Azione Unlimited announced its “Connected Clusters” initiative for dealers Tuesday. The web-based program is designed to provide a “summit-like” way for dealers to share ideas and knowledge between Azione spring and fall conferences, said Azione President Richard Glikes. The 157 Azione dealer members have been divided into 13 cluster groups of 12 members each, and dealers will meet online every four to six weeks via GoToMeeting, Glikes said.

Qualcomm said it’s supporting the European Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) across its product portfolios. The company began implementing hardware support for Galileo several years ago in select chipsets, and now offers what it called the industry's first “pervasive,” end-to-end location-services platform for smartphone, computing, infotainment, telematics and IoT applications. The Qualcomm IZat location services platform uses up to six satellite constellations concurrently without incremental device hardware or cost, and users benefit from more than 80 different satellites when calculating global position for navigation or location-based applications, Qualcomm said Tuesday. The addition of another GNSS is intended to provide more accurate location performance, faster time-to-first-fix, and improved robustness worldwide, “particularly in challenging urban environments where the combination of narrow streets and tall buildings can reduce accuracy,” the company said. The feature is integrated in the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, 600 and 400 processors and modems, and Galileo will be supported on smartphones and compute devices through software releases for Snapdragon 820, 652, 650, 625, 617 and 435 processors; automotive infotainment solutions incorporating Snapdragon 820A; telematics and IoT solutions with Snapdragon X16, X12, X7 and X5 LTE modems; and Qualcomm 9x15 and MDM6x00 modems, said the company.

Correction: The "pragmatic argument" that Donald Trump is bad for the presidency, but that Hillary Clinton "is worse, in terms of both her policy positions and ethics," is an opinion held by a "camp" of congressional Republicans who on that basis support Trump’s nomination, CTA President Gary Shapiro said in a Medium.com blog post Friday blasting Trump as "unfit" for the White House (see 1606170031). It's not the view of Shapiro on Clinton, he said, and he has taken no position on her candidacy.

Facebook and Twitter are the newest members of CTA, the trade group said in a Thursday announcement. CTA President Gary Shapiro hailed them in a statement as “great American companies that have fundamentally revolutionized how we communicate." Facebook and Twitter “have created extraordinary new platforms for commerce and innovation, fulfilling the remarkable potential of the internet,” Shapiro said.

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) said it launched an early certification test program for products incorporating USB Type-C connectors and the DisplayPort Alternate Mode (Alt Mode) standard. The DisplayPort Alt Mode standard enables a USB Type-C connector and cable to deliver full DisplayPort audio/video performance (driving monitor resolutions of 4K and beyond), SuperSpeed USB data, and up to 100 watts of power, VESA said in a Wednesday news release. DisplayPort is the only display interface alt mode that’s natively supported by both standard USB-C connectors and cables, it said. Allion Labs and Granite River Labs are doing certification testing, and VESA organizes and sponsors PlugTest events in the U.S. and Taiwan for member companies. VESA’s latest version of DisplayPort, v1.4, incorporates VESA's Display Stream Compression technology to facilitate high dynamic range and 8K video across the USB-C connector, it said.

The Trustworthy Accountability Group said it plans to provide best practices and an information-sharing infrastructure to help the advertising industry better fight malware. "Later this year, TAG plans to unveil the results of that work and begin to offer companies a TAG anti-malware seal if they comply with those standards," the group said in a Wednesday blog post, after a malware summit in New York City. The group, formed two years ago by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers and Interactive Advertising Bureau to tackle malicious software, among other problems, said the summit's discussions were confidential but featured several industry leaders, including AppNexus co-founder Brian O'Kelley and The Media Trust CEO Chris Olson. Industry leaders also met with representatives from the departments of Homeland Security and Justice and the FBI.

A U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) report found at least some evidence that cellphones cause cancer. NTP researchers subjected male rats to constant, heavy doses of cellphone radiation. The program gathered data on an unprecedented number of rodents subjected to a lifetime of electromagnetic radiation, at much higher does than anyone would get using a cellphone, NTP said. The program released partial results of the $25 million study, which hasn't been completed. Researchers found “low incidences of 12 malignant gliomas in the brain and schwannomas in the heart of male rats” exposed to radiofrequency radiation (RFR), the report said. NTP tested both GSM and CDMA systems used in U.S. wireless networks. “Potentially preneoplastic lesions were also observed in the brain and heart of male rats exposed to RFR,” the report said. Rats in a control group not subject to the radiation didn't develop similar tumors, NTP said. "No biologically significant effects were observed in the brain or heart of female rats,” the report found. NTP said it decided to release partial results because of the importance of the topic. “Given the widespread global usage of mobile communications among users of all ages, even a very small increase in the incidence of disease resulting from exposure to RFR could have broad implications for public health,” NTP said. “There is a high level of public and media interest regarding the safety of cell phone RFR and the specific results of these NTP studies.” CTIA is still reviewing the study, a spokesperson said. "The larger scientific community will consider the partial findings, as well as the complete reports, in the context of the many other scientific studies conducted over several decades," CTIA said. "Numerous international and U.S. organizations, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, World Health Organization, and American Cancer Society, have determined that the already existing body of peer-reviewed and published studies shows that there are no established health effects from radio frequency signals used in cellphones. The evidence includes official federal brain cancer statistics showing that since the introduction of cellphones in the mid-1980s, the rate of brain cancer in the United States has remained stable.” The NTP is a federal interagency group under the National Institutes of Health.

Twilio, a provider of phone and text message services to app developers, may go public. “The future of communications will be written in software, by the developers of the world -- our customers,” the company said in a prospectus filed at the SEC. “By empowering them, our mission is to fuel the future of communications.” Twilio said in a Thursday news release it hasn't decided how many shares it will offer in the IPO. The San Francisco-based company said it plans to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol TWLO.

Pay-TV subscriptions continued to fall in Q1, though cable subscription numbers improved, SNL Kagan said in a news release Thursday. Cable posted “its best first-quarter in eight years,” by losing only 18,300 video customers, the media research firm said. But cable, DBS and telco multichannel video programming distributors as a group lost 162,000 subscribers in Q1, it said. “The mounting loss in the quarter foreshadows mounting pressure on service providers and an accelerating annual decline.” MVPDs lost 1.2 million subscribers over the preceding 12 months, SNL Kagan said. DBS gained 166,000 subs in Q1, it said. The growth was driven by DirecTV's growth strategy and offsetting losses from Dish Network, the researcher said.

North Carolina’s new law on transgender use of public restrooms “has positioned the state as a leader against LGBT rights,” CTA wrote Gov. Pat McCrory (R), urging him to “revisit” the recently passed legislation. The Wednesday letter was co-signed by 13 other trade groups, including CompTIA, the National Association of Manufacturers and the tech group Tech Titans. The groups’ member companies “thrive by attracting the best and brightest employees,” the letter said. “The potential talent pool of employees not only includes LGBT employees, but a younger generation of Americans who believe all Americans should be allowed to marry, adopt and use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. With the obvious anti-equality tone and impact of this law, millions of existing and potential employees are less likely to want to live or work in North Carolina. Thus, while this law stands, our members are less likely to want to invest or locate in North Carolina.” The governor’s office didn’t comment. Various tech and telecom interests have been opposing legislation like North Carolina's (see 1604140016).