Long-time Slashdot reader bird writes: Without admitting wrong-doing, would-be electric truck maker Nikola has agreed to a $125,000,000 settlement to settle charges that it defrauded investors with false claims about their EV vehicle technology. You may recall the video of a supposedly electric-powered truck that was later admitted to be powered not by a motor but rather by gravity? Nikola. The Seattle Times provides additional details about the settlement: Nikola violated the antifraud and disclosure control provisions of the federal securities laws, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday. In July the founder and one-time chair of Nikola, Trevor Milton, was freed on $100 million bail after pleading not guilty to charges alleging he lied about the company. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, New York, charged Milton, 39, with two counts of securities fraud and wire fraud. He resigned as chairman in September. The SEC said in its order that Milton embarked on a public-relations campaign aimed at inflating and maintaining Nikola's stock price before the company had produced a vehicle. The SEC also found that Milton misled investors about Nikola's technological advancements, in-house production capabilities, hydrogen production, truck reservations and orders, and financial outlook. In addition, it found that Nikola misled investors by misrepresenting or omitting information about the refueling time of its prototype vehicles, as well as the economic risks and benefits associated with a potential partnership with General Motors.

Nikola, based in Phoenix, didn't admit or deny the SEC's findings. The company did agree to cease and desist from future violations and to the $125 million penalty. Nikola also agreed to continue cooperating with the SEC's ongoing investigation. The order also establishes a fund to return penalty proceeds to investors who were affected. "We are pleased to bring this chapter to a close as the company has now resolved all government investigations," Nikola said in a statement. We will continue to execute on our strategy and vision to deliver on our business plan."

The United States has taken legal action to seize and return over $154 million purportedly stolen from Sony Life Insurance Company Ltd, a SONY subsidiary, by an employee in a textbook business email compromise (BEC) attack. BleepingComputer reports: "According to the government's complaint, Rei Ishii, an employee of Sony Life Insurance Company Ltd. ("Sony Life") in Tokyo, allegedly diverted the $154 million when the company attempted to transfer funds between its financial accounts," the Justice Dept said today. "Ishii allegedly did this by falsifying transaction instructions, which caused the funds to be transferred to an account that Ishii controlled at a bank in La Jolla, California."

According to court documents, Ishii switched the transfer address for a Sony Life transaction to use a Silvergate Bank account under his control. Ishii later converted the stolen funds into more than 3879 bitcoins via A Coinbase set up to automatically transfer all added funds to an offline cryptocurrency cold wallet [...]. After converting the money to cryptocurrency, Ishii also tried persuading his supervisor and several Sony Life executives not to help investigators by emailing them a ransom note typed in English and Japanese. "If you accept the settlement, we will return the funds back. If you are going to file criminal charges, it will be impossible to recover the funds," the note read. "We might go down behind all of this, but one thing is for sure, you are going to be right there next to us. We strongly recommend to stop communicate (sic) with any third parties including law enforcement."

However, on December 1, following an investigation in collaboration with Japanese law enforcement authorities, the FBI seized the 3879.16242937 BTC in Ishii's wallet after obtaining the private key, which made it possible to transfer all the bitcoins to the FBI's bitcoin wallet. [...] Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department arrested the 32-year-old Ishii the same day and criminally charged him on suspicion of obtaining $154 million dollars following fraudulent money transfers from mid-May.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: The Biden administration has pledged to create a carbon-free energy sector by 2035, but because renewable resources generate only around 19 percent of US electricity as of 2020, climate experts warn that our transition to a green grid future needs to speed up. A group of researchers at Stanford led by Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering, has set out to prove that a 100 percent renewable energy grid by 2050 is not only feasible but can be done without any blackouts and at a lower cost than the existing grid. Jacobson is the lead author of a new paper, published in Renewable Energy, which argues that a complete transition to renewable energy -- defined as wind, water, and solar energy -- would benefit the US as a whole and individuals by saving costs, creating jobs, and reducing air pollution and carbon emissions.

