SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) ― Google announced Wednesday that it will unveil a modular smartphone in Puerto Rico this year as part of a pilot program that will allow people to choose their own hardware based on their needs and interests.The company will partner with Mexico-based carrier Claro and local carrier Open Mobile to offer the product, which will be sold from free-standing stores that look like food trucks, said Jessica Beavers, a Google marketing executive.She said Puerto Rico was chosen

U.S. president says lagging access is drag on economy

Brace for $40-a-barrel oil. The U.S. benchmark crude price, down more than $60 since June to below $45 Wednesday, is on the way to this next threshold, said Societe Generale SA and Bank of America Corp. And Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says that West Texas Intermediate needs to remain near $40 during the first half to deter investment in new supplies that would add to the glut. “The markets are continuing to price in huge oversupply in the first half of 2015,” Mike Wittner, head of research at Socie

WASHINGTON (AP) ― The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted to soften a law that brought the strictest rules for banks and Wall Street since the 1930s, more than six years after the 2008 financial crisis struck.The bill is one of several that President Barack Obama has threatened to veto as he clashes with newly empowered Republicans who now control all of Congress. The vote was 271-154 on legislation pushed by the newly bulked-up Republican majority in the House. It now goes

GENEVA (AFP) ― World leaders including France’s Francois Hollande, Germany’s Angela Merkel and China’s Li Keqiang will gather at the annual Davos forum next week, seeking to chart a path away from fundamentalism towards solidarity.“We are in a critical situation, at the crossroads,” the World Economic Forum’s founder Klaus Schwab said Wednesday.“We have two roads in front of us, one is the road of disintegration, hate and fundamentalism, the other is the road of solidarity,” he said, citing the

World oil prices slid Wednesday after major crude producers stressed they will maintain output levels despite global oversupply, while traders awaited the latest update on U.S. crude inventories.Oil sentiment was also soured after the World Bank slashed its global 2015 economic growth forecast to 3.0 percent from 3.4 percent, raising fresh doubts about future crude demand.In early afternoon deals in London, Brent North Sea crude for February delivery lost 10 cents to $46.49 per barrel.U.S. bench

DETROIT (AFP) ― The world’s most prominent automakers are hungrily eyeing up Cuba after its rapprochement deal with the United States.But trade restrictions that are still in place for Americans and a litany of concerns about Havana’s policies means they are unlikely to dive in any time soon. Washington and communist Cuba in December began the painstaking process of restoring diplomatic relations and easing the five-decade-old trade embargo.President Barack Obama declared that the United States

The last time excess supply caused a plunge in oil, it took almost five years for prices to recover. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. oil benchmark, tumbled 69 percent from $31.82 a barrel in November 1985 to $9.75 in April 1986 when Saudi Arabia, tiring of cutting output to support prices, flooded the market. Prices didn’t claw back the losses until 1990. Oil has dropped 57 percent since June and OPEC members say they’re willing to let prices sink further. Surging prices in the 1970s led to th

GANDHINAGAR, India (AFP) ― Narendra Modi may have pledged to make India the “easiest” place to do business but experts remain skeptical about how the prime minister intends to overcome obstacles such as corruption, red tape and an arduous tax regime.Hundreds of executives gathered this week in Modi’s longtime fiefdom of Gujarat to hear him promise to transform India’s business climate, with “unlimited” reforms designed to attract foreign investment. Everyone from World Bank president Jim Yong Ki

The World Bank cut its forecast for global growth this year, as an improving U.S. economy and low fuel prices fail to offset disappointing results from Europe to China. The world economy will expand 3 percent in 2015, down from a projection of 3.4 percent in June, according to the lender’s semiannual Global Economic Prospects report, released Tuesday in Washington. The report adds to signs of a growing disparity between the U.S. and other major economies while tempering any optimism that a plung