Category: Tech News Feed

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran tested one of its satellite carrying rockets with a suborbital flight on Monday, state media reported, the first such test since a ceasefire was reached after a 12-day war waged by Israel against Iran in June, which also saw the United States strike nuclear-related facilities in the Islamic Republic.

The test was the latest for a program that the West says improves Tehran’s ballistic missiles.

A report by the official IRNA news agency said the Ghased satellite carrier test aimed at “assessing some emerging new technologies in the country’s space industry.” It said the test results will help improve the function of Iran’s satellites and space systems.

The report did not provide any further details on the test flight or from where the rocket was launched.

Iran from time to time Iran launches satellite carriers to send its satellites to the space. Last September, Iran launched a satellite into space with a rocket built by the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

The Ghased, a solid and fluid fuel rocket, was first inaugurated in 2020 by the Guard when it put a military satellite in the orbit.

The war in June killed nearly 1,100 Iranians, including senior military commanders and nuclear scientist. Retaliatory missile barrages by Iran killed 28 in Israel.

LONDON (AP) — A routine moment of crowdwork at a Coldplay concert went viral last week when a couple tried to avoid the spotlight after they were caught hugging on the jumbotron. Internet sleuths quickly figured out that they were the CEO and chief people officer of a little-known tech company called Astronomer.

The snippet of video set the internet alight, fueling a wave of memes and drawing attention to the erosion of privacy in public spaces.

Here are some things to know:

What happened at the concert

During the concert on Wednesday at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, lead singer Chris Martin asked the cameras to scan the crowd for his “Jumbotron Song,” when he sings a few lines about the people the camera lands on.

A man wearing a birthday sash was up first. Two people in banana costumes were highlighted.

But in between, something unexpected happened. For several seconds, a couple was shown on the big screen. They were cuddling and smiling, his arms wrapped around her, as she leaned back into him.

When they saw themselves on the big screen, her jaw dropped, her hands flew to her face and she spun away from the camera. He ducked out of the frame, as did she.

“Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Martin joked.

It didn’t end there.

Who was involved

After the video went viral, the internet got to work.

Online sleuths rapidly figured out that the man was Andy Byron, chief executive officer, while she was Kristin Cabot, the chief people officer — in other words, the head of human resources.

Astronomer, based in New York, provides big companies with a platform that helps them organize their data.

The company at first said little about the incident. In response to an initial inquiry from The Associated Press, Astronomer’s spokesman said only that a statement attributed to Byron that circulated online immediately after the incident was a “fake from a clearly labeled parody account.”

The company later confirmed the identities of the couple in a statement to AP.

What happened to the CEO

In the hours after the video went viral, Byron’s name was at one point the most searched term on Google.

Astronomer eventually addressed the situation, announcing in a LinkedIn post late Friday that Byron had been placed on leave and that the board of directors had launched a formal investigation.

The company said a day later that Byron had resigned, and that its cofounder and chief product officer, Pete DeJoy, was tapped as interim CEO while it searches for Byron’s successor.

“Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met,” the company said in its post on LinkedIn.

DeJoy weighed in on Monday how the company was thrust into the spotlight.

“The events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies—let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world — ever encounter,” he wrote on Linkedin. “The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name.

Why you should read those warnings about being filmed

It’s easy to miss, but most concert venues have signs informing the audience that they could be filmed during the event. Look for them on the walls when you arrive and around the bar areas or toilets. It’s common practice especially when bands like to use performances for music videos or concert films.

The venue in this case, Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, also has a privacy policy online which states: “When you visit our location or attend or participate in an event at our location, we may capture your image, voice and/or likeness, including through the use of CCTV cameras and/or when we film or photograph you in a public location.”

What it says about privacy

In the internet age, such videos — or ones taken on someone’s smartphone — can quickly zip around the world.

This video rocketed around social media, as people speculated about why the couple dodged the camera.

Empathy for the pair and their families was mixed with plenty of snarky commentary and countless memes, with the fake statement from the chief executive generating a lot of additional vitriol. And news reports said that Byron’s LinkedIn account was disabled after it was flooded by a wave of comments.