They modeled how wind turbines, tidal turbines, geothermal and hydroelectric power plants, rooftop and utility photovoltaic panels, and other sources could generate energy in 2050. A host of different sources powered these projections: Jacobson used data from a weather-climate-air pollution model he first built in 1990, which has been used in numerous simulations since. Individual state and sector energy consumption was taken from the Energy Information Administration. Current fossil fuel energy sources were converted to electric devices that are powered by wind, water, and solar. This was then used to create projections for energy use in 2050. Time-dependent energy supply was matched with demand and storage in a grid integration model for every 30 second interval in 2050 and 2051. The study authors analyzed US regions and countrywide demand until the model produced a solution with what the authors called zero-load loss -- meaning, essentially, no blackouts with 100 percent renewable energy and storage. According to Jacobson, no other study is conducting this kind of modeling, which is unique in part because it checks conditions for any simulation every 30 seconds.

As the cost of renewables falls, researchers predict power companies and consumers will migrate to using renewables. Solar and wind are already half the cost of natural gas. Policy may also motivate adoption -- or hinder it. While the current administration has set out goals for a renewable energy grid, new permits for gas and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico counteract those same efforts. [...] The researchers quantified these benefits by looking at private costs, such as those to individuals or corporations, and social ones, which also include health and climate costs. Zero-emissions leads to few air pollution related deaths and illness, and a reduced toll on the healthcare system. [...] The model cannot address emissions from things like long-distance shipping or aviation, though the authors argue that green hydrogen could be a possible alternative to explore. They did not include nuclear energy or carbon capture, which [Anna-Katharina von Krauland, a PhD candidate in the Atmosphere/Energy program at Stanford and a co-author of the paper] views as "distractions from getting to 100 percent renewable energy as quickly as possible" because the technologies are costly, unproven, or lacking in their promises. "The best path forward would be to invest in what we know works as quickly as we can," she says -- such as wind, water, and solar energy.

The UK National Crime Agency has shared a collection of more than 585 million compromised passwords it found during an investigation with Have I Been Pwned, a website that indexes data from security breaches. The Record reports: The NCA now becomes the second law enforcement agency to officially supply HIBP with hacked passwords after the US Federal Bureau of Investigations began a similar collaboration with the service back in May. In a blog post today, Troy Hunt, HIBP creator Troy Hunt said that 225 million of the compromised passwords found by the NCA were new and unique.

These passwords have been added to a section of the HIBP website called Pwned Passwords. This section allows companies and system administrators to check and see if their current passwords have been compromised in hacks and if they are likely to be part of public lists used by threat actors in brute-force and password-spraying attacks. Currently, the HIBP Pwned Passwords collection includes 5.5 billion entries, of which 847 million are unique. All these passwords are also available as a free download, so companies can check their passwords against the data set locally without connecting to Hunt's service.

In a statement shared by Hunt, the NCA said it found the compromised passwords, paired with email accounts, in an account at a UK cloud storage facility. The NCA said they weren't able to determine or attribute the compromised email and password combos to any specific platform or company.

A security researcher says an internet gateway used by hundreds of hotels to offer and manage their guest Wi-Fi networks has vulnerabilities that could put the personal information of their guests at risk. From a report: Etizaz Mohsin told TechCrunch that the Airangel HSMX Gateway contains hardcoded passwords that are "extremely easy to guess." With those passwords, which we are not publishing, an attacker could remotely gain access to the gateway's settings and databases, which store records about the guest's using the Wi-Fi. With that access, an attacker could access and exfiltrate guest records, or reconfigure the gateway's networking settings to unwittingly redirect guests to malicious webpages, he said. Back in 2018, Mohsin discovered one of these gateways on the network of a hotel where he was staying. He found that the gateway was synchronizing files from another server across the internet, which Mohsin said contained hundreds of gateway backup files from some of the most prestigious and expensive hotels in the world. The server also stored "millions" of guest names, email addresses and arrival and departure dates, he said. Mohsin reported the bug and the server was secured, but that sparked a thought: Could this one gateway have other vulnerabilities that could put hundreds of other hotels at risk? In the end, the security researcher found five vulnerabilities that he said could compromise the gateway -- including guests' information.

