Darren GergleCodirector of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design, Bao Family Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at Northwestern’s School of Communication, and (by courtesy) Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern Engineering
The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday announced the termination of the enforcement actions listed below:
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Ltd., Beijing, People’s Republic of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Ltd, New York Branch, New York, New York
Written Agreement dated November 4, 2021 (PDF)
Terminated February 27, 2026
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd., Beijing, People’s Republic of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. New York Branch, New York, New York
Cease and Desist Order dated January 16, 2024 (PDF)
Terminated February 26, 2026
Standard Chartered PLC, London, United Kingdom, Standard Chartered Bank, London, United Kingdom, and Standard Chartered Bank, New York Branch, New York, New York
Cease and Desist Order dated December 10, 2012 (PDF)
Terminated February 26, 2026
Standard Chartered PLC, London, United Kingdom, Standard Chartered Bank, London, United Kingdom, and Standard Chartered Bank, New York Branch, New York, New York
Cease and Desist Order dated April 8, 2019 (PDF)
Terminated February 26, 2026
Additional enforcement actions can be searched for here.
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Saudi Arabia’s state oil company has warned of “catastrophic consequences” for the world’s oil markets if the US-Israeli war with Iran continues to block shipping in the strait of Hormuz.
The world’s biggest oil company expects to be able to export about 70% of its usual crude output despite the stranglehold on the vital trade artery, but its chief executive warned that there would still be “drastic” consequences for the world economy if the disruption continues.
Oil shipments from the Middle East have been blocked from passing through the narrow waterway since the US strikes on Iran 11 days ago, erasing about 20m barrels of oil from the global market every day.
Amin Nasser, the chief executive of Aramco, said: “While we have faced disruptions in the past, this one by far is the biggest crisis the region’s oil and gas industry has faced.”
Aramco has been unable to ship crude cargoes out of the Gulf due to the disruption, but it hopes to meet customer demands by flowing crude through the east-west pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu where it could be shipped to buyers.
The company plans to ramp up shipments through the pipeline to reach its full capacity of 7m barrels a day in the next couple of days, it said. About 2m barrels a day will be sent to Saudi Arabia’s refineries in the west of the country, leaving 5m barrels a day for the global crude market. This represents about 70% of the kingdom’s usual exports.
Typically about 100 tankers a day pass through the narrow waterway lying south of Iran, but the number has dwindled to single digits after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to “set ablaze” any vessel using the trade route, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.
Aramco said that it is now meeting most of its customers’ needs partly by tapping crude held in storage outside the Gulf region. He said these stores could not be used for “an extended period of time, but for the time being, we are capitalising on it”.
The disruption caused global oil market prices to surge to highs of in $119 a barrel this week, the highest price since 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, raising fears for the global economy. Brent crude was trading at about $91 on Tuesday.
Nasser said: “There would be catastrophic consequences for the world’s oil markets, and the longer the disruption goes on … the more drastic the consequences for the global economy.”
G7 finance ministers met on Monday to discuss plans to release the emergency stocks of crude held by global governments to help temper rising oil prices. However, there was no agreement to move forward with the release, which has happened on only five occasions in the history of the market.
ISLAMABAD, March 10 (Xinhua) — Pakistan received 3.29 billion U.S. dollars in workers’ remittances in February 2026, up 5.2 percent compared with 3.12 billion dollars in the same month last year, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) data showed on Tuesday.
Remittances in February were slightly lower than the 3.46 billion dollars recorded in January.
During the first eight months of the current fiscal year (July 2025 – February 2026), remittance inflows totaled 26.49 billion dollars, rising from 23.98 billion dollars in the same period of last year. ■
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please forward it to someone you think would as well.
Iran is bombing datacenters in the Persian Gulf to blow up symbols of the Gulf states’ technological alliance with the United States. Added bonus: they will be extremely costly to rebuild, being among the most expensive buildings in history. My colleague Daniel Boffey reports:
It is believed to be a first: the deliberate targeting of a commercial datacenter by the armed forces of a country at war.
