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Union members voted down a contract proposal covering tens of thousands of Walt Disney World service workers, saying it didn’t go far enough toward helping employees face cost-of-living hikes in housing and other expenses in central Florida.

The unions said that 13,650 out of 14,263 members who voted on the contract Friday rejected the proposal from Disney, sending negotiators back to the bargaining table for another round of talks that have been ongoing since August. The contract covers around 45,000 service workers at the Disney theme park resort outside Orlando, Florida.

Disney World service workers who are in the six unions that make up the Service Trades Council Union coalition had been demanding a starting minimum wage jump to at least $18 an hour in the first year of the contract, up from the starting minimum wage of $15 an hour won in the previous contract.

The proposal rejected Friday would have raised the starting minimum wage to $20 an hour for all service workers by the last year of the five-year contract, an increase of $1 each year for a majority of the workers it covered. Certain positions, like housekeepers, bus drivers and culinary jobs, would start immediately at a minimum of $20 under the proposal.

“Housekeepers work extremely hard to bring the magic to Disney, but we can’t pay our bills with magic,” said Vilane Raphael, who works as a housekeeper at the Disney Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa.

The company said that the proposal had offered a quarter of those covered by the contract an hourly wage of $20 in its first year, eight weeks of paid time off for a new child, maintenance of a pension, and the introduction of a 401K plan.

“Our strong offer provides more than 30,000 Cast Members a nearly 10% on average raise immediately, as well as retroactive increased pay in their paychecks, and we are disappointed that those increases are now delayed,” Disney spokesperson Andrea Finger said in a statement.

The contract stalemate comes as the Florida Legislature is prepared to convene next week to complete a state takeover of Disney World’s self-governing district. With the support of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the Republican-controlled legislature last April approved legislation to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District by June 2023, beginning a closely watched process that would determine the structure of government that controls Disney World’s sprawling property.

The contract with the service workers covers the costumed character performers who perform as Mickey Mouse — as well as bus drivers, culinary workers, lifeguards, theatrical workers and hotel housekeepers — representing more than half of the 70,000-plus workforce at Disney World. The contract approved five years ago made Disney the first major employer in central Florida to agree to a minimum hourly wage of $15, setting the trend for other workers in the hospitality industry-heavy region.

A report commissioned last year by one of the unions in the coalition, Unite Here Local 737, said that an adult worker with no dependents would need to earn $18.19 an hour to make a living wage in central Florida, while a family with two children would need both parents earning $23.91 an hour for a living wage.

While a wage of $15 an hour was enough for the last contract, “with skyrocketing rent, food, and gas prices in the last three years, it’s no longer possible to survive with those wages,” the report said.

With inflation causing the price of food and gas to shoot up, an employee earning $15 an hour full time currently makes $530 less than the worker would need for rent, food and gas each month, the report said.

Last month, food service and concessions workers at the Orange County Convention Center voted to approve a contract that will increase all non-tipped workers’ wages to $18 an hour by August, making them the first hospitality workers in Orlando to reach that pay rate.
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Nigerian Central Bank authorities are calling for calm as citizens march in the streets protesting cash and fuel shortages days ahead of the February 10 deadline when the country will switch to redesigned currency.  Protesters asked authorities Friday to circulate the new notes or reverse the currency switch decision. President Muhammadu Buhari assured citizens Friday that the problem will be addressed in a matter of days.

Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Godwin Emefiele told reporters Saturday authorities are taking measures to ensure smooth flow of the cash swap and minimize inconvenience.

He said there are enough of the redesigned currency and reiterated that the deadline to exchange the old bills for the new ones will not be extended beyond February 10.

On Sunday, the CBN announced a 10-day extension from January 31 for citizens to exchange world currencies for the new 200-, 500-, and 1,000-naira bills

But across many states, citizens say the new cash is yet to circulate, bringing business to a halt.

The situation snowballed into protests Friday in Oyo, Delta, Osun and Lagos states. Angry mobs vandalized banks and gas stations.

Ogho Okiti, the managing director of BusinessDay Media Ltd. said the new policy, though profitable, is already showing signs of poor implementation.

“What I think is happening is that we’re seeing an evidence of poor execution of the policy,” said Okiti. “There’s the dimension of logistics, there’s dimension of restrictions, then the dimension of accessibility, even to make transfers online you’re not able to do that. So, it’s putting so much frustration and pressure on the system”.

Nigeria is also facing intensifying fuel shortages across the country due to a disruption in the product distribution chain caused by the activities of cross-border smugglers.

On Friday, Buhari called for calm and said he has met with officials to resolve the problem in a lasting manner.

Oyo state Governor Sheyi Makinde also addressed residents in a televised broadcast, condemning violence in the state’s capital of Ibadan.

“The violence that erupted in part of Ibadan today is condemnable and will not be tolerated,” said Makinde. “In response to this I’ve suspended all campaign activities, I’ve also met with the heads of security agencies in Oyo state to restore calm. Violence cannot and will not solve our problems”.  

But across many states, citizens say the new cash is yet to circulate and the old notes have been mostly withdrawn from circulation, making business transactions difficult.

“The protest was actually peaceful, but I guess some people … all these political thugs joined, that is why it actually became violent. The bank was actually damaged totally, because they burgled the ATM machine, sike ?? parts of the windows,” said Stephen Adekunle, an Oyo State Resident.

This is Nigeria’s first currency swap in 19 years. 

Authorities say the measure is already making an impact curbing crimes, counterfeiting and corruption, as well as recalling the excess cash stashed away back into the banking system.
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Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani is in the eye of a storm after a dramatic crash in the stocks of his companies.

Adani’s businesses have lost more than $100 billion after a U.S. investment firm, Hindenburg Research, alleged that the companies engaged in stock market manipulation and fraud. The Adani Group has called the allegations “nothing but a lie.”

