Week of Sunday, October 18, 2026

Diesel in France hit a record €2.41 a liter on September 20th, which works out to about $10.27 a gallon at the European Central Bank's October 16th exchange rate. On Sunday it cost about €2.37 a liter, or $10.08 a gallon. AFP, the French wire service, notes diesel is at its highest since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran began February 28th. Government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon said events in the Middle East are what directly drive fuel prices.

Saturday's demonstrations were called over rising living costs and declining public services. The Interior Ministry counted 550,000 marchers; the CGT, one of France's largest union federations, counted 800,000. The day ended with the town hall in Limoges set on fire, and the prefect, the state's top official for the area, said nearly all of its historic interior was destroyed. Protesters got into the town halls in Marseille, where they covered walls in graffiti, and in Lille, where entrances were forced and part of the building was trashed. Shops were looted or vandalized in Paris, Lille, Rennes and Lyon, and bank branches were smashed in Paris. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said about 1,200 people were arrested that evening, and counts were still provisional on Sunday. Alexandre Bompard, who heads the French retail federation FCD, told the news channel LCI that 1,500 businesses were directly hit, at a cost of several hundred million euros, and said it is too early to put a full figure on it.

The truckers stood down the day before. OTRE, one of France's trucking federations, had called a protest for October 21st and 22nd. It suspended it on Friday after the government confirmed its commitments. They include a fuel price cut of up to 18 euro cents (about 20 US cents) a liter from November 1st for three months, and official guidance on fuel indexation, the formula that ties a carrier's price to the diesel price, by the end of October. A second round of aid grants is due by October 31st, and payment of every complete application filed so far by November 30th. OTRE said it has not given up the protest, and that any breach of the commitments would lead it to consider resuming it.

Companies with no French operations can still feel this. A French supplier, or a carrier that crosses France, may pass a higher diesel price on through an indexation formula, and it can show up as a surcharge on a US invoice some time after the pump price moved. A port strike or a rail strike can add delay: containers wait, a trucking slot is missed, and an order ships late for a reason that never appeared in your own operations. One strike day going ahead as scheduled is enough to cause that delay.

Tuesday's National Assembly vote is the first of several dates. It covers only the revenue half of the 2027 budget; the full bill is scheduled for a vote on November 17th. Moody's, which rates France Aa3, its fourth-highest grade, with a negative outlook, holds a scheduled review on October 23rd. The CGT's ports and docks federation has called a 24-hour strike for October 30th, part of an international dockers' day of action. On November 5th, five unions have called a national strike, and four rail unions have called a strike the same day. President Macron addresses the country tonight at 8 p.m. Paris time.

n0n, a data-theft extortion group first seen in September, posted about 38 port, terminal and shipping companies in 18 countries on its leak site on October 12th, a dozen of them in South Korea. The names include Ocean Network Express, the Singapore container line, and terminal operators in South Korea, Spain, Morocco and Brazil. No US company is currently listed. The demands are in dispute: SOCRadar, a threat-intelligence firm, and most outlets report $2.4 million to $14 million in Bitcoin, while Cydome, an Israeli maritime cybersecurity firm that read all 38 listings, reports $400,000 to $400 million each and says some figures in Korean press, such as $10 million for Dongkuk Steel, match the 10% payment that opens a negotiation.

The group posted EDI messages, the electronic data interchange traffic that shippers, carriers and terminals exchange to book and release containers, plus manifests, vessel schedules and terminal system configurations. Cydome adds freight rate sheets, invoices, ship charter contracts and delay-fee calculations. SOCRadar reads the pattern as a single weak point shared by many victims rather than 38 separate break-ins, and names no vendor. Cydome names one, CyberLogitec, a Seoul-based maritime software maker that reports more than 150 customers. Its evidence is that at least 21 of the 38 are documented customers, and that 7 of 85 sample file names carry the vendor's name or a product's. "This is not confirmed... We do not know which system was accessed, how, or how much of each customer's data was taken," Cydome writes. Korean press, relayed by Cydome, reports that CyberLogitec confirmed the Korean firms are its customers and sent a precautionary notice saying their systems are operating normally. It has not confirmed an incident, and nobody has validated the samples.

If Cydome is right, the files came from one software vendor's records, and the exposure reaches further than the list. EDI messages pass between companies, and Cydome says they can contain other carriers' data, so the exposure may include companies that never appear on the leak site. For a shipper, that could be as small as a record that a container of yours moved through a terminal, or as large as a manifest of what you shipped and to whom. Cydome notes that on earlier deadlines n0n replaced anonymous listings with real names within hours.

