The FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council approved reports aimed at improving emergency communications in the U.S. Wednesday's meeting was the current CSRIC’s sixth. The FCC is to take up changes to rules for wireless emergency alerts (WEA) at the Sept. 29 commissioner meeting (see 1609080083). None of the reports approved Wednesday was immediately available.
The FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council approved reports aimed at improving emergency communications in the U.S. Wednesday's meeting was the current CSRIC’s sixth. The FCC is to take up changes to rules for wireless emergency alerts (WEA) at the Sept. 29 commissioner meeting (see 1609080083). None of the reports approved Wednesday was immediately available.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control removed nine individuals from the list of Specially Designated Nationals, in line with President Barack Obama's executive order (here) to terminate the national emergency designation for the Ivory Coast, OFAC said (here).
The stage is set for the Sept. 28 nationwide test of the emergency alert system to go smoothly, said broadcasters, the FCC, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials and EAS test industry officials in interviews this week. Designed to address the shortcomings revealed by the 2011 test (see 1607180062), the 2016 version is expected to be successful, broadcast industry officials and the government agencies that oversee EAS told us. Checking those expectations is why such tests are conducted, said Maine Association of Broadcasters CEO Suzanne Goucher, who chairs the Joint NAB-National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations EAS Committee.
Resolution of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 battery-fire-hazard issue won’t come until after the Consumer Product Safety Commission issues an “official recall” notice on the smartphones, and that won’t happen until CPSC is "confident" Galaxy Note7 replacements are safer than the originals, an agency spokesman told us Monday. Meantime, CPSC wants consumers to power down their Galaxy Note7s and not recharge them and wait until an official recall notice is available, the agency said in a news statement Friday.
Resolution of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 battery-fire-hazard issue won’t come until after the Consumer Product Safety Commission issues an “official recall” notice on the smartphones, and that won’t happen until CPSC is "confident" Galaxy Note7 replacements are safer than the originals, an agency spokesman told us Monday. Meantime, CPSC wants consumers to power down their Galaxy Note7s and not recharge them and wait until an official recall notice is available, the agency said in a news statement Friday.
Resolution of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 battery-fire-hazard issue won’t come until after the Consumer Product Safety Commission issues an “official recall” notice on the smartphones, and that won’t happen until CPSC is "confident" Galaxy Note7 replacements are safer than the originals, an agency spokesman told us Monday. Meantime, CPSC wants consumers to power down their Galaxy Note7s and not recharge them and wait until an official recall notice is available, the agency said in a news statement Friday.
The FCC will consider this month whether to set new rules limiting most-favored-nation (MFN) and alternative distribution method (ADM) provisions in program carriage agreements. The tentative agenda released Thursday for its Sept. 29 meeting includes consideration of an NPRM on independent and diverse programming. In a blog post Thursday, Chairman Tom Wheeler said the MFN and ADM prohibitions are meant to promote "the availability of diverse and independent programming from which to choose."
The District of Columbia is reviewing its processes after learning human error led to a 100-minute outage of the 911 system in the District of Columbia over the weekend. The outage initially was reported as an equipment failure (see 1608290027). Now, a D.C. Office of Unified Communications spokesman said officials have determined the failure was caused by a contractor hitting an emergency shutoff button. A National Emergency Number Association official said developing standards and best practices for 911 centers could prevent similar outages at other such centers.
National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Christopher Hart doesn’t “see it happening anytime real soon” that autonomous cars will get so good that human drivers -- and their susceptibility to human error -- get banned from the road, Hart told the Bloomberg-Western Digital Data Revolution conference on artificial intelligence Thursday in San Francisco. DOT soon may release its long-awaited autonomous-vehicle guidelines, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said earlier at the event (see 1608250049).