Technology News

LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators are opening an in-depth investigation of Facebook’s plan to buy Kustomer over concerns that the deal would stifle competition for customer relationship management software.

The EU Commission said Monday it’s also investigating the acquisition because of worries that Facebook would get more data for personalized ads, handing it even more of an advantage in the online advertising market.

The social network announced the deal in November as it seeks to make more money from its WhatsApp and Messenger chat services, which have thrived during the pandemic, by adding ways for businesses to interact with customers. Kustomer provides software that help companies manage online conversations with customers over various channels by putting them into a single dashboard.

“Our investigation aims to ensure that the transaction will not harm businesses or consumers, and that any data that Facebook gets access to does not distort competition,” EU Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s top competition watchdog, said in a press statement.

Facebook pledged to fully cooperate with the European Commission, and said the transaction is “pro-competitive” and will result in more innovation.

“More people will benefit from customer service that is faster, richer and available whenever and however they need it,” Facebook said.

The U.K. competition watchdog began looking into the deal last week over concerns it would result in a “substantial lessening” of competition.

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HONOLULU (AP) — William Edward Mann enlisted in the Navy after graduating from high school in rural Washington state. A guitar player, he picked up the ukulele while stationed in Hawaii.

He’s been presumed dead since Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor and set off a massive explosion that sank his battleship, the USS Arizona, launching the U.S. into World War II.

Now, his niece is among some families of crew members who are demanding the U.S. military take advantage of advances in DNA technology to identify 85 sailors and Marines from the Arizona who were buried as unknowns. They say the military has disinterred and identified remains from other Pearl Harbor battleships and should do the same for their loved ones.

“These men matter and they served. They gave their lives for our country. And they deserve the same honor and respect as any other service member past, present and future,” Teri Mann Whyatt said.

The Arizona suffered more loss of life than any other ship at Pearl Harbor, with 1,177 dead. More than 900 went down with the ship and have remained entombed there ever since.

As with remains on other sunken ships, the Navy considers those aboard the Arizona to be in their final resting place. The families are not advocating for them to be removed and identified.

The issue is what to do with the 85 Arizona unknowns buried in a Hawaii cemetery. It emerged in February when the director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which is tasked with finding and identifying the remains of U.S. service members from past conflicts, was asked during a Facebook Live meeting when the agency would disinter them.

Kelly McKeague said his agency had spoken to the Navy about exhuming the Arizona unknowns and moving them to the ship without identifying them first. McKeague said it didn’t make “pragmatic sense” to identify them.

That outraged some families who feared the 85 remains would be placed on the sunken battleship without ever being identified.

The agency has since said it doesn’t plan to move the cemetery remains onto the ship. Rear Adm. Darius Banaji, the agency’s deputy director, said that was just a possibility discussed informally a few years ago.

Banaji also said the agency doesn’t plan to disinter the remains and try to identify them because it lacks sufficient documentation.

The military has files on just half of those missing from the Arizona, he said. Of those, it has medical records — listing age, height and other information — for just half. It has dental records for only 130 men. Some documents are believed to have been destroyed with the battleship. Others may have been lost in a 1973 fire at a military personnel records office.

And the military only has DNA samples from relatives of just 1% of the missing Arizona crew members.

McKeague told The Associated Press that what he said about identifications not being pragmatic referred to the lack of documentation, not the cost.

“We must apply our limited resources in a manner that is equitable to all families and to do so as efficiently and effectively as possible,” he said in a statement.

The agency, which aims to find more than 80,000 service members missing from World War II and on, has successfully identified unknowns from the USS Oklahoma, another battleship that capsized during the Pearl Harbor bombing.

In 2015, the agency dug up the remains of 388 Oklahoma sailors and Marines from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, the same graveyard where the Arizona unknowns are buried.

It acted after the military drafted a new policy allowing the disinterment of groups of unknown servicemen if it expected to identify at least 60% of the group.

The agency had dental records, age and height information for the vast majority of the Oklahoma unknowns. The military also had family DNA samples for more than 80%.

The agency predicted it would identify 80% of the Oklahoma remains, which were buried comingled in 61 caskets. As of this month, it has identified 344, or 88%, and anticipates naming more.

A group of families led by Randy Stratton, whose father, Donald Stratton, suffered severe burns as a sailor on the Arizona but lived to be 97, has drafted a petition demanding that the agency identify the 85 Arizona unknowns.

He’s vowed to help families submit DNA samples. He’s also been pushing for the agency to use genetic genealogy techniques like those used by law enforcement to solve cold cases.

Stratton said about 30 to 40 families of Arizona unknowns have joined him.

From a scientific perspective, there isn’t much stopping the military from identifying the Arizona remains, said Michael Coble, associate director of the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas.

