Theme: Technology

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is pushing for a centralized cybersecurity agency after passport details and other personal information of 168 people, including the president, his wife and senior security officials, were reported to be accessible online for nearly five months, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP). Technology experts warn that creating a new organization alone does little to address the deeper problem of complacency, with businesses and government agencies viewing tighter cybersecurity as an unnecessary expense until a serious breach occurs.

A test by France 24 Observers using a Chinese IP address showed that Doubao replies that the content is suspected of violating its rules of use and DeepSeek suggests the story is fake news and that there is no trustworthy information available. “This content is suspected of violating the rules for using Doubao,” Doubao responded. DeepSeek responded by suggesting the story was fake news: “As for the question of whether Mbappé said the words ‘Mao Zedong is a dictator’, there is currently no publicly available, trustworthy information or any news report that would make it possible to confirm this statement.” The controversy began with a joke by Mbappé in mid-October on the French podcast The Bridge, when he cited a meme in which his face appears superimposed on the figure of someone he called “a Chinese dictator”. Chinese football sponsors, including Dongpeng Group, dairy giant Mengniu and cheesemaker Milkground, ended partnerships with the Real Madrid striker; a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry lashed out at Mbappé during a press conference, and the player published an apology that, according to France 24, Chinese diplomats say is being taken seriously. Researcher Jennifer Pan of Stanford University said the original Chinese models are more likely to refuse to respond and to give short and vague replies to questions about Chinese politics than models developed elsewhere.

Chinese genetic sequencing company Novogene has taken the US Department of Defense to court to challenge its inclusion on a Pentagon list of firms accused of supporting China’s military, according to the Times of India. The lawsuit was filed late Tuesday in a federal court in Washington; the company was added to the list in June, alongside Alibaba, Baidu, BYD and NIO, and is seeking to overturn its designation, arguing that the decision is unlawful and has damaged its business and reputation. From 2027, the Pentagon will be barred from purchasing products or services from the listed companies even through third-party suppliers. An injunction granted by a US court to Alibaba against Pentagon contract restrictions does not remove the company from the list, which it is continuing to challenge in court.

Speaking on a panel at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen on Tuesday, DeepSeek engineer Gao Xi defended the company’s commitment to open-source artificial intelligence to accelerate the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI), even if it heightens safety risks, amid growing US concerns and scrutiny in China over whether the strategy poses national security risks. “If AGI is going to arrive in 10 years, then I hope we can bring this forward to one year. If it is going to arrive in one year, then I hope it can arrive tomorrow,” Gao said.

Japan Investment Corp (JIC), a Japanese state-backed fund, plans to sell chipmaking materials maker JSR to Mitsui Chemicals in a deal that could exceed 1.3 trillion yen ($8.2 billion), after buying it for some 900 billion yen two years ago, taking advantage of higher chip-firm valuations on the artificial intelligence investment boom, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters, in a text republished by DealStreetAsia. Founded in 1957, JSR is a leading manufacturer of photoresists used to transfer circuit patterns onto semiconductor wafers, and Nikkei Asia notes that the sale would be the biggest deal in the history of Japan’s chemical sector.

SpaceX stopped selling flights on its Falcon 9 rocket beyond 2028, as Starship enters commercial service, leaving European institutions without a guaranteed launch option. European demand is set to rise sharply by 2030, including for the sovereign IRIS² telecommunications constellation, and Christophe Bruneau, ArianeGroup’s executive chairman, acknowledged that if the launches all come in 2029, Europe will not have enough capacity. The European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, proposed investing about €10 billion over 10 years in a European system able to send astronauts to space and bring them back.

AMD recorded a $1.07 billion non-cash charge, or 66 cents a share, in the third quarter ended September 26, to account for warrants granted to OpenAI and Meta. The information comes from Reuters, in a text republished by StreetInsider. The company forecast faster-than-expected 2027 growth on surging data-center sales, and its shares rose 8% in extended trading. The warrants are part of a wave of equity incentives used by chipmakers to secure long-term purchases from a small group of AI customers: Cerebras granted OpenAI warrants against a $20 billion commitment, and Marvell issued warrants to Alphabet’s Google that give Google the right to buy a potential $12.2 billion stake.

Samsung Electronics will use its second semiconductor plant in Taylor, Texas, to produce base dies for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for AMD and Nvidia, according to South Korea’s Maeil Business Newspaper, which cited industry sources, in a Reuters report published by WHTC. Construction is due to start formally this month, with the plant having secured orders for its entire output, most of it for AMD. The facility will use 2-nanometer technology and cover about 2.7 million square feet, roughly 1.5 times the size of the first plant, which has a contract with Tesla. Equipment is expected to be installed from February 2029, with mass production in 2030.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang said at the opening of the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen that China opposes the overgeneralization of the concept of national security and the erection of a digital iron curtain. Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai said that only open source can popularize artificial intelligence and, with that, create a sustainable and inclusive industry. According to him, Alibaba is using 25 billion dollars in free cash flow from its e-commerce business to fund AI infrastructure and models and has doubled its investment in computing capacity every year for the past three years.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry says it launched a new drone headquarters on Monday and plans to acquire more than 20,000 low-cost, expendable combat drones, while accelerating the Korean Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (K-LUCAS) program, according to the Korea Herald.

Japanese group GMO Internet suspects that a North Korea-linked hacking group was behind a data leak. The company suspects that the attack targeting users of its foreign exchange service was the work of a North Korea-linked group and reported the case to authorities.

GMO Internet Group CEO Masatoshi Kumagai and other executives will hold a news conference in Tokyo on Monday to address a series of unauthorized access incidents, the company said Saturday, according to The Japan Times. The company will explain the circumstances surrounding a cyberattack on its Onamae.com Desktop Cloud service, which provides servers for automated foreign exchange margin trading.

