Business category, Page 170
U.S. Mint begins shipping quarters honoring Maya Angelou
WASHINGTON — The United States Mint said Monday it has begun shipping quarters featuring the image of poet Maya Angelou, the first coins in its American Women Quarters Program. Angelou, an American author, poet and Civil Rights activist, rose to prominence with the publication of “I Know Why the Caged...
John Dorfman: Analysts’ most-adored stocks trailed the market yet again
Suppose your son falls in love with a beautiful Wall Street analyst. What should you do? Don’t try to block the wedding, but don’t take your future daughter-in-law’s advice on which stocks to buy. For more than two decades, I’ve been tracking the fate of the four stocks analysts love...
Stocks end modestly lower after recouping most of early loss
Stocks on Wall Street fell again Monday, though the market ended up bouncing nearly all the way back from an early slide led by technology companies. A broad wave of selling pulled had the S&P 500 down by 2% in the early going, but a late-afternoon burst of buying left...
Report: U.S. carbon emissions grew in 2021
In the face of presidential orders and a flurry of legislation to curb carbon emissions, the volume of climate-warming gases pumped into the atmosphere in the U.S. grew by more than 6 percent in 2021 after a pandemic-driven decline in 2020, according to widely watched data released Monday. Domestic greenhouse...
Grand Theft Auto in FarmVille; a $12.7 billion gaming deal
Take-Two Interactive, maker of “Grand Theft Auto” and “Red Dead Redemption,” is buying Zynga, maker of “FarmVille” and “Words With Friends,” in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $12.7 billion. The acquisition announced Monday would wed a powerhouse in console gaming, Take-Two, with a mobile gaming company with an almost...
Stay home or work sick? Omicron poses a conundrum
As the raging omicron variant of covid-19 infects workers across the nation, millions of those whose jobs don’t provide paid sick days are having to choose between their health and their paycheck. While many companies instituted more robust sick leave policies at the beginning of the pandemic, some of those...
Moderna gives Mexico 2.7 million shots as deaths top 300,000
MEXICO CITY — The U.S. company Moderna donated 2.7 million doses of coronavirus vaccine to Mexico on Saturday as the country’s official death toll topped 300,000. Mexico passed 300,000 test-confirmed coronavirus deaths this week, but so little testing is done in the country that a government review of death certificates...
Biden’s economic challenge: Finding workers and goods
President Joe Biden enters the midterm election year of 2022 determined to address what economists call a “supply” problem — there aren’t enough jobseekers or goods to meet the country’s needs. This is also a political problem. The mismatch has obscured the strong growth and 3.9% unemployment rate achieved during...
Bed, Bath & Beyond to close its North Hills store
A McKnight Road shopping staple is closing in Ross. Bed, Bath & Beyond announced plans to close 37 stores across the country, one of them in the busy North Hills shopping district. New Jersey-based Bed, Bath & Beyond is a favorite destination for shoppers scouting housewares, small appliances and trendy...
New York Times buys sports site The Athletic for $550M
The New York Times Co. is buying sports news site The Athletic for $550 million, the latest move in its strategy to expand its audience of paying subscribers as the newspaper print ads business fades. The Times, unlike many local news outlets, has thrived in the past several years. It...
At Carnegie Mellon, a bipartisan effort to address Pa.’s autonomous vehicle industry
Pennsylvania lawmakers and officials gathered at Carnegie Mellon University on Wednesday to unveil legislation to authorize the testing and commercial deployment of automated vehicles. State Sen. Wayne Langerholc Jr., R-Johnstown, chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, discussed how the Pittsburgh region’s continued leadership in autonomous vehicle technology — with cutting...
U.S. average long-term mortgage rates rise; 30-year at 3.22%
Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates rose in the past week to start the new year. They reached their highest level since May 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, yet remained historically low. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year home loan...
