Category Archives: Business

Subsea cables to help Britain meet green energy goal get green light

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Ofgem gives green light to five interconnectors capable of powering millions of homes

Projects to lay five subsea power cables capable of powering millions of homes have been given the green light as Great Britain prepares to use its giant offshore windfarms to become a net exporter of green electricity in the 2030s.

The energy regulator, Ofgem, has approved three subsea cable projects linking Great Britain to power grids in Germany, Ireland and Northern Ireland to help share renewable electricity across borders.

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Musk’s influence on Trump could lead to tougher AI standards, says scientist

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Tycoon might help president-elect realise race for artificial general intelligence is a ‘suicide race’, says Max Tegmark

Elon Musk’s influence on a Donald Trump administration could lead to tougher safety standards for artificial intelligence, according to a leading scientist who has worked closely with the world’s richest person on addressing AI’s dangers.

Max Tegmark said Musk’s support for a failed AI bill in California underlined the billionaire’s continued concern over an issue that did not feature prominently in Trump’s campaign.

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Man charged with murder after woman’s body found in Penrith hotel – as it happened

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Meteorologists are forecasting that thunderstorms will develop over large swathes of the country every day this week, and likely into next.

Ben Domensino from Weatherzone has outlined the forecast as follows:

Early in the week, showers and thunderstorms will target central, eastern, southern and southeastern Australia on Monday and Tuesday. Severe thunderstorms are likely in parts of NSW and [Queensland] on both days and are also possible in other states.

Storms will become more focussed on a broad arc stretching across Australia’s eastern and northern states and down into the WA interior through the middle of the week. Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra will all be at risk of severe thunderstorm activity on Wednesday.

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British Steel to keep Scunthorpe blast furnaces operating past Christmas

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Confirmation follows progress at talks over government support for switch to less polluting technology

The owners of British Steel are to keep the blast furnaces at its Scunthorpe site running past Christmas amid talks over government support for a switch to less polluting technology.

The government is thought to be considering aid for British Steel at the same level or even higher than the £500m pledged to Tata Steel, which closed its two blast furnaces in Port Talbot in September. However, no decisions on the shape of a package have been made.

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Leading UK estate agent cuts its longer-term house price growth forecast

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Hamptons says ‘modest’ rises can be expected amid ‘dampening effect’ of higher interest rates overall

Expectations that UK interest rates may stay higher for longer, as well as revenue-raising measures in the budget, have prompted a leading estate agent to cut its forecast for house price growth over the longer term.

The revised forecast from Hamptons came days after Halifax and Nationwide banks said the annual rate of property price growth had slowed, with the former saying it was likely to be “modest … for the rest of this year and into next”.

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Australia ‘not immune from trade tensions’, Chalmers says of incoming Trump presidency

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Treasurer says he spoke about tariffs to a ‘key member’ of Republican’s economic team before the US election

Australia’s economy will not be immune from escalating trade tensions, Jim Chalmers has warned, as the Albanese government prepares itself for an incoming Donald Trump administration.

In a speech to be delivered on Monday , the treasurer will outline the risks of an “uncertain world characterised by economic vulnerability and volatility” but will say the Australian government is “well-placed and well-prepared”.

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‘He hears me’: Trump’s Wall Street fixer prepares to assemble obedient administration

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Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick is planning to stack the incoming White House staff with Trump loyalists

Scrambling to construct an administration in the wake of his shock victory eight years ago, Donald Trump looked far beyond his inner circle, and those who ardently embraced his agenda. Not this time.

The president-elect has charged Howard Lutnick, a longtime friend, and one of the few high-profile figures in corporate America to vocally endorse his campaign, with recruiting officials who will deliver, rather than dilute, his agenda.

A masculinity researcher on the Democrats’ ‘fatal miscalculation’

Election deniers use Trump victory to sow more doubt over 2020 result

What a second Trump presidency means for big US tech firms

Who could be in Trump’s new administration

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Tory former energy secretary facing conflict of interest claim over JCB owner links

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Shadow cabinet secretary Claire Coutinho accepted donation from Lord Bamford while overseeing millions awarded to his family businesses in green grants

A Conservative former cabinet ­minister who took donations from the billionaire boss of the JCB digger dynasty – including a £7,000 trip on his VIP private helicopter – oversaw decisions to award his family’s business empire millions in taxpayer-funded green energy grants.

Claire Coutinho also posed for ­pictures promoting Lord Bamford’s personal £100m hydrogen engine project and accepted a £7,500 donation from JCB to her local election campaign while she was the energy secretary in Rishi Sunak’s government.

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Markets and farm shops among targets of organised crime gangs, say experts

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Smoked salmon, artisan cheese and fine wine among food and drink lost by European outlets

Small food producers are increasingly being targeted by organised crime gangs and rogue industry insiders looking to exploit national and global supply chain challenges , according to food crime experts.

The warning comes after several food businesses in the UK and continental Europe revealed how they had lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in scams where thieves apparently posed as legitimate buyers.

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EU leaders vow to make bloc more competitive in face of Trump threat

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Budapest meeting finds consensus on need to raise growth and productivity as ‘America first’ protectionism looms

EU leaders meeting in Budapest have signed a declaration aimed at boosting the bloc’s ailing competitiveness – a task given added urgency by the threat of “America first” protectionist trade policies promised by the US president-elect, Donald Trump.

The bloc has too many barriers to innovation and must drastically reduce red tape, especially for startups; ramp up investment; make access to capital easier; and raise productivity, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Friday.

