Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy for a ninth straight year, the Geneva-based World Economic Forum said on Wednesday.

Since suffering a rare blip in 2008, when it was nudged into second place by the United States, the Swiss economy has maintained an efficient but unshakeable grip on the top spot in the WEF annual ranking.

WEF economist Thierry Geiger said Switzerland had a virtuous circle of infrastructure, institutions and education, but at the heart of its success was the way it created and used talent.

“That is really the secret of Switzerland, this ability to innovate, supported by a whole range of enabling factors,” he said.

However, after almost a decade at the top, Switzerland is at risk from complacency and populism. The ageing population could undermine the innovation miracle by shutting the door to foreign talent in one of the referendums that make Swiss law, he said.

“We see a proliferation of such referendums on everything, some of them are kind of dangerous, they could really endanger and jeopardize Switzerland’s prosperity,” Geiger said.

The World Economic Forum, the same organization that runs the Davos meeting of global powerbrokers each January, bases its rankings on a dozen drivers of competitiveness and a survey of business leaders.

“Global competitiveness will be more and more defined by the innovative capacity of a country,” Klaus Schwab, WEF founder and executive chairman, said in a statement.

Besides Switzerland, the top 10 remained the same as a year ago, although there was some shuffling of the order. The United States climbed over Singapore into second place, and Hong Kong jumped three places to sixth, leapfrogging Japan in ninth spot Britain slipped one place to eighth.

Britain has not yet dropped in the rankings because of its Brexit negotiations with the European Union but it is expected to do so, the WEF said.

China inched up one place to 27th, well ahead of 38th-ranked Russia and India, which was in 40th position.

The wooden spoon went to Yemen, a poor country further devastated by civil war, economic collapse, cholera and near-famine conditions, which was in 137th place.

Full List of Top 30 countries:

1. Switzerland

2. United States

3. Singapore

4. Netherlands

5. Germany

6. Hong Kong

7. Sweden

8. United Kingdom

9. Japan

10. Finland

11. Norway

12. Denmark

13. New Zealand

14. Canada

15. Taiwan

16. Israel

17. United Arab Emirates

18. Austria

19. Luxembourg

20. Belgium

21. Australia

22. France

23. Malaysia

24. Ireland

25. Qatar

26. South Korea

27. China

28. Iceland

29. Estonia

30. Saudi Arabia
…

The Commerce Department slapped duties of nearly 220 percent on Canada’s Bombardier C Series aircraft Tuesday in a victory for Boeing that is likely to raise tensions between the United States and its allies Canada and Britain.

Commerce ruled that Montreal-based Bombardier used unfair government subsidies to sell jets at artificially low prices in the U.S.

“The U.S. values its relationships with Canada, but even our closest allies must play by the rules,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said.

Canada ‘strongly disagrees’

Canada responded by saying it “strongly disagrees” with the U.S. move.

“This is clearly aimed at eliminating Bombardier’s C Series aircraft from the U.S. market,” said Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs.

Bombardier, meanwhile, called the decision “absurd … U.S. trade laws were never intended to be used in this manner, and Boeing is seeking to use a skewed process to stifle competition.”

In April, Boeing charged that Bombardier had received at least $3 billion in subsidies from the governments of Britain, Canada and the province of Quebec. The Chicago-based aircraft manufacturer asked the Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate the alleged “predatory pricing.”

Specifically, Boeing said that Bombardier last year sold Delta Air Lines 75 CS100 aircraft for less than it cost to build them.

“Subsidies enabled Bombardier to dump its product into the U.S. market, harming aerospace workers in the United States and throughout Boeing’s global supply chain,” Boeing said Tuesday.

Boeing upset with Delta deal

But Delta has said Boeing didn’t even make the 100-seat jets it needed.

“Boeing has no American-made product to offer because it canceled production of its only aircraft in this size range — the 717 — more than 10 years ago,” Delta said in a statement Tuesday.