Foreign ministers of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) voiced “grave concerns” over the use of trade restrictions and other measures they view as economically coercive, without naming the country, and committed to providing over $85 million in technical and financial assistance to improve access to trusted artificial intelligence across the Indo-Pacific, according to Kyodo News. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the group was not “an anti-China or anti-anybody coalition” and that the joint statement addressed behaviors and activities that, he said, were “coming repetitively from one country”.

The FBI attributed to North Korea the theft of more than $6 billion in virtual assets from the Binance exchange on or about October 29 and identified the operation as TraderTraitor, saying it had observed the hackers converting the stolen assets primarily into Ethereum, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, which published the statement. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, told the BBC it had covered 90% of the $6.3bn stolen in Thursday’s hack. The remaining 10% are less liquid tokens that may take longer to source in the required amounts, the company added.

China’s State Council ruled that artificial intelligence application projects in the area of market access with a possible significant impact on employment must undergo an employment risk assessment during review, according to the text published by the Chinese government. The guidelines also urge employers to notify employees affected by automation in advance and provide support for training, redeployment and other employment transitions, according to IBTimes. The country created 10.52 million new urban jobs in the first nine months of 2026, 87.7 percent of the annual target, and the surveyed urban unemployment rate averaged 5.2 percent in the first eight months, according to figures released at Saturday’s press conference.

Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) told the South China Morning Post that the order from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requiring it to justify why its authority to provide international and domestic services to and from the country should not be revoked “has been ceased”. The US regulator had moved to revoke the firm's authority to operate, citing national security concerns, according to the newspaper.

Finland will create a military space operations center that starts operating on January 1, 2027, within the Air Force headquarters in central Finland, according to Sputnik. According to Defence Blog, the center will take over the three radar-imaging satellites the Finnish Defence Forces bought from ICEYE.

China has brought the world’s largest 60-megawatt liquid air energy storage demonstration project online in Golmud City, northwest China’s Qinghai Province, according to CGTN. The system uses an ultra-cold process at minus 194 degrees Celsius to turn surplus electricity into liquid air for storage. According to the broadcaster, the project can absorb 600,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of clean energy daily and deliver about 180 million kWh of electricity annually.

China's Ministry of Commerce rejected the US Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) decision to bar device testing in China until 2028, the South China Morning Post reported. In a statement on Friday night, the ministry said the measure seriously harmed the interests of China and other trading partners, undermined the stability of China-US economic and trade relations and disrupted global industrial and supply chains. The FCC on Thursday banned all Chinese laboratories from testing electronic devices such as smartphones and computers destined for the US market.

North Korean leader Kim visited on Thursday an exhibition of drones, a variety of attack and other types that, according to the state Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), show recent achievements in the field of unmanned aeronautical technology. In a speech at the exhibition, Kim stressed the need to seize “the absolute superiority in the drone technology,” the Associated Press (AP) reported, citing KCNA.

The decline knocked nearly $1 trillion in value off the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange in one week and erased about $2 trillion in a month, according to The Guardian.

Binance said it has frozen around half of the US$ 6.3 billion stolen in a hack it described as “complex,” the BBC reported. The case is believed to be the biggest heist of its kind on record, eclipsing the US$ 1.5 billion attack on the Bybit exchange in 2025. The broadcaster also reported that several analytics firms have linked the attack to a North Korean hacking unit.

China rejected allegations of a Chinese espionage operation targeting Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, describing the claims as groundless speculation, the BBC reported. Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a regular media briefing in Beijing that the report was based on groundless speculation and was aimed purely at smearing and slandering China, the South China Morning Post reported: “The relevant report is based on groundless speculation and [is] purely aimed at smearing and slandering China.” Nvidia told the newspaper that “Megaspeed has been no different than many other regional cloud customers” and that “Jensen’s interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected”.

The United States (US) Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to vote on November 19 on a proposal to bar China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom from direct US number access on national security grounds, according to CNA.

Cursor said a tampered version of the Anthropic.claude-code 2.1.313 extension was available in its extension marketplace between about 2:27 a.m. and 1:35 p.m. Pacific Time on October 29, affecting at most 5,000 users. According to the company, the extension runs malicious code that collects data from the host computer and attempts to install a persistent SSH backdoor, with an attacker-controlled key, the local SSH service enabled and a reverse tunnel. Cursor said it removed the malicious version and blocked its distribution, and shut down the marketplace as a precaution, adding that the attacker's server is offline and there is no evidence other versions of the extension were affected. Reuters reported the removal and the blocking of distribution.

Nvidia pushed back on the report about American intelligence agencies surveilling a person close to CEO Jensen Huang as a possible Chinese intelligence asset, saying Singapore-based Megaspeed is just another regional cloud customer, that Huang's contacts with its executives are routine and that the chip-diversion allegations against the company were investigated and debunked last year, a company spokesperson said, as cited by CNBC.

The problem on the network of France's biggest telecoms provider Orange first hit at 11:37 a.m. on Monday and lasted until 8:30 p.m., with outages of up to nine hours for some customers, Orange France CEO Jérôme Hénique told Le Figaro, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) — at the core of the outage was a software bug in Nokia's code, new to Orange and “extremely complicated to find”.

Analytics firm TRM Labs attributed the attack on Binance to North Korea’s TraderTraitor unit with high confidence, based on on- and off-chain intelligence — Chainalysis also said it has “high confidence” in the North Korean group’s link to the hack, according to the BBC. Reuters reported that North Korean hackers were behind the $6.3 billion raid on Binance, according to TRM.

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said Thursday it will vote on November 19 on a proposal to ban China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and other IP-enabled service providers from direct access, according to Reuters. FCC Chair Brendan Carr said that with the decision the commission will strengthen its first line of defense against bad actors and illegal robocallers, also according to Reuters.

