Wall Street Journal

Commerce Dept Lifts Ban on US Suppliers Selling to Chinese Firm ZTE

ZTE Corp can resume business with its US suppliers, the Commerce Department said July 13, after the Chinese telecommunications giant met the conditions of a deal President Donald Trump made to save the company. The saga over the fate of the Chinese firm began in April when Commerce banned US companies from selling to ZTE as punishment for its failure to honor an earlier US agreement to resolve its sanctions-busting sales to North Korea and Iran. Because ZTE relies on US suppliers to make its smartphones and to build telecommunications networks, the penalty was effectively a death knell.

SEC Probes Why Facebook Didn’t Warn Sooner on Privacy Lapse

Apparently, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Facebook adequately warned investors that developers and other third parties may have obtained users’ data without their permission or in violation of Facebook’s policies. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s probe of the social-media company, first reported in early July 2018, follows revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a data-analytics firm that had ties to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, got access to information on millions of Facebook users.

FCC Proposes Rebuilding Comment System After Millions Were Found Fake

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai proposed an overhaul of the agency’s online comment system after millions of fake comments were posted about a recent FCC rule change.

Why the Landline Phone Will Never Go Away

The piercing ring of a home phone used to command respect. “That’s how I was raised: When the phone rings, you hop to it,” I heard my mom say recently as we chatted on my new landline phone. She finally got rid of her hard-wired phone because she couldn’t stop herself from answering it, even after it had primarily become a conduit for robotic telemarketing and fraud. Despite its demotion to a means of harassment, though, the landline refuses to die. According to a 2017 U.S.