Business news in brief
By The Associated Press
CrowdStrike executive apologizes to Congress for global tech outage
WASHINGTON | An executive at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike apologized in testimony to Congress for sparking a global technology outage over the summer.
“We let our customers down,” said Adam Meyers, who leads CrowdStrike’s threat intelligence division, in a hearing before a U.S. House cybersecurity subcommittee Tuesday.
CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off a global tech outage in July that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.
Tenth death reported in Boar’s Head listeria outbreak
A 10th person has died in the listeria outbreak that shuttered a Boar’s Head deli meat plant, federal health officials said Wednesday.
At least 59 people in 19 states have been sickened by the bacteria first detected in liverwurst made at the Jarratt, Virginia, plant. Illnesses were reported between late May and late August, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. All of those who fell ill were hospitalized.
The latest fatality was reported in New York, bringing the total deaths to two each in New York and South Carolina and one each in Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia, Florida, Tennessee and New Mexico.
Judge approves $600M settlement for residents near Ohio derailment
A federal judge on Wednesday approved a $600 million class-action settlement Wednesday that Norfolk Southern railroad offered to everyone who lived within 20 miles of last year’s disastrous derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Judge Benita Pearson gave the deal final approval after a hearing where the lawyers who negotiated it with the railroad argued that residents overwhelmingly supported it, attorneys for the residents and railroad spokesperson Heather Garcia told The Associated Press. Roughly 55,000 claims were filed. Only 370 households and 47 businesses opted out.
Those who did object to the deal were vocal in their concerns that the settlement won’t provide enough and that the deal was rushed through so quickly that they can’t possibly know what the potential health impact from the derailment will be. They say it’s hard to know all the risks, given the way test results have been reported by the EPA and the fact that the lawyers haven’t disclosed everything they learned in their investigation.
—From AP reports
