Amazon workers criticise company on climate change despite risk to jobs

Amazon, which relies on fossil fuels to power the planes, trucks and vans that ship packages all over the world, has an enormous carbon footprint.

Hundreds of employees are openly criticising Amazon's record on climate change despite what they say is a company policy that puts their jobs at risk for speaking out.

On Sunday, more than 300 employees of the online retail giant signed their names and job titles to statements on blog post on Medium.

The online protest was organised by a group called Amazon Employees For Climate Justice, an advocacy group founded by Amazon workers that earlier this month said the company had sent letters to its members threatening to fire them if they continued to speak to the press.

"It's our moral responsibility to speak up, and the changes to the communications policy are censoring us from exercising that responsibility," said Sarah Tracy, a software development engineer at Amazon, in a statement.

Amazon said that its policy on external communications is not new and is in keeping with other large companies. It said the policy applies to all Amazon employees and is not directed at any specific group.

"While all employees are welcome to engage constructively with any of the many teams inside Amazon that work on sustainability and other topics, we do enforce our external communications policy and will not allow employees to publicly disparage or misrepresent the company or the hard work of their colleagues who are developing solutions to these hard problems," according to an Amazon spokesperson.

Amazon, which relies on fossil fuels to power the planes, trucks and vans that ship packages all over the world, has an enormous carbon footprint. Its workers have been vocal in criticising some of the company's practices.

Last year, more than 8,000 staffers signed an open letter to CEO and founder Jeff Bezos demanding that Amazon cut its carbon emissions, end its use of fossil fuels and stop its work with oil companies that use Amazon's technology to locate fossil fuel deposits.

Amazon said in a statement that it is passionate about climate change issues and has already pledged to become net zero carbon by 2040 and use 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030.

Business Standard

Saudi prince may have sent spyware via Whatsapp to hack Bezos' phone: Probe

Saudi authorities rejected the latest allegations on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

Amazon chief Jeff Bezos's phone was likely infected by spyware hidden in a message from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, according to an analysis released Wednesday, prompting calls for an official investigation.

A forensic analysis by technical experts retained by Bezos after a leak of his personal information in early 2019 suggested that the Bezos iPhone was compromised by "tools" procured by a close associate of the Saudi de facto ruler.

The suggestion of the Saudi prince's role in the hacking prompted calls for further investigation by UN human rights officials looking into the October 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and contributor to The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos.

"The alleged hacking of Mr Bezos's phone, and those of others, demands immediate investigation by US and other relevant authorities," UN Special Rapporteurs Agnes Callamard and David Kaye said in a statement in Geneva.

Any investigation should also look at the "continuous, multi-year, direct and personal involvement of the Crown Prince in efforts to target perceived opponents," they added.

Callamard, the UN expert on summary executions and extrajudicial killings, and Kaye, the expert on freedom of expression, said the latest revelation "suggests the possible involvement of the Crown Prince in surveillance of Mr Bezos, in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post's reporting on Saudi Arabia."

The technical experts hired by Bezos concluded "with medium to high confidence that Bezos' iPhone was compromised via malware sent from a WhatsApp account used by Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman," said the report by FTI Consulting, first reported by the online news site Vice.

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Amazon founder Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince' in 2018: Report

According to The Guardian, a digital forensic analysis revealed that the encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman included a malicious file that infiltrated his phone.

Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos’s mobile phone was hacked after receiving a message from the Saudi Arabian crown prince, The Guardian newspaper reported.

According to the British daily, a digital forensic analysis revealed that the encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman included a malicious file that infiltrated his phone.

The analysis also found that the intrusion could have been triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of of the Saudi prince.

"The two men had been having a seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange when, on May 1 of that year, the unsolicited file was sent," Guardian said quoting anonymous sources.

While the details of the data taken from the is unclear, the revelation of the security breach comes almost a year after Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie announced that they would be separating after 25 years of marriage. After the divorce was finalised, Bezos, in a blog post, accused National Enquirer - a US tabloid - of threatening to publish embarrassing text messages and photos unless he publicly affirmed that there was no political motivation or outside force behind the tabloid’s coverage.

The National Enquirer had earlier disclosed an extramarital affair between Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, a former television anchor, in a series of reports that relied, in part, on intimate text messages sent by Bezos.

