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The National Society of Accountants has sent a letter to Internal Revenue Service commissioner Charles Rettig and leaders of Congresss main tax committees asking the IRS to speed up the refunds for 2019 and 2020 tax returns and communicate better.

The group cited a recent op-ed by Rettig in the Washington Post in which he pleaded for more funding from Congress. But the NSA also asked for the IRS to do more with the funds its been receiving.

NSA strongly agrees with the commissioner that there is, indeed, a crisis occurring involving the IRS, taxpayers and practitioners, much of which can be attributed to insufficient funding, wrote NSA president Marchelle Foshee and managing director of public policy Jessica Jeane in a letter Monday. Therefore, we strongly encourage Congress to fund the IRS more adequately and consistently. The steady increase of responsibility that Congress continues to legislatively place upon the IRS year-after-year greatly exceeds the declining and often stagnant appropriations for the agency. That said, however, the IRS must also do its part to rectify the situation. To that end, it is equally vital for the IRS to recognize its own shortcomings in communication during this ongoing crisis. Taxpayers and practitioners need the IRS to be more transparent and forthright about the status of its operations. Reporting out that the agency is caught up on mail, for example, does not equate to such correspondence being processed and resolved. And while providing general backlog estimates may help paint a picture of the problem, it shines little to no light on taxpayers specific concerns.

The NSA pointed out that the IRS is continuing to lag in its processing and issuing of refunds for 2019 and 2020 returns and it called for more transparency and improved communication from the IRS to alleviate the growing frustrations and fears among tax and accounting professionals about the 2022 tax filing season.

Often, taxpayers and practitioners either cannot reach the IRS or receive confusing and inaccurate information, they wrote. Frustrations within the tax and accounting professional community are at an all-time high, and fears among practitioners about how the upcoming 2022 tax filing season will unfold, when many 2019 and 2020 tax returns remain unresolved, are based firmly in reality.

Stefani Reynolds/Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/B

Until the IRS can more efficiently communicate with taxpayers, the NSA is asking the IRS to stop all automatic collection notices and actions of liens and levies (at least for certain categories that have low compliance risk) until the agency has completed its backlog of opened yet unprocessed mail; as well as provide taxpayers with targeted, automatic relief from the underpayment of estimated tax penalties and late payment penalties for the 2020 tax year. They also want the IRS to use its IRS.gov website to more frequently and specifically provide updates on the status of operations for taxpayers and practitioners. These updates would include current processing times for various categories of returns and replies to correspondence and notices, said Foshee and Jeane.

The American Institute of CPAs also has been asking the IRS to improve its processing and responsiveness. During an online meeting Monday of the AICPA Tax Division, AICPA officials made the case directly to several IRS officials, including Holly Paz, deputy commissioner of the Large Business and International division, and Fred Schindler, director of collection policy at the IRSs Small Business/Self-Employed division, and National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins.

One sore point has been the automated collection notices. We know that as folks are living through the pandemic that there are a lot of financial difficulties there, said Schindler. One of the things that weve been doing is to be very conscious of other relief programs that have been going on in government. You see some guidance out there asking our employees, particularly our field employees, to be very conscious of that and make sure that they are being very thoughtful and deliberate about their collection activity.

Why do we have the system continuing to spit out notices and move forward if, for example, something there is favorable to taxpayers, said Collins. Not every collection notice is there a request for the taxpayers to do something, but when there is you can reach out to a revenue officer or the 800 number or something else. We should be able to put a suspension for a lot longer than six, eight, nine weeks, whether it be six months or until some action takes place. Its been discussed, but they havent agreed to that yet, needless to say. Its the same thing on the IRS side. Its what I call the one and done. Theyll send you a notice and if you dont respond, theyre done with you. With the phones and the issues that have come out with taxpayers, we need to give people a little more flexibility before we take that next step. We need to give people, especially the IRS, time to process whatever the request is, before they move forward on collections.

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Accountants press IRS for faster refunds and responses - Accounting Today

PARTNER CONTENT: 2021 is a big year in which 5G is running on the fast track. In accordance with recent GSMA and GSA reports, 464 operators in 139 countries and territories are investing in 5G networks in the form of tests, trials, pilots, planned and actual deployments, and 5G connections will be 2 billion in 2025, around 4 times compared with that of this year. Meanwhile, 89 operators are investing 5G SA network and over 400 types of UE are commercial ready for 5G SA. We can see that the tide is quite high.

