New York State will need to raise taxes to cope with the budget chasm left by caring for COVID patients and the damage done by the economic shutdown, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on 9 December. The speaker of the state assembly and the senate’s majority leader, both Democrats, have agreed with Cuomo’s assessment. Republicans in...
Tag: dec 15 2020
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RESTAURANTS’ FUTURE GROWS DIMMER
By December, 110,000 U.S. restaurants – roughly one in six – had gone out of business this year, according to new data released by the National Restaurants Association (NRA). Ten thousand closed permanently during September, October, and November alone, the NRA reported. Of the eateries that have closed this year, 17 percent had been in...
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U.S. ECONOMIC RECOVERY STUMBLES
Workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits shot up to 853,000 during the week of 30 November, climbing by 137,000 from the week before, according to U.S. Labor Department data. The weekly number of new claims was the highest in two months. Companies have been hiring recently but at a slower pace than in the...
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SHUTDOWN FORCES 1 IN 5 WORKERS TO POSTPONE RETIREMENT
One in every five working Americans – and one in four Gen X’ers, born between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s – expect to retire later than planned because of the economic shutdown, a survey by the Northwestern Mutual insurance company has found. A third of survey respondents have had to adjust their future financial plans...
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NEW BATTERY COULD DOUBLE EV RANGE, SLASH CHARGING TIMES
Volkswagen has invested $300 million in QuantumScape, a quiet California company that has invented a new lithium-metal battery that could provide the convenience missing from today’s electric vehicles. According to QuantumScape’s test results, the flat battery can charge to 80 percent of capacity in 15 minutes (Tesla’s charged to 90 percent in 37 minutes in...
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CHEAP, EASY WAY TO SOLIDIFY NATURAL GAS
Gas-rich countries, such as the U.S., see a growing world market for their resource. But exporting natural gas means investing in multi-billion-dollar ports where the stuff can be cooled and stored at around -260°F, then pumped aboard refrigerator tankers to sail off to foreign lands. Even storing natural gas in your home’s tank for cooking...
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COMPUTER COMPLETES BILLION-YEAR TASK IN 3 MIN
If you’ve ever wondered how fast a quantum computer really is, scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China can tell you: fast enough to complete in three minutes a calculation that would take today’s fourth-best supercomputer an estimated 200 billion years to solve. Conventional computers process information, moving as an electrical current,...
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PROTESTS CONTINUE IN INDIA OVER AGRICULTURE BILL
As we have been reporting, for nearly three weeks, hundreds of thousands of farmers began protesting on the outskirts of Delhi in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push for deregulations they fear will sink them deeper into poverty. Yesterday, leaders of Indian farmers’ unions held a hunger strike in hopes of pressure on the...
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CIVIL WAR IN MOROCCO?
Last month, we reported that gunfire erupted between Moroccan forces and a pro-independence group in Western Sahara, ending nearly 30 years of peace in the area. The Moroccan military clashed with fighters from the Polisario Front in several locations. Brahim Ghali, the Secretary-General of the Polisario Front, announced in a decree the beginning of the...