“It’s definitely going to be a huge undertaking. But I think the technology has evolved that this kind of work could be done,” said Coble, who was chief of research at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory from 2006 to 2010.

The lab, which dates to 1991, has long used DNA to identify remains for the military.

One newer method uses so-called SNPs, which are unique to an individual — except for identical twins — and provide a kind of fingerprint. The lab hasn’t been able to make much use of this technique because it’s been unable to obtain adequate SNP profiles from degraded remains. Last month, however, it completed a project to get those samples.

This technique would help the lab distinguish between individuals even when it’s only able to extract tiny fragments of DNA. SNPs are the same type of DNA sample that services like Ancestry.com and 23andMe use to help match people with long-lost relatives or learn their propensity for certain diseases.

DNA profiles from this technique could theoretically be used for the kind of investigative genetic genealogy work that Stratton advocates.

Tim McMahon, head of DNA operations for the Defense Department, said researchers could take samples that failed to find matches in the lab’s in-house database and upload those to publicly available, private-sector DNA databases to look for potential cousins or other relatives. Genealogists could then study marriage licenses, birth records and other documents to make closer potential matches, which would then have to be confirmed with additional DNA tests.

Using such databases raises privacy concerns because relatives of the missing may not want their family’s genetic information shared. The military would need to develop policies to protect privacy — for example, by potentially allowing researchers to upload an anonymous DNA profile of an unidentified serviceman.

But first, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency would have to decide that it wants to identify the Arizona unknowns.

For Stratton, it would be worth it.

“Why wouldn’t you want to find out who these guys are?” Stratton said.

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DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — The first stop on Romain Grosjean’s monthlong tour of the United States with his family was the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, where his wife had arranged a tour for the race car driver and their three children.

On the day The Associated Press visited, IndyCar rookie Scott McLaughlin happened to be in the parking lot waiting for the doors to open.

Small wonder the drivers are so interested: The national landmark museum founded in 1929 by the creator of the Model T and father of Ford Motor Co. houses some of the most historic items in U.S. history, including the presidential limousine of John F. Kennedy, the chair used by Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater, the Rosa Parks bus and the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop.

The museum’s newest wing includes a sprawling, interactive “Driven to Win” exhibit that provides a comprehensive look at motorsports in all its forms. It took more than a decade from conception until the doors opened earlier this year as part of a rare collaboration between rivals Ford and General Motors, which is the presenting sponsor of the exhibit.

“Racing is the embodiment of American innovation in the world of sports, but its reach has long stretched beyond the track to our showrooms, our roads and our culture,” Mark Reuss, president of General Motors, told The Associated Press of the exhibit.

“‘Driven To Win’ documents and celebrates those contributions, with an exciting and comprehensive presentation of the past, present and future of motorsports,” he said. “I’m proud that GM could help bring it to members and guests of this great museum.”

The permanent exhibit takes visitors on a timeline of motorsports, from soap box derbies to Indy cars, stock cars and dragsters. The Sports Car Performance Center features a full-size clay model of a Ford GT. It’s housed in the same area as the winning car Ford used in the automaker’s 2016 return to Le Mans — a 50th anniversary celebration of Ford’s 1-2-3 finish in the 1966 endurance race.

One of the vehicles on display at the entrance of the 24,000 square-foot exhibit is “Sweepstakes,” the 1901 race car Henry Ford used following the failure of Detroit Automobile Co., his first car company. Amid doubts over his ability as both an engineer and businessman, Ford believed a successful race car would restore his credibility. On Oct. 10, 1901, novice racer Ford drove Sweepstakes to a victory over the more established Alexander Winton at a horse racing track in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

“What was impressive to me is that the exhibit takes you through the timeline of motorsports right from Sweepstakes all the way to today,” Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance, told AP. “It takes you through all the different racing series and disciplines, and ties in people and technology and how that has been transferred to road cars.”

It is done through interactive displays including simulators, a pit stop challenge and a hand-eye coordination test to measure motor skills and ability to make split-second decisions. A 15-minute short film is shown in a multi-sensory theater and highlights five racers pursuing their dreams.

The film follows two-time IndyCar champion Josef Newgarden (a Chevy driver) preparing for the Indianapolis 500; Brehanna Daniels, the first Black female tire changer in NASCAR; multi-generational Bonneville Salt Flats racer Megan Volk; drag racer Brittany Force; and Tim Hardy, a Pikes Peak International Hill Climb racer.

Trevor Bayne’s 2011 winning Daytona 500 car is on display, as well as the “Yellow Submarine” Chevy-Penske Indy car Rick Mears drove to his third Indianapolis 500 victory in 1988. Among the A.J. Foyt memorabilia is the 1960 Meskowski-Offenhauser Indy Roadster that helped Foyt to his first three Indy car championships in 1960, 1961 and 1963.

