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COLUMBUS (AP) — A state commission earlier this week awarded bids to several companies allowing them to frack oil and gas beneath state parks. The Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission granted the mineral rights to multiple oil and gas companies, allowing them to frack for oil and gas under land owned by the [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation has changed the way many Americans shop. Now, economists say those changes in consumer habits are helping bring down inflation. Fed up with prices that remain about 19 percent, on average, above where they were before the pandemic, consumers are fighting back. In grocery stores, they're shifting away from name brands [...]
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Industry analysts say they’re expecting 2024 to be a good year for the nation’s homebuilders — as long as mortgage rates don't jump back to the highs they hit late last year. Sales of new homes rose nationally in 2023 for the first time in two years, climbing 4.2 percent from [...]
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Two tech CEOs said production of sophisticated chips will need to greatly increase to support the fast-growing artificial intelligence industry. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discussed the topic during a conference in San Jose, Calif., last week. The discussion came a few hours after chipmaker Nvidia [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Trying to keep up with customer demand, Batesville Tool & Die began seeking 70 people to hire last year. It wasn't easy. Attracting factory workers to a community of 7,300 in the Indiana countryside was a tough sell, especially having to compete with big-name manufacturers nearby such as Honda and Cummins Engine. [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers are raising alarms about what they see as America's failure to compete with China in biotechnology, warning of the risks to national security and commercial interests. As the two countries' rivalry expands into the biotech industry, some others say that shutting out Chinese companies would only hurt the United States. Biotechnology [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The kind of systemic failures that enabled the high-profile prison deaths of notorious gangster Whitey Bulger and financier Jeffrey Epstein also contributed to the deaths of hundreds of other federal prisoners over the years, a watchdog report released last week found. Mental-health care, emergency responses and the detection of contraband drugs and [...]
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans pulled back their spending in January after the traditional holiday season increase, according to new government figures. Retail sales fell 0.8 percent in January from the strong pace in December when they rose a revised 0.4 percent, according to the Commerce Department's report released late last week. Excluding sales at [...]
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Laboratory-produced diamonds’ popularity has grown in recent years. One of the appeals of a lab-grown diamond is that they cost a fraction of the stones formed naturally underground. Lab-produced diamond sales in the United States jumped 16 percent last year from 2022, according to Edahn Golan, an industry analyst. Lab diamonds are [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer inflation in cooled last month, yet remained elevated in the latest sign that the pandemic-fueled price surge is slowing gradually and fitfully. This week’s report from the Labor Department showed that the consumer price index rose 0.3 percent from December to January, up from a 0.2 percent increase the previous month. [...]