include:

Domain: enterox.ru

IP addresses: 109.68.212.97

Link (URL): http://109.68.212.97/infant.php

Wednesday’s statement came two days after Ukraine’s National Coordination Center for Cybersecurity reported what it said were “massive DDoS attacks on the Ukrainian segment of the Internet, mainly on the websites of the security and defense sector.” An analysis revealed that the attacks used a new mechanism that hadn’t been seen before. DDoS attacks take down targeted servers by bombarding them with more data than they can process.



DAN GOODIN is the Security Editor at Ars Technica, which he joined in 2012 after working for The Register, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, and other publications.

ONLINE TRANSITION —

Best Buy lays off 5,000 workers as it shifts focus to online sales

The pandemic has accelerated Best Buy's transition to selling online.

TIMOTHY B. LEE - 2/26/2021, 

Snow outside of a Best Buy store in Oklahoma City, 

Oklahoma, on Feb. 17, 2021.
Nick Oxford/Bloomberg via Getty 

Best Buy says it has trimmed its headcount by 21,000 over the last year as the pandemic has accelerated the company's transition to selling online. Most of those losses were due to attrition—including workers who were furloughed during the pandemic last year and then chose not to return to work. But Best Buy says that in recent weeks it formally laid off 5,000 workers. The company now has about 102,000 workers—including employees in its retail stores and corporate headquarters.

A company will often lay off workers because it is struggling. The last year has certainly been a challenging period for some brick-and-mortar businesses. This week, for example, electronics giant Fry's shut down all of its stores.

But that doesn't seem to be the situation at Best Buy, which has weathered the pandemic fairly well. In the last quarter, same-store sales at Best Buy's brick and mortar stores were up 12 percent compared to a year earlier. Meanwhile, online sales were up an impressive 89 percent.

As a result, online sales accounted for 43 percent of total sales in Best Buy's fourth quarter, which ends on January 31. That's way up from 25 percent in 2019 and 22 percent in 2018. And Best Buy believes that this shift will be mostly permanent, with 40 percent of sales coming from online in the new fiscal year.

Best Buy is downsizing its physical retail presence

Best Buy says its recent changes are an effort to adjust to this new market reality. Traditional stores aren't going away, but they're becoming less important. Best Buy says that it has been closing about 20 stores per year over the last two years and expects to accelerate the process in the coming year. Best Buy has 450 stores (out of roughly 1,000) whose leases will run out in the next three years. The company says that it always rigorously evaluates a store before renewing its lease, but in the future, the company will have "higher thresholds on renewing leases." In other words, under-performing stores will get shuttered more quickly than in the past.

FURTHER READING

Confirmed: Fry’s Electronics going out of business, shutting down all stores

That will mean fewer workers overall and particularly fewer full-time workers. As it laid off 5,000 mostly full-time workers, Best Buy is planning to add 2,000 new part-time jobs.

Best Buy is also working to increase the flexibility of its workforce by training workers to perform a mix of face-to-face and online-oriented jobs. For example, during a slow shift, workers with appropriate training can pick up customer calls from Best Buy's national hotlines.

Best Buy plans to reconfigure stores to devote less space to showrooms in the front of the store and more space to storage and shipping facilities in the back. Store workers will be able to spend some time helping customers face to face and some time packing online orders.

Some parts of Best Buy’s business are booming

This is all in the context of a generally upbeat financial picture for the company. In a call with investors on Thursday, Best Buy executives reported that the pandemic has boosted demand for several categories of products that Best Buy stocks. For example, the company has struggled to keep gaming consoles on store shelves because "there just hasn't been enough inventory to meet demand."

FURTHER READING Amazon and Best Buy team up to sell TVs, but it’s a risky move for Best Buy

Remote workers have been spending heavily on a range of work-from-home products, from "high tech chairs to monitors to standing desks." Best Buy says that printing products are in perpetually short supply.

Best Buy also says that home theater equipment and personal fitness gear has been selling briskly as more people exercise and watch movies at home. Kitchen gadgets have also been selling well.

