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Angus Whitley | Bloomberg News (TNS)

Qantas Airways Ltd., not known for usually offering big discounts, has cut prices more than six times this year. Virgin Australia is averaging at least one fare sale a month. Even Ryanair Holdings Plc, which practically invented affordable European air travel, says flights are getting cheaper.

Passengers around the world are winning some respite from the fare madness that followed the pandemic — and further price declines are coming.

It’s a partial rebalancing of power from the post-COVID demand surge that gave airlines almost free rein over fares. As travel restrictions lifted and the world rushed to reconnect, prices ballooned for the reduced number of seats that were available. Premium fares reached more than $20,000.

Now, falling fares reflect the growing number of international flights on offer, particularly in Asia and Europe, and a traveling public that is increasingly cost conscious.

“It’s not just a blip, it’s a global trend,” said James Kavanagh, chief executive officer of leisure at Brisbane-based travel agency Flight Centre Travel Group Ltd. “Airlines certainly don’t have all the power at the moment.” read more

By Kate Ashford | NerdWallet

More than 338,000 Americans moved for retirement in 2023, according to a January study from HireAHelper, a moving-services marketplace. And a quarter of them changed states, the study found.

Relocating in retirement isn’t simple. There are things to ponder, like whether you need new health insurance, how your new state taxes your income, whether a city has good health care and whether the culture is a match.

Kyle Newell, a certified financial planner (CFP) in Winter Garden, Florida, has a client who moved from Tampa, Florida, to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, where she lived for six months before deciding she wanted to move to Minnesota to be closer to family.

Thankfully, she made money on all the buying and selling, says Newell, who encourages clients to spend time where they plan to move to make sure it’s the best spot for them. It could be that you love the feeling of a certain place, he says, but it’s because you associate it with being on vacation, and living there is different. read more

Katie Kelton | (TNS) Bankrate.com

Credit cards can be powerful tools to purchase things you need and build a strong credit history, but they can also be risky. The cost of carrying credit card debt is high. Even so, more Americans — 50%, according to new Bankrate survey data — are carrying a balance today than they have been since March 2020.

With interest rates at an all-time high, you might wonder why cardholders are carrying that balance. But it’s not a simple answer. Economic factors like inflation and interest rates are making it hard for some Americans to make ends meet, survey data shows. In some cases, people might be doom spending or going into debt for fun.

Bankrate’s key insights on credit card debt in 2024

—One-half of American credit cardholders carry a credit card balance from month to month. That’s 50% of cardholders, compared to 44% in January 2024 and 60% in March 2020.

—The likelihood of having credit card debt increases with age until the boomer generation. Forty-two percent of Gen Z cardholders (ages 18-27), 53% of millennials (ages 28-43), 60% of Gen Xers (ages 44-59) and 48% of boomers (ages 60-78) carry a balance month to month. read more

TALLAHASSEE — The state has warned Port Canaveral leaders that they are putting at risk current and future infrastructure money if they don’t reverse dock plans that appear to favor cruise ships over the space industry.

In a letter Friday, Department of Commerce Secretary J. Alex Kelly and Department of Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue expressed dismay about Port Canaveral — one of the world’s busiest cruise ports — changing cruise terminal plans in a way that would affect expansion of liquified natural-gas facilities that serve the space industry.

“Florida’s cruise tourism and commercial space launch sectors are both vitally important,” Kelly and Perdue wrote. “Port Canaveral bears the responsibility of housing and supporting both. We will help you do both. But in this case, the port has announced its intention to support one sector to the direct detriment of the other. That decision must, therefore, be reversed.”

Unless the port returns to its earlier plans, Kelly and Perdue warned Florida will take actions such as the Department of Transportation shifting planned investments to other seaports and spaceports and the Department of Commerce halting funding for Port Canaveral projects. read more

By DAVID KLEPPER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The actor in the viral music video denouncing the 2024 Olympics looks a lot like French President Emmanuel Macron. The images of rats, trash and the sewage, however, were dreamed up by artificial intelligence.

Portraying Paris as a crime-ridden cesspool, the video mocking the Games spread quickly on social media platforms like YouTube and X, helped on its way by 30,000 social media bots linked to a notorious Russian disinformation group that has set its sights on France before. Within days, the video was available in 13 languages, thanks to quick translation by AI.

“Paris, Paris, 1-2-3, go to Seine and make a pee,” taunts an AI-enhanced singer as the faux Macron actor dances in the background, seemingly a reference to water quality concerns in the Seine River where some competitions are taking place.

Moscow is making its presence felt during the Paris Games, with groups linked to Russia’s government using online disinformation and state propaganda to spread incendiary claims and attack the host country — showing how global events like the Olympics are now high-profile targets for online disinformation and propaganda. read more