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☆ Biden’s Selma visit puts spotlight back on voting rights
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

The visit to Selma also is an opportunity for Biden to speak directly to the current generation of civil rights activists. They urged Washington politicians visiting Selma not to sully the memories of the late civil rights activists John Lewis, Hosea Williams and others with empty platitudes. "When voting rights passed after Selma, it didn't just help Black people. We need the president to reframe this: When you block voting rights, you're not just hurting Black people. As a candidate in 2020, Biden promised to pursue sweeping legislation to bolster protection of voting rights.

☆ The cheapest and most expensive U.S. airports to fly out of—JFK, LAX didn't make either list
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Celia Fernandez | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

CivMetrics ranked the cheapest and most expensive airports in the U.S. based on average flight costs. Among the busiest airports, Ted Stevens Anchorage International in Alaska was the most expensive, with an average flight price of $540. On the other end, St. Pete Clearwater International in Florida, where flight costs average around $147, ranked as the cheapest airport. Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, came in third place. The Ted Stevens International Airport is a critical supply chain hub.

☆ Can't figure out this economy? Walmart, Home Depot are having trouble, too
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-26 | by ( Tim Mullaney | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Joe Raedle | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesIf you think the economy is confusing right now, consider how baffling it must look to Home Depot and Walmart. Home Depot said consumer spending is holding up, but that it expects a flat sales-growth year overall, with declining profits. Friday's PCE showed consumer spending rose more than expected as prices increased, jumping 1.8% for the month compared to the estimate of 1.4%. It wasn't a good week for the retail sector or consumer stocks, either. "The outlook for sustained consumer spending growth remains," wrote consumer analyst Jason English.

☆ TikTok's 'lucky girls' say they manifest success by simply believing things always work out for them — because, why not?
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-20 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | Rebecca Knight | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

The "lucky girl" technique has been criticized as pseudoscience, wishful thinking, and little more than pop psychology. "If you want to be that lucky girl, you've got to step into her and embody her." She sees being a lucky girl as a "way to have control and hope," she said. "When you believe you're lucky, you follow the cues that come to you, and trust that the universe will do its part." Natasha BadgerFor Badger, "lucky-girl syndrome" is akin to a spiritual practice.

☆ U.K. Man Stole Nearly 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Joseph Pisani | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Police said nearly 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs were stolen Saturday in England. A man in Britain pleaded guilty to stealing nearly 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs, in what police are calling an “eggs-travagent theft.”“West Mercia Police has helped save Easter for Crème Egg fans,” the police department, which covers an area west of Birmingham, said in a series of tweets crackling with egg puns.

☆ Britain's NICE to speed up reviews of COVID-19 treatments
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Maggie Fick | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

LONDON, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Britain's agency that determines if medicines should be used in the National Health Service (NHS) said on Thursday it is speeding up how it decides if COVID-19 therapies are still effective against circulating variants. The new review process will enable the agency to update its recommendations on the cost-effectiveness of COVID treatments so they can be made available more swiftly to patients, it said. "The rapidly evolving nature of COVID-19 means we need to have a way of establishing the cost effectiveness of existing medicines against current variants in an agile way," the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said. It said there is no evidence of Evusheld's clinicial effectiveness against current variants and those likely to be circulating in the next 6 months. The announcement comes as demand for COVID treatments appears set to drop this year, due to population immunity from high rates of vaccination and previous infections.

☆ The 11 U.S. cities where rent prices fell the most in January
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Mike Winters | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

U.S. renters are finally getting a break on their rent, with prices dropping in 11 major markets in January, according to new data by online realtor Redfin. Median asking rent dropped to $1,942 last month, down from a 2022 peak of $2,053. Only four cities posted double-digit rent growth in January 2022, compared with 38 in January 2021. The number of cities with price drops also continues to climb, from just two a year ago to 11 in January. January rent prices for this study are based on 20,000 apartment listings from Rent.com for the 50 largest metro areas in the country.