The rout faced by the Adani conglomerate, which spans such key areas as ports, power generation, airports, mining, and renewable power, has raised fears of a potential loss of investor confidence in India’s growing economy. It has also triggered a political storm, with opposition parties demanding a probe into the accusations of malpractice against a business figure perceived to have close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The spectacular rise of the Adani empire over the last decade has catapulted Gautam Adani into the realm of the world’s wealthiest people. He was ranked as the world’s third richest, and Asia’s richest man by Forbes, behind Bernard Arnault and Elon Musk until late January.

That ranking has tumbled since seven listed companies of the Adani group lost nearly half their market capitalization after Hindenburg raised doubts over the business practices of the conglomerate. In a report, it accused the group of artificially boosting share prices by funneling money into stocks through offshore tax havens. The report said the shares were overvalued and their prices had soared more than 800% in the past three years.

Hindenburg is a small investment firm known as a short seller on Wall Street. The firm looks for corporate wrongdoing and makes money if stock prices of the company fall.

Hindenburg said that the “brazen stock manipulation” and accounting fraud by Adani Group was “the largest con in corporate history.” It also said that “substantial debt” puts the group on a precarious financial footing.

In a 413-page response, the Adani Group called the report baseless and a “malicious combination of selective misinformation” and “stale, baseless and discredited allegations.” It said the charges were driven by “an ulterior motive” to allow the U.S. firm to make financial gains.

In a video message to investors Thursday, Adani said that the fundamentals of his group are “strong” and that its record on paying back debt was “impeccable.” The Adani Group called the report an attack on the “growth story and ambition of India.”

Hindenburg countered by saying, “India’s future is being held back by the Adani Group, which has draped itself in the Indian flag while systematically looting the nation.”

The controversy has turned a spotlight on the dizzying rise of the 60-year-old businessman, a college dropout from a middle-class family, who began as a commodities trader before expanding into infrastructure in the 1990s when he built a port in Gujarat state and made a foray into areas such as coal mining. Then came power plants, airports, roads and defense equipment, areas he said were in step with the country’s need for infrastructure. The group became one of the country’s top three conglomerates.

He has also made investments overseas — on Tuesday, even as the controversy raged, Adani stood with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he took control of Israel’s Haifa port, acquired for $1.2 billion. In 2011 he bought a large coal mining operation in Australia. Other investments are lined up in Sri Lanka.

Adani hails from Gujarat state, which Modi headed as chief minister before arriving on the national stage in 2014. Critics point out that his dramatic expansion has coincided with Modi’s rule.

“From the time Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, there were close ties with Adani at the personal level,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a political analyst who has written a book on Modi. “However, I did not really look into their association at a business level.”

Adani has denied claims of any preferential treatment by Modi’s government. “These allegations are baseless,” Adani told India Today television saying that their shared origins made him an “easy target” for such claims. “The fact of the matter is that my professional success is not because of any individual leader.”

For the time being, the group faces a crisis of confidence despite a marginal rally in its companies’ stocks on Friday. Adani has scrapped a $2.5 billion share offering that opened after the release of the Hindenburg report, saying he was doing it to insulate investors from potential losses, but that it would not affect his business. The share issue had been seen as a key sign of investor confidence. Although it found support from institutional investors and wealthy Indians, small retail investors had largely shunned it.

Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that she did not expect the controversy around Adani’s business empire to affect investor confidence in India.

India remains a “very well-regulated financial market,” she told broadcaster News18 on Friday.

“One instance, however much talked about globally it may be, I would think is not going to be indicative of how well Indian financial markets are governed,” Sitharaman said. “I think the investor confidence which existed before shall continue even now.”

However, calls for a probe are growing amid questions about whether financial regulators had done enough scrutiny of the group. “The allegations made by Hindenburg need an enquiry at the level of the Supreme Court because the charges are serious,” economist Prasenjit Bose said.

The controversy has also turned into a political flashpoint. Parliament was adjourned Thursday and Friday as opposition lawmakers demanded an inquiry either by a joint parliamentary committee or one monitored by the Supreme Court into the allegations and have expressed concerns about exposure that Indian financial institutions have to the Adani Group.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi, a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters outside parliament on Friday that “we [the government] have no connection” with the Adani controversy.

Political analyst Mukhopadhyay said, “The Adani meltdown will only have a political impact if there is a negative fallout on the wider stock markets and Indian public financial institutions. Otherwise, it will blow over.”
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America’s employers added a robust 517,000 jobs in January, a surprisingly strong gain in the face of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive drive to slow growth and tame inflation with higher interest rates.

The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, a new half-century low.

Friday’s government report added to the picture of a resilient labor market, with low unemployment, relatively few layoffs and many job openings even as most economists foresee a recession nearing. Though good for workers, employers’ steady demand for labor has also helped accelerate wage growth and contributed to high inflation.

January’s job growth, which far exceeded December’s 269,000 gain, could raise doubts about whether inflation pressures will ease further in the months ahead. The Fed has raised its key rate eight times since March to try to contain inflation, which hit a four-decade high last year but has slowed since then.

Companies are still seeking more workers and are hanging tightly onto the ones they have. Putting aside some high-profile layoffs at big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others, most workers are enjoying an unusual level of job security even at a time when many economists foresee a recession approaching.

For all of 2022, the economy had added a sizzling average of 375,000 jobs a month. That was a pace vigorous enough to have contributed to the painful inflation Americans have endured, the worst such bout in 40 years. A tight job market tends to put upward pressure on wages, which, in turn, feed into inflation.

The Fed, hoping to cool the job market and the economy — and, as a consequence, inflation — has steadily raised borrowing rates, most recently on Wednesday. Year-over-year measures of consumer inflation have steadily eased since peaking at 9.1% in June. But at 6.5% in December, inflation remains far above the Fed’s 2% target, which is why the central bank’s policymakers have reiterated their intent to keep raising borrowing rates for at least a few more months.

The Fed is aiming to achieve a “soft landing” — a pullback in the economy that is just enough to tame high inflation without triggering a recession. The policymakers hope that employers can slow wage increases and inflationary pressures by reducing job openings but not necessarily by laying off many employees.

