Uber to pay $20 million
Compiled from news services
SAN FRANCISCO — Uber Technologies is paying $20 million to settle allegations that it duped people into driving for its ridehailing service with false promises about how much they would earn and how much they would have to pay to finance a car.
The agreement announced Thursday with the Federal Trade Commission covers statements Uber made from late 2013 until 2015 while trying to recruit more drivers to expand its service and remain ahead of its main rival, Lyft.
The FTC alleged that most Uber drivers were earning far less in 18 major U.S. cities than Uber published online.
Conviction upheld
Former coal baron Donald Blankenship will stay in jail for now after an appeals court upheld his conviction for flouting minesafety laws.
The self-described “political prisoner” didn’t identify any reversible errors in his 2016 trial on charges he ignored safety rules at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, a federal appeals court said Thursday. The government began probing Massey’s operations after a 2010 explosion killed 29 workers at the site.
Blankenship’s conviction marked the first time a major energy company’s top executive was jailed over a workplace crime. He’s serving a year sentence at a minimum-security prison camp in Taft, Calif.
Judge blocks Texas move
AUSTIN, Texas — A federal judge on Thursday blocked Texas from ousting Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid program over secretly recorded videos taken by anti-abortion activists in 2015.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks adds Texas to the list of Republican-controlled states that have been thwarted in efforts to cut off Medicaid dollars to the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Video shows shooting
LOS ANGELES — Graphic surveillance video released this week shows a throng of police officers in Fontana, San Bernardino County, surrounding a legally blind and mentally ill man in a convenience store before an officer opens fire, killing him.
The muted video of the Nov. 22, 2015, incident was made public by lawyers for the man’s family and marked the latest in a series of videotaped police shootings over the past few years that has generated debate about whether officers are too quick to use lethal force.
Also in the nation …
Doctors treating former President George H.W. Bush for pneumonia considered Thursday whether to remove a breathing tube, while his wife, Barbara, said she was feeling “1,000 percent better” after being treated for bronchitis. … Up to 27 bomb threats were made Wednesday at Jewish centers in 17 states, according to the JCC Association of North America, following bomb threats made last week at 16 Jewish facilities. … The Secret Service agreed Tuesday to pay $24 million to settle a two-decade-old case in which more than 100 black agents alleged that the agency routinely promoted white agents over more qualified African-Americans.