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Airline corporations have explicitly demanded passengers wear masks between bites of food and sips of drinks. Despite a Harvard study reported by the Washington Post in 2020 that indicates “flying can be safer than eating at a restaurant during the pandemic” due to “onboard systems that constantly circulate and refresh air,” airlines have begun conducting in-flight announcements to cudgel people into donning masks while eating and drinking.

The CEO of FedEx said on Sunday the transport company will be able to meet holiday demand “assuming that we can get the employees,” as a number of industries continue to grapple with decreased workforces because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Asked by host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation” if Christmas presents will arrive on time this holiday season, FedEx CEO Fred Smith said “I think we’re ready for this,” as long as he has enough workers. He said FedEx and other companies have seen a shortage in workers in part because of the highly infectious delta variant, and...

Colombo (AFP) - The Sri Lankan government on Friday ended price controls on essential foods in a bid to end black market trading as food shortages worsen amid a foreign currency crisis. The cabinet decided to free prices for milk powder, wheat flour, sugar and liquified petroleum gas hoping it would increase supplies. "Prices could go up by as much as 37 percent across the board, but it is hoped dealers will not make unconscionable profits," a trade ministry official told AFP. A shortage of foreign currency caused by a pandemic recession has unleashed the shortages of food, medicines and...

UK - Panicked motorists have caused lengthy queues at petrol stations for a second day - as an industry expert predicted the "catastrophic situation" is going to get worse before it improves. Long lines of cars continued to form at forecourts across the country on Saturday after a shortage of HGV drivers forced some fuel retailers to shut their pumps and ration sales. The petrol problems come after retailers warned a solution to the lack of truckers must be found within days to avoid "significant disruption" in the run-up to Christmas. Sky News understands that Boris Johnson has allowed minsters...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) called on President Biden on Thursday to double the funding he’s proposed to fix public housing during a tour of a Brooklyn NYCHA complex which highlighted the long-standing problems they’re seeking to remedy. Biden has proposed pouring $40 billion into public housing throughout the U.S. over the next several years, but Schumer and Velazquez are saying it’s not enough and ultimately want the federal government to pony up more than $80 billion to address the mold, old roofs, leaky pipes and other squalid conditions that have plagued New York...

…time to ignore Dr.Copper once again!? Copper prices plunged on Tuesday to their lowest levels in seven weeks over concerns about Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening and a pull-back in Chinese demand. From aluminum to copper to lead to nickel to tin to zinc, the entire base metal complex is down anywhere from 2-4%.Focusing on copper, future prices on the London Metal Exchange are down 4% to their lowest levels in seven weeks. Three-month LME copper futures were trading around $6,563 per ton, down 11% in 25 trading sessions since topping at $10,747 in early May. Copper prices soared to a...

Lumber futures on Chicago Mercantile Exchange posted their largest-ever weekly loss, extending a multi-week decline as sawmill output increases and buyers hold off on purchases, according to Bloomberg. On Friday, lumber futures fell 5.61% to $1,059.20 per thousand board feet. For the week, prices plunged 18%, the most significant decline since 1986, one year before the 1987 stock market crash.Lumber prices have crashed 40% from the record high in May of around $1,711.Lumber prices have catapulted into the stratosphere in the last year, hitting renovators, home builders, buyers, and anyone else extremely hard. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)...

“I’m significantly concerned about how quickly the scales seem to have tipped from having a lot of demand and not enough supply, to having enough supply and not demand,” said Jared Moskowitz, the outgoing director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, who has overseen the state’s vaccination distribution. “This is something we all need to be concerned with, from the federal government on down… What do we do if half the population doesn’t get vaccinated?”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Wednesday publicly supported President Trump’s call for lawmakers to increase direct payments to the American people in the multitrillion-dollar coronavirus relief and government spending bill passed by the House and Senate this week. “I support President @realDonaldTrump‘s demand to increase direct payments for long-suffering Americans to $2,000 per person. And I also support his call to end Section 230 Big Tech legal liability protections,” Graham said on Wednesday following Trump’s Tuesday remarks on the nearly 6,000-page bill:

Went shotgun shopping today for a family member who is well-equipped with pistols and long guns, but lacked a shotgun. Net: none to be found in stock in our N Ga area. More details below.

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — Shoppers who suspected they've been paying more at the grocery store during the coronavirus pandemic are not imagining things. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, food prices saw their largest monthly increase in 46 years. The April Consumer Price Index showed food prices away from home jumped by 3.5% over the past year. Between March and April, all categories of food increased by 1.5%. The increase has not been that dramatic since February 1974.