The Bankruptcy Noticing Center, which prepares and sends notices for every federal bankruptcy court in the country, has been down since October 9th. The contractor BAE Systems runs it for the federal judiciary, and BAE says the cause is a security incident isolated to the center's system. The center's websites and creditor registration service are offline, and neither paper nor electronic notices are going out. Registered users of the courts' own electronic filing system still receive their filing notices. Creditors who rely on the center, by mail or through its own electronic service, are not.

In a voluntary Chapter 7 case or a Chapter 12 or 13 case, the liquidation and repayment-plan cases, a creditor generally has 70 days from the filing to submit a proof of claim, the form that puts you in line to be paid. That clock runs from the filing, not from the notice. In a Chapter 11 reorganization the court sets the claims deadline by order, and the rules say creditors get at least 21 days' mailed notice of it. That is the mail that has stopped. If the debtor listed what it owes you as undisputed, you need not file a claim at all. If the debtor left your claim off its list of what it owes, or listed it as disputed, conditional or not yet fixed in amount, a missed deadline means you are not treated as a creditor for voting or payment. A judge can extend the deadline by up to 60 days from the date of the order if you ask and the notice did not give you reasonable time to file. That is decided case by case, in Chapter 11 as in the other chapters.

No national extension has been ordered; individual courts are posting their own orders and guidance. Connecticut's bankruptcy court said the outage justifies extra time and that it may extend deadlines or reset hearings on request, while keeping scheduled hearings on the calendar. The Central District of Illinois tells parties to check the electronic docket for case updates themselves, and the bankruptcy court for southern Georgia has posted a way to look up creditor addresses in its case files. Nobody has said what caused the incident, whether any data was accessed, or when the notices resume.

On October 14th DHS proposed ending the rule that has officers defer to an earlier approval. Today, when an employer files to extend a worker's petition on the same facts as before, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) generally accepts the earlier approval unless something material has changed. The proposal drops that default, so each extension would be decided on its own evidence. DHS argues the deference rule shifts the burden of proof, which the statute puts on the petitioner, onto the officer. It reaches extensions for H-1B specialty workers, L-1 transfers from a foreign affiliate and most other employment visa categories. DHS estimates about 208,000 petitions a year are affected, and about 6,000 more a year would draw a request for evidence, a letter from USCIS asking for more proof before it decides.

Without deference, an officer may ask you to prove again what the first approval settled, and the file waits while you assemble it. That can push back a start date, a staffing plan or a transfer you had counted on.

A second DHS rule, finalized that day, hits the same employers. It makes permanent an interim rule in effect since October 30th, 2025. Most renewal applications for employment authorization documents, the work permit card many non-citizen employees carry, filed on or after that date no longer get an automatic extension of up to 540 days while USCIS decides them. Extensions set by law, such as for people allowed to stay because their home country is unsafe, are unaffected. Automatic extensions date to 2016, and DHS raised them to 540 days in 2022 and 2024 because of USCIS processing delays. What is new is DHS's own accounting: 20,000 to 33,000 permits lapsing in an 18-month window starting in May 2027, at 1,700 to 2,800 employers, with $138 million in lost productivity and $312 million in turnover costs over that period. In DHS's example, a worker whose card expires May 30th and whose renewal is still undecided on May 31st cannot work from that day unless authorized on another basis, and may return only if the renewal is approved. The largest groups of work permit applicants are asylum applicants and people applying for green cards from inside the United States.

Conduent is a business-services outsourcer, the company other companies hire to run back-office work. Someone was inside its network from about October 21st, 2024 until the breach was found around January 13th, 2025, and the files taken held information on about 62 million people: some combination of names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, medical and health-insurance details and financial account numbers. For most of them, Conduent held the data because it ran services for their health plan. As of its June quarterly filing, Conduent said the data had not surfaced publicly, and a February company statement said it had seen no evidence of misuse.

More than 30 class actions followed, starting in October 2025. The consolidated complaint, filed for 35 plaintiffs in 18 states, named Conduent and five of its clients: AIG Procurement Services, The Cigna Group, Elevance Health, Health Care Service Corporation and Humana. It alleges the clients did not do enough to oversee Conduent or to meet their contract duties to protect the data. On October 16th Conduent agreed to pay $80 million to settle.

Everyone covered gets a year of credit or medical-data monitoring without filing a claim, and cash is available on request. The fund also pays the plaintiffs' lawyers and the administrator, so $80 million across 62 million people is about $1.29 each before those costs come out. Conduent admits no fault, says it carries cyber insurance and expects no material impact.

