NSO Group, fraught by lawsuits and bad press over sales of its phone-hacking spyware, is reportedly in talks to sell off its assets to a US-based venture capital fund.

The Israeli cyber technology firm, which was recently targeted by US sanctions and has seen its revenue sink amid a string of scandals around the world and at home, is in advanced negotiations with Integrity Partners, Haaretz reported this week.

NSO Group described the report as full of “inaccuracies and half truths,” but confirmed that it was in talks with US-based funds, without naming any.

“The company generates great interest with a few US-based funds, and the company is in talks with them all,” it said in a statement carried by Reuters Wednesday.

According to the Haaretz report Tuesday, an Integrity Partners subsidiary by the name of Integrity Labs would be created to take over the company and pump $300 million into transforming the firm from a veritable pariah back into a going concern.

The infusion would help NSO Group avoid defaulting on a debt it took on for a 2019 buyout, according to Bloomberg, which also reported on the sale talks.

NSO has faced mounting scrutiny over its flagship Pegasus software, which can seamlessly infiltrate a mobile phone and allow its operators to gain access to the device’s contents and location history. Confirmed targets have included Mexican and Saudi journalists, British attorneys, Palestinian human rights activists and Uganda-based US diplomats.

In November, the US Commerce Department blacklisted NSO, barring the company from using certain US technologies, saying its tools had been used to “conduct transnational repression.” The global tech giants Facebook and Apple have filed lawsuits against NSO over hacks against their products.

With Energy being the hottest topic on the front burner around the world today, US and European officials are coordinating with natural gas suppliers globally to cushion the impact if Russia were to cut off energy supplies in the conflict over Ukraine, Biden administration officials say.

The US and European allies have promised punishing economic and political sanctions if Russia moves its military into Ukraine, but worry about repercussions for Europeans from any such sanctions, including Russia potentially cutting off delivery of its natural gas to Europe at the height of winter.

Putin has deployed roughly 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s border for weeks, sparking a diplomatic crisis for Europe and the United States. He denies any intention of invading.

Any US and European measures against Russia in the event of an invasion “also have consequences for others, including us,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in remarks as part of a lecture series Monday night.

“There’s a cost imposed on everyone,” Blinken said. “But we have done a tremendous amount of work to mitigate any effects of sanctions on those…imposing them, as well as any retaliatory action that Russia might take.”

Two senior US administration officials separately briefed reporters Tuesday about efforts by Biden’s national security team to deal with any knock-on effects from sanctions. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations.

In a deals expected to bring Lebanon up to 250 megawatts of electricity a day within two months, Lebanon signed agreements on Wednesday to purchase electricity from Jordan via Syria to help the small Mediterranean country deal with its crippling energy crisis.

enough for about two hours of power a day. The electricity will be transmitted through Syria. The World Bank is expected to finance the deals, and negotiations are underway.

Lebanon’s Energy Minister Walid Fayyad said he expects financing negotiations to conclude in two months.

“After signing today, we are left with the financing through the World Bank, something I will work on as soon as possible. The details will be clear in the next two months,” Fayyad told reporters during the signing ceremony. ”We don’t want to promise the Lebanese people that as soon as we sign electricity will come.”

Lebanon’s electricity company offers only a couple of hours of power a day, and residents have heavily relied on costly and polluting private generators. The aging national grid has not been able to provide 24-hour electricity in the country since the end of the civil war in 1990, and fuel oil subsidies for the state electricity company have been the main driver of the country’s massive national debt.

The energy crunch is at the heart of Lebanon’s snowballing economic crisis, described as one of the world’s worst since the 1850s. A massive public deficit and a crashing national currency have made shortages perennial amid continuously soaring prices. US, Europe draw up gas supply plan in case of Russian cutoff amid Ukraine tensions.

Yellowfin tuna in the Indian Ocean Seychelles is currently the most overfished tuna stock in the world.

Seychelles’ overall quota for yellowfin tuna catch for 2022 has been reduced by 9,184 tonnes by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) as a payback provision for over-catch in 2020 by industrial longline fleets.

Under IOTC Resolution 21/01, Seychelles qualified for a total yellowfin tuna allocation of 39,542 tonnes for 2022, covering catch from all fleets registered in the island state – purse seiners, industrial longliners and semi-industrial longliners.

The principal secretary for fisheries, Roy Clarisse, told SNA that Seychelles lodged a formal objection to the IOTC chairperson on January 5.

He said that while the payback penalty is based on confirmed data submitted by the island state to the IOTC Secretariat, “it is also based on estimates made by the IOTC Secretariat for 2021, whereby it is assumed that this fleet segment has over-caught the same amount as they did in 2020.”

This is because final catch data for industrial longline vessels are not reported to the commission until December 30 the following year.

Clarisse said that if the situation is not rectified it will affect the fishing opportunities of all of Seychelles’ fleets.

“Besides a big revenue loss to the country, it may also impact the livelihood of several Seychellois who are directly or indirectly dependent on the tuna fishing industry such as Seychellois owners of the semi-industrial vessels, their crew, the local set-industrial fish processors and their employees, stevedores, just to name a few,” said Clarisse.

He said that the government will work to ensure that the catch of the Seychellois semi-industrial longliners will be protected and in no way reduced.

“These boats are 100 percent Seychellois-owned and any reduction can have serious consequences and as such we will ensure that this fleet is in no way affected,” said Clarisse.

According to an IOTC circular published on December 31, 2021, if a given fleet over-caught fish in 2020, it has to pay back 200 percent of that amount they over-caught – 100 percent for 2021 and 100 percent for 2022.

Clarisse added that SFA’s interpretation of the IOTC provisions is that the paying back of over-catch is undertaken “by allowing that country/fleet to be able to split the payback over a period of two years, rather than as a double penalty as implemented through the IOTC circular.”

He said that Seychelles is doing its utmost to submit 2021 data before the due date so that the reduced tonnage for the year can be reinstated into the 2022 catch limit allocation.

While purse seiners and semi-industrial fleets are very dependent on yellowfin tuna in view of the nature of their fishery, the industrial longline fleet is more flexible as it can adjust fishing methods and target other species such as big-eye tuna and swordfish, he explained.