Archive by Author

Biden offers brief message for North Korea's Kim: 'Hello. Period'

President Biden, who is on a multiday trip to Asia, had a brief message for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday.

Asked during a stop in Seoul if Biden has a message for Kim while in the region, the president responded, “Hello. Period.”

The comment comes one day after Biden said he would consider meeting with the North Korean leader if he was “sincere” and “serious” about discussions regarding Pyongyang’s nuclear program. North Korea’s nuclear arsenal has been the focus of heightened tensions between the country and the U.S.

It is not customary for U.S. presidents to meet with the leader of North Korea, but former President Trump generated headlines during his time in office for meeting with Kim three times. During one encounter, Trump stepped into North Korea.

The U.S.’s talks with North Korea during the Trump presidency regarding the North’s nuclear program, however, were not successful.

Now, the Biden administration is preparing for North Korea to potentially launch a ballistic missile or nuclear test while Biden is traveling through Asia. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan last week said such an instance was a “genuine possibility” during or in close proximity to Biden’s trip.

North Korea has launched a number of ballistic missile tests this year, but it has not conducted a nuclear test since 2017.

Biden set off on a trip to Asia on Thursday, marking his first visit to the region during his presidency.

He capped off a three-day stop in South Korea on Sunday at Osan Air Base, where service members from the U.S. and South Korea monitor the North’s nuclear threat.

Biden, in the command center of the base, said, “you are the front line, right here in this room.”

The president is now headed to Japan.

Source: TEST FEED1

Experts see progress on federal cybersecurity

After grappling with multiple devastating cyberattacks, experts are applauding the progress made by the White House in the year since President Biden signed an executive order aimed to strengthen federal cybersecurity. 

They are particularly impressed with the improvements to make it easier for the government and the private sector to share threat information. 

“I’ve seen much more directive, actionable steps coming out now and I think the executive order is a big reason for that,” said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer at Veracode. 

The May 2021 order sought to help secure federal government networks and critical infrastructure against cyber strikes. It introduced several key initiatives, including facilitating threat information sharing between the government and the private sector, modernizing federal cybersecurity standards and improving software supply chain security, among others.  

Wysopal added that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has been frequently sharing threat intelligence and issuing guidance on the best cybersecurity practices to adopt, including implementing multi-factor authentication and using encryption.  

“CISA has really improved immensely in that area,” he said. 

Kelly Rozumalski, a senior vice president at technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton with similar views, said the order paved the way for better coordination between sectors. 

“I think the public-private partnership portion of the executive order has really been key,” Rozumalski said.  

CISA has played a key role in pushing some of the order’s initiatives forward, including publishing a standardized playbook on cybersecurity vulnerabilities and incident response. The playbook ensures that all federal agencies meet certain standards and are prepared to mitigate and respond to cyber incidents.   

The agency also launched the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) last year in an effort to encourage more and better collaboration between public and private sectors.  

Since then, CISA has partnered with numerous companies in the private sector to push forward that effort, which includes implementing nationwide cyber defense strategies, sharing information and other steps to mitigate the risks of cyberattacks. 

“The cyber executive order really set the foundations for how to evolve national and federal cyber defense,” Rozumalski said. 

Calling the order long overdue, Wysopal said its directives are practical and comprehensive, adding that the mandate covered more ground than he was expecting. 

Prior to the order, there was a lot of talk but no action in Congress about concrete ways to improve federal cybersecurity, Wysospal said.  

“[The order] sort of changed the status quo from best practices to practicality,” he said, adding that it “helped push things forward which were kind of stuck for years.”  

He added that the federal mandate had ripple effects in the private sector that pushed companies to take cybersecurity more seriously.  

The executive order was introduced amid major cyber incidents in the past few years, including SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline, that disrupted critical sectors. 

Last May, the Colonial Pipeline was hit by a destructive ransomware attack, forcing it to shut down operations for nearly a week.  

The year before, SolarWinds, a Texas-based software firm, was breached when Russian state-sponsored hackers exploited vulnerabilities in its updates to penetrate the networks of nine federal agencies and at least 100 private sector organizations.   

The SolarWinds hack specifically prompted a directive in the order that would require baseline security standards for software sold to the government.  

“Putting those requirements on suppliers has really forced suppliers to take software security seriously,” Wysopal said, adding that many companies in the private sector now also require that suppliers sell them upgraded and secure software.  

