Over the past decade, the United States population grew at the slowest rate since the 1930s, the Census Bureau reported on Monday, a remarkable slackening that was driven by a leveling off of immigration and a declining birthrate. The New York Times reports: The bureau also reported changes to the nation's political map: The long-running trend of the South and the West gaining population -- and congressional representation -- at the expense of the Northeast and the Midwest, continued, with Texas gaining two seats and Florida, one. California, long a leader in population growth, lost a seat for the first time in history. [...] The numbers are the product of the most controversial census process in decades. The Trump administration tried to add a citizenship question to the Census form, but the Supreme Court eventually blocked that plan. [...] The Bureau also faced a daunting task of conducting the Census during a pandemic. Then, last summer, the Trump administration pushed it to stop the count sooner than planned.

Booming economies in states like Texas, Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina, have drawn Americans away from struggling small communities in high-cost, cold weather states. In New York, 48 of 62 counties are estimated to be losing population. In Illinois, 93 of 101 counties are believed to be shrinking. In 1970, the West and South comprised just under half the U.S. population -- today it's nearly 63 percent. The new decennial census counted 331,449,281 Americans as of April 1, 2020. The total was up by just 7.4 percent over the previous decade. Combined with the decline in inflows of immigrants, and shifting age demographics -- there are now more Americans 80 and older than 2 or younger -- the United States may be entering an era of substantially lower population growth, demographers said, putting it with the countries of Europe and East Asia that face serious long-term challenges with rapidly aging populations. "This is a big deal," said Ronald Lee, a demographer who founded the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at the University of California at Berkeley. "If it stays lower like this, it means the end of American exceptionalism in this regard." It used to be clear where the country was headed demographically, Professor Lee said -- faster growth than many other rich nations. But that has changed. "Right now it is very murky," he said.

Millions of Americans are not getting the second doses of their Covid-19 vaccines, and their ranks are growing. From a report: More than five million people, or nearly 8 percent of those who got a first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, have missed their second doses, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is more than double the rate among people who got inoculated in the first several weeks of the nationwide vaccine campaign. Even as the country wrestles with the problem of millions of people who are wary about getting vaccinated at all, local health authorities are confronting an emerging challenge of ensuring that those who do get inoculated are doing so fully. The reasons vary for why people are missing their second shots. In interviews, some said they feared the side effects, which can include flulike symptoms. Others said they felt that they were sufficiently protected with a single shot.

Those attitudes were expected, but another hurdle has been surprisingly prevalent. A number of vaccine providers have canceled second-dose appointments because they ran out of supply or didn't have the right brand in stock. Walgreens, one of the biggest vaccine providers, sent some people who got a first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine to get their second doses at pharmacies that only had the other vaccine on hand. Several Walgreens customers said in interviews that they scrambled, in some cases with help from pharmacy staff, to find somewhere to get the correct second dose. Others, presumably, simply gave up. From the outset, public health experts worried that it would be difficult to get everyone to return for a second shot three or four weeks after the first dose. It is no surprise that, as vaccines are rolled out more broadly, the numbers of those skipping their second dose have gone up.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The Biden administration is preparing to send up to 60 million AstraZeneca doses to countries in need over the next several months, once a federal safety review is conducted, according to two senior Biden administration officials. The company has produced about 10 million doses of the vaccine for the U.S. but the FDA has not yet authorized their use. The agency is still examining the doses to ensure they meet the necessary quality control standards. An additional 50 million doses are in production, one of the senior officials said.

It is unclear where the U.S. will send the AstraZeneca doses and whether it will send them through COVAX or directly to individual countries. The administration's decision to commit the doses was first reported by the Associated Press. It comes on the heels of the Biden administration's announcement that it will send India raw materials and components to manufacture Covishield, a version of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the country's Serum Institute. Those materials were already wrapped up in contracts held by the U.S. But the administration decided over the weekend to divert pending orders of vaccine supplies such as filters to India, and to ship additional drugs, test kits and personal protective equipment. The administration has not yet decided whether to send India AstraZeneca doses directly.

