As American tech firms pile billions into AI products, their Chinese counterparts are experiencing what some analysts have long warned might be coming: a bubble that pops, with both enormous sums and international clout at risk. What does China’s bursting AI bubble mean for this burgeoning industry, and what could happen next?

Why is China’s AI economy unique?

China’s artificial intelligence boom has “crashed,” said Reuters, as “lofty valuations collapse under worries about AI demand” and limits on Chinese exports. In addition to “tanking” China’s STAR50 index of AI and semiconductor leaders plus “vaporizing some $480 billion in market value” over the past several months, the bursting bubble is an “ill omen for wobbly world markets.” Beijing’s efforts at “encouraging its savers into stocks to fund the AI boom” are also vulnerable.

China’s “AI exuberance” may “already have come and gone,” said the Financial Times. The shift in part stems from differences between American and Chinese AI industries. Western firms have “focused on charging for access” to their proprietary AI models, while Chinese labs are “more comfortable giving away the model and charging for access to processing power.” China’s “‘open-weight’ models” have led to “intense price competition” on both sides of the Pacific, raising questions about whether revenue can “support the level of investment required to develop ever more powerful models.” Sliding Chinese tech stocks reflect a “repricing of crowded AI trades, weak domestic demand and the lack of stimulus,” said Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis Corporate & Investment Bank, to CNN.

What does this mean for world markets?

Wall Street is funding America’s AI build-out “in real time,” said NPR, and China’s bubble collapse raises the question of whether the U.S. might be “close behind.” China’s stock dive “offers a cautionary tale,” as insiders warn an “abrupt collapse of the debt-fueled AI boom” could have deleterious effects worldwide, said CNN. For now, “strict controls” limiting foreign investment into Chinese markets mean the current stock slip is “unlikely to trigger significant spillovers into global markets.”

“After months of waiting, the Bank of England was finally forced off the sidelines,” Sanjay Raja, chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank, told The Times after the central bank hiked interest rates to 4%.

Conflict in the Middle East has pushed oil prices consistently above $100 a barrel in recent months, and hopes have faded that a deal could lead to a reopening of the key Strait of Hormuz. As a result, the Bank now expects UK inflation to rise to 4.9% in the middle of next year, up from the 3.2% it forecast in July.

What did the commentators say?

In his decision, the Bank’s governor, Andrew Bailey, said that “without news which softens the risks to inflationary pressures, I can see the argument for a further increase in rates”. So “the Bank looks poised to raise borrowing costs further unless a miracle takes place and price pressures simmer out”, said Maurício Alencar in City A.M.

Following its counterparts in the US, the EU and Japan, the Bank of England is the last of the major central banks to respond to rising global oil prices with an interest rate rise this year. But think tanks that “take more of an interest in people on lower incomes”, like the New Economics Foundation, “tend to see interest rate rises as a blunt instrument in the battle against inflation”, said Will Dunn in The New Statesman.

The textbook explanation for higher rates “is that they control prices by reducing demand and promoting saving”, but when people have relatively little money to either spend or save, “this doesn’t seem particularly useful”.

It is, however, one of the few effective instruments against rising inflation. After the global oil crisis of 1973 Britain’s central bank had to use interest rates (which peaked at 17% in 1979) to prevent prices from spiralling further upwards.

Yet this “should not be seen as the start of a cycle of hikes”, said economics editor Faisal Islam on the BBC. Oil prices are already lower than they have been, reflecting “expectations or guesses that President Trump will now retreat or de-escalate from the Iran war”.

Equally “the UK economy is performing much better than forecasts and expectations”. So this isn’t the same economic uncertainty that has brought massive price rises in the past. Even the expected further rise in interest rates, probably in February next year, “is conditional on the war continuing”.

What next?

It is, “regrettably, true that we have become used to debt being artificially cheap” in the UK, said Dunn.

It could be argued that historically normal interest rates were “still a fair bit higher than they are after today’s hike”. For instance, in the 15 years prior to the 1973 oil crisis they averaged 6%. In the 15 years prior to the 2008 crash they averaged 5.5%. “The glum take on today’s hike is that this is not a temporary measure to deal with a period of inflation but a return to normal.”

Hackers are targeting the technology controlling supermarket fridges and freezers across Europe, causing disruption, ruining millions of euros worth of food, and raising serious concerns about how prepared the UK is for a similar assault.

What has happened?

Supermarkets in several countries have been hit by cyberattacks that hit their refrigerated and frozen food storage units. In Belgium, Ireland and Sweden, an IT incident left cold storage units malfunctioning after attackers exploited security flaws in their internet-connected controllers.

Hackers can access the controls of digital refrigeration systems and turn their temperatures up very high, turning an everyday piece of supermarket equipment into a tool for disruption.

The attacks began last month, when hundreds of French supermarkets were left with “spoiled food” and overheated equipment, causing damage costing millions of euros, said Al Jazeera. It is a “very cold war”.

How vulnerable is the UK?

Some British supermarket fridges have also been affected, although the incidents are thought to be “isolated and not widespread” at this stage, said The i Paper.

Richard Horne, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, confirmed there had been a “couple of instances” in which cold food storage units in the UK had been exploited by hackers.

The threat extends beyond supermarkets, however. Disruption has been identified across the wider food supply chain, with the full impact still unclear. Meat processing firms in the UK were hit by cyberattacks and the NCSC is working to understand the extent of the problem and identify vulnerable technology.

Meanwhile, Horne warned that the UK’s underlying technology infrastructure “has not been invested in to the extent it needs to be”. Many organisations continue to rely on ageing systems that have reached the end of their useful lives or have not been properly updated. This leaves “a whole load of vulnerabilities” that artificial intelligence, in the hands of hostile actors, can help identify and exploit with ease.

The NCSC has also warned that AI-powered malware could be used to attack critical national infrastructure in Britain within the next two years, including airports, hospitals and power stations.

The risks are not limited to businesses. Increasing numbers of household appliances are connected to the internet, including fridges, freezers, smart thermostats, central heating systems, locks and televisions. We should “get used to the chaos and confusion”, said The Independent, because “hits on networks and services that affect our everyday life are coming for us in due course”.

What can be done about it?

For the companies and organisations affected, the simplest fix is to patch their software systems. According to the Belgian refrigerator group Sabcobel, the impact of Monday’s hack could have been far worse if they had not started patching fridges after the 12 October attack in France.

In the UK retailers are “currently working with the NCSC to ensure their fridges and freezers are secure as possible against potential attacks”, said Graham Wynn, from the British Retail Consortium.

The UK is considering spending £450 million a year to give students from the EU discounted university fees, said The Guardian. But it wants access to the bloc’s “Made in Europe” protectionist industrial scheme in return.

What is ‘Made in Europe’?

The European Commission’s proposed Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) is designed to help stimulate demand for European-made clean technologies, while reducing reliance on producers from abroad, most notably China but also the US.

Covering strategic sectors such as steel, aluminium and cement, electric vehicles, batteries, solar and ⁠wind power, hydrogen technology and nuclear energy, the law aims to use the €2 trillion of member states’ public procurement to shore up struggling domestic industries and push into newer growing sectors. Supporters of the scheme say rivals such as the US, China, and India already have similar rules in place and this would merely bring the EU in line with much of the rest of the world.

“If we do nothing, then it’s quite clear that very soon, 100% of clean tech technology will be ⁠produced in China,” said Stéphane Séjourné, an EC executive vice president, in March. “It’s quite possible that our cement, steel industries will be offshored completely in the next few years.”

Will it work?

The problem is that “EU governments disagree over where Europe ends”, said Euronews. France has been pushing for a strict EU approach while Germany wants a more open model, allowing products made “with” Europe, provided those countries grant European companies equivalent access in return.

Last month, Germany and France reached a compromise that would allow suppliers from non-EU members like the UK, Norway and Switzerland to qualify for “European origin” status.

This is “causing deep concern among other allied carmaking nations” such as Japan, South Korea and Turkey, which will still be shut out from the scheme, said Deutsche Welle. Excluding Turkey, which has enjoyed seamless access to the EU market since the mid-1990s, would also harm European car production rather than strengthen competitiveness against China, said Ayhan Zeytinoglu, from the Turkish think tank the Economic Development Foundation.

Will the UK be able to join?

The “Made in Europe” scheme has become a major obstacle to the UK’s long-hoped-for Brexit “reset” with the EU. Wrangling over rules affecting British businesses has twice delayed a UK–EU summit, which is finally due to take place on 20 November.

Andy Burnham said in September that he would make the case for Britain to be considered a “trusted partner” under the scheme, warning that excluding the UK could damage the British car industry.

The UK and EU have already agreed a draft deal on removing post-Brexit checks from food and agriculture exports. Burnham’s government now hopes the promise to subsidise EU students could be enough to win over EU negotiators in the “Made in Europe” talks.

