Business

Fast food is and always has been too cheap. The McDonald's dollar menu and 50-cent Jack in the Box tacos have become anachronisms in a world where an extra scoop of guacamole at Chipotle costs nearly $3. Fast-food companies have used their dominant position in the labor market to keep wages and prices excessively low, said Michael Reich, a labor economist and professor at UC Berkeley.

Amazon’s Maple Valley, Washington, warehouse is built for speed. At night, big rigs pull up to one end to unload boxes and padded mailers – some after a short drive from a bigger warehouse down the road, others following a flight in the hold of a cargo plane. Waiting employees scan, sort and load them into rolling racks.

The world’s largest seller of cybersecurity products has a problem with its own cybersecurity. In recent years, Microsoft Corp. has been hit with a series of embarrassing hacks that have exposed corporate and government customers.  

Tesla Inc. is slashing headcount by more than 10%, part of a global retrenchment extending all the way into its executive ranks as the carmaker struggles with slowing demand for electric vehicles.

Manager recruits in the industrial Midwest are shunning offers to move to the American South — in part because they’re locked into super-low 30-year mortgages.

Long used mostly for the “dull, dirty and dangerous” tasks in manufacturing, robots are increasingly considered “desirable” amid rising labor costs and shortages, strike risks and the need for flexibility in navigating the bumpy electric vehicle transition.

The financial world was roiled by a flare-up in geopolitical risks that sent stocks sliding - while spurring a flight to the safest corners of the market such as bonds and the dollar. Oil rose.

Roku on Friday disclosed that 576,000 accounts were accessed by malicious actors. The San José, California, technology company said that it discovered the problem after monitoring unusual account activity on its platform earlier this year that affected roughly 15,000 user accounts.

Google said Friday it would remove links to California news sites from its search results for some of its users, as it pushes back against a pending bill that would require the Silicon Valley technology company to pay publishers.

A federal court ruling this week allows California to keep setting air pollution and vehicle emissions standards above and beyond federal limits, with potentially far-reaching impacts for an auto industry that's navigating a bumpy electric transition.

The world’s largest creditors should take coordinated and decisive action to address the “generational challenge” of poorer nations struggling with unmanageable debt burdens, a top U.S. Treasury official said, aiming specific criticism at China, the biggest lender to emerging markets.

The stock market has punished Apple Inc. this year for failing to offer a vision of where its future growth will come from. The shares caught a bid Thursday after the tech giant took a step toward providing an answer.

In 2012 a 15-year-old girl died in Berlin after being hit by a subway train. Her bereaved parents asked Facebook to turn over her private messages in hopes of understanding whether her death was a suicide or an accident. Facebook refused.

NPR is facing both internal tumult and a fusillade of attacks by prominent conservatives this week after a senior editor publicly claimed the broadcaster had allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage, risking its trust with audiences.

Some 140 units are planned for development on about 100 acres near Beacon Hill in northeast Spokane.

Ford Motor Co. slashed prices of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck by as much as 7.5% as the automaker prepares to resume deliveries this month following a halt earlier this year over an undisclosed quality issue.

Amazon Web Services must pay $525 million to Chicago-based tech company Kove for infringing upon three of the company’s patents, a federal jury decided Wednesday.

The U.S. is betting the transition to cleaner energy combined with massive infrastructure investments will reverse a persistent decline in family farms, creating new revenue opportunities for growers while boosting their ability to compete overseas.