But the job market’s resilience isn’t making that hoped-for outcome any easier. On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that employers posted 11 million job openings in December, an unexpected jump from 10.4 million in November and the largest number since July. There are now about two job vacancies, on average, for every unemployed American.

The Labor Department’s monthly count of layoffs has amounted to fewer than 1.5 million for 21 straight months. Until 2021, that figure had never dropped so low in records dating back two decades.

Yet another sign that workers are benefiting from unusual job security is the weekly number of people who apply for unemployment benefits. That figure is a proxy for layoffs, one that economists monitor for clues about where the job market might be headed. The government said Thursday that the number of jobless claims fell last week to its lowest level since April.

The pace of applications for unemployment aid has remained rock-bottom despite a steady stream of headline-making layoff announcements. Facebook parent Meta is cutting 11,000 jobs, Amazon 18,000, Microsoft 10,000, Google 12,000. Some economists suspect that many laid-off workers might not be showing up at the unemployment line because they can still find new jobs easily.
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Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Friday the government would have to agree to IMF bailout conditions that are “beyond imagination.”

An International Monetary Fund delegation landed in Pakistan on Tuesday for last-ditch talks to revive vital financial aid that has stalled for months.

The government has held out against tax rises and subsidy slashing demanded by the IMF, fearful of backlash ahead of elections due in October.

“I will not go into the details but will only say that our economic challenge is unimaginable. The conditions we will have to agree to with the IMF are beyond imagination. But we will have to agree with the conditions,” Sharif said in televised comments.

Pakistan’s economy is in dire straits, stricken by a balance of payments crisis as it attempts to service high levels of external debt, amid political chaos and deteriorating security.

The country’s central bank said Thursday its foreign exchange reserves had dropped again to $3.1 billion, which analysts said was enough for less than three weeks of imports.

Data on Wednesday showed year-on-year inflation had risen to a 48-year high, leaving Pakistanis struggling to afford basic food items.

Bowing to pressure

Ahead of the IMF visit, Islamabad began to bow to pressure with the prospect of national bankruptcy looming.

The government loosened controls on the rupee to rein in a rampant black market in U.S. dollars, a step that caused the currency to plunge to a record low. Artificially cheap petrol prices have also been hiked.

The world’s fifth-biggest population is no longer issuing letters of credit, except for essential food and medicines, causing a backlog of thousands of shipping containers at Karachi port stuffed with stock the country can no longer afford.

“Accepting IMF conditions will definitely increase prices, but Pakistan has no other choice,” analyst Abid Hasan told AFP. “Otherwise, there is a fear of a situation like Sri Lanka and Lebanon.”

Rejecting conditions and pushing Pakistan to the brink would have “political consequences” for the ruling parties, but so will agreeing to IMF measures raising the cost of living, he said.

Political chaos

The tumbling economy mirrors Pakistan’s political chaos, with former prime minister Imran Khan heaping pressure on the ruling coalition in his bid for early elections while his popularity remains high.

Khan, who was ousted last year in a no-confidence motion, negotiated a multibillion-dollar loan package from the IMF in 2019.

But he reneged on promises to cut subsidies and market interventions that had cushioned the cost-of-living crisis, causing the program to stall.

It is a common pattern in Pakistan, where most people live in rural poverty, with more than two dozen IMF deals brokered and then broken over the decades. 
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The Federal Reserve raised its target interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, yet promised “ongoing increases” in borrowing costs as part of its still unresolved battle against inflation. 

“Inflation has eased somewhat but remains elevated,” the U.S. central bank said in a statement that acknowledged the progress made in lowering the pace of price increases from the 40-year highs hit last year. 

Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example, was still seen as adding to “elevated global uncertainty,” the Fed said. But policymakers dropped the language of earlier statements citing the war as well as the COVID-19 pandemic as direct contributors to rising prices. 

Still, the Fed said the U.S. economy was enjoying “modest growth” and “robust” job gains, with policymakers still “highly attentive to inflation risks.” 

“The [Federal Open Market] Committee anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2% over time,” the Fed said. 

The decision lifted the benchmark overnight interest rate to a range between 4.50% and 4.75%, a move widely anticipated by investors and flagged by U.S. central bankers ahead of this week’s two-day policy session. 

But in keeping the promise of more rate hikes to come, the Fed pushed back against investor expectations that it was ready to flag the end of the current tightening cycle as a nod to the fact that inflation has been steadily declining for six months. 

The statement did indicate that any future rate increases would be in quarter-percentage-point increments, dropping a reference to the “pace” of future increases and instead referring to the “extent” of rate changes. 

But those, it said, would take into account how the policy moves so far had impacted the economy, language that linked further rate increases to the evolution of upcoming economic data. 

The Fed hopes it can continue nudging inflation lower to its 2% target without triggering a deep recession or causing a substantial rise in the unemployment rate from the current 3.5%, a level rarely seen in recent decades. Inflation, based on the Fed’s preferred measure, slowed to a 5% annual rate in December. 

The U.S. central bank did not issue new economic projections from its policymakers on Wednesday.
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Boeing bid farewell to an icon on Tuesday, delivering its final 747 jumbo jet as thousands of workers who helped build the planes over the past 55 years looked on. 

Since its first flight in 1969, the giant yet graceful 747 has served as a cargo plane, a commercial aircraft capable of carrying nearly 500 passengers, a transport for NASA’s space shuttles, and the Air Force One presidential aircraft. It revolutionized travel, connecting international cities that had never before had direct routes and helping democratize passenger flight. 

But over about the past 15 years, Boeing and its European rival Airbus have introduced more profitable and fuel efficient wide-body planes, with only two engines to maintain instead of the 747’s four. The final plane is the 1,574th built by Boeing in the Puget Sound region of Washington state. 

Thousands of workers joined Boeing and other industry executives from around the world — as well as actor and pilot John Travolta, who has flown 747s — Tuesday for a ceremony in the company’s massive factory north of Seattle, marking the delivery of the last one to cargo carrier Atlas Air. 

