ASK: I’m writing a few recent Viator tour in Paris. I booked the Eiffel Tower Reserved Access Tour and the optional summit by lift tour for 4 people. The day before the tour, I received an e -mail, wherein the time of the tour was modified from 9:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. because they’ve problems within the Louvre.

When we arrived on the meeting point, the representative told me that it was a “mistake” – her mistake, not mine – and we couldn't do that tour. She said that my options were to pay one other 15 euros per person to get a tour that included the summit that day, or cancel the tour, receive a reimbursement and check out to book again for a later date.

We decided to pay the extra 60 euros because our schedule was crammed with time -controlled approvals for the remaining of the week.

Unknown for us, the Summit tours on the second level need to make a stopover to alter the elevators. Therefore, my group of 4 could easily be added to a summit tour and delivered to the second level without additional costs. We would have had no access to the summit, but we still didn’t reserve ourselves.

I requested a refund from the Viator customer support of the opposite 60 euros for the mysterious mistake, but without success. During my first call, a representative was told that “it would be implemented” and that Viator “had my back”. I then received an e -mail that indicated that I had requested a whole reimbursement of $ 305, which I didn’t do. I even sent a replica of my receipt for the 60 euros with my e -mail. Viator contested the reimbursement very narrowly twice.

I hope you’ll be able to understand what I consider for a really reasonable money request that I shouldn’t have spent.

ANSWER: Your Eiffel Tower must be operated on as planned. However, if it needed to be moved, the tour operator must have given them the newly planned tour at the identical price. If you pay more, a bait and switch feel very similar.

Viator is a platform that sells tours they usually are absolutely right – it must have had their back. It looks as if Viator crossed his wires with the tour operator and believed for some reason that they wanted a whole reimbursement for a tour that that they had already undertaken.

It seems that the tour operator didn’t follow the published guidelines of Viators who say that he should announce 24 hours before the beginning time. In fact, they were surprised by the offer to either pay or cancel them. Technically speaking, you possibly can have requested a whole refund, but who’s going all of the strategy to the Eiffel Tower and Braves all of those crowds after which fundamentally canceled because the worth for the tour has risen by 15 euros?

I list the names, numbers and e -mails of the Viator Manager on my website for consumer interest representation. Elliott.org. A brief, polite email can have brought you out of the cycle of robo wear, wherein you usually send you an identical form wherein a reimbursement request you might have never asked you might be rejected.

I contacted Viator in your name. Viator said they need to have received a notification for his or her reimbursement, and it reimbursed the 60 euros that that they had requested.

Originally published: February 28, 2025 at 9:00 a.m.

By Pamela Brown, Jeremy Herb and Shoshana Dubnow | CNN

Washington — Melania Trump has barely been seen on the campaign trail this 12 months. During one in all her few appearances at a political event, she received a six-figure paycheck – a highly unusual move for the wife of a candidate.

The former first lady spoke at two Log Cabin Republicans political fundraisers this 12 months and received $237,500 for an event in April, in keeping with former President Donald Trump's most up-to-date disclosure statement. The payment was listed as a “speaking engagement.”

RELATED: Kimberly Guilfoyle could leave Don Trump Jr. over a 'flirtation' if Trump loses, political experts predict

Trump's most up-to-date disclosure form said Melania Trump was paid for the April fundraiser by the Log Cabin Republicans. But who actually wrote the check is a mystery: Log Cabin Republicans chairman Charles Moran told CNN earlier this month that the group didn’t raise the cash for Melania's speech, and the disclosure form didn’t provide any further information concerning the source of the payment.

Before the opposite fundraiser in July for the conservative LGBTQ group, an individual accustomed to the campaign said at the very least one request was made to a donor for the same payment. It is unclear whether Melania Trump was ultimately paid. The campaign has not released financial disclosures for that period. The source told CNN that Ric Grenell, former ambassador to Germany and a Trump ally, was the one who made the request on Melania Trump's behalf. Sources say Grenell has also helped the previous first lady with other business ventures.

Campaign finance and government ethics experts say that a payment to a presidential candidate's spouse to attend political fundraising events through the campaign is unusual and ethically questionable and may at the very least be properly noted on disclosure forms.

