Red error tray icon - cannot check for updates and a crash

[Lyubomir]

After i select the error, there are options to retry for updates and also an option to open the Package Manager.
If i select the option to open the Package Manager, there is an Ubuntu error crash. I select "send the error", and then the error cannot be reported because of var/lib/apt/lists/dl.winehq.org_wine-builds_ubuntu_dists_focal_InRelease - fopen (13: Permission denied), E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

The initial error (which is displayed in the popup from the tray icon is something like the aforementioned error, if not the same).

Doing ll command on the /var/lib/apt/lists directory shows that almost all files are owned by root:root. The following exceptions are owned by _apt:root:
auxfiles/
dl.winehq.org_wine-builds_ubuntu_dists_focal_InRelease
partial/

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: apt 2.0.2ubuntu0.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-52.57-lowlatency 5.4.65
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-52-lowlatency x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.8
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
Date: Wed Oct 21 13:01:23 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-02-08 (255 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" - Release amd64 (20191017)
SourcePackage: apt
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-04-20 (183 days ago)
mtime.conffile..etc.apport.crashdb.conf: 2020-05-15T09:41:35.683742