25 and 36: Think those additional carry-on baggage fees on airlines are getting out of hand? You’re not alone. Canadian lawmakers are set to grill Air Canada CEO Mike Rousseau about it on Friday after the nation’s flagship carrier hit low-fare travelers with new fees of $25 on their first carry-on, and $36 on their second. The CEOs of WestJet, Porter, and Air Transat Airlines will also be questioned. Airlines say that extra fees like this have become an indispensable source of revenue as cutthroat competition drives down profit margins.
1,500: US President Joe Biden on Thursday commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people in the largest act of clemency ever by a modern US president. The commutations applied to people who were placed in home confinement during the COVID pandemic when authorities sought to thin out crowded prison populations to slow the spread of the virus. Biden also pardoned 39 people who had been convicted of non-violent drug-related offenses. In case you are wondering: Commutation reduces a prison sentence, while a pardon erases a criminal record entirely.
8: Canada this week placed sanctions on eight Chinese government officials over alleged human rights abuses against the Uighurs, a Muslim minority, in China’s far western province of Xinjiang. The Chinese government stands accused of arbitrarily detaining more than a million people there, many of whom were subjected to psychological torture or forced labor in camps. Beijing denies the allegations.
62: A new poll shows nearly two-thirds of Americans, or 62%, think the federal government should ensure that people have health care coverage, the highest mark since 2006. As always, the partisan split is stark: 90% of Democrats agree with the idea, a 60-point gap compared to Republicans. Americans are split nearly evenly on whether insurance should be provided by the government or the private sector. A narrow majority of Americans support the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. There too, nearly all Democrats are pro-ACA, against just a fifth of Republicans and barely half of Independents.
1 billion: Got a billion dollars to invest in the United States? If so, President-elect Donald Trump wants to roll out the red carpet for you – or at least grant you “expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.” He made the pledge in a Truth Social post. It’s unclear what that will entail or how it will work, but it’s part of Trump’s plan to boost investment in the United States by slashing onerous permitting requirements that have come in for bipartisan criticism in recent years. “GET READY TO ROCK!” wrote Trump.