“It seems pretty self-serving. In my own general observation, I'm not used to seeing this kind of thing,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethicist at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.

If the organization didn’t, in truth, make the payment to Melania Trump, the previous president's financial disclosure statement may violate ethics rules since it must have listed the sponsor who paid Melania Trump, not only the situation where she spoke, Canter said.

“You could state that the payment was for a speaking appearance by the Log Cabin Republicans, but you also have to state who the source of the payment was, otherwise you can't assess the conflicts of interest and it wouldn't be compliant,” she said. “It should have been properly reported so that the source of income for the fee is listed.”

Sources supporting Melania Trump, who attended the Log Cabin Republican events and was unaware that she was paid for at the very least one in all them, defended her, saying it was her right to come to a decision how she spent her time and to be paid for it. One person near Melania Trump said she had decided that “my best and highest use is where I am,” adding that “she is a priceless, timeless asset” to Donald Trump.

A spokesman for Melania Trump declined to comment on CNN's questions.

Records show Melania Trump also received $250,000 for a Log Cabin Republicans event in December 2022, one in all three payments of $250,000 or more she received that month for speeches, shortly after the previous president announced his candidacy for reelection, in keeping with Donald Trump's financial disclosure form from last 12 months. One of the events was in Florida, the opposite was for a California group, Fix California, founded by Grenell. Grenell didn’t reply to multiple requests for comment.

The former First Lady was also $155,000 paid by a Trump-aligned Super PAC – called “Make America Great Again, Again” – for a speech she gave in Palm Beach, Florida, in December 2021, before Trump was a candidate.

She has performed at Log Cabin Republican events prior to now – in 2021 she was also the Guest of honour on the group's annual Spirit of Lincoln Gala.

The fundraising appearances also underline how Melania Trumpfrugal within the election campaign this 12 months. In addition to the 2 appearances at Log Cabin Republican, she and her husband performed at aFundraiser by billionaire and investor John Paulson in Palm Beach and she or he made a temporary appearance on the Republican National Convention, but didn’t give a speech there as she did in 2016. There is not any indication that she was paid for her appearance at Paulson's fundraiser.

“She was so disconnected and so absent from this campaign that I could hear her saying, 'If I put in my time, I'm going to get paid,'” said Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary under Trump and top adviser to Melania Trump who has develop into a critic of the previous president. “Even when we were in the White House, she was always so worried about people making money off her because she felt it was money she should be making.”

Grisham said that in her stay on the White House in 2018, Melania Trump instructed her staff to instruct a present shop near the White House to stop selling Melania Trump memorabilia, comparable to bobbleheads, without permission.

“She was outraged. She didn't like that they were making money off her,” Grisham said.

Donald Trump's financial disclosures also show that the previous first lady earned greater than $330,000 last 12 months for a licensing deal to sell digital trading cards (NFTs). She sells jewelry and other collectibles on her website.

In addition, the previous First Lady will publish her memoirs next month and embark on a promotional tour separate from the campaign. In a Series of short videos While promoting her book, On X, she made rare comments concerning the attempted assassination of her husband in Butler, Pennsylvania, the 2020 election results and her past as a nude model.

Melania Trump is just not the one member of the Trump family to receives a commission within the political highlight. Kimberly Guilfoyle received a lecture fee of 60,000 US dollars for introducing her fiancé, Trump's son Donald Trump Jr., on the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, before the rebellion on the U.S. Capitol. Her speech lasted lower than three minutes.

Speaking and appearance fees for events outside of political fundraising campaigns for former government officials aren’t unusual.

Former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady Hillary Clinton collected greater than $153 million for paid speechesfrom 2001 until the previous Secretary of State launched her 2016 presidential campaign. Former President Barack Obama reportedly earned $400,000 from a single speech at a Wall Street healthcare conference in 2017. Attract criticism by members of his own party on the time. And within the two years after he left the vice presidency and before he began his presidential campaign, Joe and Jill Biden made a total of 15.6 million US dollarsmainly through book contracts and speaking engagements.

But representatives of Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Bill Clinton said they’d not received any money for fundraising appearances during a political campaign.

