Anticorruption police gathered material from the homes of election officials including former office leader Piero Corvetto.
By Reuters and The Associated Press
Published On 24 Apr 202624 Apr 2026
Police in the Peruvian capital of Lima have raided a home belonging to the former head of its national election agency, amid growing frustration in the aftermath of the country’s presidential election.
As of Friday, results still had not been finalised for the presidential race, which took place on April 12.
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Delays in ballot deliveries forced the voting in some areas to be extended by an extra day, and the slow vote count has led to accusations of wrongdoing. But the European Union’s election mission to Peru found no indication of fraud.
Law enforcement was seen entering the home of Piero Corvetto, the former head of Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), on Friday as part of a judicial warrant.
The officers with the local anticorruption police unit were tasked with removing mobile phones, laptops and documents, according to local broadcaster RPP.
The homes of five other officials were also targeted by police raids, as were offices belonging to Galaga, a private company that transports election ballots.
Corvetto resigned on Tuesday, though he denied any wrongdoing or irregularities in the election process. In a statement, he said he hoped his departure would boost public confidence.
On Friday, his lawyer, Ricardo Sanchez Carranza, told the news agency Reuters that a judge authorised the raid but denied prosecutors’ request to put Corvetto in preliminary detention.
But one of the leading presidential candidates, Lima’s former far-right mayor, Rafael Lopez Aliaga, has accused Corvetto of being a “criminal” and pledging to pursue him “until he dies”.
Lopez Aliaga is currently in a narrow race for second place in the presidential election.
With 95 percent of the ballots tallied, right-wing candidate and former First Lady Keiko Fujimori is in first place with 17 percent of the vote. She is all but assured of proceeding to the run-off on June 7.
Lopez Aliaga, meanwhile, is in third place with 11.9 percent, behind left-wing Congress member Roberto Sanchez at 12.03 percent.
Roughly 20,000 votes separate Sanchez from Lopez Aliaga, who has increasingly denounced the election as illegitimate, though he has yet to provide evidence to support that claim. Still, he has called the vote tally an “electoral fraud unique in the world”.
The advent of autonomous treasury has ignited a competitive push, complete with aggressive industry targets. Not all companies will want to proceed at the same speed.
The shift to an autonomous treasury is reshaping the world of corporate finance, driven by new strategies and technologies—from self-healing cash forecasts to AI-driven liquidity engines—that are replacing legacy systems and maximizing yield.
To fully realize the potential, corporate finance leaders are strategically investing in the key areas that will accelerate the transition. The next phase of autonomous treasury will be defined by three investment-focus areas, says Sayantan Chakraborty, head of Digital Payments at Fiserv. “Treasurers don’t lack visibility anymore; they lack widgets that can act on that visibility in real time,” he says. “The gap isn’t analytics. It’s execution.”
Although agentic AI can forecast cash positions and draft funding instructions, Chakraborty notes, current corporate infrastructure often runs in batch mode. The first essential missing link is comprehensive, real-time cash positioning, second, it’s combined with rule-based, just-in-time money movement across multiple payment rails—including instant and traditional—and third, integration of new features like tokenized deposits and programmable payments.
The technological journey still requires human expertise, however. And Chakraborty advises building around legacy ERP systems rather than waiting for a complete modernization.
“Think of it as an AI-powered autopilot added to an older cockpit,” he says. “Policies are enforced, actions are executed, and audit trails are preserved without forcing a full-core replacement on day one, under the watchful eyes of a trained cockpit and cabin crew.”
The era of multi-year, big-bang upgrades is over, Chakraborty argues. Instead, the best course is to implement a lightweight, 24/7 automation layer to handle real-time balances, rules, and payments.
As instant payment rails and real-time reporting become more widespread, Chakraborty predicts the current practice of pre-funding accounts before cut-offs will become obsolete. Instead, “agentic AI will push treasury from once-a-day instructions to continuous, just-in-time funding: as soon as execution matches intent across all rails.”
This shift will impact float, causing idle-balance float to decrease and driving banks to focus their earnings on 24/7 clearing services, intraday credit, and real-time liquidity.
Siemens, a leader in autonomous treasury, adopted J.P. Morgan’s programmable payment feature (formerly Onyx, now Kinexys) in late 2023. Siemens shifted to advanced programmable payments using the blockchain-based ledger, JPM Coin. This allows their bank accounts to autonomously manage cash and execute transactions based on pre-defined rules. Addressing the inefficiency of idle pre-funded balances, Siemens implemented a just-in-time mechanism. Funds are only moved into a specific account the moment a payment is due. If a balance drops below a set threshold, the system autonomously sweeps funds from a central cash pool, enabling Siemens to operate with near-zero balances in local accounts.
