Business

Audie Cornish talks with Jeff Miller a corn and soybean farmer in Lewiston, Ill., near Peoria, about the flooding in the Midwest that's come on the heels of a historic drought. Miller's farm, located right along the Illinois and Spooner Rivers, is already partially flooded, preventing him from planting corn so far this spring.

The U.S. Congress — a body not exactly known for its swift feet — raced Friday to complete legislation to help travelers avoid delays at airports.

The House voted 361-41 to approve legislation that the Senate passed without objection late Thursday. The bill gives the Federal Aviation Administration more spending flexibility to cut its budget while avoiding furloughs of air traffic controllers.

Dying on the job continues at a steady pace according to the latest statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The fatal injury rate for American workers dropped slightly in 2011 — the most recent year with reported numbers — from 3.6 to 3.5 deaths per 100,000 workers.

But 4,693 men, women and teenagers died at work. That's three more than the total number of lives lost on the job in 2010.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Accelerating economic growth is at the top of NPR's business news.

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INSKEEP: U.S. economic growth regained speed in the first quarter of this year, although not as much as economists had hoped. The Gross Domestic Product grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent. Consumer spending is up and home construction rose, but government spending fell and tax increases, as well as federal budget cuts, are expected to slow economic growth later in the year. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Rescue workers are still hoping to find survivors from the collapse of an eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh that has killed more than 300 people and left hundreds missing.

Meanwhile, angry relatives of the missing have clashed with police, blaming authorities for the catastrophe at Rana Plaza in Savar, an industrial suburb of the capital, Dhaka.

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2013, the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated Friday morning.

That's modest growth, and was below the 3.2 percent pace economists had expected to hear about. But growth was up substantially from fourth-quarter 2012, when the economy expanded at a scant 0.4 percent annual rate.

The Tribune Co., emerging from bankruptcy and looking to reshape itself, is now considering the sale of all its newspapers — including the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun and five other regional newspapers. It's still very early in the sale process; although the newspaper unit has been valued at $623 million, significant debts are also attached, and Tribune has signaled that it reserves the right not to sell if there isn't a worthy bid.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And on this Friday, our last word in business comes in the form of a toast - to the Boston Beer Company, the maker of brews including Samuel Adams.

Seventy employees were on the route of the Boston Marathon last week when the bombs exploded.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with Samsung ringing up sales.

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INSKEEP: Samsung said this morning its first quarter profit is at a record high - net profit surged 42 percent. The company has now seen six straight quarters of growth, thanks to strong smartphone sales. Tomorrow, it's launching a new smartphone in the United States - the Galaxy S4 - which is aimed at taking on Apple's iPhone. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep.

Now that automatic spending cuts are causing wider pain, Congress has begun finding ways to adjust some of them.

MONTAGNE: Today the House is expected to take up a bill the Senate has already approved. It's called the Reducing Flight Delays Act of 2013, and it comes after a week of flight delays and outrage from members of Congress, linked to the furloughs the FAA air traffic controllers.

At a time when so many major American news organizations are cutting back, foreign news agencies are beefing up their presence abroad and in the U.S. One of the biggest new players arrives from China and, more likely than not, can be found on a television set near you.

CCTV, or China Central Television, is owned by the Chinese government. With more than 40 channels in China and an offshoot in the U.S., the broadcaster has been highly profitable for the country's ruling Communist Party, which is liking profits a lot these days.

Most U.S. workers fit snugly into the middle class, but they worry a lot about falling out of it, according to a poll released Thursday.

After years of watching home prices slide and job creation stall, 6 in 10 Americans say they fear tumbling from the middle class in the next few years, the Allstate-National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll suggests.

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Another promising report today suggests that the economy in general and employment in particular continue to improve, but there's another statistic that's more troubling. More Americans than ever participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.

Google has agreed to modify the way it displays search results in Europe as part of a deal to end a probe by the EU's antitrust body. But rivals Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle will first have to sign off on the changes, reports say.

As ZDNet writes:

Update at 11:28 p.m. ET: Toll At 275

Authorities said early Friday that 275 bodies have been recovered from the site.

Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, head of the rescue operation, said 61 people had been rescued since Thursday afternoon, according to The Associated Press. More than 2,000 people have been rescued since the building's collapse on Wednesday.

There were 339,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, down 16,000 from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration says.

The drop brought claims down to around their lowest level since early 2008, when the latest recession was just getting started and before the downturn got its grip on the economy.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Our last word in business is good news for the jet setting romantic, possibly bad news for most everyone else on board.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Virgin Airlines has announced a new service called seat-to-seat delivery, now available on all U.S. flights, which allows passengers to send unsolicited treats to fellow travelers at the touch of a button.

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SIR RICHARD BRANSON: Just order a drink, meal or snack, select his or her seat and don't forget to seal the deal with a suggestive seat-to-seat chat.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Air travelers are growing less and less happy. Automatic budget cuts are now leading to hundreds of flight delays, about half of all delayed flights this week.

NPR's Tamara Keith reports.

TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Up until this point, the effects of the sequester have been scattered and hard to pin down: hiring freezes, delayed park openings. But then the furloughs of air traffic controllers the Federal Aviation Administration had been threatening for months hit and, bam, the sequester got real, real fast.

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Auto executives got a grilling on Capitol Hill yesterday. Not the usual suspects from Detroit's Big Three. Think much, much smaller. Executives from the hybrid carmaker Fisker testified about hundreds of millions of dollars in loans Fisker got from the government. Today, the company is on the verge of collapse.

NPR's Sonari Glinton reports.

SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: Fisker, the car company, isn't dead yet. But Congress has already begun the autopsy.

The lending arm of General Electric has stopped offering financing to retailers whose primary business is selling guns. Around 75 retailers are immediately affected. A company spokesman says this is a response to "industry changes, new legislation and tragic events."

The redesigned U.S. $100 bill will begin appearing after October with new security features that will make it "easier for the public to authenticate but more difficult for counterfeiters to replicate," the U.S. Federal Reserve said Wednesday.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

That market dip yesterday that Steve mentioned, the result of a hacked Twitter feed, highlights how much the financial industry relies on computer algorithms. U.S. stock markets lost $200 billion in value in just a few minutes. The markets bounced back when the Associated Press made clear there was no explosion at the White House and the tweet was a hoax.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish. Boeing says its 787 jetliner should resume passenger service early next month. The so-called Dreamliner has been grounded since problems with the lithium ion batteries surfaced back in January. Batteries on two different planes overheated. One of them, a Japan Air Lines jet, caught fire. Boeing is now working with airlines to retrofit its planes with redesigned batteries now housed in fireproof boxes.

Black and Latino homebuyers pay more for housing than whites and Asians, according to a study released this week by Duke University. The price difference is about 3.5 percent.

That may not sound like a lot. But Patrick Bayer, a Duke economics professor who led the study, says when you do the math, that percentage can translate to about $5,000 or $10,000 per housing sale.

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Now it's time for our Wisdom Watch conversation. That's where we speak with people who've made a difference in their fields.

Today, we hear from one of the most influential tech executives you probably have never heard of unless you're in that field. Not only that, his personal story is just as - if not more - interesting than those of the superstar CEOs you may have heard about in high tech.

In today's economy, many people in search of work can only find part-time jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics finds the number of 'involuntary' part-time workers has doubled since 2006. Host Michel Martin talks about what this means for the workplace and the economy, with The Wall Street Journal's Sudeep Reddy.