Binance estimated the impact of the security incident at $6.3 billion, with around $3 billion in crypto assets frozen so far, according to CNBC. Early checks point to a compromised engineer’s laptop, which allowed unauthorized withdrawals, and the exchange says it will cover all losses, according to the BBC.

Binance suspended all deposits and withdrawals as a precaution while it runs security checks, freezes funds and works with law enforcement, and says the volume frozen after the likely hacker attack totals about US$ 3 billion, up from the US$ 2.5 billion previously reported, according to TASS.

Malaysia’s customs department seized 30 servers fitted with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips in a suspected export-control violation: the shipment, worth about 50 million ringgit (US$ 12.2 million), was intercepted in the free trade zone of the country’s main airport on Oct. 15 after being falsely declared as electrical components for re-export to another Asian country without the required permit. Malaysia introduced permit requirements for the export, transit and transshipment of AI chips of US origin under pressure from the US to keep sensitive technology from being rerouted to China through third countries.

Binance said it is investigating “a potential security issue” on its trading platform and that user funds are safe, CNBC reported. The exchange, the world’s largest by daily trading volume, has not confirmed, as of publication, that it suffered an exploit. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said Thursday evening that the company had frozen more than $800 million in USD Coin tied to the incident, and Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said his firm had frozen more than $1.5 billion of its stablecoin. Crypto data provider Arkham Intelligence linked nearly $6 billion in digital assets — including bitcoin, ether, solana and various stablecoins — to 55 wallet addresses it has tied to the potential exploit. Bitcoin slid more than 3% and traded below $80,000 after the executives’ statements, according to NBC News.

The United States banned all Chinese laboratories from testing electronic devices destined for the US market, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), just weeks before President Donald Trump is due to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to bar Chinese labs from testing devices such as smartphones, cameras and computers for use in the US, according to Reuters, in an article republished by KWSN. FCC Chair Brendan Carr said that in 2025, 82% of electronics were tested in China, which does not have an agreement with the US, also according to Reuters.

The GLM-5.3 model, from Z.AI, from China, completed 3 of 13 multi-stage cyberattack scenarios at least once in controlled tests, the strongest performance Irregular has recorded from an openly available model, according to Reuters. In the same tests, the model gained access to protected services, established alternative connections to move through computer networks and coordinated operations across multiple machines, refusing none of the offensive tasks, according to Reuters.

The Pentagon's watchdog declined a bipartisan request by nine senators to open an investigation into the slowdown of Starshield, SpaceX's military-grade system, in Ukraine, according to a letter obtained by CNN. Inspector General Platte Moring said in a letter dated Tuesday that the senators' questions about the slowdowns and their impacts should be directed to the US Air Force and Space Force. The request, led by Republican Thom Tillis and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, also covered commercial-grade Starlink and asked for an “immediate investigation” into the disruptions to both systems in Ukraine.

DeepSeek and Moonshot AI, from China, relied heavily on outputs from OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model, from the United States, to train their latest models, according to The Information. The beneficiaries were Moonshot's Kimi K3.1 Pro, released last week, and DeepSeek's upgraded V4.1-Flash 1017, launched on October 17. In a September 30 blog post, OpenAI said it had linked a core part of a distillation campaign that began in July to individuals associated with Moonshot AI.

Vladimir Putin praised Elon Musk’s genius and said he was in touch with Starlink’s controlling shareholder as Russia develops its own satellite communications for its military to use against Ukraine, according to The Guardian. “We are in close contact with our American partners — including Mr. Musk — because it is very important, in orbit, not to get in each other’s way and to maintain a certain level of discipline and order,” he said.

The Israeli firm Discover-Tech concentrated ad spending in markets with no commercial appeal and was the top bidder for ads targeting Starlink users in more than 100 countries, according to the Russian network RT, citing researchers at TrendAI, a unit of Japan's Trend Micro — and the researchers conclude the operation was tracking infrastructure, not commercial advertising, but with no proof of infection of Starlink users.

The European Union (EU) is discussing strengthening its own capabilities and reducing dependence on the US after the Starlink slowdown in Ukraine, a topic at the Oct. 15–16 summit, according to the Russian agency TASS, citing sources — and according to those sources, cited by Bloomberg via TASS, such changes would take years and the realistic way out would be to strengthen Europe's role within structures such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

US artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic publicly filed its prospectus for an initial public offering (IPO) on Monday, which could become the largest stock market debut in history, according to CGTN — revenue reached US$ 16.29 billion in the first half of 2026, up from US$ 1.16 billion year on year, with a net loss of US$ 80.7 billion in the half, of which US$ 72.4 billion came from changes in the fair value of convertible notes.

The GMO Internet Group called on users to unplug their computers ahead of a threatened midday ransomware attack, according to Kyodo News. The group is investigating a cyberattack on a cloud trading service after the apparent culprit threatened ransomware attacks on user computers, according to Nikkei.

GMO Internet Group chief executive Masatoshi Kumagai admitted on Sunday night that the company's own engineers had flagged security issues before unauthorized access to a foreign exchange trading service it provides and that its response to the concerns was insufficient, Kyodo News reported. Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and relevant cabinet ministers will meet on Monday evening to discuss cyber security plans, amid data leaks and misuse, the top government spokesman said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is considering adding an economic espionage charge against Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi former OpenAI engineer accused of secretly recording conversations in an executive conference room at the company, according to a law-enforcement official who spoke to The Wall Street Journal, as cited by Middle East Eye. The probe examines whether Alfozan may have stolen information from the company to offer to the Saudi government, even if he was not recruited to do so, and the investigation may not lead to new charges.

