Strasbourg-based court rejects complaint by Afghan citizen over Germany’s handling of investigation into 2009 incident.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Germany thoroughly investigated a 2009 NATO bombing in Afghanistan that was ordered by a German commander and killed dozens of people.

The decision by the Strasbourg-based court on Tuesday rejected a complaint by Afghan citizen Abdul Hanan, who lost two sons in the attack, that Germany did not fulfil its obligation to effectively investigate the incident.

The air attack was ordered by the commander of NATO troops in Kunduz, Georg Klein, who called in a United States fighter jet to strike two fuel trucks near the city of Kunduz which NATO believed had been hijacked by Taliban fighters.

Contrary to the intelligence Klein based his decision on, most of those surrounding the trucks were local civilians invited by the Taliban to siphon fuel from the vehicles after they had become stuck in a riverbed.

The Afghan government said at the time 99 people, including 30 civilians, were killed. Independent rights groups estimated between 60 and 70 civilians were killed.

Ruling ‘important internationally’

Germany’s federal prosecutor general had found that Klein did not incur criminal liability, mainly because he was convinced when he ordered the air attack that no civilians were present.

For him to be liable under international law, he would have had to be found to have acted with intent to cause excessive civilian casualties.

The ECHR considered the effectiveness of Germany’s investigation, including whether it established a justification for lethal use of force. It did not consider the legality of the air attack.

It found that German federal prosecutors were “able to rely on a considerable amount of material concerning the circumstances and the impact of the airstrike”.

It also noted that courts including Germany’s highest, the Federal Constitutional Court, rejected cases by Hanan. And it added that a parliamentary commission of inquiry “had ensured a high level of public scrutiny of the case”.

Wolfgang Kaleck, the head of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights who provided legal support to Hanan, said the verdict was a disappointment for the latter but noted that judges had made clear that governments have a duty to at least investigate such cases.

“The bombardment and the dozens of civilian deaths didn’t result in a rebuke, there’s no resumption of the criminal case,” he told reporters after the court announced its decision.

“On the other hand, it will be very important internationally, also in future, that the European Convention on Human Rights applies,” Kaleck said. “That’s to say, those who conduct such military operations have to legally answer for them afterward, hopefully to a greater extent than in the Kunduz case.”

Afghanistan peace agreement

A separate legal effort to force Germany to pay more compensation than the $5,000 it has so far given families for each victim was rejected last year by the Federal Constitutional Court. This civil case can still be appealed in Strasbourg.

Kaleck said he hoped the German government, which initially branded those affected – including children – as Taliban and denied them access to legal files for months, would reach out to the victims with a formal apology, now that the threat of criminal liability is off the table.

Klein has since been promoted to the rank of brigadier general.

Germany, meanwhile, continues to have the second-largest contingent of all 9,600 NATO troops in Afghanistan, behind the US.

A 2020 peace agreement between the Taliban and the US calls for foreign troops to withdraw by May 1, but new President Joe Biden’s administration is reviewing the deal.

Germany is preparing to extend the mandate for its military mission in Afghanistan from March 31 until the end of this year, with troop levels remaining at up to 1,300, according to a draft document seen by Reuters news agency.

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Russia-linked state-sponsored threat actor known as Sandworm has been linked to a three-year-long stealthy operation to hack targets by exploiting an IT monitoring tool called Centreon.

The intrusion campaign — which breached “several French entities” — is said to have started in late 2017 and lasted until 2020, with the attacks particularly impacting web-hosting providers, said the French information security agency ANSSI in an advisory.

“On compromised systems, ANSSI discovered the presence of a backdoor in the form of a webshell dropped on several Centreon servers exposed to the internet,” the agency said on Monday. “This backdoor was identified as being the PAS webshell, version number 3.1.4. On the same servers, ANSSI found another backdoor identical to one described by ESET and named Exaramel.”

The Russian hacker group (also called APT28, TeleBots, Voodoo Bear, or Iron Viking) is said to be behind some of the most devastating cyberattacks in past years, including that of Ukraine’s power grid in 2016, the NotPetya ransomware outbreak of 2017, and the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in 2018.

While the initial attack vector seems unknown as yet, the compromise of victim networks was tied to Centreon, an application, and network monitoring software developed by a French company of the same name.

Centreon, founded in 2005, counts Airbus, Air Caraïbes, ArcelorMittal, BT, Luxottica, Kuehne + Nagel, Ministère de la Justice français, New Zealand Police, PWC Russia, Salomon, Sanofi, and Sephora among its customers. It’s not clear how many or which organizations were breached via the software hack.

Compromised servers ran the CENTOS operating system (version 2.5.2), ANSSI said, adding it found on the two different kinds of malware — one publicly available webshell called PAS, and another known as Exaramel, which has been used by Sandworm in previous attacks since 2018.

The web shell comes equipped with features to handle file operations, search the file system, interact with SQL databases, carry out brute-force password attacks against SSH, FTP, POP3, and MySQL, create a reverse shell, and run arbitrary PHP commands.