However, when it comes to 5G deployment to maximize 5G value and its industrial potential, there are some real pain points for operators: choice on NSA or SA architecture, and the terminal compatibility is also a question; most of sites do not have enough tower space for 5G equipment installation; need to achieve fast nationwide 5G coverage in short time; how to reduce 5G power consumption to save OPEX; and differentiated and fragmented requirements of different industries.

In response to these problems faced by operators and industries, ZTE focuses on three aspects that involve fast 5G network deployment, green mobile network, and profit opportunities in B2B & B2C markets.

Full portfolio products & innovative solutions to enable fast 5G deployment and user experience enhancement

Full portfolio products of ZTE can support SA or NSA or SA/NSA dual-mode architecture with great flexibility, meeting operators requirements for their 5G deployment.

To tackle the site problem, ZTE UniSite+ solution for radio site modernization, can provide good coverage and high capacity with greatly reduced tower space occupation and operational cost, by all-in-one outdoor BBU and high-performance dual-band and triple-band Ultra Broadband Radio products. It is estimated that the number of radio units can be reduced by up to 60% and the power consumption by about 30%, saving 1,200 Euro electricity cost per year for an average site.

ZTE has developed a series of innovative solutions further enhancing network performance and maximizing network value, including SuperDSS in fast 5G roll-out and spectrum efficiency improvement, SSB 1+X in 3D coverage enhancement, FAST uplink enhancement technology, Radio Composer in both user experience and network efficiency improvement and etc.

Up to now, ZTEs 5G footprints have been on more than 40 countries around the world, building 5G flagship networks in countries like Spain, Austria, and Italy.

Energy saving & low power consumption to build green mobile network

Currently, carbon neutrality has become a global consensus. ZTE actively implements the carbon neutralization strategy, promotes energy saving and emission reduction in enterprise production and operation, helps operators in building end-to-end green low carbon networks.

In order to build a green mobile network, ZTE is dedicated to introducing green power, building green sites, and green data centers, to reduce carbon emission. As site energy consumption accounts for a large proportion of energy consumption of the whole network. ZTE keeps innovate in hardware like next-generation chipsets, smaller but more powerful radio units with higher power efficiency. The UniSite+ solution deployed in Spain helps operators to reduce the radio units by 60% and saves power consumption by 30% compared with traditional solutions. And software features such as channels/carriers/symbols shutdown and deep sleep, for example in India, make the total power saving up to 20% during power saving time, over 5% power saving daily for the operator. This case is on the condition that energy saving functions are only activated from 00:00 AM to 06:00 AM.

In addition, PowerPilot, the industry-first service awareness based energy saving solution proposed by ZTE, employs AI as the core technology and takes the initiative to identify different energy saving scenarios, and accordingly matches energy saving policies while accurately predicting network load trend. Thereby, it establishes a coordinated energy saving and network performance model to explore the network energy saving potential. It has been applied in over 30 networks and 800,000 sites globally. In Malaysia, the PowerPilot solution was successfully launched, saving 7 million kWh of power annually.

Win-win cooperation to embrace the profitability of 5G

From the latest Omdia report, the RAN revenue of 2G/3G/4G is declined sharply. In the meanwhile, 5G part is increased greatly. Especially, in B2B market, 5G opens new opportunities for all Industries and the whole society, to drive 12 trillion USD economic activities in 2035.

On one hand, in B2C market, ZTE helps operators to increase the ARPU by precise planning and deploying 5G sites in most valuable regions, by continuous improved network performance, by efficient and intelligent operational strategy deployment for both user experience enhancement and energy saving target. Some figures shows what the operators in China have achieved. 5G now accounts for almost 20 percentage points more traffic than just twelve months ago and average monthly user data usage increases by more than twenty percent. The downtrend of ARPU has been reversed.

Meanwhile, in B2B market, ZTE has developed more than 500 cooperative partners in 15 industries including manufacturing, transportation, energy, ports, and medical care. They have jointly explored over 100 innovative 5G application scenarios and successfully carried out more than 60 demonstration projects worldwide.