“It’s a little bit unsettling how easily we can be identified with biometrics, how our faces are online, how social media can track us — and how the internet has gone from being a place of interaction, to a gigantic surveillance system,” said Mary Angela Bock, an associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media. “We are being surveilled by our social media. They’re tracking us in exchange for entertaining us.”

_____

AP Business Writer Wyatte Grantham-Philips contributed to this report from New York.

PARIS (AP) — Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Monday denied accusations from French prosecutors of alleged data tampering and fraud, calling them politically motivated.

X was responding to an announcement earlier this month from the Paris prosecutor’s office, which said it was opening an investigation into the two alleged offenses.

Both offenses involved an “automated data processing system,” according to prosecutors, who provided scant details of the alleged wrongdoing. They are potentially punishable in France with a jail term of up to 10 years.

The platform said French authorities were carrying out a “politically-motivated criminal investigation into X over the alleged manipulation of its algorithm and alleged ‘fraudulent data extraction’.”

“X categorically denies these allegations,” it said in a post from its Global Government Affairs account.

The prosecutor’s office has said it acted on information that two people provided in January to its cybercrimes unit. One of them is a member of parliament, and the other is a senior official in a French government institution. It didn’t identify them or the institution.

Prosecutors said the two people alleged suspected use of X’s algorithm for the “purposes of foreign interference,” without providing details.

The platform said it “remains in the dark” about the the specific allegations. “However, based on what we know so far, X believes that this investigation is distorting French law in order to serve a political agenda and, ultimately, restrict free speech.”

The Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday that it has asked X to grant police investigators access to its algorithm, as part of the probe.

The request was made in a letter last week, it said. It said that “investigators are bound by confidentiality and that only those in charge of the investigation will have access.”

The office said it hasn’t had a formal response from X.

NEW YORK (AP) — Microsoft has issued an emergency fix to close off a vulnerability in Microsoft’s widely-used SharePoint software that hackers have exploited to carry out widespread attacks on businesses and at least some U.S. government agencies.

The company issued an alert to customers Saturday saying it was aware of the zero-day exploit being used to conduct attacks and that it was working to patch the issue. Microsoft updated its guidance Sunday with instructions to fix the problem for SharePoint Server 2019 and SharePoint Server Subscription Edition. Engineers were still working on a fix for the older SharePoint Server 2016 software.

“Anybody who’s got a hosted SharePoint server has got a problem,” said Adam Meyers, senior vice president with CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm. “It’s a significant vulnerability.”

Companies and government agencies around the world use SharePoint for internal document management, data organization and collaboration.

What is a zero-day exploit?

A zero-day exploit is a cyberattack that takes advantage of a previously unknown security vulnerability. “Zero-day” refers to the fact that the security engineers have had zero days to develop a fix for the vulnerability.

According to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the exploit affecting SharePoint is “a variant of the existing vulnerability CVE-2025-49706 and poses a risk to organizations with on-premise SharePoint servers.”

Security researchers warn that the exploit, reportedly known as “ToolShell,” is a serious one and can allow actors to fully access SharePoint file systems, including services connected to SharePoint, such as Teams and OneDrive.

Google’s Threat Intelligence Group warned that the vulnerability may allow bad actors to “bypass future patching.”

How widespread is the impact?

Eye Security said in its blog post that it scanned over 8,000 SharePoint servers worldwide and discovered that at least dozens of systems were compromised. The cybersecurity company said the attacks likely began on July 18.

Microsoft said the vulnerability affects only on-site SharePoint servers used within businesses or organizations, and does not affect Microsoft’s cloud-based SharePoint Online service.

But Michael Sikorski, CTO and Head of Threat Intelligence for Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks, warns that the exploit still leaves many potentially exposed to bad actors.

“While cloud environments remain unaffected, on-prem SharePoint deployments — particularly within government, schools, health care including hospitals, and large enterprise companies — are at immediate risk.”

