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Microsoft workers say they’ve been fired after 50th anniversary protest over Israel contract

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Microsoft has fired two employees who interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration to protest its work supplying artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military, according to a group representing the workers.

Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

The protests began Friday when Microsoft software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad walked up to a stage where an executive was announcing new product features and a long-term vision for Microsoft’s AI ambitions.

“You claim that you care about using AI for good but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military,” Aboussad shouted at Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “Fifty-thousand people have died and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.”

The protest forced Suleyman to pause his talk, which was livestreamed from Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. Among the participants at the 50th anniversary of Microsoft’s founding were co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer.

“Thank you for your protest, I hear you,” Suleyman said. Aboussad continued, shouting that Suleyman and “all of Microsoft” had blood on their hands. She also threw onto the stage a keffiyeh scarf, which has become a symbol of support for Palestinian people, before being escorted out of the event.

A second protester, Microsoft employee Vaniya Agrawal, interrupted a later part of the event.

Aboussad was invited on Monday to a video call with a human resources representative at which she was told she was being terminated immediately. Agrawal was notified over email, according to the advocacy group No Azure for Apartheid, which has protested the sale of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to Israel.

An investigation by The Associated Press revealed earlier this year that AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The story also contained details of an errant Israeli airstrike in 2023 that struck a vehicle carrying members of a Lebanese family, killing three young girls and their grandmother.

In February, five Microsoft employees were ejected from a meeting with CEO Satya Nadella for protesting the contracts.

“We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard,” said a statement from the company Friday. “Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.”

Microsoft had declined to say Friday whether it was taking further action. Aboussad told the AP she lost access to her work accounts shortly after the protest and had not been able to log back in.

Dozens of Google workers were fired last year after internal protests surrounding a contract that the technology company has with the Israeli government. Employee sit-ins at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California were targeting a $1.2 billion deal known as Project Nimbus providing AI technology to the Israeli government.

The Google workers later filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in an attempt to get their jobs back.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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Reminding women of gender gaps in the workplace could encourage them to apply for more leadership roles, Wharton research finds

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Vietnamese property tycoon jailed for life in $17 billion money laundering case has sentence cut to 30 years—but she still faces death penalty in another case

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A Vietnamese property tycoon who was jailed for life in a $17-billion money laundering case had her sentence cut to 30 years on appeal on Monday after she claimed what happened was “an accident”.

Property developer Truong My Lan had already lost a challenge against the death penalty in a separate case in which she was found guilty in April last year of stealing money from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) and fraud amounting to $27 billion.

The appeal court ruled there was no basis to reduce her sentence but said she could still escape the death penalty if she returned three-quarters of the stolen assets.

Four months later, an appeal court in Ho Chi Minh City ruled on Monday that a life sentence she was handed for three crimes during a second trial in October would be reduced to 30 years.

“Lan played the major role… (but) we also take into consideration the amount of money that Lan has spent on overcoming the consequences,” judge Pham Cong Muoi said following discussions during the appeal about how her assets may be used to compensate victims of her crimes.

Prosecutors said she had repaid a quarter of the $1.2 billion she defrauded from thousands of bond investors.

Lan’s husband Chu Lap Co did not appeal, but the judging panel concluded that his two-year sentence should be cut by half after he paid back the $1.2 million he was found to have laundered.

In her final words before the court last week, Lan described what happened as “an accident”.

“Since being jailed, I have tried my best… to seek the best solutions to (deal with my) projects and properties,” she was quoted as saying by state media.

“Please acknowledge my effort,” she added.

‘Mastermind’

The 68-year-old was found guilty in October of laundering $17.7 billion and illegal cross-border trafficking of $4.5 billion.

She was also found guilty of bond fraud.

The court determined during the trial that Lan was “the mastermind, committed the crime with sophisticated methods, many times, causing especially serious consequences”.

During her first trial in April 2024, Lan was found guilty of embezzling $12.5 billion but prosecutors said the damages caused by the scam totalled $27 billion — equivalent to around six percent of Vietnam’s 2023 GDP.

Lan owned just five percent of shares in SCB on paper but the court concluded that she effectively controlled more than 90 percent through family, friends and staff.

Tens of thousands of people who had invested their savings in the bank lost money, prompting rare protests in the communist nation.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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How Alex Wiltschko went from Google Brain to giving computers the sense of smell

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