Apple on Monday said it will establish a new campus in North Carolina that will house up to 3,000 employees, expand its operations in several other U.S. states and increase its spending targets with U.S. supplierst. From a report: Apple said it plans to spend $1 billion as it builds a new campus and engineering hub in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, with most of the jobs expected to focus on machine learning, artificial intelligence, software engineering and other technology fields. It joins a $1 billion Austin, Texas campus announced in 2019. The iPhone maker said it would also establish a $100 million fund to support schools in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina and throughout the state, as well as contribute $110 million to help build infrastructure such as broadband internet, roads, bridges and public schools in 80 North Carolina counties.

Apple also said it expanded hiring targets at other U.S. locations to hit a goal 20,000 additional jobs by 2026, setting new goals for facilities in Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington state. In Apple's home state of California, the company said it will aim to hire 5,000 people in San Diego and 3,000 people in Culver City in the Los Angeles area. Apple also increased a U.S. spending target to $430 billion by 2026, up from a five-year goal of $350 billion Apple set in 2018, and said it was on track to exceed.

"Nomadland" director Chloe Zhao made history on Sunday by becoming the first woman of color and first Chinese woman to win the Oscar for best director. Official media, major search engines and internet censors in her home country are making as if it didn't happen. From a report: Ms. Zhao's win, just the second time a woman has walked away with best director, unleashed a flurry of congratulatory messages on Chinese social-media sites when it was announced Monday morning Beijing time. By midafternoon, nearly all of the posts had been erased. Searches for her name on Baidu and Sogou, the country's dominant search engines, produced numerous links to news of her previous accolades but only scattered links to deleted articles about the Academy Award honor.

State broadcaster China Central Television, the official Xinhua News Agency, and Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily stayed silent on the award throughout the day. Two state media reporters told the Journal they had received orders from China's propaganda ministry not to report on her victory, despite what they described as her status as a Chinese national, because of "previous public opinion." China's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the removal of social-media posts during a regular news conference on Monday, saying it wasn't a diplomatic issue.

"An internal task force found that Facebook failed to take appropriate action against the Stop the Steal movement ahead of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, and hoped the company could 'do better next time,'" writes Buzzfeed: Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of a House of Representatives committee that his company had done its part "to secure the integrity of the election." While the social network did not catch everything, the billionaire chief executive said, Facebook had "made our services inhospitable to those who might do harm" in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Less than a week after his appearance, however, an internal company report reached a far different conclusion... Shared on Facebook's employee communication platform last month, the report is a blunt assessment of how people connected to "Stop the Steal," a far-right movement based on the conspiracy theory that former president Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election, used the social network to foment an attempted coup. The document explicitly states that Facebook activity from people connected to Stop the Steal and other Trump loyalist groups including the Patriot Party played a role in the events of Jan. 6, and that the company's emphasis on rooting out fake accounts and "inauthentic behavior" held it back from taking preemptive action when real people were involved...

The document contradicts Zuckerberg's statement to Congress about Facebook being "inhospitable" to harmful content about the election, and refutes chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg's January comment that the insurrection was "largely organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate, don't have our standards and don't have our transparency...." Facebook disputed the idea that the report went against Zuckerberg's and Sandberg's public statements and noted that both had said there was violative content on the platform that the company did not catch...

Facebook's researchers also outline the bureaucratic, policy, and enforcement struggles of the social giant when trying to respond to a coordinated, fast-paced movement that exploits its platform to spread hate and incite violence. Despite the company removing the most populous Stop the Steal groups from its platform, the enforcement was "piecemeal" and allowed other groups to flourish. The company admitted that it only realized it was a cohesive movement "after the Capitol Insurrection and a wave of Storm the Capitol events across the country...." Ultimately, the report says, the issue is that the company is not prepared to deal with what it calls "coordinated authentic harm."