Rozumlaski added that while it’s helpful to develop standards and guidelines for supply chain security, it’s also important to focus on risk management to identify, analyze and address potential cyber threats. For instance, she said, companies should include cyber threat modeling, testing and software emulation in their risk management plan.

“We need better risk management,” she said, adding that “we really need to understand the threats that impact the supply chain and not just focus on the standards on this checklist.”

Cyber officials testifying before Congress this came to similar conclusions as the outside experts who spoke to The Hill, telling lawmakers they’ve made “significant progress” in improving and securing federal networks from cyber threats.  

Although some federal agencies are not yet at the level they want, they have implemented security measures, including multi-factor authentication and encryption, that have the most impact on securing federal networks.  

“We’ve got a lot of work ahead, but I really feel very good about the progress we’re making and the path we put ourselves on,” Christopher DeRusha, the deputy national cyber director in the executive office of the president, told the House Homeland Security subcommittee on cybersecurity on Tuesday. 

The lawmakers asked the officials whether the Biden administration has taken steps to secure the networks of federal agencies in response to the recent Russian cyber threats.  

DeRusha said his office has met with federal chief information officers since November to discuss the threat levels and how to prepare for them. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden says 'everybody' should be concerned about monkeypox

President Biden said Sunday that “everybody” should be concerned about the recent cases of monkeypox detected in the United States and Europe.  

Biden, who took questions from reporters before departing South Korea for Japan, said his health advisers had not yet briefed him on the “level of exposure” of the disease other than to express that it spreading would be “consequential.” 

“They haven’t told me the level of exposure yet, but it is something that everybody should be concerned about,” Biden said. “We’re working on it hard to figure out what we do and what vaccine, if any, may be available for it.”
 
“But it is a concern in the sense that if it were to spread, it’s consequential.  That’s all they have told me,” Biden added.  

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan later told reporters aboard Air Force One that the U.S. has vaccines ready to deploy that are “relevant to treating monkeypox.” Sullivan said he has been briefing Biden, who is currently on a multiday trip to Asia, on the situation based on written updates from the administration’s health officials.

Monkeypox is a rare virus that is typically detected in Africa, but recent confirmed cases in the U.S., Europe and Canada have perplexed scientists and caused concern.  

Massachusetts public health officials confirmed a case of monkeypox in a person who had recently traveled to Canada. In total, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it is tracking 80 confirmed cases and 50 possible cases across 11 countries.  

“WHO is working with the affected countries and others to expand disease surveillance to find and support people who may be affected, and to provide guidance on how to manage the disease,” the organization said in a statement on Friday.   

The globe is already on heightened alert over the threat from dangerous viruses after more than two years battling the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.  

Monkeypox spreads in a different way than COVID-19, the WHO noted, specifically through close contact with an infected person or animal. Symptoms of the virus include rashes, fever and swollen lymph nodes.  

Source: TEST FEED1

DOJ vows ramped up effort against hate crime after Buffalo shooting

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is vowing to ramp up efforts to confront hate crime, a pledge that comes amid growing concerns that the white nationalist ideology behind the deadly Buffalo shooting has increasingly moved from the political fringes into the mainstream.

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday addressed the racially motivated rampage, saying the department would use “every legal tool at our disposal” to investigate the attack and combat what he described as the “evolving” threat of hate crime.  

“Unfortunately, we are gathered today in the shadow, in the wake of another horrific attack,” Garland told an audience in Washington. “We commit to using every resource of the Department of Justice to prevent these kinds of acts of hate, to hold accountable those who commit them and to support the communities that are damaged and terrorized by them.”

The shooting spree at a Buffalo supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood on May 14 killed 10 and injured three others; all but two of the victims were Black. The alleged assailant, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of first-degree murder.

The DOJ said it was investigating the attack as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism. The federal government last year reported 8,305 hate crimes in 2020, the highest recorded figure in roughly two decades. 

Garland was scheduled to meet Friday with NAACP leaders to discuss the threat of white supremacy and its presence on social media. Ahead of their meeting, the group’s president Derrick Johnson issued a moral call to corporate America and said businesses that profit from white supremacy should be held accountable for “the serious role they play in the spike of hate crimes.” 

The DOJ’s determination to probe the Buffalo shooting as a hate crime was based in part on a 180-page manifesto the suspect allegedly posted on the internet two days before the attack in which he described being motivated by white nationalism. 