Exaramel, on the other hand, functions as a remote administration tool capable of shell command execution and copying files to and fro between an attacker-controlled server and the infected system. It also communicates using HTTPS with its command-and-control (C2) server in order to retrieve a list of commands to run.

In addition, ANSSI’s investigation revealed the use of common VPN services in order to connect to web shells, with overlaps in C2 infrastructure connecting the operation to Sandworm.

“The intrusion set Sandworm is known to lead consequent intrusion campaigns before focusing on specific targets that fits its strategic interests within the victims pool,” the researchers detailed. “The campaign observed by ANSSI fits this behaviour.”

In light of the SolarWinds supply-chain attack, it should come as no surprise that monitoring systems such as Centreon have become a lucrative target for bad actors to gain a foothold and laterally move across victim environments. But unlike the former’s supply chain compromise, the newly disclosed attacks differ in that they appear to have been carried out by leveraging internet-facing servers running Centreon’s software inside the victims’ networks.

“It is therefore recommended to update applications as soon as vulnerabilities are public and corrective patches are issued,” ANSSI warned. “It is recommended either not to expose these tools’ web interfaces to [the] Internet or to restrict such access using non-applicative authentication.”

In October 2020, the U.S. government formally charged six Russian military officers for their participation in destructive malware attacks orchestrated by this group, linking the Sandworm threat group to Unit 74455 of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), a military intelligence agency part of the Russian Army.

WTO’s incoming chief says members should speed up efforts to lift export restrictions on medicines and supplies.

The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) incoming chief has warned against “vaccine nationalism” that would slow progress in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and could erode economic growth for all countries – rich and poor.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told the Reuters news agency that her top priority is to ensure the WTO does more to address the pandemic, saying members should accelerate efforts to lift export restrictions slowing trade in needed medicines and supplies.

The former Nigerian finance minister and senior World Bank executive was appointed on Monday in a consensus process and starts her new job on March 1.

“The WTO can contribute so much more to helping stop the pandemic,” Okonjo-Iweala said in an interview at her home in a suburb of Washington, DC.

“No one is safe until everyone is safe. Vaccine nationalism at this time just will not pay, because the variants are coming. If other countries are not immunised, it will just be a blowback,” she said. “It’s unconscionable that people will be dying elsewhere, waiting in a queue, when we have the technology.”

Okonjo-Iweala said studies showed that the global economy would lose $9 trillion in potential output if poor countries were unable to get their populations vaccinated quickly and about half of the effect would be borne by rich countries.

“Both on a human health basis, as well as an economic basis, being nationalistic at this time is very costly to the international community,” she said.

“A very top priority for me would be to make sure that prior to the very important ministerial conference … that we come to solutions as to how the WTO can make vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics accessible in an equitable and affordable fashion to all countries, particularly to poor countries.”

Need to reform

Okonjo-Iweala said she was heartened by the administration of US President Joe contribution to the World Health Organization effort to ensure broader distribution of vaccines, and what she called a “fantastic” conversation with trade advisers in the US Trade Representative’s office.

Incoming WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says one of her top priorities will be to ensure COVID-19 vaccines are accessible ‘in an equitable and affordable fashion to all countries, particularly to poor countries’ [File: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters]

“I think our interests and priorities are aligned. They want to bring the WTO back to [its] purpose,” she said. “It’s about people. It’s about inclusivity. It’s about decent work for ordinary people,” she said.

She said she shared the Biden administration’s concerns about the need to reform the WTO’s Appellate Body, but said that would not be a quick or easy process.

“This is the jewel in the crown of the WTO, and we really need to restore it,” she said. The dispute settlement body has been paralysed since last year after the administration of former US President Donald Trump refused to approve the appointment of more judges.

Okonjo-Iweala said there were clearly differences among members but progress was possible, especially given the shift in tone and approach of the Biden administration.

“I’m not daunted. I see a way forward,” she said. “With the US administration being willing to engage … I think the way of working to try and get a solution will be different.”

More companies are beginning to add services for cryptocurrencies, although the asset class remains lightly regulated and controversial among policymakers.

Signs of a widening embrace across the financial services industry sent Bitcoin to new heights, with the cryptocurrency closing in on $50,000 for the first time before falling back.

A week after Tesla announced its $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin, the digital asset continues to make inroads into traditional finance, including news that an investment unit of Morgan Stanley is considering whether to bet on Bitcoin. Canada also approved the first North American Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

And there’s evidence that more companies are beginning to add services for cryptocurrencies — an asset class that is still lightly regulated and controversial among policymakers. On Thursday, BNY Mellon said it’s formed a new team that’s developing a custody and administration platform for traditional and digital assets. Mastercard Inc. has said it will begin allowing cardholders to transact in certain cryptocurrencies on its network.

