Daily Brief
2026-10-09
Top Story
A tanker was hit by projectiles 58 miles north of Qatar, with casualties reported, far from the Strait of Hormuz where attacks have been concentrated
UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), the British maritime agency that logs attacks on merchant shipping, reported casualties but gave no count and said authorities were investigating.
United States
American Express's national bank faces a $350 million penalty from its federal regulator over money-laundering controls, with a parallel Federal Reserve order against its parent
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which supervises national banks, announced the penalty on October 8th, together with a cease-and-desist order over deficiencies in the bank's anti-money-laundering program.
A new Justice Department directive requires fraud prosecutors to use pre-indictment asset seizures and infrastructure takedowns
Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald issued Directive 26-13 on October 8th.
Lawmakers urge Google to drop a proposed $10 million purchase of Spirit Airlines employee emails for AI training; Google says the data will be deidentified
Spirit Airlines, now defunct, proposes to sell Google about 100 million employee emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages and payroll records for $10 million, according to a press release from Representative Steven Horsford.
A research paper shows a malicious AI-agent add-on passing seven security scanners 94 to 100% of the time by hiding its code in compiled files while the readable source looks harmless
The paper is a preprint posted to arXiv on October 7th and has not been peer reviewed.
The US Labor Department suspended Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL from the green-card labor certification program
The department will also stop processing applications these eight companies already have pending, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said.
Iowa, Montana and Nebraska sued TP-Link alongside Florida, citing a figure that only 0.5% of its Vietnam factory's components are bought in Vietnam
Filed October 6th under consumer-protection law, the suits allege TP-Link Systems overstates that separation, and the complaints cite a figure that only 0.5% of the components used at its Vietnam factory, by value, are bought in Vietnam.
A Federal Communications Commission rule taking effect October 13th blocks approval of new devices containing chips or modules made by vendors on its national-security Covered List
The rule comes from the Federal Communications Commission's Third Report and Order.
Around the World
Germany's financial supervisor, BaFin, has set new deadlines for Deutsche Bank to fix the systems that flag suspicious payments, updating orders from 2021 and 2023
The order is dated September 15th and has been in legal effect since October 6th.
A new US indictment says Cilia Flores, wife of Nicolás Maduro, offered Venezuelan state oil contracts to allies of Colombia's ELN guerrillas around 2007
The 30-page indictment, the fifth revised version, was filed October 8th in the Southern District of New York, El Tiempo, a Colombian daily, reports.
The liquidator of failed Brazilian bank Banco Master asks a Florida bankruptcy court to freeze about $168 million of Aspen and Miami properties it says were bought with money drained from the bank
The three properties, one in Aspen and two in Miami, are valued at more than $168 million, about 840 million reais, Estadão reports.
The strike at Antofagasta Minerals' Centinela copper mine in Chile has begun, with more than 700 workers, 22% of staff, out
The legal strike began on October 7th after government-mediated talks with two unions failed.
A Russian plant that supplies rare-earth metals to Estonia was left off the EU's 22nd sanctions package at Estonia's request
Kommersant, a Russian business daily, reports, citing Estonian public broadcaster ERR, that the Solikamsk Magnesium Plant was spared.
Japan's Mitsubishi Materials is buying recycled tungsten from Vietnam instead of China, and has already raised tool prices
Nikkei Asia, via Valor, reports Mitsubishi Materials is importing tungsten from Vietnam, including material recycled from carbide scrap, at higher cost, to get around China's February 2025 export restrictions.
Zambia signed a $2.49 billion US health financing deal after a requirement to share specimens was removed and the patient-data terms were narrowed
Zambia's foreign minister, Mulambo Haimbe, said the health deal was separated from the critical-minerals talks it had been bundled with, which are now handled on their own.
Six of the 17 companies newly sanctioned over Iran's shadow fleet are based in China or Hong Kong
The US Treasury sanctioned 17 tankers alongside the 17 companies, all part of the fleet Iran uses to move oil while hiding who owns the ship and the cargo.
Saudi Arabia is negotiating long-term contracts to ship crude from outside the Strait of Hormuz, starting in 2027
The ship-to-ship transfers Saudi Arabia has used since attacks disrupted traffic through the strait would become formal long-term supply deals.
The Franco-German proposal for an EU power to cut off a trading partner's market access would take effect unless member states vote it down; Italy has not signed
Sent on October 5th, the Franco-German letter targets countries causing severe and systematic distortions.
The EU is weighing a broad levy on very large companies of every kind, rather than a tax aimed at US tech firms
Six EU officials said the European Commission is looking at changing its planned annual levy on large companies, the CORE proposal, which currently applies above €100 million in revenue, so that it covers all very large companies and not just digital firms.
Brazil's government has put about 732 million reais of its securities regulator's 2027 budget into a contingency reserve, saying a Supreme Court order does not require releasing it
The money is budgeted for CVM, Brazil's securities regulator, but cannot be spent while it sits in the reserve, Valor reports.