Moreover, Best Buy believes the spending surge is unlikely to abate in 2021. While many workers have struggled financially during the pandemic, a lot of white-collar workers have seen their savings rise as they kept their jobs but couldn't spend as much on restaurant meals, travel, or other luxuries. So Best Buy expects strong sales of luxury gadgets to continue well into 2021.

ARS 

TIMOTHY B. LEE is a senior reporter covering tech policy, blockchain technologies and the future of transportation. He lives in Washington DC.

BHOPAL REDUX

Residents of an Indian slum thought they were getting vaccinated like everyone else but were unknowingly part of a clinical trial

Madison Hall THE INSIDER 

2/26/2021

A healthcare worker reacts as she receives a dose of COVISHIELD, a COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India, during one of the world's largest COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, in India on January 16, 2021. Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

A white van drove through the slums of Bhopal in central India advertising a COVID-19 vaccine.

The van reportedly said that anyone who got one would receive 750 rupees.

But according to CNN, the residents were unknowingly part of a vaccine trial.

It seemed like a win-win for residents in the slums of Bhopal in central India when a white van drove through the streets advertising, "Come and take the coronavirus vaccine and get 750 rupees!" from its speaker system.

But according to a new report from CNN, the shots doled out were actually a part of the third phase of India's Covaxin clinical trials — and most of the recipients were completely unaware they were now part of a medical study.

Covaxin is India's first proprietary COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine has yet to be fully approved for public use and is currently only approved for restricted emergency use. As of late January, Bharat Biotech has stockpiled more than 20 million doses of Covaxin and is pushing to make 700 million by the end of 2021.

Many of the people who received vaccines through the van's instruction live in the Shankar Nagar Slum, just miles from the site of a 1984 industrial disaster that exposed an estimated 500,000 people to a cloud of toxic gas, CNN reported. Some locals in the area still report feeling health issues from the incident decades years later. Bhopal disaster - Wikipedia

CNN interviewed 21 people in the area who received shots in the trial. Many said they were drawn to get the vaccine because of the promise of 750 rupees, approximately $10 in the US.

"I went because of the greed of 750 rupees," Hira Bai, a mother of three told CNN. "Anyway, we are used to dying ... my life has no value."

Public health experts said the ethics of providing 750 rupees is questionable, especially if it was used as an incentive to bring in more volunteers.

Arun Shrivastav, the head of the pharmacology department at the Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal, told CNN it would be "unethical" and "totally wrong" if the country advertised the trial with a promise of 750 rupees.

"If there is anything like this happening, then it cannot be counted in the trial and the trial would be barred," Shrivastav told CNN.

Anil Kumar Dixit, the dean of People's College of Medical Sciences and Research Centre in Bhopal, affirmed that his hospital paid the participants 750 rupees but said it was only to cover any missed wages and was not meant as an incentive.

Many participants told CNN they weren't aware they may have received a placebo shot.

Dixit told CNN that everyone involved was made well aware that the shots were part of the trial, but over half of the people CNN spoke with are illiterate and were unable to read any of the instructions or forms that health officials provided.

For those who cannot read, he said, officials explained everything in Hindi or English before participants signed any forms.

Many of the Bhopal participants noted they weren't asked about underlying health conditions before taking part in the trial. One pregnant woman told CNN she received the first of two injections before being turned away for the second dose due to the pregnancy.

According to Johns Hopkins University, India is home to the fourth-most COVID-19 deaths in the world, with more than 156,000 recorded.

The country is pushing for its healthcare workers to get vaccinated, but the healthcare workers continue to turn down the homegrown vaccine. According to Al Jazeera, India has vaccinated more than 10 million medical professionals, but only 11% of them agreed to take the Covaxin shot. The rest opted for an AstraZeneca vaccine.

Ted Cruz rants about comedians, late-night TV, and mask-wearing before shouting at people to 'just have fun' in wild CPAC speech

Jake Lahut and Sonam Sheth
THE INSIDER

Sen. Ted Cruz. John Raoux/AP Photo

Ted Cruz's CPAC speech began with a joke on the Cancún scandal and ended in a scream about freedom.

