The food delivery app companies reached a deal valuing Deliveroo at about 2.9 billion pounds ($3.92 billion) in May

International News via Reuters:

The planned $3.9 billion takeover of Deliveroo by U.S. meal delivery firm DoorDash will be reviewed under the European Union’s simplified merger procedure, EU Commission documents showed on Tuesday.

The food delivery app companies reached a deal valuing Deliveroo at about 2.9 billion pounds ($3.92 billion) in May.

The fact that the EU regulator is reviewing the merger under its simplified procedure usually means it does not see any competition concerns and that approval is probable.

Deliveroo’s shares have weakened significantly since its 2021 debut as demand for online food delivery stagnated after the COVID pandemic.

($1 = 0.7407 pounds)

Reporting by Forrest Crellin;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta/Makini Brice/Foo Yun Chee

The strike that lasted nearly four days had led the airline that serves about 130,000 people daily to withdraw its third quarter and full-year earnings guidance

International News via Reuters:

Air Canada’s unionized flight attendants reached an agreement with the country’s largest carrier on Tuesday, ending the first strike by its cabin crew in 40 years that had upended travel plans for hundreds of thousands of passengers.

The strike that lasted nearly four days had led the airline that serves about 130,000 people daily to withdraw its third quarter and full-year earnings guidance.

The carrier said it would gradually resume operations and a full restoration may require a week or more, while the union said it has completed mediation with the airline and its low-cost affiliate Air Canada Rouge.

“The Strike has ended. We have a tentative agreement we will bring forward to you,” the Canadian Union of Public Employees said in a Facebook post.

Air Canada said some flights will be canceled over the next seven to ten days until the schedule is stabilized and that customers with canceled flights can choose between a refund, travel credit, or rebooking on another airline.

The flight attendants walked off the job on Saturday after contract talks with the carrier failed. They had sought pay for tasks such as boarding passengers. While details of the negotiations were not immediately released, the union said unpaid work was over.

The CUPE, which represents Air Canada’s 10,400 flight attendants, wanted to make gains on unpaid work that go beyond recent advances secured by their counterparts at U.S. carriers like American Airlines.

In a rare act of defiance, the union remained on strike even after the Canada Industrial Relations Board declared its action unlawful.

Their refusal to follow a federal labor board order for the flight attendants to return to work had created a three-way standoff between the company, workers and the government.

Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu had urged both sides to consider government mediation and raised pressure on Air Canada on Monday, promising to investigate allegations of unpaid work in the airline sector.

Over the past two years, unions in aerospace, construction, airline and rail sectors have pushed employers for higher pay, improved conditions and better benefits amid a tight labor market.

Air Canada’s flight attendants have for months argued new contracts should include pay for work done on the ground, such as boarding passengers.

Its CEO had on Monday in a Reuters interview stopped short of offering plans to break the deadlock, while defending the airline’s offer of a 38% boost to flight attendants’ total compensation.

While many customers had expressed support for the flight attendants, frustration with flight cancellations was growing.

Retiree Klaus Hickman missed a flight to Toronto earlier in the week. While he rebooked on another airline, he was concerned about returning to Calgary on time for a connecting flight to Germany.

Hickman sympathizes with workers demanding better pay but is worried about his own health and travel challenges.

“They want to get more money to survive. And so it is with everybody else,” he said.

Canada’s largest carrier normally carries 130,000 people daily and is part of the global Star Alliance of airlines.

James Numfor, 38, from Regina, Saskatchewan, had been stranded in Toronto for two nights since returning from Cameroon for his brother’s funeral. Air Canada only provided one night in a hotel for his family before leaving them without further support, he said.

He had slept in the airport with his family.

Reporting by Nathan Gomes, Arpan Varghese and Aishwarya Jain, additional reporting by Divya Rajagopal; Writing by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Sam Holmes and Arun Koyyur

It will likely maintain its force as a dangerous major hurricane through the middle of the week, but avoid contact with Bermuda or the U.S. coast

International News via Reuters:

Residents in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos on Monday braced for the Atlantic season’s first hurricane, the Category 4 Erin, after it strengthened over the weekend while sweeping past Caribbean islands.

While Erin is not on track to make direct landfall and has yet to cause major damage, its growing size and strength are threatening rough seas and have prompted some evacuation orders in parts of North Carolina, on the U.S. East Coast.

“Erin’s already large size and intensity are acting like a giant plunger on the sea surface,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said in a report.