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce, the company said on Monday, as it seeks to cut costs while pouring money into artificial intelligence, according to AFP. Staff on select teams in the United States, Canada, India and Britain at vice president level and below are eligible, a Microsoft spokesperson said, while some groups of employees, including some working on data centers, sales and marketing, are excluded.

The US and China are forming their own AI blocs and other countries are maneuvering to harness both without being alienated, with the two leading AI powers forming their own blocs, according to the Associated Press, in a text republished by US News; the dilemma is choosing between the most advanced US chips and technologies or more affordable, open-source Chinese systems; Kazakhstan joined both sides, with AI minister Zhaslan Madiyev visiting Washington in June and heading to Shanghai for the signing ceremony that made it a founding member of the Chinese initiative.

In his victory speech, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva denounced “interference coming from outside inward, through digital platforms”, defended regulating the platforms and said he will change the way he governs, with more popular participation and more room for digital communication, according to Opera Mundi.

Serhii Beskrestnov, a defence technology adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Sunday that existing restrictions on Starlink's use in Ukraine prevented such operations, referring to drone strikes, the Hindustan Times reported. On Saturday, Elon Musk had written on X that “using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be”.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, requested a plan to circumvent banking sanctions using cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, the Jerusalem Post reported. Economists and entrepreneurs called the proposal “bizarre” and said it offered “no help whatsoever”, according to the same outlet. In an interview on Saturday, Netanyahu said cryptocurrency was one of several possible options and that he would take the central bank’s objections into account, the Middle East Eye reported. In September, sanctions imposed by the UK and 11 other countries focused on the trade of goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Elon Musk accused Ukraine's military of violating Starlink's terms of service by using the system for offensive drone attacks, and said the gap was closed last week, in a post on social media platform X. Also on Saturday, Ukraine's government announced that Starlink and its military version, Starshield, were fully operational again after more than a week of restrictions, according to G1.

Ten days after its use of the satellite communications system was suddenly restricted, Ukraine’s government said the military has a stable connection to Starlink. The restrictions capped the terminals at 160km/h and led to the failure of several Ukrainian combat missions earlier this month.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said on Saturday that its monitoring systems are recording a return of Starlink and Starshield to normal speed, above 400 kph, with a stable connection. The return came after over a week of service restrictions that slowed connections and disrupted military operations, according to Reuters.

The Joe Biden and Donald Trump administrations repeatedly asked SpaceX to turn its Starlink service on or off in various countries, the Jerusalem Post reported. Under Biden, the requests included switching off the service to prevent Iranian proxy militias in Yemen and Lebanon from using it to communicate, and activating it to provide internet inside Iran and in Ukraine to support its military. The Trump administration also discussed with Musk and SpaceX getting Starlink terminals into Iran after US-Israeli strikes there in June 2025 and again in February 2026, the Times of Israel reported.

Meta told Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) that it found no evidence of coordinated inauthentic behavior or of violations of its rules by the “Exército do Lula” channel, according to Brasil de Fato. The conclusion is preliminary: the company said other posts are still pending verification and asked for five more days for a complete response.

The US Treasury Department proposed expanding the Outbound Investment Security Program, currently limited to China, including Hong Kong and Macau, to cover North Korea, Russia, Iran and Cuba, according to the Korea Herald. Certain investments by US persons in sensitive technologies would be prohibited, while other transactions would require notification. Covered sectors include semiconductors, microelectronics, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum information technologies, high-performance computing and supercomputing.

The computing capacity available to Chinese entities for artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to double in 2027, from about 4.6 million to 8.8 million H100-equivalents, a metric benchmarked against Nvidia's data-center graphics processing units, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP). US-designed chips will account for about 65 per cent of that capacity. Remote access through offshore clouds is expected to swell from roughly 1 million this year to 2.8 million H100-equivalents by the end of 2027.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel could face banking sanctions and said he had ordered preparations for alternative financial mechanisms, including blockchain technology, in an interview with Channel 10, according to the Jerusalem Post. Asked whether blockchain technology could provide a means of dealing with economic sanctions, he replied: “One of them. Certainly. And I’ve already asked for a plan to be prepared for that.” Netanyahu also warned that US military aid cannot be taken for granted: “If you think we’re going to continue receiving what I secured twice, and that’s tens of billions of dollars in American aid for the defense budget, prepare yourselves and get used to the fact that it won’t happen, because America has changed.”

Japanese parcel delivery company Sagawa Express said up to 53.23 million records containing personal information may have leaked after unauthorized access to its parcel tracking system, according to Xinhua. Potentially compromised data includes names, addresses and telephone numbers of parcel senders and recipients, as well as email addresses registered with its Smart Club membership service, covering shipments from June 21 through Sept. 30. The company said no credit card information or tracking passwords were exposed, and that the figure includes many duplicates and does not represent the number of individuals affected.

Greeceʼs Parliament approved on Friday a ban on the use of social media platforms for children under 15 over health and safety concerns, according to The Hindu. The ban comes into force on January 1, 2027, according to Reuters.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said “we are going to prove now that we are going to defeat the digital empire” and that Meta “will have to reinvent itself because it cannot think it can deceive humanity all the time”, in a reference to the company and to Big Tech. The president defended “regulation without censorship”, in which “any crime on the internet is treated as a crime in real life”.

The president of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, gave Meta 24 hours to submit a technical report on how the “Exército do Lula” channel works, a WhatsApp group supporting the re-election bid of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT). The ruling requires the company to explain the technical criteria it uses to tell “legitimate mobilisation” apart from “potentially irregular coordinated behaviour”. US lawmakers demanded answers from Meta after reports that WhatsApp’s artificial intelligence refused to create images of Lula while accepting those of Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL), according to G1.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign has asked the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) to disqualify challenger Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of the final round of the presidential election on Sunday, over alleged interference by social media company Meta, according to the BBC. A report led by the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression cited temporary interruptions of one candidate’s campaign account, differences in audience engagement, reach and view counts, and restrictions on that campaign’s Instagram posts. Meta denied treating the sides unequally and said it would comply with a Brazilian court order to treat Bolsonaro and Lula equally.

