WASHINGTON — Builders stepped up home construction in May and applied for permits to build single-family homes at the fastest pace in five years. The gains show housing remained a crucial source of growth ... Read more
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Protesters showed up by the thousands in Brazil’s largest cities Monday night in a remarkable display of strength for an agitation that had begun with small protests ... Read more
Just days after Apple introduced the iPad and opened an e-bookstore, the biggest player in the e-book market, Amazon, changed the way it sold digital titles. Steven P. Jobs took out his iPhone and shot off an ... Read more
WASHINGTON — THERE is a popular story going around about the state of America’s broadband networks: service is pitifully slow, hugely overpriced and limited to the richest neighborhoods — ... Read more
WASHINGTON — Economic reports released on Friday weighed on investors, showing that consumer confidence has fallen this month and that American factories barely increased their output in May. ... Read more
RIO DE JANEIRO — Protests by an increasingly forceful movement coalescing against increases in bus fares shook Brazil’s two largest cities on Thursday night, the fourth time in a week that activists ... Read more
BUENOS AIRES — A thick slab of grass-fed sirloin dripping in its own juices: so many Argentines consider such a feast a birthright to be enjoyed regularly that one president in the 1990s quipped to an ... Read more
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — Theme parks have traditionally been the ultimate melting pots. Tourists, retirees, hormonal teenagers, families and fathers who would rather be golfing are all thrown together in ... Read more
LOS ANGELES — Bidding wars sound almost quaint. These days, the only way for would-be buyers to secure a home, it often seems, is to offer all cash and be ready to do so within hours, not days. ... Read more
In an e-mail to her boss, Leslie Moonves, Carolyn K. Reidy, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, dismissed an Apple executive as a “minion.” David Shanks, the chief executive ... Read more