The combination of luminaries like billionaire Elon Musk and powerhouse banks is adding fresh ammunition to Bitcoin’s meteoric gains. The cryptocurrency neared $50,000 in weekend trading before retreating. Prices are up some 40% in February, and were at about $48,000 as of 1:39 p.m. in London on Monday.

“The key for Bitcoin’s path higher is to win over more corporate endorsements,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda Corp. “Bitcoin is no stranger to massive weekend moves and the next several days could easily see some wild swings.”

There remains a fierce debate over whether Bitcoin is a legitimate asset with any real purpose or value. The token has been derided for its role in money laundering and scams, and recently Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan,” said he’s getting rid of his Bitcoin. A currency is never supposed to be more volatile than what you buy and sell with it, Taleb said on Twitter, adding that you can’t price goods in the cryptocurrency. “In that respect, it’s a failure (at least for now).”

Even so, the price trend has been up, and Bitcoin stands as another example of the speculative excesses that are defining this bull market — along with penny stocks and cannabis companies.

There are hints that more Wall Street heavyweights could dip into the crypto market. In an interview with CNBC, JPMorgan Chase & Co. Co-President Daniel Pinto said that client demand isn’t there yet on Bitcoin, but he’s certain that’ll change.

Bloomberg reported that Counterpoint Global, a unit of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, is exploring whether the cryptocurrency would be a suitable option for its investors, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Moving ahead with investments would require approval by the firm and regulators.

“With each major announcement like the one BNY Mellon made, other institutions are spurred to more rapid adoption and deployment of digital assets,” said Patrick Campos, chief strategy officer at Securrency, a developer of blockchain-based financial and regulatory technology, on Friday.

“Tesla’s recent announcement will embolden other large corporates and institutions to accept crypto as not just a worthy asset class, but perhaps even an essential one,” he said.

Apple’s upcoming iOS 14.5 update will come with a new feature that will redirect all fraudulent website checks through its own proxy servers as a workaround to preserve user privacy and prevent leaking IP addresses to Google.

A built-in security-focused feature in the Safari browser, “Fraudulent Website Warning,” alerts users about dangerous websites that have been reported as deceptive, malicious, or harmful.

To achieve this, Apple relies on Google Safe Browsing — or Tencent Safe Browsing for users in Mainland China — a blocklist service that provides a list of URLs for web resources that contain malware or phishing content, to compare a hash prefix calculated from the website address and check if the website is fraudulent.

Any match against the database will prompt Safari to request Google or Tencent for the full list of URLs that match the hashed prefix and subsequently block the user’s access to the site with a warning.

While the approach ensures that the actual URL of a website a user is attempting to visit is never shared with a safe browsing provider, it does leak the IP address of the device from which the check was made.

With iOS 14.5, all these verifications are expected to be re-routed through an Apple-owned proxy server, thereby making all requests appear as originating from the same IP address.

“In the new iOS beta, Safari does indeed proxy the service via Apple servers to limit the risk of information leak,” said Maciej Stachowiak, head of WebKit engineering at Apple, last week in a tweet.

The new change in iOS and iPadOS is part of a number of privacy-oriented measures that Apple has been rolling out lately, including mandating app developers to disclose their data collection practices in App Store listings using “privacy nutrition labels.”

In addition, iOS 14.5 will also require apps to ask for users’ permission before tracking them across other apps and websites using the device’s advertising identifier as part of a new framework dubbed App Tracking Transparency.

iOS 14.5 is currently in beta and is slated to be released later this spring.

Syrian army says Israeli military jets flew over the Golan Heights to hit targets on the edge of Damascus.

Syria’s army said on Monday the country’s air defences intercepted “Israeli aggression” over the capital, Damascus, in the latest stepped-up bombing of Iranian targets inside the country over the last two months.

State media did not give details of what was hit by the Israeli air force.

Israeli military planes flew over the Golan Heights to hit targets on the edge of the capital, an army statement said, without mentioning casualties but adding most of the missiles had been brought down.

“Our air defences are continuing to repel the Israeli missile attacks over the skies of the capital,” the Syrian army said in a statement.

A Syrian military defector said the bombing raids hit a considerable army division in the town of Kiswa, almost 14 kilometres (8.7 miles) south of the capital, in a sprawling area where Iranian-backed militias have a dominant presence.

Witnesses heard large explosions on the southern edge of Damascus, residents said.

Israel’s armed forces did not immediately comment on the latest raid, but its senior military officials have acknowledged the escalating attacks inside Syria aimed to end Tehran’s military presence in Syria.

Israel’s Defence Force Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi said at the end of last year that his country’s missile strikes had “slowed down Iran’s entrenchment in Syria,” hitting more than 500 targets in 2020.

Western intelligence sources say Iran’s military influence has expanded in Syria in recent years, prompting Israel to escalate its campaign to prevent its arch-rival from establishing a significant military foothold along its border.

Iran’s proxy militias, led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, now hold sway over vast areas in eastern, southern and northwestern Syria, as well as several suburbs around Damascus. They also control Lebanese-Syrian border areas.

