• Texas healthcare officials are cancelling 50 planned vaccination clinics as measles spreads throughout the state. The decision comes as the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services have cut funding, which was originally allocated to communities during the pandemic.

Cuts to federal funding have forced healthcare officials in Texas to shutter 50 planned vaccination clinics in Dallas, one the state’s most populated areas, as a measles outbreak continues to grow across the state.

Many of those clinics had been planned for areas where vaccination rates for measles, mumps and rubella were low. The shots would have been freely offered to families.

The decision follows $11.4 billion in funding cuts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services. That money, originally, was allocated to community health departments during the pandemic. Last week, however, HHS said it would “no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

While COVID is not as big of a concern these days, Texas has 422 confirmed cases of measles at the moment. While none are in Dallas, health officials are trying to protect that city, given how fast the disease can spread.

Due to the cuts, 11 full-time and 10 part-time staffers at the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department have been let go, which officials say could impact their ability to fight the spread of the disease. The majority of those workers either gave vaccines or were epidemiologists and lab staff involved with measles surveillance and prevention.

(Clinics in West Texas, where many of the cases are, will continue for now.)

The cuts come a month after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine critic and the nation’s top health official, said his agency would continue to fund Texas’ immunization program and that ending the outbreak was a “top priority” for him and his team.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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A man accused of corporate espionage in a scandal rocking the world of HR has confessed to gathering intelligence on one company and passing along information to its rival, according to a new court filing. 

Keith O’Brien, who is accused of acting as a spy for HR software firm Deel, submitted an affidavit to an Irish court this week in which he says he was paid by Deel to disclose confidential information about its competitor Rippling, another HR software company. He says co-founder and CEO of Deel Alex Bouaziz directly suggested he keep his job at Rippling and work as an inside man.

“I recall him specifically mentioning James Bond,” O’Brien wrote. “I asked him what he meant. He said he would offer me a monetary award if I agreed to spy on Rippling for Deel.” 

Deel did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment. Rippling did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment. Rippling CEO Parker Conrad posted parts of the affidavit on X Tuesday, writing that Bouaziz “personally orchestrated his company’s alleged spy scheme, the spy said in a full confession

O’Brien writes that he was asked to provide Bouaziz with information regarding Rippling’s “ways of doing things” which he inferred to mean corporate strategy, customer insights and other confidential company information. O’Brien says he communicated with Bouaziz multiple times per day, and even on weekends. In November, he says he was awarded $6,000 for the insights he passed along, and continued to receive payments monthly in exchange for valuable information, according to the court filing. 

At one point, when Rippling began to suspect that something was wrong, O’Brien claims he was asked by Deel’s legal team to purchase a burner phone from Deel’s lawyers, destroy his old one with an axe, and shove it down his mother-in-law’s drain, according to the court affidavit. He further alleges that he was advised by lawyers for Deel that he should leave Ireland and fly with his family to Dubai, and that Deel would pay for his accommodations.

O’Brien says that in March, he agreed to meet with Rippling’s legal team for an interview, and wrote that he was fearful of his safety “given the power and wealth of the individuals involved.”

“I was getting sick of concealing this lie,” he wrote in the affidavit. “I realized that I was harming myself and my family to protect Deel.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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