The Federal Trade Commission ruled in a final order and opinion Monday that TurboTax, the popular tax filing software, engaged in deceptive advertising and banned the company from advertising its services for free unless it is free for all customers. CNN adds: By running ads for "free" tax services that many customers were not qualified for, the tax filing software violated the FTC Act and deceived consumers, the agency said. The FTC had first sued Intuit, TurboTax's owner, for its deceptive advertising in 2022. The FTC staff alleged most tax filers couldn't use the company's "free" services -- "such as those who get a 1099 form for work in the gig economy, or those who earn farm income." TurboTax advertising their products as free misled those customers, according to the FTC.

The FTC Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell announced the initial decision in September, which the commission upheld Monday. Intuit had appealed to the FTC as part of the process. In a statement Monday, Intuit said it has appealed "this deeply flawed decision" to federal circuit court outside of the FTC. "Absolutely no one should be surprised that FTC Commissioners -- employees of the FTC -- ruled in favor of the FTC as they have done in every appeal for the last two decades. This decision is the result of a biased and broken system where the Commission serves as accuser, judge, jury, and then appellate judge all in the same case," an an Intuit spokesperson said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: For a country that prides itself on being free, America does seem to have an awful lot of spying going on, as the new Street Surveillance Hub from the Electronic Frontier Foundation shows. The Hub contains detailed breakdowns of the type of surveillance systems used, from bodycams to biometrics, predictive policing software to gunshot detection microphones and drone-equipped law enforcement. It also has a full news feed so that concerned citizens can keep up with the latest US surveillance news; they can also contribute to the Atlas of Surveillance on the site.

The Atlas, started in 2019, allows anyone to check what law enforcement is being used in their local area -- be it license plate readers, drones, or gunshot detection microphones. It can also let you know if local law enforcement is collaborating with third parties like home security vendor Ring to get extra information. EFF policy analyst Matthew Guariglia told The Register that once people look into what's being deployed using their tax dollars, a lot of red flags are raised. Over the last few years America's thin blue line have not only been harvesting huge amounts of data themselves, but also buying it in from commercial operators. The result is a perfect storm on privacy -- with police, homeowners, and our personal technology proving to be a goldmine of intrusive information that's often misused.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is recommending that airlines check a second type of Boeing jet that uses the same kind of door plug as the one that blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this month. From a report: The FAA said late Sunday that it advises operators of Boeing's 737-900ER aircraft to inspect the planes' midexit door plugs. The recommendation comes weeks after the midair accident involving a 737 MAX 9 jet. The 900ER jet isn't part of Boeing's newer MAX family of aircraft, but its door-plug design is identical to the MAX 9's, the FAA said in a release.

The FAA cited "an added layer of safety" in recommending the inspections and called for visual checks of four places where door plugs are secured to airplanes. It said some operators had already checked 900ER door plugs and "noted findings with bolts." In a statement, Boeing said, "We fully support the FAA and our customers in this action." The agency grounded 171 MAX 9 airplanes after the Alaska Airlines midair accident and emergency landing on Jan. 5. The grounding remains in place pending a review and approval of inspection and maintenance processes. Boeing has delivered 505 of its 900ER aircraft globally to airlines including Alaska Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Indonesia's Lion Air, according to company data.

One man living in Virginia oversaw "the laundering of some $7 million in fraudulently obtained gift cards" from Walmart in an international operation which over five years scammed hundreds of victims into sending the numbers over the phone, reports a new ProPublica investigation. (Citing court evidence that emerged after his arrested in 2021). Earlier that year, he complained to an associate that more and more people were competing to resell cards in China, eating into his profits. So many scammers were flocking to Walmart that he and his team regularly encountered them at self-checkout counters.... "We ran into quite a few at the store, and we even started chatting."
It was apparently so common that federal prosecutors started calling it "The Walmart scheme." And while the store is supposed to watch for customers who appear to be acting on a scammer's instructions, "Too often, Walmart has failed." America's largest retailer has long been a facilitator of fraud on a mass scale, a ProPublica investigation has found. For roughly a decade, Walmart has resisted tougher enforcement while breaking promises to regulators and skimping on employee training, according to more than 50 interviews, internal documents supplied by former industry executives, court filings and other public records...More than $1 billion in fraud losses were routed through the company's financial systems between 2013 and 2022, according to filings by the Federal Trade Commission and court cases analyzed by ProPublica. That has helped fuel a boom in financial chicanery. Americans, many of them elderly, were swindled out of $27 billion between 2013 and 2022, according to the FTC...

