The Justice Department has 45 days to bring a case once it is referred. If it declines, the FTC can proceed on its own.
An FTC spokesperson declined to comment. It could not be learned whether the FTC is interested in settling the case, and the company declined to comment. The company previously said it is in compliance with COPPA, and that its Amazon Kids offering for Alexa requires parental consent and gives parents full control over their children’s use of the product.
Much of the attention on the FTC’s investigations of Amazon has been focused on a yearslong antitrust probe of every part of the company’s business, and President Biden’s hard-charging FTC chair, Lina Khan, first gained international prominence with a legal paper outlining an antitrust case against the tech giant.
However, the agency has several ongoing consumer protection investigations into the company, including for potential privacy and data security violations in its Ring camera and home security business.
Financial penalties under COPPA are limited to just over $50,000 per violation, though each affected person is considered a separate violation and the total number can add up quickly for a company the size of Amazon.
The details of the FTC’s COPPA case couldn’t be learned. However, in 2019, a group of consumer and digital rights organizations filed a complaint with the FTC over a version of the company’s Echo Dot smart speaker geared toward kids. Among the allegations, the groups claim Amazon doesn’t properly provide notice to parents on the exact information collected by children using the device, and makes it too difficult to delete data, including transcripts of kids’ interactions with the devices.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hyderabad: Two years after lockdowns affected the city and state due to the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses and establishments are looking forward to the normalcy they were used to before 2020. With Ramzan around the corner, the trading community is all geared up to cater to the seasonal demand.
Markets in the Old City at Pathergatti, Shehran, Gulzar Houz, Patel Market, New Lad Bazaar, Old Lad Bazaar bangle market, Khilwat, Moosa Bowli, Madina Building and Devan Deodhi are all spruced up for the brisk business they see in Ramzan.
More than 20,000 traders in the Old City of Hyderabad, both in showrooms and roadside vendors, do business from the Nayapul junction to the Charminar bus stand market. Traders deal with ready apparels both traditional and modern for men, women and children, footwear, curtains, beddings and other related furnishings, household articles, crockery and kitchenware etc.
Every market in Hyderabad’s Old City is famous for some or the other thing. The Lad Bazaar market for its lac bangles and cosmetics, Patel Market and Rikaab Gunj market for sarees and dress materials, Osmania Bazaar for crockery and utensils, Shehran market for burkhas, Madina Building stretch for sarees, shoes and readymade women’s apparel, Nayapul – Madina Building road for traditional footwear including kolhapuri chappal.
Traders in the Old City of Hyderabad expect business to be encouraging this year during Ramzan post the COVID-19 pandemic which began in 2020. Business activity in the last three years has been dull due to COVID-19 induced lockdowns, which led to severe financial problems and restrictions. “We are hopeful of good business this season,” said Abid Mohiuddin, general secretary, Old City Traders Association said.
Customers from Hyderabad and neighbouring districts of Telangana visit the market at least once to shop for the Ramzan festival. “People from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka also visit to purchase the stuff here. Because people, mostly women, feel without shopping at Pathergatti there is Eid shopping is incomplete,” he added.
The business in the Old City is intact in spite of online shopping growing and also with small markets mushrooming in neighbourhood of Tolichowki, Hafeezbabanagar, Kishanbagh, Vattepally, Tallabkatta and Yakutpura. “Festival shopping is done at Pathergatti and the fact is deeply rooted in minds of the public of Hyderabad,” said Hafeez Ahmed, a trader.
The entire city was shut due to the lockdown in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While things had partially opened up a year later in 2021, the partial lockdown was imposed in Ramzan after COVID-19 cases began increasing. Many workers and artisans in the Old City were out of jobs for months, leading to severe financial stress among people.
“Everybody will have a little different perspective. But when you want to attack inflation in this country, it starts with an all-of-the-above energy policy, and I think that will be the more unifying thing,” said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.).
While each of the 20 or so bills getting united for the House package has broad support in committee, senior Republicans are still deciding how exactly to maneuver on the floor. While conservatives have demanded a kind of “open season” for amendments, GOP leaders sense that could be a risky strategy for such a high-stakes bill — one that’s likely to be a key plank in their 2024 platform. They’re still undecided on whether to allow a so-called “open rule,” according to multiple lawmakers and aides.
“That’s the five-vote majority problem,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), noting that the GOP has already seen energy issues like offshore drilling pit cause intra-party tension on the floor — most recently pitting drill-skeptical Florida Republicans against their colleagues. “If you have a delegation that has a problem, you have a bill problem.”
The big energy package has long been atop the GOP’s agenda, not all of which has gone smoothly after a dragged-out speaker’s race and slow start to legislating. While House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) had pledged to bring up bills on the southern border, criminal justice and abortion insurance restrictions within the first two weeks of the new majority, those bills have all stalled amid resistance within the conference.
And there’s another big reason House Republicans are relishing the chance to bring this to the floor. It’s considered their opening bid on the wonky yet critical issue of energy permitting — a rare policy area that both parties believe could lead to a bipartisan deal that President Joe Biden’s willing to sign.
