Colombia Plane Crash: Four Children Found Alive in Amazon after 40 Days - BBC News

Jun 10, 2023 | Four children have been found alive after surviving a plane crash and spending weeks fending for themselves in Colombia's Amazon jungle. Colombia's president said the rescue of the siblings was "a joy for the whole country". The children's mother and two pilots were killed when their light aircraft crashed in the jungle on 1 May.

Tech Layoffs Crash Hard into Indian Workers I DW News

Nov 17, 2022 | Online-retailer Amazon has confirmed a coming round of mass layoffs, making it the latest tech-giant to slash jobs amid slowing global-growth. On Tuesday the company filed notice to California regulators that it would scrap jobs in that state. It is expected to shed as many as 10-thousand positions in the coming days, following similar measures by tech giants Meta and Twitter. Amazon employs 1.5 million workers around the world.

One country in which this wave of job cuts is particularly crashing into is India. Twitter cut off half its work force there, and education technology firms Byju and Unacademy laid off hundreds of workers. Workers in India are also among those affected by "Meta" cuts. Ironically, many of them are using those same platforms, including social media, to air their grievances and protests against the unceremonious firings.

Has Amazon Contributed to America’s Political Unraveling? | Amanpour & Company

Jan 19, 2022 • Amazon is the second most trusted institution in the U.S., surpassed only by the military, according to a Georgetown and New York University poll. What can the company's disproportionate influence mean for American society? This is the subject of a new book from award-winning journalist Alec MacGillis. In "Fulfillment," he examines the company’s impact on the wealth and poverty of towns and cities across the country. He speaks with Hari Sreenivasan about what lies behind that easy one-click purchase. Originally aired on January 18, 2022

Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos | Full Film | FRONTLINE

Feb 19, 2020 • An inside look at how Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos built one of the largest and most influential economic forces in the world — and the cost of Amazon’s convenience.

Billionaires Fight to Privatize & Monopolize Space Infrastructure as Earth Burns & Workers Organize

Jul 22, 2021 • As the world’s richest man flies his Blue Origin rocket into suborbital space, here on Earth calls are growing to tax the rich and let Amazon unionize. Billionaire Jeff Bezos has faced strong criticism after Tuesday’s flight, for which he thanked Amazon workers and customers who “paid for all of this.” Bezos traveled to the edge of space just days after another billionaire, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, took a similar trip on a Virgin Galactic spacecraft. “The richest and most powerful people in the world are turning their eyes away from the planet and to the stars,” says Paris Marx, a writer and host of the podcast “Tech Won’t Save Us.” “We need to question whether we should be dedicating so much resources to this kind of grand vision of a future that may never arrive,” Marx says. We also speak with journalist Peter Ward, author of the book “The Consequential Frontier: Challenging the Privatization of Space,” who says billionaires who have monopolized large sectors of the economy are seeking to do the same for space infrastructure. “It’s not the worst thing to have the private sector involved. It’s just it can’t be where they have complete control,” Ward says.

Amazon US Customers Have One Week to Opt Out of Mass Wireless Sharing

THE GUARDIAN: Critics raise transparency fears over plan to turn all smart home devices into ‘mesh network’

Amazon customers have one week to opt out of a plan that would turn every Echo speaker and Ring security camera in the US into a shared wireless network, as part of the company’s plan to fix connection problems for its smart home devices.

The proposal, called Amazon Sidewalk, involves the company’s devices being used as a springboard to build city-wide “mesh networks” that help simplify the process of setting up new devices, keep them online even if they’re out of range of home wifi, and extend the range of tracking devices such as those made by Tile. » | Alex Hern, Technology editor | Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Rachat de la Metro Goldwyn Mayer : le cinéma selon Amazon

LE MONDE: Mercredi 26 mai, le groupe de Jeff Bezos a déboursé 8,45 milliards de dollars pour acquérir le studio et son catalogue de 4 000 films. Cet achat à prix d’or est une nouvelle illustration du pari que l’entreprise américaine fait sur le streaming, au détriment des salles de cinéma traditionnelles.

Editorial du « Monde ». Que ne ferait-on pas pour tenter de devenir le roi de la jungle du divertissement ? Amazon a signé, mercredi 26 mai, un chèque de 8,45 milliards de dollars (6,92 milliards d’euros) pour capturer le célèbre lion rugissant de la Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM). Cette opération constitue une nouvelle étape du mouvement de concentration dans le secteur de la production cinématographique, sous la pression de la montée en puissance des sites de streaming, c’est-à-dire de diffusion de contenus en continu sur Internet. Les principales plates-formes, comme Netflix, Hulu (Disney), Apple ou Amazon, cherchent à étoffer leurs catalogues à marche forcée pour attirer de plus en plus d’abonnés. » | Éditorial, Le Monde | jeudi 27 mai 2021

Amazon to Stop Selling Books That Frame LGBTQ+ Identities as Mental Illness

THE GUARDIAN: Retail giant announces decision in letter to Republican US senators about removal of book by conservative academic

Amazon will no longer sell books that frame gay, lesbian, transgender and other sexual identities as a mental illness.

The company made the announcement public in a letter sent to Republican senators who had asked why Amazon had stopped selling When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, a book by the conservative academic Ryan Anderson, best known for his opposition to same-sex marriage.