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to get tough on trade. He has repeatedly criticized Canada, saying it unfairly blocks U.S. dairy products and subsidizes its softwood lumber industry. Trump also has threatened to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement if he can’t negotiate a better version with Canada and Mexico.

Boeing’s complaint against Bombardier drew a backlash even before Tuesday’s decision. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threatened this month to stop doing business with Boeing, which is in talks to sell Canada 18 Super Hornet jet fighters. British Prime Minister Theresa May has discussed the case with Trump. Her concern: Bombardier employs more than 4,000 workers in Northern Ireland.

Connecticut lawmakers concerned

Connecticut Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy last week wrote a letter urging U.S. government officials to “refrain from taking action that will endanger the many jobs in Connecticut that depend upon Bombardier.” Engines for the C Series aircraft are made by Pratt & Whitney, based in East Hartford, Connecticut.

Commerce’s findings Tuesday aren’t the end of the matter. The department is expected to announce its findings in another case against Bombardier early next month. Then the International Trade Commission — an independent federal agency that rules on trade cases — will decide early next year whether to uphold Commerce’s duties.

Bombardier could appeal any sanctions to a U.S. court or to a dispute-resolution panel created under NAFTA. The Canadian government could also take the case to the World Trade Organization in Geneva.

 
…

It is not quite going back to the horse, even if the bicycle was the first contraption to replace beasts as a means of personal transport.

This is a new two-wheeled animal, though, that millions of consumers in Beijing, Taipei, Singapore and cities across Asia are renting via phone apps to cover the last mile of journeys, leaving cars and motorcycles at home, and forgoing taxis.

The two-year bike-share boom has put over 16 million bikes in China alone, according to its Ministry of Transport, with more than 100 million riders registered, eating into car use and gasoline demand growth already expected to stagnate by 2025.

“I often use bike-sharing services because it’s very convenient. I can find it anywhere and will not worry about losing the bike,” said life-long Beijing native Wei Zhang, 36, who uses a shared bike several times a week on her commute, riding 5 km or more.

Analysts can’t keep up with bike numbers, let alone estimate how much gasoline consumption growth has dropped off due to the rapid rise in bike-sharing. But it is clear from industry estimates, government reports and a Reuters survey that bike services are resulting in fewer trips by motor vehicles.

“Bike-sharing has been crazy since late last year. … The general belief is that [it] boosts the utilization of public transport as shared bikes help to complete the journey,” said Harry Liu, downstream consultant with IHS Markit.

Even before the number of bike-share units began growing by multiples, analysts had already been saying greater fuel efficiency in autos and the rising use of electric cars meant gasoline’s big growth story was over.

China’s gasoline demand growth is expected to slow to nearly 4 percent this year, compared with 6.5 percent growth last year, said Sri Paravaikkarasu, head of East of Suez oil at FGE.

And Chinese demand for gasoline is expected to peak as early as 2025, according to state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.

“There used to be long queues of taxis waiting for customers outside train stations, but I don’t see them anymore,” said a Beijing analyst, who took part in a Reuters survey of bike-share users and wanted to be known only by her surname Wang.

Just in the past month, Chinese bike-sharing startup Mobike introduced its services in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Bangkok, Thailand, as well as in U.S. capital Washington, D.C. Mobike, which launched in April 2016, and China-owned rival Ofo have attracted combined funding of more than $2 billion from venture capital and private equity firms that include Temasek Holdings, Tencent Holdings, DST Global and Ant Financial.

Ofo — which has more than 10 million bikes globally to Mobike’s 7 million — says it is on track to increase its global bike units to 20 million over the next three months.

The investments “demonstrate investors’ confidence in the global bike-sharing industry,” said Lawrence Cao, head of Asia Pacific business for Ofo.

Consultancy Roland Berger said the “unforeseeable” amounts of venture capital put into bike schemes made it almost impossible to estimate the growth potential of bike operators, particularly in China, over the last two years.