Sosnowski said Erin was among the fastest-strengthening storms on record after it intensified from a tropical storm to Category 5 hurricane, the highest level of the Saffir-Simpson scale, in just over 27 hours.

It makes 2025 the fourth straight Atlantic season with at least one Category 5 storm.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Erin was expected to strengthen somewhat on Monday as it sweeps by the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos.

It will likely maintain its force as a dangerous major hurricane through the middle of the week, but avoid contact with Bermuda or the U.S. coast.

As of Monday at 1800 GMT, the storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 kph) as it skirted north of Hispaniola, the Caribbean’s most populous island.

Its strength fluctuated over the weekend, rising on Saturday to Category 5 before dropping back to Category 4 late on Sunday.

It is the fifth named storm of the 2025 Atlantic season and the first to reach hurricane status. The last Atlantic storm to reach Category 5 intensity was Hurricane Milton in October last year.

In Turks and Caicos, an overseas British territory, authorities suspended public services on its largest island and told residents in vulnerable areas to pack in case of evacuation.

The Bahamas’ meteorology department said the islands’ southeast, as well as Turks and Caicos, were experiencing tropical storm conditions, and warned that boats should not go out to sea until the end of the week.

“The seas could become extremely rough and dangerous during the swells,” it said.

Kate Williamson, a Bahamian southeastern district administrator, told local media that the small population living on the eight-square-mile island of Long Cay should move to the mainland and residents finalize their storm preparations.

NORTH CAROLINA

Even though Erin’s eye was forecast to stay well offshore, tropical storm conditions and coastal flooding were possible in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, beginning late Wednesday, the NHC said. Erin could also produce life-threatening surf and rip currents along much of the U.S. East Coast.

Evacuation orders have been issued for parts of two North Carolina coastal counties, with forecasters predicting waves up to 20 feet (6.1 m) and dangerous rip currents on Wednesday and Thursday. Two counties – Dare and Hyde – ordered tourists and residents to leave flood-prone barrier islands of Hatteras and Ocracoke islands.

While the narrow islands have just a few hundred year-round residents, about 2.7 million tourists flock to the Outer Banks each year, mostly during the summer, according to the U.S. National Park Service.

County officials warned anyone who might consider staying put during the storm that they should not count on getting any help from authorities, due to inaccessible roads.

At the Atlantic Inn on Hatteras Island, owner Holly Andrzejewski said that she, her husband and a few employees were going to ride out the storm and keep a watch on their 10-bedroom inn.

“Visitors are supposed to leave today,” she told Reuters by telephone on Monday and residents are supposed to leave tomorrow. But we’re staying. We want to safeguard our property.”

On nearby Roanoke Island, also in Dare County, no evacuation orders were given as of late Monday, but that could change, said innkeeper Lee Brickhouse of the Roanoke Inn.

“Some guests are rescheduling, and we’re just holding our breath that the worst won’t happen,” Brickhouse said.

Reporting by Scott Vincent in London, Sarah Morland in Mexico City, Rich McKay in Atlanta, Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru and Paul Mathiasen in Santo Domingo; Editing by Alison Williams

Warmer than usual weather forecast from now until the end of September for southern British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan creates a significant risk of new fires

International News via Reuters:

Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record has already burned 7.8 million hectares and could continue for weeks, federal government officials said Monday. 

Warmer than usual weather forecast from now until the end of September for southern British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan creates a significant risk of new fires, since those areas remain very dry, they said.

Present fires have a “high likelihood” of being able to continue burning or smoldering “well into autumn” because of the higher-than-usual temperatures forecast, said Julienne Morissette of Natural Resources Canada. 

Fires have also affected Atlantic provinces Newfoundland and Nova Scotia this year, due to unusual dryness. More than 60% of Canada’s burned areas have been in the western provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, however.

Since 2023 more than 25 million hectares of Canadian land have been burned by wildfires, causing massive smoke plumes to flow across Canada and well south into much of the United States.

Some local U.S. politicians have complained about the smoke from Canada ruining summer activities and vacations.

Canada’s wildfire seasons have caused mass evacuations in a number of parts of northern Canada, where many Indigenous people live. About 13,000 people from First Nations are still evacuated.

During the peak of the evacuations in early summer, military aircraft helped bring people from isolated forest communities to emergency shelters, including hotel rooms thousands of kilometres away in Niagara Falls, Ont.    

Some communities require repair work to infrastructure and homes after fire and smoke inundated hard-to-reach areas, making it hard for some evacuees to return even after the fire risks subside, officials said. 

Federal officials said climate change had worsened the wildfire risk across Canada. Warmer average temperatures and longer snow-free seasons mean there is more potential for fires than in the past.

