London / AFP Official forecasts that Brexit will blow a £59-billion hole in the British government’s budget drew fire from eurosceptics on Thursday, and even finance minister Philip Hammond said there was a “high degree of uncertainty” about the numbers. Former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said the predictions from the government’s budget watchdog, the independent Office for Budget …

  Barcelona / AFP Barcelona city hall said on Thursday it would fine home rental websites Airbnb and rival HomeAway 600,000 euros ($635,000) each for marketing lodgings that lacked permits to host tourists. The fine comes as the popular seaside resort struggles with a rising tide of tourism that has exasperated locals, threatening to drive out poorer residents and spoil …

  History has a sly sense of humor. It caused an epiphany regarding infrastructure projects —roads, harbors, airports, etc. — to occur on a bridge over Boston’s Charles River, hard by Harvard Yard, where rarely is heard a discouraging word about government. Last spring, Larry Summers, former treasury secretary and Harvard president, was mired in congealed traffic on the bridge, …