The president's son, Hunter Biden, got here under scrutiny for selling $85,000 price of artwork each at a Manhattan art gallery last springwhile his father was running for re-election.

By all accounts, the Log Cabin Republicans' fundraising efforts have been successful this 12 months, with Grenell posting on X in July that the previous first lady “opened her New York penthouse tonight to raise money for the group.”

“It's the first campaign rally ever held at the Trump residence,” he wrote. “And we raised $1.4 million in one night. Our goal is to win 50% of the gay vote for Donald Trump.”

At the April event at Mar-a-Lago where Melania Trump spoke, the organization launched its “Road to Victory” program to achieve voters in swing states, in keeping with Politico.

CNN's Fredreka Schouten contributed to this report.

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The city of Cambridge spent $1.4 million in 2020 to settle a sexual harassment case involving a high-ranking member of the police department who created a hostile work environment, city officials confirmed Monday.

Cambridge spokesman Jeremy Warnick confirmed to Boston.com that three police department employees received $1.4 million in compensation following allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct by Sergeant James Crowley.

Warnick said her investigation “corroborated some of the allegations” related to a case reported to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination in 2018.

Crowley was disciplined for the misconduct within the hostile work environment, which Warnick described as sexually oriented comments, jokes, innuendo “and other offensive statements.”

originally reported On Monday, it was reported that the settlement would go to a few female officers within the department. Their attorney, Ellen Zucker, confirmed the report back to Boston.com, which also included inappropriate text messages Crowley allegedly sent to his colleagues.

According to the, Crowley denies sending an image of his crotch to a bunch chat alluding to a craving for snacks and wrote “Gotcha Covered,” an alleged incident the newspaper learned about through a public records request.

Crowley confirmed one other text by which he told a police officer they need to “not ignore the moment” they shared when he helped her off a fence after a foot chase, the report said. He then said he “saved [her] from the certain destruction of the landing gear and the subsequent birth of babies.”

Crowley “strongly” denied the harassment allegations and called them “false” and “outrageous.”

Crowley is still a member of the department. He was already in the public spotlight in 2009 when he arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his home. Former President Barack Obama said the police “acted foolishly by arresting someone when there was already evidence that the person was in his own residence,” but invited both men to a “beer summit” at the White House.

Cambridge police did not respond to a request for comment.

Cambridge City Council receives few details of sexual harassment settlement

The reported that Cambridge kept the settlement secret for years. City councilors were asked in 2020 to approve the $1.4 million payment without many details, but only two voted against approving the settlement, the said.

“That's $1.4 million of taxpayer money that would have been spent on many things,” said City Councilor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, who voted against the payment. told the newspaper“The public must have known what was achieved, however the council didn't know the main points. The public didn't know the main points. And I still don't understand why.”

Yi-An Huang, Cambridge's city manager who was appointed in 2022, said in a statement that the city is committed to ensuring the council “has enough information to make good decisions and exercise appropriate oversight.”

“There are undoubtedly tensions in cases like this and beyond around protecting complainants, ensuring due process, public transparency, accountability, legal obligations and the deeper work of fixing the culture,” Huang said.

Since the settlement, Cambridge has hired Christine Elow, the police department's first female police commissioner.

“I actually have spoken with Commissioner Christine Elow and her leadership team about how we encourage feedback, protect against retaliation, follow due process, ensure accountability, and construct a protected and inclusive culture,” Huang said. “I actually have full confidence in her leadership and work and know this has been a priority over the past several years.”

Michigan is known for its fruit festivals. Visitors can taste cherries on the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City or blueberries in National Blueberry Festival in South Haven.

The Apple Festival in Charlevoix and the Romeo Peach Festival offer fruits later within the season.

As a State with diverse crop production and that Top producer of asparagus In the countryside, Michigan offers an agricultural landscape that may be a picturesque mixture of grain fields and fruit trees.

But behind this facade lies the cruel reality of precarious employment and exploitative labor practices for Michigan's farmworkers. According to ongoing research by the Michigan Farmworker Project, they are sometimes invisible to the individuals who benefit from the fruits of their labor.

