The Justice Department is preparing to sue Live Nation as soon as next month [non-paywalled link], an antitrust challenge that could spur major changes at the biggest name in concert promotion and ticketing. WSJ: The agency is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against the Ticketmaster parent in the coming weeks that would allege the nation's biggest concert promoter has leveraged its dominance in a way that undermined competition for ticketing live events, according to people familiar with the matter.

The specific claims the department would allege couldn't be learned. The federal government opted out of trying to block Live Nation and Ticketmaster's 2010 tie up. Since then, the company has faced accusations of exorbitant ticket fees, flawed customer service and anticompetitive practices from lawmakers, regulators and state attorneys general. Critics of the merger say it has stifled competition in ticketing and that the company should be broken up. Live Nation's size and power in concert promotion, ticketing and venues are at the heart of a Justice Department investigation that began in 2022. The investigation gained momentum in November 2022 after Ticketmaster crashed during a fan presale to Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: In a major clean energy benchmark, wind, solar, and hydro exceeded 100% of demand on California's main grid for 30 of the past 38 days. Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Z. Jacobson has been tracking California's renewables performance, and he shares his findings on Twitter (X) when the state breaks records. Jacobson notes that supply exceeds demand for "0.25-6 h per day," and that's an important fact. The continuity lies not in renewables running the grid for the entire day but in the fact that it's happening on a consistent daily basis, which has never been achieved before.

At the two-week record mark, Ian Magruder at Rewiring America made this great point on LinkedIn: "And what makes it even better is that California has the largest grid-connected battery storage facility in the world (came online in January ...), meaning those batteries were filling up with excess energy from the sun all afternoon today and are now deploying as we speak to offset a good chunk of the methane gas generation that California still uses overnight." On April 2, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) recommended 26 new transmission projects worth $6.1 billion, with a big number being devoted to offshore wind. In response, Jacobson predicted on April 4 that California will entirely be on renewables and battery storage 24/7 by 2035.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has written a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, saying that TurboTax "continues to relentlessly upsell" customers while also directing them away from services that would otherwise be free. From a report: As noted in the letter, Warren's staff analyzed TurboTax's services using a sample taxpayer and found that the company attempted to upsell the customer eight times during the tax filing process. Warren writes that in "several cases," these solicitations "appear to be efforts to mislead customers into thinking that they must pay the extra fees in order to file their taxes when that is not the case." Some show up as full-screen prompts, forcing users to scroll to the bottom to deny the upgrade.

In one instance, Warren's team found that TurboTax highlighted its $89 tax filing package as "the right option" for their sample taxpayer, leaving the free option at the bottom of the page. After choosing just one upgrade, Warren's staff found that their sample taxpayer with "simple" filing requirements had to pay an extra $69 to report her unemployment income and educator expenses, plus $64 to file Massachusetts state tax returns. That makes for a grand total of $133 -- a sum people wouldn't have to pay through the IRS's free Direct File service, Warren argues.

The Associated Press reports: As their rivalry intensifies, U.S. and Chinese military planners are gearing up for a new kind of warfare in which squadrons of air and sea drones equipped with artificial intelligence work together like swarms of bees to overwhelm an enemy. The planners envision a scenario in which hundreds, even thousands of the machines engage in coordinated battle. A single controller might oversee dozens of drones. Some would scout, others attack. Some would be able to pivot to new objectives in the middle of a mission based on prior programming rather than a direct order.

The world's only AI superpowers are engaged in an arms race for swarming drones that is reminiscent of the Cold War, except drone technology will be far more difficult to contain than nuclear weapons. Because software drives the drones' swarming abilities, it could be relatively easy and cheap for rogue nations and militants to acquire their own fleets of killer robots. The Pentagon is pushing urgent development of inexpensive, expendable drones as a deterrent against China acting on its territorial claim on Taiwan. Washington says it has no choice but to keep pace with Beijing. Chinese officials say AI-enabled weapons are inevitable so they, too, must have them.