☆ UK regional airline Flybe to wind down as rescue talks collapse
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SummarySummary Companies Flybe to wind down business as rescue talks endFurther 25 jobs affectedFeb 15 (Reuters) - British regional airline Flybe will wind up its business after rescue talks fell through, its joint administrators said on Wednesday, a month after the company cancelled all flights and entered insolvency proceedings for a second time in three years. The pandemic and resulting lockdown pushed Flybe into administration for the first time in March 2020, affecting 2,400 jobs. After administrators were appointed again in late January 2023, Birmingham Headquartered Flybe made 276 workers redundant. Flybe, which operated flights on 21 routes to 17 destinations across the UK and Europe, said a further 25 jobs would now be affected. Lufthansa declined to comment on the matter on Wednesday, while Air France-KLM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

☆ U.S. home builder confidence extends rebound in February, NAHB says
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Dan Burns | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Feb 15 (Reuters) - Confidence among U.S. single-family homebuilders improved for a second straight month in February - and by much more than economists had anticipated - in a fresh signal the housing market was turning a corner after last year's huge slump. The reading - the highest since September - was also higher than all 33 projections in a Reuters survey of economists, which had a median estimate of 37. A reading below 50 indicates that more builders view conditions as poor rather than good. Moreover, it appears that the peak in mortgage rates has passed, said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz. NAHB said all four regions saw improved sentiment and the index tracking expectations for future sales rose for a third month.

☆ Homebuilder sentiment in February improved by the biggest amount in a decade
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Diana Olick | In Dianaolick | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

America's homebuilders are growing more bullish as buyer demand picks up, driven in part by slightly lower mortgage rates. Homebuilder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes in February rose seven points to 42, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. This is the highest reading since September and the largest monthly gain since June 2013. The index stood at 81 in February of last year, before mortgage rates began to rise. Builders say affordability is improving, as mortgage rates fall back from their highs of last fall and start to settle in a narrow range.

☆ Birmingham captain Deeney suffers racist abuse
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

Feb 15 (Reuters) - Birmingham City captain Troy Deeney suffered alleged racial abuse from a fan of his team after the full-time whistle in their Championship match against Cardiff City. Deeney, 34, and several fans reported hearing the abuse after Tuesday's 2-0 defeat by Cardiff as the players left the pitch. "Blues gives its full support to Troy and is appalled and saddened that yet again, one of our players is not safe from discrimination on the football pitch," Birmingham said in a statement on Wednesday. Deeney joined his hometown club in 2021 and has made 53 appearances for Birmingham, scoring six goals this season. Reporting by Angelica Medina in Mexico City, editing by Ed OsmondOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Tuesday Morning says it wants to close 265 stores as part of its bankruptcy filing. See if your local store is on the list.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +30 min

Camarillo: Camarillo Village Square, 2450 Las Posas Road, Ste HCamarillo Village Square, 2450 Las Posas Road, Ste H Roseville: Fairway Commons Shopping Center, 5771A Five Star Blvd. San Diego: Pacific Plaza Shopping Center, 1772‐D Garnet AvenuePacific Plaza Shopping Center, 1772‐D Garnet Avenue Woodland Hills: Pride Shopping Center, 22950 Victory Blvd. Winston-Salem: Whitaker Square Shopping Center, 1947 North Pease Haven Road, Space #1947Whitaker Square Shopping Center, 1947 North Pease Haven Road, Space #1947 Matthews: Windsor Square Shopping Center, 9945 E. Independence Blvd. ; Westhill Village Shopping Center, 7525 WestheimerWeslayan Plaza West Shopping Center, 5442‐A Weslayan Street; Westheimer Commons, 12568 Westheimer Rd. ; Westhill Village Shopping Center, 7525 Westheimer El Paso: West Towne Marketplace, 6450 N. Desert Blvd., Ste.

☆ Do Trigger Warnings Help or Hurt Students?
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Emily Bobrow | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

On the first day of the spring semester in January, an assistant professor teaching a first-year English composition course at the University of Oklahoma uttered the N-word. For a lesson about the language of empathy, she read Martin Luther King , Jr.’s 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in which the civil-rights leader used the N-word to convey the racial injustice of the American South. After several students complained, the university’s president announced that the incident is under investigation. Part of the problem, students said, is that the professor didn’t preface the reading with a “trigger warning.”“I don’t think a trigger warning excuses a person from saying a racial slur, but I think it would’ve lessened the blow,” says Teegan Smith, a student in the class. “This was very disappointing.”

