One of the most compelling dealmaking sagas this year hasn’t been in tech, pharma or another industry that often dominates the news. It is a bidding war among railroads — what century is this again? — that has generated high drama. At stake was possibly the last major acquisition of a railroad, ending a long period of consolidation in the industry.

Canadian Pacific has emerged as the victor in a long-running battle to acquire Kansas City Southern, putting it in position to become the first railroad operator whose network spans the U.S., Canada and Mexico, allowing it to capitalize on trade flows across North America. Most notably, it won with a lower offer than rival bidder Canadian National, which announced yesterday that Kansas City Southern was terminating the merger agreement the companies signed in May.

The key was “to avoid a bidding war,” Canadian Pacific’s C.E.O., Keith Creel, told DealBook. So how did it prevail with a lower price? Hop aboard for a quick...

The internet is changing, including how much we pay for content and the ads and brands we see.

That’s because Apple and Google, two hugely influential tech companies, are rolling out privacy protections that hinder marketers from gaining access to our data when they show us ads. The changes have major repercussions for online advertising, which are a business foundation for the free apps and websites that many of us use, like Facebook, TikTok and the Weather Channel. Those sites and apps now have to come up with new ways to show ads or make money.

Here’s what that means for you.

A fire in a cable connecting the British and French power systems sent already overheated British electricity rates soaring Wednesday.

National Grid, the British electric power company, said that the fire had occurred at a facility in Sellindge, near the English Channel, and that the cable would be out of service for about six months.

The cause of the fire was said to be under investigation.

The Kent Fire and Rescue Service said Wednesday morning that it was fighting the blaze with as many as 12 fire engines and making “progress,” though firefighters were expected to remain on the scene for hours.

News of the outage jolted the markets. A measure of wholesale electricity, British day-ahead power prices, reached as high as 481.88 pounds per megawatt-hour, according to Epex Spot, a trading platform. That level is several times what is normal, though prices had been soaring in recent days.

Living on the South Carolina coast means living under the threat of dangerous weather during storm season. But the added peril of the pandemic made Ann Freeman nervous.

“What do I do if there’s an evacuation or there’s a storm and you have all this coronavirus and problems with hotels?” Ms. Freeman said. “So I said, ‘Maybe now is the time.’”

That’s why Ms. Freeman spent $12,400 last year to install a Generac backup generator at her home on Johns Island, a sea island near the Charleston peninsula. The wait — about three months — seemed long.

But she was lucky: The wait is twice as long now.

Demand for backup generators has soared over the last year, as housebound Americans focused on preparing their homes for the worst, just as a surge of extreme weather ensured many experienced it.

Canadian Pacific has emerged as the winner in a long-running battle to acquire Kansas City Southern, putting it in position to become the first railroad operator whose network extends from Canada to Mexico.

Its rival in the bidding, Canadian National, said on Wednesday that it had received notice from Kansas City Southern that it was terminating a merger agreement they signed in May.

“The decision not to pursue our proposed merger with KCS any further is the right decision for CN as responsible fiduciaries of our shareholders’ interests,” Jean-Jacques Ruest, the chief executive of Canadian National, said in a statement.

At stake was possibly the last major acquisition of a major railroad; mergers have consolidated the industry to seven railways from more than 100. The key component of the deal is access to Mexico, as railroads look to capitalize on trade flows across North America on the heels of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was signed into...

Living on the South Carolina coast means living under the threat of dangerous weather during storm season. But the added peril of the pandemic made Ann Freeman nervous.

“What do I do if there’s an evacuation or there’s a storm and you have all this coronavirus and problems with hotels?” Ms. Freeman said. “So I said, ‘Maybe now is the time.’”

That’s why Ms. Freeman spent $12,400 last year to install a Generac backup generator at her home on Johns Island, a sea island near the Charleston peninsula. The wait — about three months — seemed long.

But she was lucky: The wait is twice as long now.

Demand for backup generators has soared over the last year, as housebound Americans focused on preparing their homes for the worst, just as a surge of extreme weather ensured many experienced it.

A fire in a cable connecting the British and French power systems sent already overheated British electricity rates soaring Wednesday.

National Grid, the British electric power company, said that the fire had occurred at a facility in Sellindge, near the English Channel, and that the cable would be out of service for about six months.

The cause of the fire was said to be under investigation.

The Kent Fire and Rescue Service said Wednesday morning that it was fighting the blaze with as many as 12 fire engines and making “progress,” though firefighters were expected to remain on the scene for hours.

News of the outage jolted the markets. A measure of wholesale electricity, British day-ahead power prices, reached as high as 481.88 pounds per megawatt-hour, according to Epex Spot, a trading platform. That level is several times what is normal, though prices had been soaring in recent days.

One is a 29-year-old physician assistant living in Memphis, a cancer survivor with metal rods in her left leg to replace bones destroyed by a tumor.

