CARACAS, Venezuela –– Many Venezuelan shops closed as a precaution as confusion reigned Saturday following measures announced by President Nicolas Maduro aimed at fighting an economic crisis in the oil-exporting nation.

The government will enact a drastic currency devaluation and a tax increase, and will raise gasoline prices. A new ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- When President Donald Trump spoke to Marines at the Miramar Air Station in San Diego March 13, he threw out an idea that he suggested had just come to him.

"You know, I was saying it the other day, because we're doing a tremendous amount of work in space -- I said maybe we need a new force. We'll call it the 'space force,'" he ...Read more

Speculation mounted Friday that Tesla Inc.'s board will hire an executive to run the electric-car maker's daily operations after the erratic behavior of Elon Musk, its billionaire founder and chief executive, roiled the company and its stock price.

Musk raised new questions about his leadership in an interview with The New York Times Thursday. ...Read more

Google clarified that it does in fact collect users' location data, even if the user's Location History setting is turned off. The admission comes days after a report uncovered the Silicon Valley giant stored the data from smartphones regardless of setting.

Google revised a help page about its Location History setting, clarifying that the ...Read more

California payrolls grew by 46,700 jobs in July, a significant gain that came as the unemployment rate held at a record low of 4.2 percent, according to data released Friday by the state's Employment Development Department.

The positive numbers come as a relief: June's initial report, which said employers added only 800 jobs to payrolls that ...Read more

A federal appeals court has tossed out a $1.4 billion U.S. Tax Court ruling that found in favor of Medtronic, saying that the lower court failed to analyze several relevant factors related to the Minnesota-run medical device company's past taxes.

The dispute involves the taxes owed on heart devices and leads manufactured at Medtronic factories ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump said he's asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to study ending quarterly reporting for U.S. businesses in order to ease regulations and spur growth.

"In speaking with some of the world's top business leaders I asked what it is that would make business (jobs) even better in the U.S. 'Stop quarterly ...Read more

Most economists are negative or ambivalent about the provision in the U.S. tax code that allows homeowners to deduct mortgage interest from their taxable income. The major concern is that the provision is regressive. Up to some limit, the benefit increases with wealth. The wealthier the consumer, the more costly the homes they buy, the larger ...Read more

On Thursday, a new round of tariffs is due to go into effect between the U.S. and China. The two countries continue crafting financial trade barriers in the back and forth over business.

In the week ahead, each country will begin levying a 25 percent tax on $16 billion of goods from the other. Chemicals, tractors and industrial equipment are ...Read more

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- When a fishing captain walked into JWB Prime Steak and Seafood in the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort last week, he was on the hunt for a good meal.

But as soon as he picked up the menu, something caught his eye. At the top, listed as the "locally speared fish" of the day, was permit.

The problem: It's illegal to...Read more

Theme parks offer some unusual benefits to employees that help keep them working despite pay that isn't much higher than minimum wage. A recent labor dispute between workers and the Disneyland Resort was prolonged because of threats that favorite employee perks were going to be eliminated.

Nine Disneyland custodians who call their team Clean ...Read more

Soon after Stanley Black & Decker bought the well-known Craftsman brand from Sears Holdings last year, it embarked on what it says is a ground-up remake of the tool line, hoping to revitalize a name that had languished alongside the struggling department store.

Stanley has spent the past 18 months designing and making a new line of Craftsman ...Read more

The Toyota Sienna "stumbled" as the Honda Odyssey and Chrysler Pacifica both captured solid overall ratings in the latest crash tests from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for 2018 and 2019 model year minivans.

Both the Odyssey and the Pacifica qualify as 2018 Top Safety Picks, according to the institute. The Odyssey had the best ...Read more

Another former Tesla employee has come forward as a whistleblower, alleging that the electric carmaker hacked and wiretapped cellphones and computers of current and former employees, and also failed to report to federal authorities possible drug dealing done that allegedly took place at Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory.

The former Tesla employee, ...Read more

Hormel Foods Corp. said Thursday it is selling its large pork processing plant in Fremont, Neb., to a company recently created by farmers in southwest Minnesota and South Dakota.

WholeStone Farms LLC, a consortium of 220 hog farmers, said it initiated the deal. The group is seeking ways to capture a greater percentage of the value for the hogs ...Read more

U.S. Steel announced Thursday that it is investing $750 million to revitalize its flagship Gary plant to gear up for increased demand in the wake of President Donald Trump's tariffs on imported steel.

The company said the investment will make "significant upgrades" to increase efficiencies at the 110-year-old Northwest Indiana plant, which is U...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Here's the biggest problem for the board of the electric car maker Tesla: Can anything make Elon Musk focus on the job of, you know, building cars?

Another Musk enterprise Wednesday joined the competition to distract the world from Musk's consistent failure to meet his promises for Tesla auto production. This time it was the ...Read more