A federal police investigator in Brazil says a suspect has confessed to fatally shooting an Indigenous expert and a freelance British journalist in the Amazon, and the investigator said the suspect took officers to where the bodies were buried.

Officer Eduardo Alexandre Torres said at a news conference on Wednesday evening that the prime suspect in the case had detailed what happened to the pair who went missing on June 5. Torres said the suspect confessed he used a firearm to kill Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira of Brazil and freelance reporter Dom Phillips of Britain.

Police say they recovered human remains on Wednesday but they have not yet been positively identified.

“We found the bodies nearly two miles into the woods,” an investigator said. “They put bags of dirt on the boat so it would sink,” he said.

Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen on their boat in a river near the entrance of the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents.

Related video above: New Amazon facility boasts impressive tech and a balance between workers and automationAmazon on Tuesday launched a virtual clinic to treat common health conditions, including allergies, acne and hair loss, in the latest move by the e-commerce giant to expand its reach into the health care industry.The service, called Amazon Clinic, is a "message-based virtual care" option that is intended to connect "customers with affordable virtual care options when and how they need it," Dr. Nworah Ayogu, the chief medical officer and general manager of the new service, said in a blog post.Amazon Clinic offers treatments for more than 20 common health conditions and is initially available in 32 states, with hopes to expand to additional states in the coming months, Ayogu added.In recent years, Amazon has gradually been growing its footprint in the health care sector. It acquired online pharmacy PillPack in 2018, which it later rebranded to PillPack by Amazon Pharmacy, in 2019. It then launched its own Amazon Pharmacy in 2020. Earlier this year, Amazon agreed to acquire One Medical, a membership-based primary care service, for $3.9 billion.These moves come as Amazon broadens its reach into every corner of customers' lives, including grocery stores, video streaming, home devices and more. Some of these efforts have come under scrutiny from activists and lawmakers.To use Amazon Clinic, Ayogu said customers simply select their condition, "then choose their preferred provider from a list of licensed and qualified telehealth providers." From there, customers complete a questionnaire and will be connected to doctors through a message-based portal. After an initial chat, the medical professional will send a treatment plan and any necessary prescriptions to the user's preferred pharmacy.Amazon Clinic does not accept insurance at this time, but it is FSA and HSA eligible. The company said customers will be able to see how much a consultation will cost when they set out to seek treatment. The prices are set by the providers, not Amazon Clinic, Ayogu's blog post added, and in many cases, "the cost of care is equivalent or less than the average copay."

Eating cassava flour helped save the lives of four children found alive in the Amazon jungle more than a month after their plane crashed, according to a Colombian military special forces official.

The children ate “three kilograms (six pounds) of farina,” a coarse cassava flour commonly used by indigenous tribes in the Amazon region, said spokesperson Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez Suárez.

“Days after the crash, they ate the farina which they had carried there… but they (eventually) ran out of food and decided to look for a place where they could stay alive,” Suárez said.

“They were malnourished but fully conscious and lucid when we found them,” he added.

“Their indigenous origins allowed them to acquire a certain immunity against diseases in the jungle and having knowledge of the jungle itself – knowing what to eat and what not to eat – as well as finding water kept them alive – which would not have been possible (if they) were not used to that type of hostile environment.”

The four children – 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 9-year-old Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 4-year-old Tien Ranoque Mucutuy and infant Cristin Ranoque Mucutuy – are currently recovering in a hospital in the Colombian capital Bogota after being taken there by air ambulance flown by the Colombian Air Force on Saturday, officials said.

Medical reports say they are dehydrated and still “cannot eat food” – but are well and out of danger. “What’s required now is to stabilize (their health),” Colombian Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez told reporters who were gathered outside the hospital.

The children’s mother Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia was killed in the plane crash on May 1, leaving them alone and stranded in the Amazon jungle. The plane’s pilot Hernando Murcia Morales and Yarupari indigenous leader Herman Mendoza Hernández were also killed in the accident.

The children’s disappearance sparked a massive military-led search operation that saw more than one hundred Colombian special forces troops and over 70 indigenous scouts combing the deep forest.

The four were eventually found in an area clear of trees.

They told officials that they had found a dog – a Belgian Shepherd search dog named Wilson that belonged to special forces. The dog had gone missing on May 18, Suárez said. “The kids told us that they spent three or four days with Wilson and that they (found) him quite skinny,” he added.