Cruz railed against late-night TV, mocked mask-wearing, and expressed his support for Trump.

"That is our party," he yelled, "and these deplorables are here to stay."

Sen. Ted Cruz's speech at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference went off the rails Friday as he shouted about late-night comedians, mask-wearing, and President Joe Biden.

"Orlando is awesome. It's not as nice as Cancún, but it's nice," the Republican senator said, referring to the scandal he sparked when he left storm-ravaged Texas for Cancún, Mexico, with his family last week. Cruz returned to Houston a day later after drawing sharp criticism for leaving the state he represented for a vacation in the middle of a devastating winter storm.

Later in his speech, Cruz issued a rallying cry in support of former President Donald Trump.

"There are a whole lot of voices in Washington that want to just erase the last four years, want to go back to the world before where we had government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, and for the lobbyists," Cruz said.

"Where the Republicans' compelling message was, 'Republicans: We waste less,'" he added. "And they look at Donald J. Trump, and they look at the millions and millions of people inspired who went to battle fighting alongside President Trump, and they're terrified and they want him to go away."

"Let me tell you this right now: Donald J. Trump ain't going anywhere," Cruz added.

The former president once suggested that the senator's father helped assassinate President John F. Kennedy and insinuated his wife was ugly.

Cruz also reappropriated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" line to underscore Trumpism as the future of the party.

"That is our party," he yelled, "and these deplorables are here to stay."

Here are some other high  LOW lights from Cruz's speech:

Cruz called mask-wearing is virtue signaling: "We're going to wear masks for the next 300 years," Cruz said. "And by the way, not just one mask — two, three, four — you can't have too many masks. How much virtue do you want to signal?"

He railed against comedians and cancel culture before telling people to "just have fun": "You know, Jerry Seinfeld doesn't tell comedy anymore because then he jokes that funny is canceled," Cruz said. "You know, 'SNL' is unwatchable. The late-night comedy, they stand up and say, 'We hate Donald Trump.' Yeah, no kidding. We didn't get that the last 9,000 times you said that."

Cruz said Democrats were trying to turn skaters into socialists: "And let me tell you, right now, in Los Angeles, there's some skater kid who's 19, who's told that it's hip and chic and cool to be a leftist socialist, man," he said. "Who's going to hear a message, 'Wait a second, these guys don't want me to speak? Think? Have fun? Do what I want to do?'"

He said there were no "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations in Houston last year because of the Second Amendment: "In Houston where I live, I have to tell you, there weren't any rioters because let's be very clear: If there had been, they would discover what the state of Texas thinks about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms," Cruz said.

Cruz rounded out his speech by saying the US was in a period of "dark days" and that "the country will come back to sanity." He added: "And mark my words, 2022 is going to be a fantastic election year, and so is 2024 as we stand together and defend liberty, defend the Constitution, defend the Bill of Rights of every American."

In closing, Cruz quoted William Wallace 

and screamed, "Freedom!"

 

THE DOGS ARE MORE VALUABLE THAN THE DOG WALKER

Lady Gaga's two French bulldogs that were stolen have been recovered safely

LADY GAGA OFFERS $500,000 REWARD 

FOR THE DOGS

The woman who returned the dogs appeared to be uninvolved in the theft. 

The dogwalker who was shot in the attack is in stable condition.

NOR DOES DOG WALKER HAVE A NAME

(IT'S RYAN)

Myanmar police move to stamp out protests after envoy appeals to U.N. to stop coup

(Reuters) - Myanmar police moved decisively on Saturday in a bid to prevent opponents of military rule gathering after Myanmar’s U.N. envoy urged the United Nations to use “any means necessary” to stop a Feb. 1 coup.

The Southeast Asian country has been in turmoil since the army seized power and detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and much of her party leadership, alleging fraud in a November election her party had won in a landslide.

Uncertainty has grown over Suu Kyi’s whereabouts, as the independent Myanmar Now website on Friday quoted officials of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party as saying she had been moved this week from house arrest to an undisclosed location.

The coup has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters to Myanmar’s streets and drawn condemnation from Western countries, with some imposing limited sanctions.

