Beware the “lessons of history” as drawn by charlatans, ignoramuses or tyrants, for they will be daft, wrong and possibly disastrous. The self-serving amateur historiography of Russian President Vladimir Putin is an example. Last year, he invented a narrative “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which was subsequently revealed as one of the hallucinations that made him ...

  Bloomberg Air India Ltd is polling pilots on whether they want to be trained to fly Airbus SE A350 jets, indicating that it intends to operate the model as it looks to renew its widebody fleet under new owner Tata Group. The airline may introduce the A350 by the first quarter of 2023, according to a letter sent to ...

  Bloomberg Boeing Co hinted that it’s considering a cargo-hauling version of its 787 Dreamliner to eventually replace 767 freighters, whose engines won’t comply with tougher emissions standards that take effect in 2028. “That’s a natural place for us to look,” Brian Hermesmeyer, freighter customer leader for Boeing’s commercial airplane division, told reporters in a briefing near its plant in ...

  Bloomberg Europe’s retail stocks are heading back towards pandemic lows. And after the profit warning from Asos Plc and the first UK sales decline in Boohoo Group Plc’s history, it’s online merchants that are leading them there. Asos shares sunk as much as 28%, falling to the lowest since August 2010. The warning sent tremors through larger peer Zalando ...

  Bloomberg Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd is planning to recruit 4,000 staff between now and the end of 2023 to replenish its severely depleted workforce and gear up for an anticipated recovery in air travel as Hong Kong rebuilds itself as an aviation hub, according to Chief Executive Officer Augustus Tang. The hiring spree would still leave Cathay with significantly ...

  Bloomberg Ryanair Holdings Plc staff in Italy announced plans to strike on June 25, adding to Europe’s travel headaches as the industry tries to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Unions representing pilots and flight attendants will strike for 24 hours to press demands for better working conditions, they said. The walkout will also involve staff in Spain, Portugal, France ...

  Bloomberg Wizz Air Holdings Plc said it will reinstate its jet-fuel hedging policy as volatile oil prices add to other surging costs for the airline industry and threatens to upend the sector’s recovery from the pandemic. Eastern Europe’s biggest discounter will “mirror” the hedging levels of its main peers and put additional jet fuel price caps in place for ...

Bloomberg The leaders of Germany, France, Italy and Romania are in Kyiv for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in by far the highest-profile visit to the country since Russia invaded at the end of February. They traveled overnight by train to Kyiv and were joined by Romania’s president in a show of solidarity ahead of an expected recommendation Friday from ...

Bloomberg Russia and China gave alternative accounts of President Xi Jinping’s birthday call with Vladimir Putin, as both sides seek to manage perceptions of their relationship in the wake of Moscow’s war in Ukraine. The Kremlin readout said the two men, both 69, discussed increasing economic cooperation, trade and military-technical ties between China and Russia on Wednesday. Moscow’s version also ...

Bloomberg UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said she was unable to visit detained Uyghurs and that she was accompanied by authorities while visiting Xinjiang, remarks that raise questions about the Chinese government’s efforts to influence her trip. “I was not able to speak to any Uyghurs currently detained or their families during the visit,” Bachelet told a meeting of the ...