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The CEO of Ritas Italian Ice says franchising your business starts with finding the right partners.

Back in the 1910s, my Grandpa Jack was working in a shoe store, but he had bigger aspirations. So, he put a few machines in the back of the store and made socks and stockings on the side. As business picked up, he started building his own textiles factories, one of which I worked at during college.

The latest batch of leaked State Department cables from WikiLeaks reveals the U.S. government's deep interest in how tech giants like Apple and Oracle perform overseas.

In this charming music video from Chipotle, Willie sings about going "back to the start" of American farming, before animals were pumped with antibiotics and kept in factories. A farmer, not content with his small family farm, starts to modernize. He turns his farm into a factory, pumping drugs into his pigs and pollutants into the water

This and more important news from your Fast Company editors, with updates all day. Google Launches Disaster Response Website .

The winning bid for the design of the Olympic village in Rio is based on the shape of tropical flowers, and is designed to be replaced with more needed buildings once the games are over. Whether or not countries benefit from the infrastructure they build to host the Olympics is a subject for heated debate, but build they still must

Abbot could have just given money to Partners In Health and called it a day. Instead, they've been on the ground helping to build a factory to make hunger-destroying peanut paste. All too often, corporate philanthropy involves dropping a wad of money on some organizations doing work on an issue that the corporation "cares" about, and then saying goodbye.

Germany will become the first country completely accessible to fuel cell vehicles in 2015, when carmaker Daimler and the Linde technology group will build 20 new hydrogen filling stations. The result will quadruple the number of public stations available and make it possible for a fuel cell vehicle to reach any location in the country

It sounds like a forward-thinking energy policy, but giving away the bulbs won't solve the country's electricity problems, and the money could be spent on developing truly innovative solutions. Zimbabwe's power supply is erratic, to say the least

With its banking and financial infrastructure still in tatters, a new mobile service that allows Haitians to make and receive payments via text message is taking off and allowing commerce to flourish. Last year, Haiti suffered a catastrophic earthquake that caused widespread devastation--a tragedy that puts yesterday's quake, which sent shockwaves of worry up and down the East Coast despite little damage, into stark perspective. The impoverished country is still recovering--but slowly, as several reports have indicated

Mosquito-borne virus is showing up across the country. Here's what you need to know to avoid infection

Six months after a civil uprising began in Libya, Col. Muammar Qadhafi, the nation's longtime leader, finally seems to have lost his grip on the country he ruled for more than 40 years. Did he also, at some point, lose his grip on reality?

While it may seem that people want to cut back on spending, companies that shape up inefficient buildings and get paid back via the energy savings are doing booming business. What's the ideal economic environment to get a free high-efficiency upgrade worth tens of millions dollars

New renovations will let even "Post-Panamax" ships cross the isthmus, altering the economics of global shipping to the advantage of countries that produce cheap goods for the developed world. What a difference a century makes.

Heres a look at 12 products and services designed to keep your business running smoothly if catastrophe strikes. Hurricane shutters and sandbags might be the first things that come to mind when you think about preparing for natural disasters. But for businesses, disaster prep is a lot more complicated"and often costly.