November 2021

The holiday tree is towering over the main square in this central German city, the chestnuts and sugared almonds are roasted, and kids are clambering aboard the merry-go-round just like they did before the pandemic. But a surge in coronavirus infections has left an uneasy feeling hanging over Frankfurt’s Christmas market. To savor a mug of mulled wine — a pleasurable rite of winter in pre-pandemic times — masked customers must pass through a one-way entrance to a fenced-off wine hut, stopping at the hand sanitizer station. Elsewhere, security officers check vaccination certificates before letting customers head for the steaming

  First-time claims for U.S. unemployment compensation dropped sharply last week to a 52-year low, easily falling below the figure recorded at the start of the coronavirus pandemic that has played havoc with the U.S. economy over the last 20 months, the Labor Department reported Wednesday A total of 199,000 jobless workers filed for assistance last week, down 71,000 from the revised figure of the week before and the lowest recorded figure since November 1969, the government said. The new weekly figure was also well below the 256,000 total in mid-March of last year when the pandemic first swept into

  Tawanda Carter is a school librarian in New Orleans, Louisiana. She said preparing for the holidays has presented a unique set of challenges this year, a sentiment shared by millions of Americans. “Food prices are higher, and a lot of items aren’t even in stock,” she said, as she gets ready to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family in Atlanta, Georgia. “We’ve been keeping an eye out for sales and also thinking about new dishes to make up for the traditional ones we might not be able to eat this year.” Across the United States, prices on essentials such as

A Sydney restaurant is using a Chinese-made, multi-lingual hospitality robot to address chronic staff shortages as Australia’s economy begins to recover from COVID-19 lockdowns and border closures.The robot waiter is programmed to know the layout of th…

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday reappointed Jerome Powell to a second term as chair of the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, saying that Powell has played a pivotal role in helping the United States recover from the worst of the economic …