Corruption Ledger

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted new rules requiring publicly traded companies to disclose cyberattacks within four business days after determining they’re material incidents. According to the Wall Street watchdog, material incidents are those that a public company’s shareholders would consider important. The SEC also adopted new regulations mandating foreign private issuers to provide equivalent disclosures following cybersecurity breaches. “Whether a company loses a factory in a fire — or millions of files in a cybersecurity incident —…

The French-Italian owner of the Ray-Ban and Oakley eyewear brands was sued for allegedly scheming with competitors to inflate prices by as much as 1,000%. Paris-based EssilorLuxottica SA, the world’s largest eyewear company, is the “instigator and primary enforcer” of the price-fixing scheme in the US market, forming illegal agreements with Frames for America Inc. and For Eyes Optical Co., among others, according to the consumer antitrust complaint filed Friday in San Francisco federal court as a proposed class action….

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region has said that Ukraine fired cluster munitions at a village near the Ukrainian border on Friday, but that there were no casualties or damage. The governor made the statement on Saturday during a daily briefing on his Telegram channel, without providing visual evidence. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian authorities. “In Belgorod district, 21 artillery shells and three cluster munitions from a multiple-launch rocket system were fired at the village of Zhuravlevka,” Governor…

BAGHDAD — Hundreds of protesters attempted to storm Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses foreign embassies and the seat of Iraq’s government, early Saturday following reports an ultranationalist group burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Iraqi Embassy in Copenhagen. Security forces pushed back protesters, who blocked the Jumhuriya bridge leading to the Green Zone, preventing them from reaching the Danish Embassy. The protest came two days after people angered by the planned burning of the…

The USS Canberra is the latest military collaboration between the two countries as they join forces to combat China’s influence in the Pacific. The United States has commissioned a warship in Sydney, Australia, the first time a US Navy vessel joined active service at a foreign port, as the two close allies step up their military ties in response to China’s expanding regional reach. The Independence-class littoral combat ship – named USS Canberra – was commissioned on Saturday at a…

U.S. prosecutors have accused FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of witness tampering and asked a federal judge to issue an order that would bar the former billionaire and other parties from making public statements likely to interfere with a fair trial. The prosecutors wrote to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Thursday referencing a New York Times article titled “Inside the Private Writings of Caroline Ellison, Star Witness in the FTX Case.” The article reported excerpts from Ellison’s personal Google documents…

The U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that Amazon has agreed to pay a $25 million fine to settle alleged children’s privacy laws violations related to the company’s Alexa voice assistant service. Amazon has offered Alexa voice-activated products and services targeted at children under 13 years old since May 2018. In May 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed charges against Amazon, accusing the company of violating children’s privacy laws,…

The president of Stanford University has stepped down in the wake of an independent investigation that found “substandard practices” in research papers he was involved in. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the leader of the prestigious California university, issued a statement on Wednesday saying he would leave his post, effective August 31. Media reports in the United States had raised questions about “falsified data” in research linked to Tessier-Lavigne, a prominent neuroscientist from Ontario, Canada. But on Monday, a scientific panel commissioned by…

For the first time since the 1980s, the United States has deployed a nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) to South Korea, as the allies launched talks to coordinate their responses in the event of a nuclear war with North Korea. White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell confirmed the rare visit on Tuesday, which had been expected after it was announced in a joint declaration during a summit between South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and US President Joe Biden in Washington, DC in…

Backstory: Epstein continued socializing with A-listers despite conviction – media, New reports on Jeffrey Epstein demonstrate deep-going corruption of US ruling elite The U.S. Virgin Islands government is seeking at least $190 million in penalties from JPMorgan Chase in connection to its banking relationship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In a new legal filing on Friday, the USVI’s Attorney General said the territory also wants the financial giant to separately pay damages to victims of Epstein, who killed himself in…

Recent developments raise the prospect that British intelligence agents could finally face justice for their little-known role in the CIA’s global torture program. Britain’s foreign and domestic intelligence apparatus is facing scrutiny by a tribunal tasked with intelligence oversight. On May 26, London’s infamously opaque Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) unanimously issued a landmark ruling which means the complaints of two Saudis brutally tortured at CIA black sites and jailed for years in Guantanamo Bay can finally be heard, at least…

NEW YORK – Standard Chartered is ramping up its bullish Bitcoin prediction, targeting as much as US$120,000 (S$161,000) by the end of 2024 – almost quadruple the current price – as increasingly cash-rich miners reduce their sales of the token. “Increased miner profitability per BTC mined means they can sell less while maintaining cash inflows, reducing net BTC supply and pushing BTC prices higher,” Geoff Kendrick at Standard Chartered wrote on Monday. Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive process in which…

  WASHINGTON ― The White House on Monday told lawmakers it opposes a provision in the House’s annual defense policy bill that would create a special inspector general for Ukraine aid, modelled after the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The Ukraine inspector general was one of several provisions in the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that the White House, in an Office of Management and Budget statement on the bill, told Congress it wants removed. The statement also…

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announces that President Erdogan agrees to forward Sweden’s bid to Turkey’s parliament. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has agreed to back Sweden’s bid to join NATO after a year of blocking the move, citing Turkish security concerns. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Monday that Erdogan agreed to forward Sweden’s membership bid to Turkey’s parliament. After talks in Vilnius, Lithuania, with Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, Stoltenberg said Turkey had agreed to move forward….

  Joe Biden blurted out to reporters on Sunday that his decision to send widely-banned cluster bombs to Ukraine was made because “we’ve run out of ammunition.” “Mr President– on cluster munitions, why now?” a reporter asked. “We’ve run out of ammunition,” Biden bluntly responded. Joe Biden wasn’t supposed to say the quiet part out loud: “We’ve run out of ammunition”. But now that the cat’s out of the bag, one must ask whether continued support of Ukraine’s military is…

BENGALURU – Nearly 900 Amazon workers at a warehouse in Britain will stage a strike for three days in the coming week over a pay dispute, labour union GMB said on Saturday. The strike will take place from July 11-13 at Amazon’s warehouse in Coventry, for two hours during the morning and two hours in the evening on the three days, GMB said in an emailed statement to Reuters. It coincides with a “Prime Day” sales event the company has…