Tag: All Regions

Italian police search former defense exec’s home in corruption probe

ROME — Magistrates in Italy are probing former Leonardo and Fincantieri officials as part of an investigation into alleged corruption. Police removed computer files from the homes of ex-Leonardo CEO Alessandro Profumo and a former Italian Italian prime minister, Massimo D’Alema, and are probing former Fincantieri executive Giuseppe Giordo amid claims bribes were offered to Columbian officials to buy planes…

Meta to let users refuse its cross-site tracking following German antitrust intervention

Meta has been dragged kicking and screaming into another notable privacy concession in Europe: The German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) has announced a new account center incoming which will see the tech giant provide users of its social networking services with a greater degree of choice over whether they allow it to combine data on their activity across its services…

CEO guilty of selling counterfeit Cisco devices to military, govt orgs

A Florida man has pleaded guilty to importing and selling counterfeit Cisco networking equipment to various organizations, including education, government agencies, healthcare, and the military. The 39-year-old resident of Florida, Onur Aksoy, conducted the scheme through 19 companies formed in New Jersey and Florida and in several online storefronts, collectively known as ‘Pro Network Entities,’  Aksoy had a criminal complaint…

Chris Licht is out at CNN, ending a brief and chaotic run

ATLANTA – Mr Chris Licht, the former television producer who oversaw a brief and chaotic tenure as chairman of CNN, is out at the network. Mr Licht’s 13-month run at CNN was marked by one controversy after another, culminating in his exit earlier this week. He got off to a bumpy start even before he officially started when he oversaw…

Ex-CIA advisor theorizes date when Dollar’s dominance may start to crumble

The BRICS bloc’s push to create a new trade and reserve currency that can serve as an alternative to the dollar could start chipping away at the greenback’s hegemony in less than three months’ time, former CIA and Department of Defense advisor and investment banker James Rickards has predicted. “It involves the rollout of a major new currency that could…

Treasury ‘sleeping at the wheel’ on PwC tax scandal

Treasury officials have been accused of being asleep at the wheel on breaches of confidential government information. Officials were grilled on their knowledge of potential breaches of confidential Treasury data by former PwC partner Peter Collins, who has been referred to federal police to investigate the allegations. Greens senator Barbara Pocock hit out at Treasury’s decision to sign new confidentiality…

US sues Binance and founder Zhao over ‘web of deception’

WASHINGTON – US regulators sued Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao on Monday for allegedly operating a “web of deception,” piling further pressure on the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange and sending bitcoin to its lowest in almost three months. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint, filed in a federal court in Washington, DC, listed 13 charges against Binance, Zhao…

US govt sent $1.3 billion to China, Russia for gender equality, cat experiments and Wuhan lab research

The U.S. government has given Chinese and Russian entities at least $1.3 billion for various research programs over the past five years, according to an analysis released Wednesday by Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and watchdog group Open the Books. The analysis revealed that millions of taxpayer dollars have been given to, among others, a Chinese software developer for military tech support,…

Biden Signs Bill to Raise US Debt Ceiling to Avoid Default

“On Saturday, June 3, 2023, the President signed into law … H.R. 3746, the ‘Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023,’ which suspends the public debt limit through January 1, 2025, and increases the limit on January 2, 2025, to accommodate the obligations issued during the suspension period,” it said. The bill also rescinds certain unobligated balances, expands work requirements for a…

Canada boosts Indo-Pacific naval deployments, military engagements

SINGAPORE — Canada is pledging to step up its military posture in the Indo-Pacific, with its defense minister announcing the nation will annually commit to the region an additional warship. This will boost the size of the Royal Canadian Navy’s annual deployment to the Indo-Pacific from two to three ships, according to defense minister Anita Anand, who added that the…

A federal judge rejects Tennessee’s anti-drag law as too broad and vague

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A federal judge says Tennessee’s first-in-the-nation law designed to place strict limits on drag shows is unconstitutional. In a 70-page ruling handed down late Friday night, U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker wrote that the law was both “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad.” He also added that the statute encouraged “discriminatory enforcement.” “There is no question that obscenity…

Purdue Pharma can protect Sackler owners in opioid bankruptcy, court rules

NEW YORK, May 30 (Reuters) – Bankrupt OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma can shield its owners, members of the wealthy Sackler family, from opioid lawsuits in exchange for a $6 billion contribution to the company’s broader bankruptcy settlement, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday. The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that U.S. bankruptcy law allows legal…

Air Force official’s musings on rogue drone targeting humans go viral

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force walked back comments reportedly made by a colonel regarding a simulation in which a drone outwitted its artificial intelligence training and killed its handler, after the claims went viral on social media. Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek said in a June 2 statement no such testing took place, adding that the service member’s comments…

U.N. rushing to prevent “one of the worst oil spills” in history

The United Nations officially launched its mission this week to prevent what it says could be an “environmental catastrophe” on the Red Sea. Sitting off the coast of Yemen lies a nearly half-century-old ship with roughly 1.14 million barrels of crude oil on board, the global agency said – and it’s “deteriorating rapidly.”  The massive 47-year-old supertanker, FSO Safer, rests…

California: Governor Newsom wants NetChoice to drop lawsuit over unconstitutional AADC Bill

We’ve written a lot about AB 2273, California’s Age Appropriate Design Code (AADC) that requires websites with users in California to try to determine the ages of all their visitors, write up dozens of reports on potential harms, and then seek to mitigate those harms. I’ve written about why it’s literally impossible to comply with the law. We’ve had posts…

Why the media is attacking free speech -BlackListedNews editorial

Governments around the world are cracking down on free speech. What they are demanding includes the ability to read private encrypted text messages and invade homes in search of wrongspeech. Their demands thus go far beyond what the Censorship Industrial Complex was able to get away with over the last six years. And things are getting worse. Last week, the…