Business category, Page 30

NEW YORK — The holidays are supposed to be a joyful time, but they can also be financially stressful. With gifts, social gatherings and plane tickets home, the costs can start piling up. Household expenses continue to rise and many Americans are expressing concern about their financial futures, according to...

John C. Tumazos thinks unions and Pennsylvania politicians have gotten the U.S. Steel sale all wrong. The Wilkinsburg-bred metals industry analyst said Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion acquisition of the Pittsburgh-based steel icon will not trigger mass layoffs in Southwestern Pennsylvania or encourage the new owners to idle mills. Instead, the...

NEW YORK — Retailers are stepping up sales and other enticements in the final days before Christmas to lure shoppers who’ve been waiting for the best deals, or who didn’t have the time or the urge to wrap up gift-buying early. Incentives to spend last minute are an extension of...

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration released its highly anticipated proposal for doling out billions of dollars in tax credits to hydrogen producers Friday, in a massive effort to build out an industry that some hope can be a cleaner alternative to fossil fueled power. The U.S. credit is the most...

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation fell last month in another sign that price pressures easing in the face of the central bank’s interest rate hikes. Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showed that U.S. consumer prices slid 0.1% last month from October and rose 2.6% from...

NEW YORK — You found the perfect holiday gift online. You ordered it. A notification arrived on your phone, showing the package had arrived. But when you open your doors, the parcel is nowhere to be found. If this has happened to you, then count yourself among the unlucky group...

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple on Thursday stopped online sales of two popular models of its internet-connected watch in the U.S. after losing its latest attempt to untangle a patent dispute that’s blocking it from using some of the technology on the device. Both the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra...

LOS ANGELES — Homebuilders are stepping up construction of single-family homes following a steady decline in mortgage rates and broad expectations among economists that home loan borrowing costs will ease further next year. Builders broke ground on single-family homes in November at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 1.14...

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose slightly last week but still remained at historically low levels despite high interest rates intended to slow hiring and cool the economy. The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims were up by 2,000 to 205,000 the week that...

Giant Eagle plans to move its headquarters from the RIDC Park in O’Hara to Cranberry. Officials said Wednesday the company signed a long-term lease on a four-story, 100,000-square-foot building at 700 Cranberry Woods Drive in the Cranberry Woods Business Park. It declined to renew its lease at 701 Alpha Drive...

Rite Aid has been banned from using facial recognition technology for five years over allegations that its surveillance system was used incorrectly to identify potential shoplifters, especially Black, Latino, Asian or female shoppers. The settlement with the Federal Trade Commission addresses charges that the struggling drugstore chain didn’t do enough...

Toyota Motor Co. said Wednesday it is recalling 1 million vehicles over a defect that could cause airbags not to deploy, increasing the risk of injury. The recall covers a range of Toyota and Lexus vehicles with model years from 2020 to 2022. Included in the recall are Toyota Avalons,...

Three Democratic U.S. lawmakers from Pennsylvania are calling for a federal committee to block the proposed sale of U.S. Steel to Japan-based Nippon Steel, citing national security concerns. In a letter Tuesday to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman and U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio said...

Seven senior leaders at the University of Pittsburgh will see pay increases of 4% next year, bringing their base salaries to between $271,000 and nearly $1.1 million. The new pay levels were endorsed Tuesday morning by the Pitt Board of Trustees’ Compensation Committee and then approved by the full Board...

Google has agreed to pay $700 million and make several other concessions to settle allegations that it had been stifling competition against its Android app store — the same issue that went to trial in another case that could result in even biggthe er changes. Although Google struck the deal...

Independence Health System’s five hospitals posted positive operating revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, hospital officials said Monday, even as the former Butler and Excela health systems individually lost millions of dollars in that 12-month period. Latrobe Area Hospital topped all the other health system hospitals — Butler...

As each year draws to a close, I like to sift through the debris of the year’s worst-performing stocks. Usually I can find one or two that strike me as bargains. This year, among all U.S. stocks with a market value of $5 billion or more, the worst performers are:...

Third-generation steelworker Don Jackson said he’s seen how mill owners weathering an economic downturn can cripple a city. In Pittsburgh in 1984, a year after Jackson graduated from high school, J&L Steel shuttered the 140-year-old South Side mill that sat just a mile from Jackson’s Arlington home. At its peak,...

NEW YORK — For Nicole Plauché and her family, Christmas is the time of the year where they can use their preferred love language: gift giving. This year, however, Plauché is worried about how much she can afford to spend on gifts. Her main struggle? Student loan payments. “It just...

NEW YORK — The promise of self-checkout was alluring: Customers could avoid long lines by scanning and bagging their own items, workers could be freed of doing those monotonous tasks themselves and retailers could save on labor costs. All that has happened since the rollout of self-checkout but so has...

WASHINGTON — It was the most painful inflation Americans had experienced since 1981, when “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “The Jeffersons” were topping the TV charts. Yet the Federal Reserve now seems on the verge of defeating it — and without the surge in unemployment and the deep recession that...

People are running out of time to have gifts shipped in time for Christmas, with at least one deadline arriving as early as this weekend. Saturday is the last day you can have something shipped by the U.S. Postal Service in time for the holiday. The Postal Service’s first-class or...

Shoppers had their pick of products and parking Friday ahead of what retailers hope will be a chaotic and profitable weekend — the last full weekend before Christmas celebrations get underway. “It’s not very crowded. I was thinking it would’ve been busier on a nice Friday,” said Karen Belin of...

People are running out of time to have gifts shipped in time for Christmas, with at least one deadline arriving as early as this weekend. Saturday is the last day you can have something shipped by the U.S. Postal Service in time for the holiday. The Postal Service’s first-class or...