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FDA staff blindsided by nicotine decision

WASHINGTON — Senior officials in the Food and Drug Administration’s tobacco center were blindsided by a recent decision that opens the door to allowing more unauthorized electronic cigarettes and nicotine pouches onto the U.S. market, The Associated Press has learned. The guidelines, posted online earlier this month before former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned, will allow companies to launch certain nicotine-based products before they’ve been fully vetted by regulators. Some FDA officials tasked with enforcing vaping regulations were not consulted on the changes and only ...

Ticker: US stocks edge higher following U-turn for oil

U.S. stocks ticked higher following the latest reversal for oil prices. The S&P 500 rose 0.2% Thursday and inched closer to its all-time high set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.6%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.1%. All three indexes erased early drops and gained strength after the price of a barrel of Brent dropped from $109 in the morning to settle below $103. UN top court: Right to strike protected by treaty The United Nations’ top court has issued a landmark advisory opinion that says the right to strike is protected by a cornerstone labor treaty. The ...

NTSB: Flaw that led to UPS plane crash went unnoticed

A UPS plane crash that killed 15 people last year might have been prevented if an original inspection schedule hadn’t been relaxed, but mechanics didn’t get a close look at the parts that should have kept an engine from flying off its wing because federal regulators allowed Boeing to recommend checking them less frequently, according to testimony Wednesday. The National Transportation Safety Board’s questions also drew out that Boeing relied on older data when it asked to extend the inspection schedule in 2015, and didn’t seem to account for seven instances on other planes of ...

Ticker: SpaceX reveals plans for initial public offering

Elon Musk announced plans Wednesday for one of the biggest sales of stock to the public ever for his space company that is currently losing billions of dollars year. A filing Wednesday shows his SpaceX lost $2.6 billion from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue, and the losses kept piling up at the start of this year, too. Still, the initial public offering is expected to rank among the largest ever, possibly surpassing the current title holder, Saudi Aramco, the oil giant that went public seven years ago. The stock sale could also make Musk, a major owner who founded ...

Briefcase: Sporting goods store to open

Academy Sports + Outdoors, a leading full-line sporting goods and outdoor recreation retailer, will open its first store in Altoona at 415 Orchard Ave. in June. The 42,350-square-foot store brings a wide assortment of sports and outdoors merchandise to the area and will be its third location in Pennsylvania. The new Academy Sports + Outdoors store will carry a wide assortment of sports and outdoors products for customers to choose from to kickstart their fun. This location is expected to bring an estimated 60 new jobs to the community. Originally founded in 1938 as a family ...

China agrees to boost US beef, poultry trade

WASHINGTON — China has agreed to ramp up trade for U.S. agricultural products such as beef and poultry, buying at an annualized rate of $17 billion per year for 2026 and at that level for 2027 and 2028, the White House announced Sunday, two days after President Donald Trump returned from a high-stakes summit in Beijing where he sought to ease the impact on American farmers from the trade war he launched last year. China would restore market access for U.S. beef and resume imports of poultry from U.S. states determined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be free of the bird flu, ...