Business category, Page 240

NEW YORK — Stocks careened lower Wednesday, with the Dow Jones industrials sinking more than 1,400 points, as investors became more fearful that the Trump administration and other global governments won’t be able to prevent the coronavirus outbreak from doing significant damage to the worldwide economy. The Dow’s loss dragged...

WASHINGTON — U.S. consumer prices increased slightly last month, driven higher by more expensive food. The Labor Department said Wednesday that the consumer price index ticked up 0.1% last month, matching its January increase. Prices rose 2.3% compared with a year earlier. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, prices...

Airlines are slashing flights and freezing hiring as they experience a sharp drop in bookings and a rise in cancellations in the face of the spreading coronavirus. Delta Air Lines said Tuesday that travel demand has fallen so badly in the past week that it expects one-third of seats to...

Twitter says it’s reached an investment deal with Silver Lake and Elliott Management that will keep Jack Dorsey as the social media company’s CEO. Twitter Inc. said Monday that Silver Lake will make a $1 billion investment in the company. That money, along with cash on hand, is expected to...

Two CEOs have made million-dollar buys of their company’s stock in February and March. At Continental Resources Inc. (CLR), CEO William Berry spent $1.6 million to increase his holding by 90,000 shares. He now owns 931,301 shares, worth about $13.8 million at Friday’s prices. Berry has been Continental’s CEO only...

BOSTON — The first recreational marijuana shop in Boston opened Monday, where owners are bracing for large crowds. Pure Oasis owners Kobie Evans and Kevin Hart say they’re preparing for up to 1,000 customers a day to visit the store, which is also the first pot shop owned and operated...

Comcast mistakenly posted online the contact information of nearly 200,000 customers who paid the company a monthly fee to keep their phone numbers private. In November, Comcast’s Xfinity unit found that the names, phone numbers, and addresses of customers who didn’t want to be publicly listed were posted on Ecolisting.com,...

NEW YORK — Oil prices are plunging amid concern a dispute among producers could lead a global economy weakened by covid-19 to be awash in an oversupply of crude. Brent crude, the international standard, lost $11.44, or 25.3%, to $33.83 per barrel in electronic trading in London. Benchmark U.S. crude...

A congressional committee investigating Boeing said Friday that a “culture of concealment” at the company and poor oversight by federal regulators contributed to two deadly crashes involving the grounded 737 Max. The committee’s Democrats said multiple factors led to the crashes, but it homed in on a new flight-control system...

NEW YORK — A dizzying, brutal week of trading dropped one last round of harrowing swings on investors Friday. After skidding sharply through the day as fear pounded markets, steep drops for stocks and bond yields suddenly eased up in the last hour of trading amid hints from Federal Reserve...

WASHINGTON — Hiring in the United States jumped in February as employers added 273,000 positions, evidence that the job market was in strong shape before the coronavirus began to sweep through the nation. The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate fell to 3.5% last month, matching a 50-year...

Half of all medical devices used in the United States — from bandages to implantable computers — are sterilized with a toxic gas that has come under critical scrutiny over concerns about air pollution that could cause cancer. Now Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has joined a coalition of 11...

MINNEAPOLIS — Apartment developers in the Twin Cities are accustomed to ginning up out-of-the-box amenities aimed at wooing renters and setting themselves apart in an increasingly competitive market. That includes decked-out dog spas, catering kitchens and refrigerated drop boxes for package delivery. Twin Cities-based Newport Midwest hopes to offer something...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared more than 1,100 points, or 4.5%, Wednesday on hopes that governments and central banks around the world will take more forceful measures to fight the virus outbreak. The gains more than recouped the market’s big losses from a day ealier as Wall Street’s wild,...

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter is starting to test tweets that disappear after 24 hours, although initially only in Brazil. The company says the ephemeral tweets, which it calls “fleets” because of their fleeting nature, are designed to allay the concerns of new users who might be turned off by the...

Amazon and other big companies are trying to keep their employees healthy by banning business trips, but they’ve dealt a gut punch to a travel industry already reeling from the virus outbreak. The Seattle-based online retail giant has told its nearly 800,000 workers to postpone any non-essential travel within the...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — It could soon be easier for power companies to use solar energy under a bill passed Tuesday in the West Virginia House of Delegates. Lawmakers voted 75-23 to approve the measure after around an hour of debate that revolved around whether it’s better to focus on coal...

WASHINGTON — In a surprise move, the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a sizable half-percentage point Tuesday in an effort to support the economy in the face of the spreading coronavirus. Chairman Jerome Powell said at a news conference that the virus “will surely weigh on economic...

Consumption of natural gas, mostly for electric power uses, set a new record in the United States in 2019, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. Use of natural gas for the creation of electric power grew by 7% — 2 billion cubic feet per day — but consumption remained relatively...