Behind Seattle's Amazon Tax: A tech boom that sent house rents soaring

It was, as the local public radio station said, the day “Seattle Nice” died. On May 2, the residents of Seattle were hit with a one-two punch. For months, the city council had been debating a new tax on large employers to raise $75 million for new affordable housing and services for the homeless, whose growing population had burst out of shelters and into tents around the city.

In the late morning, just before a council hearing, a columnist for the Seattle Times broke the news that Amazon.com Inc., the city’s largest employer, was playing hardball. The typically hermetic company said it paused expansion plans for buildings that would house about 7,000 employees pending the outcome of the upcoming tax vote.

Later that night, hundreds of residents packed a Methodist church in the gentrifying Ballard neighbourhood, turning what was supposed to be a civil town hall discussion into a scrum that exposed deep division in the city.

Starbucks to close 8,000 US stores for racial tolerance training

Starbucks Corp will close 8,000 company-owned US cafes for the afternoon on May 29 to train nearly 175,000 on how to prevent racial discrimination in its stores.

Starbucks' roughly 6,000 licensed cafes will remain open. Starbucks said it would make training materials available to the employees of those stores, who are employed by the grocery stores or airports where they are located.

The announcement from world's biggest coffee company comes as it tries to cool tensions after the arrest of two black men at one of its Philadelphia cafes last week sparked accusations of racial profiling at the chain.

Protesters have called for a boycott of the company, in what has become the biggest public relations test yet for Chief Executive Kevin Johnson.

Johnson, a former technology executive, took the helm about a year ago and was already fighting to boost traffic to Starbucks amid intense competition from coffee sellers ranging from hipster cafes to fast-food chains and convenience stores.