More than 1.3 million customers were in the dark Sept 27 across South Carolina as the effects of powerful Hurricane Helene ripped into the state. The storm made landfall in Florida late Sept 26 as a category 3 hurricane, and then traveled inland into Georgia and South Carolina.

A Philadelphia man who was arrested as a teenager for allegedly trying to join an overseas terrorist organization as a bomb maker will be prosecuted as an adult. Investigators say the suspect constructed explosives at his parent's house and tested them at least a dozen times. "Evidence indicated his interest in potentially targeting critical infrastructure throughout the region, including power plants and domestic military bases,” a press release from the District Attorney's Office read.

Catastrophic flooding from more than two feet of rain in the North Carolina mountains from Hurricane Helene has closed more than 400 roads in the western part of the state on Sept 28. “All roads in Western NC should be considered closed,” the NC Department of Transportation said. Western North Carolina was essentially cut off because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other major roads.

Authorities confirmed that a body found in a rural area has been identified as the suspect in the Kentucky highway shooting. The suspect’s body was found in an area off exit 49 of Interstate 75 in Laurel County, the same exit near which the shooting occurred, the Kentucky State Police Commissioner said. A weapon was found with the body as well. The suspect had been the subject of a manhunt in the southeastern part of the state since five people were shot on Interstate 75 on the evening of Sept 7.

Officials in Weaverville, North Carolina, held an update on Sept 29 to discuss operations as residents remain without water or power in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Weaverville’s mayor said the town’s water plant was flooded by 8 feet of water. Electricians were en route to assess the damage. Due to the flood damage, no water is available for residents in Weaverville and the surrounding area serviced by the town’s water crews. There is also no commercial water available in Weaverville as of the morning of Sept 29.

Arkansas City, a small city in Kansas, says its water treatment facility was forced to switch to manual operations while a cybersecurity incident is being resolved. The incident was discovered on the morning of September 22 and led to precautionary measures being taken “to ensure plant operations remained secure”, the city announced in an incident notice.

The effects of Hurricane Helene are still impacting the southeastern United States, with widespread cell service outages in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, days after the Category 4 storm made landfall in Florida's Big Bend region. Major cellular providers — AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon — are actively working to restore service, though none have provided a specific timeline for full restoration.

FBI Director Chris Wray says the FBI has disrupted a group of hackers working at the direction of the Chinese government who targeted telecommunications providers, media organizations, nongovernmental organizations, universities, and government agencies. The hacking campaign known as Flax Typhoon installed malicious software on more than 200,000 consumer devices, including cameras, video recorders, and home and office routers, to create a massive botnet, which was used to facilitate cyber crimes.

The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated a network of five entities and one individual — based in Russia and in the Russia-occupied Georgian region of South Ossetia — that have enabled and supported ongoing efforts to establish illicit payment mechanisms between Russia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The sanctions demonstrate the Putin regime’s use of illicit financial schemes to enable the DPRK to access the international banking system in violation of targeted financial sanctions required under United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 1718 and a ban on correspondent relationships with DPRK banks under UNSCR 2270.

The U.S. government sanctioned two cryptocurrency exchanges and unsealed an indictment against a Russian national for his alleged involvement in the operation of several money laundering services that were offered to cybercriminals. The virtual currency exchanges, Cryptex and PM2BTC, have been alleged to facilitate the laundering of cryptocurrencies possibly obtained through cybercrime.

A man was arrested Sept 10 after deputies said he had a gun inside the BMW plant in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. The man was detained by BMW security services and released to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office and charged with trespass after notice.

The U.S. Commerce Department is seeking a ban on the sale of connected and autonomous vehicles in the U.S. that are equipped with Chinese and Russian software and hardware with the stated goal of protecting national security and U.S. drivers. While there is minimal Chinese and Russian software deployed in the United States, the issue is more complicated for hardware. There are more Chinese parts on U.S. vehicles than software, and software can be changed much faster than physical parts.