“If you love this business, you’ve been dreading this moment,” said longtime aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia. “Nobody wants a four-engine airliner anymore, but that doesn’t erase the tremendous contribution the aircraft made to the development of the industry or its remarkable legacy.” 

Boeing set out to build the 747 after losing a contract for a huge military transport, the C-5A. The idea was to take advantage of the new engines developed for the transport — high-bypass turbofan engines, which burned less fuel by passing air around the engine core, enabling a farther flight range — and to use them for a newly imagined civilian aircraft. 

It took more than 50,000 Boeing workers less than 16 months to churn out the first 747 — a Herculean effort that earned them the nickname “The Incredibles.” The jumbo jet’s production required the construction of a massive factory in Everett, north of Seattle — the world’s largest building by volume. The factory wasn’t even completed when the first planes were finished. 

Among those in attendance was Desi Evans, 92, who joined Boeing at its factory in Renton, south of Seattle, in 1957 and went on to spend 38 years at the company before retiring. One day in 1967, his boss told him he’d be joining the 747 program in Everett — the next morning. 

“They told me, ‘Wear rubber boots, a hard hat and dress warm, because it’s a sea of mud,'” Evans recalled. “And it was — they were getting ready for the erection of the factory.” 

He was assigned as a supervisor to help figure out how the interior of the passenger cabin would be installed and later oversaw crews that worked on sealing and painting the planes. 

“When that very first 747 rolled out, it was an incredible time,” he said as he stood before the last plane, parked outside the factory. “You felt elated — like you’re making history. You’re part of something big, and it’s still big, even if this is the last one.” 

The plane’s fuselage was 225 feet (68.5 meters) long and the tail stood as tall as a six-story building. The plane’s design included a second deck extending from the cockpit back over the first third of the plane, giving it a distinctive hump and inspiring a nickname, the Whale. More romantically, the 747 became known as the Queen of the Skies. 

Some airlines turned the second deck into a first-class cocktail lounge, while even the lower deck sometimes featured lounges or even a piano bar. One decommissioned 747, originally built for Singapore Airlines in 1976, has been converted into a 33-room hotel near the airport in Stockholm. 

“It was the first big carrier, the first widebody, so it set a new standard for airlines to figure out what to do with it, and how to fill it,” said Guillaume de Syon, a history professor at Pennsylvania’s Albright College who specializes in aviation and mobility. “It became the essence of mass air travel: You couldn’t fill it with people paying full price, so you need to lower prices to get people onboard. It contributed to what happened in the late 1970s with the deregulation of air travel.” 

The first 747 entered service in 1970 on Pan Am’s New York-London route, and its timing was terrible, Aboulafia said. It debuted shortly before the oil crisis of 1973, amid a recession that saw Boeing’s employment fall from 100,800 employees in 1967 to a low of 38,690 in April 1971. The “Boeing bust” was infamously marked by a billboard near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport that read, “Will the last person leaving SEATTLE — Turn out the lights.” 

An updated model — the 747-400 series — arrived in the late 1980s and had much better timing, coinciding with the Asian economic boom of the early 1990s, Aboulafia said. He took a Cathay Pacific 747 from Los Angeles to Hong Kong as a twentysomething backpacker in 1991. 

“Even people like me could go see Asia,” Aboulafia said. “Before, you had to stop for fuel in Alaska or Hawaii and it cost a lot more. This was a straight shot — and reasonably priced.” 

Delta was the last U.S. airline to use the 747 for passenger flights, which ended in 2017, although some other international carriers continue to fly it, including the German airline Lufthansa. 

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr recalled traveling in a 747 as a young exchange student and said that when he realized he’d be traveling to the West Coast of the U.S. for Tuesday’s event, there was only one way to go: riding first-class in the nose of a Lufthansa 747 from Frankfurt to San Francisco. He promised the crowd Lufthansa would keep flying the 747 for many years to come. 

“We just love the airplane,” he said. 

Atlas Air ordered four 747-8 freighters early last year, with the final one — emblazoned with an image of Joe Sutter, the engineer who oversaw the 747’s original design team — delivered Tuesday. Atlas CEO John Dietrich called the 747 the greatest air freighter, thanks in part to its unique capacity to load through the nose cone. 
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Pakistan is facing a severe economic crisis. Prices of staples like food and fuel are skyrocketing. The country must repay billions in external debt, but its foreign reserves are so low it can barely afford to buy a few weeks’ worth of imports. As the government tries to revive stalled talks with the International Monetary Fund to unlock much-needed assistance, Sarah Zaman looks at how delaying reforms has brought Pakistan to the brink of economic disaster.
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The Treasury Department said Monday it plans to increase its borrowing during the first three months of 2023, even as the federal government is bumping up against a $31.4 trillion limit on its legal borrowing authority. 

The U.S. plans to borrow $932 billion during the January-to-March quarter. That’s $353 billion more than projected last October, due to a lower beginning-of-quarter cash balance and projections of lower-than-expected income tax receipts and higher spending. 

The increased borrowing will take place as Democrats and the White House push for Congress to increase the federal debt limit. President Joe Biden wants the cap raised without any preconditions. The new House Republican majority is seeking to secure spending cuts in exchange for a debt limit increase. 

Treasury officials say the debate over the debt ceiling poses a risk to the U.S. financial position. 

“Even just the threat that the U.S. government might fail to meet its obligations may cause severe harm to the economy by eroding household and business confidence, injecting volatility into financial markets, and raising the cost of capital — among other negative impacts,” Ben Harris, Treasury’s assistant secretary for economic policy, said in a statement. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, in a letter to congressional leaders earlier this month, said the department had begun resorting to “extraordinary measures” to avoid a federal government default. She said it’s “critical that Congress act in a timely manner” to raise or suspend the debt limit. 

In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Yellen said her actions will buy time until Congress can pass legislation that will either raise the nation’s borrowing authority or suspend the limit for a period of time. She said it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June. 

New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet with Biden at the White House this week to discuss the debt limit. 

