New York / Bloomberg Inside a 1.2 million-square-foot Wal-Mart Stores Inc. distribution center near its headquarters, a buzzing sound — like a swarm of bees — comes from an aisle of shelves laden with merchandise from diapers to microwaves. Flying up and down the seemingly endless aisle is a drone with a custom-built camera that takes 30 pictures a …

  Bloomberg Amazon boasted that its virtual assistant Alexa is capable of 1,000 “skills,” as the online retail giant bolsters defenses against rivals such as Google and Apple. The Seattle-based company said in a blog post that the programs were developed specifically for the voice-commanded Alexa software used in Amazon devices such as Echo and Fire TV. Amazon released voice-enabled …

  Paris / Bloomberg Airbus Group SE is exploring ways of carving out extra space on its A380 superjumbos in order to boost capacity and enhance margins for operators, among them modifying the staircases that connect the double-decker jet’s two passenger floors. Feedback from existing A380 customers suggests that curved steps located toward the rear of the world’s biggest jetliner …