Defense

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, his wife, several relatives of former Cuban leader Raúl Castro and five Cuban entities, escalating the Trump administration’s campaign to pressure Havana’s political and military leadership.

A senior White House adviser personally directed the Pentagon to extend a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina rare-earth magnet startup partly owned by a venture firm tied to Donald Trump Jr.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are urging Wall Street companies to confess to fraud in exchange for behind-the-scenes deals that would spare them from criminal charges, fines, and public disclosure of their wrongdoing.

U.S. officials believe Chinese companies have been negotiating arms sales to Iran and plotting to route the weapons through third countries to disguise their origin.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday issued an alert urging financial institutions to step up their detection of money laundering, sanctions evasion, and digital-asset transfers tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Small, little-known Chinese companies are openly marketing and shipping engines, batteries, fiber-optic cables, and other dual-use components to Iranian and Russian drone factories despite U.S. sanctions.

The United Kingdom on Tuesday imposed sanctions on 35 individuals and entities accused of trafficking vulnerable migrants to fight on Russia’s front line in Ukraine and of supplying components to the Kremlin’s drone manufacturing operations, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said.

President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order authorizing penalties against foreign banks and other companies anywhere in the world that do business with the Cuban government. 

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) on Friday secured a £10 million payment from defense contractor Ultra Electronics after the company accepted responsibility for failure to prevent bribery, the agency said in a statement.

A deepening military and economic partnership between North Korea and Russia is systematically undermining the international sanctions architecture built over decades to constrain Pyongyang, while fueling a conventional arms buildup that raises the risk of war on the Korean Peninsula.