COMPANIES

Brazilian planemaker Embraer will sell its A-29 Super Tucano aircraft to the U.S. Air Force, in a firm-fixed price delivery order contract worth $355 million, the company said in a statement late on Friday.

The Boeing Co. beat out the Lockheed Martin Corp. to retain its position as the prime contractor for the U.S. long-range missile shield, the Pentagon said on Friday.

Boeing Friday won a $3.48-billion contract to build a U.S. shield against long-range ballistic missiles, said the U.S. Defense Department.

Members of the Canadian Auto Workers union overwhelmingly voted in favor of staging a strike against Caterpillar Inc at an Ontario locomotive factory should the company implement unilateral changes to existing employment terms.

General Motors Co is recalling 4,873 of its current year Chevrolet Sonic subcompact cars in the United States and Canada for possible missing front brake pads, the company and federal safety regulators said on Friday.

Only a day after announcing it would impose a $2 fee for one-time online and telephone bill payments, Verizon Wireless on Friday scrapped the plan because of consumer backlash.

On Saturday, the United State's tax credit and tariff on ethanol is set to expire, and that makes Brazilian ethanol producers and sugarcane growers very happy.

Standard & Poor’s has cut the rating on $695.4 million on bonds issued to built Citi Field for the New York Mets to negative, or BB+, one level below investment grade.

The new field was originally drilled in 2008, said the Brazilian company, and is expected to hold 2.1 billion barrels of oil. The new field, Sapinhoá is located offshore in ultra-deep regions of the South Atlantic.

Two old friends catch up at Ulysses' Folk House on Stone Street in Lower Manhattan.

Ford Motor Co. said Friday that vehicle sales of its brand topped the 2 million mark, making Ford the first automotive brand to reach the milestone since 2007.

China National Offshore Oil Corp. announced that it intends to set up an environmental protection fund of its own, months after ConocoPhillips said in September it intended to compensate local Chinese communities and pay for environmental damage following a spill at one of the company's offshore rigs in Northern China.

Verizon's $2 convenience fee it plans to charge customers for online and phone payments may make it the latest victim of the wrath of the Internet in 2011.

Ken and Meredith Williams produced a satiric YouTube video warning Bank of America, "Don't let anybody tell you you're too big to fail, cause you belong in jail."

Robert W. Baird believes that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) finished 2011 on a strong note, with healthy Search and e-commerce trends likely driving upside to consensus estimates. The brokerage reiterated its outperform rating on shares of Google, while increasing its price target to $760 from $700.

Mobile phones, long seen as safe amid rising threats to computer security, have become a key target for hackers and an increasing worry for corporate IT departments.

Verizon Wireless will be charging customers a $2 “convenience fee” for single bill payments made online or over the telephone.

Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. said it sold more than one million Kindle devices per week during the month of December, implying that it might have sold more than 4 million Kindles during December.

Former Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd made increasingly aggressive romantic advances over several years toward an independent contractor who later accused him of sexual harassment, according to claims in a letter from her lawyer.

The iPad 3 remains one of the company's most successful products and the new version is one of the most highly anticipated tech products of 2012. However, confirmation of long-running speculations on the device's design and specs will, it seems, have to wait until Apple does actually launch the tablet.

For the first time, two German auto manufacturers, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are competing head on for the coveted title of the No.1 selling luxury car in the United States.

Just a day after a third outage across the U.S. was reported with regards to the company's new 4G LTE wireless service, Verizon Wireless Thursday dropped a bomb on its customers by announcing its decision to charge a $2 convenience fee on payments.

Former Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd made romantic advances over several years toward an independent contractor who later accused him of sexual harassment, according to a letter from her lawyer obtained by Reuters.

Summit Entertainment is likely to remain its own company for the rest of the year.

Amazon's Kindle products had their best holiday season ever, according to a statement released by the company on Thursday. More than a million Kindles flew off the shelves each week during the month December.

Former Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd made romantic advances over several years toward an independent contractor who later accused him of sexual harassment, according to a letter from her lawyer obtained by Reuters.

Verizon may be the largest U.S. mobile broadband supplier, but a series of network outages throughout December have plenty of customers on edge, and it's the kind of thing many customers won't forget. After all, it was just this kind of coverage issue that drove so many people from AT&T over to Verizon a year ago as AT&T slipped to the number two spot among U.S. teleco's.

Analysis from CyberCoders, a technology staffing company, has revealed that Ruby developers are in the highest demand, at least financially speaking, and earn about $106,667 per job on average (in New York City). The demand for Ruby developers in Palo Alto remains high, too. Ruby developers in the West can earn $115,000 annually on average.

An appeals court ruled that a letter linked to Mark Hurd's abrupt departure from his post as chief of Hewlett-Packard Co should be unsealed, potentially revealing new details about his dramatic exit from the technology giant.