KEY COVID NOS. WORLDWIDE

Pos   /   Country   /   New Daily cases   /   Total Deaths   /        Daily Deaths /           Active Cases   /           Deaths/1M Pop

               World    5,39,380              /             41,50,509            /             8,422     /             1,35,04,287        /             532.5

1             USA        54,442   /             6,26,157              /             350        /             51,01,519            /             1,880

2             UK          39,906   /             1,28,980              /             84           /             10,45,808            /             1,890

3             Brazil     49,603   /             5,47,134              /             1,444     /             7,17,247              /             2,555

4             Indonesia            49,509   /             79,032   /             1,449     /             5,61,384              /             286

5             Spain     29,535   /             81,194   /             28           /             4,86,939              /             1,736

6             Russia    24,471   /             1,51,501              /             796        /             4,75,753              /             1,038

7             India      34,865   /             4,19,502              /             481        /             4,11,898              /             301

8             Mexico  15,198   /             2,37,207              /             397        /             3,43,473              /             1,820

9             Iran        20,313   /             88,063   /             226        /             3,31,641              /             1,035

10           Argentina            13,500   /             1,03,074              /             256        /             2,61,324              /             2,259

11           Honduras             1,501     /             7,535     /             28           /             1,79,813              /             748

12           South Africa       14,858   /             68,625   /             433        /             1,63,885              /             1,142

13           Poland   126        /             75,231   /             9             /             1,53,521              /             1,990

14           France   21,909   /             1,11,565              /             11           /             1,52,851              /             1,705

15           Bangladesh         3,697     /             18,685   /             187        /             1,51,905              /             112

16           Netherlands        6,233     /             17,789   /             3             /             1,47,042              /             1,036

17           Malaysia              13,034   /             7,574     /             134        /             1,42,051              /             231

18           Thailand               13,655   /             3,697     /             87           /             1,37,058              /             53

19           Colombia             12,576   /             1,17,836              /             354        /             1,25,707              /             2,290

20           Iraq        8,106     /             18,101   /             81           /             1,22,511              /             440

30           Pakistan               2,158     /             22,928   /             40           /             52,752   /             102

32           Philippines           5,828     /             26,891   /             17           /             50,562   /             242

ISRAEL APPOINTS COMMISSION TO REVIEW NSO

Israel has established a commission to review allegations that the NSO Group’s controversial Pegasus phone surveillance software was misused, the head of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee said on Thursday.

“The defence establishment appointed a review commission made up of a number of groups,” lawmaker Ram Ben Barak said.

“When they finish their review, we’ll demand to see the results and assess whether we need to make corrections,” the former deputy head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency added.

Pegasus has been implicated in possible mass surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders and 14 heads of state.

Their phone numbers were among some 50,000 potential surveillance targets on a list leaked to rights group Amnesty International and Paris-based Forbidden Stories.

NSO has said the leak is “not a list of targets or potential targets of Pegasus.”

NSO chief executive Shalev Hulio told Army Radio on Thursday that he would “be very pleased if there were an investigation, so that we’d be able to clear our name”.

He also alleged there was an effort “to smear all the Israeli cyber industry”.

CHINA REJECTS WHO'S PLAN TO REVISIT WUHAN LAB LEAK THEORY

China on Thursday categorically rejected the WHO's plan for the second phase of Covid origin-tracing in Wuhan, especially to probe the lab leak theory, as it dismissed reports that some of the employees of the facility were infected with the deadly virus before it spread to the city and the world.

China will not follow the World Health Organisation's suggested plan on the second phase of Covid-19 origin-tracing, Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the National Health Commission (NHC), told a media briefing here. The work plan on the second-phase origins study proposed by the WHO contains language that does not respect science, he said.

BRIEF GLOBAL OUTAGE HITS WEBSITES OF TECH COS, AIRLINES, BANKS

Several airlines, banks and technology websites were coming back online on Thursday afternoon after a brief outage, the third such widespread incident noted in just a span of two months, raising alarms across social media.

Websites of Delta Air Lines, Costco Wholesale Corp, American Express and Home Depot, Airbnb were down, displaying domain name system (DNS) service errors.

Affected services also included UPS, HSBC bank, British Airways and the PlayStation network used for online games.

