Category: 3. Business

Pilots aboard a US commercial jet mistakenly thought someone was trying to invade the cockpit on Monday, leading the flight to return to the Omaha airport fewer than 40 minutes after departing for Los Angeles.

The misunderstanding on American Airlines Flight 6469 came about because the intercom that pilots and flight attendants use to speak to each other had been left on by accident, an American Airlines spokesperson said. The pilots heard some static sound over this intercom, and they mistakenly thought it meant someone was trying to break in.

According to video shot after the plane’s landing and reported on by KABC, passengers onboard were confused as the flight’s captain sought to explain what had happened.

“We weren’t sure if something was going on with the airplane, so that’s why we’re coming back here,” the captain said, according to the video. “It’s going to be a little bit – we have to figure out what’s going on.”

Cockpit doors on passenger jets are generally locked during flights, and they were reinforced after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks involving hijacked planes.

Monday’s flight was operated by SkyWest, which flies regional routes for American and other airlines. The plane was an Embraer ERJ 175, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.

The Omaha Airport Authority said there was no security-related incident at the airport and referred questions to American.

It promises icy, refreshing drinks, and for a cool $179, this slushie maker is yours – if you can find one.

Australian TikTok users have become fixated on a Kmart slushie machine, apparently a budget version of the equally viral Ninja slushie machine (RRP A$499), with users posting videos and reviews of their frosty, fruity extrusions. One Australian video has racked up 2.7m views, and the appliance has sold out online. But with Kmart supply chains under scrutiny and the knowledge that culinary trends and the very specific appliances needed to make them are passing fads, not everyone wants to – or has to – buy a machine to make slushies this summer.

Here are some tips for how you can create the icy treats at home with appliances you likely already have.

The ingredients

Pick your flavours. (Almost) anything can be a slushie
If it can be juiced or blended, it can be a slushie. Berries? Slushie. Watermelon? Slushie. Cucumber? Slushie. In fact, if it exists in liquid form, it can be slushied: coffee, cola, matcha, gazpacho. One Singapore restaurant chain serves celery slushies, while Quebec convenience store Couche-Tard has a long history of slushie marketing ploys, releasing “wonton” and “pizza” flavours that were actually just iced-tea and strawberry flavoured.

Cara Devine, the Melbourne-based bartender and author, says stone fruit and herbs such as sage or basil are “really good friends”, while Sydney bartender Michael Chiem says a piña colada, with its pineapple and coconut elements, is “the ultimate classic slushie … Nothing like a piña colada transports you to a holiday.” He uses cold-pressed pineapple juice to retain the fruit’s freshness and flavour.

A good slushie needs a sour element too. Lime juice is a common acidic ingredient, though lemon, orange, grapefruit and green apple also work well.

And then there’s sloshed slushies. In 1971 a Dallas restaurateur modified a soft-serve machine to produce frozen margaritas at scale, and since then many alcoholic beverages have had their turn as the slushie du jour: Frose, Friesling, Pinot Freezio. At his bars PS40 and Silver’s Motel, Chiem serves salted piña colada and Midori Splice slushies; one time, Devine mixed a whisky and cola version.

But a note on spiked slushies. “Alcohol can be a friend and an enemy,” says Chiem. Add too much alcohol and the mixture won’t freeze, leaving you sipping slurry rather than slushie.

You need a lot of sugar: be brave
“Cold numbs your flavour receptors, so you tend to lean a bit sweeter in your [slushie] recipe,” says Devine.

Generally, cocktails tend to be made on the sour side, says Chiem. Margarita and daiquiris, for example, tend to have more lime juice than sugar syrup, but for slushies: “You’ve got to be brave enough to go the opposite way. You need to add more sugar than you think you need, otherwise it won’t carry the flavour.”

Rather than free-pouring CSR’s finest, it’s best to make a simple sugar syrup first, so it integrates properly into the drink. In a saucepan, simmer equal parts caster sugar and water and stir until the crystals dissolve, then cool. Many recipes use a 1:1 ratio of sugar and water, but Australian Bartender says a 2:1 sugar to water ratio will dilute your drink less.