The release reaches beyond Conduent. If the court gives final approval, people covered by the deal give up any claim over the breach against Conduent and against its clients. The agreement defines clients to include any client whose data was affected and any customer or downstream business of those clients whose data may have been affected. That covers clients that were never sued. People who opt out are not bound and keep the right to sue. The agreement says it is not an admission by the five named clients. The plaintiffs' lawyers and Conduent signed it; the clients did not, but the agreement lets them benefit from the release.

None of this is final. As of the filing, the federal court in New Jersey had not given preliminary approval, and there is no hearing date or claim deadline. The release binds class members, not state attorneys general. Regulators can still act: Texas's attorney general served formal demands for information in February 2026, and no enforcement action had surfaced as of October 18th.

The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, named for the late senator and signed on September 18th, was due to start on October 18th. Its Russia provisions included tariffs of up to 500% on Russian goods, tariffs of up to 100% on the five biggest buyers of Russian crude and gas and the five biggest helpers of sanctions evasion, sanctions on foreign banks dealing with Russian state banks, and bans on US investment in Russia and purchases of its government debt. On October 16th President Trump signed an executive order waiving those provisions, citing the national interest. The waiver lasts until the President or the Secretary of State decides further action is appropriate, and sanctions already in force under earlier orders are unaffected.

A week earlier the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces US sanctions, licensed the sale and import of Russian-origin diesel, including into the US, through April 7th, 2027. AFP, the French news agency, reports the executive order followed a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow Russian diesel exports in exchange for easing sanctions. Rubio said Russia would make the diesel available to the global market "one way or the other," and that "the only difference is how much of it the United States was going to get." He said the President "wants to take the 60-day period of time to sort of analyse what imposing both sanctions and tariffs will mean to the global economy."

The waiver drew criticism from both parties. Republican Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn criticized it: Tillis called it "beyond irresponsible," and Cornyn said Graham, who died in July, "would be appalled." Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer also criticized it, as did Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said the decision "definitely helps only the Russians." Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican who voted against the law, welcomed it. A White House spokesperson said enforcing the provisions now "would impede ongoing U.S. efforts to negotiate a durable and comprehensive peace agreement" and that the President "retains the ability to exercise these authorities at any time if he determines that doing so would advance national interests."

The diesel link runs through the winter. AFP noted how much US trucking, farming and construction depend on diesel. Rubio also said conflicts around the world, including the US war on Iran and attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels on Saudi Arabia, "are starting to crash into each other" and are affecting oil and diesel prices. The Graham tariffs would fall on the biggest buyers of Russian crude and gas, so if they return, some of that fuel may stop reaching the market, which would tighten diesel supply. A review that runs the full 60 days would end in mid-December, as winter heating and freight season builds, while the Russian diesel license runs into April.

On October 8th the Court of International Trade, the federal court that hears customs disputes, certified a class in Freestyle World v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The class is every importer of record, the company named on the customs entry and legally responsible for the tariff, that paid tariffs under IEEPA, the emergency-powers law, between February 1st, 2025 and February 19th, 2026. Importers who already sued on their own are excluded. There is no opt-out; as the law firms following the case read it, the only exit is filing your own suit.

The order does not require refunds. Judge Richard Eaton wrote that there has been no ruling on the merits and that he certified the class in the "hope, and expectation" that it leads to refunds. Both sides owe him a proposed schedule by October 22nd, and law firms do not expect a classwide refund order before the government has answered.

Most of the money is already moving. After the US Supreme Court held in February that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs, Customs and Border Protection built a refund system called CAPE. By October 2nd it had accepted about $136.6 billion for processing. About $126 billion in tariffs plus interest had been refunded or sent to the Treasury for payment, against an original estimate of $166 billion in tariffs from roughly 330,000 importers. The court estimates about $30 billion would stay in the Treasury if CAPE stopped today.

Who gets left out comes down to liquidation, the customs final accounting of an entry, which becomes final about 90 days after it is completed. CAPE does not take a finally liquidated entry from an importer that never sued, and the judge expects tens of thousands of importers, mostly small, to get nothing without a court order. More than 4,000 near-identical suits with about 7,000 plaintiffs had been filed by October 7th. Refunds also go only to the importer of record or a party it named on a customs form, so a business that paid the tariff inside a supplier's price is outside the process.

Davis Wright Tremaine, a law firm following the case, says Brazil- and India-origin tariffs are not in the class and that the earliest deadline to file an individual refund case is February 4th, 2027. The opinion does not say whether class membership pauses that clock. No government appeal of the class order had been reported as of October 18th, though a related appeal is pending at the Federal Circuit and the firms expect the government to appeal here too.