☆ UK scientists found a way to slash nearly 90% of carbon emissions from the country's steel industry
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Catherine Boudreau | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Now, researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a process to clean up the most carbon-intensive part of the steelmaking process: blast furnaces. Currently, coking coal and iron ore are fed into furnaces and heated to sky-high temperatures to create liquid iron, which is then refined into steel. About 70% of steel used around the world for buildings, cars, and household appliances is made this way. For every metric ton of steel produced, nearly two metric tons of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, according to the World Steel Organization. Kildahl described it as a "closed-loop" system that captures and recycles carbon dioxide to trigger the chemical reactions that convert iron ore into steel.

☆ 10 smart real-estate investing strategies to follow now as nationwide home prices begin falling, according to a housing industry guru and investor
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Lisa Kailai Han | William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

BiggerPockets' Dave Meyer predicts a year ripe with uncertainty for the real estate sector. Real estate investor and expert Dave Meyer has good news: national home prices are due for a decline in 2023. But alongside the coming correction, Meyer warned investors that the real estate sector will also include its fair share of obstacles and volatility this year. What's more, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to real estate investing, since housing markets are highly diverged between regions. Homebuyers need to stay calmIn addition to those three pieces of advice, Meyer shared seven more real estate investing strategies to consider this year in his 2023 real estate market outlook report.

☆ Britain’s NHS was once idolized. Now its worst-ever crisis is fueling a boom in private health care
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Hanna Ziady | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Private hospital groups flourishTo keep up with growing demand for their services, private health care providers are expanding at a rapid clip. CEO Justin Ash estimates that the market for private health care in the United Kingdom has doubled since before the pandemic to 15 million people. Ash said that appetite for private health care spans a much broader set of ages and incomes than in the past. “We’ve clearly moved into a world in which we’re all NHS patients but have episodes of private care,” he said. There is no universal health care in America and most people have private health insurance because health care is very expensive.

☆ A 300 million-year-old fossilized fish has the world's 'oldest preserved vertebrate brain.' It offers new clues about evolutionary history, say scientists.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-04 | by ( Isobel Van Hagen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Scientists discovered the fossilized brain of a vertebrate in a 319-million-year-old fossil. The rare finding offers new insights into the evolution of extinct bony fish related to the salmon. The finding suggests a more complex brain evolution pattern, allowing researchers to define better "how and when present-day bony fishes evolved." Researchers believe the extinct ray-finned fish would have been about six to eight inches long, and its brain and associated nerves are roughly an inch long. The ancient fish is on loan to scientists from the Manchester Museum in England.

☆ People in this city spend the most on coffee—it's not New York or LA
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Ryan Ermey | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

How much is your daily coffee habit really costing you? The city where espresso and steamed milk will cost you the most: Virginia Beach, Virginia, clocking in at $5.75 a cup, on average. The most expensive cups of cappuccino Virginia Beach, Virginia: $5.75 Las Vegas: $5.40 Minneapolis: $5.37 New York: $5.31 San Francisco: $5.21 That's just the outright cost. New York and San Francisco have expensive coffee, but their residents tend to make more money. If you express the cost of a five-days-a-week cappuccino habit as a percentage of a city resident's average income, the most expensive coffee cities change a bit.

☆ Rocker Ozzy Osbourne'not physically capable' of upcoming tour
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, Feb 1 (Reuters) - British rocker Ozzy Osbourne said he was "not physically capable" of going on a European and UK tour this spring, as he was too weak for all the necessary travel involved in live shows. The 74-year-old has undergone years of treatment after a 2019 fall damaged his spine and exacerbated injuries from a 2003 quad bike accident. However, after three operations, stem cell treatments, endless physical therapy sessions, and most recently groundbreaking Cybernics (HAL) Treatment, my body is still physically weak," Osbourne said, referring to a treatment involving a mechanical exoskeleton. "Never would I have imagined that my touring days would have ended this way," Osbourne said. "My team is currently coming up with ideas for where I will be able to perform without having to travel from city to city and country to country."