"We learned a lot from these cases," the report says. "We're building tools and protocols and having policy discussions to help us do better next time."
But Buzzfeed's 3,400-article concludes on a skeptical note. "The report echoes previous high-profile examples where Facebook failed to act and later issued a report promising to do better..."

UPDATE (4/26): After the report's existence was revealed, access to it was suddenly restricted for many Facebook employees, Buzzfeed writes — on a new web page republishing the whole report in its entirety.

The Washington Post reports on a surge in crowdfunding campaigns for basic essentials like rent, food and bills: Sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter or even Facebook allow people and businesses to establish a cause — or set up a page laying out why they (or someone they are raising the money for) need money, and what the cash will go toward. After demand spiked last year, GoFundMe in October formalized a new category specifically for rent, food and bills. More than $100 million had been raised at that time year-to-date for basic living expenses in tens of thousands of campaigns during 2020 — a 150 percent increase over 2019. Both Vancouver-based FundRazr and U.K. crowdfunding website GoGetFunding report similar, though smaller, trends for last year, as well as honeymoon sites PlumFund and HoneyFund.

But a year into the pandemic, some individual crowdfunding campaigns are reporting little success raising donations to cover basic expenses... Daryl Hatton, CEO and founder of FundRazr said when he browsed through the campaigns for basic expenses, most were getting little or no donations. "I saw a whole bunch of zeros," he said...

GoFundMe hasn't seen a slow-down on activity related to basic expense campaigns. It "continues at an elevated rate," company spokesperson Bobby Whithorne said... The monthly bills category is now one of GoFundMe's largest and has made up 13 percent of all new fundraisers since it was added in October, the company said. The campaigns range from people who have lost their jobs or been evicted to those who have suffered a health emergency and need help paying rent, and more. Meanwhile fundraisers for food in January spiked 45 percent higher than a year before, the company said. On Facebook, people raised $175 million for coronavirus-related fundraisers on the flagship site and Instagram between early March to late December last year, said Elizabeth Davis, a product manager on Facebook's charitable giving team.

GoFundMe makes money from many of these new campaigns it hosts and fosters — the company charges credit card processing fees, but primarily makes money from "tips" left on each donation. The tip level is automatically set at 12.5 percent of a donation, though donors can change the amount or decline to tip the company...

Despite the surge in crowdfunding, it doesn't replace other societal safety nets, experts said. GoFundMe's chief executive Tim Cadogan published an op-ed in USA Today in February, calling for more robust government programs to help people and insisting to Congress that GoFundMe "can't do your job for you."
The article also cites one research team's preliminary finding that more than 40% of coronavirus-related fundraisers on GoFundMe never received a single donation.

Technology/space pundit Robert Cringely writes that SpaceX's winning bid on NASA's Artemis lunar lander contract was helped by its flexibility in how it would be paid — made possibly by SpaceX's cushy financial position.

But he believes that's part of a larger story about SpaceX's "steadily crushing its competitors by building a hyper-efficient space ecosystem where the other guys are just building rockets," arguing that SpaceX has already won the global war of ISPs "at a net cost of ZERO dollars," if not a negative net cost, while realizing a dream of a satellite internet service that for 30 years has eluded investors like Bill Gates:

SpaceX making a profit where one would not normally exist comes thanks to U.S. residents who pay telephone and Internet bills. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been socking-away for a decade about $1.8 billion per year from you and me, saving-up to pay for expansions of rural telephony and broadband. There is now about $16 billion in this federal kitty and the FCC is starting to spend it with telephone and internet service providers, paying them to extend broadband and voice services to remote rural users who are presently underserved or unserved completely. All of this is both perfectly legal and even a good idea. Everybody wins. But circumstances are turning out to indicate that SpaceX is probably winning more than anyone else... So far SpaceX has won auctions for service in parts of 35 states for a total of $885 million... SpaceX just bid for potential customers in places where other companies typically didn't even bother to bid. They took the obvious remote customers and apparently won't be over-charging them or the government, either...