Walmart has a financial incentive to avoid cracking down. It makes money each time a Walmart gift card is used and earns a fee when another brand of card is bought. And it receives one commission when a person sends a money transfer and a second when the recipient picks it up. The company's financial services business generates hundreds of millions in annual profits. (Its filings do not provide specific figures for gift cards and money transfers.) "They were concerned about the bucks. That's all," Nick Alicea, a former fraud team leader for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service who investigated Walmart for years, told ProPublica. Walmart's deficiencies have repeatedly attracted government scrutiny. In 2017, the attorneys general of New York and Pennsylvania investigated Walmart over concerns that it was "reaping the benefits" of gift card fraud. The investigation concluded a year later with Walmart promising to restrict or eliminate the use of its gift cards to purchase other gift cards...

Instead, the company let the practice continue until 2022 — even after it knew that millions of dollars were being laundered through its stores. The FTC sued Walmart in 2022, alleging it "turned a blind eye" as criminals took advantage of its money transfer service. Walmart, the FTC claimed, pocketed millions in fees while "letting fraudsters fleece its customers." Summarizing the FTC's evidence, a federal judge in the case wrote that "Walmart knew that its services were used by fraudsters" and that the company was repeatedly warned about certain stores where "twenty-five, fifty, or even seventy-five percent of money transfer activity was fraudulent." Separately, a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania is hearing evidence of possible criminal conduct in Walmart's money transfer business, according to corporate filings that did not detail the allegations.
While the FTC says Americans were swindled out of $27 billion between 2013 and 2022, Walmart responded to ProPublica's investigation by pointing out it's refunded $4 million to gift-card fraud victims, and also blocked more than $700 million in suspicious money transfers. "We have a robust anti-fraud program and other controls to help stop scammers and other criminals who may use the financial services we offer to harm our customers." The company's legal filings in the FTC case struck a different tone. Walmart is seeking to dismiss the suit, partly on the grounds that it has "no responsibility to protect against the criminal conduct of third parties." Though fraud is "deeply unfortunate," Walmart argues, such schemes are "reasonably avoidable by consumers."
Other interesting quotes from the article:

• "Walmart outlets at one point accounted for the top 20 locations for fraud nationally among chains that partnered with MoneyGram, according to internal documents."

• "In a single week in March 2017, consumers claiming they'd been duped into a money transfer filed 610 complaints about Walmart, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. CVS ranked second, with 47."

• "Site inspections routinely found that Walmart staff lacked anti-fraud training and that employees failed to ask screening questions..."

• Walmart resisted MoneyGram's attempts to fight fraud [according to the former fraud team leader for the postal inspector's office in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who investigated MoneyGram and Walmart].

The S&P 500 index tracks 500 of the largest companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, according to Wikipedia.

And Friday that index "hit an all-time closing high," reports the Washington Post, "reflecting the staggering gains of a coterie of Big Tech firms against the backdrop of a surprisingly stable economy." The broad-based index closed at 4,839.81 — up more than 1 percent for the day — surpassing the previous closing record set in January of 2022. The stock market surged upward in the final quarter of 2023 as evidence gathered that the [U.S.] economy has not tipped into recession territory, despite the Federal Reserve's campaign to raise interest rates. At the same time analysts point to an AI-driven frenzy on Wall Street that rivals the dot-com boom of the late '90s, when investors sought to capitalize on the transformative gains brought by the early internet.

A booming S&P 500 is a welcome sign for the millions of Americans who invest in the index through retirement accounts. Investors in 2022 had about $5.7 trillion in assets passively indexed to the S&P 500 and another $5.7 trillion in funds that use it as a benchmark comparison, according to S&P Global. Voters' feelings about the stock market and economy could affect the 2024 election...