☆ Here's what happens when US Navy special operators go up against dolphins trained to keep them out of sensitive bases
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Stavros Atlamazoglou | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The US Navy has been training dolphins and sea lions to detect undersea threats since the 1960s. "Those mammals were very real and very scary," a former US Navy SEAL officer told Insider. The program tested out a number of animals but found dolphins and sea lions to be the best suited for the mission. The US military wasn't the only one using dolphins and sea lions to protect its warships and ports. BUD/S course instructors "have a sadistic tendency to scare the shit out of students before open-water swims," the former Navy SEAL officer said.

☆ IMF downgrades UK growth forecast, predicting only economic decline among G-7 countries
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Jenni Reid | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON — The International Monetary Fund downgraded its outlook for the U.K. economy even as it turns more optimistic on global growth. Its new 2023 forecast on Monday evening also sees the U.K. as the only "advanced economy" to contract, by 0.6%. This is 0.9 percentage points lower than its previous estimate. The IMF forecasts 1.4% growth in the U.S. in 2023, 0.7% growth in the euro area, 1.8% growth in Japan and 1.5% growth in Canada. Meanwhile, it hiked its outlook for the global economy by 0.2 percentage points from its last report in October, to 2.9%.

☆ Marathon-Farah returns for London Marathon, McColgan to make her debut
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Jan 31 (Reuters) - Britain's four-times Olympic champion Mo Farah will take part in his home London Marathon in April after missing the race last year, the long-distance runner said on Tuesday. Farah, who won the Chicago Marathon in 2018 and is also the national record holder in the marathon, missed the London Marathon last year when he was forced to withdraw due to injury. "The London Marathon has always been special to me and I am looking forward to being back out there on the roads of my home town." "It was disappointing not to have taken part in last year's London Marathon. I had such a fantastic summer on the track and the plan was always to follow that with my marathon debut in London," the 2021 Birmingham Games gold medallist said.

☆ Wrexham offered potential dream Cup tie with Tottenham
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Jan 30 (Reuters) - Non-league Wrexham could face a dream tie at home to eight-time winners Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup fifth round if they can get past Sheffield United in a replay, while Manchester City will travel to Championship (second-tier) side Bristol City. Wrexham, owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, played out a thrilling 3-3 draw with visiting Sheffield United on Sunday. The National League (fifth-tier) leaders were only denied a famous victory over the Championship side by a 95th-minute equaliser, forcing a replay scheduled for next month. Manchester United were handed a home tie against third-tier Derby County or fellow top-flight side West Ham United, who meet later on Monday. Brighton & Hove Albion, who knocked out holders Liverpool, will visit Championship side Stoke City.

"Flybe has now ceased trading and all flights from and to the UK operated by Flybe have been cancelled and will not be rescheduled," it said. A spokesperson for administrators Interpath Advisory said about 75,000 Flybe customers had future bookings that would now not be honoured. Headquartered in Birmingham, Flybe operated flights on 21 routes to 17 destinations across the UK and Europe using a fleet of eight leased Q400 turboprop aircraft. A spokesperson for Interpath said 45 members of Flybe's 321-strong workforce had been retained for the time being. Louise Haigh, the opposition Labour Party's transport spokesperson, said Flybe's collapse was "devastating news" for staff and customers.

☆ FA to investigate alleged racial abuse of Birmingham keeper
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Jan 28 (Reuters) - The Football Association said it would investigate alleged racist abuse aimed at Birmingham City goalkeeper Neil Etheridge as a matter of urgency following an incident in their FA Cup game at Blackburn Rovers on Saturday. Birmingham manager John Eustace said Etheridge was abused by fans after he celebrated his side's stoppage time equaliser in the 2-2 draw in the fourth round. After the goal Etheridge went to referee Keith Stroud on the halfway line to complain about comments directed to him. The FA said: "We are aware of an alleged incident of racial abuse that was reported to the match official. "We take allegations of discrimination extremely seriously and we will be investigating as a matter of urgency."

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