March, 2021

• 22 March

  Vaccine populism is how Europe loses

  

  The world is watching Europe with dismay. The region’s vaccination campaign is a mess, failing to outpace a fresh wave of Covid-19 infections that’s straining hospitals and triggering more stay-at-home curbs. The European Union’s tally of average doses administered per 100 people stands at 11.8, well behind the US and the UK at 34.1 and 40.5 respectively (though there is ...

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• 22 March

  Why some rich families in US feel so middle class?

  Back in 1972, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael was incorrectly quoted as saying she couldn’t understand how Richard Nixon had won a 49-state landslide since she didn’t know anyone who’d voted for him. The anecdote is often trotted out as an example of liberal snobbery and indifference to “ordinary” Americans. Kael’s actual quote was more self-aware: “I live in ...

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• 22 March

  Italy has Europe’s greatest vaccine need

  It’s no surprise that Italy was the first European Union nation to say it would restart AstraZeneca Covid vaccinations, just moments after the bloc’s drugs regulator gave its renewed blessing for the shots. All of the EU’s big member states need to jumpstart their painfully slow vaccine drives, but Italy’s need is greatest. The country has suffered more deaths than ...

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• 22 March

  Airport traffic bump shows signs of life for jet market

  

  Bloomberg A pick-up in spring break travel is pointing to the first signs of life for a battered jet fuel market, a trend that is likely to continue as more vaccinated Americans venture back onto airplanes this summer. In US airports, the number of passengers checking in through security hit the highest in a year this week, according to Transportation ...

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• 22 March

  Bamboo Airways sees $2.7 billion market cap at listing

  

  Bloomberg Vietnam’s Bamboo Airways expects a market capitalisation of about $2.7 billion at its planned listing no later than the third quarter as it anticipates a June or July easing of the government’s pandemic halt of international flights. The carrier, which began operations in 2019, plans to list 105 million shares on either the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange ...

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• 22 March

  Food delivery start-up Zomato plans IPO filing

  

  Bloomberg Zomato Pvt, an Indian food delivery startup backed by Jack Ma’s Ant Group, is planning to file the draft prospectus by April for its initial public offering that could raise about $650 million, according to people familiar with the matter. The company could complete the listing in Mumbai before the end of September, the people said, asking not to ...

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• 22 March

  Walmart’s early pay app falls flat as some employees leave

  

  Bloomberg Three years ago, Walmart Inc. offered hundreds of thousands of its US workers a new perk to keep them from quitting. Employees loved it. Rivals copied it. Now Walmart has reached a conclusion: It hasn’t quite worked as expected. The perk is an app that gave employees the ability to tap their wages before payday, along with a bevy ...

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• 22 March

  Indonesia plane skids off runway

  

  Bloomberg An Indonesia cargo plane that returned to base shortly after takeoff because of a technical issue skidded off the runway when it landed at a Jakarta airport, the air-navigation operator said. Trigana Air’s Boeing 737-400 returned to Halim Perdanakusumah Airport about two minutes after takeoff, AirNav spokesman Yohanes Harry Douglas Sirait said. Several flights were diverted from the facility ...

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• 22 March

  Avianca adds routes to beaches with eye on bankruptcy exit

  

  Bloomberg Avianca Holdings SA plans to add dozens of routes using smaller aircraft as it plots its emergence from bankruptcy later this year, the airline’s chief executive said. Colombia’s largest carrier is expanding with 50 direct routes between secondary cities in coming years, said CEO Anko van der Werff in an interview. Using narrow-body planes, it will target tourist spots ...

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• 22 March

  Joe Biden urged to defend voting rights as GOP pursues new limits

  

  Bloomberg President Joe Biden faces growing pressure from his party’s left to wage an all-out defense of voting rights, as Republican-held statehouses pursue restrictions that would fall heaviest on Black voters who helped Democrats win the White House and both chambers of Congress. Some activists say Biden should reshuffle his priorities and set aside work on a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure and ...

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