Tech companies, including a few names heavily associated with artificial intelligence work, led the S&P 500's gains. Seven of the largest tech stocks known as the "Magnificent Seven" — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla and Meta — increased 75 percent on average in 2023 and represented 30 percent of the index's total market value at the end of 2023. "AI is the new dot-com," said Michael Farr of Farr, Miller and Washington. "It's the new magic that is going to change the world that we don't really understand yet. But we all understand it's very powerful." Those seven stocks made up around half of the S&P 500's growth last year. Nvidia, whose high-performance chips have become popular for AI uses, had the best year of the bunch, at one point gaining nearly $190 billion in value overnight, a 24 percent gain.
In the last 12 months, the index has risen 21.83%.

The article notes that "Although the rest of the market has lagged Big Tech, analysts say promising economic data from recent months has boosted optimism about the broader economy."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: The Biden administration has updated the roadmap for solar development to 22 million acres of federal lands in the US West. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory have determined that 700,000 acres of federal lands will be needed for solar farms over the next 20 years, so BLM recommended 22 million acres to give "maximum flexibility" to help the US reach its net zero by 2035 power sector goal. The plan is an update of the Bureau of Land Management's 2012 Western Solar Plan, which originally identified areas for solar development in six states -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

The updated roadmap refines the analysis in the original six states and expands to five more states -- Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. It also focuses on lands within 10 miles of existing or planned transmission lines and moves away from lands with sensitive resources. [...] BLM under the Biden administration has approved 47 clean energy projects and permitted 11,236 megawatts (MW) of wind, solar, and geothermal energy on public lands, enough to power more than 3.5 million homes. Ben Norris, vice president of regulatory affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), said in response to BLM's announced Western Solar Plan updates: "The proposal ... identifies 200,000 acres of land near transmission infrastructure, helping to correct an important oversight and streamline solar development. Under the current policy, there are at least 80 million acres of federal lands open to oil and gas development, which is 100 times the amount of public land available for solar. BLM's proposal is a big step in the right direction and recognizes the key role solar plays in our energy economy."

U.S. lawmakers have banned the Defense Department from buying batteries produced by China's biggest manufacturers. "The rule implemented as part of the latest National Defense Authorization Act that passed on Dec. 22 will prevent procuring batteries from Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., BYD Co. and four other Chinese companies beginning in October 2027," reports Bloomberg. From the report: The measure doesn't extend to commercial purchases by companies such as Ford, which is licensing technology from CATL to build electric-vehicle batteries in Michigan. Tesla also sources some of its battery cells from BYD, which became the new top-selling EV maker globally in the fourth quarter. The four other manufacturers whose batteries will be banned are Envision Energy Ltd., EVE Energy Co., Gotion High Tech Co. and Hithium Energy Storage Technology Co.

The decision still requires Pentagon officials to more clearly define the reach of the new rule. It adds to previous provisions outlined by the NDAA that decoupled the Defense Department's supply chain from China, including restrictions on use of Chinese semiconductors. While the Defense Department bans apply strictly to defense procurement, industries and lawmakers closely follow the rules as a guide for what materials, products and companies to trust in their own course of business.

Airbus cemented its position last week as the world's biggest plane maker for the fifth straight year, announcing that it had delivered more aircraft and secured more orders than Boeing in 2023. At the same time, Boeing was trying to put out a huge public-relations and safety crisis caused by a harrowing near disaster involving its 737 Max line of airliners. In the long-running duel between the two aviation rivals, Airbus has pulled far ahead. The New York Times: "What used to be a duopoly has become two-thirds Airbus, one-third Boeing," said Richard Aboulafia, the managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory in Washington, D.C. "A lot of people, whether investors, financiers or customers, are looking at Airbus and seeing a company run by competent people," he said. "The contrast with Boeing is fairly profound."