“In my experience, the biggest challenge is not technology, but the mindset shift in finance and treasury,” states Heiko Nix, global head of Cash Management and Payments, Siemens. “For almost every technical problem, there is a solution. But simplifying entrenched processes and changing how people think about treasury and its role takes significantly more time and effort. In practice, you do not need to convince everyone at once, what matters is building sufficient momentum across the organization to enable real transformation.”
John Stevens, Kyriba
A ‘Forward-Looking Control Tower’
AI creates a strategic opportunity, argues John Stevens, senior vice president, global head of Capital Markets, Financial Institutions & Working Capital at Kyriba.
“AI can transform working capital management from a retrospective reporting function into a forward-looking control tower,” he says. “Instead of focusing on past events, you can optimize for the future in real time. This is because tasks that previously required manual, analog effort, or demanded analysts to spend long hours consolidating reports, can now occur instantaneously. This real-time capability allows for significantly more sensible and timely decision-making.”
Companies still need to work closely with vendors to build AI safely, he cautions: “We don’t see a single out-of-the-box ‘autonomous’ product replacing the diversity of treasury needs.” The future will be “composable,” he predicts, although it is important to be precise about what this means.
While Kyriba App Studio serves as an extensibility layer for building bespoke integrations and workflows on the Kyriba platform, Stevens stresses that it is not an agent-building toolkit. The agentic AI layer is TAI, which provides Kyriba-developed agents with “a clear human in the loop posture.”
Using a third-party model doesn’t automatically make an AI tool less intelligent and using only in house-models doesn’t automatically make it more intelligent, he argues.
“In treasury, the deciding factor is whether the AI can be used safely and consistently in a regulated environment,” Stevens says. TAI isn’t positioned to avoid external LLMs. “We use a leading external model [Anthropic’s Claude] within a controlled, governed deployment. The difference is the wrapper around the model: strict limits on what data it can access, clear rules on what it’s allowed to do, and a full audit trail of activity.”
Practically, that means the AI can help generate insights—summaries, explanations, flag anomalies, scenario narratives—while anything that could affect payments, liquidity, or risk stays under platform controls, approvals, and policy-driven workflows.
“So it’s not a binary choice between open and sovereign,” he notes. “Some organizations will require sovereign options for policy or jurisdiction reasons, but most regulated treasuries are looking for governed AI: strong models, used in a way that is secure, auditable, and designed for real operational control.”
Redefining Corporate Finance
The potential benefits to treasury have ignited a competitive push for autonomy, complete with aggressive industry targets and a race for “fully autonomous” platforms.
HighRadius recently updated its agentic AI platform with the goal of achieving over 90% automation for the Office of the CFO by 2027. The initiative involves deploying AI agents across six product suites and 20 products within accounts receivable, payables, treasury, close, and consolidation. The release of 186 agentic AI agents, announced last February, moves HighRadius closer to the “fully autonomous platform vision” it first announced in 2019, with cash application and cash forecasting already demonstrating 90% touchless automation.
HighRadius prioritizes “measurable value creation,” which it validates with clients through mutually agreed success criteria (MASC). This value is delivered via automated agents, aiming for 90%-plus automation, and assisted agents, designed to triple user effectiveness.
CEO Sashi Narahari views agentic AI as an interim step toward HighRadius’s goal of ensuring that all its products are “fully autonomous”—defined as 90%-plus touchless end-to-end process—by 2027. Narahari stresses the critical nature of this goal, to the point that failing to achieve it would lead to the company’s demise.
What about mid-tier banks that may not want to jump to a comprehensive transformation? For them, Chakraborty advises that a single, reliable orchestration endpoint is better than many disparate APIs.
“Essential to this is a real time balance plus payment execution API,” he says “exposing positions, limits, and instant movement through a single, resilient interface. That’s what lets AI driven treasury systems act as agents, not just analysts.” Integrating such a process with tokenized deposit movement is also beneficial where possible, he adds.
That said, the journey toward the autonomous treasury, spearheaded by pioneering companies like Siemens and driven by the rapid evolution of agentic AI, is fundamentally redefining corporate finance.
The shift is not merely about incremental efficiency gains but is coming to be seen as a strategic imperative for maximizing yield, securing real-time liquidity, and moving beyond the constraints of legacy systems. Corporate treasurers who are embracing the transition are attracted by a promised tactical roadmap to a future-proofed role. For the financial institutions that serve them, autonomous treasury is an urgent call to align their offerings with a new era of continuous, intelligent, and just-in-time financial control.