What do you do now?

The vulnerability targets SharePoint server software so customers of that product will want to immediately follow Microsoft’s guidance to patch their on-site systems.

Although the scope of the attack is still being assessed, CISA warned that the impact could be widespread and recommended that any servers impacted by the exploit should be disconnected from the internet until they are patched.

“We are urging organizations who are running on-prem SharePoint to take action immediately and apply all relevant patches now and as they become available, rotate all cryptographic material, and engage professional incident response. An immediate, band-aid fix would be to unplug your Microsoft SharePoint from the internet until a patch is available,” Sikorski advises.

As cryptocurrencies become more intertwined with the traditional financial system, industry heavyweights are racing for a long-sought goal of turning real-world assets into digital tokens.

“Tokenization is going to open the door to a massive trading revolution,” said Vlad Tenev, the CEO of the trading platform Robinhood at a recent James Bond-themed tokenization launch event in the south of France.

Advocates say tokenization is the next leap forward in crypto and can help break down walls that have advantaged the wealthy and make trading cheaper, more transparent and more accessible for everyday investors.

But critics say tokenization threatens to undermine a century’s worth of securities law and investor protections that have made the U.S. financial system the envy of the world. And Robinhood’s push into tokenizing shares of private companies quickly faced pushback from one of the world’s most popular startups.

What is tokenization?

The basic idea behind tokenization: Use blockchain technology that powers cryptocurrencies to create digital tokens as stand-ins for things like bonds, real estate or even fractional ownership of a piece of art and that can be traded like crypto by virtually anyone, anywhere at any time.

The massive growth of stablecoins, which are a type of cryptocurrency typically bought and sold for $1, has helped fuel the appetite to tokenize other financial assets, crypto venture capitalist Katie Haun said on a recent podcast.

She said tokenization will upend investing in ways similar to how streamers radically changed how people watch television.

“You used to have to sit there on a Thursday night and watch Seinfeld,” Haun said. “You tune in at a specific time, you don’t get to choose your program, you couldn’t be watching a program like Squid Games from Korea. Netflix was market-expanding. In the same way, I think the tokenization of real-world assets will be market expanding.”

Growing momentum

Robinhood began offering tokenized stock trading of major U.S. public companies for its European customers earlier this month and gave away tokens to some customers meant to represent shares in OpenAI and SpaceX, two highly valued private companies.

Several other firms are diving in. Crypto exchange Kraken also allows customers outside the U.S. to trade tokenized stocks while Coinbase has petitioned regulators to open the market to its U.S. customers. Wall Street giants BlackRock and Franklin Templeton currently offer tokenized money market funds. McKinsey projects that tokenized assets could reach $2 trillion by 2030.

Crypto’s golden age

The push for tokenization comes at a heady time in crypto, an industry that’s seen enormous growth from the creation and early development of bitcoin more than 15 years ago by libertarian-leaning computer enthusiasts to a growing acceptance in mainstream finance.

The world’s most popular cryptocurrency is now regularly setting all-time highs — more than $123,000 on Monday — while other forms of crypto like stablecoins are exploding in use and the Trump administration has pledged to usher in what’s been called the “golden age” for digital assets.

Lee Reiners, a lecturing fellow at Duke University, said the biggest winners in the push for tokenization could be a small handful of exchanges like Robinhood that see their trading volumes and influence spike.

“Which is kind of ironic given the origins of crypto, which was to bypass intermediaries,” Reiners said.

Trump bump

Interest in tokenization has also gotten a boost thanks to the election of President Donald Trump, who has made enacting more crypto-friendly regulations a top priority of his administration and signed a new law regulating stablecoins on Friday.

“Tokenization is an innovation and we at the SEC should be focused on how do we advance innovation at the marketplace,” said Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins.

Is it legal?

Securities law can be complex and even defining what is a security can be a hotly debated question, particularly in crypto. The crypto exchange Binance pulled back offerings of tokenized securities in 2021 after German regulators raised questions about potential violations of that country’s securities law.

