ATO worker fired for allegedly accessing taxation information for stalking purposes
The Federal Court has given a former ATO worker leave to amend his originating application against the Tax Office’s termination decision against him, following his dismissal for breach of the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct.
‘Never seen this before’: $860k ATO audit leaves accountant baffled
Order of Australia recipients Benjamin and Roberta Chow lose $2.5m tax court battle
2 ex-FBI officials charged with lying to Congress about Hunter Biden laptop probe
Brendan Carr warns broadcasters about ‘fake polls’ as a real polling scandal unfolds
Carr didn’t identify the polls he was targeting but warned that broadcasters could run afoul of their federal licenses
Leaked chats show Russian extortion gang sending ‘agents’ into US law firms
The Record: “Members of a Russia-based cyberextortion gang plotted to send operatives into U.S. law firms, kidnap business executives and even recruit military personnel to spy on submarine-based nuclear forces, according to leaked chats reviewed by Recorded Future News.
The archive, posted to a bespoke .onion site in early October by an unidentified source who did not state a motive, contains thousands of messages from August 2025 to September 2026. In those messages, members track dozens of victims, haggle over multimillion-dollar payments and direct operatives based in the United States whom they call “agents.” Some of the named organizations have not publicly acknowledged a breach. The archive mixes apparent records of real extortion with brainstorming sessions, abandoned plans, boasting and violent fantasies. Recorded Future News could not verify whether the most extreme schemes were ever attempted.
However, parts of the cache have been corroborated independently. Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis examined cryptocurrency addresses contained in the leak and said it could tie them to known extortions by the Silent Ransom Group, which is also tracked as Luna Moth and Chatty Spider. The company cautioned that it could not “speak to the totality of claims” documented in the archive. The FBI has also documented the group’s most unusual tactic for a Russian extortion group: recruiting what the gang calls “agents” to physically infiltrate victims’ offices. A flash alert earlier this year warned that members of the Silent Ransom Group were posing as IT personnel to gain physical access to computers.
In one negotiation shared in the chats, a law firm’s representative told the extortionists that the firm knew an individual had entered its New York office and copied files onto a flash drive. The firm said its executives had authorized $1 million to settle the demand but wanted proof that every digital and physical copy of its information would be destroyed, citing evidence that the LockBit ransomware gang had failed to delete data belonging to victims who paid…”
AI-attributed layoffs are a household money story
Public Engagement @CAIS: Wage Loss Dashboard. Layoff totals describe how many jobs disappeared. Wage estimates begin to show what those cuts can mean for households and local economies. Experts predict that AI’s effect on the economy will be transformational in the near term. They specifically cite risks like large-scale job displacement.
We agree. There has been significant news coverage of job loss from AI, but it can be hard to quantify how these cuts affect the average person’s finances. A recent report on job-cut announcements by Challenger, Gray & Christmas tracks layoff announcements across the country. In 2025, they identified more than 54,000 job cuts that companies reported were linked to AI.
This works out to about 1 in 20 of all layoffs that year. This dashboard aims to help illuminate the monetary costs of AI on American families and communities. A single software engineer losing their job can mean $90,000 or more a year gone from local spending on rent, groceries, childcare, or with small businesses.
AI is also reportedly replacing workers in customer service, software, data entry, writing, legal research, and more. One person’s layoff means less income for every business they support. Multiply that effect across thousands of workers in multiple industries, and you start to see the real economic weight of AI displacement. In addition, AI-attributed job cuts aren’t spread evenly. States with large tech and media sectors are experiencing greater impact…”
The many barriers young adults must overcome to vote
SciLine – A research based reporting guide: “This guide offers insights, tips, and story ideas to help journalists report on Generation Z’s voting habits. Nearly 50 million adults aged 18 to 29 will be eligible to vote in the 2026 midterm elections, making Generation Z potentially one of the nation’s most powerful and influential voting blocs.
The reality is that many Americans in this age group do not vote, a problem that researchers have studied for decades. Meanwhile, a number of new laws and policy proposals across the U.S. may make it even harder for young people to register to vote and cast their ballots on time. We created this guide to encourage journalists to examine independent, nonpartisan research about youth voting patterns and obstacles and to use that knowledge to ground their coverage of the 2026 midterm elections.
Historically, young adults have voted at lower rates than older adults. Less than a third of U.S. citizens aged 18 to 29 voted during the 2022 midterm elections, compared with 47% of voters aged 30 to 44, 58% of voters aged 45 to 64, and 67% of voters aged 65 and older, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Even so, social scientists warn journalists not to equate a lack of voting with political apathy. “A lot of our research shows young people deeply value democracy,” says Sara Suzuki, a senior researcher at the Tufts University Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
Commonly known as CIRCLE, the center is a leading, nonpartisan source of data and analysis on the country’s youngest voters. These voters, whom scholars refer to as youth voters, must overcome a series of structural and logistical hurdles to participate in elections, Suzuki says. Election laws in some states make voting more difficult for college students in particular, especially students who have a permanent residence in one state but live in a different state during the academic year…”
WSJ new AI tool, “Doppler,” forecasts issues that will shape midterm elections
NiemnLab: “Ahead of Election Day, the tool has ingested 25 million TikTok videos and 500,000 podcasts to gain new insight into U.S. voters.
More than 100 million voters are expected to cast ballots in the 2026 U.S. midterm elections. In recent election cycles, political reporting based on voter polling has drawn criticism, prompted scrutiny, and found defenders. As the debate over the value of polling continues, The Wall Street Journal is exploring new ways to cover public opinion and break out of traditional horse race political coverage.
In late September, the Journal published its first storyusing Doppler News AI, a custom tool built to help expand the publication’s midterms coverage. So far, Doppler has ingested more than 25 million TikTok videos, roughly 500,000 podcast episodes, and thousands of Instagram videos and cable news segments.
The Journal uses the tool to monitor trends across the internet and to identify voter priorities, concerns, and sentiments that traditional polling might miss. “We’re not trying to predict the election, but people encounter politics through a lot of different lanes: culture, work, money, family, community. We wanted to tap into that and listen in on those conversations,” said Aja Whitaker-Moore, the deputy editor-in-chief of the Journal. “We’re taking a massive set of information…and telling you, from a statistical standpoint:
‘Here’s what people are talking about. Here are the questions they’re asking. Here are the places where those conversations are happening.’” Other newsrooms have leaned on AI “visibility tools” in the past to support their reporting. That includes using large language models (LLMs) to transcribe and summarize “manosphere” podcasts, school board meetings, and local talk radio shows. But Doppler goes further…”