2026-10-28

Georgia's secretary of state says an Anthropic AI agent reached only free public election data, through the US state's Data Hub and not its voter registration system

Anthropic contacted Georgia on October 8th about the agent's activity, which Axios reported was a retrieval of aggregate voting statistics without human authorization.

The US Justice Department let Extreme Networks pay $975,721.84 instead of charging it over sanctions and export-control offenses, its first such deal under the 2026 enforcement policy

Extreme Networks, a North Carolina networking company, filled 11 orders between about March 2018 and March 2022, through its Russian subsidiary, for a Russian anti-aircraft missile maker owned by Almaz-Antey, a Russian defense group the US Treasury put on its sanctions list in 2014. The Justice Department says certain Russia-based employees hid the buyer's identity from the company's own trade compliance group. Extreme Networks came forward only when a news publication was about to expose it, so the disclosure was not timely, though prosecutors credit its full cooperation.

A strike by about 250 port security watchmen could hit eight Los Angeles and Long Beach terminals when their contract extension expires November 1st

The watchmen guard gates and cargo at the terminals and belong to Local 26 of the ILWU, the West Coast longshore union. The Pacific Maritime Association, the employer association that bargains with the union, says the terminals handle more than half the cargo through the two ports and that other dockworkers are not expected to cross Local 26 picket lines. It counts six affected container terminals; the union's notice lists eight locations. The union says talks with employers have failed since 2025.

US indicts a Malaysian man and five others from Cameroon, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda over fake crypto-token investment schemes run from compounds in Madagascar's capital

The fake investments were in NFTs, digital collectible tokens, and took more than $516,695 from 74 wallets linked to US victims, and the money moved through Binance to accounts held by people in China.

Brazil's securities commission banned a former executive of the state oil company Petrobras from running public companies for 15 years, finding he received $2.5 million in improper benefits on a 2006 US refinery purchase

The CVM, Brazil's securities commission, ruled unanimously against Nestor Cerveró, Petrobras's former international director, and fined him 16.1 million Brazilian reais. The benefits came when Petrobras bought the Pasadena refinery in the US, a figure the CVM calculated. It ruled it is too late to punish ten other former executives and board members, including Dilma Rousseff, then the government's chief of staff, who also chaired Petrobras's board when the purchase was approved in February 2006.

South Africa's Information Regulator, its data-privacy authority, fined First National Bank, part of the FirstRand group, 1 million South African rand, about $60,000, over several violations of the country's privacy law including a February 2022 security breach

Financial Afrik, an African finance news site, reports the penalty falls under the Protection of Personal Information Act, South Africa's privacy law. Only the opening of its article is public.

The police inspectorate for England and Wales says IT suppliers holding police data have been breached repeatedly since 2021

Inspectors found most police supplier contracts included no ongoing cybersecurity assurance.

Uruguay suspended poultry and poultry-product imports from all of Brazil after Newcastle disease, a poultry virus, was confirmed in Brazil's Santa Catarina state

Uruguay's agriculture ministry temporarily suspended entry of poultry and poultry products from Brazil, exempting products treated to inactivate the virus.

The European Commission has proposed tariffs of 27.5% to 57.09% on car and van tires from China to offset Chinese subsidies

Tyrepress reports the Commission disclosed its proposed findings on October 19th to the companies and governments involved in the anti-subsidy case.

South Africa's Reserve Bank revoked HSBC's license to bank from its Johannesburg branch, an administrative step completing an exit HSBC announced in 2024

Financial Afrik reports the revocation completes that exit rather than marking a new decision to leave, ending a presence of nearly 30 years.

Munich Re, a German reinsurance company, will share up to $1 billion of the risk on trade-finance loans from Africa Finance Corporation to African banks

The first phase covers letters of credit, which are a bank's promise to pay an exporter, plus trade loans and trade guarantees at 38 financial institutions in 11 African countries. Africa Finance Corporation, a lender to African banks, keeps part of the risk on each loan. Financial Afrik, an African finance news site, reports the $1 billion is Munich Re's capacity to take on risk rather than a direct loan, and that capacity frees up as transactions mature.

Chad denies Niger's accusation that an alleged drone strike on Niger was launched from Chadian soil with French participation

Niger has summoned Chad's ambassador, called for an independent international inquiry and taken the matter to the UN Security Council and the African Union Peace and Security Council, saying it holds proof of an attempt to destabilize it.

Quad9, a free nonprofit service that looks up website addresses, will stop serving users in France on November 24th after a French court ordered it to block websites accused of infringing a sports broadcaster's copyrights

Quad9 provides DNS, the internet's address book: it translates a website name like eff.org into the numeric address computers use to connect. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group, reports that Quad9, a Swiss nonprofit, says it cannot reliably block only French users, and that blocking for everyone would apply French law worldwide. Quad9 says it faces about 20 similar lawsuits in France.

Moldova shut down 82 public digital services and 30 government networks after a cyberattack its e-government agency says took data on about 750,000 citizens

A Brussels court ordered passport contractor Semlex and 13 other defendants to stand trial over a Congolese passport contract

The African Union has launched its own agency to grade how likely African governments and companies are to repay their debts, as an alternative to Fitch, Moody's and S&P

Malaysian customs seized advanced AI chips worth $12.1 million at Kuala Lumpur's main airport and ties the shipment to a syndicate suspected in at least five smuggling cases

After allowing for claims trends, specialty insurance rates fell in the first half of 2026 across every major line of coverage, the insurance broker WTW says

Russian banks have until October 29th to replace ViPNet HW4 encryption gateways, whose Federal Security Service certificates expire that day