Camila Domonoske

The U.S. Postal Service is experimenting with self-driving trucks to move mail across state lines.

The USPS has partnered with San Diego-based TuSimple on a two-week pilot program, focusing solely on a 1,000-mile route between Dallas and Phoenix.

Know a young driver who's ignoring your pleas to buckle up? Chevrolet suggests you might try to see if they'll listen to a different authority figure: their car.

The automaker is introducing a feature, specifically for teen drivers, that will temporarily block the auto from shifting into gear if their seat belt isn't buckled. A message will alert the driver to buckle up in order to shift into gear.

After 20 seconds, the vehicle will operate normally.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET

Ford is eliminating about 7,000 white-collar jobs — or about 10% of its salaried workforce — as part of a previously announced companywide global restructuring.

About 800 U.S. workers will lose their jobs between now and August. Another 1,500 U.S. employees took voluntary buyouts last year.

Globally, some of the 7,000 affected workers are being laid off, while others are being reassigned, Ford says.

The Trump administration's trade war with China continues to roil markets and draw headlines. But that's not the only trade tension in town.

For about a year, the White House has been weighing the possibility of imposing tariffs or quotas on cars and car parts imported from close allies in Europe and Japan.

The auto industry is united in opposition to the tariffs. But carmakers and auto suppliers may have to keep waiting to find out whether their pleas have been heard.

Uber will go public on Friday in a highly anticipated initial public offering that will be the largest since 2014 — and one of the biggest in U.S. history.

After speculation that the ride-hailing company could be valued at as high as $120 billion, Uber is now targeting a valuation of $80 billion to $90 billion. At the same time, it has never made a profit — and has instead been burning through cash at a prodigious rate.

New York City is preparing to become the first urban area in the U.S. to adopt congestion pricing — a fee for drivers entering the city center, designed to reduce gridlock and help fund the city's struggling subway system.

And nearly two years before the fees are put in place, a poll by Quinnipiac University found that 54% of New Yorkers are opposed to the change in policy. That's no surprise to experts on transportation policy.

Robots have revolutionized auto manufacturing, making plants safer and products more reliable — and reducing the number of people involved in the process. But walk inside a modern auto plant, and you'll quickly realize that robots have hardly replaced the human touch — at least, not in some areas.

Volvo is a Chinese-owned Swedish company making cars in the U.S. When it decided to set up a plant in South Carolina to build cars to ship around the world, it was following a long tradition.

With its port, Charleston, S.C., has been a shipping hub for centuries. And the state has been home to international manufacturers for decades — BMW, Michelin and Bosch are among the many global firms with footholds there.

But before the plant opened last year, President Trump transformed America's approach to trade policy.

Multinational oil giant Chevron will buy the American oil and gas production and exploration company Anadarko Petroleum in a $33 billion cash-and-stock deal that strengthens Chevron's position in the booming Permian Basin.

Updated at 5:41 p.m. ET

Going green is often easier said than done, but a new business organization is hoping to change that. While focusing on large-scale energy buyers, the group plans to push for changes that could make renewable power more accessible for all Americans.

Companies from a variety of industries — including Walmart, General Motors, Google and Johnson & Johnson — are forming a trade association to represent firms that purchase renewable energy and remove barriers that make it complicated to shift away from carbon.

Boeing's bestselling jetliner, the 737 Max, has crashed twice in six months — the Lion Air disaster in October and the Ethiopian Airlines crash this month. Nearly 350 people have been killed, and the model of plane has been grounded indefinitely as investigations are underway.

Boeing has maintained the planes are safe. But trust — from the public, from airlines, from pilots and regulators — has been shaken.

So far, experts say, Boeing has mishandled this crisis but has the opportunity to win back confidence in the future.

With its fastest-selling plane grounded in the U.S. and around the world, Boeing faces potential hits to its bottom line as well as to its reputation. A lengthy delay could cut Boeing's revenues by billions, some analysts say.

Some people love electric scooters. Some people hate them. And some people charge them — for money.

By day, Joel Kirzner is a consultant in Arlington, Va. But when he wraps up work in the office, he pulls out his phone and checks multiple scooter apps to see what's available nearby.

If there are scooters low on battery, they'll show up in the map on his phone. And if he can find the scooter in real life (and beat any rival chargers to the punch), he'll earn a few bucks for each one he charges at home.

"It's like Pokémon Go and you make money," he says.

Most American automobiles are powered by internal combustion engines: Gas or diesel goes in, tiny explosions power pistons and turn a crankshaft, the car moves forward, and carbon dioxide goes out.

But a growing chorus of environmental activists, business analysts and auto executives are predicting a sea change as battery-powered electric vehicles grow in popularity.

