Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 45
NEW YORK (AP) — Safety regulators warned people with kids and pets Saturday to immediately stop using a treadmill made by Peloton after one child died and others were injured. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said children and at least one pet were pulled, pinned and entrapped under the rear roller of the Tread+ treadmill, leading to fractures, scrapes and the death of one child. The safety commission said in a news release and in emails that it knows of 39 "incidents" with the treadmill, involving "multiple" or "dozens" of c...
Amazon is known for quick delivery. But finding out whether Amazon warehouse workers voted for or against unionizing is going to take some more time. The final day for the nearly 6,000 workers in Bessemer, Alabama, to cast their ballots was more than a week ago. But it could still take a few more days — or longer — to tally all the votes before the outcome is known. The vote itself has garnered national attention because of the potentially wide-reaching implications. Labor organizers hope a win in Bessemer will inspire thousands of workers nati...
NEW YORK (AP) — Is it Mr. Potato Head or not? Hasbro created confusion Thursday when it announced that it would drop the “Mr.” from the brand’s name in order to be more inclusive and so all could feel “welcome in the Potato Head world.” It also said it would sell a new playset this fall without the Mr. and Mrs. designations that will let kids create their own type of potato families, including two moms or two dads. But in a tweet later that afternoon, Hasbro clarified that the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head characters will still live on and be sold...
After unusual icy weather left millions of Texans without power, some are facing another crisis: Sky-high electricity bills. The surge in pricing is hitting people who have chosen to pay wholesale prices for their power, which is typically cheaper than paying fixed rates during good weather, but can spike when there’s high demand for electricity. Many of those who have reported receiving large bills are customers of electricity provider Griddy, which only operates in Texas. Among them is Susan Hosford of Denison, Texas. On a typical February d...
NEW YORK (AP) — Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon as an online bookstore and built it into a shopping and entertainment behemoth, will step down later this year as CEO, a role he's had for nearly 30 years, to become executive chairman, the company announced Tuesday. Bezos, 57, will be replaced in the fall by Andy Jassy, who runs Amazon's cloud-computing business. In a blog post to employees, Bezos said he planned to focus on new products and early initiatives being developed at Amazon. He said he would have more time for side projects, including h...
NEW YORK (AP) — A printing company in Maryland saw the photo on Twitter Wednesday night: an employee roaming the halls of the U.S. Capitol with a company badge around his neck. He was fired the next day. Others are facing similar repercussions at work for their participation in Wednesday's riot at the U.S. Capitol. Some business owners are being trashed on social media and their establishments boycotted, while rank-and-file employees at other businesses have been fired. The printing company, Navistar Direct Marketing, declined to name the w...
NEW YORK (AP) — The viral pandemic is accelerating a transformation of America's holiday shopping season. Few people showed up at the mall this weekend, with millions of pandemic-wary shoppers staying home to shop online. The result? Overall holiday sales are projected to rise a slight 0.9% in November and December — and even that modest gain will be due to an explosion in online shopping, according to the research firm eMarketer. It expects online sales to jump nearly 36%, while sales at physical stores fall 4.7%. The online rush was on fully...
NEW YORK (AP) — Looking for toilet paper? Good luck. A surge of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. is sending people back to stores to stockpile again, leaving shelves bare and forcing retailers to put limits on purchases. Walmart said Tuesday it's having trouble keeping up with demand for cleaning supplies in some stores. Supermarket chains Kroger and Publix are limiting how much toilet paper and paper towels shoppers can buy after demand spiked recently. And Amazon is sold out of most disinfectant wipes and paper towels. A similar scene p...
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon on Wednesday banned police use of its face-recognition technology for a year, making it the latest tech giant to step back from law-enforcement use of systems that have faced criticism for incorrectly identifying people with darker skin. The Seattle-based company did not say why it took action now. Ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd have focused attention on racial injustice in the U.S. and how police use technology to track people. Floyd died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed h...
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said Monday that he plans to spend $10 billion of his own fortune to help fight climate change. Bezos, the world's richest man, said in an Instagram post that he'll start giving grants this summer to scientists, activists and nonprofits working to protect Earth. "I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change," Bezos said in the post. Amazon, the company Bezos runs, has an enormous carbon foodprint. Last year, Amazo...
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday ordered a temporary halt of Microsoft's work on a $10 billion military cloud contract, a win for Amazon, which sued the U.S. government last year for awarding the contract to its rival. Amazon's lawsuit, filed in November, alleged that President Donald Trump's bias against the company hurt its chances to win the project. Amazon and Microsoft were finalists for the lucrative contract, for which Amazon was considered an early front-runner. The project, known as Joint Enterprise Defense I...
NEW YORK (AP) — Zachariah Mohammed's living room is filled with stuff he doesn't own. He pays $200 a month for the sofa, side table, bar cart, dining table and four chairs in his living room. It's worth it, the 27-year-old New Yorker says. If he needs to move, which he's done twice in the last 12 months, he won't need to lug a sofa across the city or worry if it will fit in a new place. The furniture-rental startup, Feather, will swap out items for something else. "We don't want to be stuck with a giant couch," says Mohammed, a social media m...
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Once a hidden and under-the-radar topic, privacy is getting more attention at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas this week. Startups now volunteer information about how they're securing your data and protecting your privacy when you use their heart rate monitor or cuddly robot. Roybi, an alien-looking robot that teaches kids languages and other skills, has a camera with facial recognition that can remember children and guess whether the kid was excited or sad after a lesson. Roybi says it uses that information to make changes t...