Another is a 51-year-old community college professor from Phoenix who fell just short of achieving her dream of becoming a NASA astronaut.

The third is a data engineer living in western Washington who was once a counselor at a camp that offered kids a taste of what it’s like to be an astronaut.

The fourth, 38, is a high school dropout who became a billionaire founder of a payments processing company. He is the one that is paying for a trip into space the likes of which have never been seen before, where no one aboard is a professional astronaut.

President Biden met on Wednesday with top executives from Microsoft, the Walt Disney Company, Kaiser Permanente and other companies that have endorsed vaccine mandates, days after he announced a federal effort to require employees of large companies to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or be tested regularly.

The administration sought to use the meeting to show that vaccine mandates are good for the economy while spotlighting employers that have mandates for workers or have praised Mr. Biden’s order. The meeting was meant to rally more business support for mandates.

“It’s about saving lives — that’s what this is all about,” said Mr. Biden, who was flanked by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House pandemic coordinator.

“Vaccinations mean fewer infections, hospitalizations and deaths, and in turn it means a stronger economy,” he added.

One of the invitees to the meeting, Tim Boyle, the chief executive of Columbia...

Living on the South Carolina coast means living under the threat of dangerous weather during storm season. But the added peril of the pandemic made Ann Freeman nervous.

“What do I do if there’s an evacuation or there’s a storm and you have all this coronavirus and problems with hotels?” Ms. Freeman said. “So I said, ‘Maybe now is the time.’”

That’s why Ms. Freeman spent $12,400 last year to install a Generac backup generator at her home on Johns Island, a sea island near the Charleston peninsula. The wait — about three months — seemed long.

But she was lucky: The wait is twice as long now.

Demand for backup generators has soared over the last year, as housebound Americans focused on preparing their homes for the worst, just as a surge of extreme weather ensured many experienced it.

A report released on Tuesday that examined poverty in the United States has invited comparisons of the effectiveness of government stimulus in response to the two most recent economic emergencies: the 2009 financial crisis and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the pandemic, the share of people living in poverty in the United States fell to a record low last year — a finding that economists and policymakers across the political spectrum have hailed as a sign that the emergency stimulus program worked.

Robert Reich, the Berkeley economics professor who served as labor secretary under President Clinton, tweeted that the data proved government aid was effective in fighting poverty. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, head of the conservative American Action Forum and a former adviser to Senator John McCain, told the DealBook newsletter that the recent stimulus was “the best policy response to a recession the U.S. has ever seen.”

But there is still room for interpretation....

We are excited to announce the first in a series of DealBook Dialogue conference calls, which will feature industry experts taking your questions about the big issues of the day. Join us on Tuesday, Oct. 5, for a deep dive into cryptocurrency’s impact on the environment. Are the opportunities worth the costs? For more information and to R.S.V.P., free of charge, click here.

The share of people living in poverty in the United States fell to a record low last year as an enormous government relief effort helped offset the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression.

In the latest and most conclusive evidence that poverty fell because of the aid, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday that 9.1 percent of Americans were living below the poverty line last year, down from 11.8 percent in 2019. That figure — the lowest since records began in 1967, according to calculations from researchers at Columbia University — is based on a measure that accounts for the impact of government programs. The official measure of poverty, which leaves out some major aid programs, rose to 11.4 percent of the population.

The new data will almost surely feed into a debate in Washington about efforts by President Biden and congressional leaders to enact a more lasting expansion of the safety net that would extend well beyond the pandemic. Democrats’ $3.5...

The clouds swirled, the wind roared and the waves beat at the hull of the schooner Apollonia, but the ship stayed its course down the Hudson River in New York. Captained by Sam Merrett, it was carrying ayurvedic condiments from Catskill; spelt flour, hemp salves and malted barley from Hudson; wool yarn from Ghent; and other local goods for the hundred-mile trip south to New York City.

“It’s a case of start-up syndrome, the issue of saying yes to everything and seeing what sticks,” Mr. Merrett, 38, said over the phone from somewhere near Peekskill, the waning winds of Tropical Storm Henri roaring in the background. “In this case, it was delivering 3,600 pounds of malted barley to a port in Poughkeepsie in pouring rain.”

In the age of flight shaming, car shaming and even meat shaming, conscientious consumers with disposable incomes are growing ever more aware of their carbon footprints and interested in buying local. Producers are experimenting with cleaner, greener...

A recent run-up in consumer prices cooled slightly in August, signaling that although inflation is higher than normal, the White House and Federal Reserve may be beginning to see the slowdown in price gains they have been hoping for.

Policymakers have consistently argued that a surprisingly strong burst of inflation this year has been tied to pandemic-related quirks and should prove temporary, and most economists agree that prices will climb more slowly as businesses adjust and supply chains return to normal. The major question hanging over the economy’s future has been how much and how quickly the jump will fade.

