Business News

EPA awards $4.3 billion to fund projects in 30 states to reduce climate pollution

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency is awarding $4.3 billion in grants to fund projects in 30 states to reduce climate pollution. The money will go to 25 projects targeting greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, electric power, commercial and residential buildings, industry, agriculture and waste and materials management. The grants are paid for by the 2022 climate law approved by congressional Democrats. Among the projects being funded are $396 million to Pennsylvania to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions from cement, asphalt and other material. EPA Administrator Michael Regan will join Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in Pittsburgh on Monday to announce grant recipients. Regan says the funds will be delivered this fall.

Most airlines except one are recovering from the CrowdStrike tech outage. The feds have noticed

Delta Air Lines is struggling for a fourth straight day to recover from the tech outage, even as other airlines are returning to nearly normal levels of service. Delta canceled more than 700 flights on Monday, bringing its total since the outage started Friday to more than 5,500 cancellations. That’s according to travel-data provider Cirium (SEAR-ee-um). Delta’s woeful performance is drawing unwanted attention from the federal government. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he spoke to Delta CEO Ed Bastian about the cancellations. Buttigieg says he expects Delta to issue quick refunds and to pay for hotels and meals for customers who are stranded by the ongoing cancellations.

Troubled Boeing stays close to the ground at a major UK air show

LONDON (AP) — European planemaker Airbus plans to show off its newest passenger jet with daily flight demonstrations during one of the world’s biggest aviation trade fairs. But an ongoing safety and manufacturing crisis has rival Boeing keeping a lower profile at the Farnborough International Air Show, which kicks off Monday in England. The beleaguered American company isn’t bringing any jetliners to take part in aerial displays at the weeklong event near London. A top executive says the company remains focused on satisfying the concerns of U.S. regulators and “meeting our customer commitments” rather than selling a lot of planes.

CrowdStrike says more machines fixed as customers, regulators await details on what caused meltdown

AUSTIN, Tex. (AP) — Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says a “significant number” of the millions of computers that crashed on Friday, causing global disruptions, are back in operation as its customers and regulators await a more detailed explanation of what went wrong. A defective software update sent by CrowdStrike to its customers disrupted airlines, banks, hospitals and other critical services Friday, affecting about 8.5 million machines running Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The painstaking work of fixing it has often required a company’s IT crew to manually delete files on affected machines. CrowdStrike said late Sunday in a blog post that it was starting to implement a new technique to accelerate remediation of the problem.

On a summer Sunday, Biden withdrew with a text statement. News outlets struggled for visuals

The shocking news of President Joe Biden abandoning his race for re-election led news outlets to scramble on a summer Sunday afternoon. It had been an intensely visual week of news in politics, from the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump to the four-day television show of the Republican national convention. This it was an old-fashioned way of making news. Biden announced his decision through a printed statement. It was dropped into his social media accounts before 2 p.m. Eastern time. It led to talk about a campaign by Vice President Kamala Harris before she even announced she was running.

Restaurant critic’s departure reveals potential hazards of the job

Restaurant critics appear to have the best job in journalism, enjoying meals a few nights a week on someone else’s dime. But New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells is painting a more complicated picture. In a recent column, Wells announced he’s leaving the beat because the constant eating has led to obesity and other health problems. To write a review, critics usually make two or three visits to a restaurant so they can taste as many dishes as possible. And restaurant food tends to contain higher than ideal levels of salt and saturated fat, according to a 2020 study by Tufts University.

Stock market today: Wall Street climbs as Big Tech recovers following worst week in months

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are broadly higher, clawing back some of the losses from their worst week since April. The S&P 500 rose 1.1% Monday and was on track to break a three-day losing streak. It would be the first gain for the index since it set an all-time high early last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 123 points, and the Nasdaq composite gained 1.7%. Big Tech stocks regained some of their sharp drops from last week, and Treasury yields mostly rose in the bond market after President Joe Biden said he won’t run for re-election.

Meet some of the world’s cleanest pigs, raised to grow kidneys and hearts for humans

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) — Some of the world’s cleanest pigs are being raised in the Virginia mountains to supply kidneys and hearts for animal-to-human organ transplants. Revivicor is one of several companies genetically engineering pigs so their organs are more humanlike, less likely to be rejected. Early experiments came from pigs born on a special biosecure research farm. Now Revivicor parent company United Therapeutics is preparing for clinical trials of those organs, from pigs raised in a first-of-its-kind facility with even more safeguards against any germs that might pose a risk to people.

Malicious actors trying to exploit global tech outage for their own gain

As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and even CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz warned about phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees offering to assist those recovering from the outage. Meanwhile, Microsoft said 8.5 million devices running its Windows operating system were affected by the faulty cybersecurity update Friday that led to worldwide disruptions.

Tech disruptions sparked by software update highlight the fragility of globally connected technology

Airlines, banks, hospitals and other risk-averse organizations around the world chose cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to protect their computer systems from hackers and data breaches. But all it took was one faulty CrowdStrike software update to cause global disruptions Friday that grounded flights, knocked banks and media outlets offline, and disrupted hospitals, retailers and other services. Some experts say it shows the dangers of organizations around the world relying too heavily on a small number of technology providers.