Volvo Cars reached an agreement with the Trump administration that exempts the automaker from a U.S. crackdown on Chinese-connected vehicle technology.

The Swedish automaker, which is majority owned by China’s Geely Holding, said Tuesday that it received specific authorization from the U.S. Department of Commerce to continue importing and selling vehicles with Chinese connected car technology in the United States. Connected car tech involves the software that covers everything from syncing with phones to some automated driving features. Bloomberg was first to report the special authorization.

Volvo was banned under rules finalized by the Biden administration in January 2025 that blocked vehicles equipped with software and hardware developed and maintained by Chinese companies over national security concerns. The rules kicked off with 2027 model-year vehicles equipped with software developed and maintained by Chinese companies. Another ban that prohibits the import of vehicle connected hardware begins with 2030 model-year vehicles.

Volvo vehicles are primarily made in Sweden and imported to the United States, with the exception of the EX90, which is assembled at the company’s factory in South Carolina. But Volvo’s ties to China’s Geely — and its manufacturing operations in the country — meant it would be banned under the new rules.

Volvo said the approval followed “constructive discussions” with the Commerce department and other U.S. officials regarding the company’s governance, technology, and data security. The automaker said it can now move forward with its expansion plans in the United States.

The automaker announced in September 2025 plans to bring two additional vehicles — the  XC60 midsize SUV and a new hybrid vehicle — into production at the South Carolina factory. In March, Volvo said it will also bring all production of the Polestar 3, an EV from its sister company Polestar, to the U.S. factory. The Polestar 3 is currently also produced in Chengdu, China.

The rule, known as “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain: Connected Vehicles,” spends considerable time on the threat of vehicles with automated driving systems developed by companies with Chinese ties.

Under the rules, Chinese companies would be prohibited from testing autonomous vehicles in the United States. Today, several of these companies, including Baidu’s Apollo Autonomous Driving LLC, Pony.ai, and WeRide, have permits to test their autonomous vehicle technology (with a human safety operator behind the wheel) in California. TechCrunch has reached out to the Department of Motor Vehicles, the agency that regulates AVs in the state, to learn if these permits will be revoked.

The Dutch government has imposed a “complete prohibition” on the acquisition of Solvinity, a Dutch cloud provider, by Kyndryl, the American IT infrastructure company spun out of IBM in 2021. The deal, valued at roughly €100 million, would have given a US-headquartered firm control over the platform that runs DigiD, the digital identity system used by millions of Dutch residents to access tax, healthcare, pension, and government services.

Willemijn Aerdts, the Dutch minister for the digital economy, announced the decision on Monday in a letter to parliament. The government said the acquisition poses a possible “risk to the public interest” based on the recommendation of the Bureau for Investment Screening, which evaluated the deal under the Netherlands’ foreign investment screening framework.

It is the first time the bureau has blocked a US acquisition since it began operating. The decision was not close. The screening body recommended a full prohibition rather than imposing conditions.

Solvinity does not just host DigiD. The company also operates the infrastructure behind MijnOverheid, the government’s citizen communications portal, and Digipoort, the gateway for business-to-government digital services. Together, these platforms form a core layer of the Netherlands’ public digital infrastructure. Solvinity runs them from a government data centre under strict security requirements.

The concern is the US CLOUD Act. The 2018 law gives American law enforcement and intelligence agencies the authority to compel US-headquartered companies to hand over data stored on their servers anywhere in the world, regardless of the host country’s data protection laws. If Kyndryl owned Solvinity, the Dutch government’s digital identity data would theoretically fall within the reach of US authorities.

Kyndryl told Politico, which first reported the decision, that it was “extremely disappointed.” The company had announced the deal in November 2025 and framed it as a way to expand its sovereign cloud capabilities for regulated European customers. The Dutch competition authority, ACM, cleared the deal on antitrust grounds in February 2026. But the investment screening process, which runs separately, reached a different conclusion.

The decision sits within a broader European push to reduce dependence on American technology providers. Trump-era tariffs and sanctions have accelerated the shift. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud together control more than half of Europe’s cloud market. The European Commission is expected to present its Tech Sovereignty Package on 27 May, a day after the Dutch decision, with proposals that could restrict the use of US cloud platforms for sensitive government data across the EU.

The EU has already begun putting money behind the strategy. Brussels awarded a €180 million sovereign cloud contract to four European provider groups in April, closing a procurement process that will let EU institutions purchase sovereign cloud services for up to six years. One of the four winners, S3NS, is a joint venture between Thales and Google Cloud, underscoring how difficult it is to build genuinely independent infrastructure.