“Increasingly fires are an all-year event, and as Canadians we need to be fire-smart all year,” said Corey Hogan, parliamentary secretary to the minister of energy and natural resources.

Reporting by Ed White. Editing by Mark Potter

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pleaded for a resolution

International News via Reuters:

A leader of the union on strike against Air Canada said on Monday he would risk jail time rather than allow cabin crews to be forced back to work by a federal labor board, raising the stakes in a battle that has disrupted flights for hundreds of thousands of travelers during tourist season.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees said the strike would continue until the carrier negotiates on wages and unpaid work, even after the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) declared the strike unlawful.

“If it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it. If it means our union being fined, then so be it. We’re looking for a solution here,” said Mark Hancock, CUPE national president, at a press conference after a deadline by the board to return to work expired with no union action to end the strike.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pleaded for a resolution. A domestic tourism boom has helped blunt the economic damage from tariffs imposed by Canada’s biggest trade partner, the United States, and Air Canada is the country’s biggest carrier. 

“We are in a situation where literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians and visitors to our country are being disrupted by this action,” Carney told reporters in Ottawa. “I urge both parties to resolve this as quickly as possible.”

Hancock said the union has not heard from the federal jobs minister or Air Canada since Friday.

The third day of a strike by more than 10,000 flight attendants has stranded passengers and led Air Canada to suspend its third-quarter and full-year 2025 guidance, sending shares down nearly 3%. The airline has earned lower profit due to fewer bookings to the United States.

 The carrier, which normally carries 130,000 people daily and is part of the global Star Alliance of airlines, had planned to start ramping up operations on Sunday evening, after CIRB ordered the union to return to work and start binding arbitration. 

In a message to cabin crew on Sunday seen by Reuters, an Air Canada executive told workers they would be accountable for defying the board’s order and not returning to work.

“What your union has not explained is that by not returning to work, you are personally accountable for that decision,” said Andrew Yiu, vice president, in-flight service, for Air Canada’s mainline and low-cost Rouge service. “To be clear, there is no lockout in place, and the continued strike is illegal.”

The flight attendants, who are pushing for a negotiated contract, are striking for wages similar to those earned by cabin crews at Canadian carrier Air Transat, and to be fully paid for work on the ground, such as boarding passengers.

“I can tell you that if Air Canada thinks that planes will be flying this afternoon, they’re sorely mistaken. That won’t be happening today,” Hancock said.

Michael Lynk, professor emeritus of law at Western University in London, Ontario, said there are provisions in the Canada Labour Code that give the board and the court the right to issue fines and sanctions against the union and against individual workers.

UNPAID WORK 

Crew are mostly paid when planes are moving, sparking demands by unions in the U.S. and Canada to change the model, and generating some vocal support from passengers on social media. 

While passengers have largely expressed support for the flight attendants, some are growing weary of the uncertainty.

Danna Wu, 35, said she and her husband will have no choice but to drive from Winnipeg to Vancouver if the strike persists for a visa appointment. Although she believes Air Canada should pay its attendants more, the master’s student at the University of Manitoba added, “It’s not responsible to strike and leave thousands of passengers in such chaos.”

Air Canada’s demands on unpaid work follow gains recently won by flight attendants in the United States. New labor agreements at American Airlines and Alaska Airlines legally require carriers to start the clock for paying flight attendants when passengers are boarding.

The government’s options to force an end to the strike include asking courts to enforce the order to return to work and seeking an expedited hearing. 

The minority government could also try to pass legislation that would need the support of political rivals and approval in both houses of parliament, which are on break until September 15, but has so far been cautious.

“The government will be very reticent to be too heavy-handed because in Canada, the Supreme Court has ruled that governments have to be very careful when they take away the right to strike, even for public sector workers that may be deemed essential,” said Dionne Pohler, a professor of dispute resolution at Cornell University. 

The previous Canadian government intervened last year to head off rail and dock strikes that threatened to cripple the economy, but it is highly unusual for a union to defy a CIRB order. 

“If you’re going to fine us or you’re going to try and take us on financially, then you can take us to court, and we can see where that plays out,” said Hancock.

Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal, Promit Mukherjee in Ottawa, Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto, and Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago. Additional reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Drefuss and Doyinsola Oladipo in New York, Kyaw Soe Oo in Toronto and Aishwarya Jain in Bengaluru; Writing by Peter Henderson and Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Frank McGurty, Marguerita Choy, Arun Koyyur, Rod Nickel