Hopes for the children’s survival waned as the weeks went on.

Their relatives shared that they endured “many sleepless nights worrying” until the children were found.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who visited the children in the hospital on Saturday, celebrated their return and said their survival “would be remembered in history.”

“They are children of the jungle and now they are children of Colombia,” Petro said.

BOGOTA, Colombia —

Four Indigenous children survived an Amazon plane crash that killed three adults and then wandered on their own in the jungle for 40 days before being found alive by Colombian soldiers.

The announcement of their rescue on Friday brought a happy ending to a saga that had captivated many Colombians, a watch with highs and lows as searchers frantically combed through the rainforest hunting for the youngsters.

President Gustavo Petro celebrated the news upon returning from Cuba, where he signed a cease-fire with representatives of the National Liberation Army rebel group. He said he hoped to talk with them Saturday, and officials said late Friday that the youngsters were being brought to Bogota to be checked at a hospital.

An air force video showed a helicopter using lines to pull the youngsters up because it couldn’t land in the dense rainforest where they were found. The craft flew off in the fading light, the air force said it was going to San Jose del Guaviare, a small town on the edge of the jungle.

No details were released on how the four siblings aged 13, 9, 4 and 11 months managed to survive on their own for so long, though they belong to an Indigenous group that lives in the remote region.

Petro called them an “example of survival” and predicted their saga “will remain in history.”

The military tweeted pictures showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in thermal blankets. One of the soldiers held a bottle to the smallest child’s lips.

The crash happened in the early hours of May 1, when the Cessna single-engine propeller plane with six passengers and a pilot declared an emergency due to an engine failure.

The small aircraft fell off radar a short time later and a frantic search for survivors began. Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the small children were nowhere to be found.

Sensing that they could be alive, Colombia’s army stepped up the hunt and flew 150 soldiers with dogs into the area. Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also helped search.

During the search, in an area where visibility is greatly limited by mist and thick folliage, soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children. Planes flying over the jungle fired flares to help search crews on the ground at night, and rescuers used speakers that blasted a message recorded by the siblings’ grandmother, telling them to stay in one place.

Rumors also emerged about the childrens' wheareabouts and on May 18 the president tweeted that the children had been found. He then deleted the message, claiming he had been misinformed by a government agency.

The group of four children were travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when the plane crashed.

They are members of the Huitoto people, and officials said the oldest children in the group had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.

On Friday, after confirming the children had been rescued, the president said that for a while he had believed the children were rescued by one of the nomadic tribes that still roam the remote swath of the jungle where the plane fell and have little contact with authorities.

But Petro added that the children were first found by one of the rescue dogs that soldiers took into the jungle.

Officials did not say how far the children were from the crash site when they were found. But the teams had been searching within a nearly 3-mile radius from the site where the small plane nosedived into the forest floor.

As the search progressed, soldiers found small clues in the jungle that led them to believe the children were still living, including a pair of footprints, a baby bottle, diapers and pieces of fruit that looked like it had been bitten by humans.

“The jungle saved them” Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”

Banana Boat is expanding its recall of Banana Boat Hair & Scalp Sunscreen Spray SPF 30 due to the presence of benzene, which is classified as a human carcinogen.

Edgewell Personal Care Company says an additional batch of the sunscreen was added to the recall announcement from July.

The products all feature the same UPC code: 0-79656-04041-8. However, they have different lot codes and expiration dates.

Lot Code Expiration Date 
20016AF Dec. 2022
20084BF Feb. 2023
21139AF April 2024
20301CF Sept. 2023

The company says the sunscreen was distributed nationwide and sold at various retailers and online. It adds that it has notified retailers to pull the product from their shelves.

Benzene is not an ingredient in Bobana Boat products, according to Edgewell Personal Care Company. However, the company says "a review showed that unexpected levels of benzene came from the propellant that sprays the product out of the can."

The Centers for Disease Control notes that benzene can be found in the environment due to a variety of factors, including tobacco smoke, vehicle exhaust and industrial emissions.

The agency warns that long-term exposure to benzene can affect the immune system and cause cancer.

Consumers are asked to discard the recalled sunscreen. They can contact Edgewell Personal Care at 1-888-686-3988 for information about how to be reimbursed.