The unchecked spread of swarm technology "could lead to more instability and conflict around the world," said Margarita Konaev, an analyst with Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
"A 2023 Georgetown study of AI-related military spending found that more than a third of known contracts issued by both U.S. and Chinese military services over eight months in 2020 were for intelligent uncrewed systems..." according to the article.

"Military analysts, drone makers and AI researchers don't expect fully capable, combat-ready swarms to be fielded for five years or so, though big breakthroughs could happen sooner."

DOJ-Collected Information Exposed In Data Breach Affecting 340,000 Information Collected An anonymous reader shared this report from Security Week: Economic analysis and litigation support firm Greylock McKinnon Associates, Inc. (GMA) is notifying over 340,000 individuals that their personal and medical information was compromised in a year-old data breach. The incident was detected on May 30, 2023, but it took the firm roughly eight months to investigate and determine what type of information was compromised and to identify the impacted individuals.



According to GMA's notification letter to the affected individuals, a copy of which was submitted to the Maine Attorney General's Office, both personal and Medicare information was compromised in the data breach... "This information may have included your name, date of birth, address, Medicare Health Insurance Claim Number (which contains a Social Security number associated with a member) and some medical information and/or health insurance information," the notification letter reads.

The compromised data, GMA says, was obtained by the US Department of Justice "as part of a civil litigation matter". More than 340,000 individuals were affected by the data breach, the company told the Maine Attorney General's Office. The impacted individuals, however, are "not the subject of this investigation or the associated litigation matters", the company tells the affected individuals.

Foreign Policy magazine visits a U.S. military training exercise that pitted Lt. Isaac McCurdy and his platoon of infantry troops against machines with camera lenses for eyes and sheet metal for skin: Driving on eight screeching wheels and carrying enough firepower on their truck beds to fill a small arms depot, a handful of U.S. Army robots stormed through the battlefield of the fictional city of Ujen. The robots shot up houses where the opposition force hid. Drones that had been loitering over the battlefield for hours hovered above McCurdy and his team and dropped "bombs" — foam footballs, in this case — right on top of them, a perfectly placed artillery shot. Robot dogs, with sensors for heads, searched houses to make sure they were clear.

"If you see the whites of someone's eyes or their sunglasses, [and] you shoot back at that, they're going to have a human response," McCurdy said. "If it's a robot pulling up, shooting something that's bigger than you can carry yourself, and it's not going to just die when you shoot a center mass, it's a very different feeling."

In the United States' next major war, the Army's brass is hoping that robots will be the ones taking the first punch, doing the dirty, dull, and dangerous jobs that killed hundreds — likely thousands — of the more than 7,000 U.S. service members who died during two decades of wars in the Middle East. The goal is to put a robot in the most dangerous spot on the battlefield instead of a 19-year-old private fresh out of basic training... [Several] Army leaders believe that almost every U.S. Army unit, down to the smallest foot patrols, will soon have drones in the sky to sense, protect, and attack. And it won't be long before the United States is deploying ground robots into battle in human-machine teams.
The robots haven't been tested with live ammunition yet — or in colder temperatures, the magazine notes. (And at one point in the exercise, "Army officials jammed themselves, and a swarm of drones dropped out of the sky.) But the U.S. Army is "considering a proposal to add a platoon of robots, the equivalent of 20 to 50 human soldiers, to its armored brigade combat team."

Six generals and several colonels watched the exercise, according to the article, which notes that the ultimate goal isn't to replace all human soldiers. "The point is to get the advantage before China or Russia do."

From the Washington Post: The U.S. government said Thursday that Russian government hackers who recently stole Microsoft corporate emails had obtained passwords and other secret material that might allow them to breach multiple U.S. agencies.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, on Tuesday issued a rare binding directive to an undisclosed number of agencies requiring them to change any log-ins that were taken and investigate what else might be at risk. The directive was made public Thursday, after recipients had begun shoring up their defenses. The "successful compromise of Microsoft corporate email accounts and the exfiltration of correspondence between agencies and Microsoft presents a grave and unacceptable risk to agencies," CISA wrote. "This Emergency Directive requires agencies to analyze the content of exfiltrated emails, reset compromised credentials, and take additional steps to ensure authentication tools for privileged Microsoft Azure accounts are secure."
"CISA officials told reporters it is so far unclear whether the hackers, associated with Russian military intelligence agency SVR, had obtained anything from the exposed agencies," according to the article. And the article adds that CISA "did not spell out the extent of any risks to national interests."