The method

You (might) need ice
If you want a slushie tomorrow, freeze your ice cubes today. The fastest way to make a slushie is essentially to make an iced smoothie – pop all your liquid ingredients (juices, syrup and alcohol, if using) plus ice in a blender, then whiz. While ice is important for a smooth, homogenous texture and frosty temperature, it can also dilute the drink. Both Devine and Chiem suggest instead using frozen cubes of juice to amplify the flavour; Nagi Maehashi AKA RecipeTin Eats uses frozen strawberries (readily available in supermarkets) in addition to fresh berries in her frozen strawberry daiquiri.

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You need a blender
Slushie machines cool and churn the slush mixture, but a powerful domestic blender can do a decent job. “Not a stick blender, but a NutriBullet or any blender that is OK to blend ice,” says Chiem.

And it sounds obvious when it comes to making a slushie, but “temperature is key”, says Devine. Make sure your ingredients are as cold as possible, don’t keep the blender running too long or the machine will warm the ingredients, and prechill your glasses.

No ice? No blender? There’s a way
Some recipes instruct cooks to partially freeze the combined liquid in a shallow tray or bowl, then use a fork to scrape the mixture into ice crystals – similar to some techniques for making granita.

Because alcohol doesn’t freeze, it can also be used to bring a slushie texture to frozen fruits. Crushed frozen watermelon cubes quickly take on slushie consistency when shaken with a squeeze of lime juice, a shot of syrup and a shot of vodka.

A note: these methods are slower, more physically demanding, and let’s be honest, less impressive than the whiz and wizardry of a blender, but show a slushie machine needn’t be bought off the shelf. The ultimate slushie machine is you.

Cara Devine’s frozen strawberry daiquiri – recipe

The frozen strawberry daiquiri has a rather venerable history as far as modern frozen cocktails go. Crushed ice was being added to daiquiris at El Floridita in Cuba as far back as the 1930s, and when the blender was popularised by Fred Waring in 1938, he took it to famed home economist Mabel Stegner, who included a strawberry daiquiri in her 1952 book Electric Blender Recipes.

Ingredients
60ml light rum, chilled
30ml sugar syrup, chilled
30ml fresh lime juice, chilled
4-5 frozen strawberries
1 cup ice
To garnish: strawberry fan (using a sharp knife, make slits in a strawberry from just below the stem to the other side, so the strawberry is held together at the stem end, then fan out the slices.)

Working as quickly as possible, add all the liquor ingredients to the blender. Add ice and blend, starting slowly then going to full speed. Don’t whiz for too long as you don’t want the drink starting to heat up from the friction. Pour into a glass and garnish with a strawberry fan.

When Warwick Irwin returned home after a week away, he was shocked by the ruin inside.

It was February 2022 and two days earlier his North Lismore house had flooded to the ceiling. “It was quite a mind-blowing experience when I got into the house when the water went down.”

He was eventually offered a buyback, and used the money to buy elsewhere – “well above the flood level”.

“I was going to stay on but I thought about it and … there would always be an anxiety about the next flood,” Irwin said. He was glad not to have sold at a loss, unlike others in the region.

Almost 2,000 homes in Lismore were affected by flooding in 2022, and the price gap between flood-prone and flood-free houses has since increased considerably, according to a new report by the Climate Council and property data firm PropTrack.

Floods have collectively wiped $42.2bn from the value of Australian homes, the report shows, in an analysis of more than two decades of property data.

It found that the median value of a three-bed, two-bath home in a flood-prone zone as of April 2025 was $75,000 less than a home without flood risks. For the 2m flood-prone houses across Australia, at least 70% have had their values reduced by flood risk.

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Climate Councillor and economist Nicki Hutley, a co-author of the report, said more than half of flood-prone properties were owned or rented by low-income families. “Those are people for whom there is no choice but to take on that [flood] risk,” she said. Climate risks were “exacerbating intergenerational inequality” in Australia, Hutley added.

Kate Smolders, a Brisbane mother of two, sold her family home in Chelmer after it flooded in 2011 and 2022. “We knew we couldn’t go through it again. We lost value on our home,” she said. “Families like mine are paying the price for climate inaction – not just emotionally, but financially.”

Chelmer topped the PropTrack report as the suburb with the greatest value loss for houses, of 10.6%, with an average impact of $303,000.

