The shift to online shopping has accelerated in the COVID-19 pandemic, but today Amazon made a bold move that underscores its belief that physical stores will remain a key component of how consumers shop. From a report: In the Los Angeles neighborhood of Woodland Hills, the e-commerce giant today opened its first Amazon Fresh supermarket. This is the first of a series of Amazon Fresh stores that the company plans to open, with others so far confirmed in Oak Lawn, Illinois; Schaumburg, Illinois; Naperville, Illinois; Irvine; California; and North Hollywood, California. A blog post from Jeff Helbling, the head of Amazon Fresh Stores, notes that the store will open initially invitation-only, based on emails it will be sending out to locals, from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. PT.

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TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer has left the Chinese-owned video app firm just three months since joining, and only days since the company sued the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump over an executive order effectively banning it in the United States. He will be replaced by U.S. General Manager Vanessa Pappas on an interim basis, TikTok said in a statement. From a report: The resignation comes at a tricky time for super-fast growing TikTok as it tries to persuade both the United States and India that it is not a security threat, while at the same time holding discussions with prospective buyers following a second U.S. order demanding the sale of its U.S. operations. Mayer was Walt Disney's top streaming executive before becoming chief executive officer of TikTok and chief operating officer of parent ByteDance on June 1. "In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for," Mayer said in a letter to employees.

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The baseball season has started with eerily empty stadiums, but some teams are exploring high-tech ways to verify that people in the stands are taking health precautions, a possible step toward bringing fans back. From a report: Several Major League Baseball teams have held talks with a California startup called Airspace Systems that develops technology to detect whether people are wearing face masks, the league and the company said. The discussions focus on implementing the systems into cameras around the stadium to identify people without face coverings, with masks dangling from their chins or otherwise worn improperly. [...] A mask requirement at ballparks would likely stoke controversy. Such mandates at stores and on airplanes have resulted in violent confrontations between customers and workers. The use of software to analyze people's behavior on camera is contentious, too. Airspace's system reviews people's faces, but the results aren't personally identifiable, the company said. Still, companies collecting data on their workers or customers in the name of public health should be required to set up privacy guardrails around how the information is used, said Ifeoma Ajunwa, an associate professor at Cornell University who has studied the intersection of law and surveillance.

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