Taiwan, where the government backs a bike-sharing scheme, is aiming to have bikes account for a 12 percent share in trips to work by 2020, up from about 5 percent now.

The Taipei city government is expanding bike-sharing program Youbike — which uses docking stations — to have a bike station within a 10-minute walk of every citizen by 2018.

Singapore-owned Obike and U.S.-based VBikes — both free-range systems — are also operating in Taiwan.

Four wheels bad

A survey done by Mobike of 100,000 customers across 36 cities in China found that car trips among the respondents had more than halved since its service was introduced.

A report from the Transport Commission of Shenzhen, one of China’s richest cities, said more than 500,000 bike-share units there had replaced nearly 10 percent of travel by private car or 13 percent of gasoline consumption.

Bike-sharing could pose a risk to gasoline consumption “if a stronger state push to reduce carbon intensity and improve air quality translates to more drivers replacing shorter-distance driving with bike rides,” said Peter Lee, an oil and gas analyst at BMI research.

Chinese growth of passenger car sales, which grew an average annual rate of 10.1 percent over 2011 to 2016, is expected to slow to 2.5 percent over the next five years, said BMI’s Lee.

Still, mismanagement of bike numbers and misuse of some bicycles may attract legislation that could curb their use. New shared bikes were recently banned in some areas in the Chinese cities of Wuhan, Shanghai and Guangzhou, because of bicycles being discarded in public spaces.
…

The United States has imposed sanctions on eight North Korean banks and 26 bank executives amid escalating tensions with Pyongyang over its nuclear program.

“This further advances our strategy to fully isolate North Korea in order to achieve our broader objectives of a peaceful and denuclearized Korean Peninsula,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday in a statement.

Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for new economic sanctions against individuals and businesses that finance trade with Pyongyang’s reclusive communist regime and fund its weapons development.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis emphasized Tuesday that the U.S. sought a peaceful resolution to escalating tensions with North Korea, despite the regime’s claim that a tweet Monday by Trump was tantamount to a declaration of war.

In New Delhi for talks with Indian officials about strengthening U.S.-India ties, Mattis said that while the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula was necessary to deter North Korea’s threats, it also supported diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully.

“And that is our goal, to solve this diplomatically, and I believe President Trump has been pretty clear on this issue,” Mattis said, following a meeting with India’s defense minister.

Hope for diplomacy

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday also stressed that the U.S. would “continue to pursue our diplomatic efforts and hope that’s the way we’ll solve this”

On Monday, Trump commented on Twitter that if North Korea carried out its threats, Kim Jong Un’s regime “won’t be around much longer.”

Speaking to reporters near U.N. headquarters in New York, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said, “Given the fact that this comes from someone who is currently holding the seat of the United States presidency, this is clearly a declaration of war.”

The world should clearly remember, he added, that “it was the U.S. who first declared war on our country.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Ri’s characterization of the tweet “absurd.”

“We’ve not declared war on North Korea,” she said.

Although North Korea has declared “war” many times in the past, now “we’ve entered a bona fide crisis,” Van Jackson, senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, told VOA.

“Even if we’re not in a war right now, we seem to be doing everything in our power to make one happen by actions and statements that make deterrence more likely to fail,” said Jackson, a former director for Korea policy and a defense strategy adviser at the U.S. Defense Department.

Threat to bombers

Ri warned that his country might shoot down U.S. strategic bombers, even if they were not in North Korean airspace. According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency Tuesday, Lee Cheol-woo, the chief of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee, said Pyongyang was spotted readjusting the position of its warplanes and boosting its defensive capabilities along its east coast.

A fighter jet from North Korea in 1969 shot down an unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane, outside North Korean territorial airspace in the Sea of Japan, killing 30 sailors and one marine on board.

Speaking at a security conference on Monday, Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said the United States hoped to avoid war with North Korea, “but what we can’t do is discount that possibility.”