In the letter, first obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Amazon writes: “As a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable.

“That said, we reserve the right not to sell certain content. All retailers make decisions about what selection they choose to offer, as do we. As to your specific question about When Harry Became Sally, we have chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”

The letter came in response to criticism from the rightwing senators Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Mike Braun and Josh Hawley who wrote to the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, criticizing the book’s removal and calling it a signal “to conservative Americans that their views are not welcome on its platforms”. » | Dominic Rushe | Friday, March 12, 2021

Jeff Bezos to Step Down as Amazon Chief Executive

BBC: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is to step down as chief executive of the e-commerce giant that he founded in his garage nearly 30 years ago.

He will become executive chairman, a move he said would give him "time and energy" to focus on his other ventures.

Mr Bezos, the world's richest man, will be replaced by Andy Jassy, who currently leads Amazon's cloud computing business.

The change will take place in the second half of 2021, the company said.

"Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it's consuming. When you have a responsibility like that, it's hard to put attention on anything else," Mr Bezos said in an [sic] letter to Amazon staff on Tuesday.

"As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions."

"I've never had more energy, and this isn't about retiring. I'm super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have," he added. » | BBC | Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Amazon, Jeff Bezos and Collecting Data | DW Documentary

No company stores more data than Amazon, the former online bookseller. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has become the richest man in the world. Every second Euro in online trading is spent at Amazon. Is the IT giant, with its unabated growth, about to turn our economic system upside down?

Amazon is a machine that can simultaneously observe, compare and analyze more than 300 million people worldwide. The company is not just a marketplace, market supervisor and provider of more and more services and consumer items - it also controls all the data streams in this market and uses them to its own benefit. Who suspects that a single click on an Amazon page will forward information to the company that fills a printed DIN-A-4 page? A conversation with Alexa, watching a streaming offer on Amazon-Prime, ordering vegetables via Amazon-Fresh - all this put together creates a whole library of information about every customer. The group collects everything - it just won’t reveal what conclusions it draws from it. What would be possible if data from other, new business areas were added? In the USA, Amazon is also active in the health and insurance sectors, and police officers are using its facial recognition software to search for wanted persons.

Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos (Full Film) | FRONTLINE

An inside look at how Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos built one of the largest and most influential economic forces in the world — and the cost of Amazon’s convenience.

Saudi Arabia Hit with Lawsuit for Role in 9/11 Attacks & Bezos Claims Unfair Bias by Government

Via America’s Lawyer: Mike Papantonio and Trial Lawyer Magazine editor Farron Cousins put the spotlight back on Saudi Arabia, as over 25,000 9/11 victims and their families are filing suit against the Saudi government for its complicity in funding terrorist organizations. Plus, Amazon is accusing the Pentagon of improperly awarding its highly-coveted $10 billion JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft, alleging the decision was based on President Trump’s bias against Jeff Bezos. Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss more.

Glenn Greenwald: As Bezos Protests Invasion of His Privacy, Amazon Builds Global Surveillance State

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is publicly accusing the owner of the National Enquirer of “extortion and blackmail,” weeks after the paper revealed details about his extramarital affair. Bezos had recently hired a private investigator to determine how the tabloid newspaper obtained private text messages between him and his lover, and whether the paper’s actions were politically motivated. The National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media, Inc., responded to Bezos’s investigation by threatening to publish revealing photos of Bezos if he did not agree to publicly state that the Enquirer’s coverage was not politically motivated or influenced by political forces. We speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald about the dispute and Amazon’s role in building the surveillance state.

F24Debate - The Future of Shopping: Google and Walmart Take On Amazon

Islamic State Magazine Dabiq Withdrawn from Sale by Amazon

BBC AMERICA: Copies of Islamic State's English-language propaganda magazine, Dabiq, have been pulled from the website of online retailer Amazon.

Four different volumes were available for sale on the site, but in a statement to the BBC, Amazon said the product had now been removed.

The author of the publications was listed as al-Hayat Media Centre, which is IS's Western-focused media arm.

Islamic State is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK. » | Saturday, June 06, 2015

Related »

Islamic State Magazine Sold on Amazon

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Dabiq is an English language publication focusing on jihad and tawhid (unity), according to its publisher, the Al Hayat Media Centre

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) is apparently using online retailer Amazon to sell propaganda magazines aimed at recruiting Western jihadists.

Issues of Dabiq, an English-language e-zine, have been available to purchase on the website since May 24. The seller is listed as the Al Hayat Media Centre, the same name as the extremist group’s most famous media arm.

The magazine, which retails at between five and seventeen pounds, can be delivered to a buyer in one working day, and can even be gift-wrapped. The Telegraph did not purchase a copy of the magazine to verify its contents.

The Al Hayat Media Centre describes it as “a periodical magazine focusing on the issues of tawhid (unity), manhaj (truth-seeking), hijrah (migration), jihad (holy war) and jama'ah (community), including photo reports, current events, and informative articles on matters relating to the Islamic State.” » | Louisa Loveluck | Saturday, June 06, 2015

Rare Footage of Isolated Amazon Tribe Released

A newly released video captures images of the Kawahiva tribe, indigenous people living in Brazil's Amazon jungle thought to have had very little contact with the outside world.

Read the short article here