Rochester Business Journal Leading source of business news and information in Rochester, N.Y.

Starbucks announced Monday that it will eliminate plastic straws from all of its locations within two years. Plastic straws have come under fire as an environmental threat to oceans even though they account for a small percentage of the waste ...

One of the biggest concerns you hear from businesses in our region—and across the country—is that there are not enough skilled workers for companies to fill the openings they have. This is especially true in technical fields that require more ...

The tariffs enacted by the Trump administration in recent weeks have prompted action from other countries and from companies based in the U.S., while the stock markets have been volatile over concerns about a trade war between the U.S. and ...

  Nations sell goods and services to each other because this exchange is generally mutually beneficial. It’s easy to understand that Iceland should not be growing its own oranges, given its climate. Instead, Iceland should buy oranges from Spain, which can ...

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that ended the process of separating children from their parents after they are detained crossing the U.S. border illegally. The separations had increased dramatically since the Trump administration implemented a “zero-tolerance” policy ...

New York’s top health official said Monday that the Health Department’s report on marijuana will recommend that New York legalize the drug for recreational use. “We looked at the pros, we looked at the cons,” Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said ...

Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, R-Canandaigua, and other Republican Assembly members on Wednesday called for passage of bills that would make the state’s economic development programs more transparent. They are right to do so. The state gives out hundreds of ...

Big things are happening in Rochester and transportation improvements are playing a major role. Gov. Andrew Cuomo knows that transportation supports mobility, community vitality and economic growth. That’s why he’s making smart transportation investments in the Finger Lakes region and across the ...

The Hilton Central School District announced Monday that it has postponed a scheduled school board vote on whether to arm some of its security officers. The school board had planned to vote Tuesday on a resolution that would apply to ...

It is fitting that on the same day that Harvey Weinstein stood in court to face rape and criminal sex act charges, another vestige of sexism was discarded. The Miss American Organization announced Tuesday that when the Miss America pageant ...

  I first visited the Zaatari refugee camp in early 2015. Located in northern Jordan, the camp is home to more than 80,000 Syrian refugees. I was there as part of a research study on refugee camp wireless and information ...

State Assemblyman Harry Bronson, D-Chili/Rochester, is one of a number of New York Democrats supporting a bill that’s in front of the state Senate Health Committee that would create a single-payer health system for New York. Bronson promoted the bill ...

A trip to the DMV is often seen as a painful process that nobody looks forward to, but news last week that personal and confidential customer information was mishandled by local DMV employees is a much bigger problem than the ...

Americans are generally aware of the fact that the coal industry in our country is now in decline. Most of us also understand that this decline has something to do with the environmentally malign impacts of mining and using coal. ...

As voice-activated digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa have become more common, there have been increasing concerns about what the devices mean for the privacy of their users. Some of those concerns came to life when an Oregon family’s private conversations ...