Issues in the News moderator Kim Lewis talks with journalists Kimberly Adams, correspondent for Marketplace Kimberly Adams and Steve Redisch, VOA Executive Editor about President Joe Biden’s commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and his plea to Congress for protection of voting rights, the significance of Vice-President Kamala Harris’ upcoming trip to Guatemala and Mexico, Israel’s agreement to form a new coalition government and other world developments.
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The United States mobilized an airlift of critical health supplies that arrived in Pakistan Saturday to help the country combat the coronavirus outbreak.
 
The donation includes tens of thousands of “critically needed and requested” personal protective items for healthcare professionals, hundreds of oximeters and other supplies, the U.S. Embassy said.  
 
“Today, the United States continues our proud partnership with the government of Pakistan in our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic,” said U.S. Embassy Chargé d’affaires Lesslie Viguerie.  
 
“Pakistan is not alone in its fight against the coronavirus,” Viguerie said.
 
Washington has allocated more than $40 million to Islamabad for COVID-19 response assistance, including a donation of 200 ventilators, to care for those suffering from the disease.  
 
The support, U.S. officials said, has benefited more than 2.5 million Pakistanis across the country, providing life-saving treatment, strengthening case-finding and surveillance, and mobilizing innovative financing to bolster emergency preparedness.
 
Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri said his government “greatly appreciates” the U.S. assistance.
 
“This timely gesture is part of the continued assistance that the U.S. has provided to Pakistan to support our COVID relief and prevention efforts,” Chaudhri said.
 
Pakistan has reported more than 21,000 deaths among at least 930,000 cases of coronavirus infections since the pandemic hit the country of about 220 million early last year.
 
Islamabad recently received 1.2 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and 100,000 Pfizer doses under the United Nations-backed COVAX program launched to support the purchase and delivery of COVID-19 vaccine to 92 low- and middle-income countries.   
 
The United States has contributed $2 billion to the COVAX initiative, with another $2 billion commitment planned by 2022.  
 
While initially close ally China provided massive COVID-19 medical supplies to Pakistan and donated a large quantity of vaccine, the Pakistani government says it has purchased or is in the process of procuring more than 90% of the vaccine to inoculate 70% of its eligible population by the end of 2021.
 
Beijing has also trained Pakistani staff and established a facility at Islamabad’s National Institute of Health, which is locally filling and finishing the Chinese CanSino vaccine from the concentrate China is providing. The facility has the capacity to roll out 3 million doses a month.
 
Pakistan has inoculated close to 9 million people as of Saturday, but officials say the pace will pick up in coming weeks to about 600,000 a day to achieve the stated target.
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On this US politics edition of Encounter, John Fortier, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy at Third Way, discuss with host Carol Castiel the status of US President Joe Biden’s ambitious agenda and the challenge of passing at least part of it, like infrastructure legislation or police reform, with bipartisan support.
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The White House on Thursday urged American businesses to take new precautions to combat disruptive ransomware attacks that have increasingly hobbled companies throughout Western economies.Jen Psaki, President Joe Biden’s press secretary, urged private industry to harden access to their computer systems, saying the government “can’t do it alone.”Anne Neuberger, a White House cybersecurity official, said in a statement that the “most important takeaway” from the recent attacks, including those affecting a key gasoline pipeline and a meat production company in the U.S., is that “companies that view ransomware as a threat to their core business operations rather than a simple risk of data theft will react and recover more effectively.”“Many ransomware criminals are aggressive and sophisticated and will find the equivalent of unlocked doors,” Neuberger said. “The threats are serious, and they are increasing.”She urged businesses to “back up your data, system images, and configurations, regularly test them, and keep the backups offline.”Neuberger said companies should “ensure that backups are regularly tested and that they are not connected to the business network, as many ransomware variants try to find and encrypt or delete accessible backups.”The deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging tech also said U.S. businesses should “test your incident response plan” because “there’s nothing that shows the gaps in plans more than testing them.”Neuberger said companies should use third parties to test their own security work, segment corporate business functions from manufacturing and production operations and regularly test contingency plans “so that safety critical functions can be maintained during a cyber incident.” 
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У ДБР зазначили, що за три роки внаслідок таких дій державі було завдано збитків на суму 1,488 мільярда гривень
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Кілька учасників процесу попросили з’ясувати причини відсутності суддів Тупицького та Касмініна
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