Volkswagen AG shareholders gathering in Berlin contended with climate protesters blocking access to the venue after gluing themselves

Binace, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, will pay over $4bn to US officials after admitting to unlicensed money transfers, sanctions violations, and willfully failing to institute anti-money laundering protections, federal officials announced on Tuesday. The oversights allowed trading with sanctioned nations like Iran, Cuba, and Syria, and failed to institute systems to report suspicious potential transactions with terror groups, according to the Treasury Department. “Binance was allowing illicit actors to transact freely, supporting activities from child sexual abuse to illegal narcotics to terrorism,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellensaid on Tuesday. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of and CEO of Binance, is also stepping down, and will pay a $50m fine after pleading guilty to related charges. He could face up to 18 months in prison. “I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility,” the executive wrote on X. “This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself.” Federal officials described a wide-ranging set of problems at the crypto exchange, which at times handled two-thirds of global crypto trades. “It willfully enabled hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions between American users and users subject to US sanctions,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in remarks on Tuesday. “And its platform accommodated criminals across the world who used Binance to move their stolen funds and other criminal proceeds. “Binance prioritized its profits over the safety of the American people.” The massive penalty, one of the largest in US financial regulation history, will also go towards resolving inquiries from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. On multiple occasions, Binance leadership intentionally took steps that allowed dangerous and illegal transactions to take place, according to the Justice Department. Binance knew it served US customers, meaning it had to register with FinCen and implement anti-money laundering controls, but “chose not to comply,” per the DOJ. Rather than set up these protections, the company created a separate Binance.US platform in 2019, while seeking to encourage VIP customers to obscure their accounts and continue using the main exchange, officials said. “Binance executives, including Zhao, made a plan to contact VIP customers and help the VIP register a new account for an offshore entity and transfer holdings to that account,” the DoJ said in an announcement of the agreement on Tuesday. “Binance employees also called US VIPs to encourage them to provide information that suggested the customer was not located in the United States.” The company, knowing it had US customers, also failed to introduce controls that would stop them from making trades with sanctioned jurisdictions like Iran, resulting in over $898m in trades between US and Iran-based users between January 2019 and May 2022. At one point, according to the DoJ, Zhao told employees it was “better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” while in another instance, a compliance employee wrote in a message, “We need a banner ‘is washing drug money too hard these days - come to binance we got cake for you.’” In a statement on Tuesday, Binance acknowledge making “criminal violations.” “These resolutions acknowledge our company’s responsibility for historical, criminal compliance violations, and allow our company to turn the page on a challenging yet transformative chapter of learning and growth,” the company wrote. “With the compliance and governance enhancements enshrined in our commitments, we can begin to share our vision for Binance’s exciting future and the future of the crypto industry.” The company also emphasised that the resolutions don’t allege Binance misappropriated user funds or engaged in market manipulation. Richard Teng, the company’s former global head of regional markets, will take over as CEO, according to Binance. The massive agreement with federal regulators will also require Binance to accept the appointment of a government monitor to oversee the business and bar Zhao from involvement with the company until three years after the monitor is appointed, according to court records viewed by The New York Times. Notably, the Securities and Exchange Commission was not a part of the Binance agreement. The SEC sued Binance and Zhao in June, alleging that they used companies beneficially owned by Zhao to inflate trading prices and make money off customers, allegedly mixing customer funds with Binance money. “While we take the SEC’s allegations seriously, they should not be the subject of an SEC enforcement action, let alone on an emergency basis. We intend to defend our platform vigorously,” the company responded at the time in a statement. “And, to be clear: any allegations that user assets on the Binance.US platform have ever been at risk are simply wrong, and there is zero justification for the Staff’s action in light of the ample time the Staff has had to conduct their investigation,” the company added in the statement. The massive settlement comes just weeks after FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty in federal court of defrauding customers on his popular cryptocurrency exchange out of billions of dollars. Bankman-Fried’s defence team has vowed to fight the charges.

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Home insurance costs that have soared in much of the US may get even higher. Tens of millions

Elon Musk left the studio guys "sweating" when he came in armed with a gun.

Taiwan is investigating whether four of its firms broke US sanctions or its own investment rules when they provided services to Chinese companies that are reportedly helping Huawei build chip factories.