New amendments to Malaysia's Copyright Act mean that "People who offer streaming services and devices that 'prejudicially' hurt copyright owners can face fines equivalent to $2,377 or more, prison sentences up to 20 years, or both," reports Engadget.

TorrentFreak has more details: How the amendments will be used in practice remains to be seen but the scope appears to be intentionally broad and could result in significant punishments for those found to be in breach of the law....

Those hoping to use a corporate structure as a shield are also put on notice. When any offenses are committed by a corporate body or by a person who is a partner in a firm, everyone from directors to managers will be deemed guilty of the offense and may be charged severally or jointly, unless they can show they had no knowledge and conducted due diligence to prevent the offense.

More than 20 different times in the last 12 months, at least $10 million was stolen from a cryptocurrency exchange or project, reports NBC News.

"In at least six cases, hackers stole more than $100 million..." By comparison, bank robberies netted perpetrators an average of less than $5,000 per heist last year, according to the FBI's annual crime statistics... "If you hack a Fortune 500 company today, you might steal some usernames and passwords," said Esteban Castaño, the CEO and co-founder of TRM Labs, a company that builds tools for companies to track digital assets. "If you hack a cryptocurrency exchange, you may have millions of dollars in cryptocurrency...."

[W]hile a handful of countries have strict regulations in place, it's relatively easy for tech entrepreneurs to set up an exchange nearly anywhere in the world and run it however they like. Cryptocurrencies generally offer a certain amount of security — taking their name, in part, from "encryption." But the exchanges that manage them, especially new ones building their businesses from scratch, often start with a tiny staff, which means few if any full-time cybersecurity professionals. Their developers may work frantically to make the code work, sometimes accidentally leaving flaws that give hackers a foothold. Combined with the fact that a volatile market often leaves them suddenly holding a fortune, exchanges are a particularly ripe target for criminal hackers....

The problem is exacerbated because many cryptocurrency projects, intent on avoiding government regulations, set up in countries whose law enforcement agencies don't have much power to go after transnational hackers. Or if they are hacked, they tend to be less likely to call for government help on ideological grounds, said Beth Bisbee, head of U.S. investigations at Chainalysis, a company that tracks cryptocurrency transactions for both private companies and government agencies. Some developers "want to be anti-bank and anti-oversight," Bisbee said. "So when something like that happens, they're not necessarily wanting to work with law enforcement, even though they'd be considered to be a victim and it'd be valuable for them to."
Ultimately the article points out that "Most exchange hackers are not caught." (Although in at least one case part of the stolen money was voluntarily returned.)

But what happens after the breach, NBC News asked Dave Jevans, the founder of CipherTrace, a company that tracks theft and fraud in cryptocurrencies. If an exchange is wealthy enough and plans ahead to have an emergency fund, it can compensate its customers if its operation is hacked, Jevans said. If not, they often goes out of business. "Not every exchange is so wealthy or has so much foresight. It just goes, pop, 'We're out of business. Sorry, you're all screwed,'" he said.

Long-time Slashdot reader kjshark writes: Eric Clapton has successfully sued a German woman who posted an illegal recording for €9.95, about $11 on eBay. The CD was a single-bootlegged recording of a Clapton concert from the 1980s.

After Clapton sent a court in Düsseldorf an affidavit stating the recordings were illegal, the defendant claimed she was unaware the CD was recorded illegally and that her late husband originally purchased the CD at a department store in 1987. Her appeal was rejected by the court.

The court ruled that the woman pay the legal fees for both parties which amount to around $3,500 and that if she continues to keep the recording up on eBay she'll face six months in prison or a fine of around $283,000.

"Both sides made closing arguments this week in Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes' fraud trial," reports Business Insider: Prosecutors said Holmes "chose to be dishonest" and that her allegations of abuse, which were a key part of her defense, were irrelevant. The defense said "rats flee a sinking ship" but Holmes stayed, noting "that's who that woman is...."

