November 2017

President Donald Trump embarks on a nine-day trip to Asia this weekend. It is his longest foreign trip so far as US president, and will include two days in China—behind the country’s Great Firewall. Does that mean the world is in for an extended version of his recent 11-minute Twitter time out? Probably not. While China’s massive censorship machine technically blocks Chinese citizens from using Twitter, there are ways around it—especially for foreigners.

The Federal Communications Commission has weighed in with a federal court to support Charter's challenge to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission's application of legacy Title II telecom regulations to its interconnected VoIP phone service. The case is being heard by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Minnesota. "The Minnesota PUC has adopted a blunderbuss approach to VoIP regulation that threatens to disrupt the national voice services market," the FCC's legal team says.

The media regulator Ofcom has ruled that the Fox News programmes Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight breached impartiality rules covering British broadcasting. The rulings relate to coverage of the Manchester Arena bombing in May and President Donald Trump’s executive order in January that restricted travel to the US from seven majority-Muslim countries. Investors interpreted the rulings as a setback for the Murdoch family’s hopes of taking full control of Sky.

Four years ago, well before the furor over allegations Moscow meddled in the 2016 election that put Donald Trump in the White House, at least 195 web addresses belonging to Trump, his family or his business empire were hijacked by hackers possibly operating out of Russia.  The Trump Organization denied the domain names were ever compromised. But a review of internet records by the AP and cybersecurity experts shows otherwise. And it was not until the week of Oct 30, after the Trump camp was asked about it by the AP, that the last of the tampered-with addresses were repaired.