CNN —

Amazon has agreed to pay more than $30 million to settle two federal lawsuits alleging that the tech giant violated users' privacy — including that of children — through its Alexa voice assistant and its Ring doorbell cameras.

Video above: Alexa’s celebrity voices are being discontinued

The twin settlements Wednesday with the Federal Trade Commission highlight claims that Amazon retained Ring videos and Alexa voice recordings, along with related geolocation information, for years – in some cases without consent and despite requests by consumers for the data to be deleted.

In addition, the FTC alleged that lax data policies at Amazon meant that the information could often be accessed by unauthorized parties — and often was, in the case of Ring doorbell footage.

Amazon acquired Ring in 2018, paving the way for the e-commerce giant to get into the home security business. In addition to video doorbells, Ring makes indoor and outdoor security cameras as well as alarm systems.

In a complaint accompanying the settlement, the FTC claimed Ring gave employees unrestricted access to videos from customers' home security systems. In one instance, the complaint states, a Ring employee viewed thousands of video recordings from at least 81 female users between June and August 2017, viewing cameras that users had assigned to bathrooms and bedrooms. An initial misconduct report by a fellow employee was not taken seriously, the complaint said.

"Only after the supervisor noticed that the male employee was only viewing videos of 'pretty girls' did the supervisor escalate the report of misconduct," the FTC alleged in the complaint. "Only at that point did Ring review a portion of the employee's activity and, ultimately, terminate his employment."

The complaint against Ring also recounts numerous alleged instances of hacked cameras allowing malicious actors to speak to victims, causing distress. Many of these attacks allegedly occurred through successful guessing of user passwords, reflecting failures by Amazon to require strong password protections, according to the complaint.

"Between January 2019 and March 2020, more than 55,000 U.S. customers suffered from credential stuffing and brute force attacks that compromised Ring devices," the FTC alleged. "Through these attacks, bad actors gained access to hundreds of thousands of videos of the personal spaces of consumers' homes, including their bedrooms and their children's bedrooms—recorded by devices that Ring sold by claiming that they would increase consumers' security."

As part of the proposed settlement, Ring has agreed to pay $5.8 million and implement a new data security program, according to the filing.

"Ring promptly addressed these issues on its own years ago, well before the FTC began its inquiry," Ring said in a statement provided to CNN. "While we disagree with the FTC's allegations and deny violating the law, this settlement resolves this matter so we can focus on innovating on behalf of our customers."

Separately, Amazon will pay $25 million to settle the allegations surrounding its Alexa voice assistant.

In a complaint, the FTC alleged that Amazon violated a children's privacy law known as COPPA, which restricts the collection of personal information from children under 13 without a parent's consent.

According to the FTC, Amazon kept Alexa voice recordings of children "indefinitely" unless a user specifically instructed the company to delete the recordings. It also allegedly sometimes failed to honor the deletion requests "and instead retained that data for its own potential use."

The proposed Alexa settlement requires Amazon to delete voice recordings and geolocation data in accordance with past consumer requests, including that of children. The company will also be barred from using that data to train its algorithms, the FTC said. Amazon also agreed to send consumers notices about the FTC settlement, and to implement a privacy program for geolocation data.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Alexa settlement.

Soon you’ll be able to pay for things by scanning the palm of your hand.

“Biometric authentication has been there for a long time,” said Sanchari Das, a cybersecurity and privacy expert. She is an assistant professor at the University of Denver focused on cybersecurity and privacy from the user perspective.

We use your fingerprint at airports, our face to unlock our phones, and now Panera recently announced that you’ll soon be able to scan your palm at checkout.

This is done by using Amazon One, Amazon’s palm scanning payment system that has already been implemented at Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go locations in parts of the U.S..

Panera will be the first national restaurant chain to implement it. It will initially be deployed at select locations in St. Louis before expanding in the coming months.

“It is highly usable, we do not need additional technological knowledge to use biometric because that's something which we are,” Das said.

Das said it’s a great option for companies that can afford it, but there are also some cons. She mentioned this tech may be difficult to use in certain weather, like when it’s cold for instance. There is also the potential for exclusion of those with physical disabilities or those who do not wish to share biometric data.

There are also privacy concerns.

“How are they going to process and store this kind of data?,” Das said. “Biometric people have to be all the more careful how it is implemented and how it is stored and that is something that users don't know.”

While you can change a password or a social security number, you can’t change your palm print.

