Our shows consistently generate significant revenue and boost tourism dollars in our host cities, as our delegates are deeply engaged in the communities they visit. This year, we're proud to partner with Reno, a city that understands the value of tourism and welcomes our industry with open arms - and real investment.
San Jose's quest to build a robust entertainment lineup around the major sporting events coming to Silicon Valley in 2026 has hit a key fundraising milestone, with several local and national companies and philanthropic organizations chipping in big bucks to make its vision a reality. Mayor Matt Mahan announced Wednesday that the city and the San Jose Sports Authority have raised nearly $5 million to help put on over 100 watch parties, 13 concerts, seven drone shows and projection mapping events with the Super Bowl, NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament and FIFA World Cup taking place in the South Bay over the next several months.
There's certainly no bad blood between the Toronto and Taylor Swift after a city report found the pop star's Eras Tour brought in an estimated $282 million in 2024. Swift held six sold-out shows in Toronto for 240,000 concertgoers in November 2024 as part of her massive Eras Tour. Globally, the tour is estimated to have made over $2 billion in ticket sales with 10 million attendees.
The anti-immigrant crusade launched by the Trump administration in the first year of his second term has not only caused personal and social hardship: the U.S. economy has also suffered. Labor shortages, the closure of successful businesses, the loss of tax revenue from immigrants, and a drop in consumer spending are some of the consequences economists are warning about, which were already being felt in 2025 and are expected to worsen in 2026.
China aims to impose a unique strategy to address a falling birth rate that threatens its long-term stability. As of January 1, 2026, the government will levy a 13 percent value-added tax (VAT) on various contraceptives, including condoms. The decision amends the Value Added Tax Law, which in 1993 exempted birth control products from taxation. At the time, the measure was part of China's effort to contain its accelerating population growth.
These are just a sampling of how this part of Ventura County is reckoning with the aftermath of federal immigration raids on Glass House cannabis farms six months ago, when hundreds of workers were detained and families split apart. In some instances, there is still uncertainty about what happened to minors left behind after one or both parents were deported.
The Trump administration has said it is immediately pausing all leases for offshore wind farms already under construction, in the heaviest blow yet to an industry that the administration has relentlessly targeted throughout the year. Trump's Department of the Interior said that it was halting the building of five wind projects due to national security risks. The department said it would work with the US Department of Defense to mitigate the risk of the wind turbine towers creating radar interference called clutter that could in some way hamper the US military.
Utility provider PG&E is hoping you'll forget about this weekend's one- to three-day power outage with a $200 credit for residential customers and a $2,500 credit for businesses, though some businesses say they lost ten times that much. The finger-pointing and blame games continue over PG&E's massive power outage that left more than 200,000 San Franciscans without electricity this weekend, as well they should.
Labour's crackdown on foreign workers could cost the UK economy millions, Sir Keir Starmer has been warned. Plans to increase the salary threshold for workers seeking to come to Britain, as part of wider changes to bring down immigration numbers, would cost between 520-710 million because thousands fewer people would be contributing to the UK economy, an independent watchdog has found.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has reportedly told staff the cyber-raid that crippled its operations in August didn't just bring production to a screeching halt - it also walked off with the personal payroll data of thousands of employees. The breach, which was pegged as one of the most costly in UK history, includes bank account details, tax codes, and other sensitive data related to staff salaries, benefits, and former employees. In an email to both current employees and former employees, seen by The Telegraph, JLR wrote: "While investigating, we have unfortunately identified that there has been unauthorised access to some personal data we process in the context of employment and some information needed to administer payroll, benefits and staff schemes to employees and dependents. This includes data of ex-JLR team members that has been stored."
The New York State Gaming Commission will hold a Monday meeting that is expected to finalize the approval for all three full-scale NYC casino sites. The meeting will take place at the Robert F. Smith Center for the Performing Arts at Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park in Manhattan. It will also be livestreamed. State officials said on the agenda will be the consideration of gaming facilities licensing for the locations that were approved by its Location Board on Dec. 1.
Anheuser-Busch will shut down its Fairfield brewery in early 2026, city officials confirmed Thursday, marking the loss of one of the community's largest employers and dealing what leaders say will be a major economic blow. Mayor Catherine Moy announced the closure in a social media post, calling the news "horrible" and "devastating." She said City Manager David Gassaway notified her Thursday morning after receiving confirmation from the company.