“We are willing to give the Europeans what they want on fees, but we will have to get something significant in return,” a source told The Guardian. “The biggest prize we are pushing for right now is access to Made in Europe, so there is a deal to be done there.”

Unexpectedly strong sales at Poundland are causing some to question plans announced by its US owner to “push the discount retailer into bankruptcy”, said The Times.

The future of the 36-year-old chain hangs in the balance after American investment firm Gordon Brothers filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators with the High Court last week – putting at risk the jobs of 12,000 employees.

Business model with a shelf life

Poundland began life as a market stall selling items for £1, and went on to become a high street chain that employs thousands of people and attracts more than a million customers a week. It was listed on the London stock exchange and, at its peak in 2014, was worth more than £1 billion. But high inflation has “exposed a business model which always appeared to have a shelf life”, said The Guardian. The “low-wage shoppers that make up the core of Poundland’s clientele” have less “spare cash for non-essentials”.

When Poundland arrived on high streets in the late 1990s, it had that “unique selling point” of everything being priced at £1, Sarah Montano, a professor of retail marketing at the University of Birmingham, told the BBC. But rising prices have forced it to drop that policy, and now there are a slew of online and offline competitors who have “got their finger on the key trends” and are “offering very similar prices and, for quite a lot of products, they’re offering them cheaper”.

For the past decade, Poundland has gone through several owners and changes of business strategy but has never recovered its early success. Last year, Gordon Brothers acquired the Walsall-based business – for £1.

‘Long time coming’

Government ministers are said to be looking closely at whether Poundland’s owners are “unnecessarily” forcing “the embattled retailer into administration” and jeopardising thousands of jobs, said the Financial Times.

Gordon Brothers launched an “accelerated sales process” for the business last month but its demand for £30 million to cover a shareholder loan has “deterred potential bidders” and was the basis for its rejection of a going-concern offer from Ireland’s Martin Property Group. The rejection of that offer triggered the departure of three new directors, just two weeks after they had been appointed.

Should Poundland “go under”, several “suitors, including Lidl, Poundstretcher, Tesco, The Range and B&M, are understood to want to buy packages of stores”, said The Times. This could “save some jobs because the retailers would be legally bound to transfer staff onto their payrolls”.

The demise of Poundland has been “a long time coming”, Joshua Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research, told The Sun. And the prospect of it “being chopped up into bits” is yet another example of the “erosion of the physical high street”.

The triple lock is a guarantee on pensioner incomes, and was introduced by the coalition government in 2011 to address high levels of old-age poverty: it was actually a Liberal Democrat manifesto policy and a key demand during coalition talks.

The aim was to halt the atrophy of the state pension. For the 30 years before that, pensions had been tied mostly to inflation, and had fallen relative to wages. The triple lock ensures that each year the payout rises by whichever of three figures is the highest: inflation (based on the CPI measure); the average increase in wages; or 2.5%.

The idea was to increase pensions fast in real terms, whatever the economic conditions, and it has worked. The charity Age UK says the triple lock has “rebuilt the value of the state pension”, and helped “improve the living standards of some of our poorest pensioners”. The state pension increased by 10.1% in 2023, 8.5% in 2024, 4.1% in 2025, and 4.8% in 2026.

How much does it cost?

Spending on pensions is now £16 billion a year higher than it would have been without the triple lock, calculates the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). This takes the total spent on the state pension in 2026-27 to £154 billion. It is by far the UK’s largest benefit, “similar in magnitude to the combined annual budgets of the Ministry of Defence and Department for Education”.

The government spends 4.9% of national income on state pension outlays: up from 4.3% in 2010 and 3.6% 20 years ago. What really worries fiscal experts though, is future projections. The government’s economics watchdog, the OBR, estimates that the triple lock has already cost “around three times more than initial expectations”, because of economic volatility.

But it is impossible to put even a ballpark figure on it long term, given the vagaries of inflation and earnings growth. By 2050, retaining the triple lock could cost “anywhere between £5 billion and £40 billion” a year. “At some point”, says the IFS, a government will have to move “towards a more predictable and less costly way of uprating the state pension”.

Why has this not been done?

The huge popularity of the triple lock, in an electorate tilted towards an elderly demographic, made it politically untouchable as the big “boomer” generation passed into retirement. The upshot, argues The Economist, is that “Britain became a dictatorship of the pensionariat”. State support for working-age groups has been squeezed, while support for the elderly has been protected. When Margaret Thatcher left office in 1990, 40% of pensioners were in poverty, after housing costs. Today, only around 15% of pensioners are in poverty (post-housing), compared with 19% of working-age adults.

So is the pension generous now?

Not on the face of it, no. At around £12,500 a year, the current “new state pension” is the lowest in the G7 – and is impossible to live on without additional private provision or benefits.

In 2024, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association calculated that a single person needs £14,400 annually as a “minimum”, £31,300 for a “moderate” lifestyle and £43,100 to be “comfortable”. Pensioners who receive only the state pension and top-ups (about 13% of the total) are very poorly off. This is why the triple lock is supported by the Labour Left, and by unions such as Unite.

However, the international comparison isn’t quite fair: income from occupational and personal pensions is a relatively important part of pensioner income in the UK, unlike in many other countries where state provision is higher.

But will private pensions hold up?

The IFS Pensions Review in 2023 found that work pension schemes had become less generous, and many private sector employees were not saving enough to fill the gap. The situation has been improved by pension “auto-enrollment”, introduced, like the triple lock, by George Osborne. Unless they opt out, all workers over 22 earning more than a set salary (currently £10,000) are enrolled into a company scheme that saves 8% of their income: 3% paid by the employer, 4% by the employee and 1% in tax relief.

A British worker on a median wage might amass a £400,000 pot after 35 years: enough at today’s rates for a £25,000 annuity. This state-subsidised system will do more of the heavy lifting as the years pass and might, in time, serve as a “replacement for the actual state pension”, says Merryn Somerset Webb on Bloomberg. But the costs to the Treasury are large: tax relief on individual contributions grew from £33 billion in 2011-12, to £84 billion last year.

What is Andy Burnham’s plan for the triple lock?

Starting from 2030, a re-elected Burnham government would not entirely abolish the triple lock, but would “adjust” it to a “double lock” – by removing the automatic annual link with average earnings, which in recent years has been highly volatile. The PM’s plan is to use the “significant savings” generated to help fund the creation of a new National Care Service, free at the point of use.

Could this cause him problems?

Burnham admits that he could “pay a political price” for the proposed reforms, but says “someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off”. All the main opposition parties are committed to keeping the triple lock. Reform UK’s Nigel Farage accused the PM of “launching an offensive against our elderly”. And even those who would happily cut the triple lock might disagree with Burnham’s intention to divert the savings to social care, as opposed to reducing UK state spending, or using it in a way that benefits Britain’s youth, instead of the elderly.

Heated debate will continue. The state pension remains a very emotionally charged topic: recent years have seen fights in Italy’s parliament and riots in France over the issue. In the meantime, next year’s pension rise will be 3.9%, equating to an increase of around £500 a year.

Although SpaceX and Tesla may be publicly inseparable from the outsize personality of their CEO, Elon Musk, legally and technically they are separate businesses. But a change might be imminent, as he’s considering a merger of his two kingdoms. The move could consolidate his authority and buttress his megariches.

‘Elon Inc.’

Musk announced last week that the two companies have formed committees to explore creating a conglomerate with dealings in rockets, cars and artificial intelligence, said Axios. “I think it would be a good idea,” he said on an earnings call with reporters, per the outlet. (SpaceX and Tesla are already collaborating on AI chip production.) The joint enterprise would be “massive,” said Axios. The companies currently have a combined capitalization of more than $3.5 trillion.

The SpaceX-Tesla combo would be the “world’s largest ever merger,” said the Financial Times. The combined firm would be a “new type of 21st-century conglomerate” centered around AI and a “leading position in industries ranging from space exploration to robotics.” There has “never been a company like it of any scale,” said analyst Gene Munster to FT.

This would “create a de facto Elon Inc.,” said The New York Times. The alliance has also “raised concerns” from policymakers and critics who believe the world’s richest man has “already amassed too much power.” The merger would give Musk official control “over an increasing slice of the world’s economy,” said Jill Fisch, a business law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to Marketplace.

The Trump factor

The proposal comes at a moment when Musk has “regained access to the White House” after a falling-out with President Donald Trump, said Bloomberg. The advantage is not “guaranteed to last,” though. As such, a push is on to officially announce a deal in the first half of 2027 “so that it closes during this administration” before a “potentially less-accommodating political and financial environment takes hold.”

A would-be power shift may explain Musk’s gargantuan spending on the 2026 midterm election. His giving to GOP candidates has blown “past the $400 million mark as of mid-October,” said CNN.

Hackers in France recently set their sights on an unusual target: supermarkets. After hundreds of French grocers had their refrigerators hacked and taken offline, many are worried that attacks like these could become commonplace, including in the U.S.

How do hackers go after supermarkets?