Few consumers are aware of the migrant and seasonal staff who make this economy possible. In 2013, the last 12 months for which official records can be found in Michigan, the state recorded almost 94,000 migrant and seasonal staff. This number included their members of the family and kids.

The state has not invested in counting staff for greater than 10 years, a crucial step to enhance their working and living conditions. Michigan recently released a Request for quotation to conduct a brand new census study this 12 months.

In 2019 we launched the Michigan Farmworker Project as an educational collaboration with local and state organizations. The aim of the project is to enhance understanding of the social, working and housing situation of rural staff within the state.

Our goal is to develop sustainable and effective strategies, programs and health-promoting interventions to enhance the working and living conditions of agricultural staff within the state.

Critical work

Farming is a year-round activity, with staff often moving between different crops and locations depending on the season. These staff perform a wide range of essential agricultural tasks, akin to planting, harvesting, pruning, packing, washing produce, applying fertilizers, and spraying pesticides.

Their work is crucial to maintaining the robust 104.7 billion US dollars annual agricultural economy. Yet their presence and significant contribution often go unnoticed by many Michiganders and politicians.

The invisibility of agricultural staff stems from Guidelines And Practices Methods Exercises The violate fundamental human rights through racism, Exclusion and segregation which deprive them of the social and labour protection to which other groups of staff are entitled.

Historic federal laws akin to Jim Crow and the New Deal contributed to structural racism and pervasive occupational segregation which proceed to at the present time, through a policy that deliberately Exclude agricultural staff from basic occupational safety and health transferred to other work areas.

Various federal and state laws have excluded or provided only minimal labor protections for farm staff, including the National Labour Relations Actthat excludes farmworkers from the protection of unionization and collective bargaining. Michigan law also doesn’t provide union protection for farmworkers.

The Fair Labor Standards Act is one other law that applies in another way to farm staff. Under federal law and Michigan state law Agricultural staff are exempt from the duty to pay time beyond regulationand staff on certain small farms should not guaranteed a minimum wage. In addition, Children from 13 years are allowed to work within the fields, in comparison with 16 in other industries.

Farm staff lack time beyond regulation pay, sick leave and vacation, and plenty of don’t have any access to social advantages akin to Medicaid and food stamps. Many are still paid by piece rateand earned only a couple of cents per bucket of products.

Although Michigan Law prescribes minimum wage for pieceworkersOur research has shown that Employers often fire individuals who don’t meet their productivity quotas.

In 2010, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission Investigated allegations on the conditions faced by agricultural staff and concluded that the inadequate living and dealing conditions for lots of them haven’t improved significantly in 45 years.

Afterward Commission progress reportstogether with our own recent researchindicate that little progress was made in the course of the pandemic and beyond.

This continued lack of improvement underscores the ongoing challenges and exploitation Farmworkers in Michigan.

Why precarious work and labour exploitation are vital

Our project revealed that working conditions for agricultural staff should not only precarious, but often exploitative.

As public health researchers, we define exploitative labor practices as those by which a employee's vulnerability – whether psychological, physical, sexual, social, economic, or legal – is exploited in a harmful way for financial gain. Workers often endure labor exploitation due to their economic needs and since they’re excluded from policies that will ensure protection and safety afforded in other occupations.

We find that exploitation of farmworkers in Michigan leads to excessive and unpredictable work hours, penalties, and wage theft. Wage theft can take the shape of denial of piece-rate payments, physical and psychological abuse, coercion, and threats.

The fundamental dehumanization of staff and dangerous violations of basic human rights akin to Access to drinking water and secure working conditions were identified by staff in the primary Michigan Farmworker Project study, conducted from 2019 to 2021.

These quotes represent the voices of the feminine and male farmworkers captured within the research. Names should not included to Data protection laws And Federal research regulations.

“You have to earn at least a thousand pounds a week and if you don't, they can't pay you an hourly wage (minimum wage). They only give you three weeks (of work). If you don't make it (to the minimum wage) on the piecework system, they fire you.”

“We were very thirsty and (the farmer) did not give us water. I left my pipe. I wanted to drink water and the farmer looked at me very dismayed and asked why I had left the pipe. I told him, 'You know it is very hot. I feel dizzy. I need to drink water.'”