Prosecutors kicked off their arguments by recapping testimony from each of their 29 witnesses. They argued that Holmes saw money dry up at Theranos while its progress languished and had to decide whether to "watch Theranos slowly fail" or defraud investors and patients. "She chose fraud over business failure. She chose to be dishonest," said Assistant US attorney Jeffrey Schenk, according to NBC News. "That choice was not only callous, it was criminal."

Prosecutors revisited Holmes' bombshell admissions during her seven days of testimony, including that she added pharmaceutical companies' logos to validation reports without authorization and kept Theranos' use of modified third-party devices a secret. Holmes has said she wanted to convey that the reports were the result of work done with those pharmaceutical companies and that she withheld information about the use of commercial devices because it was a trade secret.
The New York Times argues historians will see the trial as "a case study in the use of clothing to affect opinion (public and judicial) and, if not to make friends, at least to influence people. Or try to." When the verdict comes down, the transformation of the wunderkind founder of Theranos from black-clad genius to besuited milquetoast will be an integral part of the story. Did it work, or was it a seemingly transparent effort to play the relatable card? Rarely has there been as stark an example of Before and After.... Gone were her signature black turtlenecks and black slacks; gone the bright red lipstick and blond hair ironed straight as a board or pulled into a chignon.... Instead there was ... sartorial neutrality, in the form of a light gray pantsuit and light blue button-down shirt, worn untucked, with baby pink lipstick. She looked more like the college student trying on a grown-up interview look than the mastermind of a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme.... There was not a power heel or a power shoulder in sight. The only part of her outfit that was branded in any way was her diaper bag backpack (her son was born in July), which was from Freshly Picked and costs around $175...

The net effect of Ms. Holmes's makeover was middle manager or backup secretarial character in a streaming series about masters of the universe (but not her! uh-uh), with the diaper bag functioning as an implicit reminder of her maternal status and family values. In case that accessory wasn't enough, she often entered the courthouse with an actual family member — her mother, her partner — in tow, and a hand to cling to. It was code-switching of the most skillful kind. It was relatable. One of the stereotypes of Silicon Valley's superstars, after all, is that they are other: speaking in bits, relating to machines more than people; living, literally, in a different reality. When you want a jury to sympathize with your plight, you have to make them imagine themselves in your shoes. Which means, you need to look, if not like them, at least like someone they might know.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Across the country, some law enforcement agencies have deployed controversial surveillance technology to track cellphone location and use. Critics say it threatens constitutional rights, and members of Congress have moved to restrain its use. Nonetheless, in 2019 the Boston Police Department bought the device known as a cell site simulator -- and tapped a hidden pot of money that kept the purchase out of the public eye. A WBUR investigation with ProPublica found elected officials and the public were largely kept in the dark when Boston police spent $627,000 on this equipment by dipping into money seized in connection with alleged crimes.

Also known as a "stingray," the cell site simulator purchased by Boston police acts like a commercial cellphone tower, tricking nearby phones into connecting to it. Once the phones connect to the cell site simulator's decoy signal, the equipment secretly obtains location and other potentially identifying information. It can pinpoint someone's location down to a particular room of a hotel or house. While this briefcase-sized device can help locate a suspect or a missing person, it can also scoop up information from other phones in the vicinity, including yours. The Boston police bought its simulator device using money that is typically taken during drug investigations through what's called civil asset forfeiture.

An August investigation by WBUR and ProPublica found that even if no criminal charges are brought, law enforcement almost always keeps the money and has few limitations on how it's spent. Some departments benefit from both state and federal civil asset forfeiture. The police chiefs in Massachusetts have discretion over the money, and the public has virtually no way of knowing how the funds are used. The Boston City Council reviews the BPD annual budget, scrutinizing proposed spending. But the surveillance equipment wasn't part of the budget. Because it was purchased with civil forfeiture funds, BPD was able to circumvent the council. According to an invoice obtained by WBUR, the only city review of the purchase -- which was made with federal forfeiture funds -- came from the Procurement Department, confirming that the funds were available. In fact, it was only after sifting through hundreds of documents received through public records requests that WBUR discovered BPD had bought the device from North Carolina-based Tactical Support Equipment Inc., which specializes in surveillance technology.