The Netherlands has form on this. In October 2025, the Dutch government invoked a Cold War-era law to seize control of Nexperia, a semiconductor manufacturer owned by China’s Wingtech, citing threats to European economic security. That case involved hardware. The Solvinity block involves data. The principle is the same: the Netherlands is willing to intervene when foreign ownership of critical infrastructure creates a national security risk, regardless of the acquirer’s country of origin.

For Kyndryl, the block is a commercial setback. The company, which reported $15.1 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year, has been trying to grow its European cloud and managed services business. Solvinity’s government contracts and security credentials made it an attractive target. Without the deal, Kyndryl loses a foothold in the Dutch public sector.

For the Netherlands, the calculation is that the risk of a US company controlling the platform behind the national digital identity system outweighs the commercial benefits of the acquisition. DigiD is used for everything from filing taxes to accessing medical records. The data it handles is among the most sensitive any government holds. Handing that to a company subject to the CLOUD Act is a risk the Dutch government has decided it will not take.

The decision will be watched across Europe. If the EU’s Tech Sovereignty Package follows through on restricting US cloud platforms for government data, the Dutch block on Kyndryl-Solvinity will look less like an outlier and more like a preview of what is coming for every American technology company doing business with European public institutions.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle grid is filled with a bunch of letter groups that don’t really read as words. If you’re struggling with the puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Change the channel.

Green group hint: Three strikes, you’re out.

Blue group hint: Hut-hut!

Purple group hint: Not Jones.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Sports TV networks.

Green group: Baseball positions, abbreviated.

Blue group: Football positions, abbreviated.

Purple group: ____ Smith.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is sports TV networks. The four answers are ESPN, FS1, NBA TV and NBCSN.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is baseball positions, abbreviated. The four answers are C, OF, P and SS.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is football positions, abbreviated. The four answers are CB, DT, K and TE.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ Smith. The four answers are JR, Lovie, Ozzie and Stan.

Today, Apple seeded the first beta of iOS 26.6 to developers, and so far, it contains exactly one known feature. It’s an alert that tells you when you’ve run out of space on your blocked contacts list. That’s right, and that’s it.  

The fact that Apple had to ship this new alert at all says something uncomfortable about how the company has handled the spam call problem, along with carriers and regulators. 

What is the blocked contacts limit and why does it matter?

Apple never told us, but iOS has always had a cap on how many numbers you can block. Based on discussions on Apple’s support forums, some users have hit that limit at around 20,000 blocked contacts, while others around 8,000. 

While the exact reason behind different limits for different users isn’t exactly clear, it might have something to do with carriers imposing their own caps. Some users also report hitting the limit with even fewer contacts. 

When the blocked contacts limit was reached, iOS simply stopped blocking new numbers, without any explanation, meaning any subsequent spam calls, from new numbers, will go through. 

And instead of solving that problem and increasing the limit in the new iOS version (either at the carrier or the device level), iOS 26.6 focuses on fixing the communication gap. 

The developer beta of iOS 26.6 contains a new “Blocked Contacts Limit Reached” alert that reads: “You’ve reached the maximum number of blocked contacts.” To block additional callers, you’ll need to remove an existing entry from your blocked contacts list in Settings.

Why is this still a problem in 2026?

Yes, that’s much better than leaving users in the dark, but I wouldn’t call it a solution to a problem that shows up differently for different users. Apple could have either increased the limit for all users or introduced a bulk unblocking tool. 

However, it’s not all Apple. A comment in the MacRumors forum thread, from the user KENESS, with 17 upvotes, points out the issue very well. It’s the carriers and regulators who have the ability to address spam calls at the network level, and yet somehow, it’s users like you and me who have to do things manually on our end. 

Spam calls are profitable for some carriers and wholesale providers, as the termination fees apply to every call that completes, regardless of legitimacy. The financial incentive to kill spam at the network level is weaker than it should be, which is why the problem persists.

On the positive side, iOS 26 offers features like Ask Reason for Calling and Silence Unknown Callers, which are more practical than building a block list with thousands of entries over the years. The new alert sure is a quality-of-life improvement, but it doesn’t address the core issue.

A public release of iOS 26.6 is likely several weeks away.

As the Canadian bill for online safety is being debated in the House of Commons, Apple and Google have shared their desire for judicial oversight and protections for encryption in the bill.

