HOUSING

Construction unions to work for less to lower costs

Boston’s construction unions are offering to help lower the cost of building housing in the region by working for substantially lower rates on certain projects, a move that could result in new apartments renting for hundreds of dollars less a month. After two years of talks, building trades unions, which include plumbers, painters, and electrical workers, are set to roll out separate units that will specialize in apartment construction. Those workers would be paid about one-third less than the unions’ standard commercial rates — $40 an hour in wages and benefits for a painter, for example, instead of $60, in exchange for the jobs being 100 percent union.

MEDIA

Channel 7 sues Comcast to keep NBC affiliation

WHDH-TV (Channel 7), the NBC television affiliate in Boston owned by Ed Ansin (left), has gone to court in a bid to block Comcast Corp. from terminating the station’s network contract. WHDH, in a 68-page complaint filed Thursday in US District Court in Boston, alleges that Comcast’s plan to take away the network affiliation is a breach of their contract, and the cable giant, which owns NBC, is in violation of Massachusetts and federal antitrust law. Ansin’s station is seeking an injunction to stop the move, as well as unspecified damages. A spokeswoman for NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast that oversees NBC, issued a statement calling the lawsuit “meritless.’’

ECONOMY

New data show state job growth slowed in 2015

New data paint a different picture of the Massachusetts economy over the past two years, indicating that job growth slowed sharply in 2015 and contradicting earlier estimates that heralded it as a banner year for the state’s labor market. The revisions suggest that job creation in this expansion peaked in 2014 and the state is heading into a period of slower job growth as the economy nears full employment and baby boomers retire. Annual job growth, now estimated at 2.4 percent in 2014 and 1.2 percent in 2015, is projected to slip to 0.7 percent by 2018.

AVIATION

Human rights group targets Qatar airline

A human rights watchdog group has launched a local advertising campaign calling for a boycott of Qatar Airways days before the carrier begins daily service out of Boston. Washington-based Alliance for Workers Against Repression Everywhere, or AWARE, began running radio ads, including on WBZ news radio (1030), denouncing alleged human rights violations against workers by the airline and the State of Qatar, which owns it. Qatar Airways is slated to debut nonstop flights between Logan International Airport and Doha, the capital of Qatar, on March 16. Qatar Airways did not respond to requests for comment.

HEALTH CARE

Steward breaks with hospital industry on ballot question

Steward Health Care System is breaking ranks with the rest of the hospital industry and throwing its support behind a controversial ballot proposal to take hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s wealthiest hospitals and give them to lower-paid community hospitals. The measure, pushed by the Service Employees International Union, would change the way hospitals are paid and faces opposition from the hospital industry’s main trade group, the Massachusetts Hospital Association. The SEIU proposal would regulate payments between insurance companies and hospitals, cutting payments to the priciest hospitals while boosting payments for lower-paid community hospitals.

INVESTMENT

Icahn cashes out of Nuance

Carl Icahn (left) is taking some of the pressure off a Massachusetts company. The activist investor is selling a chunk of his holdings in Nuance Communications Inc. back to the company for $500 million. Two members of his investing team will step down as directors. Nuance will pay Icahn $19 per share for 26.3 million shares, 6 percent less than the stock’s Wednesday closing price of $20.21, the company disclosed in a statement. Nuance and Icahn declined to comment further. Icahn retains more than 34 million shares of Nuance, about 11 percent of the stock outstanding.

REAL ESTATE

Boston top destination for global investors

Global real estate investors have discovered Boston. And they’re not going away any time soon. A new report from real estate firm JLL, which ranked Boston 14th in the world, and fourth in the US in terms of international investment activity in the last three years, relative to its size. The Boston real estate world has seen a flood of cash from Canadian, European, and increasingly Chinese funds buying office buildings and launching development projects here. It’s a sign that investors want what Boston’s selling, said Lisa Strope, New England research manager for JLL.

INVESTMENT

Fraud charges filed in connection with Schilling company bankruptcy

Federal securities regulators filed civil fraud charges against a Rhode Island state agency and Wells Fargo Securities for allegedly misleading investors who bought municipal bonds to finance 38 Studios, the failed video game company of former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. The Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. issued $75 million in bonds as part of a package to lure 38 Studios from Massachusetts in 2010. In court document, the Securities and Exchange Commission said the economic development agency and Wells Fargo, which underwrote the bonds, failed to disclose that 38 Studios said it would need more than $75 million to produce its game. Wells Fargo disputed the charges. Schilling and the agency did not respond to requests for comment.

GOVERNMENT

MBTA pension fund subject to public records laws, judge rules

A Suffolk Superior Court judge ruled that records of the MBTA pension fund should be open to the public because the system receives tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding from the transit authority each year. The ruling could end decades of secrecy by the $1.6 billion retirement system for transit workers, which has shielded its records because it says it is a private trust. Less than two hours after the ruling was issued, the pension fund released a consultants’ report defending the accuracy of its financial reports from 2011 through 2013. A spokesman for the pension fund declined to comment on the court ruling.

SPORTS

Bruins free up more tickets for fans

The Boston Bruins are taking on a group long resented, but grudgingly tolerated by sports fans: ticket agencies that buy season ticket packages and resell them piecemeal for prices far above face value. The team said it has canceled the accounts of nearly 200 high-volume ticket resellers after identifying them in an analysis of its sales data. The 1,000 season tickets freed up by the move will go to some of the 10,000 fans on a waiting list for season tickets, Bruins executives said.