Business Story of the Day

In California, activists and environmentalists are seeking to halt construction of a new $500 million rail yard next to the Port of Los Angeles. Activists say the massive project would mean even more pollution for nearby neighborhoods that already have some of the worst air in the country.

There's significance behind the choice of California as the venue for the U.S.-China summit between presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. The state is home to more than a third of the China-born population in the U.S., and Chinese-backed investment groups have been pouring billions of dollars into real estate property and private companies based in California. At the same time, exports of California goods to China are surging, and state leaders are bullish about capitalizing on new markets there.

The Chinese computer maker is trying to boost its brand and U.S. market share as other high-tech firms, including Motorola, plan to manufacture here. North Carolina officials say the plant in Whitsett is a sign of manufacturing's return from overseas.

For the past five years, graduation day has been a time of apprehension as much as celebration. Prospects for those entering the workforce for the first time were bleak. The class of 2013 — whether from high school or college — has cause for more optimism than previous classes.

On Spain's Atlantic coast, the city of Santander has installed 12,000 sensors that measure everything from when streetlights need to be dimmed to when trash dumpsters are full — saving millions for cash-strapped public coffers. It's becoming a model for cities worldwide.

This week, the European Union gave some of its member nations more time to meet deficit-reduction targets — in other words, to ease back on austerity. The programs have crushed growth and sent European unemployment to a record high 12 percent.

One industry official says a path to citizenship would improve conditions in the industry, which relies heavily on immigrant labor.

Code for America, a new nonprofit out of San Francisco, is building apps to make cities work better for citizens. One of its apps often cuts down the normal time it would take to find something — for example, property research in the treasurer's office.

NASA and Google have come together to buy a new kind of computer that the manufacturer says runs on the strange laws of quantum mechanics. But some physicists counter that the machine, known as the D-Wave Two, has never demonstrated a phenomenon known as "quantum entanglement."

Tim Cook will address reports that his company pays billions less than it should in U.S. taxes each year at a Tuesday hearing in Washington. According to a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Apple avoids the tax payments by shifting profits to subsidiaries in Ireland.