Business category, Page 107
IRS says it collected $38 million from more than 175 high-income tax delinquents
WASHINGTON — The IRS is showcasing its new capability to aggressively audit high-income tax dodgers as it makes the case for sustained funding and tries to avert budget cuts sought by Republicans who want to gut the agency. IRS leaders said they collected $38 million in delinquent taxes from more...
John Dorfman: Occidental Petroleum, Valero on Casualty List
Let’s postulate that the goal in stock investing is to buy low and sell high. If so, it makes sense to look at stocks that have been banged up, searching for ones that have recovery potential. That’s the goal of my quarterly Casualty List. Today, I’ll highlight two large energy...
Wilkins Starbucks workers seek to decertify union representation
Some workers at the Penn Center East Starbucks in Wilkins Township are petitioning the National Labor Relations Board to hold a vote to decertify the union representing employees at the coffee shop. Penn Center East joined Starbucks Workers United last year. The employee who submitted the petition, Elizabeth Gulliford, is...
OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot probed by FTC over consumer harms
The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into OpenAI Inc., questioning whether its popular ChatGPT conversational AI bot puts consumers’ reputations and data at risk, according to a person familiar with the matter. The probe into the Microsoft Corp.-backed startup marks the first official inquiry into a technology that...
Hollywood actors join screenwriters in historic industry-stopping strike as contract talks collapseVideo
LOS ANGELES — Leaders of a Hollywood’s actors union voted Thursday to join screenwriters in the first joint strike in more than six decades, shutting down production across the entertainment industry after talks for a new contract with studios and streaming services broke down. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, executive director of the...
Kia to invest $200M in Georgia plant to begin building electric SUV there, hiring 200
ATLANTA — Kia Corp. will invest $200 million in its Georgia factory to begin producing an electric-powered SUV, the company announced Wednesday. The South Korean company said it would hire an additional 200 workers to begin producing its large EV9 vehicle in West Point by early 2024. The company said...
Domino’s signs deal with Uber Eats in a bid to make more dough
If you can’t beat them, join them. In a major reversal, Domino’s Pizza said Wednesday it’s partnering with Uber Eats to make deliveries in the U.S. and 27 international markets. While franchisees in a handful of international markets like the Netherlands have been working with third-party apps for years, Domino’s...
Carnegie Mellon plans new robotics center at Hazelwood Green
Carnegie Mellon University is looking to build a new robotics center at the Hazelwood Green site in Pittsburgh. Plans for the robotics center were presented to Pittsburgh’s Planning Commission on Tuesday. The center would include a 150,000-square-foot research building with a two-story enclosure for testing on robots and drones and...
Pioneering Anchor Brewing Co. to halt operations after 127 years with beer sales in declineVideo
San Francisco’s 127-year-old Anchor Brewing Co. will shut down and liquidate after years of declining sales, citing tough economic conditions. Anchor was a trailblazer in the United States, brewing craft beers in the 1970s when most Americans were loyal to a handful of major brands. Its unique brewing techniques ignited...
U.S. inflation falls to 3%, lowest level in over 2 years, as price pressures ease
WASHINGTON — After two years of painfully high prices, inflation in the U.S. has reached its lowest point in more than two years — 3% in June compared with 12 months earlier — a sign that the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes have steadily slowed price increases across the economy....
3 tax prep firms shared ‘extraordinarily sensitive’ data about taxpayers with Meta, lawmakers say
WASHINGTON — Three large tax preparation firms sent “extraordinarily sensitive” information on tens of millions of taxpayers to Facebook parent company Meta over the course of at least two years, a group of congressional Democrats reported on Wednesday. They say some of that data was then used by Meta to...
BofA hit with $250 million in fines and customer refunds for ‘double-dipping’ fees, fake accounts
NEW YORK — Bank of America will reimburse customers more than $100 million and pay $150 million in fines for “double-dipping” on overdraft fees, withholding reward bonuses on credit cards and opening accounts without customer consent. Combined, it is one of the highest financial penalties in years against Bank of...
