COMPANIES

Taco Bell?s new, ?upscale? menu items will give the 2 a.m. crowd a bit more ?gourmet? to go with its munchies. The chain restaurant will unleash its new ?Cantina Bell? menu on July 5, featuring new items that include ingredients such as Citrus and Herb Marinated Chicken and Cilantro Rice.

Sales of electronic chips rose 3.4 percent to $24.1 billion in April, the biggest monthly boost in two years, the Semiconductor Industry Association reported. The trade group repeated an earlier forecast for yearly chip sales to reach $301 billion, a slight boost over 2011.

Maybe LinkedIn should change its name to LeakedIn. On Wednesday, the business networking site said it is investigating a user's post from a Russian forum that claims he hacked LinkedIn, uploading 6,458,020 encrypted passwords to the site as proof.

Some of the world's most popular brands are partnering with music festivals to tap into a much-coveted demographic.

Now that the initial public offering of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), the No. 1 social networking site, has lost 32 percent of its value, technology giants including International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) are on a shopping spree. That may chill the IPO pipeline.

Nasdaq has reached out to at least one brokerage that lost money due to Facebook's botched IPO, saying it will make an announcement Wednesday.

Kia Motors Corporation (Seoul: 000270) is recalling 72,568 model year 2006 to 2008 Kia Rio cars due to a defect which can cause deployment of airbags when children are in the passenger seat during a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tuesday.

In the past 24 hours, Google has acquired two companies to substantially improve its various online services. On Monday, Google bought social start-up Meebo to enhance its social services like Google Chat and its social network Google+, and on Tuesday, Google bought Quickoffice to boost the functionality and compatibility of Google Apps like Docs, Gmail, Calendar, Google Drive, and more.

One of the main selling points of the Piaggio Aero Avanti II private plane is the relatively massive cabin size. If you're in the market for a private plane, you probably want comfort, and that probably means the ability to sit and stand without feeling crunched. Piaggio says the Avanti II is the perfect plane for this, but how do some of the other competitors stack up?

At E3 2012, the focus seems to be on a lot more than gaming. Each console is competing to gain dominance as the prominent entertainment system in living rooms around the globe, with a different approach from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

Airline stocks were recovering on Tuesday from a battering the previous day after Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) showed a 6 percent increase in per-seat passenger revenue in May compared to last year, one percentage point lower than it had expected.

On Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled a stunning new technology platform at the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles called SmartGlass, which essentially connects the television and the Xbox to smartphones and tablets, letting users consume their media in a much simpler and more fun way.

Shares of AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL), the No. 7 website, traded near their 52-week high again Tuesday after activist investors Starboard Value won more crucial backing to win seats on the board of directors.

General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) and its joint ventures in China sold a record number of vehicles last month as demand jumped more than 20 percent from the year-earlier level.

Shares of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), the No. 1 social network, kept setting new lows after their May 17 IPO. By Tuesday, they'd shed 32 percent of their value.

Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), the No. 1 database developer, said it had agreed to acquire private Collective Intellect to bolster its Cloud capabilities for software-as-a-service functions.

The P180 Avanti II is striking. Even stationary on the tarmac, the plane from Italian aerospace company Piaggio Aero looks like it will rise into the air with the slightest breath of breeze, a magnificent Roc ready to take to the skies and transport its travelers to wondrous lands, or the Essex County Airport in Caldwell, New Jersey, in other circumstances.

Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, told jurors at the insider-trading trial of one of the investment bank's former directors that all parts of a 2008 board meeting the two attended were confidential.

Shares of AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL), the No. 7 website, traded near their 52-week high Monday after activist investors Starboard Value Management won crucial backing to win seats on the board of directors.

It's been almost eight months since Apple released iOS 5, the most comprehensive update to its mobile operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Now, in the weeks leading up to Apple's 2012 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), insiders believe Apple will again announce a major update to its mobile platform and unveil iOS 6.

On Monday, Hawaiian Airlines will fly into its first major market on the East Coast, New York City, expanding its reach across the United States.

Last week thousands of retirees were suddenly faced by what for many would be the largest financial decision of their lives when both Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) and General Motors Company (NYSE: GM) announced they would launch immense pension buyout plans unprecedented in the United States.

Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) is considering launching local China-only brands as it continues to try and bolster its own brand in the largest global auto market, according to Reuters Monday.

Portugal will give ?6.6 billion ($8.2 billion) to its three largest banks to help them beef up their balance sheets. Receiving the capital injection are two private banks, Banco Comercial Português and Banco BPI, and state-owned Caixa Geral de Depositos.

The Battleship movie's bomb at the box office has Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and analysts worried the flop could hit his company's bottom line as a result.

Warburg Pincus LLC, a private equity firm based in US, is looking for a $100-$125 million stake in finance firm Future Capital Holdings, sources said to Reuters.

The U.S. had been losing industrial jobs to low-cost countries, particularly in Asia, for years, but its manufacturing sector appears to be staging a surprising turnaround. In 2009, manufacturing accounted for about 11 percent of U.S. gross domestic product; in 2011, the comparable figure was 12.2 percent.

U.S. car sales soared 47.6 percent for the American Honda unit of Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (NYSE: HMC) in May, as the Japanese automaker consummated its recovery from last year's triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns), with strong sales of its flagship Civic and Accord cars.

The troubled Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE:CHK), the second-largest producer of natural gas in the country, announced Friday it has made a significant discovery of crude oil and natural gas in the Anadarko Basin beneath the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma.