Amazon says its carbon footprint grew 19% last year
Amazon says its carbon footprint grew 19% last year as it rushed to deliver a surge of online orders during the pandemic.
The online shopping behemoth said activities tied to its businesses emitted 60.64 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year - the equivalent of burning through 140 million barrels of oil.
Amazon's carbon footprint has risen every year since 2018, when it first disclosed its carbon footprint after employees pressured it to do so. The company said that while its carbon footprint grew, the amount of carbon it emitted for every dollar spent on the site fell 16% in 2020.
U.S. residency may end for wealthy investors
A program that has allowed wealthy foreign investors to obtain U.S. residency may be coming to a sputtering end. The program has long been the subject of complaints that it amounts to the wholesale selling of American citizenship.
Congressional authorization for a key part of the immigrant investor program expired Wednesday with dim prospects for renewal following the failure of a Senate bill that would have addressed long-standing concerns about inadequate regulation.
The bipartisan bill would have created new regulations on a part of the program that allows money from overseas investors to be pooled into funds to finance large projects around the U.S., often high-end real estate.
Amazon asks FTC head to step back from probe
Amazon is asking that the new head of the Federal Trade Commission step aside from antitrust investigations into the e-commerce giant.
The company contends that FTC Chair Lina Khan's past public criticism of Amazon's market power makes it impossible for her to be impartial.
Amazon on Wednesday petitioned the agency to remove Khan from taking part in current probes of the company's market conduct. FTC officials declined comment on Amazon's motion. Khan has been a fierce critic of tech giants Facebook, Google and Apple as well as Amazon.
As counsel to a House Judiciary antitrust panel in 2019 and 2020, Khan played a key role in a sweeping investigation of Big Tech's market power.
China's Didi ride-hailing jumps in Wall Street debut
Didi Global, a Chinese ride-hailing service, rose 16% shortly after making its U.S. stock market debut but ended the day up just 1%.
The stock opened at $16.65 on the New York Stock Exchange. The company's initial public offering of 288 million shares was priced at $14 a share.
Didi said it aimed to spend 30% on technology development, another 30% to expand outside China and 20% on new products. Didi's U.S. market debut comes a day after it posted a loss of $5.5 billion over the past three years, though the company also touted its global reach and investments in developing electric and self-driving cars.
Circulation tops ads in newspaper revenue
For the first time in 2020, the newspaper industry earned more money from circulation than advertising.
Circulation revenue, from people buying digital or print subscriptions, reached $11.1 billion in 2020, Pew said. The newspaper industry reported $8.8 billion in ad revenue last year.
In 2006, in the early stages of the internet eating away at the industry, newspapers reported $49.3 billion in advertising revenue. Circulation revenue in 2006 was much the same as it was last year.
Pew's estimate of weekday newspaper circulation, which is complicated by the move to digital and some different reporting sources, was 24.3 million last year. Twenty years ago, it was 57.8 million.
Newspaper newsroom employment stood at 74,410 in 2006, the last year that figure grew over the previous year. In 2020, there were 30,820 people in newsrooms.
- Compiled by Dave Flessner