New rules for entry into the European Union might slow down people without EU passports. File Photo by Patrick Seeger/EPA
April 10 (UPI) — The European Union has implemented a new digital border system for those traveling without an EU passport, and it’s likely to cause long lines at airports and border crossings.
The new Entry/Exit System requires non-EU passport holders who don’t need a visa to enter — including Americans — to present their passports, give fingerprints and take a photo when entering their first EU country if they are staying up to 90 days.
Ireland and Cyprus are not participating.
They will also have to answer a few questions about their visit, such as how long they’re staying, where and if they will have enough money.
People with a United States passport would have to do this upon landing at their first EU airport. After that, their passport will be enough for entry around Europe for three years, but they’ll have to answer questions on each trip.
Many airports and border crossings have set up electronic kiosks that allow users to scan themselves in, but the wait could be long. Before this, non-EU members could move freely across borders without stopping.
A new visa-waiver system called European Travel Information and Authorization System is coming at the end of 2026. No date has been announced yet. This will allow travelers to apply to register their information before their trips and link it to their passports.
ETIAS will cost $23.44 per person and will also last three years. Those under 18 and over 70 will not have to pay.
At Dover, England, ferry passengers have had to use the kiosks a mile away from the ferry, the BBC reported. People will have to take buses that will drive them to the ferry.
Eurostar, which runs trains through the English Channel Tunnel, has installed 49 EES kiosks in its London St. Pancras terminal. But right now border police are doing the checks, BBC reported.
Eurostar said it will use the kiosks “once the operational software and the activation timetable are confirmed and approved by the French Ministry of Interior.”
The Channel Tunnel has installed more than a hundred kiosks on each side of the Channel.
John and his wife Phil, a married couple from Motherwell, Scotland, said they stood in line for five hours in Pisa Airport after flying in from Glasgow.
John, with an Irish passport, was in line for an hour, but Phil has a British passport and had to wait.
“When I came through, all the planes which had arrived in the hours before had all their suitcases unloaded from the carousel, left stacked on the concourse floor,” John told the BBC.
“There were several elderly people in those queues and, as you can imagine at this time, lots of children. Our government must do something about this,” he said.
Children race to push colored eggs across the grass during the annual Easter Egg Roll event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on April 21, 2025. Easter this year takes place on April 5. Photo by Samuel Corum/UPI | License Photo
The rise is largely symbolic as some key members are unable to raise production amid the US-Israel war on Iran.
Published On 5 Apr 20265 Apr 2026
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has agreed to increase oil output quotas by 206,000 barrels per day for May, a rise that is largely symbolic as some of its key members are unable to raise production due to the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The war has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz – the world’s most important oil route – since the end of February and cut exports from OPEC+ members Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Iraq.
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In a statement on Sunday, eight members of OPEC+, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman, agreed to increase May quotas during a virtual meeting.
“The countries will continue to closely monitor and assess market conditions, and in their continuous efforts to support market stability,” the statement read.
“The eight countries also expressed concern regarding attacks on energy infrastructure, noting that restoring damaged energy assets to full capacity is both costly and takes a long time, thereby affecting overall supply availability,” it added.
While the quota increase represents less than two percent of the supply disrupted by the closure of the strait, OPEC+ sources told the Reuters news agency that the pledge had signalled readiness to raise output once the waterway reopens.
Crude prices have surged to a four-year high amid the war, close to $120 a barrel, leading to higher prices for transport fuels.
On Thursday, JPMorgan said oil prices could spike above $150, an all-time high, if oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz remain disrupted into mid-May.
May’s increase is the same as the eight members had agreed on for April at their last meeting on March 1. But amid the war, oil supply disruption on record is estimated to have removed as much as 12 to 15 million bpd or up to 15 percent of global supply.
(Al Jazeera)
With the strait still closed, Iran has allowed some countries in the region to use the waterway.
Iran has said Iraq was exempt from any transit restrictions through the strait, with shipping data on Sunday showing a tanker loaded with Iraqi crude passing through the waterway.
Oman’s Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday that deputy foreign minister-level talks were being held with Iran to discuss options to ensure the smooth transit of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.
US President Donald Trump threatened to escalate attacks and target Iranian civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants, if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened by Monday.
It’s time to discover the timeless charm of Türkiye’s Aegean Coast, where you can find sun-drenched olive groves encircling ancient cities, scenic wine routes dotted with Michelin-starred restaurants and buzzing beach clubs…
The avian power couple follows her home, keeping her company as she cooks dinner.