In the case of the French hacking, criminals “remotely connected to refrigeration equipment” and “switched on defrost cycles that led to the loss of large quantities of fresh and frozen goods,” said CNN. Most grocery store fridges are connected to online controllers, allowing “maintenance firms to adjust the temperature remotely,” but this also makes the fridges vulnerable to hackers who can disable certain settings.

This isn’t the first instance of a widespread supermarket hack. In 2025, United Natural Foods, which supplies frozen foods to grocers in the U.S. and Canada, said it “discovered a cyberattack that forced it to take its systems offline,” said Al Jazeera. Also last year, conglomerate Ahold Delhaize USA, which owns grocery chains like Food Lion and Stop & Shop, was the “victim of a cyberattack that disrupted operations at more than 2,000 stores.” And British chain Marks & Spencer suffered a 2025 hacking that reportedly cost it $397 million.

How can this be prevented?

Most experts say consumers don’t have to be worried, for now. But it’s a different story for businesses. “Smart appliances connected to the internet will always be vulnerable as hackers seize on security lapses to log in to the systems remotely and trigger malicious features,” cybersecurity analyst Steven Lachance told Al Jazeera. These attacks also highlight “vulnerabilities in global food supplies that can be quickly and dangerously exploited,” said CNET.

To protect businesses, experts typically “recommend changing default passwords, enabling two-factor authentication where ⁠available and regularly ​installing software updates,” said Reuters. The “simplest rule is often the most ​effective: The fewer connected devices you have, the fewer potential entry points exist for attackers.”

Despite precautions, hackings of this nature still remain the “next frontier for sabotage attacks,” Muhammad Yahya Patel, the virtual chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm Huntress, said to Bloomberg. Technology has now been “weaponized against food retail infrastructure,” and the “immediate financial consequences are significant and visible.”

With much of the world focused on China’s booming tech sector, newly graduated Chinese students are looking outside the box — and the city — for work. Rising unemployment rates and fierce urban job competition have inspired a trend toward farming among young, often university-educated, job seekers.

‘Rural revitalization’

“For decades,” urban life has been a “defining feature of the Chinese economic miracle,” said the Los Angeles Times. But “declining job prospects in the cities” and government efforts to “lift up rural areas” have prompted a shift in recent years.

The change comes as President Xi Jinping has promoted “rural revitalization” as a “cornerstone of his national development policy to mitigate income inequality, stimulate local economies and guarantee the food supply,” said the Los Angeles Times. Local governments are also “jumping on the new farmer trend,” said The New York Times, by offering tax breaks and loans to “entice young people.”

‘This is not tourism’

This spring, sheep farmer Zuo Xiaoyong’s job posting for shepherds in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia “quickly turned into a viral phenomenon,” said NBC News. The post earned “millions of views and hundreds of applications” from a generation “eager to escape the stresses of urban life.” While the monthly salary — roughly $1,200 USD — may be high, “whether you can work long-term and get through the winter is what matters most,” said Zuo to Reuters. “This is not tourism.”

Older generations are “still stuck in the mindset” that agrarian life is “all about breaking your back in the dirt,” said farmer and recent college graduate Wang Hongbo to the Times. But Wang has incorporated drones and AI into his family’s farm in an effort to modernize and economize the work.

Americans keep buying a lot of stuff, even though said stuff is getting more expensive. The spending helps keep the economy afloat amid rising inflation — but at a cost to households digging deeper into debt to stretch their paychecks.

What did the commentators say?

Americans “continue to spend” even though they are “feeling pessimistic about their finances as affordability pressures mount,” said NBC News. Retail sales were up in August, and holiday spending is “projected to hit record levels this year.” The seemingly good numbers flick at a gloomier reality, however. The rise in spending is largely “because people are paying more” for the stuff they routinely buy.

The trend is “particularly remarkable” given the overall “downbeat consumer sentiment,” said The Wall Street Journal. Those dark moods historically “correlated with lower consumer spending,” but that rule of thumb mostly broke since the pandemic. Now economists say bad feelings about the economy are “increasingly decoupled from spending and other economic indicators.” Americans are “spending their financial condition, not their psyche,” said Mark Mathews, the chief economist at the National Retail Federation, to the outlet.

Older consumers are driving the economy, said CNBC. The affordability crisis is for “younger people,” said economist Ed Yardeni to the outlet. Senior Americans have “accumulated an enormous amount of net worth” that has allowed them to keep spending.

What next?

It is not clear the spending can continue much longer. U.S. households are “borrowing more, saving less and watching their paychecks lose purchasing power,” said The Wealth Advisor. Consumer debt is now above $18 trillion, a total which will carry future consequences. Today’s borrowing has the potential to “constrain spending for years, particularly when balances carry high interest rates.”

High prices “haven’t put a dent in U.S. holiday spending,” said The Street. Consumers have already begun Christmas shopping, increasingly relying on “buy now, pay later” options to buy gifts and other seasonal items. September purchases of holiday items “ran well ahead of 2025,” said Bank of America in a statement, per the outlet.

The government is going to announce more “everyday fixes” to ease financial pressures for Britons and show that it can “rectify some of life’s little nuisances without needing to bust the budget”, said Politico.

Andy Burnham promised in his first cabinet meeting that there are “things that can be done, big and small” to help with the cost of living. He is now “lining up” more “feel-good announcements”, including today’s “crackdown on public transport ‘headphone dodgers’”.

What policies has the government announced?

Burnham has been busy making minor policy tweaks since he came into power. In July, he removed VAT from electricity bills and capped single bus fares across England at £2 from January. A month later, he announced restrictions on high-street vape and betting shops, revoking the Gambling Act’s “aim to permit” rule to make it easier for councils to refuse them.

Since then, Burnham’s team have brought forward a ban on auto-renewed subscriptions, planned to tackle misleading sale prices from retailers, and are introducing price displays for fuel on Google Maps.

New rules have also been introduced for air travel. In a post on X, Burnham announced airlines will be required to seat children under 14 next to an accompanying adult without any additional charge. Passengers will also be able to fix any name errors on their booking for free. To reduce the “stress” of flying, the government will make it easier for airlines to ban “disruptive” flyers flagged by other carriers.

Today, under a new “share the carriage, not the noise” campaign, the government announced that councils will be able to issue £100 fixed penalties to bus passengers if they play loud music, litter or vape while travelling. “Headphone dodgers” who refuse to turn down the volume on trains face penalties of up to £1,000.

Will the measures be effective?

With the Budget nine days away, the prime minister wants to “assure weary voters that the government has their backs” without making “too much of a dent in the chancellor’s spreadsheet”, said Politico.

This Budget will already be “difficult”, said The Guardian. Inflation and “soaring” borrowing costs, exacerbated by the Iran war among other factors, have “blown a £12 billion hole in the public finances”, which could force John Healey to consider tax rises and “spending cuts to fund plans to ease the cost of living”.

Some government special advisers “admitted they had some qualms about the drumbeat of small interventions”, with one unnamed source telling The Guardian “we risk looking twee”. The smaller fixes “might not, on their own, amount to very much”, said the paper, but Downing Street hopes that added together they can “make a difference and show the government is trying”.

Could more be in the pipeline?

Consumer campaigner Martin Lewis has launched the apolitical Small Ideas Initiative, designed to fix “life potholes” by informing government policy. Lewis has invested £175,000 of his own money in the project, and will ask the public for “simple, inexpensive and broadly uncontroversial changes that could make Britain work a little better”, said The Times.

With the help of the public and a “broad political panel”, he will present a shortlist of ideas to the government and local authorities, and campaign to get the proposals adopted.

A car is quickly becoming one of the costliest things you can own, said Venessa Wong in MarketWatch. Between rising gas prices, steep insurance rates, and hefty repair bills, U.S. households are spending more than is recommended getting from A to B. That’s not even including the cost of the vehicle itself. “The average new car” in the U.S. is “now selling for more than $50,000,” while the average interest rate on a new-car loan is 6.35% — up from 4.09% in 2021. That double whammy is “making it harder for car buyers who need financing.” Most financial experts “recommend larger down payments to reduce the amount borrowed,” but a growing share of buyers “have been moving in the opposite direction”—borrowing more over longer periods. “You’re looking at a clear recipe for long-term financial strain,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds.

Even used cars are expensive, said David Welch in Bloomberg. New vehicles selling for record prices are still commanding “hefty premiums when they hit the used market,” pushing the average used-car price above $30,000, up from about $20,000 in 2019. The problems with the car market began during the pandemic, when a supply crisis paralyzed global auto sales. But that experience “also taught auto companies a lesson: Producing fewer, high-priced models means better profits.” Those higher prices have also helped cushion the blow from President Trump’s tariffs and the higher price of diesel that truckers need to ship cars around North America. That’s all trickling down to the used-car lot. Six years ago, a $10,000 to $15,000 budget could buy a five-year-old car with about 58,000 miles. Today, the same amount gets you a roughly nine-year-old car with close to 100,000 miles.

