Business

Two prominent lobbying groups representing the tech industry’s biggest companies are asking the US Supreme Court to step in and block a Texas law that lets the state’s residents sue large social media platforms for alleged censorship, two days after a federal appeals court allowed the law to take effect. The Computer & Communications Industry…

China’s retail and factory activity fell sharply in April as wide COVID-19 lockdowns confined workers and consumers to their homes and severely disrupted supply chains, casting a long shadow over the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy. Full or partial lockdowns were imposed in major centres across the country in March and April, including the…

Skyrocketing natural gas prices have raised manufacturing and transportation costs across many U.S. industries, and the situation should persist as the United States exports more gas to Europe to make up for Russian supplies lost to sanctions. U.S. natural gas futures have doubled this year, far more than the increases in retail gasoline and diesel…

India, the world’s second largest producer of wheat, has banned all exports with immediate effect after a heatwave affected the crop. A notice in the government gazette by the directorate of foreign trade, dated Friday, said a rise in global prices for wheat was threatening the food security of India and neighbouring and vulnerable countries….

SMBC Aviation Capital, one of the world’s biggest aircraft lessors, is nearing a deal to acquire smaller rival Goshawk for about $7 billion, including debt, people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The deal between the two privately held, Dublin, Ireland-based lessors could be announced as soon as next week, the sources said, speaking…

Ford Motor Co sold 7 million shares of electric carmaker Rivian Automotive Inc for about $188.2 million, or $26.88 apiece, the U.S. automaker said in a filing on Friday. Ford now holds 86.9 million shares in the California-headquartered company. Rivian is struggling in a competitive market, including competition from Ford’s F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck,…

Perrigo Company PLC (PRGO.N), which makes store-brand baby formulas for retailers, including Walmart Inc (WMT.N) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), expects shortages and heightened demand to last for the “balance of the year,” Chief Executive Murray Kessler told Reuters in an interview. The Biden administration this week has come under increasing pressure to address a baby…

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) has put on hold plans to sell electric cars in India, abandoned a search for showroom space and reassigned some of its domestic team after failing to secure lower import taxes, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The decision caps more than a year of deadlocked talks with government representatives…

Wall Street rallied on Friday, ending a week of wild market gyrations marked by signs of peaking inflation and worries that the Federal Reserve might tighten policy too aggressively. Rebounding megacap tech and tech-adjacent growth stocks led the market higher. These shares thrived when interest rates were low and Fed policy accommodative during the pandemic,…

Apple’s iPod creator has warned the so-called metaverse risks creating more trolls and damaging human interaction. The virtual reality-based metaverse removes the ability “to look into the other person’s face,” Tony Fadell said. “If you put technology between that human connection that’s when the toxicity happens,” he said. The metaverse is a virtual reality realm…