More weakness in technology stocks leaves indexes lower
Technology and health care companies helped pull stocks lower Thursday on Wall Street, driving the market indexes deeper into the red for the first week of the year. The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% after wobbling between gains and losses for much of the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also...
U.S. stocks slump after minutes from Fed meeting rattle market
Stocks fell broadly on Wall Street in afternoon trading Thursday after the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last meeting of policymakers signaled increasing concerns about inflation. The S&P 500 was down 1.3% as of 3:03 p.m. Eastern. Technology companies accounted for much of the decline in the benchmark index, which...
Fed officials now seeing U.S. job market near full recovery
Federal Reserve policymakers at a meeting last month said the U.S. job market was nearly at levels healthy enough that the central bank’s low-interest rate policies were no longer needed, according to minutes of the meeting released Wednesday. Fed officials also expressed concerns that surging inflation was spreading into more...
Chrysler aims to be all electric by 2028
LONDON — Chrysler plans go all electric by 2028, the latest automaker to announce a shift away from gasoline-powered engines under rising pressure to act on climate change. The company said Wednesday that it will launch its first electric vehicle by 2025. Chrysler announced its electric plans along with a...
German watchdog puts Google under closer antitrust scrutiny
LONDON — Germany’s antitrust watchdog paved the way Wednesday for extra scrutiny of Google by designating it a company of “paramount significance,” the first to get that label since regulators got more power to curb abusive practices by big digital companies. The Bundeskartellamt said its decision comes after rules were...
Toyota tops GM in U.S. sales for 1st time ever — but there’s a catch
In a historic turn, Toyota Motor North America has taken the U.S. sales crown from General Motors for 2021 after the shortage of semiconductor chips severely hampered GM’s ability to build enough new vehicles to meet demand. On Tuesday, GM and Toyota both reported fourth-quarter and full-year new car sales...
Slumping tech stocks weigh on S&P 500 even as Dow gains
A slide in technology stocks left the S&P 500 slightly lower Tuesday on Wall Street, even as the Dow Jones Industrial Average marked another all-time high. The S&P 500 slipped 0.1%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite fell 1.3% after a day of choppy trading. The Dow rose 0.6%, thanks partly...
Your BlackBerry dies today: End of an era for iconic handset
BlackBerry devices running the original operating system and services will no longer be supported after Jan. 4, marking the end of an era for the storied device that catapulted work into the mobile era. Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry Ltd., the company formerly known as Research In Motion whose signature handset in...
A record 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November
WASHINGTON — A record 4.5 million American workers quit their jobs in November, a sign of confidence and more evidence that the U.S. job market is bouncing back strongly from last year’s coronavirus recession. The Labor Department also reported Tuesday that employers posted 10.6 million job openings in November, down...
New auto sales up in 2021, but nowhere near before pandemic
DETROIT — U.S. new vehicle sales rebounded slightly last year from 2020’s dismal numbers, but forecasters expect them to be more than 2 million below the years before the coronavirus pandemic. The reason? Although there are plenty of customers who want to buy new vehicles at hefty prices, there still...
John Dorfman: Robot portfolio: value in extreme
Investors are keenly aware that growth stocks have beaten value stocks five years in a row. So what am I going to recommend today? Some extreme value stocks. Beginning in 1998, I’ve started the year with the Robot Portfolio, comprising the ten cheapest stocks in the market. My measure of...
$29,000 for an average used car? Would-be buyers are aghast
DETROIT — A couple of months ago, a woman paid a visit to Jeff Schrier’s used car lot in Omaha, Nebraska. She was on a tight budget, she said, and was desperate for a vehicle to commute to work. She was shown three cars priced at her limit, roughly $7,500....
New York jury holds drugmaker Teva liable in opioid crisis
Drugmaker Teva Pharmaceuticals is responsible for contributing to the opioid crisis, a suburban New York jury ruled Thursday in one of few verdicts so far among thousands of lawsuits nationwide over the painkillers. A separate trial will follow to determine what Teva will have to pay in the case, part...
