Category: z-Exclude

Twitter users were forced out of the platform and had trouble logging back in on Monday. 

More than 2,000 outages were reported, according to Downdetector. It is not clear what is causing the outage, and Twitter did not meaningfully respond to a request for comment.

Some users that could not log in via their computers were able to access the site from a mobile phone. The site has been undergoing multiple technical issues in the months since owner Elon Musk laid off thousands of employees. 

U.S. conservation groups on Monday announced they are suing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for not doing enough to protect the environment from SpaceX’s Starship program.

The move came after the world’s most powerful rocket exploded on its first integrated test flight, just four minutes after launching from Boca Chica, Texas on April 20.

SpaceX video showed a hail of debris being blasted as far as the Gulf of Mexico, over 1,400 feet (425 meters) away, while a cloud of dust floated over a small town several miles (kilometers) away.

The launch site also sits next to a vital habitat for protected species, including Kemp’s ridley sea turtle and the piping plover bird, according to the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which was among the groups that filed the lawsuit.

The Air Force is dangling a new carrot for early career airmen who might be tempted to leave: almost any job they want. Starting June 1, all qualified first-term airmen — those serving under the initial contract they signed to join the military, which lasts four to six years — can apply for a new job in any Air Force…

E2EE is a widely used technology that protects everyone’s privacy and security by encoding the contents of digital communications and files so that they’re decipherable only by the sender and intended recipients. Not even the provider of the E2EE service can read or hear its users’ conversations. E2EE is built in by default to popular apps such as WhatsApp, iMessage, FaceTime, and Signal, thereby securing billions of people’s messages and calls for free. Default E2EE is also set to expand to Meta’s Messenger app and Instagram direct messages later this year. 

E2EE’s growing ubiquity seems like a clear win for personal privacy, security, and safety, as well as national security and the economy. And yet E2EE’s popularity has its critics – including, unfortunately, Sen. Durbin. Because it’s harder for providers and law enforcement to detect malicious activity in encrypted environments than unencrypted ones (albeit not impossible, as I’ll discuss), law enforcement officials and lawmakers often demonize E2EE. But E2EE is a vital protection against crime and abuse, because it helps to protect people (children included) from the harms that happen when their personal information and private conversations fall into the wrong hands: data breaches, hacking, cybercrime, snooping by hostile foreign governments, stalkers and domestic abusers, and so on.

That’s why it’s so important that national policy promote rather than dissuade the use of E2EE – and why it’s so disappointing that STOP CSAM has turned out to be just the opposite: yet another misguided effort by lawmakers in the name of online safety that would only make us all less safe. 

First, STOP CSAM’s new criminal and civil liability provisions could be used to hold E2EE services liable for CSAM and other child sex offenses that happen in encrypted environments. Second, the reporting requirements look like a sneaky attempt to tee up future legislation to ban E2EE outright.

Lordstown Motors is at risk of failing — again.

The EV startup that went public via a SPAC merger cautioned investors Monday that it may be forced to file for bankruptcy because Foxconn may pull out of a critical funding deal, according to a regulatory filing.

Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn sent a letter April 21 to Lordstown stating the automaker was in breach of the investment agreement because its stock price fell below $1 for 30 days and was at risk of being delisted on the Nasdaq exchange. Foxconn warned it would terminate the investment agreement if the breach is not resolved within 30 days.

While Lordstown disagreed with Foxconn’s assertion and said it intended to enforce its rights, the company also warned that withholding key funding would be detrimental to the company.

First Republic Bank, on the brink of collapse in the weeks after the Silicon Valley Bank crisis, has finally fallen over, but with a relatively quick resolution into its next chapter: today the FDIC announced that it was being closed by the the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, that the FDIC was appointed as receiver, and that the FDIC would be selling the assets to JPMorgan.

Its assets and deposits total just over $330 billion together.

Specifically, “to protect depositors, the FDIC is entering into a purchase and assumption agreement with JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association, Columbus, Ohio, to assume all of the deposits and substantially all of the assets of First Republic Bank,” it said.

The FDIC also confirmed deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC at an estimated cost of about $13 billion to its insurance fund.

In February, Hong Kong proposed a set of welcoming rules to regulate crypto-related activities. Under the new legal regime, retail investors will be allowed to trade certain digital assets on licensed exchanges, replacing a 2018 framework that restricted trading to only accredited investors.

The city is also paving the way to legalize stablecoins. One startup, which is backed by popular exchange KuCoin and USDC issuer Circle, recently launched an offshore Chinese yuan (CNH)-pegged stablecoin, the first of its kind in Greater China.

To create a favorable environment for web3 businesses, the city is facilitating communication between banks and crypto startups, many of which are scrambling to find alternatives following Silvergate Bank’s meltdown.

These moves are contrasting with Beijing’s heavy-handed crackdown on the crypto industry; they also highlight the degree to which the former British colony enjoys policy exceptions in certain areas, such as finance.

The Biden administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on the Federal Security Service, Russia’s intelligence agency, for its role in detaining Americans like Evan Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal reporter who has been accused of espionage.

