Eurozone inflation hits a record high of 4.9 percent.

The inflation gains have driven up costs for a range of products and services, and have led workers and unions to demand higher wages in many European countries.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, reported that inflation accelerated to 6 percent from a year ago, while in France it rose to 3.4 percent, the highest in over a decade. The highest rates were in Belgium, where inflation rose to 7.1 percent, and in Lithuania, where it topped 9 percent.

With the rapid circulation of the recently discovered Omicron variant of the coronavirus, the global economic outlook has suddenly grown more uncertain.

The European Central Bank has said that it expects the inflation spike to be temporary as energy price increases fade next year. The bank’s mandate is to keep inflation to a 2 percent target.

“Although the ECB has stated that it sees the current price pressures easing in 2022, and our baseline is that monetary policy will remain accommodative, the latest data will add to the debate on the appropriate level of policy support,” Katharina Koenz, an economist at Oxford Economics, said in a note to clients.

“However,” she added, “there isn’t much the ECB can do about higher energy prices and supply bottlenecks in the short-term anyway.”

Still, relatively little is known about the Omicron variant. Scientists have detailed its mutations, but it will be a couple of weeks before they know how it responds to existing vaccines and if it causes severe disease.

On Tuesday, investors sought the relative safety of government bonds. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes declined 8 basis points, or 0.08 percentage point, to 1.42 percent, the lowest level in more than two months.

Oil futures fell, with West Texas Intermediate crude slumping 2.4 percent to $68.27 a barrel. Its price has dropped 18 percent this month.

The emergence of the new variant complicates the work of the Federal Reserve, which had begun tightening monetary policy because of higher inflation. But if the new variant restrains economic growth, it could ease the pressure on prices.

“The emergence of the Omicron variant pose downside risks to employment and economic activity and increased uncertainty for inflation,” Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, will tell lawmakers later on Tuesday, according to prepared remarks.

The lawsuit was filed by the states of Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. It said that by prompting health care workers to leave their jobs if they did not want to get vaccinated, the mandate could “exacerbate an alarming shortage of health care workers, particularly in rural communities, that has already reached a boiling point.”

Judge Schelp’s ruling is the second setback this month for the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates.

A three-judge panel in New Orleans affirmed a federal appeals court’s decision to temporarily block a requirement that companies with at least 100 employees test their unvaccinated workers weekly beginning in January. The judges said the mere existence of the regulation had resulted in “untold economic upheaval in recent months.”

“The public interest is also served by maintaining our constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions,” wrote Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt, a Trump appointee.

Ms. Yellen will also warn that the path of the recovery depends on the pandemic.

“Of course, the progress of our economic recovery can’t be separated from our progress against the pandemic, and I know that we’re all following the news about the Omicron variant,” Ms. Yellen will say, adding that vaccines continue to be a crucial tool. “We’re still waiting for more data, but what remains true is that our best protection against the virus is the vaccine.”

The Treasury secretary will also urge lawmakers to raise or suspend the nation’s borrowing cap next month. Ms. Yellen has said that the United States could be unable to pay its bills sometime after Dec. 15. At that point, Social Security checks and military paychecks could be delayed and the country would face a deep recession.

“I cannot overstate how critical it is that Congress address this issue,” Ms. Yellen will say. “America must pay its bills on time and in full. If we do not, we will eviscerate our current recovery.”

Much is unknown about the new variant of the coronavirus, but it represents something Fed officials worry about: The possibility that the pandemic will continue to flare up, shutting down factories, roiling supply lines and keeping the economy out of balance. If that happens, as it did with the Delta variant earlier this summer and fall, it could perpetuate high prices.

Inflation has surged in 2021 as strong consumer demand has crashed into the barrier of limited supply. Production line closures, port pileups and parts shortages have kept goods from getting onto shelves and to customers, prompting companies to charge more. At the same time, a dearth of labor in certain industries caused by virus wariness and pandemic-related child-care shortages has been pushing up wages and prices for some services.

It’s too early to know if the new virus strain will contribute to those trends, making inflation last longer than it otherwise would. But the new variant strikes at a delicate moment for monetary policy.

Central bankers are slowing their bond-purchase program, a move that should give them more flexibility to raise interest rates — their more traditional and powerful tool for stoking the economy — if doing so should prove necessary next year.

Several Fed officials have signaled that they may speed up their so-called bond-buying “taper” given how high and how stubborn inflation is proving. Many economists think officials could announce a plan to do so at their meeting in December.

But if the coronavirus again hits the economy, it could make such a decision — and the timing and pace of eventual rate increases — more challenging.

That’s because the Fed balances two goals, controlling inflation and stoking employment, when it sets its policy. A faster and fuller removal of help for the economy might slow down price gains by weighing down demand, but it would likely slow business expansions and hiring in the process.

“We will use our tools both to support the economy and a strong labor market and to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched,” Mr. Powell plans to say, after once again acknowledging that the Fed realizes “high inflation imposes significant burdens, especially on those less able to meet the higher costs of essentials like food, housing, and transportation.”

Mr. Powell, whom President Biden plans to reappoint for a second term as Fed chair, will tell lawmakers that the Fed is “committed to our price-stability goal.”

On Monday, Mr. Biden called Omicron “a cause for concern, not a cause for panic,” and his press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters that she was not aware of any projections by the administration’s economic team for how the variant might affect hiring, growth and inflation. “It is something obviously we will continue to assess,” she said.

“We will be having conversations and seeking additional clarity about their significance as they relate to CNN over the next several days,” the company said in a statement.

When Ms. DeRosa was trying to keep tabs in early March on journalists working to uncover stories of harassment, she turned to Chris Cuomo for “intel.”

“On it,” he wrote back after one such request. A few days later, Ms. DeRosa wrote to the governor’s brother that she had heard Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker was “getting ready to move” a story. “Can u check your sources?”

In text messages with Ms. DeRosa in March, Chris Cuomo said he was in a “panic” about how the governor’s team was handling the accusations and pleaded to “let me help with the prep” before drafting his own proposed statements for the governor to read, including one referencing “cancel culture.”

The newly released records included copies of text and email messages, as well as transcripts of depositions with many of Governor Cuomo’s closest aides. READ THE ARTICLE →