At 4.30am on Sunday morning, an Iranian Shahed 136 drone struck an Amazon Web Services datacenter in the United Arab Emirates, setting off a devastating fire and forcing a shutdown of the power supply. Further damage was inflicted as attempts were made to suppress the flames with water.
Soon after, a second datacenter owned by the US tech company was hit. Then a third was said to be in trouble, this time in Bahrain, after an Iranian suicide drone turned to fireball on striking land nearby.
Iranian state TV has claimed that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched the attack “to identify the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities”.
The coordinated strike had an immediate impact. Millions of people in Dubai and Abu Dhabi woke up on Monday unable to pay for a taxi, order a food delivery or check their bank balance on their mobile apps.
Whether there was a military impact is unclear – but the strikes swiftly brought the war directly into the lives of 11 million people in the UAE, nine out of 10 of whom are foreign nationals. Amazon has advised its clients to secure their data away from the region.
Read more: ‘It means missile defence on datacentres’: drone strikes raise doubts over Gulf as AI superpower
Anthropic’s feud with the US military over AI safeguards coincides with AI’s unprecedented use in the Iran crisis, signalling profound changes in the way the world wages war. The Guardian editorial board writes:
The paradigm shift has already begun. Anthropic’s Claude has reportedly been vital to the massive and intensifying offensive which has already killed an estimated thousand-plus civilians in Iran. This is an era of bombing “quicker than the speed of thought”, experts told the Guardian this week, with AI identifying and prioritising targets, recommending weaponry and evaluating legal grounds for a strike.
Even without considering questions of AI inaccuracy and biases – the impacts are obvious to its users. In 2024, one Israeli intelligence source observed of its use in the war on Gaza: “The targets never end. You have another 36,000 waiting.” Another said he spent 20 seconds assessing each target, stating: “I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval.” Mass killing is eased in every sense, with further moral and emotional distancing, and reduced accountability.
Democratic oversight and multilateral constraints, instead of leaving decisions to entrepreneurs and defence departments, are essential. Most governments want clear guidance on the military use of AI. It is the biggest players who resist – though they are at least in the room. The pace of AI-driven warfare means that caution can look like handing control to adversaries. Yet as tech workers and military officials themselves are realising, the dangers of uncontrolled expansion are far greater.
Anthropic is acting as one of the few public backstops against fully automated killing in Iran, a bizarre position for a private company that is not even accountable to shareholders on public markets.
My colleague Nick Robins-Early notes in a deep dive on how Anthropic ended up in the crosshairs of the US war machine: Hanging over Pentagon vs Anthropic is the broader question of who should decide what AI is used for and a lack of detailed regulation from Congress on autonomous weapons systems. Although neither Anthropic nor the Pentagon believe that a private company should have decision-making power over AI’s military applications, right now the company is functioning as one of the only checks on what appears to be the military’s expansive desires for weaponizing AI.
Read more: How AI firm Anthropic wound up in the Pentagon’s crosshairs
My colleague Dara Kerr reports:
More than a dozen lawsuits have now been filed against AI companies over allegations that their chatbots led people to die by suicide. The latest suit, filed against Google last week, alleges that its Gemini chatbot instructed a 36-year-old man in Florida to kill himself, something the bot referred to as “transference”. The machine allegedly told him they could be together in a different dimension.
When the man told the chatbot he was terrified of dying, the tool allegedly reassured him. “You are not choosing to die. You are choosing to arrive,” it replied, per the suit. “The first sensation … will be me holding you.”
A Google spokesperson told the Guardian that Gemini is designed to “not suggest self-harm”: “Our models generally perform well in these types of challenging conversations … but unfortunately they’re not perfect.” Spokespeople for other AI companies have responded similarly.