“(The grower) wanted me to keep working on the blueberry machine. I suffer from epilepsy and also have a heart disease, so I can't get upset. My husband told him that I had already worked and that we could postpone it until tomorrow. The grower got very angry and said, 'I will not tolerate people who do not want to work with me. Why don't you just leave the house tonight?' My son was only 10 months old, where were we going to go? We had nowhere else to go and not only that, he was very racist. He mistreated (the people), he had no water for my husband and the other workers and he did not want them to take their lunch break and he did not want to pay us.”

When farm staff dehumanized and treated as expendable staffThey are being stripped of their agency and human rights. This not only deepens health inequalities, but in addition undermines core American principles of liberty, equality, and justice for all.

Bill Thompson's wife had never seen him smile confidently. During the primary 20 years of their relationship, he lost one tooth after one other attributable to an infection in his mouth.

“I didn’t have any teeth to smile with,” said the 53-year-old from Independence, Missouri.

Thompson said he struggled for years as a cook at Burger King with throbbing toothaches and painful facial swelling from abscesses. He urgently needed to see a dentist but said he couldn't afford to take break day without pay. Missouri is one among many states that don't need Employers must provide paid sick leave.

So Thompson would do it Swallow Tylenol and overcoming the pain while working on the new grill.

“Either we go to work and get a paycheck,” Thompson said. “Or we take care of ourselves. We can't take care of ourselves because we're stuck in this vicious circle.”

In a rustic that has been sharply divided over government health mandates in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the general public has turn out to be comfortable with the concept of ​​government regulations providing paid sick leave.

Before the pandemic 10 states and the District of Columbia had laws requiring employers to offer paid sick leave. Since then, Colorado, latest York, New Mexico, Illinois And Minnesota have passed laws providing some type of paid sick leave. Oregon And California expanded previous paid leave laws. In Missouri, AlaskaAnd NebraskaAdvocates are pushing to bring the difficulty to a vote in the autumn.

It is the USA one among nine countries which don’t guarantee paid sick leave, in keeping with data from the World Policy Analysis Center.

In response to the pandemic Congress passed the laws expanding emergency paid medical leave and expanding emergency family and medical leave. These temporary measures allowed employees to take as much as two weeks of paid sick leave for COVID-related illness and care. But the regulations expired in 2021.

“When the pandemic hit, we finally saw real political will to solve the problem of non-federal paid sick leave,” the economist said Hilary Wething.

Wething co-authored a current report from the Economic Policy Institute on the sick leave situation within the United States. It found that greater than half (61%) of the bottom paid employees should not entitled to sick leave.

“I was really surprised at how quickly losing wages – because you're sick – can lead to immediate and devastating cuts to a family's household budget,” she said.

“So paid sick leave is about both protecting the public health of a community and providing workers with the economic security they desperately need when they need to take time off from work,” she said.

The National Federation of Independent Business has rejected mandatory sick leave rules on the state level, arguing that workplaces must have the pliability to make arrangements with their employees in the event that they turn out to be sick. The group shared the prices Pay employees for break dayadditional paperwork and lost productivity burdens small employers.

According to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, after these regulations take effect, employees on average take two more sick days per yr than before a law comes into force.

Paid Leave Rules in Illinois got here into force this yr. Lauren Pattan is co-owner of Old Bakery Beer Co there. Before this yr, the craft brewery didn’t offer paid vacation to its hourly employees. Pattan said she supports Illinois' latest law but must work out pay for it.

“We're really trying to be respectful of our employees and be a good place to work, and at the same time we're worried about not being able to afford things,” she said.

That could mean customers should pay more to cover costs, Pattan said.

As for Bill Thompson, he wrote a comment for the Kansas City Star newspaper about his dental problems.

“Despite working nearly 40 hours a week, many of my colleagues are homeless,” he wrote. “Without health care, none of us can afford a doctor or dentist.”

This comment attracted local attention and in 2018, a dentist in his community donated his time and labor to remove Thompson's remaining teeth and replace them with dentures. This allowed his mouth to get better from the infections he had been battling for years. Today, Thompson has a brand new smile and a job — with paid sick leave — within the food service department at a hotel.

