60 Minutes

A Look Inside Amazon on Cyber Monday

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A Look Inside Amazon on Cyber Monday

In anticipation of Cyber Monday, 60 Minutes ran a segment that took a look into how Amazon.com operates. 

Here is how the story began: 

There has never been a company quite like Amazon. Conceived as an online book seller, Amazon has reinvented itself time and again, changing the way the world shops, reads and computes. Amazon has 225 million customers around the world. Its goal is to sell everything to everyone. The brainchild of Jeff Bezos, Amazon prides itself on disrupting the traditional way of doing things. A few weeks ago the company announced it was launching Sunday delivery.

 

Tonight, for the first time, you will be introduced to perhaps Amazon’s boldest venture ever.

Inside Guantanamo Bay

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Inside Guantanamo Bay

Yesterday, 60 Minutes went inside Guantanamo Bay.  Here is how the story began: 

If there’s a heaven above and a hell below, then limbo can be found just 90 miles off the coast of Florida at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There, prisoners who’ve been scooped up in the war on terror have remained locked up — most for 11 years now without being charged. And it’s cost taxpayers $5 billion so far.

 

Two weeks ago, we reported on the handful of the prisoners going on trial. Tonight, we’ll tell you about the others, many of whom can’t be tried. The evidence against them is weak or inadmissible, in some cases, because it was obtained through quote “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

 

With Congress having mandated that none of the detainees can set foot on U.S. soil, and President Obama vowing to shut the prison down, life at Guantanamo Bay grinds on.

Profiting from Politics: How Members of Congress Exploit Campaign Finance Laws

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Profiting from Politics: How Members of Congress Exploit Campaign Finance Laws

There is not a lot that unites Republicans and Democrats in this era of hyper-partisanship. However, last evening 60 Minutes posited that there is one thing that is common to both parties–profiting from public office. 

Here is how the story began:   

The government shutdown that finally ended on Wednesday night furloughed 800,000 government workers for the better part of two weeks, but there was one group of federal employees that was able to maintain the lifestyle that many of them have grown accustomed to: members of Congress.

 

With all the talk about their irreconcilable political differences, we wanted to see if they shared any common ground. And we found some. For example, there seems to be a permanent majority in Congress that’s completely satisfied with the current state of campaign financing and congressional ethics and members of both parties have institutionalized ways to skirt the rules.

 

Most Americans believe it’s against the law for congressmen and senators to profit personally from their political office but it’s an open secret in Washington that that’s not the case. As the saying goes the real scandal in Washington isn’t what’s illegal, it’s what is legal.

Nurse Serial Killer Interviewed on 60 Minutes

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Nurse Serial Killer Interviewed on 60 Minutes

Last night, 60 Minutes re-aired a segment titled “Angel of Death,” the story of Charles Cullen.  Cullen was a critical care nurse who has admitted killing up to forty people.  

Here is a description of the story: 

Tonight you’re going to come face-to-face with a serial killer, one of the most prolific in U.S. history. Serial killers don’t usually talk to reporters. In fact this story, which first ran in April, was the first time in the 45 years of 60 Minutes that we ever interviewed one.

 

Charles Cullen was a critical care nurse who admits to killing up to 40 people. Some suspect it was a lot more. The murders took place over 16 years in seven different hospitals. There were suspicions at nearly all of them that Cullen was harming patients, yet none of them passed that information on to subsequent employers. Newspaper headlines called him “The Angel of Death,” but as you will see, Charles Cullen was no mercy killer. Until we interviewed him four months ago, he had never spoken publicly about his crimes, never tried to explain why he did it, or even express remorse to the families of victims when he finally faced them in court.

“Sonia from the Bronx”

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“Sonia from the Bronx”

Don’t be fooled by the jurisprudence that she’s got, she’s still, she’s still “Sonia from the Bronx.”  However, it is unclear whether she know J-Lo personally.  Regardless, 60 Minutes recently re-air its interview Supreme Court Justice Sonio Sotomayor.  Here is a description of the story: 

In the 223 years of the Supreme Court of the United States, it is fair to say there has never been a justice like Sonia Sotomayor. Among other things, she’s the first Hispanic on the court, she’s the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who settled in the Bronx — that New York melting pot that pours out streetwise kids and American success stories.

 

Sotomayor, now 58 years old, calls the streets of her childhood “my beloved world” and when we aired this story in January, she was about to come out with a memoir of the same name. She told us that, the neighborhood gave a poor girl, with a serious illness, a chance to serve and an opportunity to become one of the most powerful women in America.