The online screed expresses existential fear that a group of elites has set up U.S. policy to overrun the white population through an influx of minorities with higher fertility rates, done with the aim of “replacing” white Americans.

This so-called “great replacement theory,” which has long had a history at the fringes of U.S. politics, gained a recent mainstream foothold under President Trump. Many of his political allies have followed suit by regularly invoking themes of white grievance and racial resentment.

In the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) was among the fiercest critics of those in her own party who have engaged with white nationalist ideology or refused to condemn it.

“The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse,” Cheney wrote on Twitter. “@GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”

Conservative commentators have also come under intense scrutiny since the Buffalo shooting. A New York Times investigation of Tucker Carlson’s primetime Fox News show found that more than 400 episodes promoted core tenets of the replacement theory, making him one of the most prominent mouthpieces for the theory.  

Prior to meeting with Garland on Friday, Johnson, of the NAACP, singled out Carlson and his show’s parent company.

“Fox News represents the worst of American broadcasting,” Johnson said. “The media outlet, through shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight, has used its ‘news’ division to sow bigotry and racism, create dissension, spread misinformation, and promote conspiracy theories that continually encourage violence.”

Experts in political violence say America had reached a turning point in recognizing just how mainstream white nationalism had become.

“It’s a really big thing that we’ve come to that realization because otherwise it’s too easy for the administration, politicians, other media figures to just continually duck the issue,” said Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

Appearing alongside Garland on Friday to announce a new anti-hate crime initiative was Vanita Gupta, who holds the No. 3 position at DOJ. She emphasized that part of the department’s focus will be on prevention and deterrence, aided in part by a new program to help local law enforcement and communities report suspected hate crimes to the federal government.

“We use our criminal enforcement authority to prosecute those who commit hate crimes. But we also know it is not enough to wait until a hate crime occurs,” she said. “We have to address hate well before it escalates into violence.” 

Pape, of the University of Chicago, said the mainstreaming of the white nationalist ideology — which he called “extremely dangerous” — has made the environment more primed for violence.

“What happens when these ideas get in the mainstream is that it can trigger volatile people. It sort of lowers the threshold of where volatile will see what they’re doing as legitimate,” he said. “And if you read the manifesto, he fully thinks what he’s doing is legitimate and that what he’s going to do is make this even more legitimate.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Republicans vow to kill domestic terrorism bill in Senate 

Senate Republicans are lining up against a House-passed bill that would authorize special offices within the government to investigate and monitor domestic terrorism, which is being pushed in the wake of a racist shooting in Buffalo that left 10 people dead.

The GOP compares the proposal, which sets up offices in the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the FBI to target domestic terrorism, to the recently paused disinformation board set up by the Biden administration.

“It sounds terrible,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) of the House-passed bill, predicting it won’t get 10 Republicans in the Senate.  

“It’s like the disinformation board on steroids. Another way to look at is the Patriot Act for American citizens,” he added, referring to the law passed immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that expanded the government’s power to monitor phone and email conversations and collect bank records.  

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) says he will bring the bill to the floor this week as a response to the killings at a Buffalo supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood. The bill passed the House 222-203 on a mostly party-line vote, with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) casting the only GOP vote in favor.  

Democrats increasingly see the need for the government to take more action against the threat of domestic terrorism given a long string of incidents that includes the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and several mass shootings targeting Blacks, Hispanics and Jewish people.

But the efforts have run into opposition from the GOP.

Senate conservatives say empowering the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice with new authority to monitor domestic terrorism could easily morph into federal policing of political speech, and they worry it would be more targeted toward anti-government, anti-immigration activists than extreme left-wing groups.   

“I’m completely opposed to this idea that we would be giving the federal government and federal law enforcement power and authority to surveil Americans, to engage in any kind of monitoring of speech that is directed toward censorship. I think it’s extremely frightening and I can’t believe they haven’t learned their lesson from the disinformation board debacle,” Hawley said.  

The Biden administration ran into a storm of controversy last month when it announced the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board “to coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security.” The backlash grew so intense that the Homeland Security Department put the project on pause after three weeks and its executive director, Nina Jankowicz, resigned.  

Republican lawmakers argue that bringing the bill to the floor after the shooting in Buffalo is a veiled political attack on conservative critics of illegal immigration.

