News Room

Mayor Bill de Blasio doesn’t want to just restart the city’s economy, sighs Seth Barron at City Journal — he wants to “transform” it. “For six boom years,” he spent “tens of billions” pursuing his “equity agenda” and hiring “tens of thousands of new municipal employees.” Yet his message as the city faces the coronavirus “sounds strikingly similar to his message pre-crisis.” In fact, de Blasio “has spoken of the ‘transformative’ nature of his administration so often that it prompts groans from anyone outside his closest orbit.” Meanwhile, “homeless people fill New York’s subways,” crime is on the rise and tenants have “no idea” how to pay their rent. With the city “spiraling into crisis,” the mayor “continues to sound the one note he knows how to play — about unfairness and inequality” — even though “his instrument is out of tune.”

New data shows Wisconsinites might be growing less compliant with social distancing measures meant to slow the spread of COVID-19. But public health researchers say "quarantine fatigue" isn't a reason to give up on the restrictions.

After more than a month of the national lockdown aimed at stemming the spread of COVID-19, plans for how the United States can move back toward normalcy have begun to emerge. The centerpiece of discussion has been the extent to which the country is able to massively ramp up accurate testing for the virus — a point of contention between the White House and leaders in the most heavily affected states since the outbreak’s earliest days.

Bottom Line: This year's hard reset is amplifying how vital customer relationships are and how much potential AI has to find new ways to improve them.

Because customers who shop online cannot try on their purchases, a third of all Internet sales get returned. But handling these returns is costly, giving retailers that have both physical stores and digital sales a clear advantage over retailers that operate only online. A new study examined the decisions around the pricing and return policies of a retailer with both stores and online sales to help explain why some firms opt to fully refund customers for their returns while others charge a fee for online returns. The findings offer guidance to retailers about pricing and policies on returns and refunds.