LANSING - Legislative Democrats unveiled a proposal Monday that would extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks when the jobless rate rises above 5 percent, as well as increase the weekly maximum unemployment benefit to $408 from $362 and tie it to inflation increases. But their Republican counterparts said the package would hurt businesses by increasing
ARMONK, NY ? IBM announced Tuesday that it is launching a new licensing program with the venture capital community and startups as it seeks to populate emerging businesses with its technology. The new IBM Ventures in Collaboration program will give venture capital companies in IBM's partner network and their portfolio clients with the opportunity to
LANSING ? Michigan?s state economic development efforts, including the governor's jobs plan and Republican-led tax cuts, will pay off in job growth, said new Michigan Economic Development Corporation CEO James Epolito - but those new jobs will not outpace loss of existing jobs for some two years. Epolito, who has now been head of the
ANN ARBOR - The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has been awarded a $25 million contract by the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop and test a new, integrated crash warning system in a fleet of 16 passenger cars and heavy-duty trucks. UMTRI, along with partners Visteon Corp., Eaton Corp., AssistWare Technology Inc., Honda
DETROIT ? TechTown, the downtown Detroit technology accelerator run by Wayne State University, has announced that it has inked deals with six new tenants during the final quarter of this year, raising the number of tenant companies to 21. ?Our original plan was to expand to 40 companies in 10 years,? said TechTown Executive Director
SAN FRANCISCO ? Both Circuit City and Best Buy are selling $299 Compaq-branded PCs, part of the cornucopia of tech bargains available for the Holidays. But in the case of the Compaq PCs, beware of the differences. While both include an 80GB hard drive and 256MB of memory, the Best Buy machine comes with a
SHEFFIELD, United Kingdom ? Grand Rapids and Detroit were ranked in the top 15 in the 2005 edition of World Knowledge Competitiveness Index released Tuesday. WKCI is the a relative measure of the knowledge economies of the world?s leading regions. Grand Rapids ranked sixth in the latest survey and Detroit 15th, down from third and
LANSING ? Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm seems to have conceded to the retooled business tax plan making its way through the Legislature and said Wednesday she is willing to sign off on the bills as long Republicans leaders don't change anything in the proposal and - a very big and - Congress does not pass
LANSING - The House passed all of its four business tax cut bills Wednesday, but added another bill that would increase the sales apportionment from 90 percent to 95, thereby lowering taxes for manufacturers. Though the bills passed easily, more Democrats came out against the package than their Senate counterparts had done the day before.
For companies with 51 to 100 employees the jump is dramatic ? 55 percent in the first half of 2006, up from just 22 percent in the last half of 2005. Most of the increase will be seen in mid-level staff working on technology applications. Only 4 percent of responding companies expect to decrease their