Apple isn’t afraid to pull out the big guns when dealing with overzealous regulators. Just as it had to pull safety features in the UK in response to backdoor requests, it could do the same in Canada.

According to a report from Reuters, Apple and Google representatives both spoke on the bill as it was being debated in the House of Commons. The bill, C-22, is an online safety bill that is meant, in part, to give law enforcement access to encrypted data.

While the bill doesn’t specifically mandate creating encryption backdoors, it doesn’t specify how companies are meant to hand over such data in the first place. If requested, Apple couldn’t give up data that is end-to-end encrypted because it doesn’t have the key.

There is no such thing as a backdoor built only for the good guys.

Google’s director for government affairs and public policy in Canada, Jeanette Patell, stated that the bill could enable officials to request data via secret orders. She said such orders could “severely restrict companies’ ability to be transparent with users about how their data is protected.”

Apple had its turn with Erik Neuenschwander, senior director for user privacy and child safety. A representative asked if Apple would leave Canada if required to build a backdoor.

“I can’t speculate what would happen in that situation,” Neuenschwander said. “Through this engagement and the continued dialogue, we hope to have positive amendments made to the bill.”

If the bill passes as-is, it may be some time before Apple, Google, or Meta are confronted about encrypted data. When that time comes, it will be interesting to see how each might react, and if Apple will truly need to pull out the nuclear option.

Full disclosure: despite my lifelong fondness for the cartoon — I watched the reruns religiously on Channel 11 as a kid, chased them down on UHF in later years, and own every episode on disc — I somehow missed the 2008 movie in theaters and never bought the Blu-ray. That may have been a blessing. The kind that arrives wearing a helmet and leaves tire marks. More on that in a moment.

My brain is working overtime to process what the Wachowskis have wrought with their family-friendly follow-up to the Matrix Trilogy, inspired by their love of Tatsuo Yoshida’s animated TV series. It overwhelms the senses in very entertaining fashion, but there’s also layers of sophisticated cinema craft on display, some easy to miss, as well as a lot of heart that critics and audiences largely overlooked 18 years ago.

Good-natured Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) is born into an auto-racing clan, obsessed with the family business and quite skilled behind the wheel, but haunted by a dark event from his youth. His success brings him to the attention of a potential corporate sponsor, but soon the seamier side of Big Racing rears its ugly head, and the dangers facing Speed and everyone he cares about grow exponentially. There’s an endearing innocence at work; the story is told in broad emotional strokes, with one character wondering aloud if someone can drive a car and change the world. By the end, we get our answer.

Speed Racer dares to create a whole new world that’s bigger, brighter and more extreme than our own. The filmmakers bombard us with fast-paced sights and sounds like we’ve never experienced before and challenge us to keep up, delivering this live-action redux in a kinetic style previously seen only in animation, ultimately giving us something entirely new.

It turns out that the 1080p home entertainment debut of Speed Racer I mentioned earlier was on a mere single-layer BD-25 disc, and the audio was but a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1, so fans–and there are now many–have long been anticipating Warner’s new 4K Blu-ray. The movie was originally captured on HD video and completed as a 2K master, a necessity for the exhaustive post-production efforts of the era, but never let it be said that an upscale can’t be absolutely stellar 4K demo material. To my comrades who attend trade shows, expect to see Speed and the gang on quite a lot on TVs flaunting their wide color gamut, as the intensity has been ratcheted up as mightily as I’ve ever seen. This is what you get when seemingly every scene, every shot is intended to impress.

HDR10 brightness is likewise dazzling, with the nighttime races in particular bordering on the surreal. Black levels are neither the best nor the worst I’ve seen, but for an upscale, they look natural enough and avoid the processed, crushed-to-death look. And while native detail isn’t the only metric for a 4K image, I must say the textures of Speed’s fancy new suit, shirt and tie gifted from a would-be benefactor all reproduce wonderfully. I’m not sure that the videogame-quality graphics in some sequences will play well to modern eyes, but it helps to think of this as a work of abstract art.

Auto racing is perfect fodder for modern theater sound, as evidenced by the most recent Oscar winner, and Speed Racer has been reimagined in a throaty, all-encompassing Dolby Atmos presentation. The races are transportative, whisking us into a reality where the sport is bigger, faster and crazier than any human could handle. Revving engines, screeching tires, cheering crowds and even acrobatic automobiles are creatively channeled and masterfully balanced.

