Amid the Republican backlash against federal scientists who write rules governing everything from movie theater popcorn to offshore oil drilling, stories abound of overburdened businesses, heavy-handed civil servants and crushing paperwork. But another story, one involving a deadly household material, offers a lesson in what can go wrong when government experts are shackled, as currently envisioned under a sweeping regulatory reform bill gliding toward President Trump's desk. The GOP-backed legislation revives many of the rule-making hurdles that for years crippled the government's ability to respond to the asbestos-exposure epidemic, which has been blamed for tens of thousands of American deaths. "I don't think lawmakers are focusing on how extreme this legislation is," said Paul Billings, lobbyist for the American Lung Assn., which has joined several major public health groups imploring congressional leaders to apply the brakes. "It has been viewed as this abstraction that creates improvements in the regulatory process. This would undermine bedrock public health laws."

Just days after China announced plans to grow its defense budget, the country's largest missile maker has started developing military drones with stealth abilities that can evade anti-aircraft weapons, local media reported Thursday. The move comes as China continues to advance in its military modernization program amid growing threats from its neighbors and the West. "Drones have become an indispensable weapon in modern warfare because they can play an important role in high-resolution reconnaissance, long-distance precision strikes, anti-submarine operations and aerial combat," Wei Yiyin, deputy general manager of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, told the China Daily. China has been working to develop new weapons, including stealth fighters and aircraft carriers but has clarified that its investment to upgrade its military prowess has no hostile intent. Amid tensions with U.S. over the South China Sea, and the recent threats from North Korea after its missile launches, China, which is ranked third in the list of biggest military in the world has stepped up research into military drones.

Uber will stop using its "Greyball" tool to evade law enforcement efforts, the ride-hail company announced Wednesday, just days after it defended the controversial program as necessary to protect its drivers from harm. "We have started a review of the different ways this technology has been used to date," Uber's chief security officer Joe Sullivan wrote in a blog post. "In addition, we are expressly prohibiting its use to target action by local regulators going forward." Uber's backtracking comes less than a week after the New York Times revealed that the company had been serving up an alternative (and non-functioning) version of its app to public officials in cities where its service violated regulations. It also comes shortly after the company reversed course on applying for a permit to test self-driving cars in California.

A technology initially used to fight traffic fines is now helping refugees with legal claims. When Joshua Browder developed DoNotPay he called it "the world's first robot lawyer". It's a chatbot - a computer program that carries out conversations through texts or vocal commands - and it uses Facebook Messenger to gather information about a case before spitting out advice and legal documents. It was originally designed to help people wiggle out of parking or speeding tickets. But now Browder - a 20-year-old British man currently studying at Stanford University - has adapted his bot to help asylum seekers.

In reinforcement learning, the state of the real world is often represented by feature vectors. However, not all of the features may be pertinent for solving the current task. We propose Feature Selection Explore and Exploit (FS-EE), an algorithm that automatically selects the necessary features while learning a Factored Markov Decision Process, and prove that under mild assumptions, its sample complexity scales with the in-degree of the dynamics of just the necessary features, rather than the in-degree of all features. This can result in a much better sample complexity when the in-degree of the necessary features is smaller than the in-degree of all features.

FILE - In this Feb. 3, 2017, file photo, former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about his Cancer Moonshot initiative and preventable patient safety at the 5th Annual Work Patient Safety, Science and Technology Summit in Dana Point, Calif. Organizers of South By Southwest said Monday, March 6, that Biden will give a speech on Sunday, March 12 at the festival in Austin, Texas, about about his cancer-fighting initiative. They'll be no lack of controversial issues to dissect at this year's SXSW Conference & Festivals, which begins Friday and runs through Mar. And more so than in past years, this year's massive gathering of tech, film and music enthusiasts – usually equated with tech innovation and startups – will have a stronger-than-ever focus on politics. Former Vice President Joe Biden and CNN's Van Jones are scheduled to speak.

The voice-activated Echo lets users control other smart home devices, play games and order products on Amazon's site. Amazon's mounting First Amendment battle has reached an anticlimactic end. The company agreed to hand over user data of an Amazon Echo speaker for a murder trial in Arkansas, after it spent months pushing back against a warrant for the information. Amazon changed its position after the user, defendant James Andrew Bates, consented to the disclosure, according to a court filing that was made public Monday. Before Bates consented, Amazon just last month offered a strong defense against releasing the user information, with the company saying Bates' audio recordings with the Echo were protected under the First Amendment.

Technology must be controlled in order to safeguard the future of humanity, Stephen Hawking has warned. The physicist, who has spoken out about the dangers of artificial intelligence in the past, says a'world government' could be our only hope. He says our'logic and reason' could be the only way to defeat the growing threat of nuclear or biological war. We are living through the most dangerous time in the history of the human race, according to Professor Stephen Hawking. 'Since civilisation began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages,' he told The Times. 'It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. 'Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war.

Uber's self-driving cars will return to California's streets. But the company doesn't plan to pick up passengers in them, at least for now. The California Department of Motor Vehicles said Wednesday that it has granted Uber permission to run two Volvo SUVs on public roads. Agency spokeswoman Jessica Gonzalez said the DMV also approved 48 people as backup drivers who must sit behind the wheel in case the prototype cars malfunction. The permits resolve a conflict dating to December, when Uber rolled out a self-driving car service in San Francisco without the approval of state regulators.

The Amazon Echo, a voice-controlled virtual assistant, is seen at its product launch for Britain and Germany in London, in 2016. After several months of pushback, Amazon has agreed to release user data from an Amazon Echo device involved in a high-profile Arkansas murder trial. The device, a popular, hands-free artificial intelligence assistant named "Alexa" that responds to human directives, contains audio recordings that prosecutors say could could provide information in the murder of Victor Collins, 47, who was found dead in his hot tub on Nov. 22, 2015, in Bentonville, Arkansas. James Bates, 31, was charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the case. Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Nathan Smith wrote in an email that prosecutors were "pleased" with Amazon's decision.