There is no FCC rule saying Comcast couldn't sub-contract...difficult customers to Starlink... Instead of earning $885 million of those FCC subsidies, Starlink is more likely to gain half of the full $9.2 billion — money that can be used for any purpose including financing that Artemis lander. But remember that satellites are a global resource. If SpaceX launches 4000 or 12,000 Starlink satellites to serve the USA, they'll also serve anywhere else the satellites overfly, even North Korea. The same level of service Starlink offers in Omaha will be available in Vietnam or on tankers in the Pacific ocean.

Once Starlink becomes effectively the dominant ISP in America, it will also become the dominant ISP in the world. And all at no cost to SpaceX since the expansion will have been financed from our phone bills.
Cringely cites estimates that 40,000 satellites would be enough to serve every Internet user on Earth, as well as IoT devices and even future as-yet-uninvented network services.

He also asks whether this might ultimately make it harder for China to censor the internet — and whether Apple might attempt a competing satellite-to-phone network, possibly using technology from Samsung.

"Just before the end of the Trump administration, an obscure Florida company began announcing routes to IP addresses owned by the Pentagon," writes long-time Slashdot reader whoever57. The Washington Post calls it "a huge unused swath of the Internet that, for several decades, had been owned by the U.S. military." What happened next was stranger still. The company, Global Resource Systems LLC, kept adding to its zone of control. Soon it had claimed 56 million IP addresses owned by the Pentagon. Three months later, the total was nearly 175 million. That's almost 6 percent of a coveted traditional section of Internet real estate — called IPv4 — where such large chunks are worth billions of dollars on the open market... "They are now announcing more address space than anything ever in the history of the Internet," said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis for Kentik, a network monitoring company, who was among those trying to figure out what was happening...

The change is the handiwork of an elite Pentagon unit known as the Defense Digital Service, which reports directly to the secretary of defense. The DDS bills itself as a "SWAT team of nerds" tasked with solving emergency problems for the department and conducting experimental work to make big technological leaps for the military... Brett Goldstein, the DDS's director, said in a statement that his unit had authorized a "pilot effort" publicizing the IP space owned by the Pentagon. "This pilot will assess, evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space," Goldstein said. "Additionally, this pilot may identify potential vulnerabilities...."

The specifics of what the effort is trying to achieve remain unclear... What is clear, however, is the Global Resource Systems announcements directed a fire hose of Internet traffic toward the Defense Department addresses...

Russell Goemaere, a spokesman for the Defense Department, confirmed in a statement to The Washington Post that the Pentagon still owns all the IP address space and hadn't sold any of it to a private party.

After 45 years, NBC's popular TV show "Saturday Night Live" has lined up its richest guest host ever. CNN reports: In one of the more surprising announcements in the recent history of "Saturday Night Live," the NBC variety show said Saturday that its next host will be Elon Musk, the eccentric CEO of Tesla and one of the richest people on the planet.
USA Today adds: The coveted slot, usually occupied by British actors like Carey Mulligan or former boy band members like Nick Jonas, is now reserved on May 8 for Tesla CEO and SpaceX chief engineer, Musk.

He'll be joined by musical guest Miley Cyrus...

The official Twitter page for "SNL" announced the news in its usual format, a photo of sticky notes with the guest's name. "SNL" captioned the tweet with three rocket ship emojis.

The mayor of Los Angeles is proposing the largest universal income pilot program in America, saying he hopes the program will "light a fire across our nation."

Newsweek reports: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has proposed giving a "universal basic income" of $1000 a month to 2,000 poor local families for one year... The program would give 2,000 families below the federal poverty line monthly $1,000 checks for 12 months. The families could then spend the money however they please.

Garcetti said he hopes the program could provide a model for similar anti-poverty initiatives in other cities. "We have to end America's addiction to poverty..." Garcetti told LAist, a local news site affiliated with Southern California Public Radio. Similar programs are also being floated in at least four other L.A. county districts, according to the Los Angeles Times...

