Amazon’s $2.5B Prime Settlement, Starbucks’ Store Closures, Trump’s DOJ Strikes Comey & Britain’s Digital ID Push

26th September, 2025

Amazon will pay $2.5 billion to settle FTC claims it tricked millions into unwanted Prime subscriptions, with 35 million customers set for payouts. Starbucks shutters hundreds of stores, including its iconic Seattle roastery, as restructuring costs top $1 billion. Trump’s DOJ levels criminal charges against former FBI chief James Comey in an unprecedented move against political critics, while Britain unveils compulsory digital IDs to curb illegal work. All this and more in today’s Read It And Eat! 

Major Headlines

• Amazon to pay $2.5 billion for allegedly duping millions to sign up for Prime

Amazon.com (AMZN.O), will pay $2.5 billion in fines and reimbursements to Prime subscribers to settle the Federal Trade Commission's allegations that it deceived its customers to generate subscriptions, the FTC said on Thursday. While a win for consumers and the FTC, the settlement is relatively painless for Amazon: the company takes in around $2.5 billion in sales every 33 hours. Shares of Amazon were nearly unchanged after the news.

Around 35 million Prime customers will be eligible for payout from a $1.5 billion fund, the FTC said. Amazon will pay $1 billion in fines to the FTC. The company did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement. Customers who signed up for Prime between June 23, 2019 and June 23, 2025 through certain offers, and who used few Prime benefits afterward will automatically receive $51, according to court documents. The settlement also allows customers to submit claims for payment if they tried to cancel Prime and failed during that time.

Amazon said in a statement that the deal allows it to move forward and focus on customers. "We work incredibly hard to make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up or cancel their Prime membership, and to offer substantial value for our many millions of loyal Prime members around the world," the company said. As part of the settlement, Amazon has agreed to create a "clear and conspicuous" button to allow customers to decline a Prime subscription, and to make it easier to cancel. Amazon has also agreed to more clearly disclose the terms of a subscription during enrollment and pay an independent supervisor to monitor compliance.

Amazon said the settlement largely requires it to maintain changes that are already in place, rather than make new ones. The FTC alleged in its case that, between 2017 and 2022, Amazon executives rejected changes that would make its sign-up and cancellation processes clearer. The company later adopted changes in 2022, while it was under investigation by the FTC. The agency sued Amazon the next year. Reuters

• Starbucks closing stores, including iconic Seattle roastery, as CEO deepens restructuring 

Starbucks (SBUX.O), said on Thursday it would close underperforming stores in North America, including its iconic Seattle roastery, as CEO Brian Niccol presses ahead with his restructuring effort, which is expected to cost $1 billion in a bid to revive the company's flagging sales. The coffee chain's overall U.S. and Canada store count is expected to drop by 1%, or several hundred stores, by the end of the 2025 fiscal year. 

Niccol is trying to restore the chain's "coffeehouse" feel to bring customers back to its outlets after six consecutive quarters of declining U.S. sales. Among the closed stores was Starbucks' flagship unionized location in Seattle, a large cafe with an in-house roastery, the company confirmed. Talks between Starbucks and the Workers United union, which represents over 12,000 baristas, began last April, but have hit a wall since. In December, some members of the union walked off their jobs in multiple U.S. cities in a strike that spanned several days during the peak holiday season. Workers at the Seattle store, which is located near its headquarters, voted to unionize in 2022, and the union picketed the store on Monday over contract negotiation disputes.

A unionized store in Chicago, on Ridge Avenue, was also closed, the union confirmed. Baristas at the store were picketing Thursday morning, in a plan made before the store's closure was known, the union said. Baristas on the picket line came from stores across the Chicago area. "We're here to remind the company that it's the workers who actually bring the people into the stores," said Diego Franco, who came from a store in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines.

A Starbucks spokesperson said the union status of stores was "not a factor in the decision-making process." Starbucks Workers United criticized the closures in a statement. "It has never been more clear why baristas at Starbucks need the backing of a union," the union said, adding that it planned to bargain for affected workers so they could be transferred to other stores. Analysts at TD Cowen estimate that about 500 North America company-owned stores were impacted by the restructuring. Reuters

• Former FBI chief Comey charged as Trump ramps up campaign against critics

The U.S. Justice Department filed criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday, in a dramatic escalation of President Donald Trump's retribution campaign against his political enemies. If convicted, Comey could face up to five years in prison. He faces charges of making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation. Comey, in a video posted on Instagram, said: "My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I'm innocent. So, let's have a trial and keep the faith."  His attorney, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, said in a statement: “Jim Comey denies the charges filed today in their entirety. We look forward to vindicating him in the courtroom." 

Trump has threatened to imprison his political rivals since he first ran for president in 2015, but Thursday's indictment marks the first time his administration has succeeded in securing a grand jury indictment against one of them. Trump's Justice Department is also investigating other antagonists including New York Attorney General Letitia James and John Bolton, who served as a national security official in Trump's first term as president. The charges breach decades-long norms that have sought to insulate U.S. law enforcement from political pressures. The federal prosecutor in Virginia who had been tasked with pursuing the case resigned last week after drawing Trump's wrath for expressing doubts about the case, and others in the office have privately said the evidence does not merit criminal charges, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Trump, who has pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey and other critics, celebrated the news. "JUSTICE IN AMERICA!" he wrote on social media. "He has been so bad for our Country, for so long." Trump fired Comey in 2017, early in his first term in office. He has since regularly assailed Comey's handling of the FBI investigation that detailed contacts between Russians and Trump's 2016 campaign. Since Trump returned to office last January, his Justice Department has been examining Comey's 2020 testimony when he addressed Republican criticisms of the Russia investigation and denied that he had authorized disclosures of sensitive information to the news media.