Das said companies still have a few details to iron out around data storage and encryption, but technology like this is only going to become more popular.

“Definitely this is the future, and we should work towards it,” she said.

A new investigation from Consumer Reports is showing how e-commerce delivery is impacting neighborhoods across the country. It looked at a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, where there are two Amazon warehouses and a third expected soon.

Using traffic, noise and air-quality sensors, Kavah Waddell says they recorded elevated levels of particle pollution. The levels were at a point the Environmental Protection Agency would consider concerning for people with preexisting conditions like asthma.

His team also noticed through its investigation of other places outside of Los Angeles and Chicago that e-commerce warehouses are often in lower income neighborhoods and communities of color.

"Because of our very long legacy of discriminatory housing policies, like redlining, a lot of those sort of areas that are adjacent to industrial uses, places where it might not be their first place to choose to live, those are often communities of color or lower income communities," Waddell said.

Waddell says there's been a growing momentum of policies that would make it difficult for warehouses to clump in a single neighborhood.

A proposal in New York state would be a first of its kind. It’s called the Clean Deliveries Act.

"It would actually require warehouse operators across all of New York state to account for their truck and van traffic and take certain steps to mitigate that,” Waddell said. “So that could be electrifying trucks and vans, for example. It could be things like putting in solar panels."

In a statement, Amazon said the following:

"We remain committed to becoming a more sustainable company, and that includes how we show up in neighborhoods where our customers live, and employees work,” Amazon spokesperson Simone Griffin said. “We will continue to roll out electric delivery vehicles, cargo bikes, and other forms of transportation, in addition to powering local buildings with wind and solar energy where we can."

Amazon says it's on the path to power its operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025. That is five years ahead of its initial 2030 target.

Meanwhile, Waddell wants people to know e-commerce giants are moving closer to neighborhoods because that's what it takes for really fast deliveries.

WASHINGTON (Video above: WUSA via CNN) —

Dozens of Amazon packages containing thousands of dollars worth of merchandise have arrived on Liz Geltman's doorstep.

The problem? She hasn't ordered any of it.

Geltman said since last fall, she's received more than 80 deliveries that aren't hers.

"Well, that's the game," she told WUSA. "Everybody asks me how many Amazon boxes today?"

The packages are addressed to Meng Xian Kuan, a person Geltman said she doesn't know.

Geltman has called Amazon to tell them that the deliveries keep coming to the wrong house and has even tried to convince drivers to return the items.

"And they won't take it back on their trucks either," she said. "It's like, they just leave it. This is yours."

Most of the mistaken deliveries contain children's bedding — probably $4,000 worth since this issue began, Geltman said. Since the packages started coming, she's made numerous trips to an Amazon return center near her to send them back.

When WUSA contacted Amazon about Geltman's issue, company officials agreed to start picking up the packages mistakenly delivered to her home and work on putting an end to this issue.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his partner Lauren Sánchez are engaged, a source close to the couple tells CNN.No additional details about the proposal or pending wedding plans were immediately available.Bezos and Sánchez, a former broadcast journalist and now philanthropist, first went public with their relationship in 2019. Since Bezos and Sánchez began dating, they have kept details of their lives together mostly private outside of being photographed at various events. In 2022, the couple spoke with CNN at their Washington D.C. home for their first joint sit-down interview where they talked about their philanthropic work toward strategically giving away Bezos's vast wealth to a variety of causes. When it comes to their charitable efforts, Sánchez told CNN that they make "really great teammates," adding with a laugh that they can also be "kind of boring." Bezos went on to describe the Emmy award-winning journalist as "the most generous, most big-hearted person that you would ever meet," and said that she is "an inspiration." The billionaire is also the founder of space company Blue Origin, and was aboard a 2021 flight into space and back on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket. Sánchez, who is also a former helicopter pilot, told CNN that she, too, plans to head to space in the coming years, saying she'll be joined by "a great group of females." Bezos was previously married to MacKenzie Scott for 25 years, with whom he shares four children. Sánchez has three children from previous relationships, and was married to Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell for 13 years before finalizing their divorce in 2019.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 16-6 on Thursday to advance a bill limiting the way big companies like Amazon, Apple and Google do business.

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act targets a practice known as self-preferencing.

