Wire stories category, Page 33

LOS ANGELES — U.S. home sales tumbled to the slowest pace in nearly a decade as soaring mortgage rates and sky high prices in 2022 pushed homeownership out of reach for many Americans. The National Association of Realtors said Friday that existing U.S. home sales totaled 5.03 million last year,...

FLINT, Mich. — General Motors says it will spend more than $900 million to update four factories, with the bulk going to an engine plant in Flint, Michigan, to build the next-generation V8 for big pickup trucks and SUVs. Factories in Rochester, New York; Defiance, Ohio; and Bay City, Michigan;...

LONDON — Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff as the economic boom that the industry rode during the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who also leads its parent company Alphabet, informed staff Friday at...

The U.S. union membership rate reached an all-time low last year despite high-profile unionization campaigns at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies. Union members fell to 10.1% of the overall U.S. workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was down slightly from 10.3% in 2021. The number of workers...

WASHINGTON — The number of people seeking unemployment benefits in the U.S. reached a four-month low last week, a sign that employers are holding on to their workers despite the Federal Reserve’s efforts to slow the economy and tamp down inflation. U.S. jobless aid applications for the week ending Jan....

NEW YORK — Party City has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after struggling with rising prices and a pullback in customer spending. The company, based in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, said that its franchise stores, subsidiaries outside of the U.S. and its foil balloons Anagram business are not part...

WASHINGTON — On the brink of hitting the nation’s legal borrowing limit on Thursday, the government is resorting to “extraordinary measures” to avoid a default. Sounds ominous, right? But — take a breath — the phrase technically refers to a bunch of accounting workarounds. Yes, accounting. Because the debt cap...

When inflation rises, child care expenses do, too. If you’re a parent, you may be hoping to get a little financial relief during the upcoming tax season through deductions or credits. But since there have been recent reductions to both of the child tax credits, you may not get as...

After years of being in debt, Rachel Kramer Bussel came to a realization: “If I don’t become proactive about it, I will be in debt for the rest of my life.” For Bussel, a freelance writer near Atlantic City, New Jersey, that meant scaling back spending and putting any available...

SAN FRANCISCO — While still grappling with the fallout from a company he did take private, beleaguered billionaire Elon Musk is now facing a trial over a company he didn’t. Long before Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October, he had set his sights on Tesla, the electric automaker...

Apple CEO Tim Cook will take a more than 40% pay cut this year from a year earlier as the company adjusts how it calculates his compensation partly based on a recommendation from Cook himself. Apple Inc. said in a regulatory filing late Thursday that Cook’s target total compensation is...

In perhaps one of the most cynically ironic twists in the field of climate science, new research suggests ExxonMobil may have had keener insight into the impending dangers of global warming than even NASA scientists but still waged a decades-long campaign to discredit research into climate change and its connection...

NEW YORK — Wall Street is wobbling Thursday as it digests a report showing inflation slowed again last month, bolstering hopes the Federal Reserve may take it easier on the economy through smaller hikes to interest rates. The S&P 500 was 0.2% lower after flipping between small gains and losses...

WASHINGTON — Rising U.S. consumer prices moderated again last month, bolstering hopes that inflation’s grip on the economy will continue to ease this year and possibly require less drastic action by the Federal Reserve to control it. Inflation declined to 6.5% in December compared with a year earlier, the government...

NEW YORK — Love her or loathe her, Barbie has been transformed again, this time into a version for children as young as 3. Gone is the contentious hourglass figure for My First Barbie, which launched Thursday ahead of July’s live-action film about the icon starring Margot Robbie and Ryan...

Activist investor Nelson Peltz is fighting for a seat on the board of Walt Disney Co., claiming that the company is struggling with self-inflicted problems. Peltz’s attempt to join Disney’s board comes just months after the company brought back longtime CEO Bob Iger to lead Disney again. Disney urged shareholders...

WASHINGTON — For months, the outlook for the U.S. economy has been a mostly bleak one: Inflation hitting a four-decade high, consumer spending weakening, interest rates surging. Most economists penciled in a recession for 2023. An economic downturn is still possible. Yet in recent weeks, with inflation showing widespread signs...

Thousands of travelers were stranded at U.S. airports Wednesday due to an hours-long computer outage. More than 1,100 U.S. flights were canceled and nearly 8,000 flights were delayed as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the tracking site FlightAware. Even though the Federal Aviation Administration was at fault for the outage,...

PONTIAC, Mich. — Electric vehicles took two of three categories for the first time in this year’s North American Car, Truck and Utility of the Year awards. Ford’s F-150 Lightning electric pickup won the truck category, while Kia’s EV6 battery-powered EV was named the top SUV. The Integra, a small...

WASHINGTON — The IRS is beginning to see “a light at the end of the tunnel” of its customer service struggles, thanks to tens of billions of new money from the Democrats’ climate and health law and the authority to hire more people, according to an independent watchdog within the...

Knowing if you’re being paid fairly for the work you do is a mystery shrouded in a lack of information. That may be changing, though, and pay transparency may be the catalyst. It’s a growing trend for companies to reveal what a job opening or current position pays — whether...

OMAHA, Neb. — Chickens may not be able to fly very far, but the price of eggs is soaring. A lingering bird flu outbreak, combined with soaring feed, fuel and labor costs, has led to U.S. egg prices more than doubling over the past year, and hatched a lot of...

FRANKLIN, Tenn. — In-N-Out Burger announced Tuesday that it plans to open a corporate office in Tennessee and restaurants in and around Nashville by 2026, marking the company’s first expansion east of Texas. Gov. Bill Lee joined In-N-Out Burger owner and president Lynsi Snyder along with other government and company...