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SpaceX is about to launch the world’s biggest and tallest rocket once again. Elon Musk’s private space company has got its final approval from US federal regulators to launch Starship on Friday morning local central time. The first launch of the rocket initially appeared to go well, with the rocket launching up into the sky and preparing for its journey around Earth. But minutes later the spacecraft began to tumble and soon after that it blew up in a vast explosion. Since then, SpaceX has been working to comply with regulators including aviation authorities as well as those tasked with protecting the environment and wildlife around its base in Texas. The Federal Aviation Administration issued its license Wednesday, noting that SpaceX has met safety, environmental and other requirements to launch again. Elon Musk's rocket company said it was targeting Friday morning. After the self-destruct system blew up the rocket over the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX made dozens of improvements to the nearly 400-foot (121-meter) rocket and to the launch pad, which ended up with a large crater beneath it. SpaceX has a $3 billion NASA contract to land astronauts on the lunar surface as early as 2025, using the spacecraft. A month ago, the FAA completed its safety review of the upcoming Starship launch. It needed more time to wrap up its environmental review. No one was injured in the first attempt, but the pad was heavily damaged as the rocket's 33 main engines ignited at liftoff. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service later reported that concrete chunks, steel sheets and other objects were hurled thousands of feet (hundreds of meters) from the pad. It also said a plume of pulverized concrete sent material several miles (up to 10 kilometers) away. Wildlife and environmental groups sued the FAA over what they considered to be the FAA’s failure to fully consider the environmental impacts of the Starship program near Boca Chica Beach. Plans call for the test flight to last 1 /1/2 hours and fall short of a full orbit of Earth. The spacecraft would go eastward, passing over the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans before ditching near Hawaii. Nothing of value will be on board. Additional reporting by agencies Read More The world’s most powerful rocket should launch imminently, Elon Musk says Robot hand with bones, ligaments and tendons 3D printed in world first Users of iPhones can now check bank balance from Wallet app

By Joseph White DETROIT The venture capital arm of automaker Stellantis said on Thursday it will invest about

Twitter’s abrupt decision to limit the number of tweets users can see on a daily

This month’s steep decline in Bitcoin trading volume on Binance is likely tied in part to the end

Twitter has rebranded to X as part of Elon Musk’s plan to create an “everything app”. The tech billionaire, who took over the platform in October 2022, launched the new logo over the weekend after crowdsourcing ideas for users. He also reportedly informed employees by email that Twitter would become X, as well as redirected the domain X.com to Twitter.com. Mr Musk said Twitter’s famous blue bird logo would eventually be phased out entirely. Linda Yaccarino, who Mr Musk hired to be the chief executive of Twitter last month, confirmed the switch in a series of tweets late on Sunday. “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression,” she wrote. “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.” Ms Yaccarino described the app as the “future state of unlimited interactivity”, incorporating audio, video, messaging, payments and banking. “There’s absolutely no limit to this transformation,” she added. “X will be the platform that can deliver, well... everything.” Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, said on Sunday that the move would further alienate Twitter’s original, and once fiercely loyal, user base. “On the one hand, you can make the argument he would be getting rid of an iconic brand. On the other hand, he is signalling it is a new day for what was once Twitter and that the company is heading in a different direction with a different user base.” Mr Musk said in a Sunday post he wanted to change Twitter’s logo and polled his millions of followers whether they would favour changing the site’s colour scheme from blue to black. He posted a picture of a stylized X against a black outer space-themed background. “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” he said. Under Mr Musk’s tumultuous tenure since he bought Twitter in October, the company has changed its business name to X Corp, reflecting the billionaire’s vision to create a “super app” like China’s WeChat. In April, Twitter’s legacy blue bird logo was temporarily replaced by Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog, helping drive a surge in the cryptocurrency’s market value. The company came under widespread criticism from users and marketing professionals when Musk announced early this month that Twitter would limit how many tweets per day various accounts can read. The daily limits helped Meta Platforms-owned rival service Threads, which crossed 100 million sign-ups within five days of its 5 July launch. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment about the latest changes. Additional reporting from agencies Read More TikTok is now most favourable single source of news in UK teenagers, research shows Apple’s next iPhone may include new battery technology, report suggests DMs may come to Threads soon as app’s user base grows to one-fifth of Twitter’s Battery breakthroughs are about to trigger a transport revolution