But the agency's executive assistant director for cybersecurity did tell the newspaper that "the potential for exposure of federal authentication credentials...does pose an exigent risk to the federal enterprise, hence the need for this directive and the actions therein." Microsoft's Windows operating system, Outlook email and other software are used throughout the U.S. government, giving the Redmond, Washington-based company enormous responsibility for the cybersecurity of federal employees and their work. But the longtime relationship is showing increasing signs of strain.... [T]he breach is one of a few severe intrusions at the company that have exposed many others elsewhere to potential hacking. Another of those incidents — in which Chinese government hackers cracked security in Microsoft's cloud software offerings to steal email from State Department and Commerce Department officials — triggered a major federal review that last week called on the company to overhaul its culture, which the Cyber Safety Review Board cited as allowing a "cascade of avoidable errors."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Influential US Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has called on U.S. President Joe Biden to ban electric vehicles from Chinese brands. Brown calls Chinese EVs "an existential threat" to the U.S. automotive industry and says that allowing imports of cheap EVs from Chinese brands "is inconsistent with a pro-worker industrial policy." Brown's letter to the president (PDF) is the most recent to sound alarms about the threat of heavily subsidized Chinese EVs moving into established markets. Brands like BYD and MG have been on sale in the European Union for some years now, and last October, the EU launched an anti-subsidy investigation into whether the Chinese government is giving Chinese brands an unfair advantage.

The EU probe won't wrap until November, but another report published this week found that government subsidies for green technology companies are prevalent in China. BYD, which now sells more EVs than Tesla, has benefited from almost $4 billion (3.7 billion euro) in direct help from the Chinese government in 2022, according to a study by the Kiel Institute. Last month, the EU even started paying extra attention to imports of Chinese EVs, issuing a threat of retroactive tariffs that could start being imposed this summer. Chinese EV imports to the EU have increased by 14 percent since the start of its investigation, but they have yet to really begin in the U.S., where there are a few barriers in their way. Chinese batteries make an EV ineligible for the IRS's clean vehicle tax credit, for one thing. And Chinese-made vehicles (like the Lincoln Nautilus, Buick Envision, and Polestar 2) are already subject to a 27.5 percent import tax.

But Chinese EVs are on sale in Mexico already, and that has American automakers worried. Last year, Ford CEO Jim Farley said he saw Chinese automakers "as the main competitors, not GM or Toyota." And in January, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he believed that "if there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world." [...] It's not just the potential damage to the U.S. auto industry that has prompted this letter. Brown wrote that he is concerned about the risk of China having access to data collected by connected cars, "whether it be information about traffic patterns, critical infrastructure, or the lives of Americans," pointing out that "China does not allow American-made electric vehicles near their official buildings." At the end of February, the Commerce Department also warned of the security risk from Chinese-connected cars and revealed it has launched an investigation into the matter. "When the goal is to dominate a sector, tariffs are insufficient to stop their attack on American manufacturing," Brown wrote. "Instead, the Administration should act now to ban Chinese EVs before they destroy the potential for the U.S. EV market. For this reason, no solution should be left off the table, including the use of Section 421 (China Safeguard) of the Trade Act of 1974, or some other authority."

Under a new agreement between the U.S. and Japan, the first non-American on the Moon as part of the Artemis lunar exploration campaign will be a Japanese astronaut. SpaceNews reports: At an event in Washington, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Masahito Moriyama signed an agreement regarding an additional Japanese contribution to Artemis, a pressurized lunar rover called Lunar Cruiser. NASA will deliver the rover to the moon, which the agencies said should take place ahead of the Artemis 7 mission scheduled for no earlier than 2031. NASA will also provide two seats on future Artemis lunar landing missions to astronauts from the Japanese space agency JAXA, the first agency other than NASA to secure spots on landing missions.