McCarthy told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday: “I want to sit down together, work out an agreement that we can move forward to put us on a path to balance — and at the same time not put any of our debt in jeopardy at the same time.” 
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India’s population is set to surpass China’s sometime this year according to the United Nations. Experts say while this represents an opportunity to reap a demographic dividend, much will depend on how India leverages its numbers, especially its massive population of young people. Anjana Pasricha has a report from New Delhi.
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U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised Sunday the United States would not default on its national debts as the country approaches its $31.4 trillion spending limit in June but said the government cannot continue to annually spend more than it collects in taxes.

McCarthy, leader of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” show that he will meet with Democratic President Joe Biden on Wednesday, the first discussions in what could be protracted debt ceiling talks over several months.

The U.S. must raise its debt ceiling before it runs out of money to pay bills it has already incurred. Biden and Democrats want a “clean” approval to raise the debt ceiling not tied to future spending, while Republicans have called for limits on new spending to curb yearly deficits, chronic overspending that often totals more than $1 trillion annually.

“We’re not going to default,” McCarthy said.

The U.S. has never defaulted on its debts, such as on Treasury notes sold to China, Japan and individual Americans, but its credit rating was downgraded in 2011 when Democratic President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans sparred at length over the country’s spending before eventually reaching a 10-year agreement.

Now, McCarthy said, the country’s debt totals 120% of its national economic output, with the debt significantly added to in recent years for two main reasons, the national tax cuts Republicans approved under former President Donald Trump and unfunded coronavirus aid relief approved under both Trump and Biden.

“We haven’t been in this place to debt since World War II,” McCarthy said. “So, we can’t continue down this path. And I don’t think there’s anyone in America who doesn’t agree that there’s some wasteful Washington spending that we can eliminate.”

“So, I want to sit down together, work out an agreement that we can move forward, to put us on a path to balance — at the same time, not put any — any of our debt in jeopardy at the same time,” he said. “We shouldn’t just print more money; we should balance our budget. So, I want to look at every single department. Where can we become more efficient, more effective, and more accountable?”

McCarthy, like Biden, ruled out cuts to two of the most popular government programs, pensions and health care for older Americans, respectively known as Social Security and Medicare.

But he added, “I want to look at every single dollar we’re spending, no matter where it’s being spent. I want to eliminate waste wherever it is.”

He compared government spending to an American family’s budget, saying, “Every family does this. What is – what has happened with the debt limit is you reached your credit card limit. Should we just continue to raise the limit? Or should we look at what we’re spending?”
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Across the U.S., there’s a silent frustration brewing about an age-old practice that many say is getting out of hand: tipping.

Some fed-up consumers are posting rants on social media complaining about tip requests at drive-thrus, while others say they’re tired of being asked to leave a gratuity for a muffin or a simple cup of coffee at their neighborhood bakery. What’s next, they wonder — are we going to be tipping our doctors and dentists, too?

As more businesses adopt digital payment methods, customers are automatically being prompted to leave a gratuity — many times as high as 30% — at places they normally wouldn’t. And some say it has become more frustrating as the price of items has skyrocketed due to inflation, which eased to 6.5% in December but still remains painfully high.

“Suddenly, these screens are at every establishment we encounter. They’re popping up online as well for online orders. And I fear that there is no end,” said etiquette expert Thomas Farley, who considers the whole thing somewhat of “an invasion.”

Unlike tip jars that shoppers can easily ignore if they don’t have spare change, experts say the digital requests can produce social pressure and are more difficult to bypass. And your generosity, or lack thereof, can be laid bare for anyone close enough to glance at the screen — including the workers themselves.

Dylan Schenker is one of them. The 38-year-old earns about $400 a month in tips, which provides a helpful supplement to his $15 hourly wage as a barista at Philadelphia café located inside a restaurant. Most of those tips come from consumers who order coffee drinks or interact with the café for other things, such as carryout orders. The gratuity helps cover his monthly rent and eases some of his burdens while he attends graduate school and juggles his job.

Schenker says it’s hard to sympathize with consumers who are able to afford pricey coffee drinks but complain about tipping. And he often feels demoralized when people don’t leave behind anything extra — especially if they’re regulars.

“Tipping is about making sure the people who are performing that service for you are getting paid what they’re owed,” said Schenker, who’s been working in the service industry for roughly 18 years.

Traditionally, consumers have taken pride in being good tippers at places like restaurants, which typically pay their workers lower than the minimum wage in expectation they’ll make up the difference in tips. But academics who study the topic say many consumers are now feeling irritated by automatic tip requests at coffee shops and other counter service eateries where tipping has not typically been expected, workers make at least the minimum wage and service is usually limited.

“People do not like unsolicited advice,” said Ismail Karabas, a marketing professor at Murray State University who studies tipping. “They don’t like to be asked for things, especially at the wrong time.”

Some of the requests can also come from odd places. Clarissa Moore, a 35-year-old who works as a supervisor at a utility company in Pennsylvania, said even her mortgage company has been asking for tips lately. Typically, she’s happy to leave a gratuity at restaurants, and sometimes at coffee shops and other fast-food places when the service is good. But, Moore said she believes consumers shouldn’t be asked to tip nearly everywhere they go — and it shouldn’t be something that’s expected of them.

“It makes you feel bad. You feel like you have to do it because they’re asking you to do it,” she said. “But then you have to think about the position that puts people in. They’re paying for something that they really don’t want to pay for, or they’re tipping when they really don’t want to tip — or can’t afford to tip — because they don’t want to feel bad.”

In the book “Emily Post’s Etiquette,” authors Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning advise consumers to tip on ride-shares, like Uber and Lyft, as well as food and beverages, including alcohol. But they also write that it’s up to each person to choose how much to tip at a café or a take-out food service, and that consumers shouldn’t feel embarrassed about choosing the lowest suggested tip amount, and don’t have to explain themselves if they don’t tip.