The Army lieutenant general added that the U.S. had thought through several different ways the problem with North Korea could be resolved, and “some are uglier than others.”

However, McMaster, told the conference, hosted by the Institute for the Study of War, that “there’s not a precision strike that solves the problem.”

One peaceful solution, according to McMaster, would be for Pyongyang to give access to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. But any diplomatic negotiations, McMaster said, would “have to happen under conditions that are different from previous talks.” He said, however, he was not going to come up with a list of preconditions.

Beijing’s role

Some analysts see the path to talks still running through Beijing, which recently moved to cut banking ties between China and North Korea, shut off the supply of liquefied natural gas to the North Koreans and stop imports of their textiles.

“I think that the Chinese are sending a signal to the North that they are skating on thin ice,” said T.J. Pempel, a political science professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

The North Korean foreign minister threatened on Saturday that his country could conduct an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific Ocean.

Mattis responded Monday that if North Korea carried out its threat, “this would be a shocking display of irresponsibility toward global health, toward stability, toward nonproliferation.”

U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers from Guam escorted by F-16 fighter jets from a U.S. base in Japan on Saturday flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea.

The Pentagon said the show of force, meant to display some of the military options available to Trump, was “the farthest north of the demilitarized zone any U.S. fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea’s coast in the 21st century.”

VOA’s William Gallo contributed to this report from New Delhi.
…

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen acknowledged Tuesday that the Fed is puzzled by the persistence of unusually low inflation and that it might have to adjust the timing of its interest rate policies accordingly.

Speaking to a conference of economists, Yellen touched upon key questions the Fed is confronting as it tries to determine why inflation has remained chronically below its inflation target of 2 percent annually. The Fed chair said officials still expect the forces keeping inflation low to fade eventually. But she conceded that the Fed may need to adjust its assumptions.

In noting the persistence of low inflation, Yellen suggested that the Fed will take care not to raise rates too quickly. But she also said the central bank should avoid raising rates too slowly. Moving too gradually, she suggested, might eventually force the Fed to have to accelerate rate hikes and thereby elevate the risk of a recession.

Most analysts expect the central bank to raise rates in December, for a third time this year, in a reflection of economic improvement. But the Fed has said its rate hikes will depend on incoming data.

In her speech in Cleveland to the annual conference of the National Association for Business Economics, Yellen went further than she has before in suggesting that the Fed could be mistaken in the assumptions it is making about inflation.

“My colleagues and I may have misjudged the strength of the labor market, the degree to which longer-run inflation expectations are consistent with our inflation objective or even the fundamental forces driving inflation,” Yellen said.

The Fed seeks to control interest rates to promote maximum employment and stable prices, which it defines as annual price increases of 2 percent. While the Fed has met its goal on employment, with the jobless rate at 4.4 percent, near a 16-year low, it has continued to miss its inflation target.

Chronically low inflation can depress economic growth because consumers typically delay purchases when they think prices will stay the same or even decline.

Inflation, which was nearing the 2 percent goal at the start of the year, has since then fallen further behind and is now rising at an annual rate of just 1.4 percent.

Yellen has previously attributed the miss on inflation this year to temporary factors, including a price war among mobile phone companies. She and other Fed officials have predicted that inflation would soon begin rising toward the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target, helped by tight labor markets that will drive up wage gains.

In her remarks Tuesday, Yellen said this outcome of a rebound in inflation is still likely. But she said the central bank needed to remain alert to the possibility that other forces not clearly understood might continue to keep inflation lower than the Fed’s 2 percent goal.

The Fed chair cautioned that if the central bank moved too slowly in raising rates, it could inadvertently allow the economy to become overheated and thus have to raise rates so quickly in the future that it could push the country into a recession.

“It would be imprudent to keep monetary policy on hold until inflation is back to 2 percent,” Yellen said.