They know that their package’s pro-fossil-fuel proposals and its targeting of Biden’s progressive climate policies are unlikely to garner bipartisan support, but GOP lawmakers hope the permitting plank in particular represents an aggressive starting point for negotiations with Senate Democrats. Perhaps their most politically vulnerable centrist, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), watched his permitting reform plan fall short last year even as his party controlled both the House and Senate.
“The dynamics of the last Congress, with Manchin leading it, weren’t really conducive to getting something done. And this approach of doing something that originates in the House is a better start,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a McCarthy ally and party leader on energy issues.
Graves crafted the main permitting measure in the House GOP package, which would overhaul rules for reviews conducted under the National Environmental Policy Act — a bedrock environmental law adopted in 1970 — for energy infrastructure, be it pipelines or wind turbines.
Manchin had demanded his party attempt to pass a similar effort but failed thanks in part to Republicans who were peeved by his support for Democrats’ party-line tax, health care and climate bill.
From his perch atop the Energy Committee, Manchin is still joining with the White House to press for a congressional permitting modernization that would, they say, help companies take full advantage of the hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies that the party-line deal devoted to expanding clean energy.
“I wouldn’t expect their [Republicans’] first bill to be something the Democrats could support,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), a centrist who is talking to House Republicans about permitting. “It is true we have an interest, as climate action advocates, to move things along in a way I am not sure the current law accommodates.”
Most of the rest of Republicans’ legislative package, though, is dead on arrival in the Senate. Instead, it serves mostly political purposes for a GOP that hammered the issue for months during the midterm campaign.
The effort follows components of a broader energy strategy that McCarthy released last summer, calling for measures to stimulate oil and gas production, ease permitting regulations and reduce reliance on China for critical materials used in green energy technologies.
McCarthy’s strategy stemmed from an “energy, climate, and conservation task force” he created ahead of the midterms, chaired by Graves, that incorporated legislative ideas from across the conference. That work drew support from leaders of key committees, including Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) of Energy & Commerce, Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) of Natural Resources, Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) of Science, and Sam Graves (R-Mo.) of Transportation and Infrastructure.
“It’s energy security, it’s domestic production, and it’s inflation,” Westerman said. “It’s all of the above energy.”
The GOP effort, notably, started off at least partly with climate change in mind, as McCarthy recognized the political liability that his party faces on an issue which animates young voters on both sides of the aisle.
But in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which spiked oil and natural gas prices, most Republicans are downplaying elements of their forthcoming package that could potentially boost clean energy and help address climate change. Instead, Republicans are arguing that Democratic climate policies have stoked inflation by slowing oil and gas production — even though output of both has climbed under Biden.
“Their agenda is just all in for the polluters and Big Oil,” said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who led the Select Climate Crisis Committee last Congress alongside Graves (Republicans have since disbanded it). “There is such dissonance there. It’s confusing, to say the least.”
Republicans counter that their agenda — promoting production and export of all forms of energy, including renewables and other carbon-free sources — makes more sense since Russia’s continental aggression underscored the importance of maintaining ample supplies of oil and gas even as the world transitions off fossil fuels.
“It’s a really good time to merge energy and climate policy with rational approaches to being cleaner,” said Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who chairs the nearly 80-member Conservative Climate Caucus. “Before, maybe the whole conversation was on being clean. Now, it’s about being affordable, reliable, safe, and clean. That’s a good nexus for a lot of us.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Washington: US President Joe Biden remains a healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency, his physician said Thursday.
“The President remains fit for duty, and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations,” Dr Kevin C O’Connor, Physician to the President, said in a memorandum, days after his annual physical at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre.
Biden’s current medical considerations include a-fib with normal ventricular response, hyperlipidemia, gastroesophageal reflux, seasonal allergies, spinal arthritis and mild sensory peripheral neuropathy of the feet. For these, he takes three common prescription medications and two common over-the-counter medications, the physician said.
“President Biden remains a healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” said Dr O’Connor.
According to him, the most notable interval history for this past year was the President’s very extensively reported upper respiratory infection from SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). His initial infection ran from 21 July 2022 through 27 July 2022. He then experienced rebound COVID-19 positivity which started on 30 July 2022 and he tested negative on 6 August 2022.
“Fortunately, having been fully vaccinated and twice boosted at the time of initial infection, the President experienced only mild symptoms, consisting mostly of a deep, loose cough and hoarseness. He responded very well to standard, outpatient therapy, to include the anti-viral medication, Paxlovid,” Dr O’Conner said.
“His vital signs remained normal throughout his illness. Most importantly, his oxygenation remained excellent on room air. His pulse oximetry never fell below 97 per cent. The President experienced rebound positivity several days after testing negative, as has been well documented. Again, his course remained mild,” he said.
During his infection, the President was able to continue the business of the American people, working from the Executive Residence. He isolated in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations. He made it a very deliberate priority to protect any of the Executive Residence White House Secret Service and other staff whose duties required any (albeit socially distanced) proximity to him.
“The President has not experienced any residual symptoms which may be considered to be “Long COVID”. He has received his Bivalent COVID vaccine,” the doctor said.