Digital payment methods have been around for a number of years, though experts say the pandemic has accelerated the trend towards more tipping. Michael Lynn, a consumer behavior professor at Cornell University, said consumers were more generous with tips during the early days of the pandemic in an effort to show support for restaurants and other businesses that were hard hit by COVID-19. Many people genuinely wanted to help out and felt sympathetic to workers who held jobs that put them more at risk of catching the virus, Lynn said.

Tips at full-service restaurants grew by 25.3% in the third quarter of 2022, while gratuities at quick or counter service restaurants went up 16.7% compared to the same time in 2021, according to Square, one of the biggest companies operating digital payment methods. Data provided by the company shows continuous growth for the same period since 2019.

As tip requests have become more common, some businesses are advertising it in their job postings to lure in more workers even though the extra money isn’t always guaranteed.

In December, Starbucks rolled out a new tipping option on credit and debit card transactions at its stores, something a group organizing the company’s hourly workers had called for. Since then, a Starbucks spokesperson said nearly half of credit and debit card transactions have included a gratuity, which – along with tips received through cash and the Starbucks app – are distributed based on the number of hours a barista worked on the days the tips were received.

Karabas, the Murray State professor, says some customers, like those who’ve worked in the service industry in the past, want to tip workers at quick service businesses and wouldn’t be irritated by the automatic requests. But for others, research shows they might be less likely to come back to a particular business if they are feeling irritated by the requests, he said.

The final tab might also impact how customers react. Karabas said in the research he did with other academics, they manipulated the payment amounts and found that when the check was high, consumers no longer felt as irritated by the tip requests. That suggests the best time for a coffee shop to ask for that 20% tip, for example, might be on four or five orders of coffee, not a small cup that costs $4.

Some consumers might continue to shrug off the tip requests regardless of the amount.

“If you work for a company, it’s that company’s job to pay you for doing work for them,” said Mike Janavey, a footwear and clothing designer who lives in New York City. “They’re not supposed to be juicing consumers that are already spending money there to pay their employees.”

Schenker, the Philadelphia barista, agrees — to a certain extent.

“The onus should absolutely be on the owners, but that doesn’t change overnight,” he said. “And this is the best thing we have right now.”
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A Japanese whaling operator, after struggling for years to promote its products amid protests from conservationists, has found a new way to cultivate clientele and bolster sales: whale meat vending machines.

The Kujira (Whale) Store, an unmanned outlet that recently opened in the port town of Yokohama near Tokyo, houses three machines for whale sashimi, whale bacon, whale skin and whale steak, as well as canned whale meat. Prices range from 1,000 yen ($7.70) to 3,000 yen ($23).

The outlet features white vending machines decorated with cartoon whales and is the third location to launch in the Japanese capital region. It opened Tuesday after two others were introduced in Tokyo earlier this year as part of Kyodo Senpaku Co.’s new sales drive.

Whale meat has long been a source of controversy but sales in the new vending machines have quietly gotten off to a good start, the operator says. Anti-whaling protests have subsided since Japan in 2019 terminated its much-criticized research hunts in the Antarctic and resumed commercial whaling off the Japanese coasts.

Conservationists say they are worried the move could be a step toward expanded whaling.

“The issue is not the vending machines themselves but what they may lead to,” said Nanami Kurasawa, head of the Iruka & Kujira (Dolphin & Whale) Action Network.

Kurasawa noted the whaling operator is already asking for additional catches and to expand whaling outside of the designated waters.

Kyodo Senpaku hopes to set up vending machines at 100 locations nationwide in five years, company spokesperson Konomu Kubo told The Associated Press. A fourth is to open in Osaka next month.

The idea is to open vending machines near supermarkets, where whale meat is usually unavailable, to cultivate demand, a task crucial for the industry’s survival.

Major supermarket chains have largely stayed away from whale meat to avoid protests by anti-whaling groups and remain cautious even though harassment from activists has subsided, Kubo said.

“As a result, many consumers who want to eat it cannot find or buy whale meat. We launched vending machines at unmanned stores for those people,” he said.

Company officials say sales at the two Tokyo outlets have been significantly higher than expected, keeping staff busy replenishing products.

At the store in the Motomachi district of Yokohama, a posh shopping area near Chinatown, 61-year-old customer Mami Kashiwabara went straight for whale bacon, her father’s favorite. To her disappointment it was sold out, and she settled for frozen onomi, tail meat that is regarded as a rare delicacy.

Kashiwabara says she is aware of the whaling controversy, but that whale meat brings back her childhood memories of eating it at family dinners and school lunches.

“I don’t think it’s good to kill whales meaninglessly. But whale meat is part of Japanese food culture, and we can respect the lives of whales by appreciating their meat,” Kashiwabara said. “I would be happy if I can eat it.”

Kashiwabara said she planned to share her purchase of a 3,000 yen ($23) handy-size chunk, neatly wrapped in a freezer bag, with her husband over sake.

The meat mostly comes from whales caught off Japan’s northeastern coast.

Japan resumed commercial whaling in July 2019 after withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission, ending 30 years of what it called research whaling, which had been criticized by conservationists as a cover for commercial hunts banned by the IWC in 1988.

Under its commercial whaling in the Japanese exclusive economic zone, Japan last year caught 270 whales, less than 80% of the quota and fewer than the number it once hunted in the Antarctic and the northwestern Pacific in its research program.

The decline occurred because fewer minke whales were found along the coast. Kurasawa says the reason for the smaller catch should be examined to see if it is linked to overhunting or climate change.

While conservation groups condemned the resumption of commercial whaling, some see it as a way to let the government’s embattled and expensive whaling program adapt to changing times and tastes.

In a show of determination to keep the whaling industry alive in the coming decades, Kyodo Senpaku will construct a 6 billion yen ($46 million) new mother ship for launch next year to replace the aging Nisshin Maru.

But uncertainty remains.

Whaling is losing support in other whaling nations such as Iceland, where only one whaler remains.

Whales may also be moving away from the Japanese coasts due to a scarcity of saury, a staple of their diet, and other fish possibly due to the impact of climate change, Kubo said.