The incident involving the 737 Max 9, in which a hole blew open in the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines flight in midair, was the latest in a string of safety lapses in Boeing's workhorse aircraft -- including two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 -- that are indirectly helping propel the fortunes of the European aerospace giant. As the Federal Aviation Administration widens its scrutiny of Max 9 production, Airbus's edge is likely to sharpen. Airlines are embarking on massive expansions of their fleets to meet a postpandemic surge in the demand for global air travel, and are considering which company to turn to.

A Boeing cargo plane headed for Puerto Rico was diverted Thursday night after taking off from Miami International Airport because of engine trouble, according to an official and flight data. From a report: Atlas Air Flight 5Y095 landed safely after experiencing an "engine malfunction" shortly after departure, the airline said early Friday. It was unclear what kind of cargo the plane was carrying. Data collected by FlightAware, a flight tracking company, showed the aircraft was a Boeing 747-8 that left its gate at Miami International at 10:11 p.m. on Thursday and returned to the airport about 50 minutes later. The website also showed that the plane traveled 60 miles in total. Reuters adds: The Atlas Air Flight 5Y095 was on its way to San Juan, Puerto Rico from Miami International Airport on late Thursday evening. The pilot made a Mayday call around 0333 GMT to report an engine fire and requested to return back to the airport, according to multi-channel recordings of conversations between the air traffic control and the plane available on liveatc.net. "We have a engine fire," one of the plane crew said, disclosing that there were five people on board.

An anonymous reader quotes a report released Tuesday (Jan. 16th) by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: The U.S. labor market experienced a massive increase in remote and hybrid work during the COVID-19 pandemic. At its peak, more than 60% of paid workdays were done remotely -- compared with only 5% before the pandemic. As of December 2023, about 30% of paid workdays are still done remotely (Barrero, Bloom, and Davis 2021). Some reports have suggested that teleworking might either boost or harm overall productivity in the economy. And certainly, overall productivity statistics have been volatile. In 2020, U.S. productivity growth surged. This led to optimistic views in the media about the gains from forced digital innovation and the productivity benefits of remote work. However, the surge ended, and productivity growth has retreated to roughly its pre-pandemic trend. Fernald and Li (2022) find from aggregate data that this pattern was largely explained by a predictable cyclical effect from the economy's downturn and recovery. In aggregate data, it thus appears difficult to see a large cumulative effect -- either positive or negative -- from the pandemic so far. But it is possible that aggregate data obscure the effects of teleworking. For example, factors beyond telework could have affected the overall pace of productivity growth. Surveys of businesses have found mixed effects from the pandemic, with many businesses reporting substantial productivity disruptions.

In this Economic Letter, we ask whether we can detect the effects of remote work in the productivity performance of different industries. There are large differences across sectors in how easy it is to work off-site. Thus, if remote work boosts productivity in a substantial way, then it should improve productivity performance, especially in those industries where teleworking is easy to arrange and widely adopted, such as professional services, compared with those where tasks need to be performed in person, such as restaurants. After controlling for pre-pandemic trends in industry productivity growth rates, we find little statistical relationship between telework and pandemic productivity performance. We conclude that the shift to remote work, on its own, is unlikely to be a major factor explaining differences across sectors in productivity performance. By extension, despite the important social and cultural effects of increased telework, the shift is unlikely to be a major factor explaining changes in aggregate productivity. [...]

The shift to remote and hybrid work has reshaped society in important ways, and these effects are likely to continue to evolve. For example, with less time spent commuting, some people have moved out of cities, and the lines between work and home life have blurred. Despite these noteworthy effects, in this Letter we find little evidence in industry data that the shift to remote and hybrid work has either substantially held back or boosted the rate of productivity growth. Our findings do not rule out possible future changes in productivity growth from the spread of remote work. The economic environment has changed in many ways during and since the pandemic, which could have masked the longer-run effects of teleworking. Continuous innovation is the key to sustained productivity growth. Working remotely could foster innovation through a reduction in communication costs and improved talent allocation across geographic areas. However, working off-site could also hamper innovation by reducing in-person office interactions that foster idea generation and diffusion. The future of work is likely to be a hybrid format that balances the benefits and limitations of remote work.

