William Lee, Author at Author feast

23andMe Breach Targeted Jewish and Chinese Customers, Lawsuit Says

27

Jan

Technology

23andMe Breach Targeted Jewish and Chinese Customers, Lawsuit Says

The genetic testing company 23andMe is being accused in a class-action lawsuit of failing to protect the privacy of customers whose personal information was exposed last year in a data breach that affected nearly seven million profiles.The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in federal court in San Francisco, also accused the company of failing to notify customers with Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage that they appeared to have been specifically targeted, or that their personal genetic information had been compiled into “specially curated lists” that were shared and sold on the dark web.The suit was filed after 23andMe submitted…

Economists Predicted a Recession. Instead, the Economy Grew.

27

Jan

By William Lee

Business

Economists Predicted a Recession. Instead, the Economy Grew.

The recession America was expecting never showed up.Many economists spent early 2023 predicting a painful downturn, a view so widely held that some commentators started to treat it as a given. Inflation had spiked to the highest level in decades, and a range of forecasters thought that it would take a drop in demand and a prolonged jump in unemployment to wrestle it down.Instead, the economy grew 3.1 percent last year, up from less than 1 percent in 2022 and faster than the average for the five years leading up to the pandemic. Inflation has retreated substantially. Unemployment remains at…

Haiti Threatened by Armed Environmental Group

26

Jan

By William Lee

New miscellaneous

Haiti Threatened by Armed Environmental Group

In Haiti, as the number of murders soar and kidnappings rise, even the police are fleeing.With no elected president in office and a prime minister widely seen as illegitimate, calls for the government’s ouster are now being heard from an unlikely source: a brigade of armed officers ostensibly responsible for protecting environmentally sensitive areas.Armed uniformed members of the brigade clashed with government forces in northern Haiti this week, heightening tensions in an already volatile nation where gangs have seized control over large swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and are wreaking havoc in rural areas.The environmental group, the Brigade for the…

Nitrogen Hypoxia: What to Know About This New Method of Execution

25

Jan

By William Lee

Health

Nitrogen Hypoxia: What to Know About This New Method of Execution

The planned execution of a death row inmate by the state of Alabama on Thursday evening will be carried out by a procedure that has never been used for capital punishment in the United States. The inmate, Kenneth Smith, who was convicted in a 1988 stabbing murder, will be put to death by inhaling nitrogen gas, a method known as nitrogen hypoxia.Supporters of the method say it is fast and painless. But earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Office urged Alabama to stop the execution, saying it could amount to torture and be in violation of human rights…

Why Caitlin Clark could pose a dilemma for Team USA at the Olympics

25

Jan

By William Lee

Sports

Why Caitlin Clark could pose a dilemma for Team USA at the Olympics

USA Basketball will be seeking its eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal this summer with the first step coming at the Olympic qualifying tournament in Antwerp, Belgium, from Feb. 8-11. The 12-player roster for that tournament will be the first approximation of the team that will defend the Americans’ gold medal in Paris.Based on the 18 players who have been invited to the national team camp from Feb. 2-4 in Brooklyn, N.Y., the committee has a terrifically challenging task to select that final roster, a decision that will likely be further complicated by the current collegians — primarily Caitlin Clark, but…

L.A. County to Pay Million to Election Executive Wrongly Charged With Data Breach

25

Jan

By William Lee

Technology

L.A. County to Pay $5 Million to Election Executive Wrongly Charged With Data Breach

Los Angeles County agreed to pay $5 million to the top executive of an election software company who had been arrested and charged in 2022 with mishandling voter data in a case that prosecutors dropped a few weeks later, the executive’s lawyer said this week.The payment, which settles a lawsuit filed last year, is yet another twist for Eugene Yu, 66, the co-founder of the software company Konnech.Mr. Yu and his company faced a barrage of right-wing conspiracy theories after the 2020 election including that Konnech, which is based in Michigan, had stored election data in China. Mr. Yu repeatedly…