News Bytes

Fuel surcharges for flights reduced

After a further decrease of crude oil and kerosene prices, Lufthansa again lowered its fuel surcharge for flights. As of December 16, 2008, fuel surcharge on flight tickets will be lowered €3 to €21 for flights within Europe. Fuel surcharges for long-haul flights – which is important for passengers traveling to North America – will be reduced by €10 to €82 per flight. The fuel surcharge had already been reduced by €5 on October 10.

 

Barack Obama prepares for taking office

US President-elect Barack Obama is busy assembling his government team. He announced Robert Gibbs, who has been working alongside him a long time, as White House Press Secretary. 37-year old Gibbs has been working with Obama since 2004 and was also the communications director during his campaign. His new Treasure Secretary will be the president of the Federal Reserve Bank, Timothy Geithner. Commerce Secretary will be the Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson. Reports of Geither’s nomination had already made stocks soar on Wall Street. He is regarded as a financial market expert and worked together closely with Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke and current Treasure Secretary Henry Paulson. It also seems certain that Obama’s former rival during the presidential campaign Hillary Clinton is going to be Secretary of State. Find more information about nominations for Obama’s cabinet here.

Obama has until January 20, when he will assume office, to assemble his government. That is also when the big shakeup in the White House and various US departments and offices will begin. Up to 3,000 leaders and top officials from the Bush administration could – as is usual with a change of government – be exchanged.

 

More US citizens leave their cars at home

The number of road fatalities on US highways has decreased up to ten percent this year. If this trend were to continue until the end of the year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced, the number of traffic deaths could reach a record low since the introduction of the statistics in 1966. Until the end of October, 31,110 traffic deaths had been recorded. Compared to the same date of the previous year, this is a 9.8% decrease.

One of the reasons is that the total amount of miles of highway travel has decreased due to rising fuel prices. At the same time, the US railroad company Amtrak noticed that it had transported more passengers this year than ever before in its 37-year long history.

 

US budget deficit rises to record height

Due to the financial crisis, the US budget deficit rocketed to a whole new level over the past few weeks: after the first two months of the new fiscal year that began October1, the total sum of the deficit amounted to $401.6 billion (€310 billion), according to the US Department of the Treasury. This means the deficit of October and November alone is almost as high as that of the entire previous fiscal year, which reached a record of $454.8 billion. Experts believe the deficit for the current fiscal year 2008/2009 may well reach a total amount of more than one trillion.