Business category, Page 279
Home sales fall 4.9% in slow start to spring buying season
WASHINGTON — Sales of existing U.S. homes fell in March after a huge gain the previous month, held back partly by a sharp slowdown among the most expensive properties. The National Association of Realtors says home sales fell 4.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.21 million, down from...
Tesla gears up for fully self-driving cars amid skepticism
SAN FRANCISCO — Tesla CEO Elon Musk appears poised to transform the company’s electric cars into driverless vehicles in a risky bid to realize a bold vision that he has been floating for years. The technology required to make that quantum leap is scheduled to be shown off to Tesla...
What the Apple-Qualcomm-Intel dance means for the future of 5G
The market for a critical component in next-generation smartphones is undergoing a dramatic shift at the dawn of the 5G era. At its center is Qualcomm, the silicon-chip maker whose miniature modems help put the “phone” in iPhone. Now, analysts say, two key developments last week stand to make Qualcomm...
Earth, meet Polo: Ralph Lauren unveils plastic bottle shirt
NEW YORK — Polo Ralph Lauren on Thursday launched a version of its iconic polo shirt made entirely of recycled plastic bottles and dyed through a process that uses zero water. David Lauren, the youngest son of the company’s founder and its chief innovation officer, told The Associated Press ahead...
From cherry pies to French dressing, FDA to ease some food rules
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump may soon be able to claim a sweet victory for his deregulation push, with officials preparing to get rid of the decades-old rules for frozen cherry pies. Emails show the Food and Drug Administration planned to start the process for revoking the standard for...
Airlines could someday weigh passengers like luggage
In the name of fuel effeciency among airlines, a British start-up is looking into the idea of weighing passengers — just like luggage — before flights. The more a plane weighs, the more fuel it will need to burn to complete its flight. This is why your luggage is so...
Cocoapreneur Pgh highlights black businesses in Pittsburgh, encourages support
The Cocoapreneur Directory Launch Party highlights the progresses and successes of black businesses in the Pittsburgh region while encouraging people to continue to support them. It begins at 7 p.m. Friday at SLATE studio in the Strip District. Hosted by Cocoapreneur Pgh, a black business and consultancy which creates and...
PSU study: Fake smiling at work can lead you to drink more off the job
Faking it at work can drive a person to drink. That’s what Penn State researchers found out in a new study published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. The PSU team — along with researchers from the University at Buffalo — looked into the drinking habits of people who...
U.S. recession looks less likely in 2020, boosting Trump’s chances of re-election
WASHINGTON — A noticeable shift has taken place on Wall Street and among many economists and business leaders in recent weeks: Fears of an imminent recession have faded and been replaced with cautious optimism, especially about 2020, a trend that bodes well for President Donald Trump as he seeks re-election....
Watch: Pack of Boston Dynamics robot dogs pulls truckVideo
Mush. A pack of robot dogs stood in for real dogs, and a box truck instead of a sled, in a new video released by a U.S. robotics company, showing the robots pulling the truck with apparent ease. The video posted Tuesday shows 10 four-legged, though headless, robot SpotMini pulling...
U.S. trade deficit narrows to $49.4 billion in February
WASHINGTON — The U.S. trade deficit fell for the second straight month in February, and the politically sensitive deficit in the trade of goods with China narrowed. The Commerce Department says the gap between the goods and services that the United States sells and what it buys from the rest...
Bulging stockpiles to weigh on 2019 U.S. growth
The rising stockpiles of cars, furniture and other goods that helped the U.S. economy boom in 2018 are poised to cause a hangover this year. Inventory accumulation added an average 1.2 percentage point to U.S. growth in the third and fourth quarters, government figures show, and were a key to...
Banks lead U.S. stocks to slight gains amid mixed earnings
Stocks closed slightly higher on Wall Street on Tuesday, erasing the market’s modest losses from a day earlier. The gains, which followed a rally in overseas stock indexes, came as investors sized up the latest batch of company earnings reports. Financial stocks led the way higher as bond yields rose,...
It’s ‘up to Herman Cain’ if he wants to pursue Fed seat, White House says
WASHINGTON — The White House appears to be giving Herman Cain an out in his candidacy for a seat on the Federal Reserve board of governors amid Republican senators’ mounting opposition. President Trump said this month he is considering Cain for the central bank’s leadership. The president has voiced his...
Apple, Qualcomm settle bitter dispute over iPhone technology
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple and mobile chip maker Qualcomm have settled a bitter financial dispute centered on some of the technology that enables iPhones to connect to the internet. The surprise truce announced Tuesday came just as the former allies turned antagonists were facing off in a federal court trial...
John Dorfman: MarineMax, Miller Industries may be undiscovered gems
Twenty-five Wall Street analysts cover International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and 22 follow Pfizer Inc. If you invest in big, well-known stocks like these, it’s a challenge for you to see what others don’t. Your odds of finding an undiscovered gem are higher, in my opinion, in the realm of...
Russian company to invest in Kentucky aluminum mill
FRANKFORT, Ky. — An aluminum company planning to build a $1.7 billion plant in Appalachia said Monday it’s forging a partnership with a Russian company that until recently faced U.S. sanctions. Russian aluminum giant Rusal wants to invest $200 million in a Kentucky taxpayer-backed aluminum rolling mill that Braidy Industries...
Delta reducing recline space to give travelers room to work
Kick back and enjoy your flight… well maybe don’t kick back too much. In the ongoing battle between reclining your seat versus leaving room for your fellow passengers, Delta Air Lines is giving some room back to travelers that like to work on their flights, rather than sleep. According to...
GM to reveal next-generation Corvette in July
FRANKFORT, Ky. — It’s just the thing to make the hearts of Corvette fans race: A new rendition of the classic sports car is coming. And General Motors has a big change in store for the eighth generation Corvette being revealed July 18. The engine in the new model is...
Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp back up after massive outage
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were temporarily down early Sunday. All three social media platforms, including Facebook Messenger, were affected by the outage. Downdetector.com, a site that monitors site outages, shows Facebook had been down since 6:30 a.m. EST in much of the world, with thousands of reported outages concentrated in...
China’s auto show highlights electric ambitions
BEIJING — This year’s Shanghai auto show highlights the global industry’s race to make electric cars Chinese drivers want to buy as Beijing winds down subsidies that promoted sales. Communist leaders are shifting the burden to automakers by imposing mandatory sales targets for electrics, adding to financial pressure on them...
Appalachian Regional Commission looking for 40 institute fellows
The Appalachian Regional Commission is looking for leaders in the public and private sector to be part of the new Appalachian Leadership Institute. The inaugural nine-month program, from October 2019 to July 2020, is designed as a leadership and economic development training opportunity for people who live and work in...
Here’s how to stop Amazon from listening to what you say to Alexa
Don’t want Amazon employees eavesdropping on what you tell Alexa? The AI machine doesn’t magically learn a “Taylor Swift” reference means the musical artist, there is manual processing involved and that means someone at Amazon.com is listening. Officials explained to the Tribune-Review that the device is designed to respond to...
As cashless stores grow, so does the backlash
NEW YORK — Hembert Figueroa just wanted a taco. So he was surprised to learn the dollar bills in his pocket were no good at Dos Toros Taqueria in Manhattan, one of a small but growing number of establishments across the U.S. where customers can only pay by card or...
Uber to go public at last in what could be one of the biggest IPOs
The biggest IPO of the year is on its way. Uber’s initial public offering, expected to value the company at about $100 billion, could be among the largest in history, and will likely compete with Alibaba for the biggest tech IPO ever. Uber’s debut also would dwarf Facebook’s as the...
