Germany's Volkswagen says auto industry headwinds mean it can't rule out plant closings in its home country - and must drop a longstanding job protection pledge in force since 1994 that would have barred layoffs through 2029.

"The European automotive industry is in a very demanding and serious situation," Oliver Blume, Volkswagen Group CEO, said in a statement Monday.

When Jerome Powell delivered a high-profile speech last month, the Federal Reserve chair came the closest he ever had to declaring that the inflation surge that gripped the nation for three painful years was now essentially defeated.

And not only that. The Fed's high interest rates, Powell said, had managed to achieve that goal without causing a widely predicted recession and high unemployment.

Wall Street was poised to open with losses Tuesday, kicking off a holiday-shortened week that features another hefty slate of earnings and the government's latest jobs report.

Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were each down 0.5% before the bell.

Lebanon's controversial former central bank governor Riad Salameh was detained Tuesday after being questioned in several corruption cases, according to three judicial officials.

Salameh served a 30-year term as central bank governor beginning in 1993.

Vice President Kamala Harris used a joint campaign appearance with President Joe Biden in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania on Monday to say that U.S. Steel should remain domestically owned — concurring with the White House's monthslong opposition to the company's planned sale to Japan's Nippon Steel.

Her comments came during a rally before cheering union members marking Labor Day in the industrial city of Pittsburgh, where Harris said U.S. Steel was "an historic American company and it is vital for our country to maintain strong American steel companies."

With up to 17 rooms to clean each shift, Fatima Amahmoud's job at the Moxy hotel in downtown Boston sometimes feels impossible.

Imagine a customer-service center that speaks your language, no matter what it is.

Alorica, a company in Irvine, California, that runs customer-service centers around the world, has introduced an artificial intelligence translation tool that lets its representatives talk with customers who speak 200 different languages and 75 dialects.

Global shares were mixed in cautious trading Monday ahead of the Labor Day holiday in the U.S., when stock exchanges are closed.

France's CAC 40 slipped 0.3% in early trading to 7,611.64, while Germany's DAX fell 0.1% to 18,881.14. Britain's FTSE 100 was little changed, down less than 0.1% at 8,370.39. U.S. shares were set to drift lower with Dow futures down 0.1% at 41,613.00. S&P 500 futures fell 0.1% to 5,654.25.

Iran's president said his country needs some $100 billion in foreign investment to achieve an annual target of 8% economic growth up from the current rate of 4%.

Climate change is stressing rainforests where the highly sensitive cocoa bean grows, but chocolate lovers need not despair, say companies that are researching other ways to grow cocoa or develop cocoa substitutes.

Scientists and entrepreneurs are working on ways to make more cocoa that stretch well beyond the tropics, from Northern California to Israel.