During a question-and-answer session, Yellen said the Fed would be “looking at inflation very carefully” to determine the timing of upcoming rate hikes. But she said the data is likely to be difficult to assess, in part because of the effects of the recent devastating hurricanes, which have forced up gasoline prices.

Yellen’s remarks came a week after Fed officials left their benchmark rate unchanged but announced that they would start gradually shrinking their huge portfolio of Treasury and mortgage bonds. Those holdings had grown from purchases the Fed made over the past nine years to try to lower long-term borrowing rates and help the U.S. economy recover from the worst downturn since the 1930s.

The Fed did retain a forecast showing that officials expect to boost rates three times this year. So far, they have increased their benchmark lending rate twice, in March and June, leaving it at a still-low range of 1 percent to 1.25 percent.

Last week, the Fed said the reductions in its bond holdings would begin in October by initially allowing a modest $10 billion in maturing bonds to roll off the $4.5 trillion balance sheet each month.

Asked about how long-term loan rates might respond to reductions in the Fed’s bond portfolio, Yellen cited a study that estimated that the increase in its bond holdings had lowered such rates by about 1 percentage point.

But she said the reduction in the holdings wouldn’t likely raise rates by as much as a percentage point given that the Fed intended to keep the size of its balance sheet significantly higher than it was before the financial crisis. She said any upward pressure on rates would likely be gradual and take place over several years.

Crutsinger reported from Washington, Kang from Cleveland.
…

Міністерство фінансів заявляє, що кошти від розміщення суверенних єврооблігацій в сумі 1,32 мільярда доларів зараховані на рахунок Державного казначейства України.

Як повідомляє прес-служба відомства, одночасно завершена операція з викупу єврооблігацій з терміном погашення у 2019 і 2020 роках на загальну суму 1,68 мільярда доларів США.

«Така транзакція була проведена, щоб зменшити пікове навантаження на державний бюджет під час погашення державного боргу в 2019-2020 роках. Надходження від нового випуску, зараховані на рахунок Держказначейства, будуть спрямовані на фінансування загального фонду держбюджету», – йдеться в повідомленні.

Кабінет міністрів вніс до парламенту проект закону про держбюджет 15 вересня, в останній день, коли згідно з Бюджетним кодексом, мав це зробити. Документ, зокрема, передбачає доходи бюджету на наступний рік у сумі понад 877 мільярдів гривень, видатки – більш ніж 948 мільярдів гривень.
…

Hackers breached the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s computer system last year by taking advantage of companies that used authentic financial data when they were testing the agency’s corporate filing system, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service have since launched an investigation into a 2016 hack into the SEC’S EDGAR system, several of those people said.

The sources spoke anonymously because it is not a public investigation.

The SEC’s EDGAR system is a crucial network used by companies to file earnings reports and other material information.

Spokesmen for the FBI, the Secret Service and the SEC all declined to comment, saying they could neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.

The breach occurred in October 2016 and was detected that same month. The attack appeared to have been routed through a server in Eastern Europe, according to an internal government memo describing the incident, which was seen by Reuters.

There was no evidence at the time that data had been improperly retrieved, according to one source familiar with the matter, and the issue was handled internally by the SEC’s Office of Information Technology.

Only after the SEC’s Enforcement Division detected a pattern of suspicious trading ahead of company public disclosures did officials go back to the agency’s technology staff and ask if some companies were using authentic data when they were testing the EDGAR system, one of the people said.

The person said that “not many companies” had submitted real
data that is believed to have been hacked.

The test process is for people to submit test filings to ensure that they format correctly and don’t have submission errors,” the person said.

“They normally use that right before they file their normal reports. They are supposed to use dummy data,” the person said. “However, it is still supposed to be protected the same way in case they do something stupid. A couple companies did, and it wasn’t protected properly.”

