Government & Policy

EU puts TikTok on watch over election security

The European Commission has responded to widespread concerns swirling around the impact of TikTok on elections in Romania by announcing it’s stepping up monitoring of the platform’s compliance with the bloc’s online governance framework, the Digital Services Act (DSA). This follows the shock emergence of Călin Georgescu, an independent, far-right, pro-Russian nationalist, as the lead […]

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Vodafone and Three’s $19B merger cleared by UK regulators — with conditions

The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has greenlighted the longstanding planned merger between two of the country’s biggest telecommunication operators. Vodafone and Three constitute two of the U.K.’s four infrastructure-owning mobile network operators (MNOs), alongside O2 and EE. As such, when the duo revealed plans to merge in a $19 billion transaction last June, it was always likely

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says it’d be ‘un-American’ for Elon Musk to wield political influence to harm rivals

During an interview at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that it’d be “profoundly un-American” for Elon Musk, the CEO of X and Tesla, to wield political influence to “hurt competitors” and “advantage [his] own businesses.” “I don’t think people would tolerate that,” he said, per Bloomberg. Musk,

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Biden administration races to approve clean energy loans before Trump takes over — here’s who is benefiting

The Department of Energy (DOE) appears to be on a loan-approval spree in the lead-up to President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, and the winners are all companies manufacturing clean energy solutions on U.S. soil. Trump has promised to cancel any unspent federal dollars under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a bipartisan climate law that allocated

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FTC fines online retailer Goat $2M over deceptive ‘Instant’ and ‘Next Day’ orders

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ordered Goat, an online marketplace for sneakers and apparel, to pay more than $2 million to consumers over illegal shipping practices. The FTC also alleges that Goat fails to honor its “Buyer Protection” policies. In a complaint, the agency outlined that Goat has failed to ship many orders

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EU ends Amazon state aid case with no back taxes in its basket

Amazon can finally close the book on a long-running state aid saga in the European Union. The Commission confirmed Thursday it’s shuttered an investigation into whether Luxembourg, the Member State where Amazon has its EU HQ, had granted it “selective tax advantages.” The upshot is Amazon has no unpaid taxes to pay. The case dates

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FTC reportedly opens antitrust investigation into Microsoft

The FTC has launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft, according to multiple reports that corroborate earlier reporting by the Financial Times. The agency is said to be looking into whether Microsoft violated antitrust law in multiple segments of its business, including its public cloud, AI, and cybersecurity product lines. Of particular interest to the FTC

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Marc Andreessen, Joe Lonsdale, and all the other VCs reportedly in the running for DOGE and other Trump committees

With Elon Musk playing such a high-profile role in Donald Trump’s transition team, Musk’s buddies, many of them Silicon Valley venture capitalists, are reportedly being tapped to help out. For instance, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, and in particular co-founder Marc Andreessen, is repeatedly being mentioned. He, along with Antonio Gracias and Joe Lonsdale, are reportedly

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