“We live in such a busy world, and things are always being thrown at our face, so sometimes it’s nice to just have a gentle reminder of nature and what else is out there in the world,” Wagner told me last week.
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She is just one of many devoted fans; the eagles had the highest view count of any year-round nature livestream active on YouTube between last fall and this spring, said Rebecca Mauldin, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington who studies social connectedness.
While the eagles’ following is singular, it’s part of a broader trend: surging interest in webcams that broadcast nature, unadulterated, minute by minute, in all its messy glory.
The number of 24/7 livestreams created per year swelled by about 3,000% between 2019 and 2025, Mauldin’s data show.
Jackie and Shadow’s livestream exemplifies “Slow TV,” a genre that began with a 2009 Norwegian broadcast of a seven-hour train trip. It took off, with other marathon programs featuring chopping firewood and knitting.
The appeal makes intuitive sense. In a world of quick camera cuts, sound bites and troubling headlines, Mother Nature’s rhythms can be a salve. And with many of us wound up in concrete urbanity, the livestreams offer instant transportation to the wild.
Following Jackie and Shadow takes patience. If they’re not hanging out at the nest, it’s a waiting game until they come back. Even when they’re there, there may not be much going on.
Entertainment “can be very artificial, it can be very packaged, and it can be very short,” said Jenny Voisard, media manager for Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that operates the cameras broadcasting the eagles. “This is long and slow and calm.”
Yet nature is unpredictable, another draw for viewers. This nesting season alone has brought plenty of drama, from the lovebirds losing their eggs to ravens to laying more not long after. Last week, I wrote about the couple’s shocking origin — it involves a love triangle! — and their rise to reality stardom.
Last year, Jackie and Shadow raised two chicks that went on to fledge: Sunny and Gizmo
(Friends of Big Bear Valley)
Research backs the vibes. Those who watch nature livestreams — from platypi to osprey — report a host of benefits, from uplifted mood to relaxation, said Mauldin, citing a literature review she-coauthored.
Others get jazzed about learning about a particular species, she said.
There may be limitations, though.
In terms of connecting to nature, “I lean toward the effect is stronger if you’re actually outdoors, or, you know, you’ve got a little ant crawling on your finger and watching it,” Mauldin said.
She highlighted another dimension I didn’t think of: Many “talk about how they’re developing strong online relationships, and you can see it in the chats or in the comments.”
Someone might comment that they had a bad day and are glad to be watching their favorite birds again, and another viewer will rally to support them. Then there are people who watch on their own, but gab about it later with a friend.
Friends of Big Bear Valley, with 1.2 million followers on Facebook, offers more than just updates on the eagles. It’s a buzzing community center where fans can share their thoughts and engage with one another.
Animals may also get something out of being watched: protection.
The eagle cam, for example, “sort of stokes the public’s imagination and interest in conservation,” said Thomas Leeman, deputy chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s migratory bird program in the Pacific Southwest. “They start to really care about whichever particular birds that they’re watching.”
Wagner, of Chicago, said her husband and 14-year-old son sometimes give her a hard time about how invested she is in Jackie and Shadow.
But her cat, Oscar, shares her fascination.
She recently posted a photo of the feline on Jackie and Shadow’s Facebook — looking intently at a TV where an eagle hunkered down on the nest.
“My new cat is just as obsessed as all of us,” she wrote.
More recent wildlife news
Big Bear’s celeb eagles continue to keep us on our toes. Jackie recently vanished from the nest for nearly 24 hours, sending fans into a panic — but eventually reunited with her eggs and mate, reports USA Today’s Michelle Del Rey.
While we’re on the subject of avian kind: Last week, I wrote about a pair of condors that appear to be nesting in Northern California, something not seen for a century. The Yurok Tribe is leading the effort to bring the large, endangered vultures back to their historic homeland in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
As conservationists celebrate that win, the story for birds nationwide is not so rosy. A recent study found that North America is rapidly losing birds, and the loss is accelerating, largely due to intensive agriculture and warming temperatures, writes the Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein.
A few last things in climate news
Trump’s war on Iran has disrupted global oil and gas supplies. The conflict has kept ships that carry millions of barrels of oil a day stranded in the Persian Gulf, and key Middle East facilities have sustained damage, reports the Associated Press.
Oil prices have spiked, and Californians are paying the highest price at the pump in the nation. As my colleague Iris Kwok explains, that’s due to the state’s higher taxes and stricter requirements for cleaner, more expensive gas that pollutes.
This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.
