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For most of last year, running an airline meant parking jets, laying off workers and haggling with governments for bailout funds in a desperate effort to stay out of bankruptcy as appetite for travel shriveled to nearly nothing. A new class of entrepreneurs believes the moment has arrived to do something that has proved difficult in the best of circumstances: start an airline, the Wall Street Journal reported. Upstart airlines are cropping up in North America, Europe, South America, Africa and Asia, as the pandemic continues to depress global travel. More than 90 new carriers, most with funding already secured, have plans in place to take off before the end of the year, according to Avolon Holdings Ltd., an aircraft leasing firm. Some of the upstarts are emerging from the ashes of airlines that failed during the pandemic. Others have been waiting for air travel to show signs of recovery so they can activate plans that were already in place. Most are hoping that they can seize the chance to pick up heavily discounted aircraft, snap up coveted space at once-congested airports and in some cases, hire laid-off pilots and flight attendants. In the U.S., two new airlines are looking to fly routes that larger carriers have ignored or left behind after years of consolidation. One of them, Avelo Airlines had its first scheduled flight Wednesday morning, from Hollywood Burbank Airport to Santa Rosa, in California’s Sonoma County. The airline, which has its corporate headquarters in Houston, is being started by Andrew Levy, the former CFO of United Airlines Holdings Inc., who began planning in 2018 to launch a low-cost carrier that would fly from less crowded secondary airports. Mr. Levy decided last November to go ahead with his plans.

On March 14, 2020, entertainment behemoth Cirque du Soleil shuttered its seven Vegas production shows due to COVID-19. More than 15 months later, the company will finally turn the lights back on, Nevada Public Radio reported. With state plans allowing entertainment venues to operate at 100 percent capacity starting June 1, Cirque will revive its pioneering shows "Mystere" and "O," along with its affiliate show "Blue Man Group." All three will be open by the big July 4 holiday weekend. Many have said the return of Cirque on the Strip would signal the return of the Strip entertainment. But it’s also a huge comeback for Cirque itself, the company having come out of last year’s bankruptcy. The company went from putting on 44 shows across the globe to zero revenue almost overnight and was pushed into bankruptcy. “The company was very, very healthy, but you cannot sustain close to 5,000 employees without any revenue. That is why we had to protect ourselves from our creditors,” said Daniel Lamarre, CEO and president of Cirque du Soleil. But from that came new investors who helped the company survive. “That shows a lot about the strength of the brand of Cirque du Soleil because, despite zero revenue for more than a year, people were willing to spend money to keep us alive,” he said.

Lawmakers and administration officials signaled on Sunday that they expected negotiations over an infrastructure package to ramp up this week, as Republicans and President Biden work to see if a bipartisan agreement is within reach, the Wall Street Journal reported. White House chief of staff Ron Klain said that Mr. Biden had invited Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, one of the lead GOP negotiators on the infrastructure package, and others to meet this week. “We’re going to work with Republicans. We’re going to find common ground,” Mr. Klain said on CBS. Republicans said they wanted to see that Mr. Biden was willing to make some concessions to prove his willingness to work across the aisle. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a centrist Republican involved in the discussions, said it was up to Mr. Biden to make the next offer in negotiations with GOP lawmakers. Republicans last month proposed spending $568 billion on infrastructure, offering a far narrower and less expensive alternative to the plan Mr. Biden unveiled in March, which would spend $2.3 trillion over eight years on programs and services that go beyond transportation, among them home care for seniors and technology and manufacturing research. In addition, Mr. Biden announced a $1.8 trillion child-care and education plan in his joint address to Congress last week. GOP lawmakers have said they think it might be possible to reach a bipartisan agreement on a more limited package focused on roads, bridges and other elements of physical infrastructure.

According to the Princeton University Eviction Lab, 318,091 households have faced eviction proceedings during the pandemic in the 27 cities the research project tracks, including Phoenix, Milwaukee and Dallas, Reuters reported. Many more remain vulnerable to eviction and possible homelessness: By May, an estimated 7 million renters across the country will owe $40 billion in back rent, utilities and fees, Moody’s Analytics estimates. Before the pandemic, about 900,000 households were evicted each year. Most renters live in apartments or houses owned by small-scale “mom-and-pop” landlords, who often rely heavily on their rental income. But based on a review of hundreds of court filings across the country, as well as interviews with tenants, their lawyers and housing advocates, it’s the big, deep-pocketed corporate landlords with property portfolios spanning multiple states that have been the most aggressive in filing eviction cases, even as they have thrived in the pandemic. Since the pandemic began, large corporate landlords have filed nearly 70,000 eviction cases in just 27 counties in seven states analyzed by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a Chicago-based nonprofit that studies the impact of private equity investments on the public. Many of the big landlords, especially those focused on single-family homes, have benefited as higher-income families have fled to the suburbs for perceived safety and more space during the pandemic. Invitation Homes had its best year ever in 2020, with profits climbing to a record $200 million as occupancy rates neared 100%. Its share price has nearly doubled since March 2020. Invitation Homes ranked fifth among companies seeking evictions in the seven states examined by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, with 710 cases since the CDC moratorium took effect Sept. 4. Ahead of it were S2 Capital, a Dallas, Texas, investment firm, with 1,160 eviction suits; Ventron Management, with 1,134 cases against tenants in Georgia and Florida and which received $2.6 million under the federal Paycheck Protection Program; private equity firm Pretium Partners, which operates Progress Residential and Front Yard Residential, with 1,074 eviction suits; and Western Wealth Capital, with 1,018.