If approved, Garcetti's program would be at least the 12th time that a U.S. region has offered a basic income to its citizens.
Bloomberg notes that Los Angeles "will be the recipient of more than $1.3 billion in federal stimulus funds from the recently passed American Rescue Plan, which could be used to fund the payouts." Garcetti, a Democrat in his second term, is co-chair of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, which has been advocating for the policy at the federal level and funding local programs. The group, which has 43 elected officials as members, was founded last year by then-Stockton-mayor Michael Tubbs. It has received $18 million in seed money from Twitter Inc. co-founder Jack Dorsey as well as $200,000 from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable arm of Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News's parent company.

California cities have been taking a lead with these programs... In San Francisco, grants and some revenue from hotel taxes will fund monthly payments of $1,000 to about 130 artists for six months beginning next month. Organizers said the pilot is the first to solely target artists. Oakland will tap private donations this summer to fund its guaranteed income program, providing $500 monthly to about 600 poor families.

Still, a majority of Americans oppose the federal government providing a guaranteed basic income, according to a survey last year by the Pew Research Center...

Ultimately the costs of such programs will be too big for cities to finance alone, he said. But with data proving it works, Garcetti said states and the federal government could be inspired to fund them.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from Politico: The Pentagon has briefed top lawmakers on intelligence surrounding suspected directed-energy attacks against U.S. troops, and officials identified Russia as a likely culprit, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The briefings included information about injuries sustained by U.S. troops in Syria, the people said. The investigation includes one incident in Syria in the fall of 2020 in which several troops developed flu-like symptoms, two people familiar with the Pentagon probe said. After this article was published, Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told lawmakers during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that he has seen "no evidence" of such attacks against U.S. troops in the Middle East.

The investigation is part of a broader effort to look into directed-energy attacks on U.S. officials across multiple agencies in recent years. Since late 2016, close to 50 officials have reported symptoms of a mysterious illness that became known as "Havana syndrome" among U.S. diplomats posted in Cuba. Symptoms included acute ringing and pressure in the ears, as well as loss of hearing and balance, fatigue and residual headaches. Some victims have suffered long-term brain damage. A report commissioned by the State Department and released in December pointed to "directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy" as the most probable cause for the "Havana syndrome" incidents.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel on Friday recommended the U.S. resume using the Johnson and Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, saying the benefits outweighed the risk. CNBC reports: The recommendation, which was adopted 10-4 with one abstention, by the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, will pave the way for U.S. regulators to lift their recommended pause on using the J&J shot as early as this weekend. The committee, an outside panel of experts that advises the CDC, decided to postpone a decision on the vaccine last week while officials continued to investigate cases of six women, ages 18 to 48, who developed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, or CVST, in combination with low blood platelets within about two weeks of receiving the shot.

The Food and Drug Administration and CDC on April 13 asked states to temporarily halt using J&J's vaccine "out of an abundance of caution" following reports of the rare blood clots. Within hours of the warning, more than a dozen states as well as some national pharmacies halted inoculations with J&J's vaccine, some replacing scheduled appointments with either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Rare blood clots with low platelets are occurring at a rate of 7 per 1 million vaccinations in women ages 18 to 49 for the J&J shot and 0.9 per 1 million in women age 50 and older, according to a slide presented at the CDC panel meeting. CDC has confirmed 15 cases total of rare blood clot conditions, which includes 12 women who developed blood clots in the brain. Three women have died and 7 remained hospitalized, according to the slides. There are no confirmed cases in men, though officials have said they are reviewing potential additional cases.

