Amazon gets U.S. patent to use delivery drones for surveillance service

Amazon.com Inc is exploring using drones not just to deliver packages but also to provide surveillance as a service to its customers, according to a patent granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The delivery drones can be used to record video of consented user’s property to gather data that can be analyzed to look out, say for example, a broken window, or a fire or if a garage door was left open during the day, the patent described.

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U.S. says $168 million ITT for-profit student loans to be forgiven

Former students at ITT Technical Institute will not have to pay $168 million they still owe on private loans from an affiliated lender to attend the now-defunct for-profit college, under a U.S. regulatory settlement announced on Friday.

Student CU Connect CUSO, created in 2008 to fund and manage loans for ITT students, reached the settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 44 states and Washington D.C. to resolve claims over its alleged shoddy business practices.

The accord also requires CUSO to stop collecting on loans, ask consumer reporting agencies to effectively delete its loans from students’ credit profiles, and tell borrowers they no longer owe money on the loans.

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Trump wins U.S. court victory in quest for transgender military ban

A U.S. appeals court handed President Donald Trump a victory in his effort to ban most transgender people from the military, ordering a judge to reconsider her ruling against the policy, which the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed to take effect.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday set aside a ruling by U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Seattle, which said the ban likely violated the constitutional rights of transgender service members and recruits.

Without ruling on the merits, a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appeals court said Pechman did not give the military’s judgment enough deference, and ordered her to give it more.

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FDA proposes shorter deadline for e-cigarette applications

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it can advance the date for the submission of e-cigarette applications, responding to a ruling that the agency had exceeded its authority by allowing e-cigarettes to remain on the market until 2022 before companies applied for regulatory approval.

The FDA in a court filing on Wednesday proposed adoption of a timeline of not less than 10 months to submit the applications after a final ruling, if the court decides not to remand the case back to the agency for further action.

“Should the Court order premarket applications to be submitted by a date certain, it should set that deadline no sooner than 10 months from the date of its decision, along with a one-year period for FDA review,” FDA said in the court filing.

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Trump asserts executive privilege to withhold documents on citizenship census question

President Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege to withhold documents from Congress about the administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

A Wednesday Department of Justice letterexplaining the decision said the materials were being withheld to protect the deliberative process as well as attorney-client privilege and attorney work product. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have coverage.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr had asked Trump on Tuesday to assert the privilege. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform had scheduled a Wednesday vote on whether to recommend that Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross be held in contempt for failing to turn over the materials.

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