"Self-preferencing is mainly intended to describe situations where, if you're a merchant selling a product through an e-commerce platform, and that e-commerce platform is a competitor of yours who offers the same product, the platform somehow induces the consumer to have a preference for its own product," said Tad Lipsky, the director of the Competition Advocacy Program at the Global Antitrust Institute.

"It's really easy to find examples of that tension," Lipsky continued. "For Amazon, it could be any of a whole range of products that they offer themselves. Google, same thing. There are a lot of e-commerce searches on Google sites that can relate to products that Google offers."

The bill does not identify any major companies by name. It says any new rules will apply to companies with at least a billion monthly users, a list which would include companies like Amazon, Google and Meta, the parent company of Facebook.

In 2021, Amazon and Meta were two of the top three companies in terms of spending money to lobby Congress, according to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who spoke at Thursday's hearing.

"They are never going to like this bill," said Sen. Klobuchar. "When companies take them on, they have, for decades, formed an impenetrable shield. They're making a lot of money. They want to maintain and profit and keep their positions as monopoly gatekeepers."

The major tech companies did not comment on Thursday's hearing, but most have raised objections to the legislation moving through Congress.

Amazon has warned third-party sellers that they might be kicked off the marketplaces if the legislation passes.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said during the hearing that Apple CEO Tim Cook called him personally to talk about the bill for more than 40 minutes.

Cruz, and several other senators, said they were advancing the bill for a full Senate vote with the knowledge that more amendments will be made.

"This bill may become law without there ever having been a public hearing about how these particular provisions are supposed to operate," said Lipsky. "They're very extensive, complex provisions. It could lead to a tremendous amount of disruption and intervention in these companies' business, and nobody has established by the usual legislative procedures that there's a need for that to happen."

It's not clear when, or if, the bill will make it onto a crowded Senate calendar for a vote.

If it passes in the Senate, it would still have to clear some hurdles in the House before becoming law. But it has enjoyed some measure of bipartisan support throughout the process, a rarity in an often-divided Congress.

"It's nice and refreshing to see something resembling real debate on substance," said Sen. Cruz. "It's something we as a committee, and we as a Senate, ought to do more often."

Amazon has a new venture outside of e-commerce, cloud computing, content streaming, smart devices, Whole Foods, cashier-less technology or anything else you've come to associate with one of the most successful companies in American history.

It's a physical clothing store. Like, you know, a real brick-and-mortar space where you go try on stuff, buy it and then bring it home.

Amazon announced Thursday that it will open Amazon Style, its first clothing, shoe and accessories store later this year at a posh shopping complex in Los Angeles. The 30,000-square-foot store's next-door neighbors will be some of the traditional clothing and department stores Amazon has pressured over the last decade — Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters, J. Crew, H&M and others. There's a JCPenney across the street, one of the most prominent casualties of the transformation of U.S. retail spurred by Amazon.

It may seem surprising that Amazon, which has grown to become the largest clothing retailer in America since it started selling clothing in 2002, wants to open a physical store. But in-store purchases still make up more than 85% of U.S. retail sales, and shoppers often want to see how clothes look, feel and fit before they buy. It can also be more difficult to find new clothing brands and styles browsing online than in person.

"Customers enjoy doing a mix of online and in-store shopping. And that's no different in fashion," Simoina Vasen, the managing director of Amazon Style, said in an interview. "There's so many great brands and designers, but discovering them isn't always easy."

There are some novelties to Amazon Style and ways the company hopes will make shopping quicker and more personalized for customers. However, many of the ideas Amazon is using in the store are not new to the retail industry.

Most of the clothing will be kept in the back of the store and only one sample of each item will be displayed on the sales floor. To buy it, customers will scan a QR code using a mobile Amazon shopping app and then retrieve it at the pickup counter. If they want to try it on first, they can get it sent to a fitting room, which has touchscreens where customers can request different sizes or colors. As customers browse the store and scan items, Amazon's algorithms will recommend other items they may be interested in buying.

Vasen said the store is a "truly unique experience," but similar technology can be found at other retailers. At Nike flagship stores, for example, Nike app members scan codes on sneakers and clothes and those items are sent directly to a fitting room. Clothing brand Reformation displays only one of each item in its showrooms, and whatever customers want to try is delivered straight to dressing rooms that have different lighting options. American Eagle and others have tested interactive fitting rooms, where shoppers can request different sizes and styles on a tablet located in the room.