Under Trump, the SEC has taken a much less expansive view than the previous administration and dropped or paused litigation against crypto companies that the agency had previously accused of violating securities law.

Hilary Allen, a professor at the American University Washington College of Law, said crypto companies have been emboldened by Trump’s victory to be more aggressive in pushing what they can offer.

“The most pressing risk is (tokenization) being used as a regulatory arbitrage play as a way of getting around the rules,” she said.

However, the SEC has struck a cautionary tone when it comes to tokens. Shortly after Robinhood’s announcement, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who has been an outspoken crypto supporter, issued a statement saying companies issuing tokenized stock should consider “their disclosure obligations” under federal law.

“As powerful as blockchain technology is, it does not have magical abilities to transform the nature of the underlying asset,” Peirce said.

All eyes on private companies

One of the most closely watched areas of tokenization involves private companies, which aren’t subject to strict financial reporting requirements like publicly traded ones.

Many hot startups are not going public as often as they used to and instead are increasingly relying on wealthy and institutional investors to raise large sums of money and stay private.

That’s unfair to the little guy, say advocates of tokenization.

“These are massive wealth generators for a very small group of rich, well-connected insiders who get access to these deals early,” said Robinhood executive Johann Kerbrat. “Crypto has the power to solve this inequality.”

“Please be careful”

But Robinhood’s giveaway of tokens meant to represent an investment in OpenAI immediately drew pushback from the company itself, which said it was not involved in Robinhood’s plan and did not endorse it.

“Any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval—we did not approve any transfer,” OpenAI said on social media. “Please be careful.”

Public companies have strict public reporting requirements about their financial health that private companies don’t have to produce. Such reporting requirements have helped protect investors and give a legitimacy to the U.S. financial system, said Allen, who said the push for tokenized sales of shares in private companies is “eerily familiar” to how things played out before the creation of the SEC nearly a century ago.

“Where we’re headed is where we were in the 1920s,” she said. “Door-to-door salesmen offering stocks and bonds, half of it had nothing behind it, people losing their life savings betting on stuff they didn’t understand.”

As cryptocurrencies become more intertwined with the traditional financial system, industry heavyweights are racing for a long-sought goal of turning real-world assets into digital tokens.

“Tokenization is going to open the door to a massive trading revolution,” said Vlad Tenev, the CEO of the trading platform Robinhood at a recent James Bond-themed tokenization launch event in the south of France.

Advocates say tokenization is the next leap forward in crypto and can help break down walls that have advantaged the wealthy and make trading cheaper, more transparent and more accessible for everyday investors.

But critics say tokenization threatens to undermine a century’s worth of securities law and investor protections that have made the U.S. financial system the envy of the world. And Robinhood’s push into tokenizing shares of private companies quickly faced pushback from one of the world’s most popular startups.

What is tokenization?

The basic idea behind tokenization: Use blockchain technology that powers cryptocurrencies to create digital tokens as stand-ins for things like bonds, real estate or even fractional ownership of a piece of art and that can be traded like crypto by virtually anyone, anywhere at any time.

The massive growth of stablecoins, which are a type of cryptocurrency typically bought and sold for $1, has helped fuel the appetite to tokenize other financial assets, crypto venture capitalist Katie Haun said on a recent podcast.

She said tokenization will upend investing in ways similar to how streamers radically changed how people watch television.

“You used to have to sit there on a Thursday night and watch Seinfeld,” Haun said. “You tune in at a specific time, you don’t get to choose your program, you couldn’t be watching a program like Squid Games from Korea. Netflix was market-expanding. In the same way, I think the tokenization of real-world assets will be market expanding.”

Growing momentum

Robinhood began offering tokenized stock trading of major U.S. public companies for its European customers earlier this month and gave away tokens to some customers meant to represent shares in OpenAI and SpaceX, two highly valued private companies.

