Amazon on Thursday pledged to spend $700 million over the next few years to retrain 100,000 of its US workers. The Upskilling 2025 program will be one of the largest retraining initiatives any US company has undertaken and follows similar efforts by corporations such as AT&T and Accenture.  The program is designed to help one-third of Amazon’s …

AT&T is now making its Call Protect fraud caller blocking service a default for its new mobile customers. If you’re an existing customer, don’t worry: The company says it’ll make this feature the default for you, too, in the coming months. AT&T said Tuesday it was able to make this change thanks to a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission last month …

Just as Amazon is finalizing plans for its big Prime Day summer sale next week, the company is facing more labor problems in its Minneapolis-area warehouses. Workers at its Shakopee, Minnesota, fulfillment center are planning a six-hour strike during Prime Day to push for better working conditions and worker protections, Bloomberg reported Monday. Amazon warehouse workers in the Twin Cities …

Amazon on Tuesday said it agreed to lease 15 more Boeing cargo planes from GE Capital Aviation Services, helping the e-commerce titan continue growing its air fleet so it can speed up Prime deliveries. The 15 Boeing 737-800 planes are in addition to the five planes Amazon already agreed to lease from GECAS earlier this year. The company has 42 …

Sean Scott is almost poetic when describing his intense interest in sidewalks. “Each sidewalk is like a snowflake,” Scott, who’s soft-spoken with a friendly smile, told me with a bit of excitement in his eyes. “Because the textures are different, the way they’re laid out is different, what we see on the sidewalk is different.” Scott, vice president of the …

Amazon on Wednesday unveiled its latest Prime Air drone — a hybrid model that borrows from both helicopter and airplane designs. Like a helicopter, the drone can do vertical takeoffs and landings, but it can also fly around aerodynamically like an airplane. It can easily switch between those modes too, Amazon says, and it’s fully shrouded for safety. Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s …

A mostly uneventful keynote interview with Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos veered off the rails when an animal rights protester stormed the stage Thursday. The woman, who was hard to hear from the audience, called out as Bezos was sitting nearby in the middle of a “fireside chat” interview in front of thousands of people at Amazon’s re:MARS conference. …

Amazon said Monday its one-day Prime delivery program is now available on more than 10 million products across the continental US. Products eligible for these faster shipments include books, baby wipes, doggie bags, sunscreen, closet organizers and cleaning products. Amazon noted that when it launched two-day deliveries in 2005, it only offered 1 million items, meaning its one-day program is …

Amazon is offering deep warehouse discounts to its sellers in a bid to jump-start its Prime one-day shipping program. The company last month announced plans to transition its popular Prime membership deliveries from two-day shipping to one day. To increase the number of items it can offer for one-day delivery, Amazon will need to have more stuff spread around its …

Plenty of folks get hit with hefty and unexpected medical bills they have a hard time paying. Earnin, a Palo Alto, California-based startup, thinks it can help. The company, which already offers customers an alternative to high-interest payday loans, on Wednesday introduced a new service called HealthAid. It lets people take pictures of their medical bills and load them into …