Amazon Exploring Ways to Break Into Health Care With Virtual Consultations

Health care by Amazon: The e-commerce giant seems to be ever-expanding with its acquisition of Whole Foods and its brand deal with home retail chain Sears. Now, the company is positioning itself into the health care business while the conversation around affordable care has peaked nationally. According to CNBC, Amazon has created a new lab called "1492" to tap into health care tech for electronic medical records and health apps for existing devices.

This new advent in health technology raises a lot of concerns but also has been flagged as having potential for improving delivery of services such as telemedicine, which can make it easier for people to have virtual appointments with health professionals and access to pharmaceuticals. The news comes just after the GOP Senate repeal and replace health care bill was shut down again for now.

Wrong side of history: On Wednesday morning, in a seemingly random string of tweets, President Trump announced via Twitter a ban on all transgender military service. This reverses an Obama-era policy that allowed transgender people to serve in the armed forces. However, the policy from the Obama Administration has not been enforced by Trump's Defense Secretary James Mattis since taking office.

The backlash against the Commander-in-Chief's tweet was swift. People on both sides of the aisle, from liberal activists to GOP politicians, criticized Trump's message. LGBTQ rights organizations like Lambda Legal and OutServe-LSDN have vowed to sue if the president's tweets become law.

Is this really 2017?: The Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has claimed that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that protects employees from workplace discrimination doesn't actually cover sexual orientation. The announcement via a legal brief came yesterday— the same day as President Trump's Twitter tirade on transgender military service.

James Esseks, the director of the ACLU's LGBT & HIV Project, has weighed in on taking legal action. "Fortunately, courts will decide whether the Civil Rights Act protects LGBT people, not an Attorney General and a White House that are hell-bent on playing politics with people's lives," Esseks said.

Shots fired again: Mississippi police have been accused of both excessive force and incompetence after fatally shooting a man after showing up to the wrong house in the middle of the night. Officers killed 41-year-old Ismael Lopez while trying to serve an arrest warrant to Samuel Pearman, Lopez's next door neighbor.

One of the officers says that that upon opening the door, a dog had charged him and that Lopez was holding a gun. The family denies that Lopez had a gun in hand, though he did own one, and claimed that the dog followed Lopez to the door but did not attack law enforcement. The family is now seeking legal recourse.