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Twitter, Facebook lawsuits highlight importance of diversity policies… Climate change will make our food taste bad… State website hit by cyber attack…

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Twitter, Facebook lawsuits highlight importance of diversity policies
If your business has no formal procedure for promotions and is not ensuring that diversity policies are implemented across the business there is risk of allegations of unfair treatment. Two of the best-known firms in the world are currently facing allegations relating to diversity. Social networks Twitter and Facebook have been accused of treating men and women differently, in two separate lawsuits. Tina Huang claims that Twitter has no formal process for promotions but relies on a ‘shoulder tap’ approach that unfairly favours men. The software engineer has filed papers for a class action against the company. Twitter says it is committed to diversity and believes that the facts will show that Ms. Huang was treated fairly. Meanwhile Facebook is being accused by former employee Chia Hong that she was wrongly dismissed in 2013 because of her gender, race and Taiwanese nationality. Facebook denies the claims.
 
Climate change will make our food taste bad
As if the risk to homes, businesses and our very existence isn’t compelling enough to make us take climate change seriously, now experts are warning of its effects on our food. Scientists at the University of Melbourne report that heatwaves caused by global warming will make cattle more stressed, leading to tougher meat; vegetables will be smaller and less tasty. The study shows that the quality of everything from milk and cheese to onions could be adversely affected. Putting the massive potential impact on humans overall, those businesses that are reliant on quality produce could find resources become more limited and more expensive as a result of changing climates. Read the full story.
 
State website hit by cyber attack
The government website in Maine was knocked out by a cyber attack yesterday. It was confirmed as a ‘denial of service’ attack where a site is bombarded with data requests and overwhelms the host server. A spokesman for the state’s Department of Administrative and Financial Services said that no data was breached and they had no reason to believe any personal information was compromised. Network experts Cisco warn in a whitepaper that these attacks are of increasing risk to businesses, referring to them as ‘weapons of mass disruption’. It says that an online-based business could lose thousands of dollars within hours of being offline and urges defenses that include identification of good web traffic from bad with the intention of keeping business continuity. 
 

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