Business category, Page 265
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hacked; account sent racist tweets
SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has found his official account hacked and sending racist and vulgar tweets to his 4.2 million followers. The person tweeting from Dorsey’s account on Friday sent tweets such as “Hitler is innocent” and, using a vulgarity, asked “bald skeleton head,” referring to Dorsey,...
TVs to shoes: This time consumers face pain of Trump tariffs
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, until now mainly an abstraction for American consumers, is about to hit home. Beginning Sunday, the U.S. government will begin collecting 15% tariffs on $112 billion in Chinese imports — items ranging from smartwatches and TVs to shoes, diapers, sporting goods...
Apple sanctions phone-repair shops for iPhone fixes
NEW YORK — There may soon be more places to get an Apple-sanctioned fix for a cracked iPhone screen. Apple said Thursday that it will sell tools and parts to independent phone-repair shops in the United States and later in other countries. The repair shops need to have an Apple-certified...
No. 1 reason patients don’t fill their prescriptions: sticker shock
WASHINGTON — It’s the No. 1 reason patients don’t fill their prescriptions: sticker shock. While the price of almost any good or service can be found online, most Americans don’t know what they’ll owe for a prescription medication until they get it. Unexpected costs contribute to the estimated 20 to...
Facebook tightens political ad rules, but leaves loopholes
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is tightening its rules around political advertising ahead of the 2020 presidential election, acknowledging previous misuse. But it’s not clear if it will be enough to stop bad actors from abusing its system. The changes include a tightened verification process that will require anyone wanting to...
Union, AT&T say 20,000 striking workers coming back to work
NEW YORK — AT&T and the Communications Workers of America said that the 20,000 AT&T workers in the Southeast who went on strike over the weekend were coming back to work Wednesday. The union said Wednesday that it had a “handshake deal” on a new agreement with AT&T and that...
Ex-Google engineer Anthony Levandowski charged in Uber self-driving theft case
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A former Google engineer was charged Tuesday with stealing self-driving car technology from the company shortly before he joined Uber’s efforts to catch up in the high-stakes race to build robotic vehicles. The indictment filed by the U.S. attorney’s office in San Jose, Calif., is an...
U.S. consumer confidence dips slightly in August
WASHINGTON — Consumer confidence dipped slightly in August after a big rebound in July. The Conference Board, a business research group, said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index edged down to 135.1 in August, slightly below a July reading of 135.8, which had been the highest since November. Economists had...
U.S. home prices rise a modest 2.1% in June
WASHINGTON — U.S. home prices rose more slowly in June as some of the country’s most expensive housing markets saw stagnant or even falling prices. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index rose 2.1% in June from a year earlier, down from a 2.4% gain in May. Prices fell...
John Dorfman: Micron, Allstate have value plus momentum
Newton’s first law says that a body in motion will maintain a constant speed and direction, unless acted on by an outside force. Momentum investors think a similar law applies in the stock market. If a stock has advanced strongly in the past month, or the past 52 weeks, they...
KFC partners with Beyond Meat for first plant-based ‘chicken’
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It’s finger lickin’ fake chicken. Kentucky Fried Chicken plans to test plant-based chicken nuggets and boneless wings Tuesday at one of its restaurants in Atlanta. Depending on customer feedback, the chain could expand the test to other markets. California-based startup Beyond Meat said it developed the new...
Kraft Heinz brings back former CFO amid struggles
CHICAGO — Kraft Heinz Co. is bringing back its former chief financial officer amid accounting problems and falling sales. Paulo Basilio, 44, joined H.J. Heinz as CFO in 2013 and remained in the job after the company’s 2015 merger with Kraft. He most recently served as Kraft Heinz’s chief business...
Target teams up with Disney to open shops
NEW YORK — Target is hoping to bring the magic of such characters as Mickey Mouse and Elsa to its own customers by opening permanent Disney shops at a cluster of stores starting this fall. As part of the collaboration with The Walt Disney Co., the Minneapolis-based discounter says it...
U.S. tech industry becomes hotbed for employee activism
SAN FRANCISCO — When Liz O’Sullivan was hired at the New York City-based artificial intelligence company Clarifai in 2017, she felt lucky to find work at the intersection of two of her main interests: technology and ethics. Two years later, she found herself facing a moral dilemma. Clarifai was developing...
AARP chief: How living to 100 changes our ideas about aging
Jo Ann Jenkins is the CEO of AARP, the world’s largest nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization. AARP is focused on helping people “improve their quality of life” as they age; it has more than 38 million members. Jenkins joined AARP in 2010 and became CEO in 2014. Previously she was chief...
Return of the king: Salmon rebounds after California drought
SAN FRANCISCO — Trolling off the California coast, Sarah Bates leans over the side of her boat and pulls out a long, silvery fish prized by anglers and seafood lovers: wild king salmon. Reeling in a fish “feels good every time,” but this year has been surprisingly good, said Bates,...
Major carriers, state AGs will work to combat robocalls
NEW YORK — Major phone companies have pledged to do more to fight robocalls plaguing Americans, the country’s state attorneys general say. It’s the latest step from government and industry to combat the growing problem. Americans get nearly 5 billion automated calls from scammers, telemarketers, debt collectors and others every...
Trump flip-flops on tax cuts, saying U.S. has ‘strong economy’
WASHINGTON — A day after considering cutting taxes to promote economic growth, President Donald Trump changed course and said he would abandon the idea because the nation already had “a strong economy.” Trump’s flip-flop on Wednesday came after recent market volatility and economic uncertainty, and amid a debate about whether...
Report shows U.S. deficit to exceed $1 trillion next yearVideo
WASHINGTON — The federal budget deficit is expected to balloon to more than $1 trillion in the next fiscal year under the first projections taking into account the big budget deal that President Trump and Congress reached this summer, the Congressional Budget Office reported Wednesday. The return of $1 trillion...
U.S. has 501,000 fewer jobs than first reported
WASHINGTON — The U.S. job market isn’t quite as strong as originally believed — with revised figures showing that the economy had 501,000 fewer total jobs this March than initially reported. The Labor Department says that nearly two-thirds of the downward revision came from the retail and leisure and hospitality...
U.S. Steel plans to lay off nearly 200 workers in Michigan
U.S. Steel Corp. is planning to lay off almost 200 workers from its Great Lakes Works facility just outside of Detroit. The Detroit Free Press reports the Pittsburgh company said in a filing with the state of Michigan that “market conditions and recent reductions in customer demand” are the reason...
Is online shoe-buying bad for kids’ feet?
CHICAGO — It’s a back-to-school tradition: a visit to the neighborhood shoe store, where employees pull out a well-worn metal foot measuring tool from under a seat to measure children’s feet, fit them with the right shoes, and send them out the door, frequently wearing the new kicks. Generations of...
Long-sought Volcker Rule revisions land on a changed Wall Street
NEW YORK — Wall Street spent the better part of a decade battling for regulators to reshape the reviled Volcker Rule. When the changes finally landed Tuesday, the win felt more symbolic. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other regulators rolled out tweaks that clarify which trades are prohibited and...
Facebook rolls out tool to block off-Facebook data gathering
SAN FRANCISCO — Soon, you could get fewer familiar ads following you around the internet — or at least on Facebook. Facebook is launching a long-promised tool that lets you block the social network from gathering information about you on outside websites and apps. The company said Tuesday that it...
Eddie Bauer to shut down its Midwest call center, send jobs overseas
In yet another example of a beloved Northwest retailer trying to turn itself around, Eddie Bauer will shutter a call center near Columbus, Ohio, and eliminate 111 jobs there in October. The closure, disclosed last week by the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, comes a little over a...