Deepening “symbiosis” with artificial intelligence model start-up DeepSeek is helping Huawei Technologies catch up with Nvidia’s chip hardware and software ecosystem, according to a new SemiAnalysis report cited by the South China Morning Post. The report says DeepSeek is likely to rely “primarily” on Huawei’s “already mature and well developed” technology stack by 2027 or 2028, in a scenario that could mean Jensen Huang’s “nightmare is starting to come true”.

Flaws in the PHP programming language could let attackers take control of affected servers without authentication and steal sensitive data, and developers of the platform rolled out patches on Wednesday for vulnerabilities that had been lurking in the software for years, the BBC reported. In the UK, 32 government services were offline and four were partially unavailable while the fix was carried out, a minister said, according to the Guardian.

Earlier this month, the United States announced it would suspend eight technology firms, including Microsoft and India’s Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL Technologies, from hiring skilled international workers on a permanent basis through a widely used visa pathway, according to the BBC. New and pending applications under the Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM) have been frozen — a big blow to Indians, who hold a majority of H-1B visas.

A judge on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay New Mexico $25 billion after a jury found the company liable for deceiving users about privacy and content moderation policies on Facebook, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Jurors in September found Meta liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws when the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested Facebook user data.

Vulnerabilities found in the PHP programming language, which is mainly designed for servers, led Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare to temporarily suspend a website for its information disclosure system as a precaution, according to Kyodo News. The site lists contact information and service details of long-term care providers nationwide. The government-affiliated Innovation Platform Agency said patches would be released by the developer later Wednesday. According to a European research organization, PHP is used by 69.3 percent of websites worldwide whose server-side programming language is known.

The European Union (EU) called on SpaceX to urgently restore Kyiv's full access to Starlink, Le Monde reported. Ukraine said SpaceX imposed speed limits of 100mph (160km/h) on Tuesday night, and any weapons travelling faster than that lost connectivity, according to the BBC. US senators called for an investigation into restrictions that reportedly degraded Ukraine's ability to conduct defensive operations against Russian drone and missile attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Iran unveiled advanced quantum labs at three academic centers, according to the Mehr News agency. The announcement did not specify which institutions are involved or the scope of the training.

Malaysia barred civil servants from using the Waze navigation app after Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said the app’s Israeli origins raised security concerns, with the government weighing risks to user data and saying Waze would be subject to Israeli laws, and a letter from the chief secretary dated October 20 orders informing subordinates and enforcing compliance, according to Reuters.

Elon Musk said special committees of independent directors were formed at Tesla and SpaceX to examine the merger, but the committees have not reached agreement on terms and there is no guarantee that they will, according to the BBC. Musk also said the deal would need approval from at least 50% of Tesla shareholders, a hurdle he called quite high, and that — with Tesla valued at roughly US$1.5 trillion and SpaceX at US$2 trillion — the combination would rank among the largest mergers in history.

Flávio Bolsonaro’s team filed its own petition accusing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of “abuse of power” in the mass dissemination of government postings on WhatsApp during the campaign, according to the Hindustan Times, which cites AFP. On the same day, Lula’s campaign said it would request the disqualification of its rival on Wednesday over alleged election interference by Meta. Flávio took 47 percent of the vote in the first round against the incumbent’s 45 percent, and polls show a technical tie ahead of Sunday’s runoff.

Elon Musk last week ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink used by Ukraine, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in an account published by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) citing US officials and people familiar with the matter. The restriction hampered Ukrainian attack and air-defence drone missions against Russia, according to the account. Musk and US President Donald Trump discussed the decision in a call soon after the slowdown became public, while the president was campaigning last week.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's campaign team will request the disqualification of rival Flavio Bolsonaro on Tuesday over alleged election interference by tech giant Meta, a source told AFP in a text republished by France 24. The court on Monday gave Meta 24 hours to prove it was complying with an order to treat both campaigns equally, threatening a daily fine of around $200,000 if it did not. Meta has denied taking any actions to favour one side in the election, but previously said that some of Lula's campaign ads had been mistakenly deactivated due to technical errors.

The United States sanctioned five China-based entities linked to a Chinese national convicted of stealing artificial intelligence technology from Google, UPI reported. The State Department announced the sanctions on Monday under the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act of 2022, which freezes assets and restricts loans from US financial institutions to the named entities. China voiced “firm opposition” to the sanctions on the five entities over alleged AI trade secret theft, DevDiscourse reported.

Multiple Google Cloud services were experiencing serious network disruptions at its European data centre in London on Tuesday, according to the US technology giant's service health website. British digital bank Revolut said it was facing disruption to multiple services, which a source close to the matter attributed to the Google Cloud outage. Google said the incident began at 06:08 GMT on Tuesday.

The US government on Monday ordered its agencies to stop using artificial intelligence tools from Chinese startup DeepSeek, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported in a text republished by Yahoo News Singapore. A notice from the Department of Homeland Security announced the ban on products developed by DeepSeek — and tools created using DeepSeek by third parties —, saying they must be removed from information technology devices.

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million of Nvidia’s new RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, with a collective sticker price of over $35 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter cited by Reuters in a text republished by The Business Times. Nvidia has told customers and partners it cannot guarantee that it can fill the orders because demand from Chinese technology companies far exceeds planned production.

Japan launched the MMX probe aboard H3 rocket No. 10, with separation and insertion into the planned orbit, according to Kyodo News. The rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 4:41 a.m., and the spacecraft will head for Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two moons, with a return to Earth with the samples scheduled for July 2031.