Israel, which in the last two months staged some of its biggest attacks yet inside Syria, has concentrated on al-Bukamal, the Syrian city that controls the border checkpoint on the main Baghdad-Damascus highway.

The widening military campaign is part of a so-called “campaign within wars”, which, according to Israeli generals and regional intelligence sources, has been tacitly approved by the United States.

The operations that aim to prevent Tehran from changing the balance of power in Syria in its favour have gradually eroded Iran’s extensive military power without triggering an extensive increase in hostilities, according to regional intelligence sources.

Leaders of five Sahelian countries in West Africa and their French counterpart will hold a summit this week to discuss the fight against armed groups in the volatile region.

The heads of state of the so-called G5 Sahel countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – will converge in Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, while French President Emmanuel Macron will attend virtually.

The conflict in the western portion of the Sahel largely between state forces and armed groups linked to ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda has ravaged the semi-arid strip south of the Sahara Desert for much of the past decade, sparking a major humanitarian crisis.

Almost 7,000 people died due to worsening fighting last year, according to data by the Armed Conflict and Location Event Data Project. In late January, the United Nations warned the “unrelenting violence” had internally displaced more than two million people, up from 490,000 at the start of 2019.

France has 5,100 troops stationed across the Sahel, alongside UN, American and European partners. At the summit, it is expected to announce a drawdown of 600 soldiers from Barkhane, its military operation in the region.

But what other issues are expected to be on the agenda of the talks on Monday and Tuesday, and how has the conflict shifted since the last major Sahel summit in the French city of Pau?

A year ago in Pau, France sought to reaffirm support from the Sahel nations in the face of rising anti-French sentiment and double down on its military-focused solution to the region’s crisis. Under this approach, it committed extra troops to Barkhane; promised to implement an intelligence-sharing agreement and integrated military command structure with the G5 nations; and said it would step up intervention in the “tri-border” region, the three-country point joining Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger which has seen the most intense fighting.

During a speech to troops in France last month, Macron implied the actions taken in Pau had worked and touted 2020 as, “a year of results in the tri-border area”.

Looking ahead, he said he was going to attend the “new summit and structuring decisions with a course that remains unchanged: stability and victory against the terrorists”.

However, a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) earlier this month called for a “course correction” in France’s approach, noting that many of its international backers – and even some French officials – are “disappointed” by the results of Macron’s strategy so far.

“In areas where there have been significant victories against the terrorist groups, things have not returned to normal,” Hannah Armstrong, the ICG’s senior consulting analyst for the Sahel and the report’s primary author, told Al Jazeera. “The idea was, go get rid of the terrorist and then the state can be deployed – that’s really not happening.”

Armstrong said anti-French sentiment, one of the issues Macron attempted to address in Pau last year, has not markedly improved. On January 20, Malian forces dispersed a crowd of protesters against the French military presence in the country with tear gas.

“I think the Sahel leaders are in a very difficult position, where to some extent they may be caught between what France wants and what their populations want,” she added.

Further divergence from France’s plan for the region has also come from some Sahel leaders’ desire to negotiate with the armed groups, something which France says should not be on the agenda.

On February 4, Burkina Faso’s prime minister said the country is looking to start negotiations for peace with the armed groups operating in the north and east of the country. Last year, former Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita initiated similar negotiations.

The issue is now likely to be addressed with the leaders at the summit.

One thing that seems to have worked in France’s favour since last year is that Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin – al-Qaeda’s Sahel affiliate – and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, once united in their campaign against the French, have begun fighting each other. An intelligence source told Al Jazeera the battles could be turf wars over trafficking routes, but whatever the reason, it has weakened both sides.

There have also been reports of successful French operations which have neutralised large numbers of fighters, although at least one of these announcements was marred by allegations an air raid had targeted a wedding ceremony in Mali and not a group of fighters. However, it is possible this was part of a disinformation campaign by armed groups.

“The situation in the Sahel has demonstrably worsened during the past year,” Judd Devermont, Africa director for The Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, DC-based think-tank, told Al Jazeera.

“The Pau summit’s much-heralded initiatives so far have been underwhelming. The Coalition for the Sahel [aimed at bringing together Sahel countries and international partners] hardly qualifies as a breakthrough and Takuba task force is only expected to become fully operational this year.”

Another new development in the French strategy over the past year, Takuba represents part of France’s attempt to share some of the military burdens with its European partners and to justify the expected troop drawdown. It will see up to 150 special forces from EU countries deployed to the region, with the Czech Republic, Estonia and Sweden having already sent troops.

“The reduction [in troop numbers] probably reflects French domestic politics, where a small majority oppose operations in Mali, as well as continued anti-French feelings amongst Sahelians,” Devermont added. “France also may be counting on European countries, through Takuba, to backfill any adjustments to Barkhane’s total troop presence.”

On Friday, Human Rights Watch issued a statement urging Sahelian nations to address frequent allegations throughout 2020 of atrocities committed by the security forces of the Sahel countries.