Whaling in Japan involves only a few hundred people and one operator and accounted for less than 0.1% of total meat consumption in recent years, according to Fisheries Agency data.

Still, conservative governing lawmakers staunchly support commercial whaling and consumption of the meat as part of Japan’s cultural tradition.

Conservationists say whale meat is no longer part of the daily diet in Japan, especially for younger generations.

Whale meat was an affordable source of protein during Japan’s undernourished years after World War II, with annual consumption peaking at 233,000 tons in 1962.

Whale was quickly replaced by other meats. The whale meat supply fell to 6,000 tons in 1986, the year before the moratorium on commercial whaling imposed by the IWC banned the hunting of several whale species.

Under the research whaling, criticized as a cover for commercial hunts because the meat was sold on the market, Japan caught as many as 1,200 whales annually. It has since drastically cut back its catch after international protests escalated and whale meat supply and consumption slumped at home.

Annual meat supply had fluctuated in a range of 3,000-5,000 tons, including imports from Norway and Iceland. The amount further fell in 2019 to 2,000 tons, or 20 grams (less than 1 ounce) of whale meat per person a year, the Fisheries Agency statistics show.

Whaling officials attributed the shrinking supply in the past three years to the absence of imports due to the pandemic, and plan to nearly double this year’s supply with imports of more than 2,500 tons from Iceland.

Japan managed to get Iceland’s only remaining whaler to hunt fin whales exclusively for shipment to Japan, whaling officials said. Iceland caught only one minke whale in the 2021 season, according to the IWC.

Criticizing Iceland’s export to Japan, the International Fund for Animal Welfare said it “opposes all commercial whaling as it is inherently cruel.”

With uncertain outlook for imports, Kyodo Senpaku wants the government to raise Japan’s annual catch quota to levels that can supply about 5,000 tons, which Kubo describes as the threshold to maintain the industry.

“From a long-term perspective, I think it would be difficult to sustain the industry at the current supply levels,” Kubo said. “We must expand both supply and demand, which have both shrunk.”
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Buying an electric vehicle remains challenging for many consumers. High prices and limited access to charging stations can make it a difficult decision, especially in emerging markets like Indonesia. VOA’s Ahadian Utama reports. Camera: Ahadian Utama, Indra Yoga
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The second consecutive quarter of economic growth that the government reported Thursday underscored that the nation isn’t in a recession despite high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s fastest pace of interest rate hikes in four decades.

Yet the U.S. economy is hardly in the clear. The solid growth in the October-December quarter will do little to alter the widespread view of economists that a recession is very likely sometime this year.

For now, the economy expanded at a 2.9% annual rate in the fourth quarter, though some of the underlying figures weren’t as healthy. Consumer spending, for example, grew at a slower pace than in the previous quarter, and business investment was weak. Last quarter’s growth was fueled by factors that won’t likely last. These include companies’ restocking of inventories and a drop in imports, which meant that more spending went to U.S.-made goods.

Increased borrowing rates and still-high inflation are expected to steadily weaken consumer and business spending. Businesses will likely pare expenses in response, which could lead to layoffs and higher unemployment. And a likely recession in the United Kingdom and slower growth in China will erode the revenue and profits of American corporations. Such trends are expected to cause a U.S. recession sometime in the coming months.

Still, there are reasons to expect that a recession, if it does come, will prove to be a comparatively mild one. Many employers, having struggled to hire after huge layoffs during the pandemic, may decide to retain most of their workforces even in a shrinking economy.

Six months of economic decline is a long-held informal definition of a recession. Yet nothing is simple in a post-pandemic economy in which growth was negative in the first half of last year but the job market remained robust, with ultra-low unemployment and healthy levels of hiring. The economy’s direction has confounded the Fed’s policymakers and many private economists ever since growth screeched to a halt in March 2020, when COVID-19 struck and 22 million Americans were suddenly thrown out of work.

Inflation, the economy’s biggest threat last year, is now showing signs of steadily declining. Used and new cars are becoming less expensive. Price increases for furniture, clothes and other physical goods are slowing.

Last year, the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate seven times, from zero to a range of 4.25% to 4.5%. The Fed’s policymakers have projected that they will keep raising their key rate until it tops 5%, which would be the highest level in 15 years. As borrowing costs swell, fewer Americans can afford a mortgage or an auto loan. Higher rates, combined with inflated prices, could deprive the economy of its main engine — healthy consumer spending.

Fed officials have made clear that they’re willing to tip the economy into a recession if necessary to defeat high inflation, and most economists believe them. Many analysts envision a recession beginning as early as the April-June quarter this year.

So what is the likelihood of a recession? Here are some questions and answers:

Why do many economists foresee a recession?

They expect the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes and high inflation to overwhelm consumers and businesses, forcing them to slow their spending and investment. Businesses will likely also have to cut jobs, causing spending to fall further.

Consumers have so far proved remarkably resilient in the face of higher rates and rising prices. Still, there are signs that their sturdiness is starting to crack.

Retail sales have dropped for two months in a row. The Fed’s so-called beige book, a collection of anecdotal reports from businesses around the country, shows that retailers are increasingly seeing consumers resist higher prices.

Credit card debt is also rising — evidence that Americans are having to borrow more to maintain their spending levels, a trend that probably isn’t sustainable.

More than half the economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics say the likelihood of a recession this year is above 50%.

What are some signs that a recession may have begun?

The clearest signal would be a steady rise in job losses and a surge in unemployment. Claudia Sahm, an economist and former Fed staff member, has noted that since World War II, an increase in the unemployment rate of a half-percentage point over several months has always signaled a recession has begun.

Many economists monitor the number of people who seek unemployment benefits each week, a gauge that indicates whether layoffs are worsening. Weekly applications for jobless aid actually dropped last week to a historically low 190,000. Employers continue to add many jobs, causing the unemployment rate to fall in December to 3.5%, a half-century low, from 3.7%.

Any other signals to watch for?