Longer loans aren’t “necessarily a bad thing for car buyers,” said Mike Winters at CNBC.com, as long as they make their payments for the life of the loan. Where buyers get in trouble is “if they want or need to replace the car before they’ve paid down enough of what they owe.” Because borrowers “typically pay down their loans more slowly in the early years, when more of each payment goes toward interest,” a longer loan leaves “the borrower owing more as the car loses value.” That balance then “gets rolled into the next car loan,” steepening the financial hole until it becomes so-called permanent car debt.

The bottom line is Americans need cheaper car options, said The Washington Post in an editorial, and that’s where Chinese cars can make a big difference. China’s auto industry appears “to have genuinely advanced the technological frontier of making cars more efficiently,” which translates into affordability. BYD’s Seal EV, comparable to a Tesla Model 3 sedan, lists for $24,190. U.S. consumers “should be allowed to reap those cost savings.”

The iced coffee debate “isn’t really about iced coffee,” said Beth Kowitt in Bloomberg. If you’ve been on social media recently, you’ve likely seen the viral debate about workplace etiquette and whether it is acceptable to bring a caffeinated beverage to a job interview. Younger people broadly think it’s fine, while their older peers think its slovenly and unprofessional. That this silly argument took off says a lot about the “tension” between employers and young employees who feel “misunderstood” and anxious “about their place in this evolving landscape.” In the current labor market, employers have a clear advantage over those looking for work, putting bosses “in their command-and-control era”—increasing surveillance, cutting benefits, and demanding office attendance. Meanwhile, Gen Z distrusts the “arbitrary rules” of major institutions, including the unwritten expectations around job interviews. To older generations, this skepticism can look like “entitlement or insubordination.” Really, it’s a conflict over “who gets to decide the norms of this new workplace.

Thinking it’s OK to sip a latte during an interview reflects “a larger behavioral pattern,” said Finn McRedmond in The Irish Times (Ireland). Remember, this is the same generation that introduced us to “quiet quitting, or the trend among young employees to show up at the office, do the bare minimum, collect their paycheck, and never work a minute over contracted hours.” Gen Z treats the job interview process with disdain because they “don’t want to work.”

There is no standard “job interview process” in a landscape that is “so confusing, discouraging, and exhausting,” said Julia Carpenter in The Washington Post. Just a few years ago, most interview advice revolved around covering up tattoos, avoiding salary questions, and following up with a thank-you note. All that has changed. Most hiring today is also done over Zoom, introducing “a whole new slate of do’s and don’ts,” and “not everyone agrees on which rules to keep and which to toss out.” To young people who have only ever interviewed on camera, the idea that you shouldn’t bring an iced coffee to an in-person meeting might legitimately be “a new one.”

I’m mostly relieved to hear that in-person interviews are still happening, said Emma Jacobs in the Financial Times. With bots handling the bulk of the hiring process, “contact with flesh-and-blood humans seems to be in short supply.” In the age of AI, workplaces are “crying out for the quirk of humans—those who can push back, bring something different, think outside the box.” Now the older generation is scolding workers for having a different view on interview etiquette without recognizing the cold reality of today’s job market. “Meeting a real person seems a cause for celebration: perhaps even a fancy cold beverage?”

The government spent £329.1 billion on benefits in the financial year 2025-26 – equivalent to 10.7% of GDP, and about £4,700 per person in Britain. It amounts to roughly a quarter of all government spending, and dwarfs the totals spent on the NHS (about £257 billion), education (about £126 billion) and defence (about £62 billion).

The welfare bill increased by about £18.8 billion in the last financial year; by 2030-31, it is expected to rise to £408.6 billion. This projected increase is fuelling calls from across the political spectrum to rein in welfare spending, particularly on disability and incapacity benefits; many also argue that increases in pension spending are unsustainable.

Who actually receives this money?

More than 24 million people claimed some form of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefit in August last year. Of these, 13.4 million were pensioners: of the entire welfare budget, about 55% goes to pensioners.

The state pension cost an estimated £146 billion in 2025-26; and another £31 billion or so went on pension credit, housing benefit for pensioners, the winter fuel allowance, and so on. In total, the UK spent £145 billion on benefits for working-age people and children – including incapacity and disability benefits (£77 billion); housing benefit (£37 billion); and child benefit (£13 billion).

Last August, about ten million recipients were of working age; and 860,000 were children receiving disability living allowance. Around a third of working-age benefit claimants are in employment of some kind (for example, low-paid workers get in-work top-up via universal credit). The latest figures show 1.6 million people who are fit for work are claiming an unemployment benefit; the cost, spread across different benefits, is some £1.4 billion.

Why is the bill rising?

In no small part, because of pensions. Since the “triple lock” was introduced by the coalition government in 2011, pensions have been guaranteed to increase by whichever is highest: inflation, average wage growth or 2.5%. This has led to sharp rises in the state pension in recent years, when inflation and wage growth have run high (pensions rose by 10.1% in 2023, 8.5% in 2024, 4.1% in 2025, and 4.8% in 2026).

But pensions are by no means the only factor. Benefits are also rising because more people are claiming disability and incapacity benefits. In 2010, Britain spent about £45 billion on such benefits; by 2025, this had risen to £77 billion.

Which benefits are these?

By the middle of this year, more than 4.5 million people in England and Wales were claiming at least one of an overlapping patchwork of incapacity and disability benefits, up from fewer than three million in 2020.

The fastest growing is the Personal Independence Payment (Pip): cash payments to cover the extra costs of being disabled – a payment that has gradually replaced the older Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit. By July, 4.1 million people were claiming a Pip in England and Wales, up 7% from last year’s 3.83 million; in 2019 there were two million. More than two million now receive health-related benefits under a separate universal credit regime.

So are people getting sicker?

Some experts point to worsening public health since the 2008 financial crisis, citing factors such as growing obesity, long hospital waiting times, the cost-of-living crisis and other social causes. But critics of the system argue that the rise in disability and incapacity claimants owes more to broadening definitions of disability – and especially to an increase in people claiming benefits for mental health conditions. In 2002, 25% of disability benefit recipients claimed primarily for a mental health condition (or a learning or neurodevelopmental condition); by 2025, this had risen to 45%. About one in seven working-age Britons now report having a long-term mental or behavioural disorder (up 50% in a decade).

How can this be explained?

Again, by most measures there has in fact been a recent increase in mental ill-health in Britain, particularly since the pandemic. Most European countries have seen similar trends; but most have not seen this translate into higher health benefit claims. Another possible explanation is the collapse in face-to-face assessments for Pip claims (down from 80% pre-pandemic to less than 15% in July 2026), which may make it harder to weed out bogus claimants – some of whom are coached by AI bots or so-called “sickfluencers” on social media. A further explanation may lie in the design of the welfare system itself, which encourages people to seek generous long-term sickness benefits.

How so?

If you’re unemployed, you don’t get much from the state. Unemployment benefit under universal credit is £339 per month if you’re under 25, £425 if you’re over 25. Add in housing benefit, and it reaches around £12,000 per year. However, if you have a long-term disability or a health condition, you get extra payments (at least £217 a month more). If you are categorised in the higher form of sickness benefits, the overall figure rises to over £17,000, according to Centre for Social Justice figures. Add in Pip, and it reaches an average of £24,000, just below the full-time minimum wage. Add in child benefit for one child, and you are paid over £27,000 – closer to the national average wage.

Obviously, the system gives powerful incentives for people to claim sickness, physical or mental; and, unlike with unemployment benefit, it brings with it little or no pressure to seek a job. There are currently around 1,000 new Pip claims submitted every day in the UK; about 34% are successful.

Is the welfare bill sustainable?

It is often said to be “spiralling”, but the overall bill has remained pretty stable as a proportion of the UK’s national income. Welfare spending amounted to just under 11% of GDP in the last financial year – up from 10.4% in 1996-97, but lower than the peak of 12.4% in 2009-10. In fact, total non-pensioner benefits have hovered between 4% and 5% for more than 40 years.

International comparisons are difficult, but the UK’s welfare bill is by most measures right in the middle of the OECD developed nations – it spends far less as a share of GDP than, say, France or Italy, and far more than the US or South Korea. Despite recent increases, the state pension is relatively ungenerous, though Britons do have good private pensions.

Spending on disability and incapacity benefits is growing fast: it is set to hit 2.1% of GDP in 2028 (almost double the share two decades earlier). The Timms Review into the Pip system is due soon; but an interim report has already deemed it “unfit for purpose”. Welfare Minister Pat McFadden said this week that Labour would make benefits reform a “moral crusade”.

However, reform is difficult: it is perceived as an attack on society’s most vulnerable. When Keir Starmer tried to tighten the assessment criteria for Pip, with a bill in June 2025 designed to save £5 billion per year, a threatened rebellion by 126 Labour MPs forced him to back down.

