The global airline industry is on track to post an all-time profit high of nearly $40 billion in 2025, according to trade group IATA, surpassing the pre-pandemic 2019 figure of $26 billion, but carriers are still managing a net margin of just 4% -- roughly $7.90 per passenger. Economist adds: Not everything has been in the ascent. European and North American airlines, which account for three-fifths of the industry's net profits, have had to contend with circuitous long-haul routes to avoid Russian airspace since the start of the war in Ukraine. This year parts of the Middle East became no-go zones after Israel's strike on Iran in June. America's airlines were hit by a government shutdown that stopped federal workers from travelling and kept unpaid air-traffic controllers at home, disrupting flights.

What is more, despite a drop in fuel prices, which account for 25-30% of airlines' operating expenses, other costs have risen. Airlines flew 4.8 billion passengers in 2024, beating the 2019 peak, and that figure likely reached 5 billion in 2025 as combined revenues topped $1 trillion for the first time and load factors hit a record of nearly 84%.

But the industry is flying older planes because Boeing and Airbus can't deliver enough new ones. The duopoly shipped under 1,400 aircraft in 2025, well below the 2018 record of just over 1,600. Boeing has struggled since two fatal 737 MAX crashes in late 2018 and early 2019 led to a 20-month grounding, and a fuselage panel blew off another 737 MAX mid-flight in early 2024. Airbus cut its 2025 delivery target from 820 to 790 in early December due to a supplier's production flaw, and Pratt & Whitney engine problems have grounded a third of the global A320neo fleet.

IATA estimates the aircraft shortage won't resolve before 2031 at the earliest, and the global fleet's average age has climbed to 15 years from 13 in 2019. Annual fuel efficiency gains have slowed from about 2% to 0.3% in 2025, and an IATA and Oliver Wyman report pegs the cost of aging fleets -- extra fuel, repairs, spare parts -- at over $11 billion in 2025.

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Two cybersecurity professionals who spent their careers defending organizations against ransomware attacks have pleaded guilty in a Florida federal court to using ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware to extort American businesses throughout 2023.

Ryan Goldberg, a 40-year-old incident response manager from Georgia, and Kevin Martin, a 36-year-old ransomware negotiator from Texas, admitted to conspiring to obstruct commerce through extortion. Between April and December 2023, Goldberg, Martin, and a third unnamed co-conspirator deployed the ransomware against multiple U.S. victims and agreed to pay ALPHV BlackCat's operators a 20% cut of any ransoms received. They successfully extracted approximately $1.2 million in Bitcoin from one victim, splitting their 80% share three ways before laundering the proceeds. Both men face up to 20 years in prison and are scheduled for sentencing on March 12, 2026.

The Justice Department noted that all three conspirators possessed specialized skills in securing computer systems against the very attacks they carried out. ALPHV BlackCat has targeted more than 1,000 victims globally and was the subject of an FBI disruption operation in December 2023 that saved victims an estimated $99 million through a custom decryption tool.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Mac Bauer is fast, but the city's trams, weighing more than 100,000lbs and traveling at a maximum speed of nearly 45mph, should be far faster than him. And yet as of late December, in head-to-head races against streetcars, the 32-year-old remains undefeated in his quest to highlight how sluggish the trams, used by 230,000 people daily, truly are.

Some races have pushed him closer to his limits as a runner. On other occasions, the car has been so slow he's had time to nip into a McDonald's before it reaches the last station. "I don't like winning. I really don't. I really, really wish these streetcars were faster than me," he said. "But they're not. And this is the problem." Bauer's rise as a running celebrity and transit critic embodies the mounting frustration of a city beset by chronic delays, congested streets and decades of under-built transit.

"Streetcars just shouldn't be stuck in traffic," he said, adding the system also needed more "signal priority" which gives the streetcars lengthened green lights and shortened red lights. Bauer started racing transit vehicles roughly a year ago after he and his wife realized how long it took them to traverse the city. He posted videos of those races to Instagram and quickly transformed into a minor celebrity. Bauer describes his runs as a form of social activism, and his ability to lay bare the absurdities of Toronto's beleaguered public transit system -- a person can outrun a streetcar! -- has struck a nerve with the tens of thousands of commuters who share his Instagram posts.

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