Indiana Attorney General leads multistate inquiry into financial company’s ties to Chinese Communist Party
Attorney General Todd Rokita is leading a multistate inquiry into whether a Chinese-owned financial company — Webull Financial LLC — may have exposed clients’ personal information to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
On behalf of Hoosiers, Attorney General Rokita previously brought a complaint against Chinese-owned social media company TikTok for allegedly violating data privacy laws and deceiving app users into believing their information is protected when that data is subject to Chinese law and may be intercepted by the CCP.
On March 13, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which would ban TikTok from operating in the U.S. unless it separates from its Chinese owner, ByteDance. The Act is now working its way through the Senate.
The company is a U.S.-registered broker-dealer that allows customers to trade U.S. stocks, options, and certain cryptocurrencies. Webull is owned by Hunan Fumi Information Technology Co., a Chinese company, and it appears to conduct substantial operations for its U.S. business using personnel and resources located directly in the People’s Republic of China.
In a letter to Webull’s CEO, Attorney General Rokita and the other attorneys general request answers from the company to 11 questions in order to shed more light on its data protection practices on behalf of customers.
City of Bloomington launches Climate Action Dashboard
The City of Bloomington is excited to unveil its Climate Action Dashboard, an innovative digital platform to learn more about the City’s efforts around local climate action and sustainability. The dashboard is part of the City’s commitment toward making progress on local climate action more transparent and accessible to residents. To view and interact with the dashboard, residents can visit bloomington.climatenavhub.com.
The dashboard was developed in partnership between the City’s Economic and Sustainable Development Department and ClimateNav, a public-benefit startup that builds tools and resources to help local governments fight climate change. The dashboard breaks down the City’s sustainability goals into the different sectors they address and includes information about City initiatives and opportunities within each sector. As an added benefit, the dashboard includes useful information and resources about actions that Bloomington residents and businesses can take to reduce their own personal carbon footprint within each of the sectors.
In 2021, the Bloomington City Council unanimously adopted the Climate Action Plan, setting an ambitious goal for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and defining several milestone goals along the way. The dashboard is designed to serve as a central tool in promoting greater transparency and data-driven leadership in implementing this plan. For each of the City’s major initiatives, the dashboard will track key metrics such as the amount of energy generated by municipally-owned solar installations or the total number of climate-related grant dollars City staff have applied for. In this way, the dashboard provides a data-driven and hands-on way for residents to interact with the City’s Climate Action Plan, while also serving as an accountability tool for monitoring the City’s advancement toward its climate goals.
The dashboard will be updated on a consistent basis in order to promote new programs, announce important sustainability-related events, and maintain up-to-date metrics to share with the public. The ClimateNav Hub platform that powers the dashboard also provides City staff with powerful tools that can estimate the mitigated greenhouse gas emissions from City-run programs, calculate up-to-date greenhouse gas inventories each year, and manage important annual climate reporting. Collectively, these tools will help City staff to identify and fund the most cost-effective programs in terms of climate impact, ensuring that Bloomington’s sustainability work is both data-driven and maximally impactful.
Please visit bloomington.climatenavhub.com to view the Climate Action Dashboard directly. If you have any questions regarding the dashboard or issues accessing it, please contact sustain@bloomington.in.gov.
City of Bloomington Celebrates 2024 Be More Award Recipients
The City of Bloomington announced the recipients of the 2024 Be More Awards. The annual Be More Awards honor exceptional volunteers and promote volunteerism and civic engagement in the Bloomington community. In honor of the volunteer’s outstanding service, each non-profit agency represented by one of the eight Be More Award recipients will receive a $1,000 cash award provided by the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County.
The following recipients will be honored on Thursday, April 25, at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. The event begins with a meet & greet from 5:45-6:30pm., and the awards ceremony begins promptly at 6:30pm. The celebration is free, family-friendly, and open to members of the community.
- Be More Bloomington Award is presented to an individual or group demonstrating excellence in response to community challenges in 2023. – Winner: El Centro Comunal Latino Volunteers
- Be More Creative Award honors volunteer work within the arts community. – Winner: Sandra Freund, for her work with Area 10 Agency on Aging’s Sing for Joy! Community Choir
- Be More Dedicated Award is presented to an individual or couple over the age of 60 for their lifetime of service. – Winner: Phillip Trimble, for his lifetime of dedication to the community through his work with Wheeler Mission, Bloomington
- Be More Energized Award honors an individual or group under the age of 25. – Sriram Srinivasan, for outstanding work with Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Central Indiana
- Be More Impactful Award/Group honors the volunteer group of the year. – Winner: SCCAP Thriving Connections’ Talking About Change Advisory Group
- Be More Impactful Award/Individual honors the volunteer of the year. – Winner: Lauren McCalister, for her work with People’s Cooperative Market
- Be More Phenomenal Award is presented to outstanding leadership through board, commission, or committee involvement. – Winner: James Sanders, for his outstanding involvement with the City of Bloomington Commission on the Status of Black Males
- Special Group Recognition Award is the selection committee’s special award spotlighting the outstanding efforts of volunteer groups in the community. – Winner: Indiana Recovery Alliance Volunteers
For additional information about the Be More Award recipients or the awards ceremony, contact Michelle Moss at michelle.moss@bloomington.in.gov or by phone at 812-349-3433.
This Week in Hoosier History
1867 – Wilbur Wright was born near Millville in Henry County. He attended school in Richmond, Indiana, until his family moved to Dayton, Ohio. There he and his brother Orville became aviation pioneers.
For more local news . . . Check out our archived episodes of What’s Happenin’ and Talkin’ Sports with Nick Jenkinson