Resuscitating a case dismissed by a federal appeals court in New York, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday said it would consider a lawsuit by 11 states charging that American Express is being anticompetitive when it prohibits merchants from steering customers to credit cards that have lower fees. The Dept. of Justice, which originally was allied with the states, had most recently argued against taking an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Aramark, the Philadelphia-based food services company, announced this morning that it was gobbling up both Avendra, the hospitality procurement services provider based in Rockville, Md., and AmeriPride, the uniform and linen rental and supply company with headquarters in Minnetonka, Minn.

With Sir Richard Branson climbing on board, the high-speed transportation concept being developed in the Nevada desert -- with the goal of moving humans and their creations in magnetically levitated pods at speeds approached 700 mph -- has been rebranded Virgin Hyperloop One.

Amazon yesterday announced a new program that allows adolescents aged 13 to 17 to shop or stream content using their own login on the family's account while keeping parents "in the know." After the teen places an order on the Amazon mobile app, parents will get a text or email showing the item, cost, shipping address and payment information. And if the parent has a Prime membership, the teen will have all its perks, too.

Activist investor Nelson Peltz may - may - have lost the vote to gain a seat on the Procter & Gamble Co. board, but he says he's not going away, calling the victory that CEO David Taylor claimed at the annual shareholder's meeting yesterday to be "Pyrrhic" at best.

Richard Thaler, the University of Chicago professor who infuses the dismal science with a lighthearted but studious measure of our everyday irrational behavior, was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics yesterday.

Unilever's Dove again found itself apologizing for an ad and defending itself against charges of promulgating racist imagery after it posted a three-second gif on Facebook "showing a black woman taking off her brown shirt to reveal a white woman, who then took off her lighter-colored shirt, revealing a woman of color in a slightly darker shirt," as the AP reports.

Counteracting Amazon seems to be the imperative in any business plan these days and the world's largest retailer is no exception. Stories with several distinct angles this morning offer insight into how the folks in Bentonville, Ark., are attempting to contain the folks from Seattle, Wash., (and a future second HQ in the Continental USA that has municipalities scrambling to outdo one another).

If you Google "Google new products," the first thing that comes up is an ad for the Google Store. Fitting, because advertising is still far-and-away how Alphabet Inc. makes its billions. But its hardware products are beginning to have a real life -- and mind -- of their own.

Ford, the "mobility" company based in Detroit, told investors in New York yesterday that it is getting fit on a diet of slashing costs while shifting into developing of connected, smart vehicles and services and reallocating $7 billion of capital from passenger cars to SUVs and trucks.