Google is facing diverse diversity lawsuits.

A former employee is suing the company for allegedly discriminating against white and Asian male applicants as it tries to boost the number of black, Latino and female staffers.

Arne Wilberg worked for seven years as a recruiter at YouTube, which is owned by Google. His job was to court and hire candidates for engineering and technology positions. In court documents filed in January, he alleges Google’s “quota-based hiring practices” systematically instructed recruiters to “purge” eligible Caucasian and Asian candidates from potential hiring pools. He says they were told to favor applicants from underrepresented groups within the company. That meant interviewing only Hispanic, African-American or female job seekers.

California labor law prohibits employers from making job decisions based on characteristics like race or gender.

The lawsuit describes several instances in which Wilberg says he raised concerns with supervisors and human resources executives only to allegedly be retaliated against. Wilberg claims he and other recruiting team members were made to feel “completely uncomfortable and psychologically unsafe” reporting to their boss, a champion of the diversity policies.

He also alleges Google subjected him “to unsubstantiated performance reviews, performance criticisms and [terminated] his employment.” Wilberg was fired in November 2017.

The court documents recount alleged conversations wherein several employees complained to Google managers about the company’s diversity hiring practices. Although he maintains that Google favored minorities, Wilberg declares that “one recruiter told her peers that she felt the way the team talked about black people in team meetings was like we were talking about black slaves as slave traders on a ship.” In another encounter, Wilberg recalls, “One team member complained that managers were speaking about blacks like they were objects.”

Google has denied the company implemented discriminatory policies toward Caucasian and Asian men. In a statement to Gizmodo, the company said it “will vigorously defend this lawsuit.”

Google added:

“We have a clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their identity. At the same time, we unapologetically try to find a diverse pool of qualified candidates for open roles, as this helps us hire the best people, improve our culture, and build better products.”

Wilberg’s lawsuit is the latest legal attack on Google and its workplace culture.

Just Thursday, Gizmodo reported that a former female software engineer had filed a lawsuit accusing the company of condoning a “bro-culture” that encouraged sexual harassment and turning a blind eye to harmful pranks and physical violence.

In January a woman named Heidi Lamar sued the company on charges that women working as preschool teachers in Google’s child care center were paid lower salaries than male counterparts who had fewer qualifications.

Wilberg’s lawsuit is also the second asserting that the tech giant discriminates against white men. James Damore, who was fired after criticizing Google’s diversity efforts, filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in January. He claimed Google’s top brass discriminated against conservative men.

Finally, a Department of Labor official has also accused Google of practicing “systemic” discrimination against female employees.

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Republican lawmakers in Georgia made good on a threat to eliminate a proposed tax break for Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, after the carrier declined to reverse a decision to cut ties with the National Rifle Association.

Earlier this week, Delta — the state’s largest private employer with 33,000 workers statewide — was among numerous companies to announce that it would end discounts for NRA members in the wake of the mass shooting that killed 17 people at a Parkland, Fla., high school.

Immediately afterward, Georgia’s Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, a Republican and staunch NRA ally, said he would “kill” legislation to give the airline a sales tax exemption on jet fuel. The proposal, estimated to be worth at least $38 million to Delta and other airlines, had until then been largely uncontroversial.

Ignoring warnings that taking on Delta could harm the state’s pro-business image, the GOP-controlled House, which had earlier approved a larger tax bill containing the exemption, voted 135-24 on Thursday for a new version stripped of the provision. Meanwhile, some experts have raised First Amendment concerns over the legislature’s punitive move.

House Speaker David Ralston, a Republican, made it clear that there was a direct link between the vote and the NRA controversy: “I hope they are better at flying airplanes than timing P.R. announcements,” he said.

The Senate passed the tax cut bill 44-10.

Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, who called the Delta controversy an “unbecoming squabble,” said he would sign the broader tax measure.

Lt. Gov. Cagle is widely seen as Deal’s successor. In a statement, he said: “Businesses have every legal right to make their own decisions, but the Republican majority in our state legislature also has every right to govern guided by our principles.”

Delta did not immediately comment on the votes, but the controversy has prompted several states in recent days to lobby the airline to relocate its headquarters.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, tweeted Tuesday: “Hey [Delta] —Virginia is for lovers and airline hubs. You’re welcome here any time.”

The governors of Connecticut and New York, also Democrats, have also pitched their states to the airline, according to The Associated Press, which says the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, and a congressional representative from Ohio “also have reached out to Delta in recent days.”

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Amazon really wants to come over to your house. Or at least make it to the front door.

The Seattle-based tech giant announced Tuesday it’s made another move into the home security and surveillance business, acquiring Ring, a smart-doorbell maker that streams audio and video to cellphones.

