New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) urged the FCC and wireless industry to partner to expand language accessibility for severe weather alerts. FCC rules currently require carriers to send wireless emergency alerts in English and Spanish. The AG is “deeply concerned” the alerts don’t support other languages, James wrote Wednesday to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and CTIA President Meredith Baker. “In the absence of that capability, immigrant communities across the country -- including an estimated 1.3 million New Yorkers who have limited English proficiency and are not Spanish speakers -- are left without critical information to protect themselves in response to severe weather and other emergency situations.” James earlier sought more languages in a Feb. 23 letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and the National Weather Service’s then acting Director Mary Erickson. Erickson told James that NWS supported sending alerts in more languages, but the FCC would have to update its rules, the AG said. New York City Council Members Sandra Ung and Julie Won agreed in the AG’s news release Thursday. “In my district, where three Asian immigrants lost their lives during Hurricane Ida, 72 percent of the residents are Asian and over 90 percent of Asian senior citizens have limited English proficiency,” said Ung. The Asian American Federation and Asian Americans for Equality also supported the AG’s letter. "Within a WEA message, local alert originators can already today include links to websites with information that warns and informs the public about an emergency in any format, including illustrations or videos and multiple languages," said a CTIA spokesperson: Industry will keep working with the FCC, Federal Emergency Management Agency, New York state "and the broader alert originator community to ensure that WEA messages continue to fulfill their life-saving mission." The FCC didn’t comment.

The U.S. government charged two Chinese intelligence officers with attempting to obstruct a criminal case against Huawei, in the Eastern District of New York, DOJ said Monday. The charges against Guochun He and Zheng Wang were announced by Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and other officials. The agents thought they recruited “an asset,” but the individual was “actually a double agent working on behalf of the FBI,” Garland said at a news conference: “The defendants paid a bribe to the double agent to obtain nonpublic information, including files from the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District. They did so in the hope of obtaining the prosecution’s strategy memo, confidential information regarding witnesses, trial evidence and potentially new charges to be brought against” Huawei. The defendants, who are still at large, allegedly paid about $61,000 in Bitcoin bribes to the FBI agent, DOJ said. The complaint said the incident took place after January 2019. In 2020, the U.S. accused Huawei of conspiring to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (see 2002130030). If convicted, He faces up to 60 years in prison, Wang up to 20 years, DOJ said. “Anyone still wanna make the case that concerns about Huawei are overblown?” tweeted Michael Sobolik, fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. “Sorry not sorry, Huawei is a tech cancer,” tweeted Nathan Leamer, an aide to former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: “We must secure our networks and kick them out.”

Truphone agreed to divest Russian investors and pay a $600,000 fine for failing to accurately disclose ownership stakes held by foreign entities and transferring control of FCC licenses and international Section 214 authorization without agency approval. In April, the FCC proposed a fine of $660,639 (see 2204210049). The FCC said sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich invested in the company and Truphone didn’t provide timely notice or seek commission approval. “Since 2011, Truphone’s ownership and reports regarding its foreign ownership have changed over time without accurate and requisite reporting to the Commission,” the Enforcement Bureau said in the Thursday order. The FCC is requiring divestiture of any interests held by Abramovich, Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov, the agency said. “Pursuing unauthorized transactions that impact foreign ownership, control, or investment in entities that possess FCC authorizations or licenses is one of our top priorities,” said Loyaan Egal, acting chief-Enforcement Bureau. “The terms reached in this settlement agreement reflect the Enforcement Bureau’s continued efforts to work closely with our colleagues in the FCC’s International Bureau" and interagency partners "to ensure that access to the telecommunications services market in the United States remains consistent with U.S. national security and law enforcement interests.”

Digital twins are already being used and can solve some of the most intractable problems facing cities, said Amen Ra Mashariki, senior principal scientist at tech company Nvidia, during an IEEE conference Tuesday. “You would be shocked what leaders of cities don’t know about their cities,” said Mashariki, former chief analytics officer in New York City. Digital twinsand the metaverse are “solving some of our greatest challenges,” including wildfire prevention, 5G signal propagation, and energy and traffic management, he said. “How do we replicate a city in such a way that we can better understand the city, learn more about the city and then apply solutions that have an impact on the residents?” he asked. A digital twin has to offer “a high level of reality,” he said. Working for New York was difficult because when anything bad happened “it happened big,” he said, citing the cascading problems when COVID-19 hit in 2020. “What digital twins allow you to do is look at the full city,” Mashariki said: “You don’t go in and solve one thing. … You have to solve at least nine, 10, 15 other things in concert.” Digital twins are never “simple to build” and have to be built using “real data,” often crowdsourced, he said. “If I build low-income housing here, how does that affect traffic, how does that affect public safety?” he said. New York City has a right-to-housing law, but people never want homeless shelters in their neighborhoods, Mashariki said. “With simulation, if you have real data, you can actually begin to simulate what opening up shelters in which neighborhoods actually looks like,” he said: “Once you build that shelter you have to then track that data and bring it back into your digital twin. This is the hardest part about a digital twin.” One often-cited example is Ericsson’s construction of digital-twin cities in Sweden, accurate in minute details from the locations of trees to the height and composition of buildings (see 2203150078).