Mr. Chao Xiong, GM of RAN Product Overseas Market

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ZTE Promises on 5G: Delivered and to be Delivered - Mobile World Live

Correction: The original version of this article miscredited two photos. In fact, the photos were courtesy of Peggy McInerny.

This post was updated Nov. 22 at 1:18 p.m.

Student organizations gathered for an annual showcase of cultures across the globe as part of the programming for International Education Week on Wednesday.

Bruins Around the World a collaboration between UCLA Residential Life, the Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars and the Study Abroad Office was held in Covel Commons. IEW, presented by the International Institute to promote international education and exchange, ran from Monday to Friday this year.

Peggy McInerny, director of communications for the UCLA International Institute and an organizer of the event, expressed her appreciation for the IEWs support of education and said she was happy to take photos at the in-person event.

We try to appeal to people from all over campus because theres so many different parts of international education, McInerny said. The most important thing is to really show the wealth of both resources and experiences there are here.

Enthusiasm was high among performers and the audience as they were able to attend Bruins Around the World in person for the first time in two years. After a fully virtual year, the community was eager to safely return to the event, McInerny added.

Before the program began, people entered the Covel Grand Horizon Ballroom to visit various informational booths, including those by the Study Abroad Office and Residential Life. Attendees had the opportunity to enjoy food from a variety of cultures set up on an outdoor balcony, featuring churros, Mediterranean falafel, Somali sambusas and Chinese egg rolls.

Speakers Naomi Moskowitz, a fourth-year Arabic and cognitive science student who studied abroad for a quarter at Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and George Li, a first-year pre-economics student from China, recounted their experiences abroad and encouraged others to seek opportunities to study internationally. Giveaways and presentations went on between cultural dance performances.

Jade Mazurkiewicz and Karly Kimes, fourth-year students and emcees of the event, introduced the series of speakers and student performance groups.

The Association of Chinese Americans was the first group to take the stage with a lion dance troupe. This dance is a traditional Chinese celebration usually performed around Chinese New Year as well as special occasions such as weddings and birthdays, according to Brian Le, a member of the troupe and former UCLA student. The multiple-person lion costumes represent figures intended to ward off bad luck, he said.

Le joined the team during his freshman year in 2016 to expand his horizons and stay active while staying in touch with his Chinese culture, he added.

School can occupy so much of your time. Its super important to have something outside of academic life, Le said.

Kyodo Taiko, a student-run Japanese drum ensemble, performed next. Their two songs featured dancing and drumming that Mazurkiewicz said was her favorite performance of the night.

You could feel it in your bones, Mazurkiewicz said.

Other performances included two dance showcases from the Chinese Cultural Dance Club and the Nigerian Students Association. The NSAs dance group drew a large audience that screamed and cheered along. Chinazam Nnorom, president of the NSA and a third-year communications student, said the organization largely represents West Africans and that their performance was a mix of West African and South African styles. She loved the opportunity to perform with her club, she added.

Thats something thats awesome about dancing, is the audience, that they really give you the energy, Nnorom said.

Paulina Fisher, a fourth-year civil engineering student, said she enjoyed the performances and sambusas.

Seeing the performers lined up from different countries, different parts of the world, it reminds me of how diverse it is currently, she said.

Student organizations sought to foster community within their own identity groups while sharing their cultures with the greater community at UCLA. Nnorom said she was excited to receive the email inviting NSA to perform.

(The organizers) reached out to us and we were so grateful, we were waiting for the email, Nnorom said. They said, We know you guys usually perform, are you guys still together? We said Yep, we are! I was like, Oh, thank God.

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Bruins Around the World brings together cultures for night of celebration - Daily Bruin

NSA released the Cybersecurity Information Sheet,Avoid Dangers of Wildcard TLS Certificates and the ALPACA Techniquetoday, warning network administrators about the risks of using poorly scoped wildcard Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates. NSA recommends several actions web administrators should take to keep their servers secure. This guidance also outlines the risks of falling victim to a web application exploitation method called Application Layer Protocols Allowing Cross-Protocol Attacks (ALPACA), which malicious cyber actors can use to access sensitive information.