Of course, the rush wouldn’t be nearly as thrilling without Michael Giacchino’s music. As he would do again the following year with Star Trek, he interprets and expands upon a familiar TV theme to give us a full-blown original score that perfectly captures and amps up the desired mood. Bass is respectable but not overpowering, even in the many crashes, offering instead some lifelike precision for the pop of fireworks. The 5.1 option here has also been upgraded to DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1.

Some (not all) bonus content from past editions has been ported over here, including a featurette once available only on a Target release. (Anyone else remember those frustrating days of retailer exclusives?) New for the 4K is an interview with the Wachowski siblings wherein they speak with surprising candor about what the movie means to them. (A metaphor for the movie biz? Who knew!) It all arrives on a single BD-100 disc, with a Movies Anywhere digital copy.

With its wild twists, loops, and corkscrews, Speed Racer is one heck of a ride, a worthy tribute to the source material and an absolute stunner that will redline your A/V system. Race, don’t saunter, to pick up your copy.

Movie Details

• STUDIO: Warner
• FORMAT: Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray (May 19, 2026)
• THEATRICAL RELEASE YEAR: 2008
• ASPECT RATIO: 2.39:1
• HDR FORMATS: HDR10
• AUDIO FORMAT: Dolby Atmos with TrueHD 7.1 core
• LENGTH: 135 mins.
• MPAA RATING: PG
• DIRECTORS: Lana & Lilly Wachowski (as The Wachowski Brothers)
• STARRING: Emile Hirsch, John Goodman, Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox, Roger Allam

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

Where to buy:

Related Reading:

Software

Exemption in amendment offers relief to open source software makers

The kids are alright. Open source operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD may soon be exempt from California’s app and OS age verification requirements.

Last October, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043) into law, which establishes age verification obligations for operating system providers, covered app stores, and application developers.

Those distributing operating systems must provide “an accessible interface at account setup” for the user to indicate birth date, age, or both.

The act, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) and Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), aims to protect children from online risks such as cyberbullying, sextortion, and mental health harms. It takes effect January 1, 2027.

After AB 1043 was signed, Wicks in February introduced AB 1856 as an amendment to the law. Several changes have been made to the bill since then, the most salient for open source projects being the version published on May 18, 2026.

That version includes the following additional language that creates an open source carve-out: 

(2) “Operating system provider” does not mean a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.

So if the proposed amendment gets approved, Linux vendors should be off the hook for implementing age checks upon distro installation and launch. Whether that will apply to companies like Valve, which ships its proprietary Steam Client with its Linux-based SteamOS, isn’t clear.

MidnightBSD in February briefly included a clause in its license that banned California residents from using the operating system. But the following month, project developers set about exploring an age verification mechanism.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been critical of AB 1043 for outsourcing censorship to app developers. Such rules harm “users’ and developers’ right to free expression, their digital liberties, privacy, and ability to create and use open platforms,” the advocacy group said in March. “It also, perversely, entrenches the dominance of major operating system developers and device makers.”

At least 25 state age verification laws have already been enacted, and a West Virginia age verification law is scheduled to take effect next month. 

Colorado lawmakers have approved a state age verification bill that currently awaits approval from the governor. According to Carl Richell, founder and CEO of Linux laptop maker System76, it includes exemptions for open source operating systems, applications, code repos, and containers.

In an SSRN paper released earlier this month, George S. Ford, chief economist of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies, a free-market think tank, expressed skepticism about the utility and cost of age verification laws. 

“The effectiveness of these laws at protecting minors is questionable, as motivated teenagers – who already use VPNs to bypass school filters – can easily circumvent age restrictions,” he wrote, adding such laws will certainly impinge upon the First Amendment rights of adults by unduly burdening speech.

Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman on Monday published a blog post looking at the impact age verification has on website traffic – the balk rate or refusal rate. The rate varies but for some sites like Pornhub, it can be as high as 99 percent. 

Citing the Supreme Court’s assertion in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton that “adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification,” Goldman argued that courts may not treat high balk rates as constitutionally significant, even if credential checks make online movement more constrained and costly.

“[W]hoever is doing the centralized authentication won’t do it for free,” Goldman writes. “A small number of entities are poised to extract monopoly rents by taking a cut of this government mandated process.”

In 2021, the Age Verification Providers Association estimated that within the next 10-15 years, annual revenues from selling age verification services to OECD countries would reach about $11.4 billion (£9.8 billion). And that was before the US states began implementing age verification laws. ®