Business news in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“There isn’t much in this report to suggest inflation is about to make a move to the upside or downside.”

Michael Feroli, a JPMorgan Chase economist, on the Labor Department’s consumer price index

Article, 1D

N.M. weighs special session for Tesla

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, said her office is considering a special legislative session to help the state win a Tesla Motors facility.

In a speech to an Albuquerque area commercial real estate development association on Monday, Martinez said her office is evaluating whether a special session is necessary to complete a package of economic incentives that aim to make New Mexico more appealing to Tesla, the Albuquerque Journal reported.

New Mexico is one of four states identified as finalists for a lithium-ion battery factory that would supply the company’s Fremont, Calif., assembly plant. The others are Arizona, Nevada and Texas.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tesla said it will invest $2 billion in the 10 million-square-foot factory, which will cost between $4 billion and $5 billion. Its partners will invest the rest.

The new factory will provide enough batteries to supply 500,000 vehicles by 2020, Tesla said. Tesla expects to produce 35,000 vehicles this year.

Martinez wouldn’t discuss details of the negotiations with Tesla, but she said New Mexico is in the running for the project in part because of tax changes that the state has made.

E-cigarette bill advances in Louisiana

BATON ROUGE — A proposal to ban the sale of electronic cigarettes to anyone under 18 in Louisiana has sailed through a Senate judiciary committee without objection. It now moves to the Senate floor. Sen. Rick Gallot, D-Ruston, described his bill as a safety measure. It would add e-cigarettes and alternative nicotine products to the list of items that can’t be sold to minors. E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that provide users with aerosol puffs that typically contain nicotine, and sometimes flavorings such as fruit, mint or chocolate. Users get their nicotine without the chemicals, tar or odor of regular cigarettes. The National Conference of State Legislatures says 27 states have banned the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, including Arkansas.

— The Associated Press

Dubai aims to double hotel rooms by ’20

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Dubai plans to almost double the number of hotel rooms by 2020 as it expects a surge of visitors to the desert sheikdom ahead of that year’s World Expo.

The emirate, which spent more than $110 billion to transform itself into the Middle East’s commercial and entertainment hub, is seeking to attract 20 million tourists annually by the end of the decade, Helal Saeed Almarri, director general of the Dubai Tourism and Commerce Marketing, said in an interview Monday. To do that, it needs to raise the number of hotel rooms to as many as 160,000, many of them not in the luxury category Dubai is known for, he said.

Dubai, part of the seven-member United Arab Emirates, attracted 11 million tourists last year, up 11 percent from 2012. That contributed to economic expansion of 4.9 percent, the fastest pace in six years.

Tourism accounted for about 20 percent of gross domestic product in 2013, and is forecast to increase between 7 percent and 9 percent through 2020, Almarri said.

Google, Viacom settle YouTube lawsuit

Google Inc. and Viacom Inc. have settled Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit claiming YouTube violated copyrights by letting users post video clips from television shows without authorization after a federal judge twice threw out the allegations. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Viacom originally sued in 2007, claiming that YouTube users were illegally uploading thousands of videos of Viacom TV shows, such as South Park and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and movies from its Paramount Pictures film studio. U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton ruled in 2010 in Mountain View, Calif.-based Google’s favor. In April 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York overturned that ruling and sent the case back to the District Court. In April 2013, Google for a second time persuaded Stanton to throw out Viacom’s lawsuit. Stanton said last year that YouTube was protected from liability by the safe harbor provision of the Copyright Act because it removed infringing videos when notified. New York based Viacom said at the time it would appeal the decision.

— Bloomberg News

Porsche to swap out engines after fires

Porsche AG will swap out the engine on the racing version of the 911 sports car after the German automaker took the rare step of telling customers to stop driving the model because the vehicle could catch fire. “We’re not taking any risks when it comes to the safety of our customers,” Porsche Chief Executive Officer Matthias Mueller said Tuesday on the sidelines of a company event in Stuttgart, Germany. “We’re acting fast and decisively to fix this.” The Volkswagen AG brand sent out details to owners Monday and is offering replacement cars such as the 911 Turbo while their vehicles are repaired, Mueller said. Porsche last month recalled all 785 of the $190,930 911 GT3 from the current model year after two vehicles caught fire after engine failures. No accidents or injuries were tied to the fires, it said at the time.

— Bloomberg News

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