“Heads of state gathering in Chad should commit to protecting the rights of civilians and detainees and investigating alleged abuses during counterterrorism operations in the Sahel region,” the statement read.

Whatever developments in the military strategies of France and the G5 countries occur in the upcoming summit, the causes of the crisis remain complex, with analysts long warning that factors such as underdevelopment, the effects of climate change and tensions between farming and animal-herding all need to be addressed.

Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, has welcomed his acquittal in a second impeachment trial, saying his political movement “to Make America Great Again has only just begun”.

The US Senate voted 57-43 in favour of convicting the former president on Saturday, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict him on a charge of inciting the mob that attacked the US Capitol on January 6, during the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election win.

In a statement shortly after the acquittal, Trump called the trial “yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our nation”.

“Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun,” he said.

“In the months ahead, I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people,” he added.

Trump left office on January 20, so impeachment could not be used to remove him from power.

But Democrats had hoped to secure a conviction to hold the 74-year-old responsible for the Capitol siege and set the stage for a vote to bar him from serving in public office again.

Though Trump was acquitted of the sole charge of incitement of insurrection, seven Republicans joined all Democrats to convict the former president. The figure marked the largest number of Senators to ever vote to find a president of their own party guilty of an impeachment count of high crimes and misdemeanours.

They were Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Trump’s political future

Al Jazeera’s Andy Gallacher, reporting from West Palm Beach in Florida, said, “The one message from Trump’ statement is that he is going nowhere.”

“There is no question now that Donald Trump has political plans going forward. But what are they? Is he going to run in 2024 as many people believe? Or is he going to seek revenge on those seven Republicans who voted against him?”

Trump is only the third president ever to be impeached by the House of Representatives – a step akin to a criminal indictment – as well as the first to be impeached twice and the first to face an impeachment trial after leaving office.

But the Senate still has never convicted an impeached president.

After Saturday’s verdict, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted “not guilty,” in the trial, offered scathing remarks about Trump.

“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” he said. “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.”

McConnell suggested that Trump could still face criminal prosecution for his acts, however.

“President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office as an ordinary citizen,” McConnell said. “He didn’t get away with anything. Yet.”

The minority leader was not the only Republican to castigate Trump for his behaviour after voting for acquittal.

“The question I must answer is not whether President Trump said and did things that were reckless and encouraged the mob. I believe that happened,” Senator Rob Portman in a statement.

“My decision was based on my reading of the Constitution,” the Ohio Republican added. “I believe the Framers understood that convicting a former president and disqualifying him or her from running again pulls people further apart.”

Senator Chuck Grassley, the Senate’s most senior Republican, described Trump’s language in a fiery speech to supporters just before the Capitol assault as “extreme, aggressive and irresponsible”. But he said the Senate had no jurisdiction to hold a trial, agreed with Trump’s legal team that the former president deserved more “due process” and said the prosecution had not made their case.

‘Serious problem’

Claire Finkelstein, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, said most of the Republicans who had voted to convict Trump were politicians who were not planning to run for office again.

“Those who are steadfast in insisting on the innocence of Donald Trump here are primarily those with political ambitions. They have fused themselves to Donald Trump. And he will control the agenda. And it gives him a wonderful platform from which to run again in 2024,” she told Al Jazeera.

McConnel has a “serious problem keeping his party together”, she said, which is why the Senate Republican leader voted “not guilty” despite later rebuking Trump and holding responsible for the storming of the US capitol.

Despite the apparent division within Republican ranks, Al Jazeera’s Gallacher said the outcome of Saturday’s vote demonstrated that the Republican Party still belonged to Trump.

“The impact of this man can’t be overstated,” said Gallacher.

“Over the last few years, he managed to remake the entire Republican Party in his own image.

“But the question is if that the image the Republican Party wants going forward? Also, what elections can they win when he appeals to a large majority of people, who tend to be white, non-college-educated people? You can’t win elections in the future with such a small demographic in a country like this that is changing so rapidly.”

After record-high rates of infections and deaths throughout January, Mexico’s sprawling capital Mexico City lowered its danger level from red to orange on Friday, amid a drop in new coronavirus cases and hospitalisations.

But the much-needed respite in cases, experts said, is likely short-lived as the nation confronts a stalled vaccination campaign and a president who has continued to downplay the threats of a pandemic that has killed more than 171,000 people in Mexico, the third-highest death toll in the world.

“As long as we don’t increase vaccinations, things are not going to get better anytime soon,” said Fernando Alarid Escudero, an assistant professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico, who has been developing models charting the spread of the epidemic in Mexico.

Despite Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum’s warning on Friday for residents not to lower their guard; “as soon as people start increasing their number of social contacts,” Alarid Escudero added, “we can expect to see an increase in cases.”