The Japanese rover will support extended expeditions from Artemis landing sites that are beyond the range of the Lunar Terrain Vehicle that three American companies are developing for NASA under contracts announced April 3. The rover is designed to accommodate two astronauts for up to 30 days, with an overall lifetime of 10 years. The announcement, though, offered no details about when the Japanese astronauts would fly to the moon. "It depends," Nelson said at an April 10 briefing when asked about schedules, noting that the two countries "announced a shared goal for a Japanese national to land on the moon on a future NASA mission assuming benchmarks are achieved."

"No mission has been currently assigned to a Japanese astronaut," added Lara Kearney, manager of NASA's extravehicular activity and human surface mobility program, at the briefing. The implementing agreement (PDF) said several factors will go into crew assignments, including progress on the pressurized rover, or PR: "The timing of the flight opportunities will be determined by NASA in line with existing flight manifesting and crew assignment processes and will take into account program progress and constraints, MEXT's request for the earliest possible assignment of the Japanese astronauts to lunar surface missions, and major PR milestones such as when the PR is first deployed on the lunar surface." The assumption among many in the industry, though, is that at least one of the astronauts will fly before the rover is delivered, and possibly as soon as the Artemis 4 mission, the second crewed landing, in the late 2020s.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A controversial US wiretap program days from expiration cleared a major hurdle on its way to being reauthorized. After months of delays, false starts, and interventions by lawmakers working to preserve and expand the US intelligence community's spy powers, the House of Representatives voted on Friday to extend Section 702 (PDF) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years. Legislation extending the program -- controversial for being abused by the government -- passed in the House in a 273-147 vote. The Senate has yet to pass its own bill.

Section 702 permits the US government to wiretap communications between Americans and foreigners overseas. Hundreds of millions of calls, texts, and emails are intercepted by government spies each with the "compelled assistance" of US communications providers. The government may strictly target foreigners believed to possess "foreign intelligence information," but it also eavesdrops on the conversations of an untold number of Americans each year. (The government claims it is impossible to determine how many Americans get swept up by the program.) The government argues that Americans are not themselves being targeted and thus the wiretaps are legal. Nevertheless, their calls, texts, and emails may be stored by the government for years, and can later be accessed by law enforcement without a judge's permission. The House bill also dramatically expands the statutory definition for communication service providers, something FISA experts, including Marc Zwillinger -- one of the few people to advise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) -- have publicly warned against.

The FBI's track record of abusing the program kicked off a rare detente last fall between progressive Democrats and pro-Trump Republicans -- both bothered equally by the FBI's targeting of activists, journalists, anda sitting member of Congress. But in a major victory for the Biden administration, House members voted down an amendment earlier in the day that would've imposed new warrant requirements on federal agencies accessing Americans' 702 data. The warrant amendment was passed earlier this year by the House Judiciary Committee, whose long-held jurisdiction over FISA has been challenged by friends of the intelligence community. Analysis by the Brennan Center this week found that 80 percent of the base text of the FISA reauthorization bill had been authored by intelligence committee members.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Hospitals -- despite being places where people implicitly expect to have their personal details kept private -- frequently use tracking technologies on their websites to share user information with Google, Meta, data brokers, and other third parties, according to research published today. Academics at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed a nationally representative sample of 100 non-federal acute care hospitals -- essentially traditional hospitals with emergency departments -- and their findings were that 96 percent of their websites transmitted user data to third parties. Additionally, not all of these websites even had a privacy policy. And of the 71 percent that did, 56 percent disclosed specific third-party companies that could receive user information.

