Tesla Motors is once again facing controversy over the safety of its Autopilot technology for assisting car drivers, this time in connection with the death of the driver in a Model S crash in China. The father of the deceased filed a lawsuit in a Beijing court in July against the car dealer who sold him the car, alleging that his son had turned on the Autopilot feature before he crashed into a vehicle in January in the northeastern province of Hebei, according to reports citing Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. Tesla has said it is unable to determine whether or not Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash. As a result of the damage caused by the collision, the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to Tesla servers, wrote spokeswoman Keely Sulprizio late Wednesday. "We have tried repeatedly to work with our customer to investigate the cause of the crash, but he has not provided us with any additional information that would allow us to do so," Sulprizio added in an email.

The cashiers' demands were simple: management must remove the tracking software they had installed in the checkout terminals, or the cashiers would refuse to return to work. The technology that tracked their every movement – their speed, efficiency, etc – had been installed without their knowledge, they asserted, and was an invasion of privacy. While this seems like something one might see today, this happened nearly 40 years ago at the biggest supermarket chain in Denmark. It is easy to see these cashiers as luddites, anti-progress and anti-technology, but like the original luddites they had valid concerns about the way that new technologies are used by employers. New technologies can not only lead to jobs lost through automation, but can also change the nature of work itself in detrimental ways.

The Times Bayer bets the farm in 66 billion Monsanto deal: An American pioneer of genetically modified seeds has struck a 66 billion takeover deal with Bayer, the German chemicals giant, in the latest round of megadeal consolidations in agricultural production. Lawyers set to pass M&A paperwork to machines: Luminance, a start-up backed by Mike Lynch, the British technology investor, is aiming to reduce the time taken on due diligence that accompanies multimillion-pound M&A deals from weeks to days or even hours using a new form of artificial intelligence. Public sector job numbers plunge to record low: Employment in the public sector has fallen to a record low as private sector jobs surge ahead despite Brexit, official figures have shown. Mortgage lending falls in wake of Brexit vote: The number of mortgages advanced for house purchases fell in the first month after Britain's decision to leave the European Union. Miner in'bribery scandal' intends to quit AIM: An Africa-focused mining company that has been caught up in a bribery scandal is planning to delist its shares.

A former Philippine militiaman testified before a Senate panel on Thursday that President Rodrigo Duterte, when he was mayor of a southern city, ordered him and other members of a liquidation squad to kill criminals and political opponents in gangland-style assaults that left about 1,000 dead. Edgar Matobato, 57, told the nationally televised Senate committee hearing that he heard Duterte order some of the killings and acknowledged that he himself carried out about 50 of the abductions and deadly assaults in Davao, including one in which they fed a man to a crocodile in 2007. The Senate committee inquiry was being led by Sen. Leila de Lima, a staunch critic of Duterte's antidrug campaign that is believed to have killed more than 3,000 suspected drug users and dealers since he assumed the presidency in June. Duterte has accused De Lima of involvement in illegal drugs, alleging that she used to have a driver who took money from detained drug lords. She has denied the allegations.

She said the passenger train hit the freight train from behind. Bayer buying Monsanto, Uber's self-driving cars, a Navy commander faces attempted rape charges, and Hesperia's halfway houses might be closed. Bayer buying Monsanto, Uber's self-driving cars, a Navy commander faces attempted rape charges, and Hesperia's halfway houses might be closed. Shirley Teeter was punched while attending a Donald Trump rally on Sept. 13 in Asheville, N.C. Shirley Teeter was punched while attending a Donald Trump rally on Sept. 13 in Asheville, N.C.

The takeover of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon by anti-government protesters wasn't violent, a county sheriff testified, but it was far from peaceful. "Certainly it's not normal to have a hundred people walking around with firearms on our streets," Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward said Wednesday, becoming the first witness to testify in the trial of Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan and five others charged with conspiracy in the 41-day takeover of a federal wildlife preserve in southeast Oregon. Ward testified in the federal courthouse here that features a wall engraved with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: "The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave." The sheriff told the jury how such a wave, ridden by Ammon Bundy and his supporters, came crashing down on Harney County early this year. On Jan. 2, Ward was watching what he thought was a live TV feed of a Bundy-led rally just three blocks from his office in Burns.

Attorneys defending Indiana Gov. Mike Pence's order to bar agencies from helping Syrian refugees resettle in his state faced unusually fierce questioning before a federal appeals court Wednesday, suggesting the panel might side with a lower court that found the order discriminatory. A three-judge panel for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago zeroed in on the intelligence and intent behind the Republican vice presidential candidate's order, which a federal judge said in February "clearly discriminates" against refugees from the war-torn nation. Judges suggested that Indiana could've had a stronger argument for opting out of the refugee program -- in which states disperse federal money to resettlement organizations -- instead of excluding Syrians. "If you're in, you play by the government's rules," Judge Frank Easterbrook said. The oral arguments came the same day the White House announced that the refugee program will be expanded in the next year as concern continues about the refugee crisis stemming from Syria's civil war and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When police officers removed the mirrored doors behind which Yonatan Daniel Aguilar had died hours earlier, they found a crumpled blanket on the ground, obscuring his emaciated body -- pale and stiff, curled in a fetal position, with cuts on his face. One officer lifted a corner of the blanket and two cockroaches crawled out. The child was so tiny that officers thought maybe he was 6 years old or so. Details about the condition of Yonatan's body when it was found last month in his Echo Park home were disclosed in more than 100 pages of heavily-redacted case records and police reports released to The Times by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services this week. The records show that Yonatan's risk of abuse at home had been marked as "high" four times from 2009 to 2012 by a county program intended to guide social workers' level of intervention.

Bayer buying Monsanto, Uber's self-driving cars, a Navy commander faces attempted rape charges, and Hesperia's halfway houses might be closed. Bayer buying Monsanto, Uber's self-driving cars, a Navy commander faces attempted rape charges, and Hesperia's halfway houses might be closed. Shirley Teeter was punched while attending a Donald Trump rally on Sept. 13 in Asheville, N.C. Shirley Teeter was punched while attending a Donald Trump rally on Sept. 13 in Asheville, N.C. For decades, environmentalists have rhapsodized about the tranquil beauty of California's deserts while battling fiercely with energy companies, the government and within their own ranks over what if any power production should occur on those sun-baked, wind-blown, geothermally active expanses of land.

As a cease-fire in Syria entered its third day, authorities said Wednesday that the government was to begin withdrawing forces from a strategic road in the besieged rebel-held area of Aleppo, a move that would open the way for U.N. relief shipments. Syrian forces, with Russian air support, closed the road in July, thereby completing the encirclement of rebel districts with a population of as many as 300,000. A withdrawal south of Castello Road was to begin Thursday morning, according to Russian state news agency TASS. Rebel forces reportedly were to retreat simultaneously to positions north of the road. But it remained unclear whether residents of the city would accept the sacks of flour and food baskets the United Nations hopes to deliver.