Signal fallout, Chinese network targeting fired workers and Russia-Ukraine
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Today, the Trump administration brushes off the group chat scandal. But what are the security concerns? The US says it's reached separate deals with Russia and Ukraine on maritime and energy truces. And the secretive Chinese network tries to lure in fired federal workers.

It's Wednesday, March 26th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Christopher Waljasper in Chicago. And I'm Tara Oaks in Liverpool. With the Venmo debit card, you can turn the spa day that your friends paid you back for into concert tickets that you can earn up to 5% cash back on.

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U.S. President Donald Trump is downplaying security concerns after a journalist was accidentally included on a secret group chat among top White House officials discussing highly sensitive military plans. And it wasn't classified information, so this was not classified. Now, if it's classified information, it's probably a little bit different.

The comment comes after a heated hearing in the Senate on Tuesday, as Democrats like Virginia Senator Mark Warner grilled national security officials, including the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. There was no classified material that was shared in that. So then if there was no classified material, share it with the committee.

You can't have it both ways. Now, a lot of the focus of the Senate hearing on worldwide threats was about the app Signal. That's the app that was used in the chat. White House officials say protocol was followed. But how secure is Signal? Raphael Satter covers cybersecurity.

Signal has an excellent reputation. It is widely considered the gold standard in encrypted messaging. It's been around for more than a decade and it's widely used by dissidents, by reporters, whistleblowers, as well as government officials and businessmen. But that does not mean that the devices that the app is running on are necessarily secure.

Secure conversations about classified matters are meant to occur over classified systems. And those systems, while not perfect, are carefully scrutinized to ensure that they cannot be compromised by foreign actors.

When people are using freely available apps like Signal or WhatsApp or Telegram to communicate about classified materials, they may be doing so over unclassified systems. And that's what's created a lot of the controversy here. Now, another criticism here is that government officials who are using Signal may not be preserving their communications as is required by law.

This is a chat app that doesn't have the functionality to preserve these government records. In the case, for example, that there's an inquiry or a FOIA request, right? And if that's happening over an app that has disappearing messages, then it's an open question as to whether or not the people involved are following the law.

The US says it's reached separate deals with Russia and Ukraine to pause their attacks at sea and against energy targets, with Washington agreeing to push to lift some sanctions against Moscow. It's not yet clear when or how the Black Sea maritime security deals would start. Moscow says the Black Sea agreements would not come into effect unless links between some Russian banks and the international financial system are restored.

And Ukraine says it will ask President Trump to supply weapons and sanction Russia if Moscow breaks any truce. A broad majority of Americans believe the U.S. president should always obey federal court rulings. That's according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

But respondents, particularly Republicans, were ready to give President Trump more leeway when it comes to pursuing one of his top priorities, deporting people who the administration says are living illegally in the U.S.,

Now, as the Trump administration comes under fire for sharing sensitive military information, another more subtle breach of information may be happening thanks to the massive layoff of federal workers orchestrated by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

According to new Reuters reporting, a shadowy network of Chinese-linked recruitment companies is trying to gather intelligence from recently laid off U.S. government workers. Our cybersecurity reporter, A.J. Vicenz, has been digging into the network's recruiting efforts. So what they're doing is they may ask somebody who was recently laid off, oh, if you need a little bit of income,

Can you write us a paper on this certain topic? And maybe it's not necessarily classified information, but it's interesting and important. And then you do another one. And then maybe they say, hey, why don't you fly out and give a presentation to this group of people and, you know,

the relationship can like spiral from there and maybe they're asking for a little bit more each time and we're talking about thousands of employees who have been laid off or have taken early resignations or retirements from the government and in a lot of cases it's

It starts out where the person almost certainly does not know that this is what they're doing. But sometimes they get wrapped in so deep, they can either have crossed a line and not know it, or they can maybe be blackmailed and they might be told and you either keep going or maybe we'll report you. So what did you find when you tried to contact these companies? You would think that a consulting firm might have a big fancy office with employees.

Now, to be clear, Reuters was not able to determine if any former federal employees have already been recruited.

But, AJ, you did find several job postings on LinkedIn that showed as many as 200 applications. How have government officials in either China or the U.S. responded to your reporting? A spokesman for the Chinese embassy told us that they are not aware of any of the companies we mentioned in our story and that they would never ask anybody to report.

collect information overseas, contrary to local laws. The FBI has told us that the intelligence and security services of China aggressively targets current and former and prospective U.S. government employees often to obtain sensitive information and that people should be watching out for this sort of thing kind of all the time. But I think that people should be

When asked about this reporting, a White House spokesperson said China was constantly trying to exploit the United States' free and open system through espionage and coercion. The

The spokesperson added, quote, both active and former government employees must recognize the danger these governments pose and the importance of safeguarding government information. An Oscar-winning Palestinian director has been released. Hamdan Bilal was injured and arrested during a raid by Israeli settlers on his village in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday. He spoke to Reuters from hospital after his release.

They came, the soldiers with the settlers, attacking me and beating me and destroyed me. Bilal is the co-director of the Oscar-winning No Other Land, a documentary about the Israeli displacement of a Palestinian community. The Israeli military says police and soldiers intervened after Palestinians threw rocks at the vehicles of Israeli citizens and later at Israeli security forces.

Springtime in most places is associated with flowers budding and possibly pollen allergies.

But here in the UK, it also means the spring statement, when the finance minister updates Parliament on their economic plans. And this year, Rachel Reeves is under a lot of pressure to show she can fix the public finances. Carmel Crimmins is here with more. So economic growth in the UK has tailed off and that's making life difficult for Reeves. It means she's likely to announce cuts to her spending plans today. That's to make sure she stays on track to meet her budget targets.

Cuts to welfare are expected, which politically are going to be very unpopular. A bitter jolt, really, like an espresso. And the Sabrina Carpenter controversy doesn't help. No, you're right. Reeves is struggling to shake off criticism for accepting free tickets for a Sabrina Carpenter concert. She says she accepted the corporate box for security reasons, but it's not a great look with those spending cuts that are expected.

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Learn more at phrma.org/ipworkswonders. And for today's recommended read: A newly discovered dinosaur fossil in Mongolia's Gobi Desert.

The dino named Duonychus zogboteri lived around 95 million years ago and had two curved claws on each hand, measuring a foot long each. To learn more and see illustrations of what scientists think Duonychus looked like, check out the link in the podcast description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app.

Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. And we'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.