Financial news

• UK households handed up to £2,550 with 4 benefits and freebies in May

  04-05-2025 21:10 via express.co.uk
  
  Households can get as much as £2,550 from four benefits available in May.
  
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• The Guardian view on Labour’s pension reforms: building on flawed foundations | Editorial

  04-05-2025 19:25 via theguardian.com
  
  Pension funds should be investing more in Britain. But Rachel Reeves needs a better plan for this to benefit both pensioners and public infrastructureWhen Otto von Bismarck introduced the world’s first pension system in 1889, he could hardly have imagined the colossal wealth that people would one day save towards retirement. Britain’s pension funds look after a collective £2tn, almost as much as the country’s annual economic output. Rachel Reeves wants them to invest
  
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• Shell reportedly weighing up merits of making move to buy BP

  04-05-2025 18:07 via theguardian.com
  
  Such a takeover would be one of biggest deals ever in oil and gas industryShell is talking to advisers about the potential for a takeover of the rival oil producer BP, according to reports.The oil company has been discussing the feasibility and merits of a takeover of BP with its advisers in recent weeks, according to a report from Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter. Continue reading...
  
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• Business figures pay tribute to Warren Buffett after retirement announcement

  04-05-2025 18:06 via theguardian.com
  
  JP Morgan boss says Buffett represents ‘everything good about American capitalism and America itself’Leading figures in the business world have lined up to pay tribute to Warren Buffett after the 94-year-old announced he would retire as chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway and hand over the reins to his vice-chair, Greg Abel.Buffett shocked an arena full of shareholders over the weekend when he announced he would step down as the CEO and chair of the trillion-dollar conglomerate at
  
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• Sheet show: MyPillow pitchman Mike Lindell’s Trumpified ‘news venture’

  04-05-2025 18:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Longstanding Trump ally’s LindellTV aims to expose election fraud – and sell branded ‘dream sheets’Millions of votes were stolen in the presidential election – only in the 2020 one, the 2024 one was fine. Freedom is under attack! DEI judges are going after Americans! President Trump is keeping his promises. Freedom is making a comeback! Bed sheets, any size, any color, are available for $25 a set if you use the promo code L77, offer is for a limited time only.Welcom
  
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• ‘Dangerous nonsense’: AI-authored books about ADHD for sale on Amazon

  04-05-2025 16:50 via theguardian.com
  
  Experts say online retailer has ethical responsibility to guard against chatbot-generated work on sensitive topicsAmazon is selling books marketed at people seeking techniques to manage their ADHD that claim to offer expert advice yet appear to be authored by a chatbot such as ChatGPT.Amazon’s marketplace has been deluged with works produced by artificial intelligence that are easy and cheap to publish but include unhelpful or dangerous misinformation, such as shoddy travel guidebooks and
  
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• Why you shouldn’t trust everything you read about the US’s ‘fed up’ workforce

  04-05-2025 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Despite rumors of ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘coffee badging’, people know work is work and the perfect job doesn’t existIf you read the media, you’ll walk away with this impression: American employees are fed up. They’re doing the “bare minimum” on Mondays, “cushioning” their careers with side gigs, “rage applying” to vent their frustrations and “coffee badging” to protest return-to-office policies.US workers ar
  
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• France and EU to incentivise US-based scientists to come to Europe

  04-05-2025 15:56 via theguardian.com
  
  Macron and von der Leyen expected to announce protections for researchers seeking to relocate amid Trump’s crackdownFrance and the EU are to step up their efforts to attract US-based scientists hit by Donald Trump’s crackdown on academia, as they prepare announcements on incentives for researchers to settle in Europe.The French president, Emmanuel Macron, alongside the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will make speeches on Monday morning at Sorbonne University in
  
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• LA’s bustling ports hit by Trump tariffs: ‘Everyone in the US will feel this’

  04-05-2025 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Traffic is down at America’s busiest port complex – and anxious dock workers are fearful of further economic harmSouthern California may be known for celebrities and glitz, but the true action has long been about 40 miles away from Hollywood, in a place where high-visibility coveralls and hardhats dominate.For the past 25 years, the San Pedro Bay port complex – comprised of the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach – has been the celebrity of the shipping world a
  
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• Better at everything: how AI could make human beings irrelevant

  04-05-2025 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The end of civilisation might look less like a war, and more like a love story. Can we avoid being willing participants in our own downfall?Right now, most big AI labs have a team figuring out ways that rogue AIs might escape supervision, or secretly collude with each other against humans. But there’s a more mundane way we could lose control of civilisation: we might simply become obsolete. This wouldn’t require any hidden plots – if AI and robotics keep improving, it’s w
  
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• Donald Trump’s cartoon-like chaos leaves US economy on unstable course | Heather Stewart

  04-05-2025 13:43 via theguardian.com
  
  Uncertainty generated by tariff policy underlines US president seemingly unable to choose a path and stick to itTen days reporting from the US – in Pittsburgh, Washington DC, and just across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia – gave me a fascinating snapshot of what feels like the slow-motion unravelling of the world’s largest economy.So many conversations featured uncertainty and wariness; and weariness, too, as businesses and consumers weigh up every decision, against t
  