Police were out in force early in the main city of Yangon and elsewhere, deployed at usual protest sites and detaining people as they congregated, witnesses said.

People still gathered, their numbers building through the morning, to chant and sing, then melting away into side streets as police advanced, apparently setting off stun grenades and firing into the air.

Similar scenes played out in the second city of Mandalay, and elsewhere, media reported. A protester in the central town of Monwya said police had fired water cannon as they surrounded a crowd.

“They’ve blocked all the ways out,” Aye Aye Tint told Reuters from the town. “They used water cannon against peaceful protesters, they shouldn’t treat people like that.”

At the U.N. General Assembly, Myanmar’s Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun said he was speaking on behalf of Suu Kyi’s government and appealed to the body “to use any means necessary to take action against the Myanmar military and to provide safety and security for the people”.

“We need further strongest possible action from the international community to immediately end the military coup, to stop oppressing the innocent people ... and to restore the democracy,” he told the 193-member group, receiving applause as he finished.

‘PREVAIL’

Kyaw Moe Tun appeared emotional as he read the statement on behalf of a group of elected politicians that he said represented the legitimate government.

Delivering his final words in Burmese, the career diplomat raised the three-finger salute of pro-democracy protesters and announced “our cause will prevail”.

Reuters was not immediately able to contact the army for comment.

Opponents of the coup hailed Kyaw Moe Tun as a hero and flooded social media with messages of thanks.

“The people will win and the power-obsessed junta will fall,” one protest leader, Ei Thinzar Maung, wrote on Facebook.


U.N. Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews said he was overwhelmed as he watched the ambassador’s “act of courage”.

“Despite enormous pressure to do otherwise, he spoke up for the people of Myanmar and against an illegal coup. It’s time for the world to answer that courageous call with action,” Andrews said on Twitter.

U.N. special envoy on Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener called for a collective “clear signal in support of democracy”, saying no country should recognise or legitimise the junta.

China’s envoy did not criticise the coup and said the situation was Myanmar’s “internal affairs”, adding that it supported diplomacy by Southeast Asian countries, which protesters fear could give credibility to the ruling generals.

‘LOSS OF RIGHTS’


A lawyer acting for Suu Kyi, Khin Maung Zaw, told Reuters he had also heard from NLD officials that she had been moved from her home in the capital, Naypyitaw, but could not confirm it. Authorities did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawyer said he had been given no access to Suu Kyi ahead of her next hearing on Monday, adding: “I’m concerned that there will be a loss of rights to access to justice and access to legal counsel”.

Protesters have been demanding the release of Suu Kyi, 75, and recognition of the result of last year’s election.

Military chief General Min Aung Hlaing says authorities were using minimal force. Nevertheless, at least three protesters have died. The army says a policeman was also killed.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate and daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero, spent nearly 15 years under house arrest under previous juntas. She faces charges of illegally importing six walkie-talkie radios and of violating a natural disaster law by breaching coronavirus protocols.


The army has promised an election but not given a date. It has imposed a one-year state of emergency.

The question of an election is at the centre of a diplomatic effort by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member. Indonesia has taken the lead, but coup opponents fear the efforts could legitimise the junta.

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince approved operation to ‘capture or kill’ journalist Jamal Khashoggi, report finds

The news is likely to herald new US sanctions on Saudi Arabia, after Mohammed bin Salman’s role in the journalist’s death has been all but confirmed

Jamal Khashoggi was killed while visiting the Saudi consulate in 

Istanbul, Turkey(Photo: Johnny Green/PA Wire)

By Laurie Havelock
February 26, 2021 

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, likely approved an operation to “capture or kill” the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to a declassified assessment of the killing released to the Congress by US intelligence agencies.

The central conclusion of the report confirms suspicions long held by intelligence officials after the 2 October 2018 murder of Khashoggi, a former Saudi insider in exile in the US who was an outspoken critic of the crown prince’s authoritarian consolidation of power.

The release of the assessment of the report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Friday could escalate pressure on Joe Biden’s administration to hold the kingdom accountable for a murder that drew international outrage.

