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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her husband are cashing in already on $5 million of Amazon stock purchased during the time frame that closed-door coronavirus meetings were being conducted in Congress. As of Tuesday morning, the Pelosi stock purchase had already earned the couple $1.1 million in less than 10 weeks. The Amazon share price climbed close to $2,000 on Tuesday. Paul Pelosi, the speaker’s husband, got in at a price of $1,600 per share and grabbed 3,000 shares on Jan. 17, according to financial disclosure filings. Additionally, Paul Pelosi held 40 additional call options on Amazon stock...

As I've mentioned in a previous post, my wife and I own a personal care home with almost 50 residents in Western Pennsylvania. We've been buying PPE supplies in bulk from Amazon for quite some time, but, this morning, my wife tried to order masks, gloves and sanitary supplies and, after almost an hour on a live chat with Amazon, discovered that we can no longer order from Amazon. Seems that Amazon is limiting the sale of PPE to hospitals and "government agencies."

And the middle of a national emergency, in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a time when everyone is making sacrifices, union members are threatening Amazon: Do what I say. Or Else.

Amazon fired a worker who organized a walkout at a New York warehouse to demand greater protection against the new coronavirus, saying the employee himself flouted distancing rules and put others at risk. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the city’s Commission of Human Right to investigate whether the dismissal was retaliatory. New York Attorney General Letitia James called on the National Labor Relations Board to investigate and said her office is also considering legal options. […] Amazon said the worker, Christian Smalls, received several warnings for violating social distancing guidelines. Amazon said Smalls showed up at the...

"Amazon has fired the worker at its Staten Island warehouse who organized a walkout on Monday to demand greater protections from the company amid the coronavirus outbreak. Chris Smalls, 31, a management assistant at the facility, told The Post he was canned in a phone call following Monday afternoon’s strike. “They pretty much retaliated against me for speaking out,” said Smalls. “I don’t know how they sleep at night.” He and dozens of other employees at the Bloomfield warehouse walked off the job to demand Amazon AMZN, +3.36% temporarily close and clean the facility after a worker tested positive for...

Amazon faced questions Friday from Capitol Hill over how the online retail giant is protecting workers at its warehouses during the ongoing deadly global coronavirus pandemic. Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat, led a dozen other lawmakers in a letter seeking answers from Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos. In addition to inquiring in detail about steps Amazon has taken to protect its employees during the pandemic, they asked him to ramp up those efforts to ensure they remain safe. **SNIP** “In a recent message to your employees, you recognize the critical work they are doing....

You got that box from Amazon, so satisfied that you didn't have to schlep to the store and mingle with the germy people there who might have COVID-19. Now what the heck do you do with the box? Should you touch it? Do you need to gown-up to handle it? How long does coronavirus live on cardboard, anyway? Yesterday when the Amazon delivery person set the box on my porch I thought wait, I keep hearing that the COVID-19 virus can last on surfaces for hours. So I donned my purple nitrile gloves, which I keep around the house and...

Maybe it’s because of Amazon’s upcoming TV series, but lately we seem to be learning a lot of hitherto unknown facts about The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, or at least, some old facts are getting spread around anew. Just recently, author John M. Bowers posited that Tolkien may have written his genre-defining trilogy while procrastinating on his academic work. (Would that all our procrastinations were that fruitful.) Now, the @SecretsOfDune Twitter account has posted a page from Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist by Oronzo Chili, which seeks to understand this literary titan by perusing his bookshelf. And...

How long does it take to get a No.1 hit? In the case of the ‘70s group Ace, fronted by singer Paul Carrack, the answer is 45 years. The British band’s 1975 single “How Long” originally reached No.3 when it was released, but this week it made it to No.1 on Billboard's Rock Digital Song Sales chart, selling 4,000 downloads, reaching 831,000 streams and increasing sales by more than 2000 percent. The reason behind the song's sudden return to popularity is its use in a new ad for Amazon Prime titled “Binge Cheat,” which features the song’s opening line, “How...

I have seen some morphing a bit over the last 48 hours. Amazon Prime is no longer prime, nor do they have stock. Walmart has stock quicker but it must be inside purchase. Looks to be the battle as to what you need now. Interesting to see this play out.

Amazon has banned the sale of most editions of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and other Nazi propaganda books from its store following decades of campaigning by Holocaust charities, The Guardian reported on Monday. According to the report, booksellers were informed in recent days that they would no longer be allowed to sell a number of Nazi-authored books on the website including Hitler’s autobiographical screed and children’s books designed to spread anti-Semitic ideas among children. In one email seen by The Guardian, individuals selling secondhand copies of “Mein Kampf” on the service have been told by Amazon that “they can no...

