Bloomberg Southwest Airlines Co is offering another round of voluntary leave as staffing levels remain too high for a flight schedule hammered by the coronavirus pandemic. Time off for employees accepting the offer begins on March 1, when thousands of workers are set to return from six-month leaves awarded last year, Southwest said. Already, 791 pilots have agreed to take ...

Bloomberg The UK government will introduce a limited hotel quarantine system for passengers arriving from the highest-risk countries, according to a person familiar with the matter. The move is aimed at curbing the spread of new variants of coronavirus that could prove resistant to vaccines, but is expected to apply to arrivals from countries with new forms of the virus, ...

Bloomberg Airport Authority Hong Kong is considering raising as much as $1.5 billion in its second dollar bond offering in two months, according to people familiar with the matter. The airport operator kicked off a series of investor calls on Wednesday for the potential offering, said the people who are not authorised to speak publicly and asked not to be ...

Bloomberg Years from now when the pandemic’s impact on global business is analysed, it’s likely that the most lucrative change will be how it pushed—or actually shoved—massive markets into the modern e-commerce era. In many countries, online shopping hadn’t been easy because of underdeveloped infrastructure and the reluctance, or inability, of consumers to use banks and electronic payment. That stalled ...

Bloomberg Levi Strauss & Co is expanding its partnership with retailer Target Corp well beyond blue jeans. The agreement will mark Levi’s first home-goods partnership, with new products including tableware and pillows, the companies said in a statement. The tie-up will also broaden its Red Tab brand within Target stores, with in-store displays planned at more than 500 locations by ...

Bloomberg President Joe Biden held his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, pressing him on issues from the poisoning of opposition leader Alexey Navalny to the massive hack of US computer systems that’s been linked to Moscow. The Kremlin confirmed that the call took place Tuesday, describing the conversation as “businesslike and frank.” The leaders also talked about ...

Bloomberg The Philippines has filed a diplomatic protest against China’s law giving its coast guard more freedom to fire on foreign vessels, the Southeast Asian nation’s foreign affairs minister said. “While enacting law is a sovereign prerogative, this one — given the area involved or for that matter the open South China Sea — is a verbal threat of war ...

Bloomberg Tunisian lawmakers approved cabinet changes proposed by Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi after riot police blocked protesters from nearing the assembly amid a rising wave of discontent in the birthplace of the Arab Spring. On Tuesday, 11 new ministers proposed for departments ranging from health and justice to the interior obtained more than the minimum 109 votes needed in the ...

Bloomberg India’s government increased security in the capital New Delhi after thousands of protesting farmers broke police barricades and stormed key landmarks in a serious escalation of monthslong demonstrations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new agriculture laws. By Wednesday most demonstrators had returned to protest sites on the outskirts of the city following calls from one of the largest farm ...

Bloomberg The resignation of Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has sparked a fresh round of back-room plotting and negotiating as the pandemic rages and the economy tanks. The biggest question is whether he will get back in the saddle. Conte is a survivor, but he has no political party of his own as he tries to recruit a new, broader ...