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A mistrial was declared today in the trial of former AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza, who was accused of bribing a powerful state lawmaker's ally in order to obtain legislation favorable to AT&T's business.

"The jury report they have reached an impasse and cannot reach a unanimous verdict. For the reasons stated on the record, the court declares a mistrial," US District Judge Robert Gettleman wrote in an order today after the trial in the Northern District of Illinois.

La Schiazza could be tried again. AT&T itself agreed to pay a $23 million fine in 2022 to resolve a federal criminal investigation into alleged misconduct involving efforts to influence former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan. AT&T "admitted that in 2017 it arranged for an ally of Madigan to indirectly receive $22,500 in payments from the company," the Justice Department said in October 2022.

Enlarge / Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma and Virendra Sachdeva, two members of Narendra Modi's ruling BJP party, celebrate the landing of India's Chandrayaan 3 spacecraft on the Moon on August 23, 2023. (credit: Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

All at once, India's government has approved plans to develop a new reusable rocket, the centerpiece of an Indian space station, and robotic sample return mission to the Moon, and a science probe to explore Venus.

"Great news for the space sector!" Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X. Collectively, the projects authorized by India's union cabinet will cost an estimated $2.7 billion. Most of the funding will go toward the country's space station and a reusable launch vehicle.

If the projects reach their goals, the approvals announced by Modi on Wednesday will put India on a trajectory to become the third-largest space power in the 2030s, after the United States and China. V. Narayanan, director of India's Liquid Propulsion Systems Center, stated this was the objective in a recent presentation, writing that India's space initiatives will catapult the country to a place "among the three important space powers in the world."

Enlarge / The Windows App runs on Windows, but also macOS, iOS/iPadOS, web browsers, and Android. (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft announced today that it's releasing a new app called Windows App as an app for Windows that allows users to run Windows and also Windows apps (it's also coming to macOS, iOS, web browsers, and is in public preview for Android).

On most of those platforms, Windows App is a replacement for the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, which was used for connecting to a copy of Windows running on a remote computer or server—for some users and IT organizations, a relatively straightforward way to run Windows software on devices that aren't running Windows or can't run Windows natively.

The new name, though potentially confusing, attempts to sum up the app's purpose: It's a unified way to access your own Windows PCs with Remote Desktop access turned on, cloud-hosted Windows 365 and Microsoft Dev Box systems, and individual remotely hosted apps that have been provisioned by your work or school.

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

LinkedIn admitted Wednesday that it has been training its own AI on many users' data without seeking consent. Now there's no way for users to opt out of training that has already occurred, as LinkedIn limits opt-out to only future AI training.

In a blog detailing updates coming on November 20, LinkedIn general counsel Blake Lawit confirmed that LinkedIn's user agreement and privacy policy will be changed to better explain how users' personal data powers AI on the platform.

Under the new privacy policy, LinkedIn now informs users that "we may use your personal data... [to] develop and train artificial intelligence (AI) models, develop, provide, and personalize our Services, and gain insights with the help of AI, automated systems, and inferences, so that our Services can be more relevant and useful to you and others."

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A coalition of law-enforcement agencies said it shut down a service that facilitated the unlocking of more than 1.2 million stolen or lost mobile phones so they could be used by someone other than their rightful owner.

The service was part of iServer, a phishing-as-a-service platform that has been operating since 2018. The Argentina-based iServer sold access to a platform that offered a host of phishing-related services through email, texts, and voice calls. One of the specialized services offered was designed to help people in possession of large numbers of stolen or lost mobile devices to obtain the credentials needed to bypass protections such as the lost mode for iPhones, which prevent a lost or stolen device from being used without entering its passcode.

iServer's phishing-as-a-service model. (credit: Group-IB)

Catering to low-skilled thieves

An international operation coordinated by Europol’s European Cybercrime Center said it arrested the Argentinian national that was behind iServer and identified more than 2,000 “unlockers” who had enrolled in the phishing platform over the years. Investigators ultimately found that the criminal network had been used to unlock more than 1.2 million mobile phones. Officials said they also identified 483,000 phone owners who had received messages phishing for credentials for their lost or stolen devices.

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

After California passed laws cracking down on AI-generated deepfakes of election-related content, a popular conservative influencer promptly sued, accusing California of censoring protected speech, including satire and parody.

In his complaint, Christopher Kohls—who is known as "Mr Reagan" on YouTube and X (formerly Twitter)—said that he was suing "to defend all Americans’ right to satirize politicians." He claimed that California laws, AB 2655 and AB 2839, were urgently passed after X owner Elon Musk shared a partly AI-generated parody video on the social media platform that Kohls created to "lampoon" presidential hopeful Kamala Harris.

AB 2655, known as the "Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act," prohibits creating "with actual malice" any "materially deceptive audio or visual media of a candidate for elective office with the intent to injure the candidate’s reputation or to deceive a voter into voting for or against the candidate, within 60 days of the election." It requires social media platforms to block or remove any reported deceptive material and label "certain additional content" deemed "inauthentic, fake, or false" to prevent election interference.

Enlarge / Fitbit's Charge 6. (credit: Google)

Users of Fitbit’s iOS and Android apps have been reporting problems with the apps' ability to sync and collect and display accurate data. Some have been complaining of such problems since at least April, and Fitbit has been working on addressing syncing issues since at least September 3. However, Google's Fitbit hasn't said when it expects the bugs to be totally resolved.

On September 3, Fitbit's Status Dashboard updated to show a service disruption, pointing to an incident affecting the web API.

"Some users may notice data discrepancies or syncing issues between [third-party] apps and Fitbit. Our team is currently investigating the root cause of the issue," the dashboard reads.