What was the key factor that propelled Donald Trump back into the White House for a second term? If you’d asked him that a couple of years ago, said Virginia Heffernan in The New Republic, his answer would almost certainly have been the cost of living.

“The beautiful but simple word ‘groceries’,” he once rhapsodised. “I won on that word.” Well, we now know the word on which he’ll likely lose: diesel.

Supply disruptions caused by the Iran and Ukraine wars have had a particularly severe impact on diesel prices: they hit a record high of $6.52 a gallon in the US last week, up from an average of $3.63 at the start of 2025. The price hikes “aim a missile squarely at the voters Trump can least afford to alienate”, such as pickup truck owners, lorry drivers, and farmers in states such as Iowa. By upsetting the “diesel class, Trump may have bitten the final hand that feeds him”.

‘Cheap appeal’

To fix this problem, Trump is toying with the idea of banning US diesel exports, said National Review. The policy has “cheap appeal” ahead of the midterm elections on 3 November, but it would only bring down prices for a short while, and only in some areas. While America makes more diesel than it consumes, pipeline constraints mean that most of it remains relatively close to refining hubs on the Gulf Coast.

Other areas of the US, such the Northeast and the West Coast, largely rely on diesel imports, so would end up paying even higher prices if the US further reduced global supplies of the fuel. What’s more, if Gulf Coast refineries were unable to export diesel, they’d soon run out of storage space for it and have to slash their output. Result? Not just less diesel, but also a reduced volume of other refined products such as petrol and jet fuel.

‘Fake fix’

A diesel export ban wouldn’t help America, agreed Catherine Rampell on The Bulwark. And it would cause major problems for countries that rely on these exports, such as Mexico, the UK and the Netherlands, which trade with the US in other oil-based products, and could well decide to retaliate in some form.

Still, this is the Trump White House we’re talking about – a team of people with “zero policy expertise” and “zero patience”, who care “only about what talking points will get them through the next news cycle, tomorrow’s consequences be damned”. The worse the opinion polls get ahead of the midterms, the more tempted Trump will be to reach for this “fake fix”.

The price of diesel has hit £2 per litre – the most expensive it has ever been – at a third of UK petrol stations, said The Sun.

This is “uncharted territory”, financial analyst Kathleen Brooks told City A.M. Donald Trump has already sent markets into a “frenzy” by threatening to ban diesel exports from the US, said the same paper. Weakened infrastructure for refining diesel and lower reserves than European counterparts mean the UK could be uniquely “exposed” to any further “ripple effects”, including more price rises.

What did the commentators say?

President Trump is trying to bring diesel prices down for US consumers ahead of the midterm elections in November. If he does decide to ban exports of US diesel, it would “hurt the countries which heavily depend” on it, said the BBC, including the UK. But it might also have “unintended effects that could hurt US production” in the longer term.

Trump’s threats have “highlighted Britain’s over-reliance on the goodwill of other countries” for its diesel needs, said an editorial in The Times. Last year, the UK imported more than 50% of its diesel supply, around a sixth of that from the US.

Our infrastructure depends on it: around 10 million cars, a quarter of the country’s trains, 70% of buses, virtually all tractors and “almost 99% of HGVs” run on diesel. Yet the UK has enough reserves to last for only around six weeks, according to International Energy Forum data, compared to around six months for France, Italy, Spain and Germany.

Breaking the £2 threshold for a litre of diesel should “set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. The government’s response so far has been to remove VAT from energy bills in an attempt to cushion the blow to consumers, but this “hardly addresses the fundamental issues”. As a nation, we have “failed to prepare”, allowing our refining capacity to “wither away” to leave us “dangerously exposed” to market fluctuations beyond our control.

The diesel crisis could “deepen” after the UK’s largest refinery shut down production for up to 10 weeks, said energy editor Jonathan Leake in The Telegraph. The Fawley refinery in Hampshire – which produces “one fifth of the fuel used on UK roads” – has closed for planned maintenance, a move that “will add to fears about another diesel price spike hurting drivers at the pumps”.

In the 1980s, the UK had 18 refineries, but that has dropped to just four. Two closures last year – in Grangemouth, Scotland and Lindsey in Lincolnshire – “slashed UK refinery output by about a third”. Now, any closures, planned or unplanned, temporary or permanent, have a “rapid impact on supplies”.

What next?

“Rising diesel costs aren’t just a problem for drivers generally but a wider inflation threat,” said Sky News. Diesel is the “engine of the UK economy” and shortages would heavily disrupt supply chains and lead to costs being passed on to consumers, particularly in the run-up to Christmas. This is the type of inflation that “worries” the Bank of England, which is “widely tipped” to raise interest rates in November.

Taxes on fuel – which account for “just over half of the cost of a litre” – are also set to rise. Hikes planned by former chancellor Rachel Reeves are set to come into effect in January, but her successor, John Healey, should “question the wisdom of raising prices at the pump at a time when they are clearly inflationary in nature”. As such, they are likely to be “scrapped or further delayed” at the upcoming Budget.

Argentina is subjecting the Falklands to “economic warfare”, the leader of the British overseas territory’s government has said.

As the country ramps up political pressure on its claim of sovereignty over the territory, restrictions are making life more difficult for the residents of the remote Atlantic islands, Andrea Clausen told the Financial Times. And at the centre of the power struggle with Britain is the Falklands’ first oil project: Sea Lion, a joint UK-Israeli venture.

What is life like on the islands?

The Falklands are home to about 3,500 people, most of whom live in the capital, Stanley, with the remainder spread across the sprawling archipelago roughly half the size of Wales. “People are always amazed by the scale when they visit,” one resident told the Metro.

Leaving the islands “isn’t simple – or cheap”. There are two 18-hour direct flights a week to the UK, on a military plane, or one commercial flight a week to Chile. A monthly flight from a small city in southern Argentina is considered a domestic flight by Buenos Aires, although not by the Falklands’ authorities.

Because of the limited connections, imported goods can cost more than double their price in the UK. There’s currently only one shipping link, to Uruguay, which sometimes leads to shortages of cheese and other food staples, said the FT. Most international suppliers “refuse to serve Falklands’ businesses” out of fear of angering Argentina. Officials are preparing a second shipping link to Chile, scheduled to open between November and December. But some islanders worry that Buenos Aires “could try to disrupt those efforts”.

What resources do the Falklands have?

There is a “huge capital programme” underway to boost the islands’ infrastructure, said resident Traighana Smith in The Independent, including a new power station and port, and “a hydrocarbon industry is also on the horizon”.

There are “vast energy reserves” just 136 miles north of the islands, said The Telegraph. Surveys suggest the Sea Lion oilfield contains up to 1.7 billion barrels of oil: “larger than anything remaining in British North Sea waters”.

Two oil companies, Britain’s Rockhopper Exploration and Israel’s Navitas Petroleum, are due to begin a joint project extracting from the oilfield within two years. The $2.2 billion venture, the Falklands’ first commercial oil project, aims to produce 50,000 barrels per day. It could be “economically transformative for the islands”, said the FT. It could “triple GDP” and reduce dependence on the inconsistent fishing industry.

“We never want to rely on handouts from the UK,” said Stirling Harcus, a director at the islands’ Chamber of Commerce. “We’re already a growing self-sufficient economy, but oil would supercharge that process.”

What is Argentina doing?

At the start of September, President Javier Milei announced restrictions on companies involved in oil extraction, along with additional military funding. His new sanctions regime “appears to target both oil and fishing”, said the FT, which is responsible for more than half of the islands’ GDP.

And on Monday, Milei warned that his government would request an emergency order to stop development of the Sea Lion oilfield if drilling is not halted within two weeks. If the “illegitimate exploitation” does not stop, his statement said, Argentina will ask the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, a Hamburg-based maritime court, to order a temporary halt to the project. Argentinian officials argue the project is “an inflection point”, said the FT, because it violates a UN resolution banning “unilateral” changes to the status quo on the islands.

“Time will tell” if Milei follows through on his threats, said Smith in The Independent. But in the meantime, the Falklands will “continue to grow its industries and care for its people”.

With prices spiking and borrowing costs already high, the Federal Reserve’s latest decision could make life even more expensive, said Rachel Lerman in The Washington Post. The central bank’s vote this September to raise interest rates by a quarter percentage point to 3.75% 4%, the first such hike since 2023, could affect everything from student loans to mortgage rates. The Fed “sets the federal funds rate, or the standard rule for how banks borrow money from each other.” That doesn’t impact longer-term rates like business or car loans directly, but if “banks are paying more to borrow money,” they will soon begin “charging customers a higher interest rate,” too. Expect auto loan and credit card rates to jump first—with payments climbing by a few dollars on average— adding strain to households already holding a record $18.8 trillion in debt. And more rate hikes could be coming this year, because the Fed signaled that its effort “to slow the economy slightly and rein in persistent inflation” remains a work in progress.

