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Despite free-flowing kombucha, WeWork tenants feel unease
NEW YORK (AP) — WeWork’s stock market fiasco has yet to reverberate much for its more than 600,000 tenants. But beneath the work-and-play cheer, there’s unease as WeWork embarks on a painful restructuring that will include thousands of layoffs as early as this week. The office-sharing company is slashing the lavish spending that has fueled its breakneck growth while racking up unsustainable losses. Experts are skeptical that WeWork can achieve meaningful cost reductions without somehow squeezing tenants.
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Boeing’s grounded 737 Max scores 2nd order at Dubai Airshow
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Boeing’s 737 Max jet has gotten another boost at the Dubai Airshow. This time it’s an order from Kazakhstan’s newly-launched budget carrier as the Chicago-based company works to try and win U.S. regulatory approval to get the airplane back in the sky by early next year. The plane has been grounded around the world after two crashes that killed 346 people. The jet’s automated flight control system has been blamed in part in the crashes.
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Doubts cast on easyJet plan to be net-zero emissions airline
LONDON (AP) — European budget airline easyJet says it will become the first major carrier to operate net-zero carbon flights, offsetting carbon emissions from the fuel used on every flight. The company says Tuesday it will offset the carbon “by investing in projects that include planting trees or protecting against deforestation.” Climate activists, however, warn that such efforts are stopgap measures at best.
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US housing starts climbed 3.8% in October
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. home building jumped 3.8% in October to an annual pace of 1.31 million. The Commerce Department report is a positive sign for the overall economy as developers anticipate steady demand for both single-family houses and rental apartments. Still, housing starts so far this year are running 0.6% below 2018’s levels.
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Safety board favours redesign of engine part on Boeing 737s
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal safety board says Boeing should redesign part of the casing on some jet engines to prevent accidents like one that killed a passenger last year. The National Transportation Safety Board said the April 2018 accident on Southwest Airlines flight 1380 was caused by a cracked fan blade that broke off in flight, hitting the engine case at a critical location. Parts of the engine turned into shrapnel, striking the fuselage and causing a window to break free.
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Official: Safety lacking before Uber self-driving car crash
WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board says Uber had an ineffective safety culture when one of its autonomous test vehicles ran down and killed a pedestrian last year in Tempe, Arizona. Robert Sumwalt says at a hearing on the March 2018 crash that Uber didn’t continually monitor its operations and it had de-activated its Volvo SUV’s automatic emergency braking system.
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Muted launch for Google’s game-streaming service Stadia
NEW YORK (AP) — Google’s new game-streaming service Stadia demonstrates the possibilities of gaming from the cloud, but experts say it’s hindered by a lack of compelling games and a somewhat convoluted pricing scheme. The service launched Tuesday. Tech companies such as Google are trying to establish a foothold early — even with some kinks — before streaming becomes as established in gaming as Netflix is in video and Spotify in music.
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Microsoft competes for popularity with upstart Slack
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft is in a fierce popularity contest with upstart work messaging service Slack. Microsoft announced Tuesday that its own workplace collaboration service Teams now has more than 20 million daily active users. That’s 8 million more than what Slack boasted of having last month.
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Federal Reserve approves merger of BB&T, SunTrust banks
NEW YORK (AP) — The Federal Reserve has approved the $66 billion merger between BB&T and SunTrust, clearing the last hurdle in creating the sixth-largest bank in the U.S. The combination of BB&T Corp., which is based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks Inc. is the largest bank merger since the Great Recession.
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GateHouse, Gannett join, become largest US newspaper chain
NEW YORK (AP) — GateHouse has closed its $1.1 billion takeover of Gannett, promising a $300 million cut in annual costs as it becomes the country’s largest newspaper company by far at a time when print publications are in precipitous decline. The new company keeps the Gannett name and brings about 260 daily papers together, including USA Today, The Arizona Republic, the Providence Journal and the Austin American-Statesman.
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US stock indexes edge mostly lower as retailers sink
NEW YORK (AP) — Major stock indexes ended a wobbly day of trading on Wall Street mostly lower Tuesday, as losses in energy companies and department store operators offset gains elsewhere in the market. A good showing for technology sector stocks helped lift the Nasdaq composite to another all-time high. The S&P 500 finished just below the record close it reached Monday. Energy sector stocks fell as the price of U.S. crude oil dropped. A slide in Home Depot pulled the Dow Jones Industrial Average lower.
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The S&P 500 index slipped 1.85 points, or less than 0.1%, to 3,120.18. The Dow fell 102.20 points, or 0.4%, to 27,934.02. The Nasdaq climbed 20.72 points, or 0.2%, to 8,570.66. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks ended up 5.95 points, or 0.4%, at 1,598.29.
The Associated Press