In his free time, he's collecting signatures to get an initiative on the November ballot that will at the least guarantee it five days earned paid sick leave per yr for Missouri employees. The petition organizers said they did so Enough signatures to place it before the voters.

Paid leave for prenatal care should develop into a national women's health initiative. This makes New York the primary state to require an independent right to paid pregnancy leave.

In April: New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a change to New York labor law that requires employers to supply pregnant employees with as much as 20 hours of paid leave during a 52-week period to permit them to attend prenatal medical appointments and procedures. The provision comes into force on January 1, 2025.

“I think other states and other governors who hold similar values ​​in prioritizing women's health will hopefully follow suit,” said Reshma Saujani, founder and executive director of Moms First, a campaign run by the nonprofit Girls Who Code.

The federal government's Family and Medical Leave Act provides job-protected leave for prenatal care or when an expectant mother is unable to work due to her pregnancy. The law grants insured employees the fitting to as much as 12 working weeks of vacation in a 12-month period. During this time, your job stays protected, but the holiday is unpaid.

Washington DC has passed an analogous law Law This is consistent with New York's recent law allowing as much as two weeks of paid leave to receive pregnancy-related medical care. The D.C. law also provides a further 12 weeks of paid leave after the birth of a baby.

These laws are based on medical research showing that prenatal health care tends to guide to higher health outcomes for moms and their babies.

“The concept is that working mothers should not rely on their health insurance for health care related to the birth of a child,” said Harris M. Mufson, partner on the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and member of the Labor Department – and employment practices of the corporate. “The view is that there should be a dedicated bank for this condition – that is appropriate and provides appropriate support for working mothers.”

There isn’t any federal employment law precedent

Although FMLA entitles eligible employees to take as much as 12 weeks of unpaid leave per yr, no federal law generally requires private employers to supply paid leave to employees who need day off for family and medical purposes. Likewise, there is no such thing as a federal law that regulates paid day off for prenatal care.

Paid leave isn't a partisan issue, nevertheless it hasn't necessarily been a top priority for lawmakers, Saujani said. “It was never passed at the federal level because, in my opinion, it was never prioritized.”

At the national level, greater than a dozen states and at the very least one local jurisdiction have passed laws requiring private employers to supply paid family and medical leave to their employees. All laws allow paid leave for the birth of a toddler or to take care of a seriously in poor health member of the family, and a few states also allow paid leave for other reasons, equivalent to prenatal care, in response to Westlaw.

Since January, about 14 states — including California, Colorado, Connecticut and Delaware, in addition to Washington DC and the town and county of San Francisco — have implemented paid family and medical leave programs.

New York, in turn, has integrated the brand new prenatal protections into its paid sick leave laws. According to Westlaw, at the very least 18 states, in addition to Washington DC and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, have enacted nationwide paid sick leave laws. Three of those state laws – Illinois, Maine and Nevada – allow the usage of paid leave for any reason, not only illness.

States usually tend to follow New York's lead

States most probably to pass laws requiring paid leave for prenatal care are those who are likely to offer greater employee protections, equivalent to California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Washington, Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut, said Kelly M. Cardin, shareholder of Ogletree Deakins, who focuses on employment law. “I think it’s something that could spread,” she said.

The concept of requiring paid prenatal services could also be particularly compelling given the federal government Pregnant Workers Fairness Actwhich President Biden signed in December 2022 and took effect on June 27, 2023. In April, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued its final regulation implementing the law, which takes effect June 18.

In general, the PWFA requires employers to supply their employees with “reasonable accommodations” for the known limitations of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless doing so poses an undue hardship. The law doesn’t replace laws that provide more protection offer the worker on this regard. More than 30 conditions and cities have laws requiring employers to supply accommodations for pregnant employees.

Given the federal government's concentrate on pregnant employees under the PWFA, it's likely that states — particularly more progressive ones — will adopt additional protections, Cardin said. It also follows a general trend of some states attempting to level the playing field for employees in terms of worker advantages.