Plans to update the federal court system's Pacer service include enhanced search functionality such as unified search capability and search technology that's cloud based "both intuitive and user-friendly," Roslynn Mauskopf, U.S. Courts Administrative Office director, wrote lawmakers Wednesday. The new search capabilities will allow record searches from a central repository crossing court boundaries, eliminating the need to search for records at each individual federal court, Mauskopf said. The capability will also enable full text searches and searches by judges’ names. "The new search technology will be both easy to use and free for non-commercial users," she said. However, the Open Courts Act "may unduly constrain the effort we have underway," Mauskopf said, noting Congressional Budget Office opinions that eliminating Pacer fees will cost the Judiciary $1 billion over a 10-year period.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel is visiting Fort Myers, Florida, and Puerto Rico Monday and Tuesday to view recovery efforts from Hurricanes Fiona and Ian. “Rosenworcel’s trip will focus on learning from local stakeholders about how Florida and Puerto Rico’s recovery is progressing, reflecting on what lessons learned the Commission should consider in future natural-disaster related actions," said a Monday news release. The FCC had a virtual field hearing last year after Hurricane Ida (see 2110260067), leading to a July order requiring wireless carriers to participate in the previously voluntary wireless network resiliency cooperative framework and to work out roaming arrangements before disaster strikes (see 2207060070). “Supporting resilient infrastructure has never been more important," Rosenworcel said: "The FCC is committed to supporting recovery efforts and doing all we can to help restore communications networks as quickly as possible."

FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips formally ended his tenure at the commission Friday, after announcing his resignation in August (see 2208090061 and 2208170039). Phillips, who joined the commission in 2018, was a “voice of reason” at the epicenter of a “lively and historic debate on issues of profound significance” at the FTC, said Commissioner Christine Wilson.

U.S. internet service costs in September were down 0.01% year over year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index unadjusted data released Thursday. It said residential phone service costs increased 3.6% year over year, but wireless service was down 1.1%. Cable and satellite TV service costs were up 2.2%. BLS said September prices overall were up 8.2% year over year before seasonal adjustment.

The FCC’s 2022 biennial 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act report to Congress largely affirms the tentative findings issued earlier this year (see 2206230052), said the report released by the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Wednesday. “As we continue to monitor accessibility developments and gaps, Congress may wish to examine whether the CVAA should evolve to keep pace with technological development,” the report said. It concludes progress has been made in accessible products over the past two years but said some products and services still don’t include accessibility features. “In particular, commenters discussed how people with disabilities were unable to use features of some video conferencing services needed for work, school, and healthcare during the pandemic,” the report said. The report lists difficulties with automatic captions on video conferencing platforms, plus inaccessible chat features. Only some videoconferencing software has features to support the use of screen readers when users share screens, the report said. Some telehealth technology also lacks accessibility features, the report said. “In a 2020-2021 telehealth accessibility survey of people who are deaf or hard of hearing, two-thirds of the respondents reported communications challenges.” From Jan. 1, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2021, consumers filed 49 requests for dispute assistance (RDA) alleging violations of accessibility rules, the report said, with eight of those against Lifeline providers. The FCC’s Disability Rights Office resolved 47 RDAs through “facilitated dialogue and negotiation” while the remaining two led to informal complaints, the report said.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has granted a request from NetChoice and CCIA to keep a Texas social media law from taking effect while a U.S. Supreme Court hearing of the case is pending, said an order Wednesday in docket 21-51178. The 5th Circuit previously ruled that the law doesn’t violate the First Amendment (see 2209190080). “This ruling means Texas’s unconstitutional law will not be in force as the issue of government-compelled dissemination of speech makes its way to the Supreme Court,” said CCIA President Matt Schruers in a release. “We are confident these laws will not stand.”