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the ODNI wrote in a partly-redacted four-page summary.

It made the conclusion in light of bin Salman’s “control of decision-making in the kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of [the prince’s] protective detail in the operation, and [his] support for the using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi”.

“Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization,” it adds.

The news comes two years after Khashoggi attempted to visit the Saudi consulate in Instanbul to take papers that might have allowed him to marry his Turkish fiancee, Hadice Cengiz.

Though he was assured of his safety in the consulate, an investigation spearheaded by the UN and Turkish authorities found that a team of Saudi agents restrained, killed and then dismembered Khashoggi before smuggling his body out of the building. His remains have not been found since.

The prince said in 2019 he took “full responsibility” for the killing since it happened on his watch, but denied ordering it.

The release of the report is likely to be accompanied by further action from the US president’s administration, which could start with economic sanctions on top Saudi officials.

On Thursday, Mr Biden made a courtesy call to King Salman, the crown prince’s father, but a White House summary of the conversation made no mention of the killing and said instead that the men had discussed the countries’ longstanding partnership.

Former US President Donald Trump’s administration held back the long-awaited report despite a 2019 law passed by Congress requiring its release.

Additional reporting by news wires

Text of the U.S. assessment of Saudi government role in Khashoggi killing


By Reuters Staff


(Reuters) - Following is the text of the redacted report released on Friday by the Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) 

“Assessing the Saudi Government’s Role in the Killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” dated Feb. 11, 2021:

“(U) EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

(U) This report is provided by the ODNI. Questions should be directed to the NIO for Near East.

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

• We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi.

• Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization.

“Assessing the Saudi Government’s Role in the Killing of Jamal Khashoggi

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom since 2017, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi. Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization.

• At the time of the Khashoggi murder, the Crown Prince probably fostered an environment in which aides were afraid that failure to complete assigned tasks might result in him firing or arresting them. This suggests that the aides were unlikely to question Muhammad bin Salman’s orders or undertake sensitive actions without his consent.


• The 15-member Saudi team that arrived in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 included officials who worked for, or were associated with, the Saudi Center for Studies and Media Affairs (CSMARC) at the Royal Court. At the time of the operation, CSMARC was led by Saud al-Qahtani, a close adviser of Muhammad bin Salman, who claimed publicly in mid-2018 that he did not make decisions without the Crown Prince’s approval.

• The team also included seven members of Muhammad bin Salman’s elite personal protective detail, known as the Rapid Intervention Force (RIF). The RIF - a subset of the Saudi Royal Guard - exists to defend the Crown Prince, answers only to him, and had directly participated in earlier dissident suppression operations in the Kingdom and abroad at the Crown Prince’s direction. We judge that members of the RIF would not have participated in the operation against Khashoggi without Muhammad bin Salman’s approval.

• The Crown Prince viewed Khashoggi as a threat to the Kingdom and broadly supported using violent measures if necessary to silence him. Although Saudi officials had pre-planned an unspecified operation against Khashoggi we do not know how far in advance Saudi officials decided to harm him.

“We have high confidence that the following individuals participated in, ordered, or were otherwise complicit in or responsible for the death of Jamal Khashoggi on behalf of Muhammad bin Salman. We do not know whether these individuals knew in advance that the operation would result in Khashoggi’s death.

• (U) Saud al-Qahtani

• Maher Mutreb

• Naifal-Arifi

• Mohammed al-Zahrani

• Mansour Abahussain

• Badr al-Utaybah

• Abdul Aziz Al Hawsawi

• Waleed Abdullah Al Shihri

• Khalid Al Utaybah

• Tha’ar Al Harbi

• Fahd Shiahb Al Balawi

• Meshal al-Bustani

• Turki Al Shihri

• (U) Mustafa Al Madani

• (U) Saif Saad Al

• Ahmed Zayed Asiri

• Abdulla Mohammed Alhoeriny

• Yasir Khalid Alsalem

• Ibrahim al-Salim

• (U) Salah Al Tubaigy

• (U) Mohammed Al Utaybah”

 

Where did COVID come from? Five mysteries that remain

In the wake of the World Health Organization’s investigation, there are still key questions about when, where and how the pandemic began.