Several other firms are diving in. Crypto exchange Kraken also allows customers outside the U.S. to trade tokenized stocks while Coinbase has petitioned regulators to open the market to its U.S. customers. Wall Street giants BlackRock and Franklin Templeton currently offer tokenized money market funds. McKinsey projects that tokenized assets could reach $2 trillion by 2030.

Crypto’s golden age

The push for tokenization comes at a heady time in crypto, an industry that’s seen enormous growth from the creation and early development of bitcoin more than 15 years ago by libertarian-leaning computer enthusiasts to a growing acceptance in mainstream finance.

The world’s most popular cryptocurrency is now regularly setting all-time highs — more than $123,000 on Monday — while other forms of crypto like stablecoins are exploding in use and the Trump administration has pledged to usher in what’s been called the “golden age” for digital assets.

Lee Reiners, a lecturing fellow at Duke University, said the biggest winners in the push for tokenization could be a small handful of exchanges like Robinhood that see their trading volumes and influence spike.

“Which is kind of ironic given the origins of crypto, which was to bypass intermediaries,” Reiners said.

Trump bump

Interest in tokenization has also gotten a boost thanks to the election of President Donald Trump, who has made enacting more crypto-friendly regulations a top priority of his administration and signed a new law regulating stablecoins on Friday.

“Tokenization is an innovation and we at the SEC should be focused on how do we advance innovation at the marketplace,” said Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins.

Is it legal?

Securities law can be complex and even defining what is a security can be a hotly debated question, particularly in crypto. The crypto exchange Binance pulled back offerings of tokenized securities in 2021 after German regulators raised questions about potential violations of that country’s securities law.

Under Trump, the SEC has taken a much less expansive view than the previous administration and dropped or paused litigation against crypto companies that the agency had previously accused of violating securities law.

Hilary Allen, a professor at the American University Washington College of Law, said crypto companies have been emboldened by Trump’s victory to be more aggressive in pushing what they can offer.

“The most pressing risk is (tokenization) being used as a regulatory arbitrage play as a way of getting around the rules,” she said.

However, the SEC has struck a cautionary tone when it comes to tokens. Shortly after Robinhood’s announcement, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who has been an outspoken crypto supporter, issued a statement saying companies issuing tokenized stock should consider “their disclosure obligations” under federal law.

“As powerful as blockchain technology is, it does not have magical abilities to transform the nature of the underlying asset,” Peirce said.

All eyes on private companies

One of the most closely watched areas of tokenization involves private companies, which aren’t subject to strict financial reporting requirements like publicly traded ones.

Many hot startups are not going public as often as they used to and instead are increasingly relying on wealthy and institutional investors to raise large sums of money and stay private.

That’s unfair to the little guy, say advocates of tokenization.

“These are massive wealth generators for a very small group of rich, well-connected insiders who get access to these deals early,” said Robinhood executive Johann Kerbrat. “Crypto has the power to solve this inequality.”

“Please be careful”

But Robinhood’s giveaway of tokens meant to represent an investment in OpenAI immediately drew pushback from the company itself, which said it was not involved in Robinhood’s plan and did not endorse it.

“Any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval—we did not approve any transfer,” OpenAI said on social media. “Please be careful.”

Public companies have strict public reporting requirements about their financial health that private companies don’t have to produce. Such reporting requirements have helped protect investors and give a legitimacy to the U.S. financial system, said Allen, who said the push for tokenized sales of shares in private companies is “eerily familiar” to how things played out before the creation of the SEC nearly a century ago.

“Where we’re headed is where we were in the 1920s,” she said. “Door-to-door salesmen offering stocks and bonds, half of it had nothing behind it, people losing their life savings betting on stuff they didn’t understand.”

The IT company CEO captured in a widely circulated video showing him embracing an employee at a Coldplay concert has resigned.

Andy Byron resigned from his job as CEO of Cincinnati-based Astronomer Inc., according to a statement posted on LinkedIn by the company Saturday.

“Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met,” the company said in its post on LinkedIn.

