Business news in brief

FILE - In this May 16, 2012, file photo, the Facebook logo is displayed on an iPad in Philadelphia. Facebook believes its policing system is better at scrubbing graphic violence, gratuitous nudity and terrorist propaganda from its social network than it is at removing racist, sexist and other hateful remarks. The self-assessment on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, came three weeks after Facebook tried to give a clearer explanation of the kinds of posts that it won't tolerate. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
FILE - In this May 16, 2012, file photo, the Facebook logo is displayed on an iPad in Philadelphia. Facebook believes its policing system is better at scrubbing graphic violence, gratuitous nudity and terrorist propaganda from its social network than it is at removing racist, sexist and other hateful remarks. The self-assessment on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, came three weeks after Facebook tried to give a clearer explanation of the kinds of posts that it won't tolerate. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

Acxiom to release results on call today

Acxiom Corp. will release its fourth-quarter and fiscal-year earnings today after the market closes, the Conway-based technology company said.

Management will host a conference call at 4 p.m. to discuss the financial results. The call can be accessed by dialing (833) 287-0802 and using the identification code 979-6535.

-- David Smith

Wells Fargo target of Fed nominees' ire

WASHINGTON -- Two Federal Reserve nominees on Tuesday slammed Wells Fargo & Co., for its consumer abuses and indicated that they would have to see significant improvements before voting to lift a cap on the San Francisco bank's growth.

"Just based upon the news accounts, which of course is all I have to go on, the activities of Wells Fargo in this domain are egregious and unacceptable and I was as shocked as anyone to read about it in the newspaper," said economist Richard Clarida, the nominee to be vice chairman of the Fed, at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

The other of President Donald Trump's Fed nominees at the confirmation hearing, Kansas banking regulator Michelle Bowman, said she concurred with Clarida's answer.

"The actions of Wells Fargo were absolutely inappropriate and I would certainly want to make sure that any concerns are addressed by the bank prior to any discussion," she said.

In February, the Fed board voted unanimously to order Wells Fargo to cap its growth at the $1.95 trillion in assets reached at the end of last year and to improve its corporate governance in response to the creation of millions of unauthorized customer accounts and other consumer abuses.

-- Tribune News Service

Facebook admits hate talk hard to police

SAN FRANCISCO -- Getting rid of offensive remarks on Facebook is more challenging than weeding out other types of unacceptable posts because computer programs still stumble over the nuances of human language, the company revealed Tuesday.

Facebook's self-assessment showed its policing system is far better at scrubbing graphic violence, gratuitous nudity and terrorist propaganda. Automated tools detected 86 percent to 99.5 percent of the violations Facebook identified in those categories. For hate speech, Facebook's human reviewers and computer algorithms identified just 38 percent of the violations. The rest came after Facebook users flagged the offending content for review.

Facebook also disclosed that it disabled nearly 1.3 billion fake accounts in the six months that ended in March. Had the company failed to do so, its user base would have swelled beyond its current 2.2 billion.

The report was Facebook's first breakdown on how much material it removes for violating its policies. The statistics cover a relatively short period, from October of last year through March of this year, and don't disclose how long it takes Facebook to remove material violating its standards.

-- The Associated Press

After bank hackings, Mexico slows wires

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico established a one-day waiting period on electronic money transfers of over $2,500 in the wake of a hacking attack that may have taken as much as $20 million from several Mexican banks.

It was the latest in a string of embarrassments for the Mexican banking system, which has seen slowdowns in e-payment, debit-card transactions and transfers since late April.

The head of the country's central bank, Alejandro Diaz de Leon, acknowledged late Monday that a "cyberattack" was involved in shadowy transfers of between $18 million and $20 million.

The central bank issued a memo Monday saying banks could opt to immediately pay out transfers for customers they know and trust, but would impose a one-day wait period for others.

-- The Associated Press

California city's coal-shipping ban struck

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge in California on Tuesday struck down Oakland's ban on coal shipments at a proposed cargo terminal, siding with a developer who wants to use the site to transport Utah coal to Asia.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco ruled the information the city relied on to conclude the coal operations would pose a substantial health or safety danger to the public was "riddled with inaccuracies, major evidentiary gaps, erroneous assumptions, and faulty analyses, to the point that no reliable conclusion about health or safety dangers could be drawn from it."

City leaders approved construction of a rail and marine terminal in 2013 as part of a larger makeover of an Army base that was shuttered in 1999.

The $250 million project in west Oakland -- a historically black neighborhood that is among the poorest and most polluted in the region -- was expected to provide thousands of construction and shipping jobs.

-- The Associated Press

Texas' Arlington drops Amazon HQ2 bid

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Arlington says it's "no longer moving forward" in the competition to become Amazon's second headquarters, and released details of the incentives it offered the online retailer.

Arlington said Tuesday that it had been "one of the very select finalists in North Texas asked by Amazon to make an in-person pitch to company executives and provide a site visit for our proposed HQ2 site." But it said it was no longer involved.

Arlington's pitch was included in the proposal for the Dallas-Fort Worth region, which included many area sites. Arlington offered incentives estimated at $921 million, including a 10-year property-tax abatement and a grant for the hiring of Arlington residents. The city proposed the 200-plus-acre Globe Life Park, soon-to-be-former home of the Texas Rangers baseball team, as the potential site. The team will move into a new stadium in 2020.

Amazon had set off the competition last year, and made clear that tax breaks and grants would be a big factor in its decision. In January it released a list of 20 areas still in the running for the $5 billion project that could employ up to 50,000 people.

-- The Associated Press

Business on 05/16/2018

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