Uber to pay $4.4M to end sexual harassment probe
SAN FRANCISCO — Uber Technologies Inc. will establish a $4.4 million fund to settle a federal investigation into allegations that the San Francisco company allowed a rampant culture of sexual harassment, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Wednesday.
The agreement ends an investigation launched in 2017 in which the commission found reasonable cause to believe the ride-hailing tech company “permitted a culture of sexual harassment and retaliation against individuals who complained about such harassment.”
A claims administrator will send notices to women who worked at Uber between Jan. 1, 2014, and June 30, 2019. The commission will determine which claimants may be eligible for money from the $4.4 million fund.
The company has also agreed to create a system to identify serial offenders and managers who fail to respond to concerns about sexual harassment in a timely manner.
The commission initiated the investigation after a former Uber engineer wrote a widely circulated blog post exposing sexual harassment at the company, including propositions from her boss. Susan Fowler said her complaints to human resources were ignored.
The company fired 20 people, including some managers, after an investigation by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s law firm.
The commission’s district director in San Francisco, William Tamayo, applauded Uber’s commitment to accountability, and said the “tech industry, among others, has often ignored allegations of sexual harassment when an accused harasser is seen as more valuable to the company than the accuser.”
As part of its bid to increase transparency, Uber revealed earlier this month that more than 3,000 sexual assaults were reported during its U.S. rides in 2018. Drivers and riders were both attacked in the reported assaults, and some of the assaults occurred between riders.
Police, protesters clash outside Barcelona-Real Madrid game
BARCELONA, Spain — Riot police clashed with protesters in the streets Wednesday night outside a soccer match between Barcelona and Real Madrid, as authorities sought to keep Catalonia’s separatist movement from disrupting the game viewed by 650 million people worldwide.
The match in Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium began without incident and was halted only briefly when some fans threw balls onto the field bearing a message for the Spanish government to open a dialogue with the separatists.
The game, which drew nearly 100,000 spectators, ended in a scoreless draw.
Thousands of police and private security guards were deployed in and around stadium.
In the street clashes, riot police used batons to force the crowd back, some threw objects at officers lined up behind shields and other protesters fought among themselves. Authorities said nine people had been arrested, and Spain’s national news agency Efe reported that 12 were injured.
Feds: Man whose number found on NJ shooter was selling arms
NEWARK, N.J. — A bail hearing for a man whose number was found in the pocket of one of the perpetrators of last week’s fatal attack on a Jewish market was halted and abruptly postponed Wednesday after prosecutors said they had evidence he was selling firearms from his pawn shop.
Investigators had previously disclosed that they found several weapons in a search last week of Ahmed A-Hady’s home and a pawnshop owned by his family.
On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Joseph Dickson gave the parties two additional days to present arguments for whether A-Hady should be detained pending a trial or released on bail.
NEW YORK — Singer R. Kelly pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges he schemed with others to pay for a fake ID for an unnamed female a day before he married R&B singer Aaliyah, then 15 years old, in a secret ceremony in 1994.
Kelly entered the plea in New York via a video feed from Chicago, where he remains jailed while facing multiple sex crime and other criminal charges.
A revised indictment filed earlier this month in federal court in Brooklyn accuses Kelly of paying a bribe in exchange for a “fraudulent identification document” for someone identified only as “Jane Doe” on Aug. 30, 1994. A day later, Kelly, then 27, married Aaliyah in a secret ceremony he arranged at a hotel in Chicago. The marriage was annulled