The researchers' latest work builds on a study they published a year ago of 3,747 US non-federal hospital websites. That found 98.6 percent tracked and transferred visitors' data to large tech and social media companies, advertising firms, and data brokers. To find the trackers on websites, the team checked out each hospitals' homepage on January 26 using webXray, an open source tool that detects third-party HTTP requests and matches them to the organizations receiving the data. They also recorded the number of third-party cookies per page. One name in particular stood out, in terms of who was receiving website visitors' information. "In every study we've done, in any part of the health system, Google, whose parent company is Alphabet, is on nearly every page, including hospitals," [Dr Ari Friedman, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania] observed. "From there, it declines," he continued. "Meta was on a little over half of hospital webpages, and the Meta Pixel is notable because it seems to be one of the grabbier entities out there in terms of tracking."

Both Meta and Google's tracking technologies have been the subject of criminal complaints and lawsuits over the years -- as have some healthcare companies that shared data with these and other advertisers. In addition, between 20 and 30 percent of the hospitals share data with Adobe, Friedman noted. "Everybody knows Adobe for PDFs. My understanding is they also have a tracking division within their ad division." Others include telecom and digital marketing companies like The Trade Desk and Verizon, plus tech giants Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon, according to Friedman. Then there's also analytics firms including Hotjar and data brokers such as Acxiom. "And two thirds of hospital websites had some kind of data transfer to a third-party domain that we couldn't even identify," he added. Of the 71 hospital website privacy policies that the team found, 69 addressed the types of user information that was collected. The most common were IP addresses (80 percent), web browser name and version (75 percent), pages visited on the website (73 percent), and the website from which the user arrived (73 percent). Only 56 percent of these policies identified the third-party companies receiving user information. In lieu of any federal data privacy law in the U.S., Friedman recommends users protect their personal information via the browser-based tools Ghostery and Privacy Badger, which identify and block transfers to third-party domains.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week South Korea's SK Hynix announced it would partner with Purdue University on a $3.9 billion semiconductor complex here, the largest single corporate investment in state history. Now comes the hard part. SK Hynix must not only build the fabrication plant, or fab, which will package high-bandwidth memory chips used in artificial intelligence, and a connected research-and-development center. It also has to staff them. "We need several hundred engineers to operate our advanced-packaging manufacturing fab -- in physics, chemistry, material science, electronics engineering," Kwak Noh-Jung, chief executive of SK Hynix, said in an interview following last week's announcement.

Staffing a fab is harder in the U.S. than in South Korea, where SK Hynix has contracts with local universities and its own in-house university. Nonetheless, Kwak said, "the final goal is very clear. We need to have very good engineers for our success in U.S." The U.S. is trying to do something unprecedented: reverse a shrinking share in a key manufacturing sector. Between 1990 and 2020, the U.S. share of world chip making shrank to 12% from 37%, while the combined share of Taiwan, South Korea and China grew to 58%. The federal CHIPS program has showered billions of dollars on Intel for fabs in several states, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.in Arizona and GlobalFoundries in New York and Vermont. SK Hynix hopes for support as well.

Subsidies alone won't guarantee a sustainable industry. Fabs need customers, a supply chain and, above all, a skilled, specialized workforce. From 2000 to 2017, U.S. employment in semiconductor manufacturing shrank to 181,000 from 287,000. It has since recovered to about 200,000. Why did the U.S. share of semiconductor production shrink? As in other industries, the U.S. became an expensive place to manufacture. Susan Houseman of the Upjohn Institute, who has studied outsourcing, said this wasn't "primarily a story about offshoring." U.S. companies still lead in chip design: Nvidia in artificial intelligence, Qualcomm in communications and Apple in smartphones. Over time they mostly contracted out fabrication of their chips to foundries such as TSMC who benefited from generous domestic subsidies. The theory behind CHIPS is that, by matching Asia's subsidies, the U.S. can again be competitive in chip making. Nonetheless, there is a chicken-egg problem. Fabs need a ready supply of skilled workers. But without fabs, America's best and brightest have little incentive to pursue careers in the sector.

President Joe Biden said he is "considering" a request from Australia to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The BBC reports: The country's parliament recently passed a measure -- backed by PM Anthony Albanese -- calling for the return of Mr Assange to his native Australia. The US wants to extradite the 52-year-old from the UK on criminal charges over the leaking of military records. Mr Assange denies the charges, saying the leaks were an act of journalism. The president was asked about Australia's request on Wednesday and said: "We're considering it."