Some Senate Republicans see the domestic terrorism bill as another attempt to target the right and point to calls that Democrats made in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol to begin monitoring groups on the right as potential domestic terrorism threats.   

“That’s exactly what it is,” said Hawley, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security has taken “a very different tone” with groups on the left that have threatened violence against Supreme Court justices after a draft ruling overturing Roe v. Wade leaked.  

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a senior member of the Homeland Security Committee, said law enforcement is already supposed to be tracking domestic terrorism threats.  

“The Democrats can’t even wait an hour before they blame the Republicans for the Buffalo shooting. I think it’s despicable,” he said.  

Johnson said “there’s a huge double standard” between calls by Democrats to authorize federal law enforcement to track extreme speech when it comes from groups on the right compared to groups on the left.  

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called on the Department of Defense to investigate white supremacy and extreme ideology in the military after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The Justice Department announced in January the formation of a special unit to fight domestic terrorism and has doubled its investigations of people suspected of fomenting domestic extremism over the past two years, signaling it’s a top priority for Attorney General Merrick Garland.  

The Biden administration unveiled a 32-page plan in June for identifying domestic extremists, an issue that took on new urgency for the mob of Trump supporters swarmed the Capitol in January of 2021 in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.  

The shooting in Buffalo has given Democrats on the Hill a new reason to crack down on domestic terrorism after the 18-year-old murder suspect, Payton Gendron, allegedly posted a manifesto that cited replacement theory.  

President Biden and Schumer have implicitly and explicitly blamed the shooting on conservative pundits, commentators and some politicians who have amplified a conspiracy theory that posits that Democrats are trying to undermine the political influence of White Christian voters in the country by encouraging illegal immigration.

“The mass killing in Buffalo last weekend was a tragic reminder of the threat posed by violent White supremacists and other far-right extremists,” Sen. Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said at a press conference, announcing that he would circulate the Senate’s domestic terrorism bill among GOP colleagues in hope of winning their support.  

He noted that in March of last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that the threat of domestic terrorism is “metastasizing” across the country.  

“We’ve seen evidence of that in so many places. Sadly we saw it in Buffalo,” Durbin said.  

But so far, no Republicans have signed onto the bill, Durbin told The Hill.  

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would be very surprised if the bill gets 10 Republican votes to overcome an expected filibuster.  

“I get a little concerned when people want to pass new laws to supplement laws that are already in place that would be used to charge people with crimes. I don’t necessarily believe we need a new law to convict people who have committed other crimes,” he said of the domestic terrorism bill.  

“I’m a little wary of the political motivation and charging Americans who otherwise engaged in peaceful protest with crimes,” he said.  

Source: TEST FEED1

2 dead, 3 injured in shooting at Indiana residence

A shooting at an Indiana residence Saturday afternoon left two people dead and three injured, according to police.

One male victim died at the scene, while another male victim died after being taken to the hospital for treatment, the Goshen Police Department said in a Facebook post.

Three female victims who were injured in the shooting have been transported to trauma hospitals in Fort Wayne and South Bend.

The Goshen, Ind., shooting is being investigated by the Elkhart County Homicide Unit as well as the Goshen Police Department.

Three women were also injured and have been transported to trauma hospitals in Fort Wayne and South Bend.

“Although the investigation is on-going, preliminary information indicates that the shooting was targeted, not gang related, and there does not appear to be any further threat of danger to the community at this time,” wrote the Goshen Police Department.

Source: TEST FEED1

Abbott CEO details 'serious steps' company is taking to address baby formula shortage

Abbott Laboratories CEO Robert Ford described the “serious steps” his company is taking to address the baby formula shortage, which he said was “exacerbated” by the company’s voluntary recall of its products for health reasons, in an op-ed published in The Washington Post on Saturday.

Abbott Nutrition, one of the largest producers of baby formula in the U.S., recalled several of its powdered baby formula products earlier this year following reports that four infants fell ill from the same rare infection after ingesting formula made at the company’s Sturgis, Mich., plant. The facility has been shutdown since February amid an investigation into safety concerns by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“We’re sorry to every family we’ve let down since our voluntary recall exacerbated our nation’s baby formula shortage,” Ford wrote in his opinion piece.

He continued: “We believe our voluntary recall was the right thing to do. We will not take risks when it comes to the health of children.”

Ford clarified that the infection contracted by the four infants, eventually killing two of them, was not found to be linked to Abbott’s products.