Sen. Mitt Romney is among a bipartisan group of lawmakers demanding that President Donald Trump explain why he fired the intelligence community inspector general. The eight senators, led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, say the explanation Trump gave for removing Michael Atkinson was insufficient and does not comply with the law. The president cited a lack of confidence in the intelligence community’s top watchdog. “Congressional intent is clear that an expression of lost confidence, without further explanation, is not sufficient to fulfill the requirements of the statute,” the senators wrote in a letter Thursday. “This is in large part because...

New York doesn’t need any more ventilators and California is in good enough condition to send 500 ventilators to states in worse shape, their governors said on Monday, a sign that the CCP virus curve appears to be flattening in both states. “We don’t need any additional ventilators right now,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters at a press conference after repeatedly warning in recent days that the state needed up to 40,000 of the breathing machines. Cuomo declined to state how many ventilators the state has in stock and his office hasn’t responded to requests for information about...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed back Monday against congressional Democrats who demanded that the Trump administration retract its declaration last month that it views Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria as legal under international law. In a letter..., the Secretary of State called Democrats’ positions against Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria “foolish”, Israel Hayom reported Monday night. Last month, Pompeo announced that the State Department did not view Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria as being inherently illegal under international law, reversing the policy set down late in the Obama administration, mirroring the position adopted by the Carter...

The European Union formally condemned the demolition of illegal Arab apartment buildings near Israel’s security barrier separating Jerusalem from Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, and demanded Israel halt its enforcement of demolition orders. In a statement issued Monday afternoon, the European Union’s foreign affairs department said the demolitions undermine the “viability of the two-state solution”. “Israeli authorities have proceeded with the demolition of 10 Palestinian buildings, containing some 70 apartments, in Wadi al Hummus, part of Sur Baher neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem. The majority of the buildings are located in Area A and B of the West Bank where, according to...

After President Trump’s State of the Union Address, there seems to have emerged one common thread that is uniting the two parties. Both agree that the cost of prescription drugs is far too high in the United States. Trump mentioned it in his speech, and the theme has been invoked in countless post-speech interviews by elected Democrats. America spends far more per capita on healthcare than other developed nations, and yet drug prices here dwarf those in other countries. In one analysis carried out by Reuters, researchers found that top-selling drugs in the U.S. cost roughly triple what their counterparts...

Here are two recent events you might have missed: In March, House speaker Paul Ryan was widely quoted as saying, “The last thing we want to do is pass historic tax relief and then undo that, so we are not going to raise gas taxes.”The next month, in California, Republicans submitted 54 percent more than the required signatures to put on the November ballot a measure that would repeal the 2017 state law increasing gasoline and diesel taxes. Meanwhile, roads in Los Angeles are in such bad shape that it costs the average driver $892 a year in additional vehicle...

Around three-quarters of a million Catalans have marched to demand the release of local politicians arrested for their role in the drive for independence. Spain’s central government has dissolved the Catalan parliament, dismissed the Catalan government, and imposed direct rule following the region’s unilateral declaration of independence on October 27th. This followed a self-determination referendum which the Spanish authorities deemed illegal and attempted to shut down violently, with the blessing of the European Union’s ruling bodies.Carles Puigdemont, Catalonia’s ex-president — or president-in-exile, depending on your point of view — had given some indication that he would ignore Madrid’s attempts to terminate...

No city in America runs on anything resembling a free-market model. But Texas' major cities are probably the closest thing, with vast improvements to their economies and living standards to show for it. Their looser land-use laws mean that housing supply grows quickly, stabilizing prices. Their lighter tax and regulatory structure helps businesses locate there and grow. And—shenanigans from the governor's office notwithstanding—their openness to immigrants means they have cheap and robust labor forces.But one market-oriented aspect little discussed is Texas' approach to transportation. The state has 25 toll roads, more than any other state. They are particularly common in Houston and Dallas,...

Older smokers are usually more set in their ways, but a dollar increase in cigarette prices makes them 20 percent more likely to quit, a new Drexel University study found. The study, published in Epidemiology, used 10 years of neighborhood-level price data to determine how it affected nearby smokers, focusing on those who skewed older. “Older adult smokers have been smoking for a long time and tend to have lower rates of smoking cessation compared to younger populations, suggesting deeply entrenched behavior that is difficult to change,” said Stephanie Mayne, PhD, the lead author of the study who is a...