BANGKOK (AP) — Major world share benchmarks were mixed at the outset of the last trading week of the year as countries grappled with the spread of the omicron coronavirus variant.

NEW YORK (AP) — Flight cancellations that disrupted holiday travel stretched into Monday as airlines called off thousands more flights because crews were sick with COVID-19 during one of the year’s busiest travel periods, and storm fronts added to the havoc.

Holiday sales rose at the fastest pace in 17 years, even as shoppers grappled with higher prices, product shortages and a raging new COVID-19 variant in the last few weeks of the season, according to one spending measure.

Surging prices are haunting consumers and confounding economic planners in the U.S. and other countries, but not in Japan, where sparking inflation has proven an elusive goal.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Tower Health plans to close two money-losing hospitals in southeastern Pennsylvania, saying that a sale has fallen through to a prospective buyer that lacked the financing and preparation to take over.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Prices for U.S. consumers jumped 6.8% in November compared with a year earlier as surging costs for food, energy, housing and other items left Americans enduring their highest annual inflation rate in 39 years.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — More U.S. drivers could find themselves stuck on snowy highways or have their travel delayed this winter due to a shortage of snowplow drivers — a reality that could hit home Friday as winter storms start dumping snow from the Intermountain West to the Upper Great Lakes.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A former Pennsylvania state lawmaker charged with falsifying and double-dipping on expense reimbursements from the state House of Representatives and her campaign pleaded guilty this week, the state attorney general’s office said.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Health officials reported the first confirmed case of the omicron variant in Pennsylvania on Friday, a man in his 30s from Philadelphia.

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s unemployment rate tumbled last month to its lowest point since the pandemic struck, even as employers appeared to slow their hiring — a mixed picture that pointed to a resilient economy that’s putting more people to work.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Kellogg’s has reached a tentative agreement with its 1,400 cereal plant workers that will deliver 3% raises and end a nearly two-month-long strike if the deal is approved.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s state Senate on Wednesday approved legislation that would bar municipalities in the nation’s No. 2 natural gas state from adopting building codes that prohibit gas hookups or otherwise restricting utility service based on the energy source.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s high-profile attorney general, Josh Shapiro, will formally announce his candidacy for governor on Wednesday, entering the 2022 race months after making his intentions known and effectively clearing the field of potential rivals for the Democratic nomination.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — A U.S.-based economist won the Nobel prize in economics Monday for pioneering research that transformed widely held ideas about the labor force, showing how an increase in the minimum wage doesn’t hinder hiring and immigrants do not lower pay for native-born workers. Two others shared the award for creating a way to study these types of societal issues.