The World JAPANESE Japan Premier Kishida cools speculation for early election

“He’s likely judged overall that holding an election now would not be advantageous,” said political analysts Shigenobu Tamura.

“He’ll look for another time for a dissolution including the possibility of autumn.”

Asahi TV and Jiji Press also indicated approval had sagged in the past month.

With stocks hovering around three-decade highs and the economy growing faster than initially thought in the first quarter, Kishida has some factors in his favor.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed several agencies were affected. Russianspeaking hackers known as Clop have carried out a spate of recent attacks that exploited a vulnerability in MOVEit, a popular file-transfer product, according to the agency.

CISA Director Jen Easterly said the agency is providing support to several federal agencies affected by the MOVEit attack. Easterly said “as far as we know” the hackers are only stealing information stored on the MOVEit file transfer service, and that the intrusions are not being leveraged to gain further access to other parts of networks.

Bloomberg News

Security firm: Chinese spies breached hundreds of public, private networks

SUSPECTED state-backed Chinese hackers used a security hole in a popular email security appliance to break into the networks of hundreds of public and private sector organizations globally, nearly a third of them government agencies including foreign ministries, the cybersecurity firm Mandiant said Thursday.

“This is the broadest cyber espionage campaign known to be conducted by a China-nexus threat actor since the mass exploitation of Microsoft Exchange in early 2021,” Charles Carmakal, Mandiant’s chief technical officer, said in a emailed statement. That hack compromised tens of thousands of computers globally.

In a blog post Thursday, Googleowned Mandiant expressed “high confidence” that the group exploiting a software vulnerability in Barracuda Networks’ Email Security Gateway was engaged in “espionage activity in support of the People’s Republic of China.”

It said the activity began as early as October.

The hackers sent emails containing malicious file attachments to gain access to targeted organizations’ devices and data, Mandiant said. Of those organizations, 55 percent were from the Americas, 22 percent from Asia Pacific and 24 percent from Europe, the Middle East and Africa and they included foreign ministries in Southeast Asia, foreign trade offices and academic organizations in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the company said.

Mandiant said the majority impact in the Americas may partially reflect the geography of Barracuda’s customer base.

Barracuda announced on June 6 that some of its its email security appliances had been hacked as early as October, giving the intruders a backdoor into compromised networks. The hack was so severe the California company recommended fully replacing the appliances.

After discovering it in mid-May, Barracuda released containment and remediation patches but the hacking group, which Mandiant identifies as UNC4841, altered their malware to try to maintain access, Mandiant said. The group then “countered with high frequency operations targeting a number of victims located in at least 16 different countries.”

Word of the breach arrived with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken departing for China this weekend as part of the Biden administration’s push to repair deteriorating ties between Washington and Beijing. AP

“I am not thinking of dissolving the current session of the lower house of parliament,” Kishida told reporters Thursday. Dissolving parliament would be a procedural step needed for calling an election.

Kishida said he wanted to focus on the challenges ahead. Opposition members are expected to submit a no-confidence motion on Friday against Kishida’s government, which will likely be easily defeated given the large majority of seats held by the coalition led by the premier’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. But such a motion could be used by Kishida to call for a snap election. Given the relatively weak support for opposition parties, Kishida’s ruling LDP would likely remain in power if there was a vote, as it has been almost continuously since 1955. It could, however, lose some seats to an upstart opposition party.

While he need not hold a vote until 2025, calling an early vote would have left the opposition with less time to prepare for a campaign that could eat into the ruling coalition’s majority. Renewing his mandate would also help Kishida retain his position as party leader in an LDP vote next year.

The premier has been widely expected to hold the election by the end of the year, before the government reveals how it will fund plans to hike defense spending pledges and policies to counter the falling birthrate. Polls show a majority of the public is unwilling to countenance tax hikes, as inflation continues to hurt household budgets.

An election could come in the autumn, following a cabinet reshuffle and changes in some top LDP leadership positions, Jiji Press reported, citing political sources it did not name.

Support for Kishida’s cabinet has slipped in three recent media surveys. A poll by public broadcaster NHK conducted June 9-11 found a fall of 3 percentage points to 43 percent, while surveys by

On the downside, he has failed to bring about the pay hikes he promised, with real wages falling for a 13th straight month in April as food and fuel prices surge.

He’s also facing unease over mess-ups in the introduction of a national ID card.

Tamura said trouble over the ID card, the fall in poll ratings and scandals involving his son and a close aide likely contributed to Kishida’s thinking.

Kishida’s comments also come amid a rift between the LDP and its Buddhist-backed coalition partner Komeito amid a redrawing of constituency lines to reflect the ongoing drift of the population from his party’s rural strongholds to urban areas.