WHO investigators visit sites in China as part of their probe into the pandemic's origins.Credit: Hector Retemal/AFP/Getty

Following a month-long fact-finding mission in China, a World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic concluded that the virus probably originated in bats and passed to people through an intermediate animal. But fundamental questions remain about when, where and how SARS-CoV-2 first infected people.

As the international WHO team finalizes a report of its findings, which is expected next week, Nature speaks to four of the investigators about what they still want to know.

Was the virus circulating in Wuhan before the first known cases?

To trace the virus’s origin, it’s crucial to pin down exactly when the first cases occurred in people. The WHO team established that the first person known to have COVID-19 was an office worker in Wuhan with no recent travel history, who began showing symptoms on 8 December 2019, says Peter Ben Embarek, a food-safety scientist at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, who led the investigation. But the virus was probably spreading in the city before that, because it was well-established by later that month, he says.

Yet evidence of earlier spread has proved elusive. Researchers in China conducted an extensive survey of patient reports from hospitals in Wuhan made between October and December 2019, and identified fewer than 100 people who had symptoms of COVID-19. They then tested the blood of 67 of those people for antibodies generated by past infection with SARS-CoV-2, but found none. This suggests there wasn’t a large cluster of infections before December, or an unusual spike in deaths in the surrounding province of Hubei.

‘Major stones unturned’: COVID origin search must continue after WHO report, say scientists

But Ben Embarek says the analysis should be repeated using less restrictive symptom criteria, to make sure that researchers spot all potential COVID-19 cases.

Scientists in China should also search for evidence of past infection in some 200,000 archived samples currently held at the Wuhan Blood Center and from other regions across China, says team member Dominic Dwyer, a medical virologist at New South Wales Health Pathology in Sydney, Australia. This would show whether the virus was spreading in the general population in China — not just among people who went to health facilities — before December 2019.

Some scientists not involved in the WHO investigation have already looked at blood-bank samples taken up to a year before the pandemic, in Guangzhou, southern China. Close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 have been found in bats and pangolins in southern China. Some of the samples tested positive for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, but Ian Lipkin, an infectious-diseases researcher at Columbia University in New York City, who worked on the analysis, says the test was not specific enough to say for sure that the antibodies weren’t caused by infection with other viruses. “There is a lot of laboratory work that needs to be done that hasn’t been done,” says Lipkin, who also wants to know whether there are autopsy samples from before December 2019 that could be studied for traces of viral genetic material.

Was the virus spreading in people outside China before December 2019?

Answering this question is also key to establishing the timeline of the first COVID-19 cases. Previously, researchers in Europe have reported1,2,3 finding antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in samples taken at blood banks from November 2019 onwards.

Ben Embarek says this doesn’t necessarily suggest the virus originated in Europe, but supports the idea that it was spreading in Wuhan before the first known cases. “Wuhan at that time was a very well-connected international city with direct flights to the entire planet on a daily basis. So if it was circulating in Wuhan, it could easily have been brought to other parts of the world through travellers, and circulating again, undetected, in different regions,” he says.

Still, he recommends that the blood samples from Europe be retested to confirm that they indicate cases of COVID-19. Some of them, from Italy and France, are already being reanalysed, he says.

What was the role of the Huanan market?

The intermediate animal that passed the virus from bats to people has not been identified, but researchers think it might be a wild species that is sold as food in ‘wet markets’, which typically sell live animals. Early in the pandemic, investigators homed in on the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, because it sold fresh and frozen animals and many of the earliest infections were in people who had visited it. But the lead went cold when other early cases were found that were not associated with the market. Viral material was identified in drains and sewage at the market, but none was found on any animal carcasses.

Still, the market is the only place where a large number of the people infected at the start of the outbreak were exposed to meat and animals. It’s important to establish how the virus got into the market and whether it was on an animal, says WHO team member Hung Nguyen-Viet, an environment and food-safety researcher at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi.