The move comes a day after the company said that Byron had been placed on leave and the board of directors had launched a formal investigation into the jumbotron incident, which went viral. A company spokesman later confirmed in a statement to AP that it was Byron and Astronomer chief people officer Kristin Cabot in the video.

The short video clip shows Byron and Cabot as captured on the jumbotron at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, during a Coldplay concert on Wednesday.

Lead singer Chris Martin asked the cameras to scan the crowd for his “Jumbotron Song,” when he sings a few lines about the people the camera lands on.

“Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” he joked.

Internet sleuths identified the man as the chief executive officer of a U.S.-based company and the woman as its chief people officer.

Pete DeJoy, Astronomer’s cofounder and chief product officer, has been tapped as interim CEO while the company conducts a search for Byron’s successor.

Most concert venues warn attendees that they can be filmed

It’s easy to miss, but most concert venues have signs informing the audience that they could be filmed during the event. Look for them on the walls when you arrive and around the bar areas or toilets. It’s common practice especially when bands like to use performances for music videos or concert films.

The venue in this case, Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, also has a privacy policy online which states: “When you visit our location or attend or participate in an event at our location, we may capture your image, voice and/or likeness, including through the use of CCTV cameras and/or when we film or photograph you in a public location.”

Once captured, a moment can be shared widely

“They probably would have got away with it if they hadn’t reacted,” said Alison Taylor, a clinical associate professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. And by the time the alleged identities emerged on social media, it hit a classic nerve around “leaders acting like the rules don’t apply to them,” she added.

Still, Taylor and others stress how quickly such a video can lead to an internet search to find the people involved — and note that it’s important to remember that such “doxing” isn’t just reserved for famous people. Beyond someone simply spotting a familiar face and spreading the word, technological advances, such as the rising adoption of artificial intelligence, have made it easier and faster overall to find just about anyone in a viral video today.

“It’s a little bit unsettling how easily we can be identified with biometrics, how our faces are online, how social media can track us — and how the internet has gone from being a place of interaction, to a gigantic surveillance system,” said Mary Angela Bock, an associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media. “When you think about it, we are being surveilled by our social media. They’re tracking us in exchange for entertaining us.”

_____

AP Business Writer Wyatte Grantham-Philips contributed to this report from New York.

A Mississippi law that requires social media users to verify their ages can go into effect, a federal court has ruled. A tech industry group has pledged to continue challenging the law, arguing it infringes on users’ rights to privacy and free expression.

A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overruled a decision by a federal district judge to block the 2024 law from going into effect. It’s the latest legal development as court challenges play out against similar laws in states across the country.

Parents — and even some teens themselves — are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media use on young people. Supporters of the new laws have said they are needed to help curb the explosive use of social media among young people, and what researchers say is an associated increase in depression and anxiety.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch argued in a court filing defending the law that steps such as age verification for digital sites could mitigate harm caused by “sex trafficking, sexual abuse, child pornography, targeted harassment, sextortion, incitement to suicide and self-harm, and other harmful and often illegal conduct against children.”

Attorneys for NetChoice, which brought the lawsuit, have pledged to continue their court challenge, arguing the law threatens privacy rights and unconstitutionally restricts the free expression of users of all ages.

The industry group, which has filed similar lawsuits in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Utah, represents some of the country’s most high-profile technology companies, including Google, which owns YouTube; Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat; and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

In a written statement, Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, said the group is “very disappointed” in the decision to let Mississippi’s law go into effect and is “considering all available options.”

“NetChoice will continue to fight against this egregious infringement on access to fully protected speech online,” Taske said. “Parents — not the government — should determine what is right for their families.”

___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday signed into law new regulations for a type of cryptocurrency, a major milestone for an industry that has spent heavily to strengthen its legitimacy and political might.

The GENIUS Act sets initial guardrails and consumer protections for stablecoins, which are tied to assets like the U.S. dollar to reduce price volatility compared with other forms of cryptocurrency. It passed both the House and Senate with wide bipartisan margins.

