Business category, Page 159
U.S. inflation jumped 8.5% in past year, highest since 1981
WASHINGTON — Inflation soared over the past year at its fastest pace in more than 40 years, with costs for food, gasoline, housing and other necessities squeezing American consumers and wiping out the pay raises that many people have received. The Labor Department said Tuesday that its consumer price index...
John Dorfman: My 30-30 club has Alphabet, Nvidia and 45 more stocks
Few players — stars such as Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Mike Trout and Mookie Betts — can make baseball’s 30-30 Club. It’s for players who hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in the same season. I have a 30-30 Club for companies. To make it, a company must...
California utility to pay $55 million for massive wildfires
Pacific Gas & Electric has agreed to pay more than $55 million to avoid criminal prosecution for two major wildfires started by aging Northern California power lines belonging to the nation’s largest utility, prosecutors announced Monday. PG&E does not admit wrongdoing in the two settlements reached with prosecutors for last...
Once a retail giant, Kmart nears extinction after closure
AVENEL, N.J. — The familiar sights and sounds are still there: the scuffed and faded floor tiles, the relentless beige-on-beige color scheme, the toddlers’ clothes and refrigerators and pretty much everything in between. There’s even a canned recording that begins, “Attention, Kmart shoppers” — except it’s to remind folks about...
Stocks fall on Wall Street, led by slump in tech companies
Technology companies led a broad slide for stocks on Wall Street and bond yields rose again Monday as investors look ahead to the upcoming company earnings reporting season and what it will reveal about the impact inflation is having on corporate profits. The S&P 500 fell 1.7%, adding to its...
Efforts to make protective medical gear in U.S. falling flat
UNIVERSITY CITY, Mo. — When the coronavirus pandemic first hit the U.S., sales of window coverings at Halcyon Shades quickly went dark. So the suburban St. Louis business did what hundreds of other small manufacturers did: It pivoted to make protective supplies, with help from an $870,000 government grant. But...
Frontier CEO talks about Spirit Airlines merger, travel outlook
DALLAS — Barry Biffle is juggling his day job as CEO of Frontier Airlines while also working to save a proposed merger with Spirit Airlines that would create the nation’s fifth-biggest carrier by some measures. This figures to be a bounce-back year for airlines like Frontier that cater to leisure...
Tesla CEO Elon Musk won’t join Twitter’s board after all
SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter’s largest investor, billionaire Elon Musk, is reversing course and will no longer join the company’s board of directors less than a week after being awarded a seat. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced the news, which followed a weekend of Musk tweets suggesting changes to Twitter, including...
Elon Musk suggests Twitter changes, including accepting Dogecoin
As Twitter’s newest board member and largest shareholder, Elon Musk is already floating suggestions for changes he’d like to see on the social media platform. In a series of tweets late Saturday, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said that the company should include an “authentication checkmark” as a feature of...
Amazon seeks to overturn union win, says vote was tainted
Amazon is seeking to overturn the historic union victory at one of its New York City warehouses, arguing in a legal filing Friday that union organizers and the National Labor Relations Board acted in a way that tainted the results. It now wants to redo the election. The e-commerce giant...
Musk says Tesla will build vehicle designed to be a robotaxi
Tesla will build a vehicle dedicated for use as a robotaxi, and it will start making three new vehicles next year, CEO Elon Musk told fans at a party celebrating the opening of a Texas factory. Musk didn’t give details of the robotaxi other than to say it will “look...
U.S. ends probe of Fiat Chrysler minivans, won’t seek recall
DETROIT — The U.S. government is ending an investigation into complaints of USB charging port fires in some Fiat Chrysler minivans without seeking a recall. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began the probe covering about 170,000 minivans in August of 2020 after getting reports of three fires and one...
