Category:

International News

Retail sector top target for ransomware attack in 2020: Report

“The retail sector has always been an attractive target for cyberattacks, with its complex, distributed IT environments, including a multitude of connected point-of-sale devices, a relatively transient and non-technical workforce, and access to a wide range of personal and financial customer data,” said Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist at Sophos, in a statement.

read more

Worst Algeria wildfires in decades kill 65

While wildfires are a relatively regular occurrence in Algeria, this week’s were the country’s biggest and deadliest in several decades. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced three days of national mourning on Wednesday.French-language TSA Algerie, which visited Kabylie on Wednesday, said the wildfires left a trail of desolation all along the usually lush road linking Tizi Ouzou to Bouira. Several villages were abandoned.

read more

Severe weather events drive global insured cat losses of $ 42 billion in first half of 2021, Swiss Re 

Jérôme Jean Haegeli, Swiss Re’s Group Chief Economist, said: “Climate change is one of the biggest risks facing society and the global economy. The recent analysis from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms expectations of more extreme weather in the future and urgency to act to limit global warming. Working with the public sector, the re/insurance industry plays a key role in helping to strengthen communities’ resilience by steering development away from high-risk areas, making adaptation investments, maintaining insurability of assets and narrowing protection gaps.“

read more

Sompo Global Risk Solutions to offer Epidemic and Pandemic protection

Triggered by civil authority restriction resulting from international public health emergencies declared by the World Health Organization, the new Sompo GRS Epidemic and Pandemic Protection Program provides insurance based on a number of available pre-set coverage options including loss of income, extra expense, debt servicing, supply chain disruption and other fixed costs.

In its first year, limited capacity for the program is available to Sompo GRS clients and their captives in the real estate, hospitality, financial services, professional services, technology and life sciences industries, as well as the unit’s Asian-interest accounts.

read more

UN experts call to impose moratorium on sale of surveillance technology

Two years ago the then UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression published a report on the dangerous impact of surveillance technology on human rights and recommended an immediate moratorium on its sale and transfer until international regulations incorporating human rights safeguards were adopted. The international community failed to heed his call.

read more

Covid-19: China’s port shutdown raises fears of closures worldwide

The shutdown at Ningbo-Zhoushan is raising fears that ports around the world will soon face the same kind of outbreaks and Covid restrictions that slowed the flows of everything from perishable food to electronics last year as the pandemic took hold. Infections are threatening to spread at docks just as the world’s shipping system is already struggling to handle unprecedented demand with economies reopening and manufacturing picking up.

read more

Global sizzling: July was hottest month in 142 years, NOAA says

In this case first place is the worst place to be, NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe.”

This is climate change,” said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann. It is an exclamation mark on a summer of unprecedented heat, drought, wildfires and flooding.

read more

Sex scandal in Alibaba sparks #MeToo moment in China

“An Alibaba executive raped his female employee, but the company has taken no action!” she screamed, handing out the leaflets to stunned colleagues until security guards forcibly removed her. “No one is taking responsibility!”

The allegations she printed on those pages, and in a lengthy post over the weekend that went viral on China’s tightly controlled internet, are now reverberating across the upper echelons of Alibaba and in C-suites across much of the country.

read more