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Lufthansa pilots are on strike leading to cancellation of hundreds of flights. Due to strike Wednesday that grounded some 750 flights affected around 80,000 passengers. Most of the flight were domestic or within Europe.

The strike is active on short and medium haul operations. The Vereinigung Cockpit union said that on Thursday, it would extend its strike to long-distance flights. In past few months, the union has hit many Lufthansa units resulting into walkouts.

The argument is over the airline's plans to scarp transition payments for pilots to want to take early retirement. But the union wants no changes and payments to be maintained.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is encouraging his employees to discuss about race with their customers. Earlier also, the coffee house chain has involved itself into debates about same-sex marriage and gun control.

In fact, two years ago an investor said that the company's support for gay marriage in Washington State had affected sales. Lately, Starbucks came up with a full page ad in the Sunday New York Times having the headline 'Shall We Overcome?" and the words "Race Together" were included in the company logo.

On Monday also similar advertisement was published in USA Today. Starbucks wants to initiate conversation about race in America.

The McCalmans and the Browns will see overflow demand for Omaha's hotels this spring, when the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholders will come to the town.

The is because David and Susan McCalman of Papillion, along with their daughter, Susan Brown, and her husband, Nathan, who live in La Vista, wanted to be the first-time hosts for Airbnb.

Airbnb is an online company that helps the out-of-town visitors with the availability of private lodging.

Their main target will be on the out-of-towners of the 40,000-plus shareholders who will hold their annual Berkshire meeting at the CenturyLink Center on May 2.

David McCalman said, "We're testing the waters. If Berkshire weekend goes well, we could do this for the College World Series, too".

On Tuesday, Oracle's top executives said that the company expects to generate more than $1 billion in new software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) business in 2015.

This will put oracle in direct competition with Salesforce. com in the cloud market. During Oracle's quarterly earnings call, the company's Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison told financial analysts that people won't have to wait any longer to know who's going to sell the most SaaS and PaaS this year.

Oracle's SaaS and PaaS revenue grew by 30% to $372 million in the quarter that ended on February 28, the third of Oracle's fiscal year.

The United States Army is all set to destroy the country's largest remaining stockpile of chemical weapons. According to reports, the army could start destroying chemical weapons as early as Wednesday. Earlier, the United States Department of Defense (DOD) has agreed to destroy about 780,000 shells containing 2,600 tons of mustard agent at the Army's Pueblo Chemical Depot in southern Colorado.

As per depot spokesman Thomas Schultz, the process of eliminating chemical weapons could start on Wednesday if the weather is favorable. Schultz further said that managers do not want to expose containers to storms or bad weather.

On Wednesday, financial services major American Express announced that it will be working in partnership with companies like Macy's Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. for launching a loyalty program this spring. This decision is taken by the company in order to attract a wider customer base.

The program will work like drugstore-rewards programs, as customers will earn points by spending at the seven companies. These companies also include Rite Aid Corp., Hulu and AT&T Inc. By using these points, the customers can pay their AT&T Wireless bill in order to pay their purchases at Rite Aid.