So far, only 0.56 percent of Mexicans have been vaccinated, regionally lagging behind Brazil and Chile [Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters]

Mexico’s vaccination roll-out started out well – on December 23, it was the first country in Latin America to receive a vaccine shipment. But the campaign has since stalled amid mismanagement and a global shortage in vaccine production.

So far, only 0.56 percent of Mexicans have been vaccinated, regionally lagging behind Brazil and Chile, according to data compiled by Oxford University’s Our World in Data.

The country’s health ministry said Mexico has received 766,350 doses of the two-dose regimen Pfizer vaccine, well short of the 34.4 million it was expecting to arrive in weekly shipments by March. Most of the doses have already been administered, leaving many without access to a second dose, and the country scrambling to find other sources.

On Thursday, Mexico announced it had received ingredients to manufacture China’s CanSino vaccine, enough to produce two million doses. A day earlier, Mexico gave emergency approval for the use of the CanSino and the Sinovac vaccine, another Chinese vaccine.

Mexico also expected a shipment of one million doses on Sunday from India of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Last week, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said the administration has a contract for 7.4 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, with an initial delivery due later in February. All these upcoming shipments, officials said, would allow the country to finish inoculating front-line workers, and begin vaccinating the elderly.

People wearing face masks walk on the street, as the COVID-19 outbreak continues, in Mexico City, Mexico, January 26, 2021 [Carlos Jasso/Reuters]

Carlos Peterson, a Mexico senior analyst for the Eurasia Group said that, despite the bumpy start, Mexico – Latin America’s second-largest economy – is well positioned to carry out an effective vaccination campaign, once the doses become available.

“The infrastructure is there, the expertise within the health institutions of the country exists,” Peterson said. “Once they start vaccinating, they might not be very organised, but they will start vaccinating people fairly quickly.”

Modelling good behaviour

Many observers have put the blame for the slow roll-out of vaccinations squarely on President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who, even after spending two weeks at home with a bout of the coronavirus, said he will continue to not wear a mask in public.

“No, no,” he said of mask wearing on his first day back at work on Monday. “Now, additionally, according to the doctors, I am not contagious,” he said.

Analysts said the president’s unwillingness to model good behaviour, including social distancing and wearing a mask, has been indicative of not only his attitude of downplaying the threat of the virus, but of his wider mishandling of a pandemic.

Analysts say President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s unwillingness to model good behaviour, including social distancing and wearing a mask, has been indicative of his wider mishandling of a pandemic [File: Edgard Garrido/Reuters]

“There’s a lot of disappointment,” said Tony Payan, director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at the Baker Institute.

“People were hoping he (Lopez Obrador]) would overcome the disease and it would be a lesson learned for him to recalibrate and reconsider his approach to the pandemic.”

“But instead he has doubled down.”

Lopez Obrador has resisted shutting the nation’s borders or imposing nationwide lockdowns, arguing it would heavily affect the millions of Mexicans who live hand-to-mouth. Still, the country’s gross domestic product plunged 4.5 percent in 2020 – the sharpest contraction in decades.

Focus on vaccination

Instead, the president has been focused on a plan to vaccinate Mexicans as quickly as possible.

But there are concerns that the roll-out in the nation of 130 million people might face challenges that could further undermine faith in the government’s ability to rein in the pandemic.

A health ministry website launched in early February that was supposed to allow people to register for appointments did not function properly and then crashed, triggering an avalanche of criticism on social media.

“The launch of the website that they are using to organise the vaccination campaign is a disaster,” Christopher Wilson, global fellow with the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, told Al Jazeera.

Wilson added that some of the disjointed results may be because Lopez Obrador charged his foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, with acquiring vaccines, rather than allowing the health ministry to lead the effort.

Mexico‘s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard at the airport in Mexico City ahead of the arrival of 439,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on January 12, 2021 [File: Gustavo Graf/Reuters]

“Acquiring vaccines was happening in one place in the Mexican government and distribution was happening in another,” Wilson said, “and it feels like there was a lack of coordination across the Mexican government.”

Even with its third-place rank in global fatalities, the true number of Mexicans killed by COVID is feared to be even higher. A recent analysis of excess deaths in Mexico City showed from November 1, 2020, until January 31, 2021, more than 77,000 people died – 123 percent more people than in past years, and more than twice the official coronavirus death toll of 29,146 in the city during the same period.

Alarid Escuerdo said current data showed that the country was likely to continue to see a decrease in the number of cases in the coming few weeks.

But amid a stalled vaccination campaign and the spread of new variants – infections, hospitalisations and deaths are likely to surge again in the weeks and months ahead.

“We have a president who does not promote the use of masks,” Alarid Escudero said, “and we don’t have enough vaccinations and people are not really in lockdown. So we have the three worst ingredients that you can possibly have, to prevent the further spread of the pandemic.”

Russian Dutch-domiciled search engine, ride-hailing and email service provider Yandex on Friday disclosed a data breach that compromised 4,887 email accounts of its users.

The company blamed the incident on an unnamed employee who had been providing unauthorized access to the users’ mailboxes for personal gain.

