Category: Regulatory News

As you read through the details of the DOJ investigation, ask yourself why Boeing was permitted to regulte itself. Deregulation is a choice made by government.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) has initiated a criminal investigation into the Boeing jetliner incident that occurred on an Alaska Airlines plane earlier this year, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. According to the newspaper, the DOJ has reached out to passengers and crew members, including pilots and flight attendants, who were on…

Blackbaud has settled with the Federal Trade Commission after being charged with poor security and reckless data retention practices, leading to a May 2020 ransomware attack and a data breach affecting millions of people. Blackbaud is a U.S.-based company listed on NASDAQ with operations in multiple countries and a provider of cloud-based donor data management software catering to nonprofit organizations, like charities, education organizations, and healthcare agencies. The FTC’s complaint alleges that the company “failed to monitor attempts by hackers…

PARIS: France said it would push to ease European Union environmental regulations on fallow farmland this week, as tractors blocked major highways out of Paris on Monday and nationwide farmers’ protests intensified. The French government on Friday dropped plans to gradually reduce state subsidies on agricultural diesel and promised a reduction in red tape and an easing of environmental regulations, but farmers’ organisations said that was not enough and pledged to step up the pressure. The head of France’s biggest…

Morgan Stanley will pay $249 million to settle a criminal investigation, as well as a related Securities and Exchange Commission probe. The SEC said the bank generated more than $100 million in illicit profits as a result of misconduct by Pawan Passi, the bank’s former head of its US equity syndicate desk, and another employee.  Morgan Stanley has been under investigation by the SEC since 2019 over its handling of block trades (a business that the bank dominates), and the…

At the height of the online file-sharing boom, the phrase ‘Sharing is Caring’ was a reminder that peer-to-peer file-sharing systems lived or died on the availability of upload bandwidth. Its presentation allowed it to be about much more than that. The ‘give to get’ philosophy forms part of the BitTorrent protocol even today, but Sharing is Caring was a phrase that could influence human behavior, to the benefit of the wider file-sharing movement, with no suggestion of pressure. Sharing is…

SEATTLE – When Microsoft opened an advanced research lab in Beijing in 1998, it was a time of optimism about technology and China. The company hired hundreds of researchers for the lab, which pioneered Microsoft’s work in speech, image and facial recognition and the kind of artificial intelligence that later gave rise to online chatbots such as ChatGPT. The Beijing operation eventually became one of the most important AI labs in the world. Mr Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, called it…

A mid-air blowout aboard a Boeing 737-9 MAX passenger plane has led to dozens of aircraft worldwide being grounded while engineers try to establish what went wrong. Six people aboard Alaska Airlines flight 1282 from Portland to California were injured after a window and chunk of fuselage blew out of the plane in mid-air shortly after takeoff on 5 January. Questions around the safety of the jets are swirling and various airlines have come out with statements saying what actions…

Bottled water has been found to contain hundreds of thousands of tiny plastic particles, the vast majority of which are nanoplastics (<1μm in length), according to new research. Nanoplastics are thought to be more toxic to humans because their small size means they can pass more easily from the gut into the body than microplastics (1μm to 5mm in length). However, there is a gap in understanding the effects of these tiny particles on organisms due to the challenges associated…

Not for the first time, Boeing is again the subject of unwanted attention from regulators and customers over safety issues. The shocking scenes on Friday night, in which a Boeing 737 MAX 9 operated by Alaska Airlines suffered a mid-air blow-out, has again raised questions over the safety of the jet. Boeing shares fell by 8% in pre-market trading today while shares of Spirit AeroSystems, which made and installed the fuselage part on the jet, were down by as much…

Attorneys for the Securities and Exchange Commission apologized to a judge on Thursday for misrepresenting facts used to secure a restraining order and asset freeze against a crypto firm. In a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court of Utah, in response to the judge’s order to show cause for its misstep, the SEC attorneys wrote that the commission “deeply regrets these orders” and promised to conduct mandatory training for staff members involved in the investigation. “I fully appreciate the…

Five years since the legalization of cannabis in Canada, the industry finds itself grappling with significant challenges. Despite making economic contributions on par with the dairy sector and marking its presence on the global stage, primarily in the medical cannabis export market, this promising industry is hindered by financial strains, murky advocacy, and unyielding regulations. Excise Tax: A Thorn in the Side A primary issue, raised during a recent industry gathering in Toronto, is the hefty excise tax, which critics…

SINGAPORE – The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has imposed a $3.9 million civil penalty on Credit Suisse for its failure to prevent or detect misconduct by relationship managers (RMs) in its Singapore branch. Credit Suisse paid the penalty to the regulator immediately after it was imposed, and as part of the settlement, also separately compensated its affected clients, said MAS in a statement on Dec 28. The RMs had provided clients with inaccurate or incomplete post-trade disclosures, resulting in…

Since the major data protection provisions of Quebec’s Law 25 went into effect in September, privacy professionals within the province and Canada at large now face the prospect of a more stringent enforcement regime under the provincial data protection authority, the Commission d’accès a l’information du Québec. To ease compliance burdens, Canada-based privacy tech vendors Data Sentinel and Denodo joined forces to develop a Law 25 compliance solution, now available to the market. Denodo Director, Partner and Channels Sales Robert…

Negotiators are convening this week in Nairobi for the latest round of talks aimed at creating a new scientific panel to advise the world’s governments on how to tackle chemical waste. But as the talks get underway, concerns have been voiced about potential conflicts of interest that could undermine the panel. The warning comes as efforts to agree a global treaty on plastic pollution appear to have been delayed by vested interests. The UN wants its new panel on chemical…

Mercer Financial Advice has been ordered by the Federal Court to pay a $12 million penalty for breaching fee disclosure obligations and for wrongly charging fees to customers, ASIC has reported. “This is a significant penalty for a financial advice provider,” said Sarah Court (pictured above), ASIC deputy chair. “Mercer failed in its obligation to provide fee disclosure statements to clients, provided misleading information in the disclosure statements it did provide, and charged its clients fees for services it was…

WASHINGTON: US inspectors announced fines against China-based firms Thursday, as part of a broader effort to hold US-listed Chinese companies up to American auditing standards amid simmering geopolitical tensions. These included PwC affiliates in Hong Kong and China, alongside a Chinese audit company. The $7.9 million in penalties unveiled by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) represent some of the highest imposed on any firm globally, it said. They mark the first time it “has been able to bring enforcement action…