Data released by the Labor Department on Tuesday suggested that a surge in Delta-variant coronavirus cases was weighing on airfares and hotel rates, but it also showed that price increases for key products — like cars — were beginning to moderate, helping to cool off overall inflation. The Consumer Price Index rose 5.3 percent in August from a year...

The plan sounded simple enough.

The federal government has long owned more real estate than it knows what to do with — buildings that sit empty and sites that are underdeveloped — but it must jump through hoops before it can sell its holdings. So surplus properties languish while taxpayers foot the bill for maintenance.

The solution, springing from legislation passed in 2016, was an independent agency that would quickly identify underused properties and expedite their disposal.

But nothing has been simple about the Public Buildings Reform Board, as the little-known agency is called.

It took three years for the five existing board members to be sworn in, and two empty seats remain, including that of the chairman. The Government Accountability Office reported that the board did not adequately document how it went about selecting properties for sale. The board was sued when it sought to sell a Seattle building that is a repository of important tribal...

WASHINGTON — The prospect of the largest overhaul to the global tax system in a century took a step forward this week as top Democrats introduced a plan to rewrite tax rules for multinational companies in a way that would allow the United States to join the rest of the world in an effort to crack down on tax havens.

Passing such legislation will be critical for the Biden administration, which is leading global negotiations aimed at limiting the ability of companies to minimize their tax bills by setting up offices in low-tax jurisdictions. The White House says this corporate strategy deprives economies of much-needed revenue.

Finance ministers from around the world have been working for months to complete a plan to end what they describe as a race to the bottom on corporate taxation before an October deadline. More than 130 countries have agreed to adopt a global minimum tax of at least 15 percent and are discussing a change in how taxing rights are allocated so...

One is a 29-year-old physician assistant living in Memphis, a cancer survivor with metal rods in her left leg to replace bones destroyed by a tumor.

Another is a 51-year-old community college professor from Phoenix who fell just short of achieving her dream of becoming a NASA astronaut.

The third is a data engineer living in western Washington who was once a counselor at a camp that offered kids a taste of what it’s like to be an astronaut.

The fourth, 38, is a high school dropout who became a billionaire founder of a payments processing company. He is the one that is paying for a trip into space the likes of which have never been seen before, where no one aboard is a professional astronaut.

The share of people living in poverty in the United States fell to a record low last year as an enormous government relief effort helped offset the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression.

In the latest and most conclusive evidence that poverty fell because of the aid, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday that 9.1 percent of Americans were living below the poverty line last year, down from 11.8 percent in 2019. That figure — the lowest since records began in 1967, according to calculations from researchers at Columbia University — is based on a measure that accounts for the impact of government programs. The official measure of poverty, which leaves out some major aid programs, rose to 11.4 percent of the population.

The new data will almost surely feed into a debate in Washington about efforts by President Biden and congressional leaders to enact a more lasting expansion of the safety net that would extend well beyond the pandemic. Democrats’ $3.5...

One is a 29-year-old physician assistant living in Memphis, a cancer survivor with metal rods in her left leg to replace bones destroyed by a tumor.

Another is a 51-year-old community college professor from Phoenix who fell just short of achieving her dream of becoming a NASA astronaut.

The third is a data engineer living in western Washington who was once a counselor at a camp that offered kids a taste of what it’s like to be an astronaut.

The fourth, 38, is a high school dropout who became a billionaire founder of a payments processing company. He is the one that is paying for a trip into space the likes of which have never been seen before, where no one aboard is a professional astronaut.

One is a 29-year-old physician assistant living in Memphis, a cancer survivor with metal rods in her left leg to replace bones destroyed by a tumor.

Another is a 51-year-old community college professor from Phoenix who fell just short of achieving her dream of becoming a NASA astronaut.

The third is a data engineer living in western Washington who was once a counselor at a camp that offered kids a taste of what it’s like to be an astronaut.

The fourth, 38, is a high school dropout who became a billionaire founder of a payments processing company. He is the one that is paying for a trip into space the likes of which have never been seen before, where no one aboard is a professional astronaut.

The plan sounded simple enough.

The federal government has long owned more real estate than it knows what to do with — buildings that sit empty and sites that are underdeveloped — but it must jump through hoops before it can sell its holdings. So surplus properties languish while taxpayers foot the bill for maintenance.

The solution, springing from legislation passed in 2016, was an independent agency that would quickly identify underused properties and expedite their disposal.

But nothing has been simple about the Public Buildings Reform Board, as the little-known agency is called.

It took three years for the five existing board members to be sworn in, and two empty seats remain, including that of the chairman. The Government Accountability Office reported that the board did not adequately document how it went about selecting properties for sale. The board was sued when it sought to sell a Seattle building that is a repository of important tribal...