“High-value suburbs that are also flood-exposed are repricing,” the report found. “Over time, this may lead to a structural divergence in housing wealth accumulation based on climate resilience.”

Of the properties at risk of flooding, 40% were in Queensland and 30% in New South Wales.

Hutley said the report highlighted the need for a robust adaptation plan with funding for both community-level infrastructure – such as dam levees and raised roads – and support for individual households.

Jason Byrne, a professor of human geography and planning at the University of Tasmania, who was not involved in the report, said the findings highlighted “the costs imposed by a changing climate and how our planning systems are struggling to cope”.

“We are seeing the beginnings of a response in some states … where more accurate flood mapping is informing planning decisions not to allow intensification of development in flood-prone areas,” Byrne said.

“The development industry is quick to decry any effort in planning to limit development in flood prone areas,” Byrne said. “We have seen some councils in South Australia effectively choosing to ignore their flood mapping because it is seen to harm prospects for future development.”

“We need politicians and decision-makers to develop the courage to stand up to powerful lobby groups and vested interests to protect vulnerable people,” he said, citing unaffordable insurance premiums.

“Stupid” planning decisions were “putting people in harm’s way”, Hutley agreed. “We have information about what climate risk looks like, whether it’s coastal inundation or riverine flooding or bushfire risk.”

“If you’re making homes more vulnerable, it’s going to cost us all a lot more in the long run.”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said she plans to scrap “needless form filling” in a bid to boost business growth.

Speaking at a regional investment summit in Birmingham, the chancellor said the reforms would boost growth and “make the UK a top destination for global capital”.

Ahead of the Budget next month, Reeves acknowledged that “for too many people” the economy was “not working as it should”.

The government has been criticised by firms who say increased employers’ National Insurance contributions and the Employment Rights Bill add to the burdens facing businesses.

The chancellor said the changes will save firms almost £6bn a year by the end of the parliamentary term.

The measures include plans to reform the company merger process. New “simpler corporate rules” will remove requirements for small businesses to submit lengthy reports to Companies House, the Treasury said.

The changes will apply to over 100,000 firms such as family-run cafes.

Earlier on Tuesday, Business Secretary Peter Kyle defended Labour’s approach to business, telling the BBC the government would implement changes in a way that is “pro-worker and pro-business”.

The measures could include temporary exemptions for new AI software from regulation, Kyle told the Today programme.

“In certain circumstances when new AI technology is being developed, we can remove it from all regulation for a period of time to give it the space to really grow, to develop, to be commercialised really rapidly,” he said.

This, he said, would enable the tech to be used “to benefit the health, the wealth, the education of our nations”.

“We’ll use that in a very targeted, a very safe way.”

The government has pledged to reduce the administrative cost of regulation by a quarter by the end of this Parliament.

Kyle said the previous government “did not do enough on deregulation” despite pledging to do so, particularly after Brexit.

“If you look at some of the reporting that needs to be done by directors, for example, directors’ reports to Companies House, I’m eliminating a great deal of that today because some of it is just so unnecessary,” he said.

But pushed on whether the government’s changes to employment rights would add costs to businesses, Kyle insisted that the changes would be fair for both employers and employees.

“We are making sure that the rights and responsibilities that people have in the workplace as employers and as employees [are] right for the age we’re living in.”

Jane Gratton, the deputy director of public policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, said the plans would be welcomed by businesses.

“The burden of unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy ramps up their costs and damages competitiveness,” she said.

But Tina McKenzie, policy chair at the Federation of Small Businesses, said Tuesday’s announcement would “ring hollow” if the chancellor raised taxes for employers in next month’s budget.

“The true test of whether Rachel Reeves will deliver for business will be at the Budget – small firms and entrepreneurs have heard these warm words on regulation before.

“The burden of compliance – in terms of money, time, and stress – weighs heavily on small firms, and cutting it needs to be a project undertaken by every part of the government.”

Tom Ironside from the British Retail Consortium said that while retailers supported efforts to cut red tape, “there are several policies coming down the track that will add to, rather than cut back, business bureaucracy”.

Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokeswoman Daisy Cooper said: “If the chancellor was serious about cutting red tape she would tackle the mind-blowing two billion extra pieces of business paperwork created by Brexit by pursuing an ambitious tailor-made UK-EU customs union.”

