All posts tagged: regulation

At anti-Trump rally, Sánchez promises to ‘twist the arm’ of the global right – POLITICO

At anti-Trump rally, Sánchez promises to ‘twist the arm’ of the global right – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

“We will twist the arm of the people who think they are completely untouchable,” Sánchez told the crowd. “The billionaires with greed that is unlimited. Those who speculate with houses of people,” he said. He singled out oligarchs “who want to get richer using our democracy and the mental health of our youngsters.” “When we progressives reach government, it is not to serve the elites — we put them in their place,” said Sánchez. He said the far right was “organizing internationally” but insisted their numbers betrayed weakness rather than strength. “They shout not because they are winning but because they know their time is about to be over,” he said. Some 6,000 left-leaning elected officials, policy analysts and activists attended the event in Barcelona. Organizers said the gathering would conclude with a joint declaration outlining coordinated action on shared priorities including inequality, climate and digital regulation. The gathering drew an unusually broad cast of heads of state and government, including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa and Colombian President …

The Paradox of China’s Crypto Regulation and Capital Going Global (Part 2)

The Paradox of China’s Crypto Regulation and Capital Going Global (Part 2)

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Global Expansion of Chinese Crypto Capital and the Systemic Collapse of Community Culture In Part 1, I examined how China and the United States have gradually diverged onto two fundamentally different regulatory and institutional paths in the Web3 era. While the American model remains anchored in token-based financialization and dollar-linked stablecoins, China has deliberately removed the coin from the centre of its Web3 strategy, repositioning blockchain as an infrastructure for governable data, industrial coordination, and sovereign digital currency. Next, we’ll turn to the global political and cultural implications of Chinese crypto capital. Against this backdrop of domestic regulatory restructuring, a striking paradox emerges: even as China tightens control over crypto activity at home, capital and actors with Chinese backgrounds continue to expand aggressively in overseas markets. The clearest examples are the reported cooperation between Binance and the Trump family, as well as Justin Sun’s appearance at a White House dinner as a major token holder. Whatever these interactions may ultimately signify in legal, compliance, or political-symbolic terms, they at least produce a powerful visual …

EPA May Ease Regulation of Chemical Plastic Recycling, and Environmentalists Worry

EPA May Ease Regulation of Chemical Plastic Recycling, and Environmentalists Worry

Published by Sam Flores

The Environmental Protection Agency is reconsidering whether facilities that recycle plastic chemically should be held to the same strict air pollution standards as incinerators. The possible change is alarming environmental advocates who say it would lead to more dangerous pollution spewing into communities, with fewer or no checks at the federal level. The plastics industry disputes that, saying it would clear up confusion while still controlling emissions. The world is pumping millions of tons of plastic pollution into the environment every year. While dozens of countries and many environmental groups have urged caps on production, industry and several big oil-producing countries have resisted, arguing instead for improvements in reuse and recycling. Chemical recycling uses heat or chemicals to break down plastics. The main method, a process known as pyrolysis, has long been regulated as incineration by the Clean Air Act. The EPA limits emissions from incinerators of nine air pollutants, including toxic particulates, heavy metals and dioxins. The agency says a potential new rule could instead recognize pyrolysis as manufacturing. The American Chemistry Council, an …

Why Europe should strive to increase its clinical trials – POLITICO

Why Europe should strive to increase its clinical trials – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

The pharmaceutical sector is the engine room that drives clinical trial activity and the benefits that go way beyond patient care. Clinical research delivers significant economic growth, and the European Union has the potential to deliver so much more. That’s why it’s good news that the European Medicines Agency (EMA), alongside the European Commission and Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA), have set a new target for increasing clinical trials in the EU. The 11.1 percent target should bring an additional 500 multinational trials over five years. A new report by Frontier Economics, published in February by EFPIA, analyzed this target. It will produce an extra 35,000 clinical trial places for people in Europe, who will be able to access treatments that may otherwise have been unavailable. The economic impact is estimated to be around €4 billion. It’s certainly a good first step toward turning around a decade of decline. Patients in the United Statesand China, for example, now see the benefit of significantly increased trial places, whereas Europe has lost 60,000 trial places in the …

Anthropic Opposes the Extreme AI Liability Bill That OpenAI Backed

Anthropic Opposes the Extreme AI Liability Bill That OpenAI Backed

Published by skeptic

Anthropic has come out against a proposed Illinois law backed by OpenAI that would shield AI labs from liability if their systems are used to cause large-scale harm, like mass casualties or more than $1 billion in property damage. The fight over the state bill, SB 3444, is drawing new battlelines between Anthropic and OpenAI over how AI technologies should be regulated. While AI policy experts say that the legislation only has a remote chance of becoming law, it has nonetheless exposed political divisions between two leading US AI labs that could become increasingly important as the rival companies ramp up their lobbying activity across the country. Behind the scenes, Anthropic has been lobbying state Senator Bill Cunningham, SB 3444’s sponsor, and other Illinois lawmakers to either make major changes to the bill or kill it as it stands, according to people familiar with the matter. In an email to WIRED, an Anthropic spokesperson confirmed the company’s opposition to SB 3444, and said it has held promising conversations with Cunningham about using the bill as …