However, Gavin de Becker, a security consultant for Bezos, told The Guardian that he believed the Saudi Arabian government had accessed Bezos’s phone before the Enquirer exposed the affair.

Business Standard

Women shouldn't think of themselves as second-class citizens: Indra Nooyi

Nooyi, 64, was on Sunday inducted into the prestigious National Portrait Gallery along with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Frances Arnold, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Earth, Wind and Fire.

Business Standard : Women must not see themselves as second class citizens and know that they too have arrived on the scene, Indra Nooyi, who has broken many glass ceilings as a businesswoman, said on Sunday.

It does not matter, where you're born and what your heritage was, I think the US gives you a great opportunity to be anybody you want to be as long as you work hard, you contribute positively to whatever you work on and in and you have integrity, Nooyi told PTI in an interview.

Nooyi, 64, was on Sunday inducted into the prestigious National Portrait Gallery along with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Frances Arnold, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Earth, Wind and Fire.

The induction ceremony was marked with a star-studded gala that included former First Lady Michelle Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others.

The first-ever Indian American to be included in the portrait gallery, Nooyi said it sends the message to the people that the US is a great country to make your future in.

I think going forward, people like us paved the path for women to be viewed as equal, powerful and contributing as anybody else. And, so women should not feel like second class citizens. They should know they too have arrived on the scene. And their contributions will also be noticed irrespective of your background, she said.

I think that's the key thing. To be an Indian American, to be included among business leaders in the portrait gallery basically says, here is a country that only cares about your contribution, not necessarily where you came from and who you are, she said.

It is a pretty special day today. Special because I've just begun to understand the value of the portrait gallery. I didn't know a portrait gallery existed because I had never been to one. So, I came to visit this gallery about a year ago when they informed me about this. I was simply blown away by the fact that such a gallery existed, that portraiture is a way to tell the story of the country and all the people who contributed to it, she said.

The Portrait Gallery, she said, tells a beautiful story.

It's not just a picture, it tells a story. If you go downstairs to the portrait gallery, there's a room that is now showcasing the women's suffragette movement. It's a fantastic story of how the whole thing evolved, she said.

How to revive India's economy? Encourage ecommerce, says Amazon executive

Agarwal said Amazon works with some 500,000 sellers, and has created over 200,000 jobs in India since launching its ecommerce operations in 2013.

Business Standard : India needs to encourage ecommerce and reduce red tape to help small businesses sell online and export goods to help revive sagging domestic economic growth, a senior Amazon.com executive said on Wednesday.

"There is so much opportunity to just let ecommerce thrive versus trying to define every single guard rail under which it should operate," Amazon's India head Amit Agarwal told Reuters, ahead of the launch of Amazon's biggest campus in the world in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, on Wednesday.

India revised its ecommerce rules in early 2019, creating hurdles for Amazon and rival Walmart Inc's ecommerce subsidiary, Flipkart.

"I feel ecommerce can actually accelerate India's economy in a big way, if it's just allowed to thrive," said Agarwal, whose comments come at a time when India's economic growth has slumped to near five-year lows.

Agarwal said Amazon works with some 500,000 sellers, and has created over 200,000 jobs in India since launching its ecommerce operations in 2013.

He said Amazon's push to get small and medium businesses in India to export has resulted in more than $1 billion in exports and it expects this to exceed $5 billion in the next three years, but red tape is holding some businesses back.

"Even a seller, who wants to sell out of their state, has to get a tax registration in the new state. How many small business owners would go through the onerous job of doing that?" he said.

"The number of basic paper cut opportunities out there are so many," he said. "I feel we're getting lost in the high level debate around ecommerce and data localization."

India's revised ecommerce regulations, along with its push to compel multinationals to store data locally, have irked the U.S. government and heightened trade tensions between the two countries. India has argued the rules are aimed at protecting interests of its small traders and also its citizens' privacy.

Ambani vs Bezos vs Murdoch: Sacred games play out in India's content arena

Indians are watching digital video content for an average of 8 hours and 28 minutes each week, which is more than for TV.

Meghal Karekar is hooked on watching smartphone videos, an addiction shared with 200 million fellow Indians that has the world’s streaming giants beating a path to his door.

“Everywhere I go during my work day - the security guards at client offices, the receptionists, people lining up for the elevator - are on heads-down, earphones-on mode,” said Karekar, a 56-year-old architect from Bangalore. “India has always been movie-mad but the mobile phone is taking the screen mania to another level.”

