Britain's May offers to quit to get her Brexit deal over the line

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday she would quit if her European Union divorce deal passes at the third attempt, making a last-ditch sacrifice to try to win over dozens of rebels within her Conservative party. While her departure would not alter the terms of that withdrawal agreement, it could give Conservative eurosceptics who have opposed it a greater say in negotiating the terms of Britain’s future relationship with the EU. May’s office said there would be a contest to replace her after May 22 - assuming her plan gets through parliament - to provide new leadership for that next stage of Brexit. “I have heard very clearly the mood of the parliamentary party,” May told a meeting of Conservative lawmakers (MPs).

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu/britains-may-says-she-will-quit-if-her-brexit-deal-passes-idUSKCN1R80RM

Ethical question takes center stage at Silicon Valley summit on artificial intelligence

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Technology executives were put on the spot at an artificial intelligence summit this week, each faced with a simple question growing out of increased public scrutiny of Silicon Valley: ‘When have you put ethics before your business interests?’

A Microsoft Corp executive pointed to how the company considered whether it ought to sell nascent facial recognition technology to certain customers, while a Google executive spoke about the company’s decision not to market a face ID service at all. The big news at the summit, in San Francisco, came from Google, which announced it was launching a council of public policy and other external experts to make recommendations on AI ethics to the company. The discussions at EmTech Digital, run by the MIT Technology Review, underscored how companies are making a bigger show of their moral compass.

At the summit, activists critical of Silicon Valley questioned whether big companies could deliver on promises to address ethical concerns. The teeth the companies’ efforts have may sharply affect how governments regulate the firms in the future. “It is really good to see the community holding companies accountable,” David Budden, research engineering team lead at Alphabet Inc’s DeepMind, said of the debates at the conference. “Companies are thinking of the ethical and moral implications of their work.” Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president for global affairs, said the internet giant debated whether to publish research on automated lip-reading. While beneficial to people with disabilities, it risked helping authoritarian governments surveil people, he said.

Ultimately, the company found the research was “more suited for person to person lip-reading than surveillance so on that basis decided to publish” the research, Walker said. The study was published last July. Kebotix, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup seeking to use AI to speed up the development of new chemicals, used part of its time on stage to discuss ethics. Chief Executive Jill Becker said the company reviews its clients and partners to guard against misuse of its technology.

Still, Rashida Richardson, director of policy research for the AI Now Institute, said little around ethics has changed since Amazon.com Inc, Facebook Inc, Microsoft and others launched the nonprofit Partnership on AI to engage the public on AI issues. “There is a real imbalance in priorities” for tech companies, Richardson said. Considering “the amount of resources and the level of acceleration that’s going into commercial products, I don’t think the same level of investment is going into making sure their products are also safe and not discriminatory.” Google’s Walker said the company has some 300 people working to address issues such as racial bias in algorithms but the company has a long way to go. “Baby steps is probably a fair characterization,” he said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-ethics/ethical-question-takes-center-stage-at-silicon-valley-summit-on-artificial-intelligence-idUSKCN1R829I?il=0

Boeing unveils 737 MAX software fix after fatal crashes

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Boeing Co said on Wednesday it had reprogrammed software on its 737 MAX to prevent erroneous data from triggering an anti-stall system that is facing mounting scrutiny in the wake of two deadly nose-down crashes in the past five months. The planemaker said the anti-stall system, which is believed to have repeatedly forced the nose lower in at least one of the accidents, in Indonesia last October, would only do so once per event after sensing a problem, giving pilots more control. It will also be disabled if two airflow sensors that measure key flight data offer widely different readings, Boeing said, confirming details reported by Reuters on Tuesday. “We are going to do everything that we can do to ensure that accidents like these never happen again,” Mike Sinnett, Vice President for Product Strategy and Future Airplane Development told reporters on Wednesday at a Boeing facility near Seattle.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-boeing-software/boeing-unveils-737-max-software-fix-after-fatal-crashes-idUSKCN1R8238

New Jersey jury finds J&J not liable in latest talc cancer trial

(Reuters) - A New Jersey jury on Wednesday cleared Johnson & Johnson of liability in a lawsuit brought by a man who said that asbestos in the company’s talcum powder products caused his mesothelioma. The jury delivered its unanimous verdict in Middlesex County Superior Court in New Brunswick, just miles from J&J’s headquarters, in the case of plaintiff Ricardo Rimondi.