It’s not all bad news, said Jessica Hall in MarketWatch. Higher rates can lift yields on savings and certificates of deposit (CDs), so savers will “finally get paid something for holding safe assets.” For seniors with a fixed income, that extra cash is often spendable money that ends up back in the economy. Buying annuities when rates are high can also provide a larger regular payout.

There’s less optimism about the housing market, said Nicholas G. Miller in The Wall Street Journal. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate is set by lenders based on the 10-year Treasury yield, which is normally dictated by investors’ views of the economy. “If the market believes that the Fed is taking inflation seriously,” yields might fall. But “if taken as a sign that the economy faces a real inflation problem,” then they won’t. Mortgage rates “are closing in on 7% for the first time since the beginning of last year.” Even a tiny rise can make “prospective homebuyers hesitant to make a big-ticket purchase.”

We all better get used to it, said Craig Torres in MarketWatch, because high rates are here to stay. “For nearly a dozen years, starting with the global financial crisis” and lasting until 2023, we lived in a near-zero-rate world. “That phase is starting to look like an anomaly.” Rates are roughly back to where they were before 2008. Will they return to pre- pandemic lows anytime soon? Doubtful. It’s increasingly apparent that “a regime change is taking place—one where rates will need to be higher” to lower inflation that continues to be inflamed by tariffs, wars, and uncertainty. This rate hike could be “signaling something more structural and lasting.”

When the former deputy PM Nick Clegg – and his erstwhile Meta colleague Sheryl Sandberg – joined the board of Nscale in March, it looked like something big was in the offing. And so it has proved, said Elias Schisgall in The Wall Street Journal.

The British tech unicorn, which operates a string of AI-ready data centres in the US and Europe and is backed by the deep pockets of Nvidia, has filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. Founder Josh Payne promises “a fully vertically integrated platform that can deliver computing power to the AI boom at scale”. Nscale has just won a huge contract to supply computing capacity to Anthropic worth $45 billion over six years.

Even so, the mooted $35 billion valuation looks heroic, said FT Alphaville. Six months ago, the company, which reported a $1.02 billion loss in the first-half, was valued at just $14.6 billion. Now it is “a multibillion-dollar bet that investor enthusiasm for computing infrastructure projects will endure”, despite growing calls for an AI slowdown. Spun out of an Australian crypto mining group in 2024, Nscale is relatively untested. Remarkably for the leader of a company of its age and size, Payne, 32, bagged total compensation of £17.2 million last year.

Part of Nscale’s shtick is that “its British roots” are “a competitive advantage in the race to build sovereign AI infrastructure across Europe”, said Saskia Koopman in City A.M. Indeed, it intends to “open its IPO to ordinary British investors” through a UK retail offer. There’s no shortage of “heavyweight names” or “lofty” ambitions in the prospectus, said Ben Martin in The Times. But Nscale will ultimately live or die on its ability to secure “significant multi-year customer contracts”. That means “substantial upfront capital expenditure”.

The cost of diesel fuel is breaking records, with spillover effects for the cost of groceries and other goods. President Donald Trump is reportedly contemplating a possible solution: a 90-day ban on exports of diesel from U.S. refineries. Experts warn the move could backfire.

‘Most important fuel on the planet’

The idea of an export ban is “quickly gaining traction with more Republicans” ahead of the midterms, said The Wall Street Journal. The United States “produces more fuel than it consumes,” and diesel exports have risen by 31% since the war began. Some officials see a halt to overseas sales as an easy way to ease price pressures. “High diesel prices ARE KILLING FARMERS INCOME,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said on X.

But oil companies are likely to “lose money” if exports are banned, said the Journal. The White House should not create “new restrictions that risk making a difficult situation worse,” American Petroleum Institute’s Mike Sommers said to the outlet. A decision will happen “fast, one way or the other,” Trump said Tuesday to reporters, per the outlet.

Diesel is the “most important fuel on the planet” given that it powers “trucks, trains, tractors and ships at the heart of the modern economy,” said CNN. The Iran war is not the only reason for the price spike: Ukraine has “knocked out a series of refineries in Russia,” and Russia and China have both imposed their own export restrictions.

Experts warn that while an export ban might be “quite effective at lowering prices” in the short term, it would also “jack up gasoline prices, crush U.S. refiners and damage America’s reputation as a reliable energy superpower” over the long run, said CNN. Domestic refiners deprived of overseas markets would “logically pull back on how much crude they process into fuel.” That would ultimately cause domestic fuel costs to “soar,” oil consultant Andy Lipow said to the outlet.

Food supply ‘could be disrupted’

China is being quietly credited with keeping energy prices down in the wake of Donald Trump’s war with Iran, in turn helping prop up the global economy while cementing its own power on the world stage.

By tapping into its huge reserves of oil, “China kind of saved the day,” and helped the world avoid the “doomsday scenario” when the Strait of Hormuz closure choked off 20% of global energy supply, said Paul Gruenwald, global chief economist at S&P Global Ratings.

What did the commentators say?

For decades, China heavily depended on imported crude to meet its ever-growing energy needs. But over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping has sought to address what has long been viewed in Beijing as a major security weakness by spending billions of dollars amassing the world’s biggest stockpile of oil.

Last year China’s reserves were estimated at nearly 600 million barrels bigger than the US. This enabled it to dramatically cut its oil imports when the war in the Middle East broke out, keeping a lid on global oil prices and safeguarding its own economy.

Not only has this enabled China to weather the global commodities storm resulting from the closure of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, it has seen China emerge as a “clear winner” from Donald Trump’s foray into the Middle East, said The Guardian, citing the findings of a report from geopolitical consulting firm Asia Group.

Long thought to be vulnerable to oil supply shocks, the conflict has made clear how China has “managed to transform that weakness into a surprising source of geopolitical power”, said The New York Times.

This has “big implications for the global energy industry, where oil producers like Saudi Arabia and the United States — not importers like China — have traditionally held most of the cards”.

“If they come to feel that in this domain, they are less vulnerable than they and many others may have assessed previously, that is a profound and important shift in one of the key inputs to how China makes decisions about its global strategy,” said Julian Gewirtz, a former White House and State Department official who worked on China issues in the Biden administration.

What next?

While the Iran crisis has vindicated Xi’s investment strategy, the “buffer” of China’s stockpile of oil, which has helped the world avoid a far deeper energy crisis up to now, “may face a test as Beijing shows signs of resuming purchases”, said CNBC.

Should this happen, the drag on global growth from elevated oil prices would deepen well beyond current estimates, said Krishna Srinivasan, director for the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund.

But the Iran crisis has also shown how “China’s muscular energy policy has afforded Beijing a major tool it could use, for instance, in a war over Taiwan”, said The Wall Street Journal.

“In the future, such power could be wielded in a clash with the US In the event of a war over Taiwan”. For example, “Beijing’s ability to slash oil imports for months on end could help China resist efforts by the US and its allies to block energy shipments”.

For China, “oil is not the Achilles’ heel we thought it was,” said Michal Meidan, head of China energy research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “I think a lot of people thought China was very, very vulnerable to oil supply disruptions. It’s not.”

What happened

Paramount Skydance on Monday settled an antitrust lawsuit with 12 states challenging its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, clearing the merger’s last major obstacle. The states, led by California, had argued that combining the two major Hollywood studios plus streaming giant HBO Max and a host of cable channels would harm competition, cut film production and raise consumer prices. There were also concerns about combining Warner Bros. owned CNN with Paramount’s CBS News division under Paramount CEO David Ellison, an ally of President Donald Trump.

Who said what

The settlement is “not a vote of support for this merger,” but it “resolves our antitrust concerns” by “guaranteeing massive investment” of $1.5 billion in “domestic film production and providing enforceable guardrails to help keep cable prices competitive,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said in a statement. The five-year deal also includes $47.5 million for workers affected by the merger and a “News Editorial Independence Board” to “insulate” CBS News and CNN from “corporate intervention in newsroom decisions, a demand from several of the attorneys general,” said NPR. But many panned the plan for a Paramount-led oversight board, which “sounds like utter garbage,” one CBS News staffer told The Guardian.

What next?

A federal judge must approve the agreement, The Wall Street Journal said, but Paramount “expects to close the deal in about two weeks.”

The British glass industry could become “No. 10 North’s first major test”, said the Financial Times. A new government green levy introduced last year has put thousands of jobs at risk in the “heavily northern-based sector”, creating a headache for Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

‘Polluter pays’

The Extended Producer Responsibility scheme is based on “the ’polluter pays’ principle to help local councils with the cost of recycling”, said The Times. It makes businesses responsible for the collection and recycling costs of the goods they put on the market, including packaging. Because the fees are calculated according to weight, glass is facing disproportionate costs compared to cardboard and plastic.

The policy, drawn up by the Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, is expected to raise around £1.6 billion a year. But it comes at an “acute time” for the glass sector, industry body British Glass told The Times.