The new law is meant to bolster consumer confidence in the crypto industry, which has quickly become a major power player in Washington thanks to massive campaign donations and spending on lobbying. Its passage comes as Trump had repeatedly pledged to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the world.”

“For years you were mocked and dismissed and counted out,” Trump told crypto industry executives at a White House bill signing attended by about 200 people, including several top GOP lawmakers. “This signing is a massive validation of your hard work and your pioneering spirit.”

The crypto industry has long complained it was unfairly targeted by former President Joe Biden’s administration and spent heavily to help Trump win last year’s election.

The president lavished praise on crypto leaders during his speech Friday, saying “nobody has gained the respect in such a short period of time.”

Trump said helping the cryptocurrency industry was “good for the dollar and it’s good for the country.”

“That’s why I backed you at an early stage,” said Trump, who had previously been a skeptic of cryptocurrency before embracing it. His administration has taken several early steps to boost the crypto industry, including the Securities and Exchange Commission dropping several enforcement actions against large crypto companies.

Trump then added a candid admission about the political calculus of his support for the crypto industry: “And I also did it for the votes,” he said, drawing laughter from the audience.

The president also joked that lawmakers had named the GENIUS Act after him. The acronym stands for “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins.”

The use of stablecoins has grown dramatically in recent years. Circle, the U.S.-based issuer of one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year and quickly saw its value soar amid heavy interest from crypto enthusiasts and investors. Stablecoin issuers make profits by collecting the interest on the assets they hold in reserve to back their stablecoins.

A provision in the GENIUS Act bans members of Congress and their families from profiting off stablecoins. But that prohibition does not extend to the president and his family, even as Trump builds a crypto empire from the White House. His family holds a significant stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto project that launched its own stablecoin earlier this year and received an early boost from an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates.

The House also passed two other bills Thursday that are meant to help the crypto industry. One creates a new market structure for cryptocurrency, and the other bans the Federal Reserve from issuing a new digital currency. Both measures now go to the Senate.

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A snappy tune by a blogger that mockingly laments his poor internet connection in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don has gotten over a half-million views on Instagram in two weeks.

“How to say you’re from Rostov without saying a word? Show one bar of cellphone service,” Pavel Osipyan raps while walking around the city, smartphone in hand. “We have internet until 12 o’clock, and recently there’s been no connection at all. No need to be angry, just get used to it already.”

The complaints by Osipyan — unable to pay electronically for groceries, or having to use paper maps while driving — aren’t isolated to Rostov-on-Don, which borders Ukraine and, as home to Russia’s Southern Military District, is targeted frequently by drones.

In the last two months, cellphone internet shutdowns, which officials say are needed to foil Ukrainian drones, have hit dozens of Russian regions — from those near the fighting to parts of Siberia and even the Far East. Some Wi-Fi outages also have been reported.

Russians contacted by The Associated Press talked about card payments not going through, taxi and ride-sharing apps not working properly, ATMs that sometimes fail.

Experts point to the unprecedented nature of the measures and warn of far-reaching consequences in a country where the Kremlin already has significantly curtailed online freedom.

Such shutdowns in the name of security legitimize them to the public and open the door for authorities abusing the restrictions, said Anastasiya Zhyrmont, policy manager for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the Access Now digital rights group.

A signal to regional authorities

Experts say the trend began in May, when Russia celebrated the 80th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazi Germany in World War II and foreign dignitaries flocked to Moscow for a big military parade.

The capital suffered severe disruptions of cellphone connectivity to the internet for days, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed those were deliberate restrictions due to regular Ukrainian drone attacks. Asked how long they’d last, he replied, “This will be done as needed.”

Russia has restricted smartphone connectivity before, with isolated instances during protests, as well as in regions bordering Ukraine.

Shutdowns in the capital, however, sent a signal to authorities across the vast country that it’s a useful tool, said lawyer Sarkis Darbinyan, founder of Russian internet freedom group Roskomsvoboda.

Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb” in early June, in which drones launched from containers on trucks attacked airfields deep inside Russia, made officials all the more eager to take action, Darbinyan said.