A CDC model presented at the meeting showed not resuming the use of J&J's vaccine would delay immunizing all adults intending to get the shots by 14 days. J&J executives told the committee the benefits of its vaccine still outweighed its risks, adding that the shots would prevent deaths and hospitalizations. They suggested a new warning label for the vaccine that explains the risk of blood clots.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that final rules announced in December took effect on Wednesday allowing for small drones to fly over people and at night, a significant step toward their eventual use for widespread commercial deliveries. The effective date was delayed about a month during the change in administration. The FAA said its long-awaited rules for the drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, will address security concerns by requiring remote identification technology in most cases to enable their identification from the ground. Previously, small drone operations over people were limited to operations over people who were directly participating in the operation, located under a covered structure, or inside a stationary vehicle -- unless operators had obtained a waiver from the FAA.

Drone manufacturers have 18 months to begin producing drones with Remote ID, and operators will have an additional year to provide Remote ID. The new rules eliminate requirements that drones be connected to the internet to transmit location data but do require that they broadcast remote ID messages via radio frequency broadcast. One change, since the rules were first proposed in 2019, requires that small drones not have any exposed rotating parts that would lacerate human skin.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The world's nuclear powers have detonated more than 500 nukes in the atmosphere. These explosions were tests, shows of force to rival nations, and proof that countries such as Russia, France, and the U.S. had mastered the science of the bomb. The world's honey has suffered for it. According to a new study published in Nature Communications, honey in the United States is full of fallout lingering from those atmospheric nuclear tests.

For the study, researchers collected honey samples from more than 100 hives and soil samples from 110 locations across the Eastern United States. The scientists found elevated levels of cesium in both the soil and honey samples. "While most of the radiation produced by a nuclear weapon detonation decays within the first few days, one of the longest-lived and more abundant fission products is [cesium] , which has a radioactive half-life of 30.2 years," the study said. Previous research after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster identified elevated levels of cesium in European honey and pollen. The good news is that, according to researchers, most of this honey is probably safe for humans to consume. "While the concentrations of [cesium] we report in honey today are below the...dietary threshold level of concern observed by many countries, and not evidently dangerous for human consumption, the widespread residual radiation...is surprising given that nearly 2 half-lives have elapsed since most of the bomb production of [cesium]," they said. Interestingly, the researchers "also found an inverse relationship between the amount of potassium naturally occurring in soil and the amount of fallout found in honey," the report says. "Southern states contained three times the amount of fallout that the northern states did. Southern soil doesn't contain much potassium while soil in the north is rich with the stuff. While this honey is probably safe for human consumption, it may not be for the bees who generate it."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A massive procession of gig workers riding e-bikes with food coolers strapped to their backs protested in streets of Manhattan on Wednesday with a growing set of grievances: wage theft, no access to bathrooms, arbitrary deactivations, rampant e-bike theft, and violent assault and murder while they're working. The mass demonstration was the second organized by Los Deliveristas Unidos, a growing grassroots campaign formed by immigrant Latinx delivery workers in New York City during the pandemic. The group formed last year to organize for better working conditions on food delivery apps, as New Yorkers laid off during the pandemic have turned to gig work. In recent weeks, workers have organized on Whatsapp and other apps to form self-defense groups. Organizers estimate more than 1,000 app-based delivery workers attended Wednesday's protest -- which took over Times Square. Delivery workers honked horns, waved Mexican and Guatemalan flags, and raised banners in Spanish that said "Don't buy bikes on the street without a receipt" and "United we are stronger."

Wednesday's protest follows a growing trend of violent assaults and murders of app-based grocery and food delivery workers not just in New York City, but across the United States. In early April, a 29-year old e-bike delivery delivery worker, Francisco Villalva Vitinio, was shot and killed while delivering food in Manhattan. In Washington DC, two teenage girls allegedly carjacked and killed a 66-year old UberEats driver, Mohammed Anwar, in late March. Gig workers have also been killed in Illinois, Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, and Michigan over the past 18 months. The assaults and murders have forced e-bike delivery workers to do their jobs with the constant threat of violence and financial ruin looming over their heads. "Los Deliveristas Unidos is pushing for New York City Council to pass a package of laws that would improve their working conditions, including the right to use restaurants' bathroom (which have been closed to workers during the pandemic), insurance to protect workers from robberies, free personal protective equipment, access to a copy of their receipts to verify tip amounts, and limits to distance and weight on deliveries," adds Motherboard.

