Category: News and Views

SBA Waives Disaster Loan Interest and Payments for First Year | Small Business Trend

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The U.S. Small Business Administration recently announced it will be waiving the interest rate for the first year on new disaster loans by extending the initial payment deferment period automatically to 12 months.

SBA Waives Disaster Loan Interest and Payments for First Year

This means new disaster loan borrowers will now have up to one year from the date of the note to begin making payments, instead of the usual five months.

Interest on such loans will not begin to accrue until 12 months from the date of the initial loan disbursement.

This is great news for borrowers as they will no longer need to pay interest accrued on all disbursed loan funds during this new initial payment deferment period.

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Sunny Balwani: Former Theranos executive gets nearly 13 years in prison | BBC News

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Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the business partner of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, has been sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison.

Balwani was convicted in July of 12 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in the failed blood-testing start-up.

Theranos executives falsely claimed the product could diagnose illnesses with a few drops of blood from a finger prick.

Holmes was sentenced to over 11 years (135 months) in prison last month.

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FDA approved a 1st-of-its-kind treatment made from human poop. What does it do? | Live Science

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For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a treatment that’s made using donated human poop, the agency announced(opens in new tab) Wednesday (Nov. 30). The treatment, called Rebyota, contains gut bacteria collected from the stool of healthy human donors and is approved for the prevention of a potentially life-threatening bacterial infection.

By administering the liquid treatment into a patient’s rectum through a tube, doctors can help restore balance to the patient’s gut microbiome, the community of microbes living in the lower digestive tract.

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China Covid: Shocking protests are huge challenge for China’s leaders | BBC News

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Acts of dissent are not unusual in China.

Over the years, sudden, local explosions of defiance have been triggered by a range of issues – from toxic pollution to illegal land grabs, or the mistreatment of a community member at the hands of the police.

But this time it’s different.

There is one subject at the forefront of Chinese people’s minds, and many are increasingly fed up with it – prompting widespread pushback against the government’s zero-Covid restrictions.

This has come in the form of residents smashing down barriers designed to enforce social distancing, and now large street protests in cities and university campuses across the country

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Amazon recruiters were laid off. AI tech might fill their roles. | Mashable

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The fear of every person who reads too much sci-fi labor dystopia might be coming true: Robots could be replacing workers.

Last week, Amazon extended hundreds of its recruiters’ buyout opportunities in just one part of a very long, very trying cycle of layoffs expected from the shopping giant. And some of those jobs might have been lost to some new artificial intelligence technology the company has been experimenting with for a year, according to a confidential internal document viewed by Recode.

Amazon’s AI technology — known internally as Automated Applicant Evaluation or AAE — works by predicting which job applicants have the highest potential of being successful in certain roles, and then fast-tracking them to an interview all without a human recruiter’s oversight. According to Recode, it works by finding the middle part of a venn diagram between current Amazon employees and job applicants applying for similar jobs. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mashable.

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New gene therapy restores night vision of people with inherited eye disorder | Live Science

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Two people with a rare inherited eye disorder have had their night vision restored by an experimental gene therapy, researchers say.

These two individuals are part of an ongoing clinical trial(opens in new tab) testing the safety and effectiveness of the new gene therapy, the research team wrote in a report published in October in the journal iScience(opens in new tab). This and additional trials will need to be completed before the therapy can be approved for widespread use. Still, these early data hints that the treatment can spur “remarkable gains” in patients’ night vision, the scientists wrote.

The trial participants have a genetic disorder called Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), which affects an estimated 3 in 100,000 babies, according to the University of Florida Health(opens in new tab), one of the institutes involved in developing the therapy.

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American Airlines baggage fee lawsuit. Am I owed money? | Fast Company

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There is perhaps no greater annoyance in the nickel-and-dime economy than surprise airline fees. From extra leg room to booze to unaccompanied minors, carriers seem to be finding increasingly creative ways to squeeze a little extra profit out of every last warm body in the air. And since they own the airplanes, what can we really do?

Well, some savvy flyers fought back in court, and now American Airlines has agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit over what the passengers said were illegitimate baggage fees. In a lawsuit filed early last year, the plaintiffs claimed that they were incorrectly charged to check their luggage, despite being part of a loyalty program that promised free bag checks or being promised free bag checks via email.

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Google to pay a record $391m privacy settlement | BBC News

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Google will pay $391.5m (£330m) to settle allegations about how it collects data from users.

The technology giant tracked the location of users who opted out of location services on their devices, 40 US states said.

Google has been told to be transparent about location tracking in the future and develop a web page telling people about the data it collects.

It is the largest privacy-related multi-state settlement in US history.

A Google official said: “Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”

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