“They got really scared that drones now may appear, like a jack-in-the-box, in any Russian regions,” he told AP.

By mid-July, deliberate shutdowns spread to most of the country, according to Na Svyazi — Russian for “staying connected” — an activist group tracking internet availability.

On Thursday, the group said 61 of Russia’s more than 80 regions suffered cellphone internet shutdowns. In 42 regions, there were reports of broadband network outages.

The Russian military reported downing 122 Ukrainian drones over a dozen regions overnight Wednesday to Thursday. It said 73 drones were shot down early Friday.

Some regional officials confirmed that cellphone internet was restricted for security reasons. Nizhny Novgorod Gov. Gleb Nikitin said this month the measure will stay in place in the region east of Moscow for “as long as the threat remains.”

Asked Thursday whether such mass shutdowns were justified, Peskov said “everything that has to do with ensuring the safety of citizens, everything is justified and everything is a priority.”

Unpredictable disruptions

Russians from affected regions say the outages can last for hours or days; patterns also are hard to discern, with service working in one part of a city but vanishing elsewhere.

In Voronezh, near Ukraine and frequently targeted by drones, one resident said she felt like she was in “a cave” in early July with no cellphone internet or Wi-Fi in her home. The woman, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said she was only able to get online at work the next day.

Cellphone internet in the southwestern city of Samara “goes out at the most unpredictable moments,” said Natalia, who also spoke on condition that her last name be withheld for safety reasons. Her home Wi-Fi recently also has slowed to a near halt around 11 p.m., staying that way for a few hours, she said.

Connectivity has improved recently in the Siberian city of Omsk, said Viktor Shkurenko, who owns retail stores and other businesses there. But cellphone internet service was out in his office for an entire week. A few of his smaller stores that rely on cellphone networks suffered disruptions, but nothing critical, he said.

“I don’t feel any super strong discomfort,” said Grigori Khromov of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s fifth-largest city where regular and widespread shutdowns were reported. “I have an office job and I work either at home or in the office and have either wire internet or Wi-Fi.”

In rural areas, small towns and villages, where cellphone internet often is the only way to get online, the situation was harder to gauge.

Pharmacies in such areas have struggled, Russian media reported and the Independent Pharmacies Association confirmed to AP. Viktoria Presnyakova, head of the association, said in a statement that prescriptions must be logged in special software, but that becomes impossible without an internet connection for weeks.

A social media user in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine complained on Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov’s social media page that without cellphone internet and a working alarm system, village residents have to bang on a rail to warn neighbors of an attack. The authorities promised to look into improving connectivity in the area.

Authorities elsewhere also announced steps to minimize disruptions by opening Wi-Fi spots. They also are reportedly planning to establish an agency to coordinate the shutdowns, according to Izvestia, a Kremlin-backed newspaper that cited unidentified government sources. Peskov said he was unaware of the plan.

Russia’s efforts at internet control

Russian and Ukrainian drones use cellphone internet networks to operate, so shutdowns are one way authorities try to counter the attacks, said Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

But it’s also part of the Kremlin’s long-term effort to rein in the internet. Authorities have actively censored online content in the last decade, blocking thousands of websites of independent media, opposition groups and human rights organizations.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the government blocked major social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as well as encrypted messenger platform Signal and a few other messaging apps.

Access to YouTube — wildly popular in Russia — was disrupted last year in what experts called deliberate throttling by the authorities. The Kremlin blamed YouTube owner Google for not properly maintaining its hardware in Russia.

State internet watchdogs routinely block virtual private network services that help circumvent the restrictions, and there are plans to introduce a national messenger app, expected to replace foreign ones.

Along with the shutdowns, these are part of a larger campaign “to establish control over the internet, which is something the Kremlin had failed to do 20 years prior on the same level that China did,” said the ISW’s Stepanenko.

Access Now’s Zhyrmont says it’s “very disturbing” that Russians have gotten used to living with growing internet restrictions, including shutdowns.

“This shouldn’t be modern reality,” she said.