Lavrov on Russian hacking allegations: Have not seen any facts, even hints at facts Wednesday, 12 Apr 2017 | 2:17 PM ET | 03:47Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov again pushed back on allegations that Russia interfered in the U.S. election during a Wednesday press conference with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “As for the allegations that the U.S. government has irrefutable proof that we interfered with the electoral campaign, I have to say, once again, that we have not seen any facts, even hints

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a slightly lower open on Wednesday morning as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meets his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow. “I have to do healthcare first, I want to do it first to really do it right,” Trump said. Stocks rallied after Trump was elected in part because of the prospects of lower taxes, deregulation and fiscal policy. On the data front, import prices posted their biggest drop in seven months in March, falling 0.2 percent. In Asia,

President Donald Trump and Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, are holding a press conference following their meeting Wednesday afternoon. Trump was expected to reaffirm the U.S.’s commitment to NATO, but he also intends to to stress his desire that allies in the organization beef up their defense budgets. Trump has been critical of NATO countries that he believes aren’t paying their “fair share” to support the defense of the North Atlantic territory overseen by the group. Trump was

U.S. government debt prices were higher on Wednesday after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Russian officials in Moscow. Tillerson visited Moscow on Wednesday and received a barrage of criticism from several Russian officials. Ahead of a meeting with Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that he wanted to know what the real intentions of the U.S. administration are, following its missile strikes in Syria. Tillerson said in a news conference Wednesday that U.S.-Russ

To that end, Amazon tries not to conflate the process of serving customers with the results, Bezos said. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, ‘Well, we followed the process,'” Bezos writes. The company has also embraced, and even pioneered, outside trends like cloud computing and artificial intelligence. “The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the

To be sure, founder Bezos isn’t doing too bad: He owns a giant chunk of Amazon, with nearly 17 percent beneficial ownership of the company’s shares. Indeed, he’s the second wealthiest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Because of his stock ownership, Bezos has never received annual cash compensation in excess of his annual base salary of about $82,000, and has never received any stock-based compensation from Amazon. But Jassy’s cloud computing division could be t

HP shares climbed on Wednesday after the stock was upgraded to “buy” by Citi analyst Jim Suva, who expects the company to continue to gain PC market share. The stock was the top mover in the S&P 500 on Wednesday morning, with shares closing up more than 2 percent. HP is moving toward more premium products, including hybrids and gaming, that could drive it to make gains as the PC market is revived, Suva wrote. Positive trends in the U.S. economy — including strong employment data and high consume

Rafferty Capital Markets’ Dick Bove shared his views on bank stocks in an interview Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” On the financial sector: “I think you should be getting out of the banks right here. “You are going to have to wait till the fall before you are going to make any money in bank stocks.” Bove is vice president of equity research at Rafferty Capital Markets. To watch the broadcast interview in its entirety, you must be a CNBC PRO subscriber.

Google Home is one of my favorite gadgets, and spending a bit of time to learn some of its secrets has made it even more valuable to me and my family. Google Home, if you’re unfamiliar, is Google’s version of the Amazon Echo and works in much the same manner. Speak a command and Google Assistant — the name isn’t as appealing as Alexa — answers your query. If you own a Google Home, you can do so much more than ask the weather or how old George Washington was when he died (67). I’ll walk you throu

When it comes to where Americans like to shop, one thing is immediately clear: They’re after value . According to new data from The NPD Group’s Checkout Tracking Service, the largest percentage of Americans spent money at Walmart, McDonald’s and Target last year. Some 95 percent of U.S. consumers shopped at one of Wal-Mart’s 4,700 stores or on its website in 2016, according to NPD. Some 42 percent of consumers spent money on Amazon, according to NPD. NPD’s data, collected in collaboration with S