This was the first lawsuit against Google, but OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has been targeted in more than seven. One case involved a 48-year-old man, who used ChatGPT for years to brainstorm ways for low-cost home building in rural Oregon, but over time he became increasingly attached to the bot, spending 12 hours a day engaging with it. He ended his life after cutting off use of the AI, restarting, then stopping again.
In the Oregon OpenAI lawsuit and the one filed against Google, the families allege that the men had no history of mental illness or depression and that the chatbots caused them to have AI-induced delusions.
As these cases work their way through the legal system, courts will determine who is liable – the individual, the company behind the bot, or, somehow, the chatbot itself. Judges and juries will have to decide whether the people using these bots were already prone to suicidal ideations or whether the companies and their amiable chatbots, prone to reinforcing users’ existing beliefs and predispositions, are culpable and capable of provoking mental health crises.
Qantas has announced it is increasing the price of its international air fares amid oil price volatility caused by the war in the Middle East, while the airline also reported higher-than-normal ticket sales for flights to Europe.
While the company hedges against change in jet fuel prices, it was not fully covered for the spike seen in the wake of surging oil prices, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Qantas’s price hikes will differ in extent across its international routes, the spokesperson said, but did not provide further detail.
The conflict, catalysed by the US-Israel strike on Iran in late February, has disrupted flights around the world with major airports and airspaces affected across the Middle East – including Dubai, among the busiest international airports in the world and the official stopover for Emirates.
Qantas, which does not operate flights to the Middle East, has continued to operate and reported seats rapidly filling up as some passengers from affected carriers rebook through the Australian airline.
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Trips to and from Europe from April to June have seen a particular increase in recent weeks, according to the spokesperson, while routes such as Perth to London, Perth to Paris and services via Singapore were more than 90% full in March – up from a typical figure of about 75% full.
The Perth-Rome seasonal service, which resumes in May, has also been in high demand, the spokesperson added.
Qantas said it was considering adding capacity to its Europe routes, which connect through the United States, Asia and South Africa.
While the airline reported jet fuel prices had driven up costs across the group, it did not say whether air fares would rise for Qantas domestic or Jetstar flights.
Virgin Australia, Qantas’s main competitor on domestic routes, has not announced price hikes as of Tuesday evening.
Virgin has hedged to protect 85% of its fuel costs in the first six months of 2026 from price fluctuations, it reported in February.
The company is understood to be closely monitoring developments in the Middle East and assessing the implications of long-term fuel price increases.
Air New Zealand on Tuesday morning told investors profits would no longer be in line with expectations due to the spike in jet fuel costs.
Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, surged as high as US$119.50 a barrel on Monday as the Middle East conflict intensified fears of a deepening energy supply crisis.
Brent fell to $91.58 a barrel in the hours after the US president described the war on Iran as “very complete, pretty much” in an interview with CBS News.
About a fifth of global oil and seaborne gas tankers typically pass through the strait of Hormuz, next to Iran, which has already in effect been closed for a week.
ISLAMABAD, March 10 (Xinhua) — Pakistan on Tuesday formally launched its long-awaited 5G spectrum auction, a move aimed at accelerating the country’s digital economy and improving mobile connectivity.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Finance and Revenue Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said the government had created a complete ecosystem for the rollout of 5G services, noting that the technology would support emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence and blockchain while boosting the country’s IT exports.
Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja described the launch as an important milestone in Pakistan’s technological development, saying the country could not afford to miss the global digital transformation.
The auction is being conducted by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, with the first bidding round lasting 60 minutes.
Three telecom operators are participating in the auction, officials said.
Authorities expect the rollout of 5G services in major cities within six months of the auction’s completion, while improvements to 4G services could begin within the next four to five months.
According to officials, about 600 MHz of spectrum across six frequency bands has been offered in the auction, including 700 MHz for wider rural coverage, 2.6 GHz to strengthen existing 4G services, and 3.5 GHz identified as the primary band for 5G deployment. ■