John Deere Is Paying Farmers Million for Allegedly Monopolizing Repair

John Deere Is Paying Farmers $99 Million for Allegedly Monopolizing Repair

Published by skeptic

On Monday, farming equipment manufacturer John Deere announced it would pay $99 million in a settlement to a class action lawsuit brought on by its customers. The suit accused the company of restricting access to tools and repairs of its tractors and other farming equipment, effectively leveraging a monopoly on the repair market for its products. The money, if accepted by the farmer-aligned plaintiffs, will go into a fund, then eventually be distributed to Deere equipment owners who can prove they paid for dealership repairs sometime since 2018. In the settlement, John Deere also says it will make repair tools and services more widely available. For the next 10 years, at least. John Deere has kept tight control over how its customers can fix or tinker with its equipment by disallowing access via software restrictions or requiring machines to be brought to approved shops for repair. That has left thousands of farmers to deal with delayed harvests and millions of dollars in lost profits while waiting for an approved fix. The difficulty in repairing John …

Bessent Urges Congress to Pass Crypto Regulation Bill

Bessent Urges Congress to Pass Crypto Regulation Bill

Published by Sam Flores

April 8 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ⁠said ⁠Congress must pass a ⁠bill to create federal rules for digital assets, reiterating ​the push for rules that he says will ensure cryptocurrency development and ‌investment remain anchored in the ‌U.S. Bessent urged passage of a crypto market structure bill called the ⁠Clarity ⁠Act. “The regulatory framework for digital asset markets is unclear,” Bessent said ​in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, adding that this uncertainty had predictable consequences.  “A growing share of crypto development relocated to ​places with clear rules, such as Abu Dhabi and Singapore. Abroad, firms ⁠knew ⁠when and how to ⁠register, ​what standards to meet, and how to operate. The benefits of domiciling in ​the U.S. rarely ⁠outweighed the risks,” Bessent wrote. The Clarity Act aims to create federal rules for digital assets, the culmination of years of crypto industry lobbying. Crypto companies have long argued that existing rules are inadequate for digital ⁠assets, and that legislation is essential for companies to continue to operate ⁠with legal …

Tech Companies Are Trying to Neuter Colorado’s Landmark Right-to-Repair Law

Tech Companies Are Trying to Neuter Colorado’s Landmark Right-to-Repair Law

Published by skeptic

Right to repair efforts are gaining headway in the US. A lot of that movement has been led by state legislation in Colorado. Since 2022, Colorado has passed bills giving users the tools, instructions, and legal capabilities to fix or upgrade their own wheelchairs, agricultural farming equipment, and consumer electronics. Similar efforts have rippled out through the country, where repair bills have been introduced in every US state and passed in eight of them. “Colorado has the broadest repair rights in the country,” says Danny Katz, executive director of CoPIRG Foundation, the Colorado branch of the consumer advocate group Pirg. “We should be proud of leading the way.” Manufacturers tend to be less supportive of right-to-repair efforts, as corporations stand to make more money charging for tools, replacement parts, and repair services than if they were to just let people fix things on their own. Some companies have begrudgingly agreed to make their products more repairable. Some have started actively pushing back against new laws intended to enable that. Today at a hearing of the …

CFTC and DOJ sue states over prediction markets regulation dispute

CFTC and DOJ sue states over prediction markets regulation dispute

Published by skeptic

Federal regulators have taken Arizona, Illinois, and Connecticut to court, opening a new front in the fight over so-called event contracts and who gets to regulate them. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, joined by the United States, filed lawsuits in federal district courts seeking to stop those states from enforcing laws that would block these products. Federal officials argue event contracts fall under their authority when they trade on registered exchanges. State regulators see something else entirely, calling them unlicensed gambling.  The cases seen by ReadWrite stem in part from recent enforcement moves. In Illinois, regulators sent cease-and-desist letters to firms including Kalshi and Robinhood, arguing their sports-related event contracts amount to unlawful wagering without proper state licenses. Connecticut officials made similar claims, saying companies were “conducting unlicensed online gambling” by offering these contracts to residents. The @CFTC has clear and longstanding exclusive jurisdiction to regulate prediction markets. But recently, state regulators have tried to impose inconsistent and contrary obligations on CFTC-registered prediction markets. In response, the CFTC and @TheJusticeDept today filed three… — Mike …

EU clarifies Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation rules

EU clarifies Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation rules

Published by skeptic

The European Commission has released new guidance to support the rollout of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), offering long-awaited clarification on how the rules should be applied across Member States. The move is intended to reduce legal ambiguity, align national approaches, and ease compliance burdens for businesses operating across borders. The PPWR, which came into force on 11 February 2025, is a central component of the EU’s strategy to curb packaging waste and transition toward a more circular economy. However, as implementation begins, regulators and industry stakeholders have faced uncertainty over how certain provisions should be interpreted in practice. The newly published guidance addresses these gaps without altering the legal framework itself. Jessika Roswall, Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy, explained: “We are providing further clarity and support to businesses, Member States, and stakeholders to ensure a smooth transition to a more circular and competitive packaging value chain. “I encourage all stakeholders to make use of this guidance and work together to ensure a smooth implementation of the Packaging …