- Chinese President Xi to meet with Merkel and Macron
- OPEC Tension in Oil Does Not End
- Cyber Attack On US Companies
Chinese President Xi to meet with Merkel and Macron
According to people familiar with the situation, China’s Xi Jinping is expected to meet with Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron this week.
China’s President Xi Jinping, whose relations with the E.U. have been strained recently due to human rights violations, will meet with Merkel and Macron via video conferencing. The topics to be discussed at the meeting are unknown.
Similar discussions with Xi have taken place in the past, including a call on Dec. 30 with top European Union officials that resulted in a now-stalled investment deal.
Chinese Foreign Ministry, German and French officials did not comment on the issue.
China-EU relations deteriorated this year due to China’s human rights violations against the Uyghurs, and both sides had mutually enforced sanctions.
The call also comes weeks after a Group of 7 leaders joined the E.U. and the U.S. in pushing for a fresh World Health Organisation probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi, echoing Xi’s July 1 centennial speech, criticized the U.S. and its allies for holding an old Cold War attitude that is often regarded as opposing the Chinese government.
OPEC Tension in Oil Does Not End
Discussions will continue on Monday to decide how much to increase production in August after OPEC+ countries disagreed on increasing production.
After OPEC and its allies failed to reach a critical agreement on their oil output policy last week, amid escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., energy prices hold around $75.
No agreement was reached on Friday after the United Arab Emirates wanted better terms for itself in the OPEC+ talks. Thus, the conflict between two close allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, was also reflected in the markets.
“The market is understandably nervous as unity among the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries appears to be weakening,” said senior commodities strategist Daniel Hynes, from Australia and New Zealand Banking Group in Sydney.
“The market is tight. Even with a small increase from Opec+, we see inventories continuing to draw down in the second half of the year,” he added.
Many OPEC+ members have agreed to a production increase of 400,000 BPD from August, but the U.A.E. wants to produce an extra 700,000 BPD, changing the basis used to calculate production quotas.
Cyber Attack On US Companies
Cybersecurity firm Huntress Labs has announced that a massive cyber attack has hit nearly 200 American companies.
Security researchers said the attack might have been carried out by REvil, a Russian cybercriminal group that the F.B.I. has said was behind the hacking of the world’s largest meat processor, J.B.S., in May.
In a statement from Kaseya, it was stated that a “possible attack” was being investigated, and customers using V.S.A. software were asked to shut down their servers immediately. Kaseya also noted that one of the applications running corporate servers, desktop computers, and network devices might have been compromised in the attack.
Despite Kaseya’s announcement that “few companies were affected by the cyberattack, experts at Huntress Labs estimate the number to be around 200.”
Besides, Sweden-based Coop company, which has hundreds of supermarkets, stated that the attack indirectly affected them and said that hundreds of markets were closed. Outside Coop stores, signs turned customers away: “We have been hit by a large I.T. disturbance, and our systems do not work.”
According to the BBC’s report, the U.S. Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) has also launched an investigation into the attack.
