Insurance company executives warned Gov. Gavin Newsom in a letter Wednesday that his plan to shift utility wildfire liability to property insurers would raise premiums across California.

"The party whose equipment ignites a catastrophic fire should bear the economic consequence of that fire," the 15 executives wrote. "Shifting those costs to ...Read more

Amazon announced Tuesday it will shutter Mechanical Turk, the 21-year-old crowdsourced labor market platform founder Jeff Bezos once called “artificial artificial intelligence.”

The rising use of AI could have delivered the fatal blow.

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant launched Mechanical Turk, which users commonly call MTurk, in 2005. ...Read more

Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez spent years in Southern California cutting and polishing slabs of crushed quartz manufactured by Minnesota’s Cambria and several other companies, fashioning the stone into popular and affordable kitchen and bathroom countertops.

Cutting the stone, he said through a translator, produced clouds of dust in the Southern ...Read more

Computer sales drove much of Best Buy’s revenue growth this summer, but it was because of higher prices, not because more were sold.

The cause of inflation in this case: data centers.

Companies are shifting memory chip production toward more lucrative data center products to meet demand from the artificial intelligence boom, tightening ...Read more

For much of the last year, Alphabet Inc. has been the Big Tech stock to beat as investors bet that it was the most-likely winner from the artificial intelligence boom.

Alphabet shares hit an all-time high on May 13 after soaring more than 150% in the previous 12 months, putting them among the 25 best performers in the S&P 500 Index over that ...Read more

Former employees of Stellantis NV's shuttered Belvidere Assembly Plant know by now not to get their hopes up.

The automaker announced earlier this month that it plans to reopen and build a new version of the Jeep Cherokee at the northern Illinois plant starting in late 2029. That's roughly two years after production of a midsize pickup ...Read more

Apple is laying off close to 150 employees, the latest tech titan to reduce staff amid the artificial intelligence boom.

Recent government filings showed that the iPhone maker is cutting 147 positions, mostly from its headquarters in Cupertino, California. It also disclosed layoffs in Sunnyvale.

Many of the roles were in software engineering ...Read more

Starter home prices in the Las Vegas Valley have more than doubled in the past decade, according to a new report from Zillow.

The latest numbers from the online real estate marketplace paint a bleak picture for potential first-time homebuyers, as the price of a starter home in the valley sits at $312,141 in July, down 3.2 percent from the same ...Read more

California and dozens of other states won sweeping new restrictions on how Facebook and Instagram treat children Wednesday, including daily time limits, overnight lockouts and stronger parental controls, along with as much as $17 billion from Meta.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved the agreement in Oakland, abruptly ending a ...Read more

Meta Platforms Inc.’s plan to pay up to $18 billion in a sweeping settlement with almost every U.S. state will resolve a slew of legal claims related to teenage users on the company’s social media platforms.

But there are strings attached.

Of the overall amount, the company has pledged to shell out about $12.7 billion in installments to ...Read more

The fight between the union representing thousands of Starbucks baristas and their employer is heating up, as workers call for a boycott.

Starbucks Workers United announced the boycott — spurred by stalled contract negotiations — on Tuesday. Unionized employees are pressing customers to not spend money at Starbucks until a contract with ...Read more

Meta Platforms Inc. said it agreed to pay up to $18 billion in landmark settlements to resolve social media claims from U.S. states that would require the company to make major changes to how it operates platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Key parts of the deal, disclosed in a court filing Wednesday, require the company to put new guardrails...Read more

U.S. supplies of diesel have fallen to the lowest seasonal level ever, threatening to push prices even higher for the global economy’s workhorse fuel just as heating and agricultural seasons kick into gear.

Stocks of distillate fuel oil — a category of fuels that most prominently includes diesel — stood at 103.4 million barrels in the ...Read more

The Federal Aviation Administration is requiring inspections of dozens of Boeing 787 planes to check for cracks in the wings.

The regulator issued a final airworthiness directive Wednesday, following a proposed rule in March, that requires some 787 operators to inspect certain structural components to ensure any cracks are caught and repaired. ...Read more

Meta Platforms Inc. said it agreed to pay up to $18 billion in landmark settlements to resolve social media claims from U.S. states that would require the company to make major changes to how it operates platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Key parts of the deal, disclosed in a court filing Wednesday, require the company to put new guardrails...Read more

Meta Platforms Inc. agreed to implement a raft of restrictions for teens on its Facebook and Instagram apps as part of a multibillion-dollar settlement with multiple U.S. states on Wednesday. The landmark agreement requires the company to put new guardrails on Facebook and Instagram, including limits on how much time youths can spend scrolling ...Read more

Once upon a time, a retirement free of fear was defined as “having enough money.” In fact, about 20 years ago I even wrote a book called “The Savage Number: How Much Money Do You Really Need to Retire?”

But now that the huge baby boomer generation is either in or closely approaching retirement, it has become clear that beyond having “...Read more

Meta Platforms Inc. said it agreed to pay up to $18 billion in landmark settlements to resolve allegations from multiple U.S. states that the company deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among young users.

Key parts of the deal, disclosed in a court filing Wednesday, require the company to put new guardrails ...Read more

General Mills has met its own deadline to remove artificial colors from all its cereals, including Trix and Lucky Charms, sold in the United States.

The company said Wednesday it met its deadline to remove these colors by the end of the summer and will strive to remove them from all U.S. grocery store products by the end of 2027.

Opponents of ...Read more