Bloomberg Italy’s Finance Ministry said that it plans to spend about 2.8 billion euros ($3.2 billion) from the 2022 budget to help shield consumers from surging energy prices. The support will target the first quarter of the year, and will include 800 million euros of savings from a tax overhaul and unspent cash from previous months, according to people familiar ...

Future US pensioners should feel pretty happy about their golden goose. A strong stock market, coupled with a dovish Federal Reserve, has buffed up their retirement accounts. For the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, corporate pension plans are edging close to being fully funded. Over the past year, their collective retirement pot has grown an average 15.6%, data ...

Texans think very highly of Texas. This has always been the case, at least in my experience, but during a recent trip to Austin I noticed a deeper development: Texans are beginning to come to terms with their state’s history — and they are less concerned about past misdeeds than about future achievements. The relevant “monument” in Austin at the ...

The Royal Standard flag representing the Queen was lowered for the last time in almost 400 years over Barbados, the Caribbean island that is now a republic with a president as head of state. At the handover ceremony declaring Barbados’s constitutional independence, Prince Charles gave a contrite speech and Rihanna was formally declared a national hero. That does not sound ...

Somehow, China’s currency doesn’t come up in conversation so much anymore. The mercantilist approach of the Trump administration has been abandoned, and the level of the yuan is no longer a geopolitical flashpoint. However, perhaps we should all pay more attention. The yuan is now at its strongest in more than three years versus the US dollar. The last time ...

Bloomberg Boeing Co’s 737 Max jets may resume commercial flights in China by the end of this year or early 2022, the nation’s Civil Aviation Administration said, a day after issuing an airworthiness directive that paved the way for the single-aisle workhorse to return to the Chinese skies after an almost three-year grounding. China will also start introducing new Max ...

Bloomberg State-owned Kazakh airline Air Astana is considering an initial public offering, according to four people familiar with the talks, who asked not to be identified as the information is not public. The company has approached banks, although talks are still at an early stage for a share sale, the people said. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic that’s hit air travel ...

Bloomberg Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd plans to hire hundreds of pilots next year, amid reports of a rising number of resignations as Hong Kong’s Covid policies severely constrain manpower and weigh on morale at the airline. “We plan to employ several hundred pilots in the coming year, many of whom have already expressed an interest in being part of the ...

Bloomberg Avianca Group International Ltd is emerging from bankruptcy with plans to compete with low-cost carriers on price while keeping parts of the business that made it Latin America’s second-largest airline before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Chief Executive Officer Adrian Neuhauser said the company was able to slash debt and build up liquidity during an 18-month Chapter 11 reorganisation that ...

Bloomberg Amazon.com’s Whole Foods Market illegally banned employees from wearing “Black Lives Matter” masks and punished workers who did, US labour board prosecutors alleged. The grocery store chain maintained appearance rules at US locations to prohibit staff from displaying Black Lives Matter messages on their apparel, the National Labor Relations Board’s San Francisco regional director said. The filing also accuses ...