>>Buttigieg To Airlines: Take Care Of Your Passengers
(Washington, DC) -- The Biden administration is promising to hold airlines accountable for delays and cancellations as holiday travel ramps up. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says the administration has been taking "accountability to another level" following a meltdown in December 2022 that led to thousands of cancellations. Buttigieg called on airlines to take care of their passengers. This comes after Southwest Airlines agreed to a record-setting civil penalty over last year's holiday travel nightmare. The airline has agreed to pay a 140-million-dollar fine.
>>Airbnb Using AI Technology To Crack Down On New Year's Eve Parties
(San Francisco, CA) -- Airbnb is using artificial intelligence technology to help put a stop to New Year's Eve parties. Officials with the short-term rental platform say bookings that are made for the holiday are being analyzed to check for risk factors such as the length of the stay and the distance of the rental from the user's address. If the AI system finds that a booking may be problematic it will not allow the reservation to go through. Airbnb says its anti-party measures blocked over 63-thousand people from booking homes across the country last New Year's Eve.
>>Taxable Wealth is Leaving California
(Undated) -- Wealthy Californians are leaving the state in large numbers, looking for lower taxes, fewer regulations, and different socio-political climates. As 750-thousand more people left California than arrived in recent years, their taxable income left with them. Analysis of IRS data shows the average gross income of California taxpayers who moved to another state was about 137 thousand dollars. People who moved to California made an average of 75 thousand dollars. Economists say that with the state projected to have a 68 billion dollar budget deficit, the dwindling high-tax bracket income is going to be sorely missed.
>>Global Cinema Box Office Expected To Drop In 2024
(Los Angeles, CA) -- The global cinema box office is expected to drop in 2024 after a post-pandemic recovery. Box office research firm Gower Street Analytics attributes that to the recent writers' and actors' strikes. The projection puts the year's total 20-percent below the average of 2017 to 2019, the last three pre-pandemic years. Gower Street's CEO noted that given they lost half of production time this year, an expected five-percent decrease doesn't signal less interest in seeing movies. Rather, it's just the consequence of having "limited product availability."