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China unveils 10tn yuan support for debt-stricken local government

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Cash stops short of hoped-for ‘bazooka option’, with critics calling it ‘an accounting exercise’ that will not bolster growth

China has announced 10tn yuan in debt support for local governments and other economic measures, but stopped short of the “bazooka” stimulus package that many analysts had expected.

The fiscal package included raising debt ceilings for local governments by 6tn yuan (£646bn) over three years, so they could replace hidden debt, which authorities said stood at 14.3tn yuan by the end of 2023.

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Sydney homes flooded after water pipeline bursts – as it happened

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Racism, colonialism ‘driving Indigenous self-harm’

Australia’s dark colonial past and ongoing racism are driving self-harm in Indigenous communities, according to a respected Aboriginal psychologist.

That whole process has left communities suffering from intergenerational trauma, disadvantage and ongoing racism, as well as the exclusion from the benefits of society and a lack of acknowledgment and respect for their different cultural values.

We still want clinical approaches but we want to see culture at the centre of that.

In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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Tax unhealthy foods to tackle obesity, say campaigners

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Health and children’s groups urge UK ministers to impose levies on products containing too much salt or sugar

Dozens of health and children’s groups have urged ministers to tackle obesity by imposing taxes on foods containing too much salt or sugar.

New levies based on the sugar tax on soft drinks would make it easier for consumers to eat more healthily by forcing food manufacturers to reformulate their products, they claim.

74% think food firms are not honest about the health impact of their products.

61% worry about the amount of sugar and saturated fat in what they eat.

Only 13% believe producers will make their food more nutritious without government intervention.

72% worry about high levels of processing used in food production.

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Fed chair says he will not resign even if pressured by Trump as interest rate cut

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Trump has been a persistent critic of the Fed, which lowered rates for the second time in a row as inflation continues to ease

US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said he would not resign if he received any pressure from Donald Trump’s new administration to step down as the central bank lowered interest rates by a quarter-point Tuesday afternoon.

Trump has been a persistent critic of the Fed and its independence, calling its officials “boneheads” in his last administration and arguing that he should have a role in setting interest rates.

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Optus fined $12m after thousands could not call triple zero during 2023 outage

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Australian Communications and Media Authority says telco did not check welfare of 369 people who tried to make a call while lines were down

Optus has paid a $12m fine over its mobile network outage last year that resulted in more than 2,000 people being unable to make triple zero calls.

One year ago on Friday, a routine software upgrade to Optus’s mobile network brought down the service for 14 hours across the country for the company’s 10 million customers.

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Shrinkflation a ‘difficult decision’ for manufacturers, inquiry told – as it happened

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Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who had some colourful moments in his relationship with Donald Trump in his first presidency, is up now being colourful on the ABC. He says the Australian prime minister “has to stand up for Australia and not follow the conventional approach, which is being urged on everyone, which is to suck up to Trump and be utterly deferential:

I had a very successful relationship with Trump because I stood up to him, stood my ground, incurred his wrath, won his respect, and then got very good outcomes for Australia.

He did sort of encourage a mob to try to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power in 2021, on January 6.

The deal that Morrison instigated and Albanese signed up to is a very, very asymmetrical deal. All of the risk was on Australia. We have no agency and no leverage over this, and that’s why I think the most likely outcome is we’ll end up with no submarines, and that will be entirely our own fault because we signed up to a dud deal.

We have been clear, in terms of the Liberal party leadership, that Peter Dutton and the Liberal party have no plans, no intentions, to see any changes to abortion laws, that we respect the states’ rights in that regard, and I am very clear in terms of my respect for women’s reproductive rights.

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City analysts overwhelmingly predict Bank of England interest rate cut

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Rare agreement among forecasters gives 96% chance of today’s MPC meeting cutting borrowing costs to 4.75%

The Bank of England policymakers are widely expected to cut borrowing costs for businesses and homeowners by reducing official interest rates from 5% to 4.75% when they meet later today.

Financial markets are overwhelmingly forecasting that the Bank’s nine-strong monetary policy committee (MPC) will reduce rates for a second time when it announces its latest decision at noon.

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Post-Brexit border scheme to simplify trade put on pause again

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Single Trade Window designed to reduce friction on imports and exports will be halted until at least 2026 amid cost fears

A key part of the UK’s post-Brexit border strategy has been put on pause for more than a year amid government concerns over the cost of implementing the scheme.

The introduction of the Single Trade Window (STW), which is designed to reduce friction for traders moving goods in and out of Britain, had already been delayed from late October to January next year, but will now be halted until at least 2026.

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US cancels $1.1bn of Somalia’s debt in ‘historic’ financial agreement

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Commitment by Mogadishu’s largest single lender is latest in series of deals to forgive ‘unsustainable’ $4.5bn debt

Somalia has announced that more than $1.1bn (£860m) of outstanding loans will be cancelled by the US, a sum representing about a quarter of the country’s remaining debt.

The announcement is the latest in a series of agreements in which Somalia’s creditors have committed to forgiving its debt obligations.

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Wetherspoon’s boss warns of pub price rises as result of Labour budget

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Tim Martin blamed increases to the minimum wage and employers’ national insurance contributions

Pubgoers should expect prices to go up as a result of Labour’s first budget in 14 years, the politically outspoken boss of Wetherspoon’s, Tim Martin, has said.

Speaking as the hospitality chain announced record quarterly sales, Martin pinned the blame for an expected increase in pubs’ costs on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, whose economic “pedigree” he has previously praised.

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