Amazon warehouse workers planned more than two dozen protests across the country in response to Amazon's Prime Day. The protests are against working conditions, air pollution generated by the warehouses, and enhanced health risks due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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• The virtual and in-person protests are aimed at highlighting "inadequate and inconsistently enforced safety measures" the company has put in place during the pandemic. Protests are being held in states including California, New Jersey, and Minnesota.
• The protestors will also demonstrate against new rules they say punish workers who demand better working conditions. Earlier this month, 35 workers in Minnesota walked off the job when an employee named Farhiyo Warsame was terminated after bringing up safety concerns to management. Warsame says management says she was spending too much "time off task."
• Amazon employees in Germany are also engaging in a two-day strike, demanding better pay and working conditions. Amazon workers have been engaging in strikes in Germany since 2013 and the country is Amazon's second-largest market after the United States.
• Amazon revealed earlier this month that nearly 20,000 employees in the U.S. had tested positive for COVID-19. 

Amazon announced a partnership with Uber that will allow users in India to pay for rides using Amazon Pay in the Uber app. Once a rider completes their trip in an Uber, the fare will automatically be deducted from their Amazon Pay balance.

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• India is the first country where the new payment partnership will be introduced. India is of strategic importance for both companies given its large population.
• Besides Amazon Pay, Uber customers in India can pay using cash, credit card, Paytm, and Google Pay. Uber has formed several strategic payment partnerships to ensure higher transaction success rates.
• Amazon customers in India will receive 50% cash back on their first three rides within a month.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin successfully launched and landed a test flight of its rocket New Shepard. Tuesday's launch was the seventh for this rocket and the 13th in the New Shepard program.

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• The test flight didn't have any passengers, but did have 12 different payloads, including from NASA, who paid $1.5m. The flight took off and landed in Texas, and traveled to a height of about 66 miles. New Shepard test flights have carried 100 payloads into space so far.
• Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith revealed the company does not have a specific timeline for when it will be able to fly paying passengers. He also revealed the company makes money on each test flight.
• Blue Origin is Jeff Bezos' personal space exploration company and a rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX. Bezos revealed in 2017 that he plans to sell $1b worth of Amazon stock every year to finance Blue Origin.
• He sold $2.8b worth of stock in 2019 and has so far sold $7.2b in 2020, leading to speculation he will be financing more than the $1b he mentioned three years ago.

Amazon's Acquisition of Twitch: 

Twitch is an online streaming platform focused mainly on live streaming video games that Amazon bought for $970m in 2014. Today, it has at least 1.5 million viewers globally at any moment and has 17.5 million visitors daily. 

Last year, Twitch generated revenue of $1.54b compared to YouTube Gaming revenue of $1.46b. Twitch was founded in 2007 (as Justin.tv) to broadcast Twitch’s CEO Justin Kan’s life around the clock and was later relaunched...

QUICK HITS

• Jeff Bezos' net worth rose above $200b again as Amazon's Prime Day caused Amazon stock to rise by almost 5%. 
• Eddie Murphy's "Coming 2 America" is reportedly moving from Paramount Pictures to Amazon Studios. The rights to the long-awaited sequel are being sold for about $125m. 
• Amazon is changing up its boxes for Halloween to include a pumpkin with a QR code that projects an augmented reality version of the pumpkin that comes to life when scanned. 
• As Apple device adoption grows in the enterprise, organizations are looking for ways to seamlessly manage and secure devices while extending the world-class Apple experience users expect.

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