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• French police investigate spate of cryptocurrency millionaire kidnappings

  04-05-2025 13:28 via theguardian.com
  
  Victims have had fingers chopped off by attackers in crimewave targeting entrepreneurs and their familiesFrench police are investigating a series of kidnappings of investors linked to cryptocurrency after a 60-year-old man had a finger chopped off by attackers who demanded his crypto-millionaire son pay a ransom.In the latest of several kidnappings of cryptocurrency figures in France and western Europe, the man, who owned a cryptocurrency marketing company with his son, was freed from a house so
  
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• BMW ends 180 agency staff contracts at Mini factory in Oxford

  04-05-2025 12:54 via theguardian.com
  
  Move comes as industry grapples with impact of Donald Trump’s steep 25% tariffs on cars imported to USThe Mini owner, BMW, has ended 180 agency staff contracts at its factory in Oxford as the British car industry grapples with global economic uncertainty and steep US tariffs.Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs in March, hitting all cars imported to the US from overseas from 3 April, in the hope of forcing carmakers to invest in production in the US. The tariffs have left British manufacture
  
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• How Trump’s love for crypto threatens US residents’ peace: ‘I just want quiet’

  04-05-2025 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Cryptocurrency mining facilities can blanket towns with ‘constant’ noise. They’re likely to get louder under TrumpFirst came the dogs’ balding – leathery pink patches on otherwise glossy fur coats.The veterinarian told Shenice Copenhaver it was genetic. But it wasn’t long before one of the hairless puppies began stealing blankets to burrow beneath furniture and hide for long stretches. Continue reading...
  
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• ITV and Channel 4 face summer of uncertainty amidst leadership issues and potential mergers

  04-05-2025 10:00 via theguardian.com
  Channel 4’s chief executive, Alex Mahon, is standing down and ITV head Carolyn McCall has been struggling for investorsWith Channel 4 facing months of stopgap interim leadership and ITV in talks over a potential merger of its programme-making operation with a rival belonging to an Abu Dhabi-backed fund, the UK’s biggest free-to-air commercial broadcasters face a destabilising and uncertain summer.Earlier this week, Alex Mahon, Channel 4’s chief executive, announced she is to st
  
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• Mirrors, caddies and skinny shelves: 12 space-saving tricks to make small rooms feel bigger

  04-05-2025 09:00 via theguardian.com
  From storage beds to floating desks, these expert buys will help you decorate small spaces• The best diffusers for your home: 22 genuinely great-smelling diffusersLarge rooms need more – and bigger – furniture, so small rooms just need fewer, smaller pieces, right? Not entirely. In fact, there’s a lot more to creating a successful small space than that.When looking at a room, don’t just think about the floor plan; consider it as a three-dimensional space and ask your
  
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• Baby food pouch hysteria? It’s just another way of making mothers feel guilty | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

  04-05-2025 09:00 via theguardian.com
  We need a society that supports parents and makes good food choices achievable – not more lecturing of exhausted mumsLike many modern mothers, I have on occasion piped cold bolognese directly from a pouch into my small child’s open mouth and, radical though it may seem, I refuse to feel guilty about it. There is a lot of panic about ultra-processed foods (UPFs), and baby food pouches, with their high sugar content and dubious nutritional value, are the latest targets. Researchers at
  
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• ‘Hi mum!’ The simple WhatsApp text scam costing parents and friends dear

  04-05-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  How to beat the scam, from setting up new passwords and telling your bank exactly what you are doing“Hi mum,” the first message starts, “I’ve lost my phone.” It carries on with a tale of woe: for some reason the sender has also been locked out of his or her bank account.Luckily a friend is often on hand to help – it’s their phone that the message comes from, apparently – and if you could just transfer some money to their account that would be great
  
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• Who is behind the great rock’n’roll ripoff? How Ticketmaster swallowed the live entertainment scene

  04-05-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  From grassroots gigs to stadium shows, there’s no escaping the ticketing giant, making billions from hiking up prices (and whacking on fees)Even Donald Trump knows that the price of concert tickets is too damn high. Recently, flanked by the preposterously dressed Maga rocker Kid Rock, the president signed an executive order to protect fans from “crazy prices” by cracking down on scalpers and hidden fees. “Make America Fun Again,” Kid Rock declared.It will take more
  
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• Spin doctors: gambling firms adopt hard tactics to flood towns with 24-hour slot machines

  04-05-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Companies deploy highly-paid lawyers and appear to mislead councillors – but local authorities are fighting backIt is almost 2am in Peterborough and a handful of punters are wordlessly feeding their money into the machines at Merkur Slots.A fragment of a song, the lyric “nothing to lose”, drifts through the shop as their funds rapidly evaporate. Closing time is fast approaching, but that does not mean the end of the gambling. Continue reading...
  
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