(Reuters) -The U.S. Air Force said on Friday that it has awarded a $13 billion contract to Sierra Nevada Corp to develop a successor to the E-4B, known as the Doomsday plane due to its ability to survive a nuclear war. The Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC) project is intended to replace the aging 1970s-era…
By Laurie Chen and Nidal al-Mughrabi BEIJING/CAIRO (Reuters) – China will host Palestinian unity talks between Islamist militant group Hamas and its rivals Fatah, the two groups and a Beijing-based diplomat said on Friday, a notable Chinese foray into Palestinian diplomacy amid the war in the Gaza Strip. Hamas, which controls Gaza, is the group…
(Reuters) – Donald Trump’s allies are reported to be drafting proposals to erode the Federal Reserve’s independence if the presumptive Republican presidential nominee regains the White House, with installing loyalists at the central bank as a key element. The Fed both manages monetary policy – most notably through setting benchmark interest rates that influence the…
By Sabrina Valle HOUSTON (Reuters) -U.S. and European oil companies reported weaker first quarter results on Friday due to a sharp drop in natural gas prices compared with a year ago. Results at oil and gas firms are still retreating from record levels in 2022 that were boosted by a surge in demand after the…
By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) – A real estate brokerage owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway said on Friday it reached a $250 million settlement of nationwide antitrust litigation that is expected to change how real estate agents are paid. HomeServices of America, the largest U.S. real estate brokerage, was the last remaining defendant in a…
(Reuters) – Starbucks held contract negotiations with the Workers United union over a two-day session in Atlanta, both the parties said on Friday, with plans to meet again in late May. The coffee chain and Workers United, that represents Starbucks workers in the United States, began negotiations this week on what they called a “foundational…
By Yuvraj Malik, Anna Tong and Stephen Nellis (Reuters) -Microsoft beat Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue and profit on Thursday, driven by gains from adoption of artificial intelligence across its cloud services, and the company’s shares jumped more than 4% in extended trade. Executives forecast ranges for current quarter cloud revenue that were mostly…
By Greg Bensinger and Akash Sriram (Reuters) – Alphabet announced its first-ever dividend on Thursday and a $70 billion stock buyback, cheering investors who sent the stock surging nearly 16% after the bell. The Google parent is returning capital while spending billions of dollars on data centers to catch up with rivals on generative artificial…
By Deborah Mary Sophia (Reuters) -Caterpillar on Thursday warned of a sales drop in the current quarter as volumes take a hit from dealers tightening equipment inventories, sparking worries that a months-long boom in machinery demand may be coming to an end. Shares of the global economy bellwether slumped 7% in morning trade as it…
By Blake Brittain (Reuters) -GlaxoSmithKline sued Pfizer and BioNTech in Delaware federal court on Thursday, accusing them of infringing GSK patents related to messenger RNA (mRNA) technology in the companies’ blockbuster COVID-19 vaccines. GSK said in the lawsuit that Pfizer and BioNTech’s Comirnaty vaccines violate the company’s patent rights in mRNA-vaccine innovations developed “more than…