Amazon Style will offer a mix of hundreds of well-known brands (Vasen didn't specify which) and its own private-label brands. Retail analysts have said a brick-and-mortar presence in clothing could help Amazon reach customers who want to shop in person and also drive the growth of Amazon's more profitable— but lesser-known — private labels.

Other advantages to a physical store: Customers can also drop off their Amazon returns at the store, or order online and pick them up there.

Amazon has been working on this clothing initiative for years, said Vasen, who has helped build out Amazon's physical store presence and also directed Amazon's Prime Now grocery delivery service. She did not say when the first Amazon Style store will open this year or how many Amazon plans to add in the future.

Amazon Style will be the company's latest attempt to move into physical retail, an area it has struggled to crack.

In 2015, Amazon opened its first physical store, Amazon Books, in Seattle. Two years later, Amazon bought Whole Foods' 471 stores for $13.7 billion. The company also has dozens of 4-Star stores, where it sells its highest-rated merchandise, and Amazon Go cashier-less convenience stores. It's building a new, separate line of grocery stores, called Amazon Fresh, to chase a mid-market shopper, different from Whole Foods' high-end customer base.

As of Dec. 31, 2020, Amazon had 611 physical stores in North America, including Whole Foods, according to its latest annual filing.

Amazon has not enjoyed the same level of success with physical stores as it has online. Sales at Amazon's physical stores dropped 0.18% in 2019 from the year prior to $17.2 billion and 5.6% in 2020 as more shoppers ordered online in the pandemic.

During its latest results in the nine months ending Sept. 30, Amazon's sales at physical stores ticked up 1.5% from the same stretch a year prior.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The family of a delivery driver who died last month when a tornado collapsed the Amazon warehouse in central Illinois where he worked has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

The action Monday on behalf of 26-year-old Austin McEwen claims that Amazon failed to warn employees of dangerous weather or provide safe shelter before a tornado slammed the Edwardsville facility Dec. 10, killing McEwen and five others.

McEwen’s parents, Randy and Alice McEwen, allege that Amazon administrators knew severe weather was imminent but had no emergency plan nor evacuated employees from the fulfillment center.

“Sadly, it appears that Amazon placed profits first during this holiday season instead of the safety of our son and the other five,” Alice McEwen said at a news conference Monday.

The Associated Press reports that the lawsuit seeks $50,000 from each of the four defendants named in the suit, including Amazon, the construction company that built the facility and the developer of the project.

Last month, workers at a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, sued the facility's owners, alleging that management threatened employees who left work during the tornadoes with termination.

MORTON GROVE, IL — High-tech contactless shopping is now a reality in more places.

Amazon, which is pushing deeper into the grocery store business, has eliminated check-out lines with a handful of stores offering the cashier-less experience. The stores don't even require you to scan your items as you select them off the shelf, a model that could become the future of all smart shopping.

With a quick QR code scan, you’re checked in.

“A lot of the feedback we get is I feel like, 'I'm shoplifting. I'm stealing,'” said Carl Andersen, a store manager at Amazon Fresh in Morton Grove, Illinois.

The company had already used "Amazon Dash Carts" to record purchases. But this is different.

Look up at the ceiling and you’ll see a trellis of cameras. Numbering in the hundreds, they are covering every square inch of the store.

“The cameras pick up what item was placed and scanned and given to you,” explained Andersen.

Coupled with computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning, the technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves.

Whatever you leave with is charged to your credit card that is linked to your Amazon account when you scan out.

“You don't walk out of with a receipt directly, but you'll get a receipt within just a few hours of leaving the store,” said Andersen.

Instead of paper cards, produce prices are centrally updated and displayed electronically on mini-screens similar to a Kindle reader.

“They'll display the item itself, how much it is, if it's on sale and it also has a star rating on there just to show you, ‘Hey, this item has been reviewed 20,000 times on Amazon,” said Andersen.

There are a handful of Alexa stations where you can find out anything you need to know about where things are, recipe suggestions or what’s on sale that week.

Since September of 2020, the tech giant has opened 23 specialty Amazon Fresh grocery locations around the country. A half dozen stores are now using the “Just Walk Out technology” in California, Illinois, Washington state and Washington, D.C.

And it’s looking like this could be the future of in-store shopping.

