The typo saga: British defence ministry accidentally sends classified emails to Russian ally

Another case has been reported where important government e-mails are getting delivered to the wrong address because of a typo. Britain's defence ministry has launched a probe after officials unintentionally forwarded secret emails to a close Russian ally due to a typing error. 

The issue of the wrong address was first reported by The Times, which further mentioned that a "small number" of emails were sent to Mali because of the accidental omission of an "i" from an email address. 

The mails that were meant for the Pentagon were sent to an address ending with the West African country's ".ml" domain, instead of the US military's ".mil". 

As quoted, a ministry spokesperson said: "We have opened an investigation after a small number of emails were mistakenly forwarded to an incorrect email domain. We are confident they did not contain any information that could compromise operational security or technical data."

"All sensitive information is shared on systems designed to minimise the risk of misdirection. The MoD constantly reviews its processes and is currently undertaking a programme of work to improve information management, data loss prevention, and the control of sensitive information," the spokesperson added.

Recently, the same typo was the reason for millions of US military emails, containing highly sensitive information, being redirected to Mali. But the UK-based report argued that the scale of the British mishap was not as extensive as that of the US.

Putin promises African leaders free grain 

Mali was among the African nations, that will get free grain from Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday told African leaders he would gift them tens of thousands of tons of grain despite Western sanctions, which he said made it harder for Moscow to export its grain and fertilisers. 

At a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg, Putin said, "We will be ready to provide Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic and Eritrea with 25-50,000 tonnes of free grain each in the next three to four months."