With NASA's Artemis moon program now targeting September 2025 for its Artemis 2 mission and September 2026 for Artemis 3, some members of Congress are concerned about the potential repercussions, particularly with China's growing ambitions in lunar exploration. "For the United States and its partners not to be on the moon when others are on the moon is unacceptable," said Mike Griffin, former NASA administrator. "We need a program that is consistent with that theme. Artemis is not that program. We need to restart it, not keep it on track." Space.com reports: The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space and Technology held a hearing about the new Artemis plan today (Jan. 17), and multiple members voiced concern about the slippage. "I remind my colleagues that we are not the only country interested in sending humans to the moon," Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) said in his opening remarks. "The Chinese Communist Party is actively soliciting international partners for a lunar mission -- a lunar research station -- and has stated its ambition to have human astronauts on the surface by 2030," he added. "The country that lands first will have the ability to set a precedent for whether future lunar activities are conducted with openness and transparency, or in a more restricted manner."

The committee's ranking member, California Democrat Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), voiced similar sentiments. "Let me be clear: I support Artemis," she said in her opening remarks. "But I want it to be successful, especially with China at our heels. And we want to be helpful here in the committee in ensuring that Artemis is strong and staying on track as we look to lead the world, hand-in-hand with our partners, in the human exploration of the moon and beyond." Several other committee members stressed that the new moon race is part of a broader competition with China, and that coming in second could imperil U.S. national security.

"It's no secret that China has a goal to surpass the United States by 2045 as global leaders in space. We can't allow this to happen," Rich McCormick (R-GA) said during the hearing. "I think the leading edge that we have in space technology will protect the United States -- not just the economy, but technologies that can benefit humankind." And Bill Posey (R-FL) referred to space as the "ultimate military high ground," saying that whoever leads in the final frontier "will control the destiny of this Earth."

OpenAI is working with the Pentagon on a number of projects including cybersecurity capabilities, a departure from the startup's earlier ban on providing its artificial intelligence to militaries. From a report: The ChatGPT maker is developing tools with the US Defense Department on open-source cybersecurity software, and has had initial talks with the US government about methods to assist with preventing veteran suicide, Anna Makanju, the company's vice president of global affairs, said in an interview at Bloomberg House at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. The company had recently removed language in its terms of service banning its AI from "military and warfare" applications. Makanju described the decision as part of a broader update of its policies to adjust to new uses of ChatGPT and its other tools.

Verizon has agreed to pay $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its monthly "Administrative and Telco Recovery Charge." The telecom giant will distribute the funds to customers who submit claims, with individuals receiving up to $100 each. Though admitting no wrongdoing, Verizon said it "continues to deny that it did anything wrong." The company defended its right to impose the charge, which was recently raised from $1.95 to $3.30 per month per line, and warned it may increase the fee again in the future. Settlement emails are still going out to eligible customers, who have until April 15 to file.

schwit1 writes: It's no joke. Humorous and quirky messages on electronic signs will soon disappear from highways and freeways across the country. The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has given states two years to implement all the changes outlined in its new 1,100-page manual released last month, including rules that spells out how signs and other traffic control devices are regulated.

Administration officials said overhead electronic signs with obscure meanings, references to pop culture or those intended to be funny will be banned in 2026 because they can be misunderstood or distracting to drivers. The agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, said signs should be "simple, direct, brief, legible and clear" and only be used for important information such as warning drivers of crashes ahead, adverse weather conditions and traffic delays. Seatbelt reminders and warnings about the dangers of speeding or driving impaired are also allowed.

Friday America's Environmental Protection Agency "proposed steep new fees on methane emissions from oil and gas facilities," reports the Washington Post, "escalating a crackdown on the fossil fuel industry's planet-warming pollution."

Methane does not linger in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but it is far more effective at trapping heat — roughly 80 times more potent in its first decade. It is responsible for roughly a third of global warming today, and the oil and gas industry accounts for about 14 percent of the world's annual methane emissions, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency. Other large methane sources include livestock, landfills and coal mines.
So America's new Methane Emissions Reduction Program "levies a fee on wasteful methane emissions from large oil and gas facilities," according to the article: The fee starts at $900 per metric ton of emissions in 2024, increasing to $1,200 in 2025 and $1,500 in 2026 and thereafter. The EPA proposal lays out how the fee will be implemented, including how the charge will be calculated...

