Some Tesla customers complain they got dirty Cybertrucks
After reservation holders waited more than two years longer than promised, some Cybertrucks have been delivered with dirt, mud and spots on the stainless-steel body.
Osceola scales back mobility fees, but builders say they’re still too high
If Osceola County and St. Cloud adopt their proposed sky-high mobility fees this month they will almost certainly face a legal challenge.
The city and county have tweaked the proposed mobility fees they would impose on new development to fund transportation initiatives, in the face of sharp opposition from the business community. But the new rates would still more than double and some are even higher than what was initially presented in June, according to a report in GrowthSpotter.
Even more confusing to many, the ordinance creates a new category for affordable housing that charges $1,202 more per unit than the standard fee for market-rate apartments. Critics say that would discourage a type of development governments should be trying to encourage.
“That doesn’t even make sense. It’s hysterical,” said Lee Steinhauer, government liaison for the Greater Orlando Builders Association (GOBA).
Advocates of the mobility fees in Osceola County and St. Cloud say they are critical to pay for the traffic impacts of new developments, in the form of new and improved roads and transit options. But the proposed fees would be the highest in the state. Many say it would discourage new building, and the costs would be passed onto residents and businesses that can’t afford them.
Ballot questions tackle high property taxes that come with rising home values
No state illustrates this year’s flurry of ballot measures to cut property taxes better than Colorado. There, the results of two likely voter questions could reduce funding for schools, roads, emergency responders and other local government services.
Colorado’s ballot measures are just two of nearly a dozen upcoming questions dealing with property taxes in states across the country, including in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, North Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming. While varying in scope, the measures all aim to reduce taxes for some or all property owners.
One Colorado question is already certified for the ballot, and another appears to have many more signatures than necessary to qualify. (A third Colorado property tax ballot question, which is less controversial than the others and has qualified for the ballot, would expand the amount of tax exclusion that can be claimed by disabled veterans.)
“Property taxes are a deeply unpopular, but a fairly efficient, tax,” said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, a conservative tax analysis group that advocates for lower, more broadly based taxes. “So they have always pitted economists and policy wonks against ordinary homeowners who get very frustrated with their property taxes.”
Global immigration crackdown ensnares students studying abroad
International students — long the golden goose for universities and colleges in advanced economies — face an increasingly uncertain future as governments seek easy targets to rein in surging immigration.
In the United Kingdom, one of the world’s biggest destinations for foreign students, the Labour Party while in opposition vowed to retain a ban on international students bringing dependents to Britain — the largest source of migration since 2019. In the Netherlands, a far-right coalition has proposed restricting foreign students’ access to Dutch universities.
In Canada, where one in 40 people is an international student, a government clampdown is forcing “puppy mill” colleges to shut down programs. And in Australia, where that ratio is even greater at one in 33, the government has proposed caps on foreign enrollments in universities and is targeting “dodgy providers.”
The impact is already being felt — aggregate visa data for the first quarter of 2024 showed volumes to the UK, Canada and Australia down between 20% and 30% from a year earlier, according to Sydney-listed student placement services and testing company IDP Education Ltd., which operates in all three markets.
How little Denmark got homegrown giant Novo Nordisk to lower Ozempic prices
On May 13, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., published an open letter to Novo Nordisk on the front page of a leading Danish newspaper, urging the hometown company to live up to its altruistic standards by lowering U.S. prices for its blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs.
What Sanders didn’t realize was that Denmark, a country of 6 million, was enduring its own crisis over how to pay for the Novo Nordisk drugs Ozempic and Wegovy.
Most other developed countries, including Denmark, negotiate down drug costs for their citizens, paying prices that are a fraction of those in the United States. But when a drug is effective and expensive, pharmaceutical companies can play hardball on pricing. And Novo Nordisk did, at least initially, pushing the Danish health system to its limits.
The country’s socialized health system had for years covered Ozempic as a diabetes treatment, but in 2022 doctors began prescribing it for weight loss, too, and soon they “emptied all the money boxes in the entire public health system,” said University of Copenhagen professor Jens Juul Holst, a co-inventor of the drug.