“The employee was one of three system administrators with the necessary access rights to provide technical support for the service,” Yandex said in a statement.

The company said the security breach was identified during a routine audit of its systems by its security team. It also said there was no evidence that user payment details were compromised during the incident and that it had notified affected mailbox owners to change their passwords.

It’s not immediately clear when the breach occurred or when the employee began offering unauthorized access to third-parties.

“A thorough internal investigation of the incident is under way, and Yandex will be making changes to administrative access procedures,” the company said. “This will help minimize the potential for individuals to compromise the security of user data in future. The company has also contacted law enforcement.”

Insider Threats Continue to Hit Companies

This is not the first time insider threats have plagued tech companies and resulted in financial or reputational damage.

Last month, Telesforo Aviles, a 35-year-old former Dallas-based ADT technician, pled guilty to computer fraud and invasive visual recording for repeatedly breaking into cameras he installed and viewed customers engaging in sex and other intimate acts. He was terminated from the firm in April 2020.

In December, former Cisco engineer Sudhish Kasaba Ramesh, 31, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for deleting 16,000 Webex accounts without authorization, costing the company more than $2.4 million, with $1,400,000 in employee time and $1,000,000 in customer refunds.

In October last year, Amazon fired an employee for sharing customers’ names and email addresses with a third-party.

And in November 2019, cybersecurity firm Trend Micro revealed that a rogue employee sold the data of 68,000 customers to malicious cybercriminals, who then used that data to target customers with scam calls by posing as Trend Micro support personnel.

Opposition forces in Venezuela cry foul saying UN representative is falling into ‘regime propaganda’ of Nicolas Maduro.

A UN envoy said US and EU sanctions on Venezuela were worsening a humanitarian crisis and recommended that the United States relax the measures, drawing criticism from the country’s opposition, who labelled it on Friday as “regime propaganda”.

Following a 12-day visit, Alena Douhan, a UN special rapporteur focusing on sanctions, recommended in a preliminary report that the sanctions be lifted, and the Venezuelan government be granted access to funds frozen in the US, United Kingdom and Portugal.

Washington in January 2019 sanctioned state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela to try to depose President Nicolas Maduro, who has overseen an economic collapse in the once-prosperous OPEC nation and stands accused of corruption, rights violations and rigging his 2018 re-election.

Maduro’s government blames the sanctions for Venezuela’s economic woes. Before blacklisting PDVSA in 2019, Washington in 2015 implemented its first sanctions on top Venezuelan government officials, and in 2017 issued some financial restrictions on PDVSA.

“Unilateral sanctions increasingly imposed by the United States, the European Union and other countries have exacerbated the abovementioned calamities,” Douhan told reporters, recognising that the economic decline started in 2014 with the downturn in oil prices and that mismanagement and corruption also contributed.

Venezuela’s opposition and US officials point out that the country’s economic collapse began before the imposition of economic sanctions, and argued the sanctions are justified because Maduro’s government would more likely use the resources for corrupt ends than to alleviate Venezuelans’ suffering.

“We regret the rapporteur’s imprecisions and the lack of mention of subjects like corruption, inefficiency, political violence and the use of hunger as a tool of social and political control,” Miguel Pizarro, opposition leader Juan Guaido’s envoy to the United Nations, wrote on Twitter.

“That is allowing oneself to be used for regime’s propaganda.”

‘Regime’s corruption’

US Ambassador for Venezuela James Story – who is based in neighbouring Colombia, as the two countries cut off diplomatic ties in 2019 – wrote on Twitter on Thursday that Venezuela’s crisis was due to “the regime’s corruption”, noting that the sanctions exempted humanitarian goods.

With the ascension of US President Joe Biden in January, Maduro is hoping for better relations with Washington, nearly two years after the cutting of formal ties.

Analysts believe the Biden administration will take a more moderate stance and will support international mediation for the transition towards a new government in Venezuela [Manaure Quintero/Reuters]

He had also urged the pro-government legislature, the National Assembly, to “take initiatives” towards a “new beginning” with Washington.

Maduro, who said he listened to Biden’s inauguration speech “three times”, asked the new US administration to “turn the page … after four years of Trumpist brutality.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has described Maduro as a “brutal dictator”, and during his Senate confirmation hearing said he supported Trump’s policy of supporting Guaido.

But analysts believe the Biden administration will take a more moderate stance and will support international mediation for the transition towards a new government.

Guaido earlier wrote that he and his supporters will continue to work towards “Venezuela’s freedom and free elections”.

He said his “ambassador” in Washington was present at Biden’s inauguration.

Thousands of Nigerian farmers and fisherman can sue Royal Dutch Shell in English courts, UK’s Supreme Court rules.

The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has ruled that a group of 42,500 Nigerian farmers and fishermen can sue Royal Dutch Shell in English courts after years of oil spills in the Niger Delta contaminated land and groundwater there.