Nguyen-Viet says the team identified ten stalls selling wildlife, either wild or farmed, that could have carried the virus into the market from farms in southern China. Some wild animals sold for meat, such as rabbits and ferret-badgers, are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 or the related virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

WHO team member Peter Daszak, president of the non-profit research organization Ecohealth Alliance in New York City, says the farms should be investigated to see whether there were infections in the animals or among workers. He also wants to know what animals were sold in other Wuhan markets. When the team interviewed the first person known to have COVID-19, he mentioned that his parents had visited a local community wet market, says Daszak.

Did frozen wild-animal meat have a role in the early spread of the virus?

The WHO team concluded that it’s most likely the virus jumped from live animals to people, but Ben Embarek says it is possible the virus entered the Huanan market through infected frozen wild animals from farms in southern China, and then sparked an outbreak. Daszak wonders whether frozen ferret-badgers sold at the market could have carried the virus. “These were carcasses skinned at the market, not just cubes of meat in a plastic packet,” he says.

Can COVID spread from frozen wildlife? Scientists probe pandemic origins

Although researchers in China have also isolated viral RNA from the packaging of imported frozen fish4, Ben Embarek says the WHO team concluded that these goods were not likely to be the route of the virus’s first arrival in Wuhan.

Lipkin says there is no evidence that the virus entered the market through infected frozen wild animals. It could have just as easily been brought in by infected people who handled wild animals, he says.

Was the virus circulating in animals in China before the pandemic?

To establish which animal passed the virus to people, researchers need to find evidence of the virus in that species. Researchers in China have tested some 30,000 wild, farmed and domestic animals in 2019 and 2020 but found no evidence of active or past SARS-CoV-2 infection, except in some cats in Wuhan in March 20205.

However, Ben Embarek says these surveys were not representative of China’s overall animal population, and that many more animals need to be tested for traces of infection, particularly on wildlife farms. “The amount of testing that’s been done is not sufficient to say, in any way, that wildlife farms were not carrying the virus,” says Daszak.

The explosive way in which the outbreak took off in Wuhan in December suggests that the virus was probably introduced once, through the wildlife trade, says Daszak. He says future testing should focus on farmed wild animals.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00502-4

References

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   Carrat, F. et al. Eur. J. Epidemiol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-020-00716-2 (2021).

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   Amendola, A. et al. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 27, 648–650 (2021).

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   Apolone, G. et al. Tumori J. https://doi.org/10.1177/0300891620974755 (2020).

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   Liu, P. et al. Biosaf. Health 2, 199–201 (2020).

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   Zhang, Q. et al. Emerg. Microbes. Infect. 9, 2013–2019 (2020).

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Ta-Nehisi Coates is writing a new Superman film produced by J.J. Abrams

A new actor is also expected to play the Man of Steel

By Ian Carlos Campbell@soupsthename Feb 26, 2021

Photo by Cheriss May / NurPhoto via Getty Images


Celebrated author and essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates is writing a new Superman film that will be produced by J.J. Abrams, Shadow and Act reports. The project has no release date or director attached yet, and there’s still no word on whether Henry Cavill will reprise his role. Shadow and Act suggests a search for a new actor to play Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman has yet to begin.

Coates is perhaps best known for his books Between the World and Me and The Beautiful Struggle, but he also has comics experience, writing popular runs on both Black Panther and Captain America. Coates is also working on several other in-development film and television projects, including a television series for HBO and a feature film adaption of a New Yorker article about Atlanta teachers, to be directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan.

It’s unknown at this point if this new Superman will be DC and Warner Media’s main version of the character going forward or more of an experimental side project like Joker and The Batman, but recasting the role opens up all sorts of exciting possibilities. Jordan himself reportedly met with Abrams about a new version of the character, which, given his work in Black Panther, could bode well for the new Man of Steel.


However things shake out, it seems like J.J. Abrams’ time as Warner Media producing guru (sealed to the tune of $250 million) is moving in some interesting directions: a Justice League Dark series, a new Superman, and a generally different future after years of Zack Snyder grimness.