One study found that the value of transactions processed by smart checkout technologies will reach $387 billion in 2025.

There are still employees in the store, stocking shelves, making fresh sushi, and preparing home deliveries. Cashiers are on hand in case you’re unnerved by all the cameras and want to shop without being tracked.

“We'll have the people that are a little nervous at the beginning to use it,” said Andersen. “So, the first time they come in, they might want to choose to do traditional shopping, or they might want to talk to the cashiers as they're walking out of the door.”

But the company says it encourages shoppers to use the technology, so they don’t have to wait in line or ever open their wallets.

“There's no line. There's no wait,” said Andersen. “You're truly just getting a quick shopping experience and you can make it as long or as quick as you want.”

Driven in part by the pandemic, the automated technology is already making its way to other retailers. Amazon says the “Just Walk Out technology” is now being used in retail, hospitality, and stadium settings with more to come.

Hundreds of FedEx packages were found in a wooded area in Alabama.

In a post on Facebook, the Blount County Sheriff's Office said it appeared "300-400 boxes of assorted sizes have been thrown off a ravine."

The sheriff said FexEx brought in tucks on Thanksgiving to retrieve the packages.

"Thank you guys for your hard work and clearing up this mess," the sheriff's office said in a post that showed a picture of the workers.

It's not clear how the packages ended up in the wooded area.

In a statement to CBS News, a spokesperson for FedEx said it will cooperate with authorities while they investigate the incident.

In the meantime, the shipping company said it would work on getting people their packages.

"We are taking steps to recover and transport the affected packages as quickly as possible," the company said.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- Tech giants say they will not sell facial recognition software to police departments, for now.

It's a tool police departments have been using for years, helping solve everything from property crimes to cold cases and missing people.

But there's little oversight over the technology, and critics say it puts our privacy and civil rights in jeopardy.

While police often use the software to scan the mug shots of criminals, there's a good chance your photo is also in the system.

A 2016 Georgetown Law report found one in two American adults are in a law enforcement face recognition network. In addition to mug shots, social media photos and surveillance videos, many states also allow searches of driver's licenses databases.

Critics of the technology also point to inaccuracies in the software.

In 2018, researchers at MIT and Stanford University examined three commercially released facial-analysis programs from major technology companies.

The analysis showed an error rate of 0.8% for light-skinned men compared to 34.7% for dark-skinned women.

Steve Beaty is a professor of computer science at MSU Denver.

"It appears these programs have, what we call, biases in them. That they're biased towards certain skin tones, for example, and will make more mistakes with certain types of people than other types of people," said Beaty.

He says the bias can occur when the machines are trained.

"The computers I don't think have any inherent bias in themselves, but they can only learn from the data sets they're provided with," said Beaty.

If a machine sees more photos of white males while being trained, it will be able to identify them more accurately.

And while the technology has proven to be a useful-crime fighting tool, a case of mistaken identity can mean an innocent person ends up with police looking into their private lives unnecessarily.

"I think it's a good idea to take a step back and say what is it we as a society want from our facial recognition technology? That's exactly what Amazon has come out and said," said Beaty.

This week, Amazon announced a one-year moratorium on police use of their facial recognition technology, Rekognition. The company is calling on lawmakers to put in place stronger regulations to govern the technology's ethical use.

Microsoft also said it will not sell its software to police departments for now, while IBM is abandoning its facial recognition program altogether.

"Let's talk about what it means, and have the conversation, and make sure that we as a society, as a country, are comfortable with what the technology is being used for," said Beaty.

As companies reevaluate how police officers use their technology, the question remains if the public will do the same.