J&J, which faces some 13,000 talc-related lawsuits nationwide, denies that its talc causes cancer, saying numerous studies and tests by regulators worldwide have shown its talc to be safe and asbestos-free. J&J in a statement said the company’s track record in the talc litigation underscored “the decades of clinical evidence and scientific studies by medical experts around the world” supporting the safety of Johnson’s Baby Powder. J&J shares, which had been down slightly, turned positive after the verdict was announced and were up 23 cents at $138.80. Lawyers for the 58-year old Rimondi could not immediately be reached for comment.

Rimondi in 2016 was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a type of cancer that has been linked to asbestos exposure. He and his wife sued J&J in 2017. They alleged that Rimondi’s lifetime exposure to Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower, another powder product containing talc sold by J&J in the past, caused his disease. The jury returned its verdict in favor of the company after just half an hour of deliberations, according to a livestream of the proceedings by Courtroom View Network.

The healthcare conglomerate to date has faced 12 trials by plaintiffs claiming asbestos in talc caused their mesothelioma. J&J has now been cleared of liability in four trials, with another five resulting in hung juries and mistrials. Three juries have found J&J liable, awarding a total of $172 million in damages. J&J is appealing those verdicts.

The majority of the 13,000 talc lawsuits against the company involve ovarian cancer claims. Juries in those cases have hit the company with verdicts as high as $4.69 billion. Some of the ovarian cancer verdicts have been overturned on appeal on technical legal grounds, while the company’s other appeals are still pending. “It remains true that of all the talc-related verdicts against Johnson & Johnson that have been through the appeals process, every one has been overturned,” the company said in its statement on Wednesday.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers have more recently focused on arguing that asbestos contamination in talc caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. Reuters in December published a report detailing that the company knew that the talc in its raw and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos from the 1970s into the early 2000s - test results the company did not disclose to regulators or consumers.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-cancer-lawsuit/new-jersey-jury-clears-jj-of-liability-in-latest-talc-cancer-trial-idUSKCN1R81XR

U.S. border agents redeployed to handle migrant humanitarian needs

(Reuters) - U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will pull around 750 officers off ports of entry and redeploy them to process record numbers of migrant families entering the United States at the Mexico border, the head of the agency said on Wednesday. The agency is also redirecting service personnel and expanding food, transportation and medical contracts to meet migrants’ humanitarian needs while maintaining border security, CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said at a news conference in El Paso, Texas.

“There will be impacts to traffic at the border. There will be a slowdown in the processing of trade. There will be wait times in our pedestrian and passenger vehicle lanes,” he said. March is on track for the highest monthly border crossings in over a decade, with more than 100,000 apprehensions and encounters of people deemed inadmissible at U.S. ports of entry, McAleenan said. Apprehensions and encounters of families were expected to reach over 55,000 people in March, McAleenan said, marking a one-month record according to CBP data.

In recent years, there has been a shift in border crossings from mainly single, adult Mexicans trying to evade capture to Central American families and unaccompanied minors turning themselves in to border agents to seek asylum. Because of limits on how long children can be held in detention, most families are released to pursue their claims in U.S. immigration courts, a process that can take years. McAleenan said up to 40 percent of CBP personnel in sectors like El Paso were now working to care for migrants’ humanitarian needs. “Smugglers are using the distraction of large groups of asylum seekers to traffic drugs and migrants seeking to evade capture, he said.

For the first time in over a decade, CBP is directly releasing migrants into the United States when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is unable to provide bed space to relieve overcrowding, McAleenan said. The Trump administration has taken aim at the asylum system and earlier this year began sending a small number of migrants back to Mexican border towns to wait our their U.S. hearings. That program, known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” started in late January California but has expanded to El Paso. As of March 26 around 370 migrants had been returned to Mexico under the program, according to a Mexican immigration official.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-border/u-s-border-agents-redeployed-to-handle-migrant-humanitarian-needs-idUSKCN1R82AD?il=0