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Eco/Invest/Demography

Brazil’s supreme court rules Covid-19 vaccination can be made mandatory

Bolsonaro has launched an attack on coronavirus vaccines, even suggesting that the one developed by Pfizer-BioNTech could turn people into crocodiles or bearded ladies.
“In the Pfizer contract it’s very clear: ‘we’re not responsible for any side effects.’ If you turn into a crocodile, it’s your problem,” Bolsonaro said on Thursday.That vaccine has been undergoing tests in Brazil for weeks and is already being used in the United States and Britain.

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Hack against US is ‘grave threat’, cybersecurity agency says

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in its most detailed comments yet that the intrusion had compromised federal agencies as well as critical infrastructure in a sophisticated attack that was hard to detect and will be difficult to undo
This threat actor has demonstrated sophistication and complex tradecraft in these intrusions, the agency said in its unusual alert. CISA expects that removing the threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging.

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Vaccination for COVID-19 will be voluntary: Health ministry

“Vaccination for COVID-19 is voluntary. However, it is advisable to receive the complete schedule of the vaccine for protecting one-self against this disease and also to limit the spread of this disease to the close contacts including family members, friends, relatives and co-workers,” the ministry said in response to a question on if it is mandatory to take the shot.

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Microsoft says it found malicious software in its systems

The U.S. National Security Agency issued a rare “cybersecurity advisory” Thursday detailing how certain Microsoft Azure cloud services may have been compromised by hackers and directing users to lock down their systems.

“Like other SolarWinds customers, we have been actively looking for indicators of this actor and can confirm that we detected malicious Solar Winds binaries in our environment, which we isolated and removed,” a Microsoft spokesperson said, adding that the company had found “no indications that our systems were used to attack others.”

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With 22,890 fresh cases, India’s COVID-19 tally rises to 99.79 lakh

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 95,20,827, pushing the national recovery rate to 95.40 per cent. The COVID-19 case fatality rate stands at 1.45 per cent.

The COVID-19 active caseload remained below four lakh for the 12th consecutive day.

There are 3,13,831 active cases in the country which comprise 3.14 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.

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From insurers to landlords, retailers to restaurants, COVID tarnsforms  Economies

Like no other event in memory, the pandemic has upended economies in the United States and across the world — transforming how people work, travel, eat, shop and congregate. It has changed how students are educated, how people communicate, how households are entertained and which industries, geographic areas and categories of people will thrive and which will suffer.

It has widened a gap between educated and affluent people who can work from home and the less fortunate — people in lower-income households without college educations or high skills who depend solely on wages rather than stock or home equity gains — who now stand to be left further behind. And it’s forced many working mothers to quit their jobs for lack of child care.

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