H&R Block filed a trademark infringement lawsuit over Square's new name, "Block" on Thursday. CNBC reports: The tax preparation service seeks to keep Block from using the new name, saying in a press release that the fintech company "would improperly capitalize on the goodwill and consumer trust cultivated by Block since 1955." H&R Block said the renamed company competes with it directly in financial services, including through its recent acquisition of Credit Karma Tax for tax preparation. It alleged the name would be overly confusing for consumers, especially given the two companies' overlapping offerings. "Today's filing is an important effort to prevent consumer confusion and ensure a competitor cannot leverage the reputation and trust we have built over more than six decades," said H&R Block President and CEO Jeff Jones said in a statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Climate change, the rapid growth of "stablecoins" and financial innovations that led to frenzied trading of GameStop shares early this year are threats to the U.S. financial system that merit closer scrutiny, a Treasury Department-led regulatory panel said on Friday. In its annual report, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) added that while the U.S. economy has improved since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, risks to the financial system are higher than prior to the health crisis, with the outlook for global growth still uncertain.

The report marked the first time the body, which was created in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis to spot looming threats, has flagged climate change as a major risk, reflecting President Joe Biden's push to address rising global temperatures. The FSOC, which comprises the Treasury and other financial regulators, said the physical risks posed by more frequent severe weather events and government policies transitioning away from carbon-heavy industry could dent asset values and weaken institutions, it wrote, echoing an October FSOC paper. "If these changes occur in a disorderly way owing to substantial delays in action or abrupt changes in policy, their impact is likely to be more sudden and disruptive," the FSOC said.

Similarly, the body reiterated concerns flagged in November that stablecoins, a fast-growing type of digital asset pegged to traditional currencies, could become a threat if widely adopted. While that market is currently only worth about $127 billion, its market value has ballooned more than 500% over the past 12 months and may be vulnerable to runs if investors lose confidence in the asset class's reliability, the FSOC said. The body also noted a surge of volatility earlier this year sparked by retail investors, who coordinated on social media and used zero-commission trading apps to fuel sharp rises in a handful of stocks, including videogame maker GameStop. The episode suggested financial innovations and social media are changing market participation, raising the risk of sudden asset price movements unrelated to fundamental news. That "could represent a vulnerability if they lead to cascading impacts by causing asset liquidations or putting stress on financial institutions," the FSOC wrote.

Verizon has sent an email to customers to let them know they're getting opted in to its Custom Experience data collection scheme after reports came out about it being turned on by default for some users. From a report: If you (understandably) trashed the email without reading it, the TL;DR is that Verizon's program collects data about your apps and web browsing activity to help "provide you more personalized experiences with Verizon." But of course, Verizon says, you have a choice -- you can turn it off anytime because your privacy is important to it (though not important enough to make the program opt-in instead of opt-out). Custom Experience is a sort of spin-off / successor / rebrand of Verizon Selects, which people were enrolled into when they used the Verizon Up rewards program. Verizon Selects has now been rebranded as Custom Experience Plus, while the Custom Experience with a few limits on tracking is rolling out to most customers who don't actively opt out. Verizon is letting its customers know about the program through emails, like one a member of The Verge's staff received, and texts like this one a reader says they got. The email promises that "you're in control," saying that you can opt out within the next 30 days before the Custom Experience is turned on for your line.