San Jose has greenlit up to 15 concerts annually at PayPal Park, expanding the city's largest outdoor venue into a key spot for live music. This decision opens doors for major acts to perform between 9 a.m. and 11 p.m., adding to the limited options for large-scale shows in the area. The concerts stand to invigorate the local economy through hundreds of jobs tied to event operations. Visitors from afar will fill hotels, while attendees head to nearby restaurants and bars before and after shows, creating a ripple effect.
According to the revised "2025 Economic Impact of Motorcoach Travel in the United States" report, motorcoach activity generated $158 billion in total economic impact in 2024, supporting more than 890,000 jobs nationwide. New data from scheduled service operations augment previous research results from the initial impact report released in September. According to ABAF, the study was conducted by Tourism Economics and highlights the combined strength of group travel, charter operations, sightseeing, scheduled service,
New York City will probably soon see three new casinos, whose owners could rake in profits because of a recent surge in gambling in the United States that has some campaigners worried. The New York gaming facility location board this week approved three proposed casinos in the US's largest city two in Queens and one in the Bronx after determining the businesses would create new jobs and generate billions in tax revenue, according to the group's report.
From his inauguration to last month's glitzy White House dinner for the Saudis, Trump basks in the support, gifts and affirmation of the most famous AI leaders and companies in the world. The big picture: Trump has essentially fused Silicon Valley and government in a race to both beat China to all-powerful AI and rescue an economy that's treading water outside of the AI boom. He has rolled back regulations, awarded huge contracts, and downplayed concerns about AI safety or downside risk.
"Moreover, we had the traditional underestimation of the opponent and overestimation of our own military."
Their purpose is to reduce or eliminate barriers to the exchange of goods and services; they do this in an assortment of ways, including lowering tariffs, creating straightforward customs procedures, and setting clear rules for business activity. FTAs also create more efficient and competitive markets. These agreements can aid in economic growth by creating better access to new markets, encouraging innovation, and lowering prices for consumers.
Trump in an August executive order said federal grants had been insufficiently vetted, and some propagated absurd ideologies. Hastings, whose South San Francisco firm Nkarta engineers killer cells to fight disease, said biotechnology companies across the board are cutting staff and product-development projects as uncertainty over what comes next rattles investors.
For 17 years, she had earned a living cutting and polishing the gems that helped transform Botswana from one of the world's poorest nations into one of Africa's success stories. Diamonds were discovered in 1967, a year after independence, an abrupt change of fortune for the landlocked country. Botswana became the world's top diamond producer by value, and second-largest by volume after Russia. Diamonds are woven into the national identity.
A new assessment by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has concluded that corruption in Pakistan is behind an economic crisis driven by state capture where public policy is manipulated to benefit a narrow circle of political and business elites. The Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment (GCDA), finalised in November 2025, presents a grim picture of a system marked by dysfunctional institutions that are unable to enforce the rule of law or safeguard public resources.
Black women are being sidelined at scale Since February, Black women have lost 297,000 jobs. Another 223,000 remain unemployed. And 75,000 have been pushed out of the labor force entirely. I estimate that these forced exits alone are draining an estimated $9.2 billion from U.S. GDP this year. These aren't just missing paychecks; they represent lost productivity, lost tax revenue, and diminished national output.
Globally, an estimated 50 million people were living as digital nomads by 2024, roughly doubling from around 20 million just a few years prior. In the United States alone, the number of people identifying as digital nomads increased from approximately 7.3 million in 2019 to 18.1 million in 2024, a 147% rise since pre-pandemic times. While remote workers once scattered randomly across the globe, something remarkable happened: they started clustering in specific countries where their foreign income could stretch furthest.
Meta plans to spend up to $72 billion this year on AI infrastructure, and has said spending will climb higher next year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this year that he'd rather risk "misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars" than be late to the development of superintelligence. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and privately held AI companies like OpenAI are logging record-breaking capital expenditures on all things AI.
A field of blazing flowers bloomed in front of Durham cathedral, a net of pulsing green light arched over the market place, and the traffic control signs were warning of global warming and mass extinctions. Farewell to Arctic ice and the Queenwood shrub frog, they read, and they might have read farewell to Lumiere. For three nights and one last time, the much admired-and imitated-Lumiere festival is bringing joy, crowds and international light artists to the dark winter streets.
A U.S. Travel Association report forecasts a 3.2 per cent decline in international tourism spending in the country for 2025, a loss of $5.7 billion US compared to the previous year. The association largely attributes the loss to a decline in the number of Canadian visitors a trend that has persisted since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in January, sparked a trade war with Canada and began referring to the country as the 51st state.
