The Los Angeles Police Department and its multibillion-dollar budget were under intense public scrutiny in the spring of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had greatly reduced city revenue amid some of the largest and most destructive street protests in decades. The LAPD was being accused of exacerbating the unrest and bungling its response. Activists and politicians were calling for the department's funding to be slashed in favor of social services for the homeless, mentally ill and poor. Behind closed doors, the money from private donors kept coming. "I wanted to share that since May 28th, we have received more than $48,000 in online donations in support of the Department -- a record for our organization and unlike anything we've ever seen," Dana Katz, head of the private Los Angeles Police Foundation, wrote in a June 9, 2020, email to LAPD Chief Michel Moore. Katz wrote to Moore again a couple of weeks later, this time with a list of donors who would be taking part in an exclusive call with him that she had arranged. Katz told Moore it "would be great" if he would brief the philanthropists and corporate bigwigs on the recent protests, the department's plans for reform and the potential negative effects of "defunding" the police.

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Innoviz Technologies, an Israeli maker of laser-based lidar sensors for self-driving cars, is raising $100 million in private investment at a company valuation of $500 million, the Calcalist financial news website said on Tuesday.

Internet of Things Release 3 is published by oneM2M, the worldwide Internet of Things interoperability standards initiative. The third set of specifications deals with 3GPP interworking, especially as it relates to cellular IoT connectivity, among other features. The release is said to enable seamless interworking with narrowband IoT and LTE-M connectivity through the 3GPP Service Capability Exposure Function. More information is available here. FogHorn Systems says its Lightning Edge Industrial IoT platform received Industrial Software Competency status from Amazon Web Services, attesting that the software is capable of working in product design, production design, production, and operations.

Panelists at Smart Citites NYC '17 discussed how the city of Columbus, Ohio pulled together $500 million in funding. Turning $50 million into $500 million is one of the greatest feats that Columbus, Ohio has ever accomplished. In June 2016, the city of Columbus landed a much-coveted $40 million grant from the US Department of Transportation and $10 million from Vulcan Inc. as part of the federal Smart City Challenge. The city won the funding in large part because of the it's close partnership with the Columbus business community. Columbus has already turned that original $50 million into half a billion dollars, thanks to an array of investments from the private sector, and more is expected.