NSA is releasing this guidance as part of our mission to help secure the Department of Defense (DoD), National Security Systems (NSS) and Defense Industrial Base (DIB). Administrators should assess their environments and mitigate wildcard certificates and ALPACA risks.

Wildcard certificates are used to authenticate multiple servers and simplify credential management, saving time and money. However, if one server hosting a wildcard certificate is compromised, all other servers that can be represented by the wildcard certificate are put at risk. A malicious cyber actor with a wildcard certificates private key can impersonate any of the sites within the certificates scope and gain access to user credentials and protected information.

The ALPACA technique, which exploits hardened web applications through non-HTTP services secured using a TLS certificate whose scope matches the web application, further increases the risk of using poorly scoped wildcard certificates.

NSA recommends NSS, DoD, and DIB administrators ensure their organizations wildcard certificate usage does not create unmitigated risks, making their web servers vulnerable to ALPACA techniques. The Cybersecurity Information Sheet provides mitigations for poorly implemented certificates and ALPACA, including:

For more details on how to harden wildcard certificates against the ALPACA technique,read the full information sheet.

For additional cybersecurity guidance, visithttps://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Cybersecurity-Advisories-Guidance/.

Read more at NSA

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NSA: Avoid Dangers of Wildcard TLS Certificates, the ALPACA Technique - Hstoday - HSToday

National Security Agency (NSA) Director Paul Nakasone predicted Tuesday that the rate of ransomware attacks will not slow down in the next five years, and said efforts to counter those threats must remain constant as well.

Every single day, Nakasone said when asked how often the U.S. would face ransomware attacks in five years, during a conversation at cybersecurity firm Mandiants Cyber Defense Summit Tuesday.

We are persistently engaged, and being persistently engaged, you have unique insights that you can develop, you have unique capabilities you can bring forward, there are matters upon which you can engage your adversaries, said Nakasone, who also serves as commander of U.S. Cyber Command. I think if you leave that, then your adversaries have determined in due course what they are going to do.

Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia, whose company responds to ransomware attacks and other cyber incidents, noted the need to keep the uniform on following Nakasones prediction around ransomware attacks.

While ransomware attacks are nothing new, they have escalated over the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic, with cybercriminals going after vulnerable groups such as schools and hospitals thataremore likely to pay to quickly regain access to encrypted systems.

Ransomware attacks have risen to become a national security threat in recent months following high-profile attacks on Colonial Pipeline, which provides 45 percent of the East Coasts fuel, on meat producer JBS USA, and on IT company Kaseya,which impactedup to 1,500 companies it worked with.

The Biden administration has been proactive in taking a stand against ransomware attacks, with President BidenJoe BidenGruden out as Raiders coach after further emails reveal homophobic, sexist comments Abbott bans vaccine mandates from any 'entity in Texas' Jill Biden to campaign with McAuliffe on Friday MORE pressuring Russian President Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinNavalny says his status has been changed to 'terrorist' in prison Oil trades above a barrel, hitting a 7-year high Russia, US lift targeted sanctions so Nuland can visit Moscow MORE to take action against cybercriminals within Russias borders during their in-person meeting in Geneva earlier this year.

Later this month, the administration will continue an effort to reduce ransomware attacks when the White House National Security Council convenes 30 countries to address cybersecurity concerns.

Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology, also spoke at the Mandiant conference Tuesday, describing the upcoming meeting as a counter-ransomware initiative with a focus on cryptocurrency, resilience, disruption and diplomacy.

Theres been a great deal of interest in countries around the world participating in these tracks, discussing how we partner, and discussing how we build an enduring partnership to make us most effective, and its exciting to work with allies and partners to make forward progress against these hard problems, Neuberger said.

When asked by Mandia if she believed the U.S. would still be facing ransomware attacks every day in five years, Neuberger said she was hopeful that would not be the case.

While Nakasone was pessimistic about the future of ransomware attacks, he expressed optimism around the national attention on cybersecurity and the talent pool working for the government, following a tough year of attacks.

I think our nation realizes how important that cybersecurity is for our economy, our informational capabilities, and our defense, Nakasone said. I feel really good about the future, I feel really good about where were headed.

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NSA director expects to be facing ransomware attacks 'every single day' in five years | TheHill - The Hill