SEC chair to confirm probe

SEC Chairman Jay Clayton will confirm the enforcement division’s ongoing investigation when he testifies Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee, according to prepared testimony reviewed by Reuters.

He has also asked the SEC’s Office of Inspector General to investigate the intrusion itself, the scope of non-public information that was stolen and how the SEC responded to the incident, which he said was properly reported to the Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team.

The FBI’s investigation, which is being led out of New Jersey, is focusing specifically on the trading activity in connection with the breach, according to several sources.

One possibility the FBI is considering is that the SEC breach was connected to a group of hackers that intercepted electronic corporate press releases in a previous case which the FBI in New Jersey helped investigate, several of the sources said.

In that case, federal prosecutors in the New York borough of Brooklyn and New Jersey, as well as the SEC, charged an alliance of stock traders and suspected computer hackers based in the United States and Ukraine.

Clayton, who was installed as chairman in May, only learned of the 2016 breach in August through the enforcement investigation. SEC Commissioners Kara Stein and Mike Piwowar, who are the only other two sitting members of the agency at the moment, also only learned of it recently.

Some SEC enforcement attorneys not involved in the matter learned about it when they read it in the newspaper, sources said.

The delay in disclosing the hack and the months-long gap between uncovering it and discovering the potential insider trading are particularly embarrassing for an agency that has pushed companies to bolster their cyber capabilities and which investigates companies for failing to disclose breaches to investors faster.

While no company has ever been charged for flawed disclosures, the SEC has previously brought charges against brokerage firms over poor cyber security practices.

The SEC has experienced other cyber incidents in recent months.

Between October 2016 and April 2017, the SEC documented a variety of various cyber security incidents, according to one source familiar with the matter.

Reuters was not immediately able to ascertain the nature of all of the incidents, though the source said several involved EDGAR.

In one other case that was not related to EDGAR, a server being set up for SEC use had not been updated to fix known vulnerabilities, one person familiar with the matter said.

The SEC detected unauthorized communications from it. The FBI watched the traffic, which was early signaling or “beaconing” rather than the export of important information, and the hole was closed. In that case, the signal from the beacon was sent to a server in Ukraine, the person added.

The SEC has been criticized for its cyber defenses. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security detected 5 “critical” vulnerabilities that needed to be fixed when it scanned a sample of the agency’s computers and devices the week of January 23.

Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Editing by Leslie Adler
…

Компанія Dragon Capital придбала телерадіокомпанію «Радіо-Ера». Про це повідомив сайт «Новое время» і підтвердив у Facebook Валерій Калниш, який стане керівником проекту «Радіо-Ера FM». 

«Ми раді, що медіа-портфель компанії поповнився найстарішою розмовною радіостанцією країни з багатою історією, і поки не плануємо революційних змін на радіостанції», – заявив генеральний директор Dragon Capital Томаш Фіала.

Дотеперішні власники медіа-активу у заяві на сайті телерадіокомпанії вказали, що ними «ухвалене важливе, але непросте рішення про продаж пакету «Радіо-Ера ФМ». Вони вважають, що «влада продовжує системний наступ на свободу слова». «Процес тиску на нас отримав несподівану розв’язку – продаж пакета акцій саме інвестору з американським корінням, який, з точки зору міжнародної юридичної і політичної практики, зможе забезпечити захист права на незалежну і професійну журналістику», – ідеться в заяві.

«Радіо-Ера» є багаторічним партнером Радіо Свобода.

Dragon Capital уже володіє суспільно-політичним журналом «Новое Время» і однойменним інтернет-порталом. Валерій Калниш раніше очолював газету «Коммерсант», радіо «Вести», а також інтернет-портал «РБК-Україна».
…

Global accountancy firm Deloitte has been hit by a sophisticated hack that resulted in breach of confidential information and plans from some of its biggest clients, Britain’s Guardian newspaper said on Monday.

Deloitte — one of the big four professional services providers — confirmed to the newspaper it had been hit by a hack, but it said only a small number of its clients had been impacted.

