The new office return date for some big companies? Try 2022
CBSN
January is shaping up as the new September for many major U.S. companies to summon workers back to long-deserted offices as the COVID-19 Delta variant trips up employers eager to normalize their operations.
Among them is automaker Ford, which on Wednesday announced that some workers will continue to work remotely at least until January 2022. Ford said it will explore hybrid arrangements — including some in-office work — in the new year, depending on the state of the virus. "While we continue to prepare our non-site-dependent team members to transition to a hybrid work model, the state of the COVID-19 virus remains very fluid and therefore we are adjusting the start of our hybrid work arrangement to no earlier than January 2022," Ford said in a statement to CBS News. "In the interim, we will continue monitoring the virus and as conditions improve, explore opportunities for team members to return on-site for collaboration and teamwork."President Joe Biden said France was America's "first friend" at its founding and is one of its closest allies more than two centuries later as he was honored with a state visit Saturday by French President Emmanuel Macron aimed at showing off their partnership on global security issues and easing past trade tensions.
The Consumer Federal Protection Bureau last week launched an inquiry into what the agency is calling "junk fees in mortgage closing costs." These additional fees, involving home appraisal, title insurance and other services, have spiked in recent years and can add thousands of dollars to the final cost of buying a home.
Retired Maj. Gen. William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic "Earthrise" photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90.