“The data collected during the investigation, genetic sequencing, retained product samples and available product from the four complaints did not find any connection between our products and the four reported illnesses in children. However, the FDA’s investigation did discover a bacteria in our plant that we will not tolerate,” wrote Ford. “I have high expectations of this company, and we fell short of them.”

Ford detailed the steps Abbott is taking to combat the shortage, including “rigorous inspections” of its products and accelerations of production processes.

He specifically addressed the impact of the shortage of Elecare, a type of infant formula specially made for babies with digestive problems.

“We will prioritize EleCare when manufacturing resumes and get that out the door first,” Ford wrote, adding that the company is creating a $5 million fund to help families whose children have been hospitalized because they don’t have access to the specialized product.

Ford said that Abbott has “been taking serious steps to relieve the supply crisis” at its own plants.

“We converted lines of our adult nutrition products at our Columbus, Ohio, plant to prioritize production of ready-to-feed liquid infant formula. And we have been air-shipping millions of cans of our most widely used powdered infant formula from an FDA-approved facility in Ireland to the United States since the recall,” he explained.

Earlier this week, Abbott Nutrition said it had reached an agreement with the FDA on a plan to restart operations at its shuttered Michigan plant. Ford wrote in his op-ed that the company expects to be able to reopen the facility by the first week of June, and get products produced there to retail shelves six to eight weeks after that.

“When we are operating our Michigan facility at full capacity, we will more than double our current production of powdered infant formula for the United States. By the end of June, we will be supplying more formula to Americans than we were in January before the recall,” Ford wrote.

He added: “Finally, we are making significant investments to ensure this never happens again. We plan to expand both capacity and redundancy. This will increase the nation’s formula supply and create the redundancy we need to never have to stop production of critical products such as EleCare again. And we will similarly invest in upgrading our safety and quality processes and equipment.”

Source: TEST FEED1

FDA, CDC investigate salmonella outbreak connected to Jif peanut butter products

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Friday that it is conducting an investigation into a multistate salmonella outbreak linked to Jif peanut butter products.

The FDA has partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and various state and local agencies to investigate foods produced at a J.M. Smucker Company facility in Lexington, Ky.

The facility is “likely” the origin point of the Salmonella Senftenberg infections that broke out among five people, all of whom said they ingested peanut butter prior to falling ill, the FDA said, citing the CDC.

Four of the five people specifically said they ingested Jif brand peanut butter before they fell ill, according to the agency.

“FDA conducted Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) analysis on an environmental sample collected at the Lexington, KY, J.M. Smucker Company facility in 2010. The analysis shows that this 2010 environmental sample matches the strain causing illnesses in this current outbreak,” said the FDA in a statement.

The J.M. Smucker Company voluntarily recalled a number of Jif peanut butter products that have been distributed around the U.S. Friday, warning consumers that “Salmonella is an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems.”

The company announced Saturday that it would also voluntarily recall several of its products sold in Canada due to potential contamination.

Source: TEST FEED1

Zelensky says Russia has blocked Ukraine from exporting 22M tons of food products

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that Russia has blocked the embattled country from exporting 22 million tons of food products.

Speaking with media representatives following a meeting with Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, Zelensky said that the worldwide energy crisis would be followed by a food crisis if other countries do not aid Ukraine in unblocking its ports and resuming exports.

Food prices are already skyrocketing around the world, causing some countries to ban the exports of key agricultural commodities.

In the U.S., the annual index for consumer food prices shot up by 9.4 percent in April, reaching a 40-year high.

“There will be a crisis in the world. The second crisis after the energy one, which was provoked by Russia. Now it will create a food crisis if we do not unblock the routes for Ukraine, do not help the countries of Africa, Europe, Asia, which need these food products,” Zelensky warned.

Zelensky pleaded with the international community to provide aid to Ukraine, specifically military equipment that can be used to unblock Ukrainian ports.

“Russia has blocked almost all ports and all, so to speak, maritime opportunities to export food – our grain, barley, sunflower and more,” said Zelensky. “You can unblock them in different ways. One of the ways is a military solution. That is why we turn to our partners with inquiries regarding the relevant weapons.”

The same day, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a massive Ukraine aid package into law, encompassing security, humanitarian and economic assistance.

The $40 billion package is the largest yet from the U.S. to Ukraine, bringing the total aid for Ukraine that Congress has approved this year to nearly $54 billion.

Source: TEST FEED1