Category: Life Style

Read time : 4 mins

Level : Intermediate

By Emese Maczko | Wealth of Geeks undefined

A new requirement for American travelers bound for Europe — an online travel authorization via the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) — has been delayed until 2025.

The requirement restricts travelers from non-EU countries like the United States to 30 European nations, including France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Applications would have brought in €7 apiece, adding up to considerable money.

As popular European cities continue to confront the challenges of overtourism in 2024, they choose to move beyond the financial solutions provided by tourist taxes.

These destinations are now deploying unprecedented innovative strategies aimed not only at managing crowds, but also at preserving their cultural heritage, protecting the environment, and maintaining the quality of life for their residents. Continue reading

Read time : 4 mins

Level : Advanced

By KEN SWEET AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — While the U.S. economy is broadly healthy, pockets of Americans have run through their savings and run up their credit card balances after battling inflation for more than two years.

Experts worry that members of these groups — mostly lower- and middle-income Americans, who tend to be renters — are falling behind on their debts and could face further deterioration of their financial health in the year ahead, particularly those who have recently resumed paying off student loans.

“The U.S. economy is currently performing better than most forecasters expected a year ago, thanks in large part to a resilient consumer,” wrote Shernette McLoud, an economist with TD Economics, in a report issued Wednesday. “However, more recently that spending is increasingly being financed by credit cards.” Continue reading

Read time : 3 mins

Level : Intermediate

By Ananyaa Bhowmik | Wealth of Geeks undefined

In a 2022 survey, 36% of CIOs believed that work will transition into a hybrid or work-from-home model permanently. And with good reason.

While people commonly believe that the work-from-home culture arrived with the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, 15-16% of survey respondents said that their company had already worked remotely even before the pandemic. Around 2005, with the availability of high-speed internet connections, advanced laptops, and the rising digitization of jobs, work from home became a viable option.

Between 2005 and 2019, the corporate world saw steady growth in remote working, but this was mostly limited to certain sectors. It was the 2020 pandemic that changed it all. As the world went into lockdown, most jobs outside the essential sectors shifted to remote working almost overnight. Continue reading

Read time : 4 mins

Level : Intermediate

By MELINA WALLING Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — Christmas tree breeder Jim Rockis knows what it looks like when one dies long before it can reach a buyer.

Rockis farms trees in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, where he and other producers often grow their iconic evergreens outside their preferred habitat higher in the mountains. But that can mean planting in soil that’s warmer and wetter — places where a nasty fungal disease called Phytophthora root rot can take hold, sucking moisture away from saplings and causing needles to crisp to burnt orange.

“After a while, it just gets to the core of it,” Rockis said. “They just wither away.”

Christmas tree growers and breeders have long prepared for a future of hotter weather that will change soil conditions, too. People buying trees may not have noticed a difference in availability this year and may not even in the next couple; the average Christmas tree takes eight to 10 years to reach marketable size. Continue reading

Read time : 4 mins

Level : Advanced

By ALEXA ST. JOHN undefined

The negative impact on the climate from passenger vehicles, which is considerable, could have dropped by more than 30% over the past decade if not for the world’s appetite for large cars, a new report from the Global Fuel Economy Initiative suggests.

Sport utility vehicles, or SUVs, now account for more than half of all new car sales across the globe, the group said, and it’s not alone. The International Energy Agency, using a narrower definition of SUV, estimates they make up nearly half.

Over the years these cars have gotten bigger and so has their cost to the climate, as carbon dioxide emissions “are almost directly proportional to fuel use” for gas-powered cars. The carbon that goes in at the pump comes out the tailpipe. Continue reading