#budget-cuts

#budget-cuts

So those are the lyrics to the "A Closer Look" music sting. Citing budget cuts, Seth Meyers joked that from now on, all jokes would be punctuated by a guy saying "rim shot," and all "A Closer Look" segments would have a guy singing the tune rather than the intro recorded by union musicians. Turns out the words are "Time for a Closer Look." Great art it ain't. RIP the Late Night live band, amirite?

The apartment where the Austrian composer Franz Schubert died, the residence of Blue Danube writer Johann Strauss, as well as the house where Joseph Haydn lived are to be closed temporarily owing to cost-saving measures, the director of Vienna's museums announced on Wednesday. The closures are part of broader austerity measures that will also see the price of public transport in the Austrian capital rise by almost 30% for some tickets. We all have to economise, said Matti Bunzl, the head of public body the Wien Museum that oversees several historical sites in the Austrian capital.

NASA is quietly ending financial support for independent planetary science advisory groups, according to a letter posted to the agency's website on January 16. The affected groups have historically offered feedback to the space agency on science efforts ranging from the exploration of Mars and ocean worlds to the storage of extraterrestrial samples, and more. According to the letter, signed by Louise Prockter, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, funding to support these Analysis and Assessment Groups will end toward the end of April 2026.

These staff reductions, combined with some temporary salary reductions and other cost-cutting measures, will reduce the Met's expenses by $15m for the remaining six months of the Met's fiscal year, and by another $25m in the Met's following fiscal year.

Since 2010, 27 states have slashed budgets and 31 have cut staff at their own public health and environmental agencies that partner with the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), increasing the risk of industrial accidents and potentially exposing already vulnerable communities to levels of pollution not seen in decades, the report found. Collectively, states cut about $1.4 billion from their environmental agencies, or about 33 percent of the nation's spending on state-level environmental regulation, since 2010.

Frustrations ran high Wednesday night as the Oakland Unified School District faces a $100 million budget shortfall next year.

"significantly modify"

Talking to our community-based violence interrupters to see, do we understand if there any sort of retaliation that might happen that we can get in front of? So, we can stop the violence in the moment? But a lot of the work happens in the days after that, and into this week,

Aiming to eliminate a budget deficit that ballooned to more than $200 million, the private school has cut nearly 1,000 positions, or almost 4% of its workforce. Faculty and staff said that the layoffs have been especially stressful because they have been ongoing for months, although the university said last week that they are nearly complete - and that as many as 200 of those who lost their jobs could find new positions at the school.

Once hailed as the most radical experiment in twenty-first-century urbanism, THE LINE, (find designboom's previous coverage here), a 170-kilometer-long mirrored megacity slicing through the desert, stands at the center of Saudi Arabia's shifting architectural agenda. Conceived as the backbone of NEOM, the $500-billion development in the country's northwest, it promised a car-free, carbon-neutral city contained within two parallel walls rising 500 meters high, an ambitious vision that faces an unexpected test of endurance.

"I am pleased to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of NASA,"

The document states that the Reform administration is currently working on a "planning assumption" that bills will rise by 5%, which would add around 80 a year to the annual mid-range Band D rate. But it also warns the council is under "significant financial pressure", with the authority planning to make widespread cutbacks and ask the government for Exceptional Financial Support of 43m to help balance the books.

Ontario's Ministry of Health has tasked hospitals struggling with deficits to come up with a three-year plan to balance their budgets, and service cuts and bed closures do not appear to be off the table for extreme cases. The Ontario Hospital Association has said that hospitals ended last year $360 million in the red and need an additional $1 billion in funding this year to keep pace with population growth and inflation.

The financial report indicates that the council could ask the government for permission to raise council tax by 8.99 per cent from April 2026. If it does, it would be the second such increase in a row after Newham council tax went up by 8.99 per cent in April this year. The proposal is one of a package of suggestions presented to the council's cabinet when it meets next Thursday.

I have serious concerns about the impact of real-terms education budget cuts on already inadequate provision and about the lack of real appetite and ambition for improvement that this represents. The prison service has a duty to protect the public by making prisoners less likely to reoffend when they are released, but too often it is failing to fulfil this responsibility.

You just said that this is an unenviable choice, said ABC's Mary Bruce. But the president has described this as an unprecedented opportunity to lay off additional workers. He posted a video likening [Office of Management and Budget chief] Russell Vought to the Grim Reaper. So which is this? Is this an opportunity to fire more workers or an unfortunate consequence?

French trade unions are leading a day of strikes on Thursday as they try to maintain pressure on the new prime minister, Sebastien Lecornu, to rethink budget cuts and consider a form of wealth tax on the super-rich. Lecornu has still not formed a new government after being appointed on 9 September amid a political crisis when his predecessor, Francois Bayrou, was dramatically ousted over proposed budget cuts.

Three months after OUSD exited state receivership, Alysse Castro, the Alameda County superintendent, is upping pressure on district leaders to balance the budget, pointing to continued deficit spending and depleted reserves. She said that by Oct. 1, OUSD must provide the county a target amount of spending reductions for the 2025-2026 school year that accounts for recent budget projections. Separately, interim superintendent Denise Saddler has asked the board to give direction to the district's finance team by Oct. 8

The 2026 budget is currently being debated in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. The draft was presented by Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil and will be debated for around two months before being voted on at the end of November. The debates will not be easy. Many ministries will have to work with significantly smaller budgets because tax revenues are far from sufficient to cover government spending.