Business news in brief

By The Associated Press

Tesla settles lawsuit over man’s death

SANTA CLARA, Calif. | Tesla has settled a lawsuit brought by the family of a Silicon Valley engineer who died in a crash while relying on the company’s semi-autonomous driving software.

The size of the settlement was not disclosed in court documents filed Monday, just a day before the trial stemming from the 2018 crash on a San Francisco Bay Area highway was scheduled to begin. The family of Walter Huang filed a negligence and wrongful lawsuit in 2019 seeking to hold Tesla — and, by extension, its CEO Elon Musk — liable for repeatedly exaggerating the capabilities of Tesla’s self-driving car technology.

Evidence indicated that Huang was playing a video game when he crashed into a highway barrier.

Biden admin pledges $6.6B to ensure microchips are built in U.S.

WILMINGTON, Del. | The Biden administration has pledged to provide up to $6.6 billion so that a Taiwanese semiconductor giant can expand the facilities it is already building in Arizona and better ensure that the most-advanced microchips are produced domestically for the first time.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that Monday’s announced funding for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. means the company can expand on its existing plans for two facilities in Phoenix and add a third, newly announced production hub. Raimonda said, “These are the chips that underpin all artificial intelligence,” and she added that they also “underpin our economy.”

Jury selection begins in Montana trial over asbestos deaths

HELENA, Mont. |Jury selection began Monday in a lawsuit against Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway over the lung cancer deaths of two people who lived in a small Montana town near the U.S.-Canada border where thousands of people were exposed to asbestos from a vermiculite mine.

The widespread contamination over decades led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 to declare the first-ever public health emergency during a Superfund cleanup. The Libby, Montana, site is one of the deadliest under the program.

The W.R. Grace & Co. mine near Libby produced contaminated vermiculite that exposed residents to asbestos, sickening thousands and leading to the deaths of hundreds.

—From AP reports