Mr Assange, 52, is fighting extradition in the UK courts. The extradition was put on hold in March after London's High Court said the United States must provide assurances he would not face the death penalty. The High Court is due to evaluate any responses from the US authorities at the end of May. The measure passed the Australian parliament in February. Mr Albanese told MPs: "People will have a range of views about Mr Assange's conduct... But regardless of where people stand, this thing cannot just go on and on and on indefinitely."

A bill introduced in the US Congress on Tuesday intends to force AI companies to reveal the copyrighted material they use to make their generative AI models. From a report: The legislation adds to a growing number of attempts from lawmakers, news outlets and artists to establish how AI firms use creative works like songs, visual art, books and movies to train their software-and whether those companies are illegally building their tools off copyrighted content.

The California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff introduced the bill, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which would require that AI companies submit any copyrighted works in their training datasets to the Register of Copyrights before releasing new generative AI systems, which create text, images, music or video in response to users' prompts. The bill would need companies to file such documents at least 30 days before publicly debuting their AI tools, or face a financial penalty. Such datasets encompass billions of lines of text and images or millions of hours of music and movies.

"AI has the disruptive potential of changing our economy, our political system, and our day-to-day lives. We must balance the immense potential of AI with the crucial need for ethical guidelines and protections," Schiff said in a statement. Whether major AI companies worth billions have made illegal use of copyrighted works is increasingly the source of litigation and government investigation. Schiff's bill would not ban AI from training on copyrighted material, but would put a sizable onus on companies to list the massive swath of works that they use to build tools like ChatGPT -- data that is usually kept private.

The Securities and Exchange Commission warned Uniswap on Wednesday that it intends to bring an enforcement action against the company, which is the leading platform for DeFi -- a segment of the crypto market where traders rely on computer protocols that act as automated market makers for exchanging various tokens. From a report: The warning came in the form of a so-called Wells Notice, which the SEC sends to a company prior to launching a formal lawsuit and which provides it a final opportunity to rebut any allegations. In this case, that process is likely to prove little more than a formality as the agency has reportedly been investigating Uniswap for some time, and is in the midst of a sweeping crackdown of the crypto industry.

Vinod Khosla, the founder of venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, opines on the bill that seeks to ban TikTok or force its parent firm to divest the U.S. business: Even if one could argue that this bill strikes at the First Amendment, there is legal precedent for doing so. In 1981, Haig vs Agee established that there are circumstances under which the government can lawfully impinge upon an individual's First Amendment rights if it is necessary to protect national security and prevent substantial harm. TikTok and the AI that can be channelled through it are national and homeland security issues that meet these standards.

Should this bill turn into law, the president would have the power to force any foreign-owned social media to be sold if US intelligence agencies deem them a national security threat. This broader scope should protect against challenges that this is a bill of attainder. Similar language helped protect effective bans on Huawei and Kaspersky Lab. As for TikTok's value as a boon to consumers and businesses, there are many companies that could quickly replace it. In 2020, after India banned TikTok amid geopolitical tensions between Beijing and New Delhi, services including Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, MX TakaTak, Chingari and others filled the void.Â

Few appreciate that TikTok is not available in China. Instead, Chinese consumers use Douyin, the sister app that features educational and patriotic videos, and is limited to 40 minutes per day of total usage. Spinach for Chinese kids, fentanyl -- another chief export of China's -- for ours. Worse still, TikTok is a programmable fentanyl whose effects are under the control of the CCP.

For the first time ever, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday it is issuing a national regulation limiting the amount of certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, found in drinking water. From a report: Commonly called "forever chemicals," PFAS are synthetic chemicals found nearly everywhere -- in air, water, and soil -- and can take thousands of years to break down in the environment. The EPA has stated there is no safe level of exposure to PFAS without risk of health impacts, but now it will require that public water utilities test for six different types of PFAS chemicals to reduce exposure in drinking water. The new standards will reduce PFAS exposure for 100 million people, according to the EPA, and prevent thousands of deaths and illnesses.

