With unemployment low, inflation high and interest rates on the rise, the time is right to bring back an old idea: bipartisan talks to reduce the federal budget deficit. I know: Try to contain your excitement. But it wasn’t so long ago — about a decade — that the US was consumed by a mania for deficit reduction. From ...
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Should your buses, trams & trains be free?
Like everybody I know in Germany, I bought the so-called 9-euro ticket this summer. Three, in fact — one each for June, July and August. I put the QR codes in my cell phone’s digital wallet, and was free to hop on and off all buses, trams, local and regional trains nationwide. In a country that specializes in making things ...
Read More »How the US can make apprenticeship work
With the US unemployment rate near a five-decade low and job vacancies close to a record high, businesses say they are scrambling to find workers. Many complain that large and growing skills mismatches prevent them from getting the staff they need. While the Biden administration has pushed for large government spending increases to support college students and former college ...
Read More »World must lean on Putin to avert nuclear disaster
It’s not every day the International Atomic Energy Agency dispatches monitors looking like Hollywood action heroes on a mission to save civilization. But that’s an apt description of the IAEA team now inspecting the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. It’s Europe’s largest nuclear reactor complex and sits right on the front line between the Ukrainian defenders and Russian ...
Read More »Bankruptcy risk higher for Europe’s airlines this winter
Bloomberg Europe’s weaker airlines face a heightened risk of collapse this winter as nations that rescued carriers during the Covid-19 crisis focus support elsewhere amid rising inflation, according to analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein. While the pandemic brought few airline failures in the region amid a deluge of aid payments, carriers now face a squeeze from higher fuel and ...
Read More »Amazon grapples with more labour strife, this time in Japan
Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc., which is struggling to quell workplace movements from the US to Europe, faces a growing union effort in Asia’s second largest economy. A group of 15 subcontracted drivers in the southwestern city of Nagasaki is protesting the long hours and excessive number of deliveries in the absence of overtime pay. They blamed Amazon’s vaunted artificial intelligence algorithms ...
Read More »South Africa’s airport shuts runway after a grass fire
Bloomberg Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport was forced to close one of its runways after dry grass caught fire and “spilled over from the adjacent community within the airport precinct,†it said via Twitter. Fire and rescue teams are onsite to extinguish the blaze, according to OR Tambo, which is the busiest airport in Africa. The runway that has ...
Read More »Bed Bath & Beyond shares fall after CFO’s death
Bloomberg Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. declined after Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Gustavo Arnal falls to his death from a Manhattan skyscraper. The shares of the struggling home-goods retailer slumped by as much as 25% in pre-market activity on Tuesday, the first day of trading after the US Labour Day weekend. The Union, New Jersey-based company confirmed on Sunday that ...
Read More »Monitors demand security zone around Ukraine nuclear plant
Bloomberg International monitors demanded the immediate establishment of a security zone around a Russian-occupied nuclear plant in southern Ukraine in order to reduce the potential for an atomic accident. The International Atomic Energy Agency called for a halt to shelling and the need for “the urgent establishment†of a nuclear safety and security zone around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, ...
Read More »Russians to face higher fees, stricter rules for EU visas
Bloomberg The European Union proposed to make it more expensive and harder for Russian tourists to travel to the bloc, in a move that will likely increase tensions between Moscow and Brussels. “Russian citizens should not have easy access to the EU,†Commissioner Ylva Johansson, in charge of home affairs, told reporters Tuesday. “At the moment, there is no ...
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