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon's push for faster delivery is hurting its profits. The online retailer said its third-quarter net income fell 26% from a year ago, missing Wall Street expectations. Its sales outlook for the holiday shopping season also disappointed analysts, and its stock sank 7% in after-hours trading. Amazon is moving to cut its delivery time in half to one day instead of two. To do that, it's adding more workers in its warehouses and expanding its shipping network with more trucks, jets and package sorting facilities. The effort is co...
NEW YORK (AP) — Nike said Tuesday that its longtime CEO Mark Parker is stepping down early next year. He will be replaced by board member John Donahoe, who formerly ran e-commerce company eBay. Parker will become executive chairman of the board. Nike's sales have been on the rise as the company focuses on selling more of its swoosh-branded sneakers online and on its apps. The company's first quarter earnings last month soared past expectations. But Nike has also been plagued by scandals recently. Three weeks ago, renowned track coach Alberto S...
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon wants Alexa everywhere. The online shopping giant said Wednesday that it will soon start selling wireless earbuds, finger rings and prescription eyeglasses with its Alexa voice assistant built in. The goal: Get Alexa outside the home and wherever customers are. "You can have Alexa with you 24/7," said Werner Goertz, a personal technology analyst at Gartner. It also launched its first celebrity voice for Alexa: actor Samuel L. Jackson. For $4.99, Alexa users can now ask Jackson to sing them happy birthday or tell them t...
NEW YORK (AP) — FedEx says it will no longer make ground deliveries for Amazon as the online shopping giant builds its own fleet and becomes more of a threat to delivery companies. The announcement Wednesday comes two months after FedEx terminated its air delivery contract with Amazon. FedEx said dumping Amazon is part of its plan to go after more e-commerce deliveries from other companies. Traditional retailers like Walmart and Target want to sell more of their goods online, which in turn allows FedEx to distance itself from Amazon.com w...
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The CES 2019 gadget show is revving up in Las Vegas. Here are the latest findings and observations from Associated Press reporters on the ground. DING-DONG, THE PEEPHOLE IS RINGING Ring is giving the old-school peephole a high-tech spin. The company unveiled a new internet-connected video doorbell that fits into most peepholes. The new device is aimed at apartment dwellers or college students who want a video doorbell, but may not be allowed to install one next to their doors. Amazon bought Ring last year, giving it a shot a...
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon has set its sights on two of the nation's largest and most powerful metro areas, announcing Tuesday it had chosen a buzzy New York neighborhood and a suburb of Washington for its new East Coast headquarters. The online shopping giant ended its 14-month-long competition for second headquarters by selecting Long Island City, Queens, and Arlington, Virginia , as the joint winners. Both are waterfront communities away from overcrowded business districts, giving Amazon space to grow. Amazon could have picked a city looking t...
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon wants to get more kids thinking about becoming computer engineers. The company launched a program Thursday that aims to teach more than 10 million students a year how to code. Amazon said it will pay for summer camps, teacher training and other initiatives to benefit kids and young adults from low-income families who might not have learned to code otherwise. It hopes the programs spur more black, Hispanic and female students to study computer science. Amazon declined to put a price tag on the program, called Amazon F...
NEW YORK (AP) — Starbucks closed thousands of stores Tuesday and asked employees to talk about when they noticed their racial identity, discuss what unconscious bias is and watch videos in which people of color describe feeling unwelcome in stores. It was all part of the coffee chain's anti-bias training, created after the arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks six weeks ago. But whether the training, developed with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and other groups, will prevent another embarrassing incident remains to b...
NEW YORK (AP) — Alexa's new missions: encourage kids to ask questions more politely, and get them to bed on time. The voice assistant that lives inside Amazon's Echo speakers will soon thank kids for shouting out questions "nicely" if they say "please." The new response is part of a kid-friendly update that's coming next month, giving parents more control over the voice assistant. Adults can set Alexa to go silent at bedtime, block music with explicit lyrics and even call kids down to dinner. "Gone are the days of shouting up the stairs," A...
NEW YORK (AP) — Starbucks, moving swiftly to confront a racially charged uproar over the arrest of two black men at one of its stores in Philadelphia, plans to close more than 8,000 U.S. stores for several hours next month to conduct racial-bias training for nearly 175,000 workers. The announcement Tuesday comes after the arrests sparked protests and calls for a boycott on social media. A video shows police talking with two black men seated at a table. After a few minutes, officers handcuff the men and lead them outside as other customers say t...
NEW YORK (AP) — The Quarter Pounder is getting a fresh makeover. McDonald's said Tuesday that it is serving Quarter Pounders with fresh beef rather than frozen patties at about a quarter of its U.S. restaurants, a switch it first announced about a year ago as it works to appeal to customers who want fresher foods. It will roll out fresh beef Quarter Pounders to most of its 14,000 U.S. restaurants by May. The fast-food giant, which has relied on frozen patties since the 1970s, said workers will cook up the fresh beef on a grill when the b...
NEW YORK (AP) — Kroger will no longer sell guns to anyone under 21 at the stores it owns, becoming the third major retailer this week to put restrictions in place that are stronger than federal laws. The moves by Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart — and retribution on Delta by lawmakers — emphasizes the pressure companies are facing to take a stand. The nation's largest grocery chain has sold guns from 44 of its Fred Meyer stores in the West, but said Thursday that since a mass shooting last month at a Florida high school that killed 17 peopl...