The policy is making the British glass industry more expensive than the cheap imports from China and Turkey which are flooding the market. Five of the six main glass packaging manufacturers are based overseas, so the UK “has to be attractive to foreign owners as an economy but also from a policy point of view”, a spokesperson said.

Call to reconsider

Breweries and the pub industry have “long urged a rethink” on the levy, which they claim offers a perverse incentive for retailers to opt for less sustainable plastic packaging, said the Financial Times. There is also support for amending the scheme within Labour: the Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, is among the cabinet ministers who have “privately been pushing for changes to the policy”.

“Too many take glass for granted”, wrote Brian Leishman, the Labour MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, on Politics Home, but this is a £1.3 billion industry “supporting well over 100,000 jobs”, and it’s “hugely important for the government to reconsider pressing ahead” with these worrying regulations.

Action needs to come swiftly, said Labour List. “Stand next to a glass furnace for a few minutes, feel the heat, listen to the noise and one thing becomes obvious”: this is not an industry “that can simply switch off at the end of the day” or “wait for market conditions to improve”.

The UK collectively donates an estimated 350,000 tons of clothes each year to our 9,900 charity shops, but the future of the sector seems in doubt as “more and more” of the outlets are closing.

Oxfam is considering shutting 100 of its 500 UK retail stores just months after the British Heart Foundation announced plans to close 150 of its 640 shops.

How do charity shops work?

When one of Britain’s earliest recorded charity shops was opened in Edinburgh in 1937, there were “queues outside” and “police on hand to manage restive shoppers”, said The Guardian.

By the 1960s, charity shops were becoming more familiar sights, and in recent years shopping for second-hand goods has lost its stigma and become recognised as a sustainable alternative to fast-fashion and throwaway culture.

The UK’s charity shops are staffed by about 223,000 volunteers and 24,900 paid employees. Together, they made more than £300 million in 2024-25. Charity shops don’t have to pay business rates, although they’re “still hit by increases in national insurance and wage bills”.

Why the decline?

Those running charity shops agree that “the glut of fast fashion” has led to a drop in the number of good-quality items being donated, said The Guardian.

“Charity shops in Britain are overwhelmed with stuff,” said Tansy Hoskins, author of “Charity Shop World: An Investigation into Community, Consumption and Waste”, in The Telegraph. The problem is they are “desperate to get rid of most of the old clothes they are given”, with most of them sold off to recycling companies in “ragbags”. The average price paid to charities for a kilo of worn clothes has “dropped from 45p to 15p” over the past decade.

Charity shops are also competing with second-hand online retailers like Vinted and eBay, which are increasingly also a resource for the charities themselves. “We need to put the higher value items that we do get on eBay to make the most money for the charity that we can,” said one charity shop manager on Reddit.

The picture is not entirely bleak. The rise of resellers who visit charity shops to buy stock to sell on themselves for profit creates a “virtuous circle”, providing the shops with “significant income”, said The Guardian, while also increasing interest in thrifting.

What’s the reaction been?

“I’m struggling to shed a single tear,” said Simon Heptinstall in The Spectator. Charity shops’ exemption from business rates has given them a “ridiculous near monopoly” on high streets, helping to push out “butchers, bakers and normal clothes shops”. Thanks to “an army” of “unpaid volunteers” and prices worthy of a “Bond Street boutique”, they rake in vast profits to support their own “sprawling corporate infrastructure”; they are no longer a community asset but an “optimised extraction racket”.

Robin Osterley, outgoing chief executive of the Charity Retail Association, has rejected suggestions that the sector is in crisis. Acknowledging that charity shops are facing challenges “maintaining their profitability in the face of some really significant rising costs”, he told Civil Society in May that I don’t “have any concerns about the future of shops”. I also “think some of the trends we’ve been seeing towards higher standards and towards larger shops in particular will continue”. He also flagged the potential of AI to “identify, describe and list donations”.

What happened

Iran on Wednesday said it attacked two U.S. ships and eight tankers near the Strait of Hormuz in response to the U.S. sinking five Iranian oil tankers. The Pentagon said the tanker strikes were retaliation for Iran’s first confirmed attacks on U.S. Navy ships during the six-month war. Those attacks “failed,” The Wall Street Journal said, but “officials described some of them as close calls.”

This was the “biggest wave of attacks on shipping by both sides” yet, Reuters said, and it “sent the price of oil surging” above $100 a barrel for the first time since July. U.S. gas prices hit $4.22 per gallon, and diesel rose to a record $5.94 per gallon. On Thursday, five gas stations in California maxed out diesel at $9.99 per gallon, the highest possible price on the pump, according to GasBuddy.

Who said what

The U.S. and Iran “appear to be stuck in a cycle that is draining U.S. air defenses and deepening Iran’s economic crisis,” The New York Times said. Iranian ballistic missiles did “minimal” damage to a U.S. military base in Jordan, officials told the Times, and it may have left some U.S. troops with “traumatic brain injuries.” They also damaged “several fighter jets” at the base, CBS News said.

What next?

“I think war ​is going to end immediately after the election,” sending oil prices “tumbling downward,” because Iran “can’t hold out any longer,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday. Top White House advisers have “privately” discussed with Trump “that the Iran war could drag on through the remainder of his term,” the Journal said, citing U.S. officials.

John Healey has said Britain’s economy is finally “turning a corner” as he set out his mission to “make Great Britain growth Britain” again.

In his first major speech as chancellor, Healey sought to reassure the markets by pledging to stick to Labour’s tax and spend fiscal rules, while trying to present a more optimistic view of Britain’s economic prospects. But only days ago a global bond sell-off saw UK yields hit their highest level since the 2008 financial crash, further increasing the cost of borrowing for the UK government.

But Healey “begins with a credibility problem that is not entirely of his own making”, said Simon French in The Sunday Times. He is the eighth chancellor in 10 years, so many businesses, households and investors are “fatigued and sceptical” about yet another new vision for growth.

What did the commentators say?

“A glance at the news could easily reinforce the gloomy impression” that the UK economy is in dire straits, but some key indicators are “telling a more cheerful story – one of growth”, said James Moore in The i Paper.

There is a “surprising level of optimism” among businesses in the services and manufacturing sectors, with overall GDP growth expected to beat Bank of England forecasts for the third quarter, boosted by warm weather and the men’s football World Cup. The data shows “that UK plc is more resilient than anyone really expected in the face of the strong headwinds that it is battling against”.

There are tentative signs that “consumer confidence has also improved”, said Delphine Strauss in the Financial Times. Private new car registrations are up by almost a fifth compared to last summer, while earlier figures from the Bank of England show growth in consumer credit.

UK recruiters also saw hiring pick up in August for the first time in four years. It adds to “evidence that the UK’s weak jobs market was stabilising and business and consumer confidence were improving – albeit from a low base – before a renewed rise in gas prices and sovereign bond yields that again threatens to hold back the economy”.

Most members of the public who describe the economy as broken “put its condition down to poor political priorities rather than to other reasons, such as global shocks, immigration or failings on the part of individual citizens (such as not working hard enough)”, said Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman.

Andy Burnham and his chancellor are constrained by costly rising debt – interest on debt costs more than the defence, Home Office and justice departments combined – rigid fiscal rules, and Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise the three main taxes. But they need to find a way to pay for their ambitious policy platform “that commands the confidence of markets – and a public more and more convinced that the economy is broken by design”.

What next?

While the underlying numbers look positive, were the Bank of England to raise interest rates later this month, or Healey to announce tax rises in the Budget at the end of October, things could turn sour very quickly.

For now, the chancellor is trying to strike a more upbeat tone than his predecessor. After the equivalent speech in the last two years since Labour returned to power, the public has been “left with a clear message of tough times, and significant tax rises ahead”, said the BBC’s economics editor Faisal Islam. Today was different.

The chancellor is “trying to nurture some fragile early signs that confidence is returning” but “the burning question is how to fill multi-billion gaps in public finance plans before the Budget, in a way that minimises the economic impact.

“While vibes are important, policy matters more.”

Artificial intelligence could cause a global economic downturn, the Bank of England’s governor has warned.

Andrew Bailey is the latest in a “throng of figures” to highlight the risks posed by the most advanced versions of AI technology, said The Guardian.

What did he say?

Bailey said “frontier” AI models were “showing increasingly sophisticated autonomy and problem-solving abilities, as well as threat capabilities”.

In a two-page letter sent to international finance ministers and central bank governors, Bailey said the advanced models risk destabilising the “highly interconnected” global financial system through cyber-disruption that “can spread across jurisdictions”.

The central bank officially raised concerns about AI in July, listing the threats of a potential stock market bubble, worsened cybersecurity vulnerabilities and AI companies’ increasingly complex and opaque debt.

How would AI cause a bubble?

The inflated valuations of companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Nvidia have led to warnings that the companies are in a stock market “bubble”. This is a “significant run-up in stock prices without a corresponding increase in the value of the businesses they represent”, said The Motley Fool.

