Financial news

• Keir Starmer pledges £200m for Grangemouth oil refinery site

  23-02-2025 14:18
  
  Unions have accused UK government of failing to act quickly enough to save jobs, but Labour says it took time to build credible proposalKeir Starmer has announced £200m in funding to boost investment at Grangemouth oil refinery, which is closing down with the loss of more than 400 jobs.The prime minister said the national wealth fund would provide £200m in state investment for up to five companies who moved to Grangemouth, where several thousand jobs in the wider supply chain are als
  
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• Hackers steal $1.5bn from crypto exchange in ‘biggest digital heist ever’

  23-02-2025 13:56
  
  Bybit platform appeals to ‘brightest minds’ in cybersecurity for help after attacker transfers Ethereum currency The cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has called on the “brightest minds” in cybersecurity to help it recover $1.5bn (£1.2bn) stolen by hackers in what is thought to be the biggest single digital theft in history.The Dubai-based crypto platform said an attacker gained control of a wallet of Ethereum, one of the most popular digital currencies after bitcoin, a
  
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• Working life in the UK: copywriters, sex workers, gardeners, chefs and more on how they scratch a living

  23-02-2025 13:00 via theguardian.com
  When Charlie Colenutt questioned workers, from copywriters to cam girls, cab drivers to cops, the answers were surprisingBetween 2021 and 2023, I spoke to 100 strangers about their jobs. I asked them, what do you do all day? Why do you do it? And do you like it? Their answers filled a book, Is This Working? It is a record of life and work in the listless British economy of the early 2020s, a “services economy” in which 85% of us, from the cam girl to the accountant, spent our days pr
  
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• The way we work: tales from the coalface

  23-02-2025 13:00
  
  What does it take to scratch a living in the UK today? We questioned workers, from copywriters to cam girls, cab drivers to cops, and the answers were surprisingBetween 2021 and 2023, I spoke to 100 strangers about their jobs. I asked them, what do you do all day? Why do you do it? And do you like it? Their answers filled a book, Is This Working? It is a record of life and work in the listless British economy of the early 2020s, a “services economy” in which 85% of us, from the cam g
  
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• ‘Real anger’: Labour can expect hostile reception at farmers’ annual gathering

  23-02-2025 13:00
  
  UK food producers plan more protests over inheritance tax changes ahead of this week’s NFU conference in LondonThe suits and black cabs which typically dot the streets around Westminster have been frequently replaced by the wellies, tweed jackets and tractors of aggrieved farmers of late. The next protest in London by the nation’s food producers is expected on Tuesday morning, ahead of the annual get-together of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU).Farmers have regularly swapped t
  
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• Home Office contractor collected data on UK citizens while checking migrants’ finances

  23-02-2025 12:07
  
  Official sent email to charity that suggested Home Office had data on ‘hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting Britons’The Home Office has been accused of collecting data on “hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting British citizens” while conducting financial checks on migrants.A report by a private contractor for a routine immigration application was mistakenly sent to a charity by a government official, and contained information on more than 260 people including their names
  
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• Don’t gift our work to AI billionaires: Mark Haddon, Michael Rosen and other creatives urge government

  23-02-2025 12:00
  
  More than 2,000 cultural figures challenge Whitehall’s eagerness ‘to ­wrap our lives’ work in attractive paper for automated competitors’Original British art and creative skill is in peril thanks to the rise of AI and the government’s plans to loosen ­copyright rules, some of the UK’s leading cultural figures have said.More than 2,000 people, including leading creative names such as Mark Haddon, Axel Scheffler, Benji Davies and Michael Rosen, have sign
  
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• Labour’s revolution of local government will be seismic but won’t be straightforward | Richard Partington

  23-02-2025 11:47
  
  Bucket-loads of political capital and cash will be used to reconfigure English councils’ two-tier set-up, but the benefits could be hugeAcross England a quiet rebellion is brewing. In Rutland, locals have started a campaign to save the tiny county from abolition. Villagers in High Peak, rural Derbyshire, worry they could be bundled in with Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester. Nottingham is expanding, Medway wants to become a city, and Surrey will have a mayor.Flick through your local n
  
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• What can Keir Starmer say at the White House that Donald Trump might listen to? | Andrew Rawnsley

  23-02-2025 08:30
  
  The stakes couldn’t be higher and the risks couldn’t be greater when the prime minister visits Washington this weekFor British prime ministers, with their ideas about the world shaped by the histories of Churchill and Roosevelt, Maggie and Ronnie, and the rest of the folklore about the transatlantic alliance, the prospect of a visit to the White House usually causes tingles of excitement. One of our senior diplomats once offered me an explanation of the allure: “The red carpet
  
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• Spending big on defence is a win for Rachel Reeves, Britain and the world | Will Hutton

  23-02-2025 08:00
  
  A tax overhaul would enable Labour to raise cash to boost security. But it must act swiftlyIt was a week that shook the world. The spilled Ukrainian blood counted for nothing as Donald Trump openly sided with Russia to achieve a peace that can only reward it for its unilateral aggression. As profoundly, the US president has launched a new era in which might is right, “strong” men carve up the globe, and international law and multilateral institutions are eviscerated. Nor, as the form
  
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• Redrawing of global energy markets map set to heap benefits on US

  23-02-2025 08:00
  The prospects of peace and the return of Russian gas looks likely to serve the interests of Donald TrumpThe Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago has reverberated through the global energy industry; unravelling Europe’s decades-long reliance on gas imported via pipelines from Russia, and triggering a global squeeze on gas markets that unleashed a cost of living crisis still felt today.The prospect of a peace deal has many wondering whether the energy industry could be upended
  
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• How UK and EU could find more money for defence without spooking the markets

  23-02-2025 07:00
  
  There is political agreement that Britain and Europe need to increase military spending. But in straitened times, how can it be done?Can Britain increase defence spending without cuts elsewhere?
  Rachel Reeves is constrained by fiscal rules that govern the extent of the UK’s debts and the annual spending deficit by the end of the parliament. Following lower than expected tax receipts and higher borrowing costs in the current financial year, it looks likely that the chancellor will need to m
  
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• iPhone designer still asks: ‘I wonder what Steve Jobs would do?’ – despite being told not to

  23-02-2025 01:01
  
  Jony Ive, the man behind the look of Apple’s iconic brands says the firm’s co-founder specifically asked him not to consider ‘what Steve would do’Sir Jony Ive, the innovative designer of Apple’s iMac, iPhone and Apple Watch, and a close friend and ­collaborator of the late Steve Jobs, says he still often asks himself: “I wonder what Steve would do?”Ive told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs on Sunday that he does so despite the fact that J
  
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