We look into reports of gene-edited babies in China, Ohio allows businesses to pay their taxes with bitcoin and Amazon closes its restaurant delivery service in London. Here's your Daily Crunch for November 26, 2018. 1. Hospital in China denies links to world's first gene-edited babies News of the world's first-ever gene-edited human babies being born in China caused a huge stir on Monday after the MIT Technology Review and the Associated Press brought the project to light. According to the AP, researcher He Jiankui sought and received approval from Shenzhen HarMoniCare Women's and Children's Hospital to kick off the experiment. When contacted by TechCrunch, a spokesperson said the hospital was looking into the validity of these claims: "What we can say for sure is that the gene editing process did not take place at our hospital. The babies were not born here either." 2. Tech giants offer empty apologies because users can't quit Without real follow-through, saying sorry isn't an apology, it's a hollow ploy for forgiveness. Josh Constine says that's the kind of "sorry" we're getting from tech giants — an attempt to quell bad PR and placate the afflicted, often without the systemic change necessary to prevent repeated problems. 3. Ohio becomes the first state to accept bitcoin for tax payments Companies that want to take part in the program simply need to go to OhioCrypto.com and register to pay in crypto whatever taxes their corporate hearts desire. 4. Amazon closes its restaurant delivery service in London Amazon is shutting down its two-year-old restaurant delivery service in London. Customers were sent emails saying they would no longer be able to order from Amazon Restaurants UK after Monday, December 3. 5. The US Postal Service exposed data of 60 million users A broken U.S. Postal Service API exposed more than 60 million users and allowed a researcher to pull millions of rows of data by sending wildcard requests to the server. The resulting security hole has been patched after repeated requests to the USPS. 6. That Logitech and Plantronics deal is now dead Over the weekend, Reuters reported that the two companies were in talks for a potential $2.2 billion merger. In a statement issued Sunday, Logitech International said that while it had engaged in discussions with Plantronics about a potential transaction, it had terminated the negotiations. 7. Podcast Monday It was a quiet week for TechCrunch podcasts (I blame the holiday weekend), but not too quiet — Equity had a Thanksgiving-ish episode. |