Controversial facial recognition company, Clearview AI, which has amassed a database of some 10 billion images by scraping selfies off the Internet so it can sell an identity-matching service to law enforcement, has been hit with another order to delete people's data. From a report: France's privacy watchdog said today that Clearview has breached Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In an announcement of the breach finding, the CNIL also gives Clearview formal notice to stop its "unlawful processing" and says it must delete user data within two months. The watchdog is acting on complaints against Clearview received since May 2020. The US company does not have an established base in the EU -- meaning its business is open to regulatory action across the EU, by any of the bloc's data protection supervisors. So while the CNIL's order only applies to data it holds on people from French territories -- which the CNIL estimates covers "several" tens of millions of Internet users -- more such orders are likely from other EU agencies.

The explosion of rug pulls in the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem over the past year helped to propel revenue from crypto scams to $7.7 billion in 2021, according to blockchain data firm Chainalysis. From a report: Per Chainalysis' 2022 Crypto Crime Report, revenues from crypto scams in 2021 were up 81% on the previous year, with rug pulls accounting for 37% of all crypto scam revenue -- up from 1% in 2020. In all, rug pulls -- in which developers build a seemingly legitimate crypto project and then abscond with investors' money -- accounted for more than $2.8 billion worth of stolen crypto in 2021. Chainalysis highlighted the fact that code audits -- which would catch the vulnerabilities that enable fraudulent DeFi projects to drain their liquidity pools -- are not required to list a project on decentralized exchanges (DEXs), hence their prevalence in the DeFi sector.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: On December 1, hours before Texas' social media law, HB 20, was slated to go into effect, a federal court in Texas blocked it for violating the First Amendment. Like a similar law in Florida, which was blocked and is now pending before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the Texas law will go to the Fifth Circuit. These laws are retaliatory, obviously unconstitutional, and EFF will continue advocating that courts stop them. In October, EFF filed an amicus brief against HB 20 in Netchoice v. Paxton, a challenge to the law brought by two associations of tech companies. HB 20 prohibits large social media platforms from removing or moderating content based on the viewpoint of the user. We argued, and the federal court agreed, that the government cannot regulate the editorial decisions made by online platforms about what content they host. As the judge wrote, platforms' right under the First Amendment to moderate content "has repeatedly been recognized by courts." Social media platforms are not "common carriers" that transmit speech without curation.

Moreover, Texas explicitly passed HB 20 to stop social media companies' purported discrimination against conservative users. The court explained that this "announced purpose of balancing the discussion" is precisely the kind of government manipulation of public discourse that the First Amendment forbids. As EFF's brief explained, the government can't retaliate against disfavored speakers and promote favored ones. Moreover, HB 20 would destroy or prevent the emergence of even large conservative platforms, as they would have to accept user speech from across the political spectrum. HB 20 also imposed transparency requirements and user complaint procedures on large platforms. While these kinds of government mandates might be appropriate when carefully crafted -- and separated from editorial restrictions or government retaliation -- they are not here. The court noted that companies like YouTube and Facebook remove millions of pieces of user content a month. It further noted Facebook's declaration in the case that it would be "impossible" to establish a system by December 1 compliant with the bill's requirements for that many removals. Platforms would simply stop removing content to avoid violating HB 20 -- an impermissible chill of First Amendment rights.

Clear Secure, an identification services company known for its expedited screening product for air travelers, is bringing its biometric sign-up scanners to locations beyond airports. The Wall Street Journal reports: The company has temporarily installed the biometrics machines this month inside a Showfields Inc. interactive mall and at a Rimowa Distribution Inc. luggage store in New York City as well as a Rimowa in San Francisco. Clear's main product, Clear Plus, checks travelers' identities at airport security using biometrics such as iris scans, and lets them skip the wait for agents to check their photo IDs. Enrollment typically begins online but customers usually must go to a Clear airport location to scan their biometrics. Annual memberships cost $179.

Clear created the temporary installations to showcase its technology more widely and to expose consumers to its products beyond travel, said Caryn Seidman Becker, chief executive of the company. Other products include Clear Stadium Access, a product that lets people skip long lines at sports and entertainment venues. The pop-ups are also offering Clear gift cards, a first for the company. The company also wanted to address pent-up demand from consumers who traveled less during the pandemic, Ms. Seidman Becker said.