Global law firm K&L Gates LLP has been named a Litigation Leader for class actions, commercial litigation, complex commercial litigation, complex employment, intellectual property, and product liability in BTI Consulting Group’s Litigation Outlook 2026 report. These recognitions reflect the firm’s unwavering commitment to legal excellence and its ongoing leadership in the rapidly changing legal landscape due to technological advancements such as artificial intelligence.   

The BTI Litigation Outlook 2026 report is an independent and unbiased analysis based exclusively on surveys with over 350 leading legal decision makers at large organizations, each with USD$1 billion or more in revenue. BTI designs its annual outreach to target top legal decision makers in high-spending industries, as well as thought leaders and innovative corporate counsel, ensuring a comprehensive and relevant perspective on litigation trends. 

This recognition follows a series of honors from BTI Consulting Group in 2025, including recognizing K&L Gates to its Client Service A-Team for delivering exceptional client service, naming the firm an “Innovation Icon” for its forward-thinking client solutions, and listing the firm among the most recommended law firms in the BTI Most Recommended Law Firms 2025 report.  

K&L Gates is recognized consistently for providing clients with the most sophisticated solutions to legal challenges around the world. For more information on the firm’s awards and recognitions, please visit: klgates.com/accolades. 

Key takeaways:

• • • Automation is a top priority, but progress is slow — While automation ranks highly among corporate tax leaders’ priorities, leaders from a majority of tax departments still view their automation efforts as reactive or chaotic rather than optimized or predictive.

    • Resource constraints limit automation efforts — More than half of respondents say their tax departments feel under-resourced, and those departments with limited resources are much more likely to struggle with implementing effective automation strategies.

    • Departments need to invest to see automation returns — Most tax departments attempt to tackle automation internally, often relying on hybrid roles rather than dedicated technology professionals, which can further strain already limited resources and hinder progress.

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The corporate tax world wishes to automate. This likely isn’t a surprise, given the increasingly complex and ever-changing nature of tax laws and regulations, particularly over the past year. In fact, according to the recently published 2025 State of the Corporate Tax Department report from the Thomson Reuters Institute and Tax Executives Institute, 10% of corporate tax leaders named process automation as their single top priority for the next 18 months, and about one-quarter of them have it as a Top 3 priority. That trails only tax compliance, planning & strategy, and new tax legislation among trends that are top of mind among corporate tax leaders today.

This heightened level of importance for automation may be a reflection of where tax departments view their efforts currently. The same report reveals that more than two-thirds of survey respondents view the levels of automation within their tax departments as reactive or chaotic, while very few are taking an optimized or predictive posture. Clearly, there is work to be done in order to extract the most from workflow tools, or even next-generation technologies such as agentic AI for tax work.

This begs the question, however: Even if corporate tax leaders are trying to automate, how are they going to go about actually doing so? As with many initiatives in the business world, it may be easier said than done.

Corporate tax departments have long been asked to do more with less, and many are feeling the effects of limited resources for daily tax work, let alone new technology investment and implementation. At the same time, however, research reveals that many of these same departments are looking to tackle automation initiatives on their own, eschewing outside aid from service providers or other third parties.

Clearly, something has to give in order to automate the department. Either corporate tax departments need to find resources to dedicate to true automation, or they need to figure out how to better work with outside providers to make automation occur. Because as it stands now, many departments risk being stuck in a state of stasis, never being able to truly bring their automation beyond a reactive posture.

Automation issues

Process automation can provide a major boon to corporate tax departments, if it is implemented correctly. Actions such as integrating and centralizing data through an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, breaking down silos to facilitate cross-departmental coordination and communication, and implementing cutting-edge technologies such as AI can help tax professionals gain greater speed, accuracy, and efficiency.

However, it’s clear that many tax professionals do not believe their organizations are automating in a way that allows for more proactive technology usage. In fact, 68% say they view their organization’s technology and automation usage as chaotic or reactive — only slightly better than in last year’s report.

This skeptical view towards their tax department’s technology posture also is not unique to any particular size or geographic location of their company. More than 60% of respondents from companies with less than $50 million in annual revenue took a negative view towards the state of automation; yet the same holds true for respondents from companies with more than $5 billion in annual revenue. And while global respondents were slightly more bullish on automation than their counterparts in the United States, the need for more automation is clearly a global goal.