The firm discovered the hack in March, according to the Guardian, but the cyber attackers could have had breached its systems as long ago as October or November 2016.

The attack was believed to have been focused on the U.S. operations of the company, which provides auditing, tax advice and consultancy to multinationals and governments worldwide.

“In response to a cyber incident, Deloitte implemented its comprehensive security protocol and began an intensive and thorough review including mobilizing a team of cybersecurity and confidentiality experts inside and outside of Deloitte,” a spokesman told the newspaper.

“As part of the review, Deloitte has been in contact with the very few clients impacted and notified governmental authorities and regulators.”

A Deloitte spokeswoman declined immediate comment, saying that the firm would issue a statement shortly.
…

Airbnb is launching local tours and other experiences in New York City this week with a special host.

Her listing promises an “unforgettable shoe-shopping experience'” and her bio describes her as an “actor, producer, businesswoman” and “proud New Yorker.”

She’s Sarah Jessica Parker of ‘Sex and the City’ fame and she’ll be taking four guests shoe-shopping at Bloomingdale’s, then sending them to the ballet.

Parker’s listing goes live Tuesday, with four spots at $400 each, first come, first served. The money will benefit the New York City Ballet, where Parker is a board member.

Airbnb is primarily known for vacation rentals around the world. Officials in many cities have criticized the company, saying its short-term rentals are reducing long-term housing options for residents and forcing prices up.

 
…

Poised to reveal a tax plan that is a pillar of  his economic policy and delivering on a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump is promising “The largest tax cut in the history of our country.”

Trump’s declarations came as the health care legislation brought forward by Republicans teetered near failure. He said his “primary focus” is the tax overhaul plan, which would be the first major revamp of the tax system in three decades.

Trump has promised economic growth of 3 percent, and insists that slashing taxes for individuals and corporations is the way to achieve it. He said the tax plan that the White House and Capitol Hill Republicans have been working on for months is “totally finalized.” He was speaking on the tarmac at the Morristown Municipal Airport.

Trump’s details weren’t firm. He said “I hope” the top corporate tax rate will be cut to 15 percent from the current 35 percent. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said a 15 percent rate is impractically low, with a rate somewhere in the low- to mid-20 percent range more viable to avoid blowing out the deficit. The rate is “going to be substantially lower so we bring jobs back into our country,” Trump said.

Trump also said “We think we’re going to bring the individual rate to 10 percent or 12 percent, much lower than it is right now.” He did not say whether the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans, now at 39.6 percent would be cut, as some Republicans have advocated.

“This is a plan for the middle class and for companies, so they can bring back jobs,” he said.

The plan also is expected to reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to three.

Trump spoke as House Republicans on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee huddled behind closed doors to discuss the plan. They have promised to reveal an outline and possible details of the plan later this week, after all Republican lawmakers in the House get a chance to discuss it and put questions to the chief architects, including Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, who heads the Ways and Means panel.

“We’ll let the White House determine the timetable” of releasing the plan, Brady said following the meeting. He added it will “definitely” occur this week.

Republicans have been split on some core issues. They are divided over whether to add to the nation’s soaring $20 trillion debt with tax cuts. The GOP also is at odds over eliminating the federal deduction for state and local taxes.

Republican senators on opposing sides of the deficit debate have tentatively agreed on a plan for $1.5 trillion in tax cuts. That would add substantially to the debt and would enable deeper cuts to tax rates than would be allowed if Republicans followed through on earlier promises that their tax overhaul wouldn’t add to the budget deficit. That would mark an about-face for top congressional Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Ryan, who had for months promised it wouldn’t add to the deficit.

Earlier Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a television interview the plan “creates a middle-income tax cut, it makes businesses competitive and it creates jobs.” He added that there are changes, too, for the “high end,” including “getting rid of lots of deductions.” He did not offer specifics.
…