Category: Regulatory News

Telecom Italia SpA has agreed to sell its land-line network to KKR & Co. in a government-backed deal valued at around €22 billion ($23.6 billion), according to people familiar with the matter. The phone carrier’s board of directors, after a marathon meeting that started on Friday, approved the grid sale to the US private equity giant on Sunday without making it conditional on a vote by shareholders, the people said, asking not to be identified as the decision isn’t yet public. The approval…

In a recent development, PayPal has been registered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to offer crypto asset activities in Britain. This move comes as PayPal establishes a post-Brexit base in the UK, reflecting its commitment to serving the British market. According to a Reuters report, the crypto market in the UK awaits its first set of regulations; companies seeking to offer crypto assets must demonstrate to the FCA that they have robust safeguards to prevent money laundering and financing…

Japanese electronics manufacturer Casio disclosed a data breach impacting customers from 149 countries after hackers gained to the servers of its ClassPad education platform. Casio detected the incident on Wednesday, October 11, following the failure of a ClassPad database within the company’s development environment. Evidence suggests that the attacker accessed customers’ personal information a day later, on October 12. The exposed data includes customer names, email addresses, countries of residence, service usage details, and purchase information such as payment methods,…

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is calling on the UK government to reduce the current cap on individual per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water from 100ng/l to 10ng/l, warning that levels above this pose a significant risk to public health. The RSC’s call follows new analysis revealing that more than a third of water courses tested in England and Wales contain medium or high-risk levels of PFAS, which have been linked to a range of serious adverse…

If government regulators prevail against Google in the biggest U.S. antitrust trial in a quarter century, it’s likely to unleash drastic changes that will undermine the dominance of a search engine that defines the internet for billions of people. As the 10-week trial probing Google’s business practices nears its midway point, it’s still too early to tell if U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta will side with the Justice Department and try to handcuff one of the world’s most dominant tech…

Reddit’s latest transparency report shows a modest increase in DMCA takedown notices. The number of copyright infringement-related user- and subreddit bans has declined, however. The latest data follows a hectic period at Reddit, where protests over an API policy change triggered a ‘dramatic’ 1169% increase in user data requests. With millions of daily users, Reddit is without a doubt one of the most visited sites on the Internet. The community-oriented platform has “subreddits” dedicated to pretty much every topic one…

In just a few months, “AI Hub” became a massively popular Discord server with over half a million members. While copyright infringement was strictly forbidden, not all users stuck to the rules. This previously raised the attention of the RIAA, and now appears to have caused the server’s downfall after it was suddenly shut down. Artificial intelligence is booming. Dozens of companies are enthusiastic about its potential and many regular people are tinkering with it too. The ‘AI Hub’ Discord…

The information supplied by banks, building societies and payment companies suggests that no firm closed an account between July 2022 and June 2023 primarily because of a customer’s political views. The Payment Accounts Regulations ban banks or building societies discriminating on this basis. The FCA will be doing further work with firms to verify the data and to better understand the reasons behind, for example, the closure of accounts due to reputational risk. By far the most common reasons providers…

India’s quest for self-reliance in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle technology unveils a trajectory cluttered with regulatory impasses, technical teething troubles, and a fragmented approach despite sporadic advancements and strategic acquisitions. In the escalating theatre of modern warfare, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) delineate a paradigm shift, reshaping conventional stratagems and operational dynamics. The Indian subcontinent, despite its earnest endeavors, wades through a labyrinth of technological glitches, regulatory conundrums, and fragmented initiatives in its quest for UAV proficiency. India’s voyage into the unmanned…

This month, the Philippines celebrates its creative industries by dedicating a special month to their work. On top of that, the Government presented a long-awaited ‘gift’. The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) announced that local site-blocking plans are about to come to fruition. IPOPHL Director General Rowel Barba signed a memorandum that will go into effect in late November. As part of the agreement, Internet providers will voluntarily block access to known pirate sites. These plans aren’t new;…

Following the creation of its Hadopi anti-piracy agency over 13 years ago, France monitored and stored data on millions of users suspected of infringing copyrights. The majority were BitTorrent users and the plan was to use evidence of their piracy activities as a basis for escalating actions including warnings, fines, and ultimately, internet disconnections. Operating the program for a decade cost French taxpayers 82 million euros ($86.5 million) but according to digital rights group La Quadrature du Net, Hadopi’s “mass…

International travelers wait to have their passports checked at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, 2014. The new agreement to allow visa-free U.S. entry to Israeli tourists and businesspeople requires Israel to end bans and restrictions on Palestinian Americans and other Arab Americans traveling to Israel. TEL AVIV, Israel — The State Department says it will allow Israeli tourists and businesspeople to enter the U.S. without visas, as part of an agreement that requires Israel to end bans and restrictions on…

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has introduced new recommendations to streamline the reporting of cyber incidents across the Department of Defense and 32 other federal agencies. The guide is expected to further protect the country’s vital infrastructure, reduce the burden on cybersecurity partners, and decrease the downtime of associated operations in each sector covered. The recommendations will also enhance the prevention, response, and recovery from cyber attacks and aid organizations in improving malicious cyber threat identification. ‘Clear, Consistent…

The two founders behind Tornado Cash, a Russian cryptocurrency mixing service, have been charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, according to a statement on Wednesday. Roman Storm and Roman Semenov were officially charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, according to a newly unsealed indictment. Storm was arrested in Washington on Wednesday but Semenov still remains at large, the…

from the pick-a-lane,-guys dept This is just so painfully obnoxious. The legacy news media, spurred on by a welfare system that pretend free market supporter Rupert Murdoch dreamed up and convinced governments to implement, whereby the government would force internet companies, which had innovated and created new business models that worked, to suddenly be required to pay for sending traffic to legacy news media organizations which failed to innovate. It’s extreme corporate welfare, egged on by a guy who pretends…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The generic drug maker Teva Pharmaceuticals agreed Monday to pay $225 million to settle price-fixing charges related to sales of a major cholesterol-lowering drug. The U.S. Department of Justice said the agreement also requires Teva to divest its business making and selling the drug, pravastatin, a generic version of the brand-name medicine Pravachol. Another generic drug maker, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, agreed to pay a $30 million criminal penalty and to divest its pravastatin business as well. In a…