Harley-Davidsons are famous for their iconic deep rumble. But the Milwaukee-based motorcycle maker's latest model features an electric motor that emits a high-pitched whirring sound. Will Harley fans go along for the ride?

After five years of tweaking and preparation, Harley-Davidson's long-awaited electric motorcycle will start rolling out to dealerships this summer.

Tesla is finally making a profit. For the first time, the California-based electric carmaker has posted two quarterly profits in a row.

Those profits were driven by pricey cars — higher-priced variants of Tesla's new Model 3, which sell for $50,000 and up.

Tesla is reducing its workforce by 7 percent — more than 3,000 jobs, according to a recent staffing estimate — as the company continues its efforts to bring lower-cost electric vehicles to market.

CEO Elon Musk announced the layoffs on Friday in an email to staff, saying the company is facing "an extremely difficult challenge."

Gas is relatively cheap these days. Enjoy those low prices, but don't get used to them, analysts say.

An oversupply of oil on the world market has triggered a steady slide in gas prices, bringing Americans some of the cheapest gas in years as 2019 kicked off.

Nationally, regular was averaging around $2.25 per gallon at the start of January — the lowest price for this time of year since 2016, according to AAA.

It's welcome news for drivers. Just last summer, gas prices were at four-year highs.

Ford Motor Co. is cutting jobs in Europe and backing away from less profitable models as part of a major restructuring effort, the company announced Thursday. It's the latest sign of big changes in a global auto industry.

Updated at 2:20 p.m. ET

Migrants who cross the U.S. Southern border and seek asylum will be required to wait in Mexico while their claims are being processed, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Thursday.

Currently, most people requesting asylum are allowed to stay in the U.S. — sometimes in detention — while their claim is pending in immigration court. The new policy will send such migrants to Mexico for the duration of that process.

More journalists were killed, imprisoned and held hostage in 2018 than the year before, according to the latest annual report from Reporters Without Borders.

In the first 11 months of the year, 348 journalists were detained and 60 were held hostage, the organization found. Eighty were killed.

Reporters Without Borders — known as RSF, for its French name, Reporters Sans Frontieres — released the report on Tuesday.

Updated at 4:20 p.m. ET

Penny Marshall, who became a household name as Laverne in the TV sitcom Laverne & Shirley and went on to direct several popular movies, has died at the age of 75.

Marshall died Monday night at her Los Angeles home from complications of diabetes, family publicist Michelle Bega tells NPR.

Massive waves are breaking along the coast of California, and the National Weather Service is warning of "potentially life-threatening conditions" and urging people to stay away from the water.

Forecasters began warning of high waves over the weekend, saying a swell would strike Sunday afternoon through Tuesday, with the peak on Monday morning. The NWS warned of waves that could reach "50+ feet at favored breaks."

The U.S. bank Goldman Sachs is facing criminal charges in Malaysia in connection with a massive corruption scheme known as the 1MDB scandal.

That scandal — involving billions of dollars allegedly siphoned from the "1MDB" development fund — has already brought down Malaysia's former prime minister. Several of the fund's top administrators in Malaysia have been charged with corruption in both U.S. and Malaysian courts. They deny the allegations.

This month, a comet called 46P/Wirtanen is doing a dramatic fly-by, giving Earth an unusually good view of its greenish glow.

The timing of the comet's apparition — and its seasonally appropriate coloring — have led some to dub it the "Christmas Comet."

For nearly two weeks in September, developers who created apps for Facebook were able to access user photos that they should never have been allowed to see, the social media company announced Friday.

Up to 6.8 million users may have been affected, Facebook says.

The "bug" affects users who gave permission to a third-party app to access their Facebook photos. Normally, that would only include photos that someone actually posted to their timeline.

A controversial statue of the Indian civil rights leader Mohandas Gandhi has been removed from the The University of Ghana campus, two years after it was installed and faculty promptly began protesting for its removal.

Kimberly-Clark has issued a voluntary recall of some U by Kotex tampons, after a "quality-related defect" caused the tampons to come apart inside of consumers' bodies, leaving pieces behind after the tampon was removed.

The problematic tampons have pushed users to "seek medical attention to remove tampon pieces left in the body," the personal care company says. "There also have been a small number of reports of infections, vaginal irritation, localized vaginal injury, and other symptoms."

Updated at 12:45 p.m. ET

After week-long peace talks at a castle in Sweden, the Yemeni government and Houthi rebels have agreed to a cease-fire in Hodeidah, a strategically significant port city held by the rebels.

The ability to import food, medicine and fuel through the port is essential for many Yemenis, and a Saudi blockade of Hodeidah helped drive widespread hunger in the country.