Though Texas lawmakers agree that the youth mental health crisis is a serious issue and social media has direct negative ties, they deliberated whether a bill requiring warning labels for social media platforms is detailed enough to be successful during a House Public Health Committee meeting Monday.
Comments are due April 14 on FCC-proposed changes to its submarine cable rules, said a notice for Thursday's Federal Register. Replies in the docket 24-523 proceeding are due May 12. The subsea cable NPRM was adopted unanimously by the FCC commissioners in November (see 2411210006) and proposes rules changes that address national security and law enforcement threats to cables, including a three-year periodic reporting requirement for submarine cable landing licenses.
Members of the FirstNet Authority board said during a meeting Wednesday that the AT&T-run network was very active in recent months. For example, FirstNet was at the Super Bowl, which raised unique security concerns because of the attendance of President Donald Trump, members said.
Two Chinese exporters of chlorinated isocyanurates said March 7 that the Commerce Department was right to not hit them with an adverse inference when they couldn’t locate information for a review (Bio-Lab, Inc. v. United States, CIT # 24-00118).
Satellite operators are “essentially flying blind” without an international protocol for sharing data about the location and position of objects in space and for planning maneuvers, said Kim Baum, Eutelsat/OneWeb vice president-spectrum engineering and strategy. Speaking at the Satellite 2025 show, she said there's a need for a universal directory of every satellite operator, including contact information, to deal with spectrum, as well as coordination of satellites possibly on collision courses. Multiple speakers mentioned the need for additional international coordination and agreement.
Despite the bottleneck of launch availability at the most heavily used U.S. sites, launch operators don't foresee packing up and moving to another, lesser-used spaceport. Launch company executives speaking Monday at the Satellite 2025 show in Washington said the size of rockets, especially heavy launch vehicles, precludes using some spaceports. Regulatory issues can also be an impediment. Brian Rogers, vice president-global launch services for Rocket Lab, added that it's incredibly expensive to set up infrastructure at another site.
President Donald Trump threatened to double Section 232 tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum to 50%, starting March 12, after Ontario placed a 25% surcharge on electricity exported to Michigan, Minnesota and New York. However, Ontario Premier Rob Ford later dropped the surcharge, and Trump told White House reporters he "probably" would not follow through with the threat as a result.
Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., reintroduced a bill March 6 that would bar individuals and entities controlled by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea from buying agricultural land and businesses near U.S. military bases or other sensitive sites. The Promoting Agriculture Safeguards and Security (PASS) Act would also add USDA to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. for agricultural transactions. The bill, whose co-sponsors include Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was referred to the Senate Banking Committee.
The FCC’s July order reducing call rates for people in prison while establishing interim rate caps for video calls (see 2407180039) is effectively the law of the land, and prisons must follow it, said Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, which represents the interests of prisoners. Tylek noted Thursday at a press conference that the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is hearing challenges to the order (see 2407180039), hasn’t granted a stay. “It is very normal for an industry to litigate and sue a federal agency when it gets regulated,” she said. “That happens in every single industry … The rules are in effect right now.”
The U.S. should establish “some kind of new unit in our government” to focus on competing with China, a researcher told the House Homeland Security Committee March 5.