Major U.S. air carriers warned on Wednesday that plans by AT&T and Verizon to use spectrum for 5G wireless services could be highly disruptive to air travel and cost air passengers $1.6 billion annually in delays. Reuters reports: Trade group Airlines for America (A4A) said if a new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) directive for addressing potential interference from wireless transmissions had been in effect in 2019 "approximately 345,000 passenger flights, 32 million passengers, and 5,400 cargo flights would have been impacted in the form of delayed flights, diversions, or cancellations." At a hearing Wednesday, senators urged airlines to work to find a resolution. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said the 5G wireless issue "is the biggest and most damaging potential issue facing us. We want nothing more than to work to a solution." Southwest Airlines Chief Executive Gary Kelly said the FAA directive "would significantly impact our operations once it is deployed on Jan. 5." The wireless carriers are set to begin using the spectrum in just three weeks. Last week, the FAA issued new airworthiness directives warning interference from 5G wireless spectrum could result in flight diversions.

The aviation industry and FAA have raised significant concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters. In November, AT&T and Verizon agreed to delay the commercial launch of C-band wireless service until Jan. 5 after the FAA raised concerns. They also adopted precautionary measures for six months to limit interference. The FAA directives order revising airplane and helicopter flight manuals to prohibit some operations requiring radio altimeter data when in the presence of 5G C-Band wireless broadband signals. Aviation industry groups said they were insufficient to address air safety concerns. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, who did not immediately comment on the airlines' analysis, has said she believes the issues can be resolved and spectrum safely used.

schwit1 shares a report from the Financial Times: The US Treasury will put DJI and the other groups on its Chinese military-industrial complex companies blacklist on Thursday (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), according to two people briefed on the move. US investors are barred from taking financial stakes in the 60 Chinese groups already on the blacklist. The measure marks the latest effort by President Biden to punish China for its repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the north-western Xinjiang region.

The other Chinese companies that will be blacklisted on Thursday include Megvii, SenseTimes main rival that last year halted plans to list in Hong Kong after it was put on a separate US blacklist, and Dawning Information Industry, a supercomputer manufacturer that operates cloud computing services in Xinjiang. Also to be added are CloudWalk Technology, a facial recognition software company, Xiamen Meiya Pico, a cyber security group that works with law enforcement, Yitu Technology, an artificial intelligence company, Leon Technology, a cloud computing company, and NetPosa Technologies, a producer of cloud-based surveillance systems. DJI and Megvii are not publicly traded, but Dawning Information, which is also known as Sugon, is listed in Shanghai, and Leon, NetPosa and Meiya Pico trade in Shenzhen. All eight companies are already on the commerce department's "entity list," which restricts US companies from exporting technology or products from America to the Chinese groups without obtaining a government license.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Insider: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday rejected the idea of barring members of Congress and their spouses from holding or trading individual stocks while in office. "We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that," Pelosi said when asked by Insider at her weekly press conference. Insider also asked Pelosi about Conflicted Congress, a five-month-long investigation by Insider that found that 49 members of Congress and 182 senior congressional staffers had violated the STOCK Act, a law to prevent Insider trading. The speaker said she hadn't yet seen the project, but added that it's important that members comply with the law. "If people aren't reporting, they should be," she said. Pelosi's position put her at odds with progressives such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom have called for barring members of Congress from trading stocks while in office. Earlier this year, NPR found that TikTok users have been watching financial disclosures of sitting members of Congress to help them determine which stocks to invest in. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's stock trading disclosures in particular were "a treasure trove," according to some TikTok users.

"Shout out to Nancy Pelosi, the stock market's biggest whale," said user 'ceowatchlist.' Another said, "I've come to the conclusion that Nancy Pelosi is a psychic," while adding that she is the "queen of investing." "She knew," declared Chris Josephs, analyzing a particular trade in Pelosi's financial disclosures. "And you would have known if you had followed her portfolio." The report notes that the trades Josephs noticed were actually made by Pelosi's investor husband.