Amazon plans to add 150,000 temporary workers in the United States for the holiday shopping rush, a 50% increase from the company's holiday hiring push a year ago.Amazon, like many retailers and logistics companies, is facing challenges hiring workers and is raising pay, dangling bonuses, and expanding benefits in response to the pressures. The company's holiday jobs this year have an average starting pay of $18 an hour — higher than Amazon's $15 minimum wage— sign-on bonuses up to $3,000 and an additional $3 an hour in pay for certain shifts in some locations, Amazon said in an announcement Monday.Amazon's temporary positions for the holidays include picking, scanning and packing items at warehouses and loading boxes onto trucks.Amazon's business has surged during the pandemic as many shoppers, spending more time at home, increased their online purchases. Amazon has added more than 450,000 workers in the United States since the beginning of the pandemic and now has upwards of 950,000 U.S. workers."It's a very competitive labor market out there. And certainly, the biggest contributor to inflationary pressures that we're seeing in the business," Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's chief financial officer, said in July. "We're spending a lot of money on signing and incentives."Amazon last month said it planned to hire 125,000 permanent workers ahead of the holidays.Other chains are adding temporary and permanent workers at stores and warehouses to meet demand from holiday shoppers.Walmart plans to hire around 150,000 employees, most of them in permanent, full-time positions, while Target is aiming to bring on 100,000 seasonal workers and 30,000 permanent supply chain employees.UPS, Kohl's, Nordstrom, Macy's and others are also adding workers for the holidays. Some are offering sign-on bonuses this year for new hires and other incentives.There are signs, however, that interest in holiday work for some has dwindled.The share of job seeker searches for seasonal work during the seven days ending Sept. 22 was down 1.5% compared with the same time last year and 39% from 2019, jobs site Indeed said in a report last month.

On Monday, Amazon Studios released its first trailer for "Coming 2 America," the sequel to the 1988 comedy "Coming to America," which stars Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall.

And it seems some old cast members are set to make their return.

In the teaser trailer, we see Murphy, who plays King Akeem, and Hall, who plays Akeem's advisor Semmi, heading back to Queens, New York, from their home country Zamunda to reunite King Akeem with his son that he never knew he had.

The original movie saw Murphy as Prince Akeem, who moved to New York to search for a bride in the United States.

James Earl Jones reprises his role as King Jaffe Joffer, Akeem's father.

Many of the characters seen in the trailer are played by Murphy and Hall themselves, wearing makeup and wigs. They will also be joined by original cast members, including Shari Headley, John Amos, and the memorable barbershop crew, The Hollywood Reporter reported.

Variety reported the cast would include newcomers Jermaine Fowler, Wesley Snipes, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, Bella Murphy, Rotimi, KiKi Layne, Nomzamo Mbatha, and Teyana Taylor.

The movie is set to debut on Amazon Prime Video on March 5.

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This is the story of what happens when a package hits the roof. But the package recipient doesn't in san Diego. An amazon delivery guy either ran into a spider's web or got buzzed by an insect when he swatted one of his packages flu. Uh huh. The homeowner added music to the images caught on his ring camera capturing the delivery man's obvious distress. The package on the roof had him going in circles, he uttered a quiet expletive. The homeowner, Casey muk, perry commiserated writing seriously, it's okay. This made our day. The husband and wife who live here didn't know what happened till they got a message. Hi, this is your amazon delivery driver. This sounds crazy, but I accidentally threw a package on your roof. Do you have a ladder? I can use the McX Perry's investigated by flashlight, I see it. And the next day Casey scaled the ladder there. It was some saw advantages. Well at least you know, nobody is going to steal it for his agony and his admission, the unidentified delivery man was praised as best amazon driver ever. The homeowner descended with Poland package, a package of vitamins, It turns out it reminded some of walter white tossing up pizza on the roof and breaking bad. We learned covering that episode that it's not always easy to intentionally stick the landing an amazon driver has to be in his prime to do it accidentally, Jeannie moos, CNN new york

WATCH: Delivery driver accidentally throws package onto roof

Updated: 10:51 PM EDT Sep 29, 2021

You might be wondering, how does a delivery driver accidentally throw a package onto someone's roof?It was caught on a Ring doorbell camera in California.The unidentified delivery driver appears to be swatting a bug away when the package slipped from his hands and onto the roof of the home where it was being delivered.Homeowner Casey McPerry got a message from Amazon after the incident."Hi, this is your Amazon delivery driver. This sounds crazy but I accidentally threw a package on your roof. Do you have a ladder I can use?"Watch the video above to learn more about this story.

SAN DIEGO —

You might be wondering, how does a delivery driver accidentally throw a package onto someone's roof?

It was caught on a Ring doorbell camera in California.

The unidentified delivery driver appears to be swatting a bug away when the package slipped from his hands and onto the roof of the home where it was being delivered.

Homeowner Casey McPerry got a message from Amazon after the incident.

"Hi, this is your Amazon delivery driver. This sounds crazy but I accidentally threw a package on your roof. Do you have a ladder I can use?"

Watch the video above to learn more about this story.