"Drinking water contaminated with PFAS has plagued communities across this country for too long," EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement Wednesday. For public water utility companies to comply with the new drinking water standards, the EPA is making $1 billion available to states and territories to implement PFAS testing and treatment at public water systems. That money is part of a $9 billion investment made possible by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to assist communities impacted by PFAS contamination.

It appears that a nearly eight-year-long battle by the FCC to require internet companies to display information on the costs, fees, and speeds of their broadband services is finally over. From a report: Starting on Wednesday, all but the smallest ISPs will be required to publish broadband "nutrition labels" on all of their plans, the regulator announced. [...] Each label will include monthly broadband prices, introductory rate details, data allowances, broadband speeds, and links to find out about any available discounts or service bundles. Links to network management practices and privacy policies should be listed as well.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Congress may be closer than ever to passing a comprehensive data privacy framework after key House and Senate committee leaders released a new proposal on Sunday. The bipartisan proposal, titled the American Privacy Rights Act, or APRA, would limit the types of consumer data that companies can collect, retain, and use, allowing solely what they'd need to operate their services. Users would also be allowed to opt out of targeted advertising, and have the ability to view, correct, delete, and download their data from online services. The proposal would also create a national registry of data brokers, and force those companies to allow users to opt out of having their data sold. [...] In an interview with The Spokesman Review on Sunday, [Cathy McMorris Rodgers, House Energy and Commerce Committee chair] claimed that the draft's language is stronger than any active laws, seemingly as an attempt to assuage the concerns of Democrats who have long fought attempts to preempt preexisting state-level protections. APRA does allow states to pass their own privacy laws related to civil rights and consumer protections, among other exceptions.

In the previous session of Congress, the leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committees brokered a deal with Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, on a bill that would preempt state laws with the exception of the California Consumer Privacy Act and the Biometric Information Privacy Act of Illinois. That measure, titled the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, also created a weaker private right of action than most Democrats were willing to support. Maria Cantwell, Senate Commerce Committee chair, refused to support the measure, instead circulating her own draft legislation. The ADPPA hasn't been reintroduced, but APRA was designed as a compromise. "I think we have threaded a very important needle here," Cantwell told The Spokesman Review. "We are preserving those standards that California and Illinois and Washington have."

APRA includes language from California's landmark privacy law allowing people to sue companies when they are harmed by a data breach. It also provides the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and private citizens the authority to sue companies when they violate the law. The categories of data that would be impacted by APRA include certain categories of "information that identifies or is linked or reasonably linkable to an individual or device," according to a Senate Commerce Committee summary of the legislation. Small businesses -- those with $40 million or less in annual revenue and limited data collection -- would be exempt under APRA, with enforcement focused on businesses with $250 million or more in yearly revenue. Governments and "entities working on behalf of governments" are excluded under the bill, as are the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and, apart from certain cybersecurity provisions, "fraud-fighting" nonprofits. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called the draft "very strong" in a Sunday statement, but said he wanted to "strengthen" it with tighter child safety provisions.

More than 200 chemical plants across the country will be required to curb the toxic pollutants they release into the air [non-paywalled link] under a regulation announced by the Biden administration on Tuesday. From a report: The regulation is aimed at reducing the risk of cancer for people living near industrial sites. This is the first time in nearly two decades that the government has tightened limits on pollution from chemical plants. The new rule, from the Environmental Protection Agency, specifically targets ethylene oxide, which is used to sterilize medical devices, and chloroprene, which is used to make rubber in footwear.

The E.P.A. has classified the two chemicals as likely carcinogens. They are considered a top health concern in an area of Louisiana so dense with petrochemical and refinery plants that it is known as Cancer Alley. Most of the facilities affected by the rule are in Texas, Louisiana and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast as well as in the Ohio River Valley and West Virginia. Communities in proximity to the plants are often disproportionately Black or Latino and have elevated rates of cancer, respiratory problems and premature deaths.