Neither company has released details about the deal but Reuters reported that it cost over $1 billion.

Amazon may have just officially put a ring on Ring, but the relationship between the two started through its Alexa Fund, which funnels money into companies that create new ways to integrate Amazon’s voice technology into their products. In June, Ring announced they’d figured out how to connect select devices to work with Alexa on Echo Show and Fire TV.

Two months ago Amazon also snapped up Blink, another maker of Wi-Fi-connected security cameras that has recently ventured into the video doorbell industry, according to TechCrunch.

But Amazon is not just leaving it up to other companies to watch what’s going on at your front door. In November, it debuted a new home security camera called Cloud Cam that comes with Amazon Key, an app that lets some Amazon Prime members grant service providers — including dog walkers, house cleaners and delivery companies — keyless entry into homes.

The Key app was supposed to be the online retailer’s solution to widespread theft of delivery packages that online shoppers have been complaining about. Instead, GeekWire reported customers are creeped out by the technology, worrying that it might be vulnerable to hacking.

Just last week, ZDNet reported Amazon implemented a second fix to a bug that let intruders with fairly simple technology bypass the smart lock.

Still, at $119 the Cloud Cam is much cheaper than Amazon’s leading competition, the $199 Google Nest Cam.

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Georgia’s lieutenant governor has threatened to block a proposed tax break for Delta Airlines unless the Atlanta-based carrier restores a discount program for National Rifle Association members that was pulled in the wake of the shooting in Parkland, Fla., earlier this month.

In the latest fallout from the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 people, Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said he would “kill” legislation to give the airline a sales tax exemption on jet fuel “unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with” the powerful gun-rights advocacy group.

“Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back,” Cagle said.

In an earlier tweet, Cagle — who has earned an “A+” rating from the NRA every year since he assumed elected office and has been endorsed by the group – criticized corporations who cut ties with the NRA, calling on them instead to “donate a portion of [their] profits to mental health treatments and school safety initiatives.”

Cagle is a leading candidate to succeed Gov. Nathan Deal.

In a statement on Saturday, Delta said it was “reaching out to the NRA to let them know we will be ending their contract for discounted rates through our group travel program.”

As The Associated Press notes:

“Cagle’s comments come as Delta, one of the Georgia’s largest employers, appeared close to convincing lawmakers to restore a $50 million sales tax exemption on jet fuel. Headquartered in Atlanta, Delta would be the prime beneficiary of the tax cut.

The proposed exemption had been part of Deal’s larger tax overhaul, which has passed the House and awaits Senate input.”

United Airlines made a similar announcement on the same day as Delta.

The airline is among numerous high-profile companies to cut discounts from NRA members in recent days, including car rental companies such as Alamo, Avis, Enterprise, Hertz and First National Bank, Symantec, MetLife and others. Meanwhile, the hashtag #boycottNRA has been trending.

According to the AP:

“Cagle was not alone in his push to punish the airline, and the issue appeared poised to become part of the upcoming gubernatorial race in the gun-friendly state.

Sen. Michael Williams, another Republican candidate for governor who had opposed the Delta tax cut before the NRA controversy, praised Cagle’s statement, saying his political rival ‘is feeling the pressure that we are putting on him.’ He applauded Cagle for listening to what he says is the ‘vast majority’ of Republican senators who now want to quash the proposed jet fuel tax cut.”

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Three weeks after he mounted them on the front of his garage, Jeff Young found his prized antlers were literally ripped off.

“I think they just hung on them,” Young says of the thieves, pointing up at the empty drill holes on the garage’s façade one gray morning in Anchorage this winter.

“They were up on this six-foot ladder, as far as they could get, and then just pulled them down,” Young says.

He found the ladder, taken from a nearby construction site, near his garage the next morning.

“It sucks getting stuff stolen,” Young says. “Doesn’t matter what it is.”

In this case, it was two large racks of moose antlers. Young and other hunters see antler theft as growing problem — one connected to the pet industry.

After the theft in July of 2016 Young tried tracking the antlers down. They held sentimental value; the larger set of antlers came from the first moose he had successfully hunted. The set had a distinctive feature he was sure would help it be identified: A bullet hole right through the center where he’d landed his shot.

Young filed a police report, scoured social media, and called a few merchants offering to buy, but to no avail. It wasn’t until later that he found other hunters griping to one another and on neighborhood groups like Nextdoor about the same thing happening to them.

“I started hearing more stories from other friends that are hunters: ‘Yeah, I had a pile by the shed, been there 10 years, all gone,’ ” Young says. “Another guy was like, ‘Yeah, I always threw them on the roof, come home one day, all gone.’ ”

The demand driving this theft, hunters believe, is the pet store trend of selling strips of antler as dog chews.

