Headlines

The Canadian government will loosen Covid-19 travel restrictions for fully vaccinated people amid warnings that a return to a completely open border will take awhile longer, Bloomberg News reported. Canadian citizens and residents who’ve received two shots will be exempt from a 14-day quarantine on arrival to the country, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government said in a statement Monday. Travelers will still need to show they’ve tested negative for Covid-19 before they cross into Canada and take a second test at the border.

European budget carrier Wizz Air expects to fully recover from the coronavirus crisis as travel demand rebounds from the pandemic, its chief executive said on Monday, Reuters reported. Speaking at the virtual Paris Air Forum, Jozsef Varadi repeated recent comments that the Hungary-based airline would fly more seats this summer than it was flying two years ago before the pandemic struck. "From my perspective, 2022 should be a fairly robust year in terms of delivering not just the volume of traffic but also the financial performance attached to it," he said.

The number of first-year students attending Laurentian University is expected to drop significantly this fall with many who applied and were accepted now getting cold feet, CTVNews.ca reported. Ken Steele, a Canadian expert in higher education, student recruitment and strategic planning, said statistics from the Ontario Universities' Application Centre show first-year enrolment confirmations are down 30 per cent at LU. That's significant because most of the students would have applied in January, before the university declared insolvency Feb. 1.

China's central bank said on Monday it had recently summoned some banks and payment firms, including China Construction Bank and Alipay, urging them to crack down harder on cryptocurrency trading, Reuters reported. The People's Bank of China's meeting came after China's State Council, or cabinet, last month said that it would tighten restrictions on bitcoin trading and mining. Beijing has sharply ratcheted up its campaign in the last few weeks.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz is targeting 99.7 billion euros ($114 billion) in additional borrowing next year to bolster the country’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. The projected new debt represents a 22% increase from the 81.5 billion euros foreseen in an earlier federal budget plan, according to two senior government officials, who asked not to be identified in line with protocol. The borrowing would take the total for this year and next to more than 340 billion euros. German bonds fell, with 10-year yields rising two basis points to minus 0.18%.

A facility extended in the context of the COVID-19 crisis seems to have contributed to the insolvency request filed by Romania’s biggest independent power supplier, Getica 95, Economica.net reported. Under an emergency ordinance issued by the Government on May 20, last year, the energy suppliers are forbidden to discontinue deliveries even to customers with overdue bills during the state of alert. The state of alert has not been lifted yet, and many customers make use of this facility in more or less good faith. Separately, the implications of a deeper crisis at Getica 95 are investigated.

Lufthansa wants to repay state aid it received during the pandemic before Germany's federal election in September if possible, the airline's chief executive said on Friday, Reuters reported. "We were one of the first companies to be rescued by the federal government. We also want to be one of the first companies to pay back the rescue funds - hopefully before the federal election. We are working on that," Chief Executive Carsten Spohr told an aviation conference.

The European Union lifted travel restrictions for U.S. residents, in the latest step toward restoring lucrative transatlantic airline routes despite concerns over the spread of potentially dangerous coronavirus variants, Bloomberg News reported. Albania, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Macau, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Taiwan were also added to a so-called “white list” of countries from which non-essential travel is allowed. The new rules will take effect within days, as soon as they are published in the Official Journal of the EU. Some EU countries already allow vaccinated Americans to visit.

British retail sales fell unexpectedly last month as a lifting of lockdown restrictions encouraged spending in restaurants rather than shops, according to official data, Reuters reported. Retail sales fell 1.4% between April and May, the Office for National Statistics said. Food stores suffered the biggest hit, with a 5.7% drop in sales. Separately on Friday supermarket chain Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, reported a sharp slowdown in underlying UK sales growth in its first quarter.