Texans with disabilities left vulnerable after deep freeze

Disaster response programs can do better

By Justine Calma@justcalma Feb 26, 2021

Volunteers with the Living Hope Wheelchair Association distributed water and supplies to people after Texas’ deep freeze. Image: Living Hope Wheelchair Association

Disaster response plans often fail to include people with disabilities, and the deadly deep freeze that swept across Texas and much of the mainland US last week was no exception.

“A lot of people in our community, they’re like, ‘I’m so damn tired that I have to be resilient. This isn’t our fault,’” says Tomás Aguilar, disaster recovery coordinator for the Living Hope Wheelchair Association in Houston, a group that provides services to immigrants with disabilities. “No, we don’t need a cheerleader. We need water.”

“WE DON’T NEED A CHEERLEADER. WE NEED WATER.”

The winter storms that froze up power and water systems last week left a humanitarian disaster in its wake. First, people were left in the brutal cold without power or heat. Then came the shortage of food supplies and clean drinking water. As has happened before, the crises hit people with disabilities and chronic illnesses especially hard.

In one harrowing example, more than 100 residents of an Austin retirement community went two days without power and little food after its generator failed on February 15th. Staff at the high-rise facility for low-income people who are older or disabled ran up and down 16 flights of stairs to check in on residents and ration out food, the Texas Tribune reported. Losing power can be especially isolating and dangerous for people who use electric wheelchairs or who rely on electronic medical devices like feeding tube pumps. When emergency responders arrived on February 17th, they had to carry residents out who wanted to be evacuated.

As Texans’ food and water dwindled across the state because of storm-related disruptions, Aguilar says people who use wheelchairs had an even harder time getting supplies than people without disabilities. People with spinal cord injuries can have a more difficult time regulating their body temperature, making it difficult for them to brave the cold to line up at grocery stores or food banks. People who rely on paratransit services to get around can have a harder time lining up for supplies, too.

“Are you going to get in line with the hundreds of cars in line already with that paratransit service? They’re not going to do that,” Aguilar says. His group has been filling five-gallon jugs with water from the organization’s sink to bring to people without water.

THESE KINDS OF STRUGGLES AREN’T NEW

These kinds of struggles aren’t new. During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, people with disabilities were left waiting in floodwaters for emergency responders who could accommodate their wheelchairs. One photo of people sitting in waist-deep water in an assisted living facility in Dickinson, Texas, went viral after Harvey.

These problems are also not exclusive to Texas. Nearly a decade ago, after Hurricane Sandy, some New Yorkers with disabilities were left stranded in their homes. One woman spent six days in her apartment without power, heat, or running water. She spent much of that time in bed after her electric wheelchair ran out of juice. A bus actually arrived to evacuate people at her public housing building at one point, but she couldn’t get to it — and even if she had, it wasn’t equipped to accommodate a wheelchair. After surviving the storm, she became a staunch advocate for more inclusive disaster response programs. But five years later, her building still hadn’t installed one of the simple fixes she pushed for: an evacuation chair that allows people to get down stairs even when the power is out.

It is unacceptable that so many years later, similar stories keep playing out. The blackout could have been prevented by investing in making the grid — not people — more resilient. Similarly, the struggles that people with disabilities faced during the crisis could also have been avoided by some simple changes to planning and infrastructure. Back-up generators and evacuation chairs could be installed in buildings where people with disabilities live. Emergency shelters could make sure to incorporate accessible bathrooms into their design and provide access to medical treatments like dialysis. And emergency response vehicles should be made more accessible so that people can get on them with their wheelchairs or other mobility aids.

ALL IT TAKES TO FIND SOLUTIONS IS MORE ROOM AT DECISION-MAKING TABLES FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

All it takes to find those solutions is more room at decision-making tables for people with disabilities. Plenty of groups similar to Aguilar’s are pushing for change. There’s the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, which has a disaster hotline. There are also guidelines from the Department of Justice on how to ensure emergency preparedness and response programs comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“Vulnerable communities, the elderly, folks with disabilities — when everyone gets hit, they always get hit harder,” Aguilar says. “But it’s totally preventable.”