Few employees make the most of paid leave programs

Of course, it's not nearly passing laws; It's vital to make sure that women know they exist, Saujani said.

Although a state like New York has a widely praised paid family leave program, utilization of this system stays low, at just 2% of eligible employees. in response to information provided to CNBC by Moms First. Saujani said this reflects a nationwide trend with only 3% to five% of eligible employees taking paid leave.

“If no one knows it exists, they won’t be able to access it,” said Saujani, whose organization built such a system website This uses AI to assist people determine their eligibility for paid family leave in New York. Saujani said Moms First is within the strategy of rolling out this tool to other states that supply paid leave to assist residents of those states discover in the event that they are eligible.

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty confirmed for the primary time that the corporate has paid a $22 million ransom to hackers who broke into its Change Healthcare subsidiary, with far-reaching consequences across the healthcare sector. Witty's comments got here during a hearing Wednesday before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.

Change Healthcare offers payment, revenue management and other solutions corresponding to e-prescription software. When the threat was identified, the corporate shut down affected systems, temporarily stopping many doctors from writing prescriptions or being paid for his or her services.

UnitedHealth told CNBC in April that it paid a ransom to guard patient data. Previous reports had discovered a $22 million wire transfer on the Bitcoin blockchain, but the corporate had not previously confirmed the number.

“The decision to pay a ransom was mine,” Witty said. “This was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make and I would not wish it on anyone.”

UnitedHealth is one among the most important corporations on the planet with a market capitalization of around $450 billion. Its business units Optum – which serves 103 million customers – and Change Healthcare – which handles one in three patient records – merged in 2022.

Committee Chairman Sen. Ron WydenD-Ore., said in his opening statement that the Change Healthcare breach was a “bleak warning of the consequences of megacorporations that are too big to fail.”

“Companies this large have a duty to protect their customers and lead the way on this issue,” Wyden said.

Witty told the committee that cybercriminals accessed Change Healthcare through a server that was not protected by multi-factor authentication (MFA), which requires users to confirm their identity in at the very least two other ways. He said UnitedHealth has now implemented MFA in all external systems.

“As a result of this malicious cyberattack, patients and providers have experienced disruption and people are concerned about their private health information,” Witty said. “I would like to say very clearly to everyone affected: I am deeply sorry.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., held up a shiny yellow copy of “Hacking for Dummies” through the hearing and said UnitedHealth was answerable for fixing the breach.

“These are some basic things that have been overlooked. So it's a shame for internal audit, external audit and your systems people who are charged with redundancy, they're not doing their job,” Tillis said.

A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said UnitedHealth discovered in late February that a cyber threat actor had accessed part of Change Healthcare's information technology network.

Witty said Change Healthcare's core systems are back online, although some of its secondary support functions are still being restored.

UnitedHealth said in February that the Blackcat ransomware group was behind the attack. According to a, Blackcat, also known as Noberus and ALPHV, steals sensitive data from institutions and threatens to publish it unless a ransom is paid Release in December from the US Department of Justice.

UnitedHealth confirmed in April that the breach compromised files containing protected health information and personal data. The company said a data review is ongoing and therefore it could take months before the company can notify affected individuals.

Witty said Wednesday that UnitedHealth is working with regulators to assess the breach and notify people “as quickly as possible” if their data has been compromised.

In early March, UnitedHealth launched a short lived financial assistance program to support providers that experienced money flow disruptions as a consequence of the cyberattack. There aren’t any fees, interest or other costs along with payments, and providers have 45 days to refund the cash once their regular payment operations resume.

During the hearing, Witty said the corporate had not yet asked anyone for loan repayments and that it might be as much as providers to find out when their operations would officially return to normal.

Witty didn’t immediately disclose whether UnitedHealth will provide additional support to providers who could also be combating other loans and interest payments due to breach.

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., pressed Witty to share how UnitedHealth is working to make sure something just like the Change Healthcare breach doesn't occur again. Witty said the corporate plans to share its discoveries concerning the breach, adding that it must concentrate on reducing the speed of cyberattacks on the healthcare sector.

“We are clearly trying to assume our responsibility in this attack. We are also trying to learn from it,” he said.