Wal-Mart is going to start offering discounts on in-store pick ups Wednesday, 12 Apr 2017 | 9:03 AM ET | 00:51Wal-Mart investors are starting to see what the retailer will look like under the influence of Marc Lore. Starting next week, Wal-Mart shoppers will receive a discount on 10,000 online-only items if they elect to pick up their orders in-store. “Jet is in a lot of ways Wal-Mart discovering fire for a bricks-and-mortar retailer,” O’Shea said. In any case, Wal-Mart’s initiative is just the

To that end, NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC, announced Wednesday a deal with mobile ad company Kargo to launch what it calls “the world’s largest premium ecosystem for mobile advertising.” They aim to provide one-stop shopping to place ads on 300 premium properties from 70 media companies. Now when advertisers come to NBCUniversal, they’ll be able to not only buy ads across the company’s digital and traditional platforms, but also across the premium mobile sites for whom Kargo sells ads —

There’s more than $700,000 worth of whisky in this room Wednesday, 12 Apr 2017 | 1:28 AM ET | 02:03It’s a whisky enthusiast’s dream. Johnnie Walker House is an invitation-only suite located at Diageo’s Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. CNBC took a tour of the space, which hosts guests to learn, taste and purchase a variety of high-end offerings. The space, which opened last year, is one of 26 private suites in the world and the only one in Southeast Asia. In total, the room boasts more tha

Would you rather have the ultimate wristwatch or a fleet of $200,000 cars? “The Billionaire,” an ultra-luxury watch by Jacob & Co., took nearly two years to build and is decked out in 260 carats of diamonds. As the name suggests, you’d probably have to be one of the world’s richest people to afford its whopping $18 million asking price, which could also get you 90 red Ferraris. “The Billionaire” and three other super high-end watches, ranging in price from $1.6 million to $18 million, are featur

No wonder that many consumers have debt-related plans for their tax refund. The average income tax refund — $2,878 overall and $3,031 for those receiving the money via direct deposit, according to the IRS — could be a big help in your goal of knocking down that debt. One in 5 taxpayers expects to put tax refund cash toward a debt, and 28 percent will use the proceeds to pay bills, according to a new survey from TD Bank. The bank polled 1,213 taxpayers in early March. 1 priority,” said Odysseas P

Shares of Neurocrine Biosciences leaped more than 22 percent Wednesday after the biotech firm announced federal approval of its drug for a movement disorder. Neurocrine announced late Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration has approved Ingrezza, the only product for treatment of adults with tardive dyskinesia, or TD. The condition is characterized by uncontrollable, abnormal and repetitive movements in certain upper body muscles caused by treatments often prescribed for mental illness, th

Earlier in the day, hospital, physician and insurance industry groups sent a letter urging the president and congressional leaders to maintain the subsidies for this year and next, calling it the most “critical action” to stabilize the individual market. “If I were a carrier right now, I guess I would be thinking about… two sets of rates. In the spring of 2015, some states allowed insurers to submit two sets of rates, when the Supreme Court was deciding the legality of Obamacare tax credits in

Love it or hate it, the election of Donald Trump has motivated Americans to express themselves politically through their purses and wallets. The CNBC All-America Economic survey found that 37 percent of the public report making a spending decision or political or charitable contribution because of President Donald Trump’s election. The survey polled 804 Americans across the country on April 3–6 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. More of the financial activism has b

For entrepreneurs planning to build a start-up the right way, no one has left a clearer trail of how-tos than Alphabet’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Once graduate students at Stanford University working on the Google search engine, they now run an internet conglomerate worth close to $600 billion. The recent advertiser uproar over Alphabet’s inability to identify offensive content on YouTube shows that even the Google founders are still learning. And the company also faces recent claims

The glucose team is said to report to Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies. Hillman’s LinkedIn page lists him as having had a “confidential role” in hardware technologies at Apple. One person said about 30 people were working in this group as of a year ago. Some of these people joined the secretive team dedicated to glucose, sources said, while others are on Apple Watch team. It could turn the Apple Watch into a “must have” rather than a “nice to have” for people