Cloud services provider Akamai Technologies had given an alert on its “Edge DNS” service incident, noting a “partial outage” on its website. “We have implemented a fix for this issue, and based on current observations, the service is resuming normal operations,” it said later in a tweet. Oracle Corp said it was monitoring the global issue related to a cloud-based DNS solution provider impacting access to many internet resources, including its own cloud services.

US LAUNCHES AIRSTRIKES TO SUPPORT AFGHAN FORCES, CONFIRMS PENTAGON

The United States recently carried out air strikes as it backed the Afghan army's bid to repel a Taliban offensive, the Pentagon said Thursday, with the withdrawal of international forces from the country all but complete.

"In the last several days, we have acted through air strikes to support to the ANDSF," said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, referring to Afghan government forces.

"We continue to... conduct airstrikes in support of the ANDSF," he told reporters at a press briefing, adding that head of the US Army Central Command (Centcom), General Kenneth McKenzie, had authorised the strike.

Kirby said he could not provide details on the air strikes, but reiterated Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's Wednesday statement that the United States remains "committed to helping the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government going forward."

Also on Wednesday, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, acknowledged the Taliban regime now controls about half of Afghanistan's roughly 400 districts, but added they had taken none of the country's densely populated main cities.

A Taliban spokesman on Thursday told Russian media that the group now controlled 90 percent of Afghanistan's borders, but the claim could not be independently verified.

SOUTH AFRICAN FIRM TO MAKE PFIZER VACCINE, FIRST IN AFRICA

A South African firm will begin producing the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, the first time that the shot will be produced in Africa, Pfizer announced Wednesday.

The Biovac Institute based in Cape Town will manufacture the vaccine for distribution across Africa, a move that should help address the continent’s desperate need for more vaccine doses amid a recent surge of cases.

Biovac will receive large batch ingredients for the vaccine from Europe and will blend the components, put them in vials and package them for distribution. The production will begin in 2022 with a goal of reaching more than 100 million finished doses annually. Biovac’s production of doses will be distributed among the 54 countries of Africa.

The development is “a critical step” in increasing African’s access to an effective COVID-19 vaccine, Biovac chief executive Dr. Morena Makhoana said.

Lara Dovifat of the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, called the agreement “a first step” but said it is “clearly not enough to achieve vaccine independence on the African continent.”

For its mass inoculation drive, South Africa is relying on the Pfizer vaccine and has purchased 40 million doses, which are arriving in weekly deliveries.

TWO DOSES OF PFIZER, ASTRAZENECA SHOTS EFFECTIVE AGAINST DELTA VARIANT, STUDY FINDS

Two doses of Pfizer or AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine are nearly as effective against the highly transmissible Delta coronavirus variant as they are against the previously dominant Alpha variant, a study published on Wednesday showed.

Officials say vaccines are highly effective against the Delta variant, now the dominant variant worldwide, though the study reiterated that one shot of the vaccines is not enough for high protection.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, confirms headline findings given by Public Health England in May about the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca, based on real-world data.

Wednesday’s study found that two doses of Pfizer’s shot was 88% effective at preventing symptomatic disease from the Delta variant, compared to 93.7% against the Alpha variant, broadly the same as previously reported.

Two shots of AstraZeneca vaccine were 67% effective against the Delta variant, up from 60% originally reported, and 74.5% effective against the Alpha variant, compared to an original estimate of 66% effectiveness.

“Only modest differences in vaccine effectiveness were noted with the Delta variant as compared with the Alpha variant after the receipt of two vaccine doses,” Public Health England researchers wrote in the study.

IRAN GETS OIL TERMINAL IN GULF OF OMAN

Iran has opened its first oil terminal in the Gulf of Oman, President Rouhani said on Thursday, to allow Iranian tankers to avoid using the strategically vulnerable Strait of Hormuz, which has been a focus of regional tension for decades.

“This is a strategic move and an important step for Iran. It will secure the continuation of our oil exports,” Rouhani said in a televised speech.

“This new crude export terminal shows the failure of Washington’s sanctions on Iran.” Rouhani said Iran aimed to export 1 million barrels per day of oil from Bandar-e Jask, a port on Iran’s Gulf of Oman coast, just south of the Strait of Hormuz.