He's a cute little fella, decked out in his reflective vest, hard hat and work boots, with his big eyes and a fixed grin.

Meet "Coalie," who joins the army of official and semiofficial mascots making government and commercial pitches go down easier for you and me, like Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog and Franklin the Fair Housing Fox.

...Read more

With Paramount Skydance's acquisition of Warner Bros. expected to saddle the combined company with $79 billion in debt, Paramount executives are looking to do away with redundant assets including real estate — and there is a lot of that.

Chief in the public's imagination are their historic studios in Burbank and Hollywood, where legendary ...Read more

Trader Joe’s, Ralphs and others have recalled some frozen food products amid concerns they may be contaminated with glass.

The recalls come weeks after Monrovia, California-based Trader Joe’s recalled batches of its private-label chicken fried rice with best-by dates between Sept. 8 and Nov. 17 due to glass.

Trader Joe’s on Tuesday ...Read more

The Trump administration’s overhaul of the U.S. visa system for highly skilled immigrants is about to get its first major test.

The annual lottery for H-1Bs, the most popular visa for white-collar professionals looking to build a career in the U.S., gets underway with new rules this month. For the first time, successful sponsors for ...Read more

U.S. homebuyers had to act fast last week to nab the first sub-6% mortgage rates in more than three years. Now they’re up, and the new conflict in the Middle East threatens to nudge them higher.

The average for 30-year, fixed loans climbed to 6% from 5.98% last week, which was the lowest point since September 2022, data from Freddie Mac ...Read more

Anthropic PBC’s clash with the Pentagon is drawing fresh attention to a lightly regulated practice: the U.S. government’s purchase of commercially available information, such as browsing histories and location data, and the growing use of artificial intelligence to analyze it at scale.

U.S. agencies, including the Defense Department, have ...Read more

Gossip often gets a bad rap.

It can be seen as frivolous or hurtful, and not typically encouraged.

Still, “there seems to be something about it that makes people a little bit giddy, or excited to be gossiping,” says Rebecca Greenbaum, a professor at Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.

In a recent study, Greenbaum ...Read more

Affordable housing advocates along with dozens of churches across the state are trying to launch the so-called YIGBY campaign in Connecticut this week by supporting a proposed law making it easier to build apartments on church-owned land.

The Yes In God’s Backyard movement bills itself as a creative way to quickly construct affordable housing...Read more

Las Vegas lost more construction jobs than anywhere else in the country last year, according to a new report.

Data from the Associated General Contractors of America showed the area had the biggest percentage loss, as well as overall numerical loss, of construction jobs out of the largest 360 metro areas in 2025. The valley lost a total of 8,...Read more

Brandon Smith, a fourth-generation Connecticut dairy farmer, said that he doesn’t want to see the state’s dairy industry disappear, but that without the state’s intervention, the industry is no longer sustainable.

Smith, who works beside his family members at Cushman Farms in Franklin, said that dairy farming is in his DNA. His great-...Read more

As the tech industry chases growth in the Middle East through data centers, the companies' infrastructure is increasingly exposed to conflicts in the region.

U.S. tech companies are investing billions of dollars into data centers in the Middle East as companies chase artificial intelligence ambitions and growing need for computing power.

At ...Read more

A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by Girl Scouts San Diego alleges that Ferrero U.S.A., a massive multinational corporation whose subsidiary bakes Girl Scout cookies, broke a contract with the local Girl Scouts in 2024, throwing the nonprofit organization’s local council into a crisis that led to more than $1.1 million in lost revenue and the ...Read more

In a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday, executives from seven major tech companies signed a pledge with President Trump to supply their own power for artificial intelligence data centers.

Leaders from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle and OpenAI agreed to the “ratepayer protection pledge” Trump first announced during last ...Read more

A Denver company has received federal approval to market an artificial intelligence program it says can predict when babies will arrive based on their ultrasounds, raising the possibility of flagging premature births.

Delivery Date AI predicts when a baby will be born, with an 11-day margin of error in either direction, based on second- and ...Read more

A drawn-out war with Iran that pushes oil prices higher for longer could dampen U.S. car sales and especially ding the Detroit Three automakers because of their heavy reliance on gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, experts said.

“There’s a potential for a very large impact,” said Michael Greiner, associate professor of management at Oakland ...Read more

NOVI, Michigan — The Iran war and its impact on oil prices could underscore the ever-important value of Americans' pocketbooks in their car-buying decisions, Scout Motors Inc. CEO said on Wednesday.

Scout is a Volkswagen AG-owned subsidiary based in Charlotte, North Carolina, that's revitalizing a historic brand name and developing off-road ...Read more

Starbucks has tapped Tennessee as the home of a new corporate operations office.

The Seattle-based coffee giant decided to expand into the Southern state’s Davidson County later this year, according to a Tuesday news release by Starbucks and the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.

Starbucks’ global headquarters is ...Read more

U.S. companies added the most jobs since July last month, adding to evidence of some stabilization in the labor market.

Private-sector payrolls increased 63,000 in February after a downward revision to the prior month, according to ADP Research data out Wednesday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 50,000 ...Read more