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After a private summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump publicly questioned the conclusions of American intelligence experts that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The Trump administration recently indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for cyber attacks on Democrats that were intended to help Trump’s campaign. Top lawmakers — including some notable Republicans — rebuked Trump for his comments: John McCain called Trump’s press conference with Putin “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.” Meanwhile, the Justice Department announced espionage charges against a Russian woman who tried to broker “back channel” meetings between Trump and Putin. [Julie Hirschfeld Davis / The New York Times]
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Amazon’s biggest sales day of the year — Prime Day — got off to a rocky start. The company’s website and mobile app crashed as soon as the global “shopping holiday” began, apparently due to heavy traffic; Amazon Web Services was also affected. Meanwhile, nearly 1,800 Amazon workers in Spain went on strike during the event, and thousands more are expected to walk off the job today. Prime Day was projected to break records again this year, surpassing even the “tens of millions” of Prime members who shopped the discounts last year. More than a sales gimmick, it’s the single biggest event to expand Amazon’s defensive moat: Last year, Prime Day resulted in an 85 percent uptick in daily signups in the U.S. for Amazon Prime compared to an average day. [Nick Statt / The Verge]
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the richest person in modern history. Bezos’s net worth cracked $150 billion yesterday — that’s about $55 billion more than the world’s second-richest person, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Meanwhile, legendary investor Warren Buffett gave away $3.4 billion to charity in his annual gift of Berkshire Hathaway shares.[Olivia Carville and Tom Metcalf / Bloomberg]
Sinclair Broadcast Group’s proposed $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Company has run into a major roadblock. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he won’t approve the acquisition as it’s currently structured, saying Sinclair’s plans for divested stations would violate the law; he is recommending that the merger be reviewed by an administrative law judge, a move that could ultimately kill the deal. [Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica]
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Netflix missed its own Q2 forecasts by more than a million subscribers, delivering 5.2 million new subscribers instead of the 6.2 million they had forecast. Wall Street reacted by pushing shares down 14 percent, wiping out more than $25 billion in market cap. The worry for investors is that Netflix’s crazy growth streak may be at an end, even though those five million new subscribers bring the company’s total to 130 million worldwide. [Peter Kafka / Recode]
This is cool
Building the Putin brand. And Jennifer Aniston’s.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