Loose regulation, high demand

At a Capitol Hill pet store in Washington, D.C. called Howl to the Chief, clerk Vincent Ford extols the benefits of antler: It’s got healthy minerals, lasts a long time, and is particularly good for canine oral health.

“It takes off the plaque and the tartar by them chewing on it, so this is a good treat for that, too,” Ford says. Antler is just one of the popular organic chew products sold to pet owners. It’s a growing share of the booming pet supply industry, which last year saw more than $69 billion in sales, according to the American Pet Products Association.

Ford carries pricier organic chews, like lamb and cow tails. The store stocks horns from goat and bison, too. Hand-length shards of deer and elk antler are on the more affordable side. But the expense and popularity has regular customers getting entrepreneurial in the hunt for antlers out in the wild.

“A lot of people actually have [started] to get their own antlers now,” Ford says. “This lady tells me she goes to Alaska and just takes a trash bag and does it.”

Online, pet supply companies will sell a six-inch chunk of elk antler for $15, marked as organic and “naturally shed,” a designation that implies they were collected after being dropped by the animal during a seasonal molt. An Alaska-based business offers single caribou antler chews for large-breed dogs at $23. Amazon Prime members can get a thick slice of moose antler for $30.

Any link between pet chews and stolen antlers is hard to prove, largely because there is little data or monitoring over the source material and complicated supply chain.

The Anchorage Police Department has a record of 14 antler thefts in 2017 but Deputy Communications Director Nora Morse suspects that number is under-reported. Police in Alaska also cannot definitively say whether antler theft is on the rise. A burglarized home-owner might not specify for a police report that moose or caribou antlers were among the possessions stolen from a home.

But hunters and horn merchants believe the thefts are being carried out by low-level criminals trying to make a fast buck by unloading antlers that are eventually sold to larger pet supply companies. Unscrupulous buyers can easily cut the antlers and horns into small chunks with a table or band saw, making the source material all but impossible to trace. The issue is framed as a subset of Anchorage’s worsening property crime, which municipal and law enforcement officials attribute in part on the state’s opioid epidemic.

The market for antler chews, particularly on the supply side, is very loosely regulated. While animal products meant for consumption have to meet certain safety criteria of the Food and Drug Administration, the pet supply industry falls under a murky mix of federal, state, and industry standards. Nationally, the Association of American Feed Control Officials, a volunteer group with no regulatory authority, develops model guidelines for pet foods. That organization’s website names their state counterpart in Alaska as the Division of Agriculture, but Lora Haralson with the division wrote in an email that they do not regulate or have requirements for these kinds of pet products.

Multiple pet supply companies contacted for this story either declined to comment or offered general remarks that sourcing quality standards are ensured.

So it can be up to individual buyers to determine if a moose antler was legally obtained.

Cash for antlers

“If a guy comes in and he looks like a hunter and he talks like a hunter then you get a pretty good feel for it,” says Gus Gillespie from behind the counter at the Alaska Fur Exchange.

Gillespie got into the horn and hide trade several decades ago after years with the Navy and as an engineer in the oil fields on Alaska’s North Slope. Now he and his wife run the Fur Exchange, where on any given day, just past the rows of wolf and opossum pelts, are piles of antlers jumbled up like waist-high tumbleweeds. On the ground are plastic bins filled with spiky tines and plates sawed down into palm-sized strips. It is an astounding volume of animal matter.

“As far as antler, it’s either crap and we don’t want it, or it’s really, really nice,” Gillespie says with a laugh.

The four or five years since antler chews have become more popular with his customers have been good for Gillespie’s business. Instead of trading predominantly in the large, high-end antlers favored by artisans and collectors, the store can now buy more medium-sized products to cut down into the chews they stock in baskets by the register.

But he has turned sellers away if he thinks the source material might have been illegally obtained. Gillespie points to the pervasive presence of substance abuse, and says he and his staff look for whether a person seems drunk, high, or in withdrawal as they assess a potential purchase.

“If it’s questionable, we don’t do anything with it for a while,” he says. They might tell someone to come back in a few hours, pulling images of the person or their license plate from the numerous security cameras mounted around the store, sharing the information with police.

“We have been instrumental in a lot of people getting caught,” Gillespie says.

But anyone he turns away can just go to Craigslist—where every day in Alaska, plenty of people promise in all caps to pay up to $50 a pound in cash for antlers. And once they’re cut down into the small chunks sold over the counter, nobody can really say whether they were stolen or not.

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