Technology giants led by Apple and Microsoft disclosed more than $100 billion in profit outside the U.S. in their last fiscal years, making them prime targets of President Joe Biden's proposals to boost taxes on earnings stashed overseas. From a report: The tax proposals, unveiled this month to help foot the bill for massive infrastructure plans, target common tactics used by U.S. multinationals such as stashing income-generating assets in low-tax offshore jurisdictions. The tech industry is particularly adept at shifting profits to tax-friendly locales because its main assets -- software code, patents and other intellectual property -- are relatively easy to move around compared to factories and other physical assets.

Former President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was supposed to crack down on offshore tax maneuvering, but Republicans neutered the rules by adding extra deductions and other benefits, according to Andrew Silverman, a tax policy analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Big Tech will find it harder to dodge Biden's plan because, if turned into law, it would close most of the loopholes left by Trump's 2017 legislation. The move threatens to leave the industry further at odds with Washington, where lawmakers are already scrutinizing the spread of misinformation on online platforms and regulators are embarking on antitrust investigations into large tech companies.

China is behind a newly discovered series of hacks against key targets in the U.S. government, private companies and the country's critical infrastructure, cybersecurity firm Mandiant said Wednesday. From a report: The hack works by breaking into Pulse Secure, a program that businesses often use to let workers remotely connect to their offices. The company announced Tuesday how users can check to see if they were affected but said the software update to prevent the risk to users won't go out until May. The campaign is the third distinct and severe cyberespionage operation against the U.S. made public in recent months, stressing an already strained cybersecurity workforce.

The U.S. government accused Russia in January of hacking nine government agencies via SolarWinds, a Texas software company widely used by American businesses and government agencies. In March, Microsoft blamed China for starting a free-for-all where scores of different hackers broke into organizations around the world through the Microsoft Exchange email program. In all three campaigns, the hackers first used those programs to hack into victims' computer networks, then created backdoors to spy on them for months, if not longer. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, said in a warning Tuesday evening the latest hacking campaign is currently "affecting U.S. government agencies, critical infrastructure entities, and other private sector organizations."

The U.S. Supreme Court slashed the Federal Trade Commission's power to seek monetary awards in court, throwing out a legal tool the consumer-protection agency has used to collect billions of dollars over the past decade. From a report: The justices on Thursday unanimously said the FTC can't seek consumer redress when it invokes a provision that lets the agency go straight to federal court to try to stop an alleged fraud. The ruling is a triumph for business trade groups, which urged the court to curb the agency's powers. The FTC in 2012 dramatically ramped up its use of the decades-old provision to recoup money. The agency reported winning so-called restitution and disgorgement of almost $12 billion in 2016 alone, including $10 billion in a settlement with Volkswagen AG stemming from its diesel-emissions scandal. Writing for the court, Justice Stephen Breyer said the FTC retains other avenues to get restitution for consumers, though those tools involve a more complicated process. "If the commission believes that authority too cumbersome or otherwise inadequate, it is, of course, free to ask Congress to grant it further remedial authority," Breyer wrote.

Hmmmmmm writes: Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn is drastically scaling back a planned $10 billion factory in Wisconsin, confirming its retreat from a project that former U.S. President Donald Trump once called "the eighth wonder of the world." Under a deal with the state of Wisconsin announced on Tuesday, Foxconn will reduce its planned investment to $672 million from $10 billion and cut the number of new jobs to 1,454 from 13,000. The Foxconn-Wisconsin deal was first announced to great fanfare at the White House in July 2017, with Trump boasting of it as an example of how his "America first" agenda could revive U.S. tech manufacturing. For Foxconn, the investment promise was an opportunity for its charismatic founder and then-chairman, Terry Gou, to build goodwill at a moment when Trump's trade policies threatened the company's cash cow: building Apple's iPhones in China for export to America.