San Francisco Chronicle Business and Technology
 Business and technology news. From SFGate.com: the Bay Area's home page, online home of the San Francisco Chronicle and much more.
Updated: 34 min 11 sec ago
1 hour 28 min ago
Germany is dropping its pursuit of a ban on Scientology after finding insufficient evidence of illegal activity, security officials said Friday. Domestic intelligence services will continue to monitor the group, officials said. The German branch of the Los...
1 hour 29 min ago
Wall Street staged a comeback Friday, with the major indexes jumping more than 5 percent and the Dow Jones industrials surging nearly 500 points. The late afternoon rally ended another volatile week that saw stocks reach six-year lows. Stocks erased about...
1 hour 33 min ago
Why aren't the government bailouts working? The presidential transition may be adding to the uncertainty roiling the financial markets. In fact, knowing the names on President-elect Barack Obama's economic team may prove more helpful in calming those stormy...
1 hour 34 min ago
Federal officials on Thursday released new rules for the protection of marine sanctuaries in northern and central California _ and some big-wave surfers are stoked. Among the changes by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the allowance of...
1 hour 44 min ago
General Motors Corp. will extend its holiday shutdown or make other production cuts at five factories at as it deals with a continued U.S. auto sales slump and fights to stay solvent. Also Friday, the company announced changes at five other factories that...
1 hour 50 min ago
A union representing paramedics in southern Nevada says it has called off a strike and hopes to return to negotiations with the area's largest ambulance company. The Service Employees International Union Local 1107 issued a statement Friday saying it had...
1 hour 51 min ago
Libya wants to open a new chapter in relations with the United States by investing some of its $100 billion sovereign wealth fund in U.S. companies and sending thousands of students to study in America, the son of Libya's leader said Friday. In an interview...
1 hour 52 min ago
Pressure intensified on Citigroup to sell part or all of itself as its stock fell below $4 a share on Friday and fears escalated about future loan losses. CEO Vikram Pandit told managers earlier in the day he opposes breaking up the company, but the bank's...
1 hour 55 min ago
In all the finger-pointing about the credit crisis, there's one unusual suspect: an accounting standard. Critics say the standard called "mark to market," or "fair value," is one cause of the nation's financial woes. Others contend that has nothing to do with...
1 hour 57 min ago
Verizon Wireless on Friday fired an unspecified number of employees it said had accessed President-elect Barack Obama's old cell phone records without permission. The firings ended an internal investigation into the matter. Verizon Wireless earlier had...
2 hours 12 min ago
With consumers looking for comfort foods and ways to save money, foodmakers H.J. Heinz Co. and J.M. Smucker Co. posted higher earnings Friday and said they're benefiting from price increases and the trend of more people eating at home. Sales in the recent...
2 hours 16 min ago
Former Ecuadorean leaders said Friday that President Rafael Correa was playing politics when he accused them of taking bribes during $3.9 billion in debt renegotiations. Correa said the former officials and two investment banks _ U.S.-based J.P. Morgan and...
2 hours 25 min ago
Only four months after peaking at an unheard of $4.11 a gallon, the national average price for gasoline tumbled below $2 Friday, its lowest point in more than three years. Yet the global economic contrast between then and now could not be more stark. On March...
2 hours 42 min ago
With briefcase in hand and a smile on his face, Attorney General Michael Mukasey returned to work Friday after collapsing during a speech the night before and spurring a 14-hour scare about his health. A Justice Department spokeswoman blamed the 67-year-old's...
2 hours 56 min ago
Word of mouth is one of the most common ways homebuyers and sellers find a real estate agent. Now, there are several Web sites that tout a more scientific approach: ranking agents based on criteria such as years of experience, how many sales they've closed,...
3 hours 6 min ago
The Pentagon has banned, at least temporarily, the use of external computer flash drives because of a virus threat officials detected on Defense Department networks. While defense officials would not publicly confirm the ban, messages were sent to department...
3 hours 13 min ago
Here's a look at how foodmakers H.J. Heinz Co. and J.M. Smucker Co. fared in the most recent quarter: HEINZ: _North American Consumer Products: Sales up 9.4 percent, prices charged to consumers up 8 percent. Volume up 2.9 percent, driven by Heinz Ketchup, Ore-...
3 hours 18 min ago
The last time Ricky Hatton crossed the pond to fight in this boxing capital he was joined by thousands of his fellow countrymen who were still singing his praises even as Floyd Mayweather Jr. was knocking him senseless. That was just a year ago, but a lot has...
3 hours 19 min ago
Federal regulators on Friday issued their first approval of a new kind of bank charter intended to increase the "pool of potential buyers" of failed banks. The Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said the new charter is intended...
3 hours 39 min ago
If only we could be a fly on the wall when our enemies are plotting to attack us. Better yet, what if that fly could record voices, transmit video and even fire tiny weapons? That kind of James Bond-style fantasy is actually on the drawing board. U.S....
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