At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai in December, EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced final standards to limit methane emissions from U.S. oil and gas operations. Fossil fuel companies that comply with these standards will be exempt from the new fee... Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said the fee will encourage fossil fuel firms to deploy innovative technologies that detect methane leaks. Such cutting-edge technologies range from ground-based sensors to satellites in space. "Proven solutions to cut oil and gas methane and to avoid the fee are being used by leading companies in states across the country," Krupp said in a statement...

In addition to methane, the EPA proposal could slash emissions of hazardous air pollutants, including smog-forming volatile organic compounds and cancer-causing benzene [according to an EPA official].
The federal government also gave America's fossil fuel companies nearly $1 billion to help them comply with the methane regulation, according to the article.

The article also includes this statement from an executive at the American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying arm of the U.S. oil and gas industry, complaining that the fines create a "regime" that would "stifle innovation," and urging Congress to repeal it.

Brandon Vigliarolo reports via The Register: A US federal tax change that took effect in 2022 thanks to a time-triggered portion of the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may leave entrepreneurs with massive tax bills. Section 174 of the US tax code -- prior to the passage of the 2017 TCJA -- allowed companies to handle the tax bill of their specified research or experimental (SRE) budgets in one of two ways: Either capitalized and amortized over the course of five years, or written off annually. Of the many things covered by SRE, most crucially for our purposes is "any amount paid or incurred in connection with the development of any software," which includes developer salaries.

The TCJA included a post-dated change to Section 174 that took effect on January 1, 2022 that would no longer allow companies to automatically expense any SRE costs on an annual basis. Going forward they'd all have to be amortized over five years -- a potential budgetary disaster for companies that haven't been doing so in the past. As pointed out by Gergely Orosz of The Pragmatic Engineer, a theoretical company with $1m in revenue and $1m of software developer salary costs could have claimed it had no taxable profit in 2021. The required SRE amortization rate of 10 percent would mean the org had $900k in profit in 2022 -- and a six-figure tax bill coming due the following year. This isn't theoretical -- Orosz said that he recently spoke to several engineers and entrepreneurs who've been surprised with massive tax bills that have led to layoffs, reduced hiring, and left some companies in financial distress.

House of Representatives member Ron Estes (R-KS), who last year sponsored a bill to restore Section 174 to its pre-TCJA option to expense or amortize, likewise said an a late-2023 op-ed that the changes have led to R&D at US companies -- not just in the tech sector -- shrinking considerably. "Since amortization took effect, the growth rate of R&D spending has slowed dramatically from 6.6 percent on average over the previous five years to less than one-half of 1 percent over the last 12 months," Estes said. "The [R&D] sector is down by more than 14,000 jobs." [...] That, and the Section 174 changes make the US far less enticing as a place to open a business or do R&D, and the only one with such forced amortization in the world. Not much is being done to fix the TCJA problem with Section 174. The Estes bill, along with a related bill introduced in the Senate in March 2023, have not undergone a committee hearing since their introduction. The White House hasn't mentioned anything about Section 174.

Meanwhile, the IRS released a notice (PDF) reminding tax payers about Section 174's changes.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday said it had opened an investigation into whether Boeing failed to ensure that its 737 Max 9 plane was safe and manufactured to match the design approved by the agency. The New York Times (non-paywalled source): The F.A.A. said the investigation stemmed from the loss of a fuselage panel of a Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines shortly after it took off on Friday from Portland, Ore., leaving a hole in the side of the passenger cabin. The plane returned to Portland for an emergency landing. "This incident should have never happened and it cannot happen again," the agency said.

