Britain’s retailers limped to the end of 2025 after a lacklustre Christmas trading period, with non-food sales failing to deliver the seasonal boost many high street businesses were relying on. New figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) show overall retail sales rose by just 1.2% in December compared with a year earlier — well below the 12-month average growth rate of 2.3%. While food sales proved resilient, demand for non-food items such as clothing,...
Senior Labour backbenchers are pressing the government to force UK banks to expand lending to small businesses and low-income communities, warning that a lack of affordable finance is holding back entrepreneurship and economic resilience. Gareth Thomas, a former business minister, has tabled a 10-minute rule bill that would require banks to measure, disclose and improve how they serve underserved communities and smaller firms. The proposal mirrors the US Community Reinvestment Act, which obliges American banks...
Up to 3,000 skilled manufacturing jobs could be at risk unless the Ministry of Defence moves quickly to place a long-delayed helicopter order, according to industry sources close to the programme. Workers at Leonardo Helicopters’s Yeovil site in Somerset, the UK’s last remaining military helicopter factory, fear the company could close the facility as early as the end of March if the government fails to commit to a new contract within weeks. Leonardo, the Italian-owned...
Alphabet has become one of the world’s most valuable companies after its market capitalisation briefly passed $4 trillion, following confirmation that Apple will integrate Google’s artificial intelligence technology into its products this year. The boost came after Apple said it would introduce the technology underpinning Google’s Gemini chatbot into its ecosystem, including Siri, marking a major strategic endorsement of Alphabet’s AI capabilities. Alphabet’s class A shares rose 1.7 per cent on the announcement, briefly touching...
Karavel, an AI-powered compliance platform built for highly regulated sectors, has secured £1.25 million in pre-seed funding in a round led by Fuel Ventures. The investment will support product development and accelerate Karavel’s commercial expansion across the UK and Europe, as the company looks to modernise compliance workflows for organisations facing increasingly complex regulatory scrutiny. Karavel is designed for legal, compliance and marketing teams operating in sectors such as financial services, fintech, insurance, healthcare and...
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is introducing a bill aimed at restricting any unauthorized military action by President Donald Trump, amid growing debate over his comments about acquiring Greenland ‘one way or the other.’ Rep. Bill Keating, D-Mass., is leading the legislation along with Reps. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., and Don Bacon, R-Neb., according to POLITICO. ‘This is about our fundamental shared goals and our fundamental security, not just in Europe, but in...
What football fans expect from sports sites has shifted completely. Dry match reports about yesterday’s game don’t cut it anymore. People want real-time numbers, instant updates, and analytics they can actually dig into. Site owners who want to keep visitors around have no choice — static pages need to become living information hubs, and data visualization tools make that happen. High-quality infographics are becoming just as important an element as original articles. Tools for Data...
Former special counsel Jack Smith will testify in a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee next week, giving Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the panel a chance to grill him in a public setting on his prosecutions of President Donald Trump. Smith will appear before the committee on Jan. 22, one month after he sat for a closed-door deposition with the committee and testified for eight hours about his special counsel work, a source familiar...
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., directed some heated remarks at a Trump administration Cabinet official whose department has been dominating headlines in recent weeks. ‘What is clear is that Kristi Noem is completely and totally unqualified. She should have never been confirmed by Senate Republicans,’ Jeffries said of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary during a Monday press conference. ‘It’s disgraceful that she’s there. She should be run out of town as soon...
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is increasingly drifting back into President Donald Trump’s MAGA orbit after their public blowup in June 2025 led to months of icy distance between the pair. That thaw surfaced publicly again over the weekend. Trump mentioned Musk by name Sunday when asked by the media whether he would lean on Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet constellation, to help deliver internet access to Iran as citizens take to the streets in mass protests...