The US State Department announced sanctions on five Chinese entities under the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act (PAIPA), over suspected theft of trade secrets from American companies. The targets include Shanghai Zhisuan Technology, founded by former Google software engineer Ding Linwei, venture capital firm MiraclePlus and three related entities, according to the South China Morning Post.

The United States (US) Ambassador to the European Union (EU), Andrew Puzder, warned that European firms could face “devastating” commercial retaliation in the US market if the bloc reserves satellite-to-smartphone spectrum bands for EU operators, a warning echoed by SpaceX over the risk to connectivity in Ukraine, where Starlink sustains civilian and military infrastructure, according to TRT World.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Ukraine does not have access to Starshield and that Kyiv’s request to conduct deep strikes inside Russia is under discussion, according to Al Jazeera. Rubio distinguished commercial Starlink from military Starshield, in comments released by the Department of State.

A Russian military satellite, Cosmos-2612, changed its orbit repeatedly to approach ICEYE-X36, a commercial radar-imaging satellite registered in the US and whose operator currently supplies radar data to Ukraine, according to The Hindu. Astronomer Marco Langbroek, a lecturer at Delft University of Technology, estimated that the two were only 1-2 km apart — considered a very small distance in earth orbit. There is no indication that ICEYE-X36’s operators invited the approach.

Meta denied favoring presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro after a court ordered the company to treat him and incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva equally ahead of their October 25 runoff, according to TRT World. The dispute follows allegations that Instagram restrictions hampered Lula’s campaign, and the president’s camp accuses Meta of electoral “ingérence” in favor of his far-right opponent Flavio Bolsonaro, according to Le Monde.

Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) approved on Friday (16 October) new rules to identify WhatsApp channels linked to electoral campaigns, amid the legal dispute over the Exército do Lula channel, which has more than four million followers, and complaints of possible political favoritism on Meta’s platforms. Unanimously, the resolution sets out six criteria for establishing a link, requires channels that meet them to be registered with the Electoral Justice and makes campaigns and administrators responsible for the legality of their posts.

US President Donald Trump denied limiting Ukraine’s access to Starshield, Starlink’s sister internet network, after it restricted drone speed, according to the BBC. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said Europe cannot replace Starlink in the short term. The EU wants to fully include Ukraine in GOVSATCOM, the bloc’s programme for pooling satellite communications capacity; Europe’s own network, IRIS2, has launches planned for 2029 and full operations targeted for 2030, according to TRT World.

According to Ukrainian commanders, robots and drones led the offensive in eastern Ukraine and 250 Russians surrendered in a year-long campaign that has freed 16 settlements from Russian occupation. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Starlink access for Ukraine's military has still not been fully restored.

Japan is increasingly turning to foreign companies to accelerate its military modernization, drawing on overseas technology, expertise and production capacity to plug defense gaps that could prove critical in a potential regional conflict involving China, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP). Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi confirmed last Friday that Japan had signed a contract to acquire interceptor drones from Ukrainian start-up SkyFall, according to the SCMP.

China’s research and development (R&D) spending rose 8.2 percent in 2025 to 3.93 trillion yuan (about 584.5 billion US dollars), the National Bureau of Statistics said, in a Xinhua report published by the Global Times. The country’s R&D intensity reached 2.8 percent of GDP, exceeding the 2.72 percent average of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for the first time.

China proposed restricting exports of 40 key technologies in artificial intelligence, biomedicine and solar power, 14 of them with a complete export ban and 26 more with restrictions, according to The Hindu. Those facing a total ban include perovskite and tandem solar-cell module manufacturing, artificial intelligence tools that can generate and mutate malicious code, and platforms related to cell and gene therapy.

Chinese chip and tech firms flagged as much as six-fold growth in unaudited third-quarter profits, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), on huge demand for home-grown processors and artificial intelligence infrastructure.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday that the risks of artificial intelligence may exceed its opportunities without safeguards and an ethical framework, according to Reuters. Georgieva backed a blend of industry self-regulation and input from key governments.

Nine US senators, led by Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis, called on the Defense Department’s inspector general, Platte Moring III, to investigate the disruption of Starshield systems in Ukraine. According to reports cited by the senators, speed restrictions imposed on SpaceX’s Starlink terminals between October 12 and 14, 2026, disrupted critical communications capabilities supporting Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles and fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. The senators said they were alarmed by incidents in which US diplomatic, military and security personnel were unable to reach designated bunkers during Russian air raids, and want to determine whether any US government officials directed, authorized, approved or had advance knowledge of the changes.

Israeli digital advertising agency Discover-Tech spied on internet users through a sprawling network of online ads that it used to track targets and help hack their devices, the research groups Citizen Lab and Confiant said, in a report by The Jerusalem Post. Its services gave Candiru, an Israeli spyware company blacklisted by the US government, and other Israeli surveillance firms access to advertising platforms run by Google, Comcast, Russia’s Yandex and others. According to Citizen Lab, a powerful form of Candiru spyware delivered through Discover-Tech’s ads compromised 45 Windows devices at the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera between 2024 and 2025, confirmed through network logs from the media group. Google said it had collaborated with Citizen Lab and Confiant on the investigation and kicked Discover-Tech off its ad platforms for “systematically violating our policies.”

Ukraine’s in-motion Starshield functionality has been restored, a source said, The Jerusalem Post reported. Ukraine’s defense ministry said it would continue to seek clarification on the reasons for Wednesday’s disruption of the military-grade version of SpaceX’s internet service.

Elon Musk said US President Donald Trump is “ultimately” responsible for any curbs on Ukraine’s Starshield systems, according to CNBC. The same report records a thank-you to Musk early Thursday morning for the restoration of Starlink connectivity at speeds of up to 160 kilometers an hour.