The indictment alleges that Comey misled Congress by claiming he had not authorized anyone else to be an anonymous source in news reporting about an FBI investigation. Trump's administration has carried out a sweeping campaign to remake the Justice Department, which the president alleges was used as a political weapon when he left office in 2021. Trump faced federal charges of mishandling classified documents and trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Both cases have been dropped. "Donald Trump has ordered the criminal prosecutions of political targets, and the Department of Justice is corruptly obeying," said Norm Eisen, a prominent former government ethics official under Democratic President Barack Obama and currently a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "This indictment has all the hallmarks of a vindictive and meritless prosecution." Reuters

• Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

Britain on Friday said it would introduce a mandatory digital ID scheme for British citizens and residents starting a new job as a measure to deter illegal immigration. "It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure," Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement announcing the move, which had been previously reported.

Polling shows immigration is top of voters' concerns in Britain, with Starmer under intense pressure to stop migrants entering the country illegally by making crossings in small boats from France. The plans, which the government had previously said it was considering, drew criticism from political opponents who say it would not deter migrants and could infringe on civil liberties. "It's laughable that those already breaking immigration law will suddenly comply, or that digital IDs will have any impact on illegal work, which thrives on cash-in-hand payments," said a spokesperson for Nigel Farage's populist Reform UK Party, which leads opinion polls ahead of an election not due until 2029. "All it will do is impinge further on the freedoms of law-abiding Brits."

The government said the digital ID would be held on people's mobile phones and would become a mandatory part of checks that employers already have to make when hiring a worker by the end of the current parliament in 2029. It would, in time, also be used to provide access to other services like childcare, welfare and access to tax records. In the 2000s Starmer's Labour Party, then led by Tony Blair, attempted to introduce an identity card, but the plan was eventually dropped by Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, after opposition that called it an infringement of civil liberties.

Britons have not been issued with identity cards since their abolition after World War Two, and typically use other official documents such as passports and driving licences to prove their identity when required. There was scathing criticism of the plan from Irish nationalist politicians in Northern Ireland, where many hold Irish rather than British passports and symbols of British rule are divisive. The proposal was "ludicrous and ill-thought out" said Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O'Neill, the head of Sinn Fein in the region. She said it was "an attack on the Good Friday Agreement and on the rights of Irish citizens in the North of Ireland" referring to the 1998 peace agreement that largely ended decades of violence between Irish nationalists, the British army and pro-British unionists. Reuters

• HSBC claims a quantum computing breakthrough in bond trading: ‘we are on the cusp of a new frontier’

HSBC has claimed a major breakthrough in applying quantum computing to financial markets. On Thursday, the bank said that experimental trials with IBM had delivered a 34% improvement in predicting bond trading outcomes. The trial is being touted as the first piece of empirical evidence that quantum hardware can deliver real-world value on the trading floor.

Quantum computing’s potential remains mostly theoretical, with many breakthroughs demonstrated under controlled conditions rather than in real-world trading. So far, these have largely been proofs of concept, showing promise without widespread practical application. HSBC and IBM’s results were also derived from historical data rather than live trades, but the study does indicate that quantum computing could be useful for real-life markets. The trial was in collaboration with IBM and its Heron chip—the company’s latest and highest-performing quantum processor. It analyzed more than 1 million quote requests across 5,000 corporate bonds between September 2023 and October 2024.

The bank said the quantum-enabled model significantly outperformed standard classical techniques in estimating how likely a customer order would be filled at a quoted price. In over-the-counter bond markets, where assets are traded directly between counterparties rather than on centralized exchanges, even small gains in predictive accuracy can offer a competitive edge. IBM’s stock jumped 5% on Thursday following the announcement.

“We have been relentlessly focused on the near-term application of quantum technology, and given the trial delivered positive results on current quantum computing hardware, we have great confidence we are on the cusp of a new frontier of computing in financial services, rather than something that is far away in the future,” Philip Intallura, HSBC Group Head of Quantum Technologies, said. “This is a ground-breaking world-first in bond trading. It means we now have a tangible example of how today’s quantum computers could solve a real-world business problem at scale and offer a competitive edge, which will only continue to grow as quantum computers advance,” he added. Yahoo.Finance

Minor Headlines 

• Intel approaches TSMC for investments or partnership, WSJ reports Reuters

  
  

• Trump signs executive order to facilitate TikTok deal; Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX will be main investors in TikTok U.S., sources say CNBC

  
  

• Bitcoin falls below $110,000 as 'cautious tone' sweeps over market Yahoo.Finance

  
  

• CoreWeave strikes $6.5 billion deal with OpenAI to power next-gen AI models Yahoo.Finance

  
  

• Former French president Sarkozy given five-year sentence after Libya case BBC

  
  

• Google likely to be hit with first EU antitrust fine under new EU law, sources say Reuters

  
  

• Spotify denies recent accusation that it changed its terms for artists TechCrunch 

  
  

• Microsoft cuts cloud services to Israeli military unit over Palestinian surveillance TechCrunch