“The first time I saw the exhibit it completely exceeded my expectations,” Edsel Ford II told AP. Edsel Ford is a Henry Ford board member, longtime executive of the company founded by his great-grandfather and NASCAR Hall of Fame member based on his contributions to motorsports.

“The exhibits are sensational and many of us had seen the drawings, and had numerous meetings about what it was going to look like, but to finally physically see it, it just took my breath away,” Ford said. “I find it that overwhelming.”

McLaughlin, a New Zealander and three-time V8 Supercars winner now in his first season of IndyCar driving for Roger Penske, has made a social media series titled “Scott Learns America” in which he visits iconic stops along the racing circuit. The Henry Ford was the Chevrolet driver’s stop during IndyCar’s doubleheader in Detroit earlier this season.

McLaughlin enjoyed the exhibit although the interactive test of reaction time was a bust — “I was terrible, I was in the bottom half of the day, 64%, pretty shameful,” he said. But the pieces of American history throughout the museum left an indelible mark.

He spent some of his visit in the aviation portion of the museum, where a replica of the 1903 Wright Flyer that Wilbur Wright used for the first heavier-than-air, machine powered flight in the world.

Wright’s journey lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet.

“I actually liked the Wright Brothers stuff and to see how far they actually flew, and I think that resonates to me because we always talk about downforce without completely trying to learn lift,” McLaughlin said. “They didn’t even know what downforce was, or they knew what it was and didn’t have a name for it, so it was cool that the Wright Brothers created lift for us.

“The whole museum just shows how incredible the history of America is and how much innovation moved the entire world forward.”

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More AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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Zoom will pay $85 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that weak privacy controls opened too many peepholes into the personal information of users and that it was too easy for outsiders to disrupt video meetings during the early stages of the pandemic.

The proposed agreement must still be approved by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh. A hearing on the settlement is scheduled for Oct. 21 in San Jose, California.

Millions of people in the U.S. who have used Zoom since March 31, 2020 could be eligible for a slice of the settlement that was reached over the weekend. The payment amounts are expected to average $34 or $35 for those who subscribed to Zoom’s paid version, and $11 or $12 for the overwhelming majority who used the free version, based on estimates in court documents.

Zoom was bedeviled by security issues early last year after stay-at-home orders transformed the company’s videoconferencing service from a niche product into a cultural phenomenon. Almost overnight it became the go-to venue for business meetings, schools, social gatherings and, in a deadly global pandemic, funerals.

The lawsuit alleged that the Silicon Valley company violated the trust of millions of people by sharing the personal information of users with platforms like Facebook, Google and Microsoft-owned LinkedIn. The case, which consolidated 14 different lawsuits filed since March 2020, also targeted the disruptive practice of “Zoombombing” — a term coined to describe hackers who broke into videoconferencing meetings being held by others.

The company in a prepared statement Monday said that it acted quickly to tighten security after reports of Zoombombing began to surface.

“We are proud of the advancements we have made to our platform, and look forward to continuing to innovate with privacy and security at the forefront,” Zoom said Monday. The company didn’t acknowledged any wrongdoing in the settlement.

Security concerns did not prevent Zoom from permeating the daily lives of millions during the pandemic.

The Zoom’s annual revenue quadrupled last year to nearly $2.7 billion and it ended April with 497,000 customers that employed at least 10 workers and subscribed to the premium version of its service, up from 81,900 customers before the pandemic hit the U.S. Its stock price has tripled and traded close to $380 Monday.

The lawyers that pursued the case are seeking $21.25 million, or 25% of the $85 million settlement fund.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Sorry, Cormac McCarthy fans. That blue-checked Twitter account for the famous, and famously media-shy author is fake.

“The account referenced was verified by mistake and that has since been reversed,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Associated Press on Monday. “The account will also be required to adhere to Twitter’s parody, newsfeed, commentary, and fan account policy.”

The McCarthy account, @CormacMcCrthy, had more than 48,000 followers as of midday Monday, among them Stephen King. It was established in September 2018, but was only recently given a blue check for verification. Another McCarthy parody account from 2012 managed to fool Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who tweeted at the time “We have the best authors in the world right here.”

McCarthy, 88, rarely speaks to the press and has no known presence on social media. His novels include “All the Pretty Horses,” “No Country for Old Men” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Road.” Some of the tweets on the current parody account make light of his unfamiliarity with technology.

“My publicist is on my case about my infrequent use of this infernal website,” reads a tweet from last week. “He says engagement is down and so are metrics and something something who cares.”

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