The lack of an international mechanism for monitoring space debris and facilitating its removal is a big challenge, particularly for smaller nations just getting into space or with space aspirations, said U.N. Undersecretary-General-Policy Guy Ryder Tuesday at a Secure World Foundation space sustainability symposium. He said there's also the potential for tension and conflict about the lack of international norms and principles for debris removal and satellite refueling. He said consensus is needed on the use of space resources and on protecting landing sites, to ensure industry can fairly access resources. The next 15 months are a window of opportunity for more aggressive work on space norms and diplomacy, with upcoming meetings by the OECD Space Forum and U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in that time frame, capped by the U.N.'s sustainability focused Summit of the Future in September 2024, Ryder said. Venture capital funding in space has rocketed since 2018, with a peak in 2021, said Maureen Haverty, vice president at Seraphim Space venture capital fund. Driving that interest was the market disruption of new players, including SpaceX, the U.S. government increasingly buying services from commercial providers, and big reductions in the cost of accessing space, she said. Space now is seen as a market that can drive large enough returns to interest the VC community, she said. While 2022 and early 2023 were "very challenging" for space startups in search of funds, European investment has provided some rebound. European investing now eclipses U.S. investing for the first time, she said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied customs broker license exam test taker Byungmin Chae's combined petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc of the appellate court's opinion landing him just one question short of passing the exam taken in April 2018. The court said Chae's petition was referred to the panel that heard the case, comprising Judges Pauline Newman, Sharon Prost and Kimberly Hughes, and was then circulated to all the judges in regular active service. A month prior, the court rejected duplicates of Chae's petition seemingly filed in error.

The California Public Utilities Commission authorized pilot programs to allow low-income consumers to stack state and federal benefits to pay for wireline and wireless broadband services. At a virtual meeting Thursday, commissioners voted 5-0 for a revised draft (see 2306060048) in docket R.20-02-008. Meanwhile, a consumer group is raising concerns about Verizon’s Friday letter to the commission on its struggles to migrate TracFone California customers to its network. Ensuring those customers weren’t abandoned was a “central issue” in the state commission’s merger review two years ago, Center for Accessible Technology (CforAT) legal counsel Paul Goodman said in an interview.

The Department of Transportation will view cellular-vehicle-to-everything and other V2X use of the 5.9 GHz band as a success when data shows the number of U.S. crashes and vehicle fatalities is falling, a DOT official said during an FCBA webinar Monday. An FCC official said the agency is looking forward to what it learns following the April approval of C-V2X waivers (see 2304240066). The FCC is still working on its final 5.9 GHz rules. Industry speakers said they hope the FCC will act soon.

Many portions of the telephone facilities and conduit under Verizon’s control along a funicular in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, “remain in disrepair,” alleged the county in an October 10 complaint in state court that Verizon removed Tuesday to U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh (docket 3:23-cv-00108). The funicular, called the Inclined Plane, travels along the "steep slope" of Yoder Hill, connecting the city of Johnstown to the borough of Westmont, it said. Verizon failed to maintain its communications facilities by allowing for the subpar conditions “to manifest and remain,” it said. Until those conditions are repaired, Verizon will remain in breach of its lease agreement with the county, it said. The county will continue to suffer lost revenue for any extended period of time the funicular is shut down, it said. Under federal guidelines, “where federal funding is used in the procurement of communications facilities, land used for such facilities must be compensated for at fair market value,” it said. Despite the county’s attempts to renegotiate the right of way agreement Verizon inherited from GTE “to provide for rent from Verizon at fair market value to comply with such guidelines,” Verizon hasn’t actively participated in such negotiations, “and continues to pay no rent for its use of the right of way,” it said.

Lane County in western Oregon seeks summary judgment against AT&T’s Oct. 25 complaint alleging the county violated the Telecommunications Act by denying its application to build a 150-foot-tall cell tower with accompanying communications electronics (see 2210260009), said the county’s memorandum of law in support of its motion Thursday (docket 6:22-cv-01635) in U.S. District Court for Oregon in Eugene. The parties “made a good faith effort through personal or telephone conferences to resolve the dispute and have been unable to do so,” it said.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. is open to working with lawmakers on a bill that could block China, Russia, Iran and North Korea from investing in American land or agricultural companies, said Paul Rosen, the head of CFIUS. While Rosen didn’t explicitly endorse the Promoting Agriculture Safeguards and Security Act, suggesting that CFIUS would need more resources if its jurisdiction were broadened, he said the legislation raises valid concerns.

Trade agreements could support the administration's goal of fighting deforestation, and so could legislation similar to the Forest Act (see 2110070050), but either path will have to contend with the difficulties of political sensitivities in targeted countries, the possibility of unintended consequences, and the logistical challenges of identifying products from deforested land and enforcing a ban on their entry to the U.S., two recent reports said.

A January privacy case against Cedars-Sinai Health System landed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court, after plaintiff/appellant “John Doe” remanded the case (docket 2:23-cv-00870) to California Superior Court in Los Angeles in April from U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles (see 2304100044). Cedars-Sinai “improperly removed” the action to district court, “purportedly pursuant to the federal officer removal statute, 28 U.S.C.,” Doe said in his first motion to remand (see 2303270036). Doe’s opening brief in the appellate court is due July 24; Cedars-Sinai’s answering brief is due Aug. 22, said a Thursday clerk order (docket No. 23-55466). An optional appellant opening brief is due within 21 days of service of the appellee’s brief, it said. Doe’s suit alleges Cedars-Sinai shared patients’ sensitive and protected personal identifiable information with unrelated parties including Facebook, Google and Microsoft Bing without patients’ consent. Tracking code on the Cedars-Sinai website “diverted customers’ private information to outside entities for analytics and marketing purposes without adequate disclosure” or consent from customers, he alleged.

Importer Pitts Enterprises evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders on certain chassis and subassemblies from China, according to a May 23 Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) notice. The agency said that Pitts knowingly imported finished chassis with numerous Chinese-origin subassemblies as products of Vietnam only, without disclosing the Chinese-origin components.