The administration also announced sanctions on Iran’s intelligence services and four senior Iranian officials, who the administration says have participated in a pattern of holding Americans and other nationals hostage.

A United States judge has ordered a South African executive to pay more than US$3.4 billion (S$4.5 billion) in restitution and fines for a fraud scheme involving Bitcoin – the highest-ever civil monetary penalty in any US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) case.

Cornelius Johannes Steynberg, the founder and chief executive officer of Mirror Trading International Proprietary, committed fraud tied to retail foreign currency transactions, among other violations, the agency said in a statement that announced the order by US District Judge Lee Yeakel.

An unusually early heatwave in drought-hit Spain is set to peak on Thursday and Friday, with temperatures expected to break April records in the south of the country.

Experts have warned of the high risk of wildfires, and farmers have warned of the catastrophic effect it is having on their crops.

Since Monday, Spain has been enveloped by a mass of warm, dry air from North Africa that has driven up temperatures to “levels normally seen in summer and exceptionally high for this time of year,” said Spain’s state weather agency Aemet.

BRUSSELS – Companies deploying generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, will have to disclose any copyrighted material used to develop their systems, according to an early European Union agreement that could pave the way for the world’s first comprehensive laws governing the technology.

The European Commission began drafting the AI Act nearly two years ago to regulate the emerging technology, which underwent a boom in investment and popularity following the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Members of the European Parliament agreed to push the draft through to the next stage, the trilogue, during which EU lawmakers and member states will thrash out the final details of the bill.

Under the proposals, AI tools will be classified according to their perceived risk level: From minimal through to limited, high, and unacceptable.

On April 26, after months awaiting a response, Japan’s Foreign Ministry announced it had received confirmation from Myanmar’s military junta that it misused two Japan-funded civilian vessels to transport soldiers and weapons in Rakhine State in September 2022.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Japan protested the misuse and the junta “expressed regret over the situation,” saying it will do its “utmost to prevent recurrence.”

Human Rights Watch first revealed the incident in October 2022 after analyzing letters from Myanmar officials that stated that two of three vessels delivered by Japan between 2017 and 2019 had been used to transport more than 100 soldiers and materiel to the town of Buthidaung in Rakhine State, where the military is fighting the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group. The Japanese government had been requesting information from the junta following that reporting.

Hackers have stolen email addresses, direct messages, and other personal data from users of two dating websites, according to a data breach expert.

Earlier this week, someone alerted Troy Hunt, the founder and maintainer of the data breach alerting website Have I Been Pwned, that hackers had breached two dating websites, CityJerks and TruckerSucker. Hunt told TechCrunch that he analyzed the stolen data and found usernames, email addresses, passwords, profile pictures, sexual orientation, users’ date of birth, their city and state, their IP addresses, and biographies. The stolen passwords are scrambled with a weak algorithm that could potentially be broken and allow hackers to see the actual passwords.”

The U.S. is imposing sanctions on groups in Russia and Iran associated with the wrongful detainment of its citizens, CNN reported on April 27. Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich are currently being held in Russia on trumped-up espionage charges. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attempted to justify Russia detaining the two U.S. citizens while speaking to journalists at the United Nations on April 25, claiming they were detained “when committing a crime.” People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg in mid-April that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin “personally approved” Gershkovich’s arrest on espionage charges. In Iran, Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi and Morad Tahbaz are all being held in a prison where where there have been reports of torture, CNN wrote. According to CNN, the sanctions imposed by the U.S. would target Russia’s Federal Security Service and the Intelligence Organization of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Four individuals in Iran would also be targeted by the sanctions. “We are showing that one cannot engage in this sort of awful behavior using human beings as pawns, as bargaining chips, without paying consequences and these are some of the consequences,” a senior U.S. administration official said, as quoted by CNN. However, as CNN pointed out, “questions remain about the real impact of these sanctions because many of the entities hit on Thursday were already sanctioned under different authorities by the U.S.”

It’s been six weeks since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank threatened to kick off a nationwide bank run. Now, U.S. regulators are due to issue their postmortem reports.

The Federal Reserve plans to release a report Friday on whether there were lapses in its oversight of Silicon Valley Bank that may have contributed to the bank’s failure.

Separately, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will also report Friday on how the regulator supervised New York-based Signature Bank, which failed days after the Silicon Valley lender.

The sudden implosion of two big regional banks rattled nerves throughout the financial system last month, forcing the federal government to take emergency steps to prevent a nationwide bank run.

BEIJING — Chinese leader Xi Jinping said Wednesday that Beijing will send an envoy to Ukraine to discuss a possible “political settlement” to Russia’s war with the country.

Beijing has previously avoided involvement in conflicts between other countries but appears to be trying to assert itself as a global diplomatic force after arranging talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March that led them to restore diplomatic relations after a seven-year break.

Xi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a phone call that a Chinese envoy, a former Chinese ambassador to Russia, would visit Ukraine and “other countries” to discuss a possible political settlement, according to a government statement.

It made no mention of Russia or last year’s invasion of Ukraine and didn’t indicate whether the Chinese envoy might visit Moscow.

The Xi-Zelenskyy phone call was long anticipated after Beijing said it wanted to serve as a mediator in the war.