In a letter to Boeing dated Jan. 10, the F.A.A. said that after the Portland incident, it was notified of additional issues with other Boeing 737 Max 9 planes. The letter does not detail what other issues were reported to the agency. Alaska and United Airlines, which operate most of the Max 9s in use in the United States, said on Monday that they discovered loose hardware on the panel when conducting preliminary inspections on their planes. The new investigation is the latest setback for Boeing, which is one of just two suppliers of large planes for most airlines. The company has struggled to regain the public's trust after two crashes, in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019, involving the 737 Max 8 killed a total of 346 people.

The stock market has a new, but familiar, monarch. Microsoft's AI-powered stock rally has made the software giant the largest U.S. company by market value, surpassing Apple for the first time since November 2021. WSJ: Shares edged higher Thursday morning, bringing Microsoft's market value to nearly $2.87 trillion. Apple, meanwhile, fell 1%, pulling its market capitalization just below that threshold. Either Apple or Microsoft has held the title since Feb. 4, 2019, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Microsoft's stock has been on the rise for the past year thanks to the continued growth of its cloud computing division, even as major competitors like Amazon and Google have experienced a gradual slowdown in sales growth.

Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, in a wide-ranging interview with Indian newspaper Economic Times praised the South Asian market for blocking Chinese apps in 2020 and said he hopes the U.S. will follow suit. He said: I hope there will be a movement towards a nationwide ban of the application soon, much like India led the way so many years ago. It is taking time, and I wish it was done as swiftly and with the alacrity that India banned not just TikTok but a number of other Chinese apps that had questionable data sharing and privacy policies. If TikTok is neither banned nor ByteDance is forced to divest this year, I would consider it a huge miss. Because only when action is taken would it be possible for us to go after the smaller players too.

Stephen Harrison, an Englishman living in Thailand who posed as chief executive Steven Reece Lewis for the launch of the HyperVerse crypto scheme, told the Guardian Australia that he was paid to play the role of chief executive but denies having 'pocketed' any of the money lost. He says he received 180,000 Thai baht (about $7,500) over nine months and a free suit, adding that he was "shocked" to learn the company had presented him as having fake credentials to promote the scheme. From the report: He said he felt sorry for those who had lost money in relation to the scheme -- which he said he had no role in -- an amount Chainalysis estimates at US$1.3 billion in 2022 alone. "I am sorry for these people," he said. "Because they believed some idea with me at the forefront and believed in what I said, and God knows what these people have lost. And I do feel bad about this. "I do feel deeply sorry for these people, I really do. You know, it's horrible for them. I just hope that there is some resolution. I know it's hard to get the money back off these people or whatever, but I just hope there can be some justice served in all of this where they can get to the bottom of this." He said he wanted to make clear he had "certainly not pocketed" any of the money lost by investors.

Harrison, who at the time was a freelance television presenter engaged in unpaid football commentary, said he had been approached and offered the HyperVerse work by a friend of a friend. He said he was new to the industry and had been open to picking up more work and experience as a corporate "presenter." "I was told I was acting out a role to represent the business and many people do this," Harrison said. He said he trusted his agent and accepted that. After reading through the scripts he said he was initially suspicious about the company he was hired to represent because he was unfamiliar with the crypto industry, but said he had been reassured by his agent that the company was legitimate. He said he had also done some of his own online research into the organization and found articles about the Australian blockchain entrepreneur and HyperTech chairman Sam Lee. "I went away and I actually looked at the company because I was concerned that it could be a scam," Harrison said. "So I looked online a bit and everything seemed OK, so I rolled with it." The HyperVerse crypto scheme was promoted by Lee and his business partner Ryan Xu, both of which were founders of the collapsed Australian bitcoin company Blockchain Global. "Blockchain Global owes creditors $58 million and its liquidator has referred Xu and Lee to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for alleged possible breaches of the Corporations Act," reports The Guardian. "Asic has said it does not intend to take action at this time."

Rodney Burton, known as "Bitcoin Rodney," was arrested and charged in the U.S on Monday for his alleged role in promoting the HyperVerse crypto scheme. The IRS alleges Burton was "part of a network that made 'fraudulent' presentations claiming high returns for investors based on crypto-mining operations that did not exist," reports The Guardian.