Daily Brief, October 17, 2026

Top Story

A single White House order carried out the new Graham Russia sanctions law, set a 500% tariff on Russian goods and a conditional 100% tariff on goods from the five largest importers of Russian oil and gas, then waived all the new tariffs and most of the law's sanctions

The 100% tariff was to apply only if one of those countries knowingly made new purchases on or after October 18th, and the order waiving it is dated October 16th.

Source: White House

United States

Enforcement & Liability

Conduent has agreed to fund $80 million to settle its January 2025 breach class action, and if the court approves, the same deal also releases its corporate clients and those clients' customers from claims over the incident

If your company was a Conduent client whose data was affected, this settlement ends the claims your own affected customers could bring over the incident.

Source: Conduent Incorporated, Form 8-K (SEC EDGAR)

Supply Chain Risk

US and Western officials say the White House ordered limits on Starshield, the military satellite service Ukraine's drones rely on for guidance, and a senior US official says the president made no such request

Ukrainian officials say military-grade Starlink receivers stopped working on fast-moving objects such as drones, and a person in Ukraine's Defence Ministry says they now work in motion only up to about 100 miles per hour.

Source: Reuters, via Military Times

Around the World

Supply Chain Risk

Romania banned public bodies from buying software from Russian antivirus maker Kaspersky in March 2023, and 83 of them, including a state physics institute that works under defense and NATO contracts, have bought it 131 times since

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative newsroom, found the purchases in procurement records through September 2026. The National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics, which bought licenses less than two months after the ban, says it never installed or used the software. Sebastian Burduja, Romania's former research and digitalization minister, attributes the purchases to too few staff to enforce a ban that carries fines of $10,500 to $42,000.

Source: OCCRP

Geopolitical Shocks

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy says a supertanker carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude hit a naval mine in the Strait of Hormuz

The Guard says the tanker struck a mine, exploded and caught fire, and calls it a rogue vessel that had switched off its navigation and radar.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Ethiopia's federal government has installed an interim administration in Tigray for six months, headed by five appointed officials, after pushing the Tigray People's Liberation Front out of the region's main cities

[FR · RFI Afrique]

The interim administration's stated tasks are to restore public services, consolidate peace, rehabilitate former soldiers and create a stable political situation for elections, and federal authorities say it will not decide long-term strategic questions.

Source: RFI Afrique

Infrastructure & Capacity

ENAV, Italy's air traffic control authority, cut air traffic capacity to 50% after a problem on the data transmission network, and ruled out malicious activity with no investigation finding reported

ENAV said it first identified the problem overnight and restricted flight volumes from around 6am local time, saying it guaranteed the greatest possible number of departures, including intercontinental flights.

Source: DW

Also Today

Australia's central bank says some private credit funds worldwide, lenders that aren't banks, have had to limit how much money investors can pull out

Source: Reserve Bank of Australia

Grüüün, a German startup power retailer, ends service for about 200,000 residential customers on October 31st, and a second startup, Stromee, has reportedly quit too

Source: OilPrice

Josh Wander, founder of investment firm 777 Partners, pleaded guilty to wire and securities fraud and agreed to forfeit at least $500 million

Source: US Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York

Vitol, the oil trader, says accelerating crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz are not lifting output of the high-sulfur fuel oil that ships burn

Source: Bloomberg, via gCaptain

Los Angeles and Long Beach moved a combined record 2.04 million twenty-foot container units in September, the busiest month in either port's history

Source: gCaptain

Kenya's third Ebola case is a 65-year-old woman, a close relative of the first two, who was already in quarantine when symptoms began

Source: Africanews

Airstrikes on October 10th killed at least 72 small-scale gold miners in northern Sudan, and miners and Sudanese rights groups blame Egyptian aircraft

Source: OilPrice

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