Wire stories category, Page 119
Amazon aims to cut its carbon footprint
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...
‘Digital gangsters’: U.K. wants tougher rules for Facebook
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...
Gone in a New York minute: How the Amazon deal fell apart
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...
Payless ShoeSource to shutter all of its remaining U.S. stores
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 dumped New York, but cities still wooing the company
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,...
Google will expand finance team to Chicago, adding ‘hundreds’ of jobs
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 jolts Wall Street with surprise exit of CEO’s deputy
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,...
Amazon’s stormy week will blow over, but debris will stay
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...
Economic trends turn downward for farmers
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...
Growth outlook weakens as a result of disappointing retail data
The surprising plunge in U.S. retail sales undermined the outlook for economic growth and is likely to leave the already-cautious Federal Reserve in an extended holding pattern. A government report out Thursday — delayed four weeks because of the partial federal shutdown — showed retail sales fell in December from...
Mortgage rates dip to their lowest levels in more than a year
After soaring to seven-year highs in November, mortgage rates have been on a steady decline the past 2½ months and this week sank to levels not seen in more than a year. According to the latest data released Thursday by Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed-rate average dropped to 4.37 percent...
Amazon ditches New York headquarters, won’t seek new location
NEW YORK — Amazon will not be building a new headquarters in New York, a stunning reversal after a yearlong search. The online retailer faced opposition from some New York politicians, who were unhappy with the nearly $3 billion in tax incentives Amazon was promised. The Seattle-based Amazon had planned...
Store that boycotted Nike after Colin Kaepernick ad goes out of business
Colin Kaepernick implored people to believe in something take a stand in his Nike ad last fall. Colorado store owner Stephen Martin took Kaepernick’s advice. Angered by the former NFL quarterback’s message, Martin removed Nike inventory from Prime Time Sports in Colorado Springs — which led to him being forced...
Airbus abandons iconic A380 superjumbo, lacking clients
TOULOUSE, France — European plane maker Airbus said Thursday it will stop making its superjumbo A380 in 2021 for lack of customers, abandoning the world’s biggest passenger jet and one of the aviation industry’s most ambitious and most troubled endeavors. Barely a decade after the double-deck, 500-plus-seat plane started carrying...
Ford F-150 recalls 1.48 million pickups due to crash concern
DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. is aware of at least five accidents involving the best-selling F-150 pickup caused by unintended downshifting into first gear, which can lead to loss of control and crashes. Ford issued a recall Wednesday for 1.48 million F-150s in North America for model years 2011-13, along...
Couples learn how to be romantic and business partners
Debbie and Gary Douglas sometimes need to remind each other, this is your business partner talking. In business together for 16 years, the Douglases have found that being co-owners of a public relations firm requires them to be more direct with each other than they once were as spouses. Like...
Levi Strauss plans to raise $100M in initial public offering
SAN FRANCISCO — Well-known jeans company Levi Strauss & Co. says it plans to raise about $100 million through an initial public offering. The number of shares to be offered and the price range has yet to be determined. The total amount raised may change based on investor demand and...
Activision to lay off 800 workers as video game sales drop
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Video game maker Activision Blizzard is laying off nearly 800 workers as the company braces for a steep downturn in revenue following the best year in its history. The cutbacks announced Tuesday illustrate the boom-and-bust cycles in an industry whose fortunes are tied to video games...
Fed Chairman Powell says prosperity not felt in all areas
ITTA BENA, Miss. — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell traveled Tuesday to a historically black university in the Mississippi Delta to deliver a message that the nation’s prosperity has not been felt in many such areas around the country. Powell said that many rural areas had been left out and...
Stocks surge on U.S.-China trade deal optimism
U.S. stocks finished broadly higher Tuesday as investors grew more optimistic about the prospects for a resolution to the costly trade dispute between the United States and China. Technology, financial and health care stocks powered much of the rally, which gave the benchmark S&P 500 index its biggest gain this...
U.S. job openings jump to record high of 7.3 million
WASHINGTON — U.S. employers posted the most open jobs in December in the nearly two decades that records have been kept, evidence that the job market is strong despite several challenges facing the economy. The Labor Department said Tuesday that job openings jumped 2.4 percent in December to 7.3 million....
Record 7 million Americans are 3 months behind on car payments, a red flag for economy
A record 7 million Americans are 90 days or more behind on their auto loan payments, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported Tuesday, even more than during the wake of the financial crisis era. Economists warn this is a red flag. Despite the strong economy and low unemployment...
U.S. Steel cites Trump in resuming construction project
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — U.S. Steel Corp. says it’s restarting construction on an idled manufacturing facility in Alabama, and it’s giving some of the credit to President Donald Trump’s trade policies. The Pittsburgh-based company says Trump’s “strong trade actions” are partly responsible for the resumption of work on an advanced plant...
Millions of Americans could be surprised as their tax refunds shrink
Millions of Americans filling out their 2018 taxes are likely to be surprised that their refund is smaller than expected or that they owe money to the Internal Revenue Service after years of receiving refunds. People are already taking to social media to vent their anger, and many are blaming...
Retail woes revealed in numbers
Until this month, it seemed as though U.S. retail employment had recovered from its apocalypse — the wave of store closures headlined by last year’s implosion of Toys R Us — and was nearing another record high. Then came the latest jobs report. Upon further review, the Labor Department revealed...