As smartphone adoption surges, along with the networks capable of transmitting high-quality videos, the nascent Indian market is seeing explosive growth that is attracting everyone from Netflix Inc. to Jeff Bezos and Rupert Murdoch. They are creating original programming, developing native language content and fine-tuning their pricing strategies in the country of 1.3 billion people to get consumers to pay.

While the Indian market for over-the-top video services was worth just Rs 21.5 billion ($296 million) in the year ended March, it’s expected to grow 45 per cent annually through 2023, according to KPMG. By comparison, Netflix’s streaming business is expected to generate $7.6 billion of sales this year.

Right now it’s Hotstar, part of Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Inc., that has the lead, helped by the rights to key cricket broadcasts. But Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video and Netflix are investing to win over users.

“Prime Video is to India what same-day or next day shipping is to the U.S.,” Amit Agarwal, Amazon’s India chief, said in an interview. “It’s a unique market with 700 million phone users.”

Bezos’s e-commerce giant has 30 original shows in different stages of production and many will be released next year. “Our production pipeline is bigger than anyone else,” Agarwal said.

It’s not just the sheer number of people that is appealing to streaming companies, it’s their engagement with their phones. Indians are watching digital video content for an average 8 hours and 28 minutes each week, which is more than for TV, with that number jumping 58 percent from 2016, says a study by delivery platform, Limelight Networks.

As the global giants duke it out in India, another potential entrant looms large in the form of Asia’s richest man. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio, with almost 240 million wireless phone users as of August, is acquiring rights to everything from soap operas and Bollywood films to the Winter Olympics for subscribers to its mobile phone network, on its way to becoming India’s largest.

For Netflix, which is in nearly half of all American households, India could hold the key to international expansion through the next 100 million new subscribers. Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings acknowledges that India is a tough market and those new users won’t come easy... Read More

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Amazon looks to disrupt healthcare by entering medical supplies marketplace

Amazon shook up the prescription-drug industry last month with its $1 bn agreement to acquire online pharmacy PillPack Inc.

Amazon.com Inc. has global aspirations for its medical-supplies marketplace, according to a job listing posted on its website, highlighting the e-commerce giant’s sweeping ambitions to disrupt healthcare by selling products to hospitals, doctors and dentists and offering prescription drugs.

The world’s biggest online retailer is looking to hire someone to lead outreach to medical-products manufacturers and service providers, who will focus on building the business in the US and then expanding it globally, according to a new job post. Amazon started the Amazon Business marketplace in 2015, with health care among the industries it listed as potential customers -- along with factories, offices and universities. The new job posting emphasizes that what works for most businesses isn’t working for medical-industry clients.

"Our mission is to make Amazon the preferred shopping destination for healthcare customers," the post states. "Our Healthcare customers have different needs than traditional Amazon Business customers and thus we are reinventing everything from how we display our selection, price our products, and provide the right customer experience. We seek to understand the specific needs of our healthcare customers, vendors, and sellers in order to deliver innovative solutions to serve their needs."

Amazon shook up the prescription-drug industry last month with its $1 billion agreement to acquire online pharmacy PillPack Inc., following a series of deals between insurance companies and drug-benefit managers that aimed to blunt Amazon’s anticipated foray into the $300 billion prescription-drug business.

Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos joined Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon earlier this year to form a new venture to address rising healthcare costs. The group recently hired surgeon and health journalist Atul Gawande to steer the effort.

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Amazon's Jeff Bezos now world's richest with $141 billion net worth: Forbes

Amazon, grew into the second most valuable company in the world after Apple.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has become the richest man in the world with a net wealth of $141.9 billion, the Forbes World's Billionaires list showed on Monday.


Bezos' wealth has grown more than $5 billion since June 1 to beat Bill Gates, the principal founder of Microsoft Corporation, who is the second-richest man in the world with $92.9 billion.


Warren Buffet, one of the most successful investors in the world, trailed in the third place with a total of a wealth of $82.2 billion.


Bezos officially became the richest person in the world earlier this year, and his business behemoth of online retailing, Amazon, grew into the second most valuable company in the world after Apple.



Fortune's last list release showed that Amazon ranked eighth on the 2018 list of America's largest companies, with revenues of $177.87 billion.