Another space race, this one private enterprise

A Russian airline entrepreneur wants to join the space race, challenging Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin LLC with a plan to launch commercial rockets. S7 Group, the owner of Russia's S7 Airlines, agreed to buy the floating rocket platform Sea Launch from a group of investors and aims to restore its operations after a more than two-year hiatus, the family-owned company said. S7 Group co-founder Vladislav Filev described the deal as an "admission ticket" into the aerospace industry. "Why are we doing it? Just because it's beautiful," Filev said in an interview in Moscow before heading to Guadalajara, Mexico, to sign the deal. S7 faces significant challenges in trying to revive Sea Launch, which was created by Russian, Ukrainian, Norwegian companies and Boeing Co. of the U.S. in 1995. Its operations were suspended in 2014 amid Russia's conflict with Ukraine.

Home prices climb again in July on low inventories

WASHINGTON — U.S. home prices rose again in July, pulled up by strong gains in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Standard & Poor's CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index, released Tuesday, rose 5 percent in July from a year earlier after increasing 5.1 percent in June. The latest report is further evidence that prices are being pushed higher by the limited inventory of homes on the market. That is hurting sales of both new and existing homes, despite buyer enthusiasm and historically low mortgage rates. "With inventory still very tight, the pressure on home prices is all to the upside," Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote in a research note.

States argue against climate regulations

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for a coalition of states and businesses reliant on fossil fuels made their case Tuesday to a federal appeals court that President Barack Obama’s plan to curtail climate-warming greenhouse gases is an unconstitutional power grab. The Clean Power Plan, which aims to ratchet down carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants, has been challenged by more than two dozen mostly Republican-led states led by West Virginia and Texas, as well as allied industry groups that profit from mining and burning coal. The opponents contend the carbon-cutting plan unveiled by the Environmental Protection Agency will kill coal-mining jobs and drive up electricity costs.

The Obama administration, some Democratic-led states and environmental groups counter it will spur hundreds of thousands of new clean-energy jobs installing emissions-free wind turbines and solar panels.

The Supreme Court has delayed implementation until the legal challenges are resolved.

The rules are considered essential to the United States meeting emissions-reduction targets in a global climate agreement signed in Paris last year. The plan aims to help stave off the worst predicted impacts of climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions at existing power plants by about one-third by 2030.