Citing staff safety concerns, Google canceled an all-hands meeting to address gender issues at the tech giant and the firing of an employee who argued women are biologically less suited than men to be engineers. The abrupt move comes amid questions about whether the fired engineer’s views should be protected under federal law. [Bloomberg LP]
Another week, another conflict for former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Benchmark Capital, one of Uber Technologies Inc.’s earliest investors, sued Kalanick in Delaware Court of Chancery alleging he breached his fiduciary duty and contractual obligations by stacking the company’s board with allies. The lawsuit could get Kalanick kicked off Uber’s board. [Axios]
Meanwhile, another Uber executive is stepping down amid the ride-hailing platform’s seemingly endless controversies. Ryan Graves, Uber’s senior vice president of global operations, is leaving the company following reports he was noticeably absent in March. [Fast Company]
After abandoning its defense of the CFPB’s constitutionality, Sessions’ Justice Department is distancing itself even farther from the Obama-era agency. In Los Angeles and southern Mississippi, assistant U.S. attorneys are pulling out of cases in which they were helping the CFPB as local counsel. [National Law Journal]
Did HBO try to pay off the hacker responsible for its recent data breach? The anonymous hacker leaked a message purportedly from an HBO executive offering to make a $250,000 “bounty payment” as part of a program to compensate IT professionals for bringing cybersecurity shortcomings to the Time Warner-owned company’s attention. [Variety]