Some interesting differences occur, however, when cross-tabulating opinions of automation with whether a respondent feels their department is adequately resourced. In total, 58% of respondents say they feel their department is under-resourced (an increase of 7 percentage points from last year), while just 38% say they feel their department is resourced about right, with the remainder unsure.

To be sure, there is some technology consternation even among those that say they feel their organization is adequately resourced. More than half (55%) of that group say they feel  their automation posture was either reactive or chaotic, displaying that adequate resources are not a panacea to technology woes.

A lack of resources, however, can certainly seem to exacerbate the problem. Among respondents who say they feel their department is under-resourced, 77% called their automation posture chaotic or reactive, 22 percentage points higher than did respondents at adequately resourced departments. Just 4% of this under-resourced group felt their automation was either optimized or predictive, compared to 10% of the adequately resourced group.

Automation plans into action

One might expect that corporate tax departments would be looking for outside help — either from the rest of the business or from third parties — particularly given the effect of resource constraints on technology efforts. After all, automation is just one priority among a number of complex areas within the tax department, and it’s also not an area that many tax professionals may be naturally equipped to tackle.

However, when asked about their primary strategies for tackling automation internally, many tax departments are still mainly looking in-house. Some are working with their company’s IT or senior leadership, while fewer are working with outside vendors or consultants. Among companies of all sizes, however, the primary way most are tackling automation is through a team within the tax department itself.

Tax departments within larger companies do tend to have more resources, both monetary and in personnel, and thus have more capability to tackle tax automation in-house. Even at smaller companies, however, most are attempting to stretch resources internally rather than setting aside budget for external help.

Often, this means training existing staff on technology, given that few tax departments have technologists directly on staff. In a separate report from the Thomson Reuters Institute and the Tax Executives Institute released earlier this year, the 2025 Corporate Tax Technology Report, our research found that just 15% of survey respondents say their tax departments have a technology-specific professional within the department, while 28% say they have technology personnel shared with another department such as finance. However, the most common way of staffing technology matters is through hybrid roles, the report shows, with more than half (52%) of departments primarily staffing their technology initiatives through hybrid personnel that hold both tax and technology job functions.

Again, this begs the question: How big of a priority is automation truly for today’s tax departments? Department leadership claims that it is one of their top priorities moving forward, but tax professionals still see a reactive or chaotic posture towards automation in their own work. Further, attempts to change this dynamic are largely internal, often being left to personnel with dual tax/technology roles who may be already feeling the pressure of being under-resourced and having to do more with less.

Ultimately, automation should be a top-level strategy decision for tax departments, not something simply alluded to with lip service. Is automating the department’s work processes actually a priority? Would automation provide positive returns, making it worth the investment? What mix of personnel would actually lead to success, rather than to what is expedient?

If automation is truly a priority, corporate tax leaders need to dedicate actually impactful resources to technology projects, above and beyond stretching internal tax professionals further. Otherwise, today’s tax departments risk never moving beyond a reactive technology posture.

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You can download a full copy of the 2025 State of the Corporate Tax Department report, published by the Thomson Reuters Institute and Tax Executives Institute, here

Achieving a coherent policy mix – meaning a set of different policies that are synergetic and don’t conflict with each other while pursuing a specific goal – has long been an objective in EU policymaking.

As early as 2001, the EU Strategy for Sustainable Development argued for improved policy coherence and reduced policy spillovers to achieve ‘economically, socially and ecologically sustainable development’.

In the 2019-24 political cycle, the European Commission’s Circular Economy Action Plan emphasised that a coherent mix of policies across all stages of a product’s lifecycle can help scale up green business models and sustainable resource consumption. Similarly, the Green Deal Industrial Plan identified a coherent policy environment as a key pillar in its strategy for rolling out green technologies.

Policy coherence is gaining more prominence as the Commission advances its Omnibus work to simplify the regulatory framework and reduce administrative burdens for EU businesses. In theory, a well-aligned policy mix with minimal conflicts can help ease these burdens and support the EU’s sustainability and competitiveness goals.