MyPillow auctions equipment after retailers pull its products
MyPillow is auctioning off hundreds of pieces of equipment and subleasing manufacturing space after several shopping networks and major retailers took the company’s products off shelves. The Minnesota-based manufacturer recently listed more than 850 “surplus equipment” items on the online auction site K-Bid. Sewing machines, industrial fabric spreaders, forklifts and...
Microsoft can move ahead with $69B acquisition of Activision Blizzard, judge rules
A federal judge has handed Microsoft a major victory by declining to block its looming $69 billion takeover of video game company Activision Blizzard. Regulators are seeking to ax the deal because they say it will hurt competition. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley said in a ruling that the...
Bank of America to pay more than $100M for doubling fees, opening accounts without customer consent
Bank of America must pay more than $100 million to customers for doubling up on some fees, withholding reward bonuses and opening accounts without customer consent. Bank of America will pay $90 million in penalties to its organization and $60 million in penalties to the OCC, the Consumer Financial Protection...
Be wary of scams as Amazon Prime Day kicks off, experts warn
NEW YORK — Amazon Prime Day is here. And, once again, experts are warning consumers of scams. Scams targeting online shoppers — often by impersonating companies like Amazon and other major retailers — are nothing new. But phishing attempts increase amid busy spending seen during significant sales events — from...
Threats of a strike heating up even before UAW begins negotiations with automakers
DETROIT — Whenever the United Auto Workers union begins negotiating a new contract with Detroit’s three automakers, threats of a strike are typically heard on the floor of the old Chrysler transmission plant in Kokomo, Indiana. This year, the talk is a little louder. Besides the usual haggling over wages,...
Amazon Prime Day isn’t the catalyst it used to be
Amazon.com Inc.’s annual Prime Day shows that e-commerce isn’t the driver it once was for the stock, as investor focus shifts to the company’s faster-growing and profitable cloud-computing unit. In the past four years, the stock has fallen in the week of the two-day sale in which the retail giant...
Developer gets OK to tear down Pittsburgh garage where Rolling Rock beer was first sold
Pittsburgh’s Historic Review Commission has approved a plan to preserve an Uptown house once owned by a bootlegger who became the owner of Latrobe Brewing Co., but not a garage that served as the company’s first Pittsburgh beer distributor. Dallas-based Fountain Residential Partners is acquiring the Uptown property that includes...
What is Threads? All your questions about Meta’s new Twitter rival, answeredVideo
NEW YORK — Threads, a text-based app built by Meta to rival Twitter, is live. The app, billed as the text version of Meta’s photo-sharing platform Instagram, became available Wednesday night to users in more than 100 countries — including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. Despite some early...
TikTok, 5 content creators ask federal judge to block Montana from banning appVideo
TikTok Inc. and a group of five content creators who are suing the state of Montana over its first-in-the-nation law to ban the video sharing app are now asking a federal judge to block implementation of the law while the case moves through the courts and before it takes effect...
Walnut Capital looks to expand Bakery Square, support affordable housing in Pittsburgh’s East End
Walnut Capital is looking to nearly double the size of its Bakery Square development in Pittsburgh’s East End. The Bakery Square office and commercial development opened in 2009, expanded to include housing and now sits on 20 acres in Larimer and Shadyside. Walnut Capital is looking to expand the specially...
No more free coffee on your birthday? Companies rein in customer rewards programs — here’s why
WASHINGTON — Reward programs, including birthday freebies and discounts, have long been a way for brands to build loyalty and incentivize spending. But now some companies are becoming a bit more stingy — and customers are taking notice. Last fall, for example, many balked at Dunkin’s decision to stop offering...
Powerball jackpot rises to $590 million
The Powerball jackpot has increased to $590 million for this Saturday’s drawing. It has a cash value of $304.8 million. The jackpot rose from $557 million after no one matched all six numbers during Wednesday’s drawing. The last Powerball jackpot was won by an Auburn, Wash., resident on March 3...
U.S. job openings dip to 9.8 million but remain high, showing resilience in labor market
WASHINGTON — U.S. job openings slipped in May but remained at levels high enough to illustrate that the American labor market remains resilient in the face of sharply higher interest rates. Employers posted 9.8 million job vacancies, down from 10.3 million in April, the Labor Department said Thursday. But layoffs...