Amazon is banning sellers from shipping any non-essential items to its warehouses as it grapples with overwhelming demand for basic staple items as the coronavirus pandemic continues to grow. The Seattle-based e-tailing giant sent an email to sellers Tuesday announcing that it would only be accepting “household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products” for the next three weeks so that it can “more quickly receive, restock, and deliver” the products to customers. “We are seeing increased online shopping, and as a result some products such as household staples and medical supplies are out of stock,” Amazon told sellers, according...

Amazon is hiring an additional 100,000 employees in the U.S. to meet the surge in demand of online shopping amid the coronavirus outbreak, the company said Monday. The company is looking to add extra warehouse and delivery workers. It will raise pay for these employees by $2 per hour in the U.S., £2 per hour in the UK, and approximately €2 per hour in many EU countries. Amazon currently pays $15 per hour or more in some areas of the U.S. This story is developing, please check back for updates.

A Scottish mother, who has a six-year old son with Down’s syndrome, has slammed Amazon for selling t-shirts which read, ‘let’s make down syndrome extinct.’ She said: “To target a group who are disabled is just disgusting.” Stacey Corrigan, aged 34 from Paisley has a six year old son with Down’s syndrome named Daniel. Ms Corrigan slammed the t-shirt slogan as “hateful” and “disgusting”, asserting that it should be treated as a crime. She said: “I can’t believe they have been allowed to sell this. Who even thinks up an idea to design this? Daniel is just perfect to us...

An Amazon employee in Seattle tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, according to a message sent to Amazon employees Tuesday in Seattle and Bellevue. The message, viewed by The Seattle Times, said the employee worked out of the company’s Brazil office building, at Ninth Avenue and Republican Street in South Lake Union. “We’re supporting the affected employee who is in quarantine,” the company said in a statement. The employee went home feeling unwell on Tuesday, Feb. 25, and has not returned to work since, the message said. The message said Amazon received word Tuesday that...

A 2% levy on the money major tech firms make from British users had been expected to be introduced next month. It has been strongly opposed by Washington, however, which has said any such tax would be discriminatory and inappropriate. “We note comments regarding digital taxation and will consider this as part of our policy development,” the British government said in its mandate for trade talks with the United States. […] France had considered a similar digital tax, but it agreed in January to suspend down payments after Washington threatened to retaliate with tariffs on French wine. …

Amazon has opened its first-ever full-size, "cashierless" grocery store, providing shoppers an experience that does not require any human interaction. The project, called Amazon Go Grocery, has been in development for five years. Starting Tuesday, customers can scan a QR code from Amazon's mobile app, walk into the Seattle store, take any item they want to purchase and walk out without paying at a cashier station. Amazon said it is employing technology that senses when a product is taken from or returned to a shelf and keeps track of items in a virtual cart. When a customer leaves, they are...

Francis’ Nightmares for the Church: Analysis of New Apostolic Exhortation Francis had some dreams, but they are really nightmares for the Church. These are not the dreams of the Patriarch Joseph, nor those of St. Joseph or St. John Bosco. They clearly do not come from the same source as the visions granted to these holy men.On Feb. 12, 2020, the Vatican released the dreaded Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia (QA), relating to the Synod on the Amazon that was held in Rome in October 2019. Dated February 2, the document is a bizarre relation of Francis’ “dreams” for the Amazon...

Have you ever wondered how often your smart speaker accidentally activates itself? A study from Northeastern University tried to find out.No one likes it when a stranger butts into their conversation.Especially when they interrupt with some astonishing non-sequitur.You're watching TV and chatting about the painfully demanding couple on House Hunters International when a distant voice pipes up: "The circumference of the Earth is 24,901 miles."MORE AT LINK It's Apple's Siri, of course. Or Amazon's Alexa. Or whatever you call your Google Home person.I suspect you pass off these apparent accidents as merely one of those things. Yet, as a new...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope’s ghostwriter, advisor claims Francis blazed path to married priests in Amazon exhortation Archbishop Fernández said that married priests and more could come by way of an 'Amazonian rite' February 20, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – An Argentinian archbishop close to Pope Francis, who is widely regarded as the principal ghostwriter of the Pope’s controversial 2016 exhortation Amoris Laetitia, is claiming that the Pope blazed a path to married priests in his new Amazon exhortation. The Pope did this by means of suggesting the development of a new “Amazonian rite” that would, in the words of the exhortation, “inculturate the...