But where do things stand today? In short, there’s been some positive developments, but more can (and should) be done – and next year’s expected Circular Economy Act would be a good starting point.

Coherence in the present policy mix – it’s a mixed picture

While coherence with existing EU and international policies is one of the criteria in impact assessments, in line with the Commission’s better regulation guidelines, there are very few empirical assessments of the level of coherence in the overall policy mix – and none specifically for the circular economy.

A new paper (full disclaimer, co-written by this author with Valeria Zambianchi) seeks to address this gap by focusing on the EU’s circular economy policy mix as it was shaped during the 2019-24 political cycle. The analysis focuses on four sectors – electronics and ICT, batteries, automotive and critical raw materials – and drew on the experiences of business actors working within these sectors.

The assessment paints a mixed picture. On average, the policies in the mix have a medium-to-high degree of coherence with each other. Importantly, at the strategic level, the European Green Deal stood out as the most coherent policy. Put simply, its long-term framework and strategic direction were seen by businesses as largely in line with the other individual policies in the mix, suggesting a strong and consistent signal to EU businesses.

However, issues start to emerge one level down. Two follow-up strategies – the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability and the EU Industrial Strategy – ranked the lowest in terms of experienced policy coherence. Moreover, four major strategies, namely the Circular Economy Action Plan, the EU Industrial Strategy, the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability and the Green Deal Industrial Plan, all show medium-to-low levels of policy coherence with each other, which suggests their goals are not well-aligned.

Issues of incoherence become more apparent when looking into how different directives and regulations in the mix interact with each other. Chemicals policies, namely the Reach Regulation  and the RoHS Directive, show low-to-medium levels of coherence with several other policies, including the recently adopted Batteries Regulation, Right to Repair Directive and Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. What these tensions highlight is that the longstanding disconnect between circularity and chemicals policies persists, despite recent legislative developments.

Even more eye-opening is the low-to-medium coherence between the EU Taxonomy Regulation and most of the other assessed policies in the mix, including the Critical Raw Materials Act, the EU Industrial Strategy and the Green Deal Industrial Plan. Introduced in 2020 to provide a transparent framework for defining sustainable investments, the Taxonomy Regulation has caused businesses to doubt about whether the criteria and selection of sectors are consistent with the priorities of the other policies in the mix.

The Waste Shipment Regulation is another example of a policy demonstrating low-to-medium coherence, reflecting its limited alignment with various other policies. Businesses highlighted the persistent mismatch between waste transport rules and circularity objectives. They pointed to the lack of synergies between the Regulation and the EU’s industrial policy goals, particularly those that aim to boost the use of secondary raw materials stemming from the Critical Raw Materials Act.

Finally, another notable finding is that many businesses perceive limited synergies between the circular economy’s objectives and those of the trade and climate policy domains.

Taking steps towards a more coherent policy mix

Amid ongoing discussions over the need to reduce the burden on businesses, the above findings highlight areas where sectoral and horizontal policies within the expanded circular economy policy mix have intersected and resulted in incoherence. Going forward, efforts to improve coherence should begin with the Circular Economy Act proposal – expected sometime in 2026 – that will aim to develop an EU single market for circular products and services.

The Act’s upcoming impact assessment is a good opportunity to include an explicit analysis of how synergies between the various policies can be improved and conflicts avoided. This can then provide the groundwork for concrete actions to strengthen the single market for circular products and services, which would be supported by a thorough trade-off analysis.

One such action could be in the domain of public procurement criteria for circular goods and services. These would need to balance climate and circularity objectives and thoroughly consider impacts across the different lifecycle stages of products.

A comprehensive fitness check, like the one conducted in 2014 for the waste acquis, could also be conducted to reflect policy developments over the past decade. On top of this, an oversight cross-DG team within the Commission could be tasked with screening different legislation and promoting compatibility between different policies.

Given that policy goals increasingly integrate objectives from industrial policy, competitiveness, the circular economy, and climate policy, it will also be important to send consistent signals to EU businesses. To do this, future strategies in these domains should be accompanied by a dedicated roadmap outlining how different actions impact cross-cutting areas, as well as a dedicated monitoring framework to easily track progress.

 

This Expert Commentary is based on the journal article ‘Unpacking policy coherence: a network analysis of the EU policy mix for the circular economy’