The dispute between British Airways' management and the Unite trade union, which is over working conditions and pay freezes, intensified over the weekend after the two sides disagreed about the effectiveness of the strike. This article is relevant to this week's topic because if the strike consists and the firm must agree to defrost its pay-freeze and increase real wage, that would result in a cost-push inflation caused by pressure from trade union.

The British Airway has decided to lay-off the number of staff on long-haul flights and freeze their pay for this year. The aim of this reduction in cost is to save 62.5million euros to help cope with a fall in demand, volatile fuel prices, and increased competition against low-cost airline firms. This article is relevant to Week 25 topic because this is an example of demand-deficient unemployment where potential supply for labor exceeds the actual demand for these labors.

The article mentions about United State's debt expanding like a baloon, soon to blow up and fail the economy. During a recession, the govenrment must keep on running the economy even at budget deficit so they must keep on borrowing money. Yet, these loans must be returned in some way, and article reports a possible higher tax coming soon to compensate the loans.

Unemployed immigrants are attending bars at weekly basis to develop skills like making eye contact and promoting themselves to strangers. The Upwardly Global, a NPO established to support job-search for immigrants from developing countries and help immigrant professional find jobs in their own field. This article is relevant to this weeks topic because these immigrants are 'unused factors' in the economy that can produce higher productivity if it were used at its fullest capacity.

Global Warming is a market failure of all times that is universal to all human population. Barack Obama visited China to negotiate about the promotion of low-carbon emissions. US and China are one of the few countries who haven't signed the Kyoto Protocol and the top emitters of green-house gases. Because of such emissions, negative externalities are starting creep into national economy in various ways, especially the climate change that have severe affect on crop production.

The Zimbabwean government has warned farmers against employing children as labourers saying those caught doing so will face the full wrath of the law. This is relevant to this week's topic because the Zimbabwean government is attempting improve the standards of society by setting legal instruments against child labor - an aspect of children's rights.

This article reports about the potential "side-effects" of President Obama's new agenda that attempts to reconstruct financial regulation, overhaul the national health care system, and deal with long-term budget deficits. This is relevant to this weeks topic because US is currently attempting to recover from its catastrophe disaster and aim to achieve almost all the macroeconomics goals

President Obama hit the road again Tuesday to promote the new job-creation program he described as his No. 1 priority, but he refused to abandon his embattled health care legislation, vowing to "punch it through" resistance in Congress. The health care system proposed by President Obama is a public goods because it would be provided to anyone, with the interference of any to violate that right. Yet, Obama still struggles to push the health care plan through the resistance in the Congress.

Education is a public goods provided by the government in almost all MEDCs. If education is a public goods, the previleidge to receive education does not get stripped away even if someone else receives. However, in Haiti where the earthquake hit hard, children cannot receive proper education. In a country under crisis, education may not be a public goods, but rather a produce only available for those who have the will to pay and the ability to pay.

Apple will host a product event on Jan. 27, giving chief executive Steve Jobs a chance to unveil a long-rumored, touch-screen tablet device for surfing the Web and playing movies and music. This is an example of non-pricing competition because Apple is introducing a new product through product innovation and improved technology. Apple has been succesfull in grabbing the consumer's hearts with their unique design and functions.

Japan Airlines (JAL) has agreed on a tie-up with Delta Air Lines that will mean JAL joins the SkyTeam airline alliance, dropping its membership of the Oneworld alliance. This article is relevant to this week's topic because these alliances of airline companies mutually set pries for tickets and share information amongst themselves - it is an collusive competition. The companies rather "collude" than "compete" so that they can maintain their long-term profits.

This article reports on the a small Sri Lankan tea company called Dilmah challenging the world's transnational tea manufacturers like Twinings and Lipton. Dilmah is selling high-quality, exclusive teas at higher price than the market price. Ultimately, Dilmah is selling the "exclusiveness" rather than the actual price.

Discount retailer Dollarama says solid sales driven by new, higher-priced products and the opening of 42 stores last year helped boost its profit in the latest quarter. Although the firm is a dollar-shop, its controversial price tagging of over $1 is bringing product - essntially a price discrimination to increase its profit.

Colombia-based multi-utility EPM has launched a prepaid electric power program for marginalized communities. EPM has monpoly over the electricity and water-supply which makes the firm narturally monopolistic.

The two big players of the online-retailer shops are Amazon and Wal-Mart. As the holiday season approaches, their price-discoutngin battles becomes intense every now and then. This ties into the topic of monopoly because these two firms dominates the online-retail industry.

The EEF manufacture organization in UK announced that public finances are needed to restore the stability of the Uk's productive sector or else firms are going to drop out of the industry. This is relevant to the concept of effeciency because if these firms cannot either reach the allocative or productive effeciency, they will have to exit from the industry due to tremendous loss.

Japal Airline is experiencing a massive loss of revenue. The theory of pure competition is relevant to thsi article because if JAL continues to fail to maximize profit and reduce its loss, there are possibilities of the firm to withdraw from the industry.

Along with the many countries throughout the world experienced harship over the economic recession, Canada was also one of them. Despite this crucial damage, Canada is starting to show some improvements from the damage. A Vancouver-based company, Telus Corp. annouced that there had been a weak eocnomic growth in the industry.

The Canadian methonal producer Methanex is planning to start operating its second methanol power plant to operate two plants at reduce rates and increase production rate by 20% over the next year. Productivity is major factor that influences that Average Cost of the gas consumption.

The government of Switzerland is planning to impose tax on nuclear energy to fund other renewable energy sources. Nuclear powerplants have been give a longer "life-span" from 40 years to 55 years. Supporters for this taxation say that Extra profit created from the nuclear energy could go toward renewable energies such as solar, geothermal or wind power. However, the nuclear safety issues and alternative taxation are still in questions.