Business category, Page 252

President Donald Trump challenged U.S. telecommunications companies on Thursday to boost their efforts to build advanced networks and said leadership should come from competition, not by blocking competitors. “American companies must step up their efforts, or get left behind,” Trump tweeted. “There is no reason that we should be lagging...

URBANDALE, Iowa — Is the “ugly produce’” trend already reaching the end of its shelf life in supermarkets? Walmart and Whole Foods in recent years tried selling some blemished fruits and vegetables at a discount, produce they said might otherwise be trashed because it’s not quite the right size, shape...

The Home Depot says it is hiring 700 employees in the Pittsburgh area in preparation for spring, its busiest selling season. Hiring events are being held at several Pittsburgh area stores until 7 p.m. Thursday. Candidates are encouraged to apply online at prior to attending the event, but walk-ins also...

WASHINGTON — U.S. home sales fell 1.2 percent in January to their worst pace in more than three years, as persistent affordability problems have put a harsh chill in the real estate market. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that sales of existing homes declined 1.2 percent to a...

Several companies, including AT&T and Nestlé, are pulling advertisements from YouTube over concerns about inappropriate comments on videos of children. A video from a popular YouTuber and a report from Wired showed that pedophiles have made unseemly comments on innocuous videos of kids. The comments reportedly included timestamps that showed...

America’s surging shale oil production shows little sign of abating, despite industrywide spending cuts, as explorers learn to do more with less. Almost all the independent producers have reduced their budgets for 2019, but many still expect to deliver double-digit growth in production this year, fourth-quarter earnings reports show. Growth...

BERLIN — Commodities giant Glencore said Wednesday it will cap how much coal it mines amid shareholder pressure for it to help reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases. The move is a sharp reversal for a company that has long championed the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, and which...

Wall Street capped another day of listless trading Wednesday with a slight gain, extending the market’s winning streak to a third day. Financial, materials and industrial companies accounted for much of the gain, outweighing losses in health care and real estate stocks as investors reviewed the latest batch of company...

SAN FRANCISCO — Samsung has unveiled a highly anticipated smartphone with a foldable screen that breaks new ground in a market that has been stuck in an innovative funk. The phone announced Wednesday in San Francisco will be called the Galaxy Fold and will sell for $1,980 when it is...

About a dozen Payless ShoeSource stores in the Pittsburgh region are among the 2,300 closing nationwide. Payless officials announced the closures last week and locations — including Westmoreland, Ross Park, Robinson and Monroeville malls — have started liquidation sales, according to a notice on the company’s website. Merchandise is between...

NEW YORK — Walmart defied a gloomy government retail sales report for December, delivering fiscal fourth-quarter profits and sales that beat Wall Street expectations. The world’s largest retailer also enjoyed another quarter of surging e-commerce sales during the critical holiday period as it expanded its online assortment and services. Shares...

Stocks shook off an early wobble on Wall Street on Tuesday, finishing modestly higher and extending the market’s gains into a fourth week. Solid earnings from Walmart encouraged investors to bid up other retailers and consumer goods companies. Communication services stocks and banks also contributed to the broad gains. Homebuilders...

An auto industry that many experts think already is overdue for a slowdown just got a major dose of uncertainty that could reduce investment in new technologies and vehicles. The Trump administration dealt automakers a wild card by reportedly deciding not to reveal the Commerce Department’s recommendations on whether to...

NEW YORK — Amazon, which ships millions of packages a year to shopper’s doorsteps, says it wants to be greener. The online retail giant announced plans Monday to make half of all its shipments carbon neutral by 2030. To reach that goal, the online retail giant says it will use...

LONDON — British lawmakers issued a scathing report Monday that calls for tougher rules to keep Facebook and other tech firms from acting like “digital gangsters” and intentionally violating data privacy and competition laws. The report on fake news and disinformation on social media sites followed an 18-month investigation by...

The height of folly. That’s what I call it when people pay 100 times a company’s pre-share revenue to buy a stock. You see this behavior mostly with young biotechnology stocks and fledgling technology stocks. Investors mentally build what economics professor Burton Malkiel called “castles in the sky” when they...

About 2,000 households in portions of Hazelwood, Swisshelm Park and Greenfield are under a flush and boil water advisory from Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority following a water main break Friday night. The precautionary advisory, which was posted to the PWSA website and social media late Saturday morning, was issued...

NEW YORK — In early November, word began to leak that Amazon was serious about choosing New York to build a giant new campus. The city was eager to lure the company and its thousands of high-paying tech jobs, offering billions in tax incentives and lighting the Empire State Building...

NEW YORK — Payless ShoeSource is shuttering all of its 2,100 remaining stores in the United States and Puerto Rico, joining a list of iconic names like Toys R Us and Bon-Ton that have closed down in the last year. The Topeka, Kan.-based chain said Friday it will hold liquidation...

Amazon’s breakup with New York was still fresh when other cities started sending their own valentines to the online giant. Officials in Newark, New Jersey, one of the 18 finalists that Amazon rejected in November when it announced plans to put its new headquarters in New York and northern Virginia,...

CHICAGO — Google plans to create “hundreds” of new jobs in Chicago this year, expanding the office it already calls its Midwest headquarters. The tech giant employs more than 1,000 people at its Chicago office, which opened as a sales outpost in 2000 and has grown to include engineers and...

FedEx Corp. threw Wall Street for a loop, announcing the resignation of Fred Smith’s top deputy just weeks after he joined the company’s board. Raj Subramaniam will take over as president and chief operating officer March 1, replacing David Bronczek, the shipping giant said in a statement Thursday. Bronczek, 64,...

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s been a complicated few weeks for Amazon, what with its abrupt pullout from a massive New York City development, extortion claims related to intimate photos taken by its founder Jeff Bezos and increasing antitrust scrutiny in Europe . For now, these events seem unlikely to pose...

Things are not looking good for the farm economy. On Thursday, the farm belt’s malaise deepened after the Department of Agriculture predicted soybean exports would stay below their pre-trade war levels until the 2026-2027 season. That followed a report that sales of the oilseed in early January had the worst...

Amazon is enlisting customers to create voice-controlled games, broadcast lectures and sermons, and turn blogs into audio presentations available to anyone, through its growing universe of Alexa-enabled speaker-and-microphone devices. The move, rolled out this week, represents a potentially significant advancement for voice-first computing and content creation — akin to the...