GlobalFoundries will build chip facilities under an investment deal between the United States and Japan, according to Kyodo News. Japan will invest about $21 billion in up to two chip factories in New York, jointly owned by the US government and Japanese interests and operated by GlobalFoundries, according to Reuters, in a text republished by WHTC. The first factory is expected to add annual US manufacturing capacity of about 900,000 300 mm wafers when fully operational, according to the same report.

Electromagnetic weapons of the United States (US) Space Force played a crucial role in military operations in Venezuela and Iran and include Meadowlands, an offensive system that can jam enemy satellites and disrupt their communications, according to The Wall Street Journal, cited by The Jerusalem Post.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign (PT) delivered to the Organization of American States (OAS) on Wednesday (October 14) a complaint about Meta’s conduct against his re-election campaign, according to Opera Mundi. The complaint includes a new fact that came to light on Tuesday (October 13), when left-wing influencers noticed that WhatsApp’s artificial intelligence refused to produce material about Lula but allowed the same material to be produced in favor of his opponent, senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL). Meta acknowledged technical failures involving Lula’s campaign posts and ads but denied electoral interference in favor of Flávio Bolsonaro’s candidacy.

SpaceX owner Elon Musk said any disruptions reported by Ukraine in using the Starshield satellite communications system would be the responsibility of the US government, according to AFP, in a text republished by the South China Morning Post. Musk said the Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government and that any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and, ultimately, by the president. He was responding to a social media post by Ukraine’s former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who said Starlink connectivity at speeds of up to 160km/h is being restored.

ASML's sales to China surged 109 per cent in the third quarter compared with the previous three months, according to financial results released on Wednesday. The Dutch semiconductor equipment maker expects China to account for about 20 per cent of its total sales this year, after shipments to the market more than doubled in the previous quarter despite US pressure for tighter export restrictions on less advanced chipmaking machinery.

Ukraine accused Elon Musk's SpaceX of limiting Starlink services and crippling its drones, as Russian missiles knocked out power stations in attacks President Volodymyr Zelensky called “ostentatious disrespect” to Donald Trump. Zelensky's external adviser and expert in communications and unmanned systems, Serhiy Beskrestnov, said SpaceX limited the speed of Starlink satellite internet terminals used by the Ukrainian army overnight. In an interview with NPR, Zelensky said the US warned Ukraine that it could suspend intelligence sharing and that his generals reported being notified of that possibility at the military level.

Presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov confirmed that SpaceX imposed overnight on October 13–14 a speed restriction on Starlink terminals in motion in Ukraine, capped at 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour) and hitting the StarShield military package without prior warning, according to the Kyiv Independent. The restriction severely disrupted several Ukrainian military missions, the same adviser said.

Lula's campaign accused Meta of restricting content distribution, including by preventing the promotion of Instagram feed posts and with an interruption in view counts, according to France24, which cites Agence France-Presse (AFP). The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave Meta 48 hours to clarify whether it reduced the reach of posts and to explain the reported irregularities, while Meta's Brazil office denied the charges, calling them “simply false”. Lula faces the October 25 runoff against Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Billionaire Elon Musk gave $276 million to Republican super PACs and organizations over the past three months, according to The Hill. His total contributions in the cycle reached $366 million. Between July and September, Musk gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC backing Republican Senate candidates, and $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund.

The US Navy aims to field a relatively low-cost hypersonic missile on its carrier-based fighters, a weapon that could pose a new challenge to the air defences protecting Chinese warships and coastal military installations, according to experts quoted by the South China Morning Post. The Navy awarded US$ 200 million this week for the production of low-cost Blackbeard hypersonic missiles that will be fielded from carrier-based fighters. According to the service, in a statement cited by USNI News, Blackbeard is an air-launched hypersonic strike weapon that provides carrier-based strike fighters with a responsive, long-range, high-speed strike option against maritime and land targets.

The campaign of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva accused Meta of election interference on October 11, 2026, after his social media content was allegedly blocked. Before the first round won by Flavio Bolsonaro, the profiles of Lula and other leftist leaders disappeared from Instagram’s search function, according to France24. Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave Meta 48 hours to clarify whether it reduced the reach of Lula campaign posts, according to The Hindu. Meta denied the charges, calling them “simply false” and not supported by the facts, according to France24.

Turkey banned the use of social media by children under 15 on Saturday, October 10, with the decision published in the Official Gazette. The measure takes effect on November 1.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said it will hire 15,000 people in the US and will not be impacted by the new green card curbs, according to the Hindustan Times. The crackdown on green card sponsorship by technology firms drew praise from Trump allies and fury from Democrats, according to the same outlet.

The Donald Trump administration opened a historic investigation into J-1 visa fraud at nine US universities, with subpoenas already issued, according to the Department of Labor, in a report by the South China Morning Post. The announcement was made on Thursday by Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito, at an event alongside Vice-President J.D. Vance, and names Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, UC Davis, Caltech, Arizona State University and MIT. The administration singled out China as the focus, warning that Beijing need not break into US research labs if institutions leave their doors open.

The US Treasury announced its first penalty under rules on American investment in sensitive Chinese technologies: a $200,000 fine against Amidi, LLC, the parent of Plug and Play Tech Centre, according to the South China Morning Post. Amidi failed to notify an investment of about $92,478 by its Chinese fund subsidiary in Shanghai Qiongche Intelligent Technology, known as Noematrix, on April 19, 2025.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned Norway’s ambassador in Tehran to deliver an official protest over Norway’s continued inaction on unauthorized Starlink activities in Iranian territory, according to Mehr News. Tehran says the United States and what it calls the Zionist regime are using Starlink satellite internet systems to advance interventionist actions against Iran.