Senior judges said there was an arguable case that UK-domiciled Shell, one of the world’s biggest energy companies, is responsible, in the latest test of whether multinationals can be held to account for the acts of overseas subsidiaries.

Represented by law firm Leigh Day, the group of Nigerians have argued that the parent company Shell owed them a duty of care because it either had significant control of, and was responsible for, its subsidiary SPDC. Shell countered that the court had no jurisdiction to try the claims.

“(The ruling) also represents a watershed moment in the accountability of multinational companies. Increasingly impoverished communities are seeking to hold powerful corporate actors to account and this judgement will significantly increase their ability to do so,” Daniel Leader, partner at Leigh Day, said on Friday.

“UK common law is also used in countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand so this is a very helpful precedent.”

The decision comes almost two years after a seminal ruling by the Supreme Court in a case involving mining firm Vedanta. The judgement allowed nearly 2,000 Zambian villagers to sue Vedanta in England for alleged pollution in Africa.

That move was seen as a victory for rural communities seeking to hold parent companies accountable for environmental disasters. Vedanta ultimately settled out of court in January.

Members of Nigeria’s Ogale and Bille communities allege their lives and health have suffered because repeated oil spills have contaminated the land, swamps, groundwater and waterways and that there has been no adequate cleaning or remediation.

SPDC is the operator of oil pipelines in a joint venture between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation which holds a 55 percent stake, Shell which holds 30 percent, France’s Total with 10 percent and Italy’s Eni with five percent.

A Shell spokesman said the decision was disappointing.

“Regardless of the cause of a spill, SPDC cleans up and remediates. It also works hard to prevent these sabotage spills, by using technology, increasing surveillance and by promoting alternative livelihoods for those who might damage pipes and equipment,” Shell said.

Shell has blamed sabotage for oil spills. It said in its annual report published last March that SPDC, which produces around one million barrels of oil per day, saw crude oil spills caused by theft or pipeline sabotage surge by 41 percent in 2019.

Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said last week that the firm would take “another hard look at its onshore oil operations” in the West African country.

The ruling is the second judgement against Shell this year regarding claims against its Nigerian operations. In a landmark Dutch ruling two weeks ago, an appeals court held Shell responsible for multiple oil pipeline leaks in the Niger Delta, which is at the heart of the Nigerian oil industry, and ordered it to pay unspecified damages to farmers, in a victory for environmentalists.

Leigh Day said that the amount of compensation sought would be quantified as the case enters the trial stage.

In 2015, Shell agreed to pay out 55 million pounds ($83.4 million) to the Bodo community in Nigeria in compensation for two oil spills, which was the largest ever out-of-court settlement relating to Nigerian oil spills.

Shell discovered and started exploiting Nigeria’s vast oil reserves in the late 1950s and has faced heavy criticism from activists and local communities over spills and for the company’s close ties to government security forces.

Ten people belonging to a criminal network have been arrested in connection with a series of SIM-swapping attacks that resulted in the theft of more than $100 million by hijacking the mobile phone accounts of high-profile individuals in the U.S.

The Europol-coordinated year-long investigation was jointly conducted by law enforcement authorities from the U.K., U.S., Belgium, Malta, and Canada.

“The attacks orchestrated by this criminal gang targeted thousands of victims throughout 2020, including famous internet influencers, sport stars, musicians and their families,” Europol said in a statement. “The criminals are believed to have stolen from them over $100 million in cryptocurrencies after illegally gaining access to their phones.”

The eight suspects, aged 18 to 26, are said to be part of a larger ring, two members of which were nabbed previously in Malta and Belgium. The latest arrests were made in England and Scotland.

The sweep comes almost a year after Europol led an operation to dismantle two SIM swap criminal groups that stole €3.5 million ($3.9 million) by orchestrating a wave of more than 100 attacks targeting victims in Austria, emptying their bank accounts through their phone numbers.

Typically achieved with the help of a corrupt insider or using social engineering lures, SIM swapping refers to the technique adopted by cybercriminals to persuade phone carriers into porting their victims’ cell services to a SIM card under their control.

The SIM swap then grants attackers access to incoming phone calls, text messages, and one-time verification codes (or one-time passwords) that various websites send via SMS messages as part of the two-factor authentication (2FA) process.

Once in control of the target’s mobile phone, the authorities noted that the criminals accessed personal information, including contacts synced with online accounts, and stole money, with cryptocurrency losses exceeding $100 million in 2020.

“They also hijacked social media accounts to post content and send messages masquerading as the victim,” the U.S. Secret Service said.

The arrested suspects face charges for offences under the Computer Misuse Act, as well as fraud and money laundering. They are also expected to be extradited to the U.S. for prosecution.

To avoid SIM swapping attacks, it’s recommended that users keep their device’s software up to date, limit data-sharing online, and enable 2FA via apps instead of having an authentication code sent over SMS.

“When possible, do not associate your phone number with sensitive online accounts,” Europol cautioned.