Financial news

• Companies could face court over failing to report gender pay gap

  25-03-2018 20:00 via theguardian.com
  Head of Equality and Human Rights Commission says firms which miss 4 April deadline would be named and shamedThe head of Britain’s equality watchdog has warned companies that they could be pursued through the courts if they fail to report their gender pay gap.Issuing a stark warning to the 5,000 companies that have yet to provide data on the difference between the amount they pay male and female employees, Rebecca Hilsenrath, chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, sai
  
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• Fears mount for House of Fraser as it holds funding crisis talks

  25-03-2018 18:19 via theguardian.com
  Department store chain meets turnaround investor in bid to secure £40m of fresh fundingHouse of Fraser has held emergency funding talks with specialist lenders amid mounting fears for its future as retailers battle increasingly torrid trading conditions on the high street.Executives at the department store chain, which dates back to 1849, are believed to have met with Alteri, a London-based turnaround investor that focuses on struggling European retailers.Continue reading...
  
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• Nuclear watchdog raises Hinkley Point C concerns

  25-03-2018 17:20 via theguardian.com
  Management failings could affect safety at EDF power station if unaddressed, says inspectorThe UK nuclear regulator has raised concerns with EDF Energy over management failings that it warns could affect safety at the Hinkley Point C power station if left unaddressed, official documents reveal.
  Britain’s chief nuclear inspector identified several shortcomings in the way the French firm is managing the supply chain for the £20bn plant it is building in Somerset. Continue reading...
  
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• Gambling Commission recommendations may have significant impact on punters

  25-03-2018 17:11 via theguardian.com
  Online gambling firms can expect to receive close attention from the regulator during the coming months in areas such as account restrictions and closuresWhen the Gambling Commission published its long-awaited review of gaming machines and social responsibility measures last week, the final document ran to nearly 50,000 words.Yet the news reports and analysis that followed concentrated almost exclusively on a number, £30, which was taken by some at least to be the Commission’s recomm
  
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• Jobseekers outside London missing out on half-price train fares

  25-03-2018 15:44 via theguardian.com
  Figures show unemployed rail passengers not taking advantage of available discountUnemployed people outside London and the south-east are failing to take advantage of half-price rail travel, figures from the last year have revealed.
  In Liverpool Walton – one of the most deprived constituencies in the UK, with an unemployment rate more than twice the national average – just one person used a discount card offered by all train operators in Britain to accredited jobseekers. Continue rea
  
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• Is it time to break up the tech giants such as Facebook? | Larry Elliott

  25-03-2018 14:14 via theguardian.com
  Amazon, Facebook and Google are as dominant as Standard Oil and AT&T were. But breaking them up is not going to be easyIn the first decade of the 20th century, Standard Oil was as mighty as the tech giants of Silicon Valley are today. The company had grown from a single refinery in Cleveland in 1863 to produce 87% of all US refined oil output. In 1911, the supreme court decided that Standard Oil was in breach of anti-trust legislation passed by Congress and ordered that the company be broken
  
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• Paper tigers? US and China in dispute over tariffs but trade war looks remote

  25-03-2018 14:00 via theguardian.com
  Trump made a big play of slapping tariffs on Chinese imports, but experts say neither side will risk escalating the current spatWill two tribes go to war? Even as the world’s largest economies, the US and China, send conflicting signals over whether they’re heading for an all-out trade war – spooking stock markets – experts doubted either side will risk escalating a dispute over trade imbalances.China’s economic tsar and vice-premier Liu He told US treasury secretar
  
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• Bad form, Mytyres, over my faulty tyre replacement

  25-03-2018 09:01 via theguardian.com
  The company is hassling me to sign away my rights on a substandard tyre but I refuseLate last year I bought four tyres from Mytyres.co.uk, which is owned by the German firm Delticom AG. I noticed a problem with one of the tyres and a specialist company confirmed it had a fault. Mytyres agreed to send another and pick up the faulty one, but said I would have to sign a form agreeing to pay for the replacement if the manufacturer did not cover it. As I knew the tyre was substandard, I did not sign
  
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• Death by robot: the new mechanised danger in our changing world

  25-03-2018 09:00 via theguardian.com
  As the use of autonomous machines increases in society, so too has the chance of robot-related fatalitiesWas killed last Sunday by an Uber autonomous car that hit the 49-year-old at approximately 40mph as she was crossing the road in Tempe, Arizona. Police confirmed there was an operator in the Volvo SUV at the time of the collision, and stated that it didn’t appear the car had slowed down. Continue reading...
  
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• Good news about renewables: but the heat is still on to cut fossil fuel use

  25-03-2018 08:59 via theguardian.com
  New data shows global emissions are at a historic high. Political leaders must now consider imposing serious penaltiesFor optimists, it was tempting to view three years of flatlining global carbon emissions, from 2014-16, as the new normal. We now know celebrations should be put on hold. Figures for 2017 published last week show global emissions from energy have jumped back up again, to a historic high.The data from the International Energy Agency shows we still have much to do when it comes to
  
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• Brexit was making us a joke nation even before the blue passports | William Keegan

  25-03-2018 08:59 via theguardian.com
  Theresa May’s ‘transition’ deal is no cause for optimism amid this growing sense of farceDid I hear aright? Is the new, or rather “retro”, post-Brexit, true-blue British passport going to be manufactured in France? What a wonderful symbol of the futility and duplicity of the Brexiters’ promise to “take back control”!And what is this dire threat from the ubiquitous Jacob Rees-Mogg that the UK risks becoming a “joke nation” by giving in o
  
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• First non-stop scheduled flight from Australia to Britain lands after 17 hours

  25-03-2018 06:43 via theguardian.com
  Qantas flight QF9 makes history as it arrives at Heathrow, London, after a direct journey from Perth, Western AustraliaThe first non-stop scheduled flight from Australia to the UK has landed in London – early – after a 17 hour, six minute journey across 9,240 miles (14,875km) from Perth.Qantas flight QF9, a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with more than 230 passengers and crew on board, touched down at 5.03am at Heathrow on a chilly Sunday morning to a welcome from ground staff. Continue rea
  
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• Being a driverless car passenger proves ‘unsettling and extraordinary’

  25-03-2018 01:05 via theguardian.com
  The latest UK entry in the race to revolutionise roads goes for a spin despite the first such vehicle death in the US last weekHow many people does it take to drive a driverless car? Five: a safety driver behind the wheel, an operator to program the route, and three engineers monitoring it in another car behind.It is, to be fair, barely even a prototype. The autonomous car unveiled in Milton Keynes last week is bleeding-edge engineering, Britain’s entry in a global race to get the first dr
  
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