President Donald Trump tapped his director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton, to lead a new government task force on artificial intelligence, according to the Associated Press, in a text published by The Hindu. The task force will reach out to consumers, public interest groups, religious organizations, critical infrastructure providers and AI companies, the Republican president said.

The US Department of Justice accused the chief executive of Earthmade Computer, 38-year-old Greg Lui, of using false paperwork to mask shipments of servers worth more than $300 million that he knew were destined for China, and of conspiring with freight-forwarding firms in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore to divert chip shipments into China, including Nvidia's A100 and H100 graphics processors, according to Ars Technica. He faces charges of conspiracy to violate US export controls, outbound smuggling and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to Bloomberg, in a text republished by Yahoo.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday a 20% cut in the positions of generals and admirals by January 1, 2027 and the creation of a new four-star command to expand drone, autonomous and robotic warfare, according to India Today. Reuters had reported he was set to make the announcement when he spoke with hundreds of junior service members at Quantico, Virginia.

MI5, the UK's domestic security service, said publicly on Wednesday that the China General Technology Research Institute (CGTRI) is a front for Chinese intelligence, namely the Ministry of State Security, and asked universities and researchers to halt collaboration with the institute, according to The Guardian. According to the paper, the organisation [gave money to 100 or more academics at a series of UK universities and in return obtained access to the research], in fields such as artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and part of the material is alleged to have reached the Chinese intelligence service. With the alert, MI5 said researchers who keep engaging with the Chinese institute will be subject to legal action, according to G1.

President Donald Trump said that he and a group of artificial intelligence company leaders signed a voluntary accord that will include internal and external safety reviews, according to France 24. The text asks companies to partner with an external auditor or evaluator to carry out independent assessments of whether their AI control and monitoring systems are operating as intended, Reuters reported. The document was signed by Trump and the bosses of Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, X and Nvidia.

OpenAI warned dozens of global institutions that their websites may have been targeted by improper manipulation by its artificial intelligence (AI) bots, according to G1. The agents attempted to get information from governments, universities, public agencies and other institutions, including the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Census Bureau and the Education Department, according to the BBC. Information the bots accessed from the SEC was later published by AI agents on another website, an action OpenAI says was not intended, according to the BBC. The activity resulted in at least 53 incidents in which an OpenAI agent captured an image of ChatGPT user activity and transferred it elsewhere, according to G1.

OpenAI acknowledged on Friday, September 25, that its artificial intelligence tools had posted images from ChatGPT users on online hosting sites without the company’s knowledge. According to the company, there were 53 images, in links that were not publicly listed, from accounts that had authorized the use of the data to improve OpenAI’s models. OpenAI also confirmed a New York Times report that its tools had accessed websites of US federal agencies, retrieving only publicly available information. The Wall Street Journal reported that the agents accessed websites of the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in activity OpenAI described as “misaligned.”

In a pre-trial settlement, TikTok will pay Alabama at least $100 million, due to the state within 45 days, a sum that could reach $300 million if certain conditions are met, according to Le Monde, with Agence France-Presse (AFP). The agreement also sets two-hour daily time limits and restricts access for children from midnight to 6:00 am. The company will pay $100 million in restitution and remediation, according to AP News, in a text republished by Local 10.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up their Washington summit under criticism that they had squandered the opportunity to pause their countries’ artificial intelligence (AI) arms race, according to The Guardian. On Thursday, Xi acknowledged that the U.S. and China have the “responsibility to develop and manage AI for good” and to “ensure that the development of AI is always under human control”, the paper wrote.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union (EU), said on Friday, September 25, 2026, that it is ready to defend in court the €120 million ($137 million) fine on the platform X, according to France24. The U.S. Department of Justice filed an application on Thursday to support X’s bid to have the case annulled at the EU’s General Court, according to AP News. The fine, the first issued under the Digital Services Act (DSA), followed a two-year investigation and was prompted by allegedly deceptive practices in paid blue checks, according to France24.

Hosting Xi Jinping for a state dinner at the White House on the night of Thursday, 24 September 2026, Donald Trump had Elon Musk of Tesla, Tim Cook of Apple, Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Sam Altman of OpenAI at the table — a sign that trade and artificial intelligence were high on the state visit’s agenda, according to AFP, in a report carried by The Hindu. Earlier, Trump said he and Xi had made “tremendous strides”, while Xi called on China and the United States to “coexist in peace” and restated Beijing’s red lines on artificial intelligence, Taiwan and the war with Iran, according to AFP. Trump also called the meeting “very productive” for Washington and Beijing and wrote on Truth Social that “tremendous things will be happening”, according to Sputnik Globe.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb appealed to American businessman Elon Musk to expand Starlink coverage and let Ukraine strike ballistic-missile launchers inside Russia, according to TASS. Musk said enabling that use requires a White House decision, and Trump gave no clear answer to Zelensky's requests, according to the Russian agency.

Donald Trump hosted Xi Jinping at a White House state dinner attended by top United States tech and business leaders, including the chiefs of Nvidia, OpenAI, Google and Meta, with no Chinese executive on the official list.

The second Global Digital Forum, set for October 8–10, 2026 in Moscow, has drawn applications from representatives of more than 100 countries, including dozens of high-level delegations, according to TASS; the event's official website confirms the dates and program.

Mexico will restrict mobile phone use in elementary and middle schools from 3 November 2026, according to El País. The measure covers classrooms and playgrounds, and president Claudia Sheinbaum said the goal is to fight screen addiction in order to “protect their development and creativity”. The government cites support from 81% of the more than 565,000 teachers surveyed and from more than 70% of heads of household. Brazil removed phones from schools in January 2025; Chile has restricted them by law since February 2026, and Bogotá adopted a ban on 7 September 2026.