Trump administration invites PM Modi for US visit

Geneva, Mar 30: The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide has reached 634,835, among them 29,957 fatalities, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Sunday.

Over the past 24 hours, 63,159 people were confirmed to be infected with the novel coronavirus and 3,464 people died, the WHO said.

According to the latest situation report, the majority of the confirmed cases - more than 361,000 - are presently concentrated in Europe, with Italy leading the tally with over 92,000 cases, followed by Spain with over 72,000 cases, and Germany with over 52,000 cases.

Italy and Spain are also the countries that top the worldwide death toll from COVID-19, with 10,023 and 5,690 fatalities, respectively.

The second most affected region is currently the Americas with over 120,000 verified COVID-19 cases, of which the majority - over 103,000 - have been found in the United States. The US is also the country with the highest single tally of COVID-19 cases at the moment.
The WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11.

New York, Jan 10: The US's National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced that it has accepted an invitation from Tehran to participate in its investigation into the crash of a Ukrainian plane amid speculations that an Iranian missile might have brought down the plane.

The federal agency said in a statement on Thursday that the Iran Civil Aviation Organization has notified them that they could take part in the investigation of the plane crash that occurred shortly after taking off from Tehran on Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board, reports the Efe news.

"The NTSB has designated an accredited representative to the investigation of the crash," said the independent US government agency tasked with investigating transport accidents.

Since the aircraft was a US-made Boeing 737-800, international regulations allow Washington to be a part of the accident investigation.

However, it remains unclear to what extent the NTSB representative will be able to play an active role in the probe, as US sanctions complicate cooperation with Iran, and the two countries have no diplomatic relations.

The NTSB announcement came hours after US intelligence sources told several media outlets that the Kiev-bound Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA) flight 752 could have been accidentally shot down by an Iranian missile.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau later confirmed that his government had "evidence" indicating that the aircraft "was shot down by an Iranian surface to air missile", although he added it may have been unintentional.

The accident occurred on the same day after Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two US military bases in Iraq, in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani in an American drone attack in Baghdad on January 3.

However, the Iranian authorities have denied that they had accidentally shot down the plane and claimed the accusations were a part of a psychological warfare campaign against Tehran.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said they welcomed the presence of experts from countries whose citizens have died in the tragic accident, and requested Trudeau and any other government to provide any information they had regarding the crash.

Days after Twitter accounts of several billionaires were hacked to engineer a crypto scam, Twitter on Saturday said it is embarrassed, disappointed and, more than anything, sorry for what happened with some of its high-profile users as attackers successfully manipulated its employees and used their credentials to access internal systems, including getting through the two-factor protections.

In the first detailed summary of the "social engineering attack" via a crypto scam that hit at least 130 users this week, Twitter said for 45 of those accounts, the attackers were able to initiate a password reset, login to the account and send Tweets.

"We are continuing our forensic review of all of the accounts to confirm all actions that may have been taken. In addition, we believe they may have attempted to sell some of the usernames," the micro-blogging platform said in a statement.

For up to eight of the Twitter accounts involved, the attackers took the additional step of downloading the account's information via "Your Twitter Data" tool.

This is a tool that is meant to provide an account owner with a summary of their Twitter account details and activity.

"We are reaching out directly to any account owner where we know this to be true. None of the eight were verified accounts," said Twitter.

The company said the attackers were not able to view previous account passwords, as those are not stored in plain text or available through the tools used in the attack.

"Attackers were able to view personal information including email addresses and phone numbers, which are displayed to some users of our internal support tools," informed Twitter.

In cases where an account was taken over by the attacker, they may have been able to view additional information, Twitter added, saying its forensic investigation of these activities was still ongoing.

"We are actively working on communicating directly with the account-holders that were impacted".

The company said it will soon restore access for all account owners who may still be locked out as a result of the remediation efforts.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the Twitter crypto scam can be traced back to a group of hackers who congregate online at OGusers.com, a username-swapping community where people buy and sell coveted online handles.

The report said that the Twitter hack is not from Russian, Chinese or North Korean hackers but was done by a group of young people, "one of whom says he lives at home with his mother".