Economists monitor changes in the interest payments, or yields, on different bonds for a recession signal known as an “inverted yield curve.” This occurs when the yield on the 10-year Treasury falls below the yield on a short-term Treasury, such as the three-month T-bill. That is unusual. Normally, longer-term bonds pay investors a richer yield in exchange for tying up their money for a longer period.

Inverted yield curves generally mean that investors foresee a recession that will compel the Fed to slash rates. Inverted curves often predate recessions. Still, it can take 18 to 24 months for a downturn to arrive after the yield curve inverts.

Ever since July, the yield on the two-year Treasury note has exceeded the 10-year yield, suggesting that markets expect a recession soon. And the three-month yield has also risen far above the 10-year, an inversion that has an even better track record at predicting recessions.

Who decides when a recession has started?

Recessions are officially declared by the obscure-sounding National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of economists whose Business Cycle Dating Committee defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months.”

The committee considers trends in hiring. It also assesses many other data points, including gauges of income, employment, inflation-adjusted spending, retail sales and factory output. It puts heavy weight on a measure of inflation-adjusted income that excludes government support payments like Social Security.

Yet the NBER typically doesn’t declare a recession until well after one has begun, sometimes for up to a year.

Does high inflation typically lead to a recession?

Not always. Inflation reached 4.7% in 2006, at that point the highest in 15 years, without causing a downturn. (The 2008-2009 recession that followed was caused by the bursting of the housing bubble).

But when it gets as high as it did last year — it reached a 40-year peak of 9.1% in June — a downturn becomes increasingly likely.

That’s for two reasons: First, the Fed will sharply raise borrowing costs when inflation gets that high. Higher rates then drag down the economy as consumers are less able to afford homes, cars and other major purchases.

High inflation also distorts the economy on its own. Consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, weakens. And businesses grow uncertain about the future economic outlook. Many of them pull back on their expansion plans and stop hiring. This can lead to higher unemployment as some people choose to leave jobs and aren’t replaced.
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The U.S. economy cooled only slightly at the end of last year, advancing at an annualized 2.9% rate, the Department of Commerce reported Thursday, even as forecasters are suggesting a recession is possible later in 2023.

The growth in the October-to-December quarter dropped from a 3.2% advance in the third quarter, following a half year when the world’s biggest economy shrank.

For all of 2022, the economy grew by a solid, if unspectacular 2.1%, down from a robust 5.7% growth rate in 2021 when the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic was in full force.

Last year saw contrasting themes, including the fastest growth in consumer prices in four decades, pinching the wallets of Americans at all income levels.

Yet the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years was recorded, with hundreds of thousands of new jobs being added to payrolls every month. Separately, borrowing costs for businesses and consumer loans and home mortgages rose sharply as the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, increased its benchmark interest rate seven times, an effort aimed at slowing economic growth and curbing inflation.

By the end of the year and into January, there were signs the economy was slowing, with some forecasters predicting a recession — meaning two straight quarters of economic decline in the coming months.

With higher interest rates, home buying and retail sales have dropped, while manufacturing output fell in November and December. The hiring of temporary workers is weakening, and major companies, especially in technology and media, are laying off thousands of workers. 

While the inflation rate in consumer prices has dropped, it remains high by historical standards — now at a 6.5% annualized rate, well above the 2% rate sought by Federal Reserve policymakers. It is likely to stay high through much of 2023.

The Fed is also planning more interest rate increases, albeit not likely as big as the ones it imposed in 2022. It is another factor that could curtail U.S. economic growth.

The White House and the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives are facing contentious negotiations over increasing the limit on the national debt, now at $31.4 trillion. The U.S. could reach the spending limit by early June.

If an agreement is not reached, the ensuing turmoil would roil world financial markets and the U.S. government’s credit rating could be cut, as occurred in 2011, the last time Congress and the White House quarreled significantly over increasing the debt limit. 
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Nigerian authorities have hailed the launch of a deepwater seaport in Lagos they say will create 300,000 jobs and reduce shipping bottlenecks. While the new port is expected to reduce losses due to congestion, shipping industry experts say Nigeria’s poor roads and rail connections to ports also must be improved.

The launch by President Mohammadu Buhari during his two-day visit this week to Lagos signaled his government’s effort to grow Nigeria’s economy through infrastructural development.

The 1.5-billion-dollar, Chinese-built Lekki Deep Sea Port sits on 90 hectares of land in the Lagos Free Trade Zone — the biggest port by size in West Africa.

Authorities say ships docking at the port could be up to four times the size of vessels at the state’s Tin Can and Apapa ports. They expect it will ease delays and congestion at ports and increase earnings by up to $360 billion in coming years.

Efioita Ephraim is a manager at Ports and Terminal Nigeria, Ltd.

“The current ports we have in the country are located along rivers, tributaries and that’s why there are limitations. It’s a welcome development to have an infrastructure like this in our country. With this, larger vessels will be able to berth at our ports and we shall be in competition with neighboring countries such as Cotonou [Benin],” said Ephraim.

Most of Nigeria’s seaports were built many decades ago and are either closed or operating below capacity.

Nigeria loses an estimated $1 billion a year to delays and bottlenecks at ports. To address the problem, the Nigerian Ports Authority launched an automated process for clearing cargo at ports.

Abiodun Gbadamosi is the former general manager of Nigeria’s western ports. He said the new deep sea port at Lagos will add to Nigeria’s economic progress and create jobs.

The country’s bureau of statistics says Nigeria’s unemployment rate is 33 percent.

“What Nigeria needs now are jobs, jobs and more jobs, and that’s going to go a very long way. It’s going to improve the commerce around that area. It’s highly commendable and it’s going to actually propel the state. Then Nigeria can now push forward the idea of being hub for the region,” he said.

Ephraim said authorities must improve road and rail accessibility to the area.

“If the items are to be conveyed out of the port and into the port by road, then I would expect the multimodal mode of transportation be encouraged to and from the Lekki deep sea port, rail water and road transportation.”

China is one of Nigeria’s biggest lenders and has been funding rail, road and power projects.

The first commercial vessel is expected to arrive in the port this Sunday.
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