Black Friday sales grew at a faster pace in the U.S. this year, underscoring that choosy consumers are still opening their wallets when they find the right products.

Retail sales, excluding automotive, grew 3.4% on the day after Thanksgiving, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. That ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Bustling crowds and early-morning lines were back as this year’s Black Friday weekend kicked off — a hopeful sign for retailers as they head into the critical holiday shopping season with consumers still grappling with inflation and economic uncertainty.

Shoppers plan to spend an average of $650 during the four-day consumer ...Read more

For members of the Boeing Co.’s executive council, catching a ride on the company’s corporate jets has long been a cherished perk of the job.

The 19 senior leaders have counted on five company-owned Bombardier Inc. Challenger 650 business jets and two customized 737 narrowbodies to help oversee the U.S. planemaker’s sprawling operation. ...Read more

CHICAGO — Women’s fashion boutique Aritzia will open its eagerly anticipated two-story flagship location Saturday on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, filling the long-vacant storefront at 555 N. Michigan Ave., former home of The Gap.

The Canada-based chain agreed to occupy the nearly 50,000-square-foot building in 2022. It was the most ...Read more

The lure of $10 gift cards wasn’t enough to draw big early-bird Black Friday crowds at the Macy’s Inc. flagship New York City location in Herald Square.

Andre Langer, 26, and Nicole Galler, 25, were visiting from Germany and arrived at Macy’s when it opened at 6 a.m., hoping to see people storm through the entrance. There were fewer ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Baltimore is poised to end the year with the fewest homicides in more than a decade, and nonfatal shootings have plunged from a year ago. But views of the city as unsafe persist.

That’s long been a challenge for city businesses that rely on visitors and customers from around the region and beyond. Even with the homicide rate ...Read more

In a week in which U.S. inflation data accelerated, President-elect Donald Trump threatened some of America’s closest neighbors with aggressive tariffs, and half of Wall Street was on vacation, the S&P 500 still comfortably beat benchmark stock gauges for both Europe and Asia.

Get used to it, say market pros.

On the sellside and the buyside,...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Rebeca Gonzalez got the call no retail worker wants on a weekend they're scheduled off — the store was short-staffed and her manager needed her to come in for a few hours.

It would be a shift that would change Gonzalez's life.

Overwhelmed with customers during the Labor Day weekend, Gonzalez was unable to keep to her plan to ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- State agriculture officials on Thursday banned Fresno-based Raw Farm from distributing its raw dairy products to retailers amid ongoing concerns about possible bird flu infections among its cattle.

However, with the exception of two limited recalls announced in the last few days, products from the farm that are already on store ...Read more

The lure of $10 gift cards wasn’t enough to draw big early-bird Black Friday crowds at the Macy’s Inc. flagship New York City location in Herald Square when it opened at 6 a.m.

Andre Langer, 26, and Nicole Galler, 25, were visiting from Germany and arrived at Macy’s when it opened, hoping to see people storm through the entrance. There ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The state's first electric-vehicle-charging roadway is expected to debut by the 2028 Olympics after a multimillion-dollar grant to UCLA — the site of Los Angeles's Olympic Village.

Nearly $20 million will go to electrify the university's BruinBus fleet and install underground charging for shuttles and buses along a route that ...Read more

HOLLY, Mich. — The North American Truck of the Year contest this year featured an impressive variety of pickups that included the GMC Sierra EV, Rivian R1T and Ram 1500.

But the marquee matchup is a fight between two midsize truck icons: the Ford Ranger and Toyota Tacoma.

The titans have both completely redesigned their vehicles for this ...Read more

As manufacturers continue to keep a close eye on sedan sales volumes, in Grasso’s Garage, they have huge purpose and need. Consumers abound have stuck fast to the sedan market and boycotted brands who have further extinct the “car” and moved into the SUV only market.

For BMW, we expect nothing less than a midsized rightly priced ...Read more

When it comes to improving efficiency and reducing emissions in transportation, often the answer is to take what’s old and replace it with something entirely new, such as buying an electric vehicle.

Atlanta-based Norfolk Southern and manufacturing giant Alstom are testing a different approach: retrofitting a pair of half-century-old ...Read more

Hooked to a super-fast charger, Kia’s all-new, all-electric EV9 can recapture an 80-percent charge in just 24 minutes. But what’s the rush?

You’ll be stretched out in the ultra-cushy three-row SUV, front seat reclined and power leg-rests deployed, while the Ergo Motion system performs a soothing massage. Might as well do the slow charger ...Read more

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — With Anchorage streets mostly empty early on a November morning, dozens of workers at the new Amazon delivery station used tiny devices on their fingers to scan barcodes on packages. Details appeared on smartphones on their forearms, helping them organize the flood of shipments.

The daily Amazon Air cargo jet to Anchorage ...Read more

Lars Dennert paid $100,000 for a forest green Rivian R1S, an electric SUV he enjoys driving on family road trips to the beach, snow and desert.

This year, he raised his wager on Rivian’s future, spending at least $10,000 on Rivian stock, which has hardly been a winner.

“I’m hoping for another Tesla, that down the road [Rivian] will ...Read more

In a world where people convert shipping containers into homes, the idea seems to be emerging that bigger isn’t always better. The same thing could be said of SUVs. Consider the 2025 Mini Countryman. It’s smaller than a Toyota Corolla Cross or a Chevrolet Trax. Yet compared with Mini’s other models, it’s positively huge.

Offered in S ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Hundreds of hospitality workers at a Las Vegas casino walked off the job Nov. 15, launching the first open-ended strike in more than two decades for Nevada's largest union.

The workers are members of the Culinary Workers Union as well as an affiliated bartenders union, which together represent some 60,000 workers in Las Vegas ...Read more