Walmart to pay in-house truckers up to $110,000 in tight job market
Walmart Inc. is ramping up pay for its truckers as the retailer seeks to shore up staffing amid a nationwide need for drivers. In-house truck drivers will now be able to earn between $95,000 and $110,000 in their first year at the company, a Walmart spokeswoman said Thursday. At the...
Pittsburgh firm LUMA acquired by San Francisco tech company
The Pittsburgh-based tech firm LUMA was acquired last week by Mural, a fast-growing company based in San Francisco that has been deemed a unicorn because the privately held startup is valued at more than $1 billion. LUMA created the LUMA System, a collection of design methods that provides a common...
URA says it has invested $12.8M in Pittsburgh’s food economy, creating 1,000-plus jobs, since 2014
Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority reports that it has invested $12.8 million in the city’s food economy since 2014. The URA said in a report to Pittsburgh City Council that it has provided $11 million in loans to 152 food-related businesses and offered technical assistance to another 99 food businesses. The...
American Airlines will use buses for hops to Philadelphia
FORT WORTH, Texas — American Airlines has hired a bus company to carry passengers between Philadelphia and two airports that are only a short hop away by air. The service will start June 3 between Philadelphia International Airport and airports in Allentown and Atlantic City, N.J., the airline said Thursday...
U.S. jobless claims stay at historically low levels last week
WASHINGTON — Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as layoffs remain at historically low levels. Jobless claims fell by 5,000 to 166,000 for the week ending April 2, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The previous week’s number was revised down a whopping 31,000 claims. In recent weeks, claims...
Stocks fall, yields rise as Fed details inflation effortsVideo
Stocks closed lower and bond yields rose Wednesday on Wall Street after details from last month’s meeting of Federal Reserve policymakers showed the central bank intends to be aggressive in its efforts to fight inflation. The S&P 500 fell 1%, adding to its losses from a day earlier. The Dow...
Fed signals more aggressive steps to fight inflationVideo
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve officials are signaling that they will take an aggressive approach to fighting high inflation in the coming months — actions that will make borrowing sharply more expensive for consumers and businesses and heighten risks to the economy. In minutes from their policy meeting three weeks ago...
If your bank merges, should you shop around or stay put?
Bank mergers and acquisitions happen regularly and can lead to streamlined services and better offerings for consumers, but they can also sometimes create challenges like less access to branches or customer service difficulties. If your bank is merging or being acquired, it will probably try to make the transition process...
JetBlue makes offer for Spirit Airlines, could spark bid war
JetBlue Airways has offered to buy Spirit Airlines for about $3.6 billion and break up a plan for Spirit to merge with rival budget carrier Frontier Airlines. Spirit said Tuesday that its board will evaluate the JetBlue bid and decide what’s best for its shareholders. JetBlue offered offered $33 per...
Pittsburgh region’s economy remains slow to recover from pandemic downturn
The Pittsburgh region’s economy continues to lag behind its pre-covid levels from 2020, when there were 64,000 more nonfarm jobs in the seven counties and 54,600 more people in the labor force, according to the February employment report released Tuesday. “It may take us years to get back to pre-pandemic...
GM, Honda to make ‘affordable’ EVs together
General Motors Co. and Honda Motor Co. Ltd. are expanding their partnership to make a series of “affordable” electric vehicles together based on a new global architecture that will use GM’s next-generation Ultium battery technology, the companies said Tuesday. Honda and GM want to start producing millions of these EVs,...
Millennial Money: Take your money to the next level
Millennials may still feel quite young (despite those pesky gray hairs and less-than-fine lines), but in so many ways, we have adulted. So it’s time for our money management to grow up a bit, too. Your financial to-do list is small but mighty in your 20s. Setting up automatic transfers...
Amazon’s first U.S. union overcomes hurdles, faces new ones
NEW YORK — When a scrappy group of former and current warehouse workers on Staten Island, New York went head-to-head with Amazon in a union election, many compared it to a David and Goliath battle. David won. And the stunning upset on Friday brought sudden exposure to the organizers and...
