During my first reporting trip to Haiti, in January 1988, on my very first day in the country, I rode 50 miles from the capital, Port-au-Prince, to St. Marc, a coastal city to the north, to write about the atmosphere in the provinces on the eve of national elections. At a roadblock just shy of St. Marc, armed remnants of the feared militia of the country’s former dictatorship, the Tonton Macoutes, were burning vehicles and extorting money from passengers in broad daylight. One of the militiamen warned me that if they allowed me to pass, I would not be permitted [...]
On June 14, the Costa Rican authorities conducted dozens of raids on private residences and public agencies as part of a sweeping anti-corruption investigation. The operation, whose targets included the office of the president’s main adviser, was a coordinated sting on a scale never seen before in a corruption case in Costa Rica. It was the culmination of more than a year’s worth of efforts by the Judicial Investigative Police and the Attorney General’s Office, which had been tapping phones and gathering evidence against a massive bribery ring involving government officials and public infrastructure contractors. It is no exaggeration to [...]
The recent Fourth of July holiday weekend in the U.S. brought the latest installment in the wearying litany of colossal cyberattacks. The breach of the Miami-based software company Kaseya, which combined a supply chain attack with ransomware, affected hundreds of organizations all over the world—from kindergartens in New Zealand to a Swedish supermarket chain representing 20 percent of the country’s food retailers. The company at the center of the incident, Kaseya, offers “complete, automated IT management software for [managed service providers] and IT Teams,” according to its website. Put another way, Kaseya software has low-level, privileged access right across the [...]