Usually, this is driven by “highly optimistic market behaviour”, said Investopedia. Then, when investors’ confidence starts to wane as they realise their hopes are not panning out, they all begin to sell off, sending stock prices tumbling and causing an abrupt contraction in the market.

The “core problem” in the markets is always debt, said Andrew Neill in the Daily Mail. But suddenly there’s “a big new kid on the block in the credit markets” in the form of America’s AI “hyperscalers”, which are “investing several trillion dollars to roll out their transformative technology” on “borrowed money”.

They’re borrowing from private credit markets, an “expensive, unregulated, opaque source of debt”. This means “voracious governments” are competing with the AI giants for credit, “pushing up the cost of borrowing”. But if AI share prices “came tumbling down” they’d bring the “whole stock-market caboodle with them” because the “continuing surge” in share prices is “overwhelmingly AI-driven”.

So what can be done?

Bailey said the sector should prioritise “appropriate steps to support safe and responsible model release and deployment on a global basis”.

But he warned that “recent developments” have “highlighted” that “many jurisdictions do not have the protocols in place to manage the development, release, and deployment of advanced frontier AI models, heightening risks for the financial sector and beyond”.

What happened

Fox News on Thursday said it had parted ways with financial journalist Maria Bartiromo, effective immediately, thanking her for “her work over the last 12 1/2 years.” She last appeared on air Aug. 9. Asked about reports that Bartiromo was fired for leaking confidential news coverage plans to the White House, a Fox News spokesperson told reporters only that the move was a “business decision.”

Who said what

After joining Fox Business in 2014, following a long career at CNBC, Bartiromo became “one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies at the network,” CNN said. She was fired, Status reported, because she “effectively betrayed” Fox by telling the White House that network bosses had instructed staff to “steer clear of giving credence to Trump’s delusional claims” in an “unhinged” July primetime speech on election security. Bartiromo “wanted to pursue a story related to China and 2020 election voting conspiracies,” Puck’s Dylan Byers reported, and when executives told her no, she “took a screenshot of the guidance and sent it to senior White House officials.”

What next?

Fox Business rebranded Bartiromo’s namesake programs and took down her contributor pages. “Her fans, of which there are many, will not be happy,” Trump said in an online post. “Social media lit up with speculation that Bartiromo might be in line to become White House press secretary,” CNN said. But asked about that possibility yesterday, Vice President JD Vance said, “No, I don’t think so.”

What happened

The NBA on Wednesday punished the Los Angeles Clippers with the largest sanctions in league history after finding that owner Steve Ballmer and other team executives violated salary cap rules to funnel millions of dollars to star forward Kawhi Leonard. The Clippers were fined $30 million and stripped of five first-round draft picks, from 2029 to 2033. Leonard was fined $700,000, and Ballmer was banned from all team and league activities for a year.

Who said what

A one-year independent investigation found that the Clippers had improperly “covered personal expenses for Leonard,” CNN said, and “funneled off-court endorsement opportunities” to him through corporate partners who were rewarded with lucrative “team business.” Paying Leonard via a team sponsor would strike at the “very heart of the NBA’s most important financial rules” to ensure a “roughly level playing field” across the league, The Wall Street Journal said. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement he was “deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations,” and “the severity of the penalties reflects” their “seriousness.”

What next?

The Clippers “vehemently reject” the NBA’s “heavily biased investigation,” the team said in a statement, and “intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to us.” There is “no appeal or arbitration process available to the team,” The Athletic said, citing a league source.

A significant drought in Panama caused by the El Niño weather pattern has forced the Central American country to slash the number of vessels it lets through its major canal. And the reduced flow of goods through one of the world’s most consequential shipping lanes could create a ripple effect that shakes the world’s economy.

What did the commentators say?

Starting on Sept. 15, the Panama Canal Authority will let 32 ships pass through the canal’s locks daily, a drop from the 36 it currently allows. While a decrease of just four ships per day may not sound significant, it represents a major change for a “critical chokepoint that moves about 5% of the world’s shipping,” said CNN. The United States is the “canal’s biggest user — about 70% of all the goods moving through it are coming to or going from the U.S.”

These reductions are necessary because the Panama Canal “relies on fresh water to operate its locks and has had less rain than normal” in recent years, said the Financial Times. The coming El Niño, when “surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean rise, potentially causing severe drought and warmer winters, could be one of the most intense ever.” And for Panama, the “result is a wet season that’s already been drier than usual and is likely to get worse,” said CNN, possibly causing a massive shortage of freshwater in the canal.”

This shift in the number of vessels could result in higher prices for consumers in the U.S. and globally, experts say. While some ships “may wait to transit to avoid the higher fees, those carrying more time-sensitive cargo are likely to take the plunge and pay the steep transit prices, driving up the price of those goods,” said CNN. One notable example: the pharmaceutical ingredients in Tylenol and certain prescription drugs, which “come, in large part, from China and are believed to transit through the Panama Canal to the U.S. East Coast,” said Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, to CNN.

Others are not convinced the change will have much impact on prices, especially in the United States. There is only a “small chance that cargo owners, pressed by paying more for shipping and other costs, will pass on this increase to customers,” Simon Heaney, a senior manager at the Drewry shipping research and consultancy firm, told Newsweek — especially since global shipping has already “been upended for months by the U.S.’ war with Iran,” said the outlet.

What next?

The shipping reductions are just the Panama Canal’s latest in a line of “other water conservation measures, such as lowering the maximum draft — the vessel’s depth in the water — for the largest ships,” said The Guardian. But the canal itself could also turn into a hindrance for vessels, as officials said that with the “upcoming reduction, waiting times for ships trying to get through without making a reservation beforehand will increase.”

In the meantime, shipping companies have already been “preparing for possible disruptions in the 110-year-old canal,” said the Financial Times, with many taking drastic measures to get ahead of the cuts. For ships that don’t make reservations to pass through the canal, officials typically issue several extra slots through an auction; at least one large ship “paid a staggering $4 million to fast-track its trip,” said CNN, leaving “others, either unwilling or unable to shell out that kind of sum, in maritime limbo.”

The UK’s productivity, which measures the economic output of each worker per hour, has been dismal since the financial crisis of 2008. But new research suggests Britain’s economy has enjoyed a hidden productivity boom over the past two years.

Productivity has been growing by 1.1% per year since late 2024 – far above the official 0.2% estimate by the Office for National Statistics – according to the Resolution Foundation. The think tank analysed payroll data from HMRC and tax returns from the self-employed, arguing that this gives a more accurate representation of the workforce than the much-criticised Labour Force Survey the ONS uses.

The proportion of people responding to the ONS survey has collapsed since the pandemic, so experts say it has overestimated the increase in worker numbers. So productivity growth has been “respectable” and not as “dismal” as the ONS’ “flawed” measurements suggest, said the Resolution Foundation.

What did the commentators say?

“Britain’s dismal productivity record since the global financial crisis explains a lot of its economic stagnation and weak living standards growth,” said Simon Pittaway, the think tank’s principal economist. But contrary to official figures, our “more accurate productivity measure” suggests the output of workers has been “improving” since 2024.

Explanations include the introduction of AI into sectors like IT and financial services is “boosting output per hour”, said Mehreen Khan, economics editor at The Times. Increases in employment taxes might also have “forced firms to rein back on hiring”, leading to job cuts in low-pay sectors such as hospitality and retail, meaning the average worker appears more productive.

“But neither explanation is borne out by the data,” said Pittaway. The share of the workforce employed in hospitality is not lower than it was in the late 2010s, and AI is more widespread across different sectors of the economy. “Instead, the UK’s productivity recovery has been achieved by the same workers, doing the same jobs, and working in the same sectors.”

In May, economists at the London School of Economics also combined HMRC’s payroll and self-employment information with the ONS’ annual figures for an even brighter estimate. Since Labour was elected in 2024, annual productivity growth has run at about 1.6% – a “remarkable turnaround to our key barometer of material wellbeing”, said LSE professor John Van Reenen, who was chief economic adviser to former chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Despite the “toxic economic and fiscal legacy” the government inherited, and “the headwinds” caused by Donald Trump’s trade wars, Reeves’ strategy of fiscal stability and investment has “started to deliver results”. We might also be witnessing “the first macro-economic flowers of the AI boom”.

However, said Sam Fleming and Amy Borrett in the Financial Times, economists “differ sharply over the relevance of the AI narrative at this stage given the patchy nature of the evidence”. The sectors that registered the biggest uptick in productivity included accommodation, wholesale and retail, which aren’t “leading adopters of AI”.

Still, recent reports are painting a “relatively optimistic picture”, said The Guardian’s economics editor, Heather Stewart. The UK was the joint fastest-growing economy in the G7 in the first half of this year, while consumer confidence rose to a two-year high this month. The economy may finally be emerging from “the long shadow” of the financial crisis.

The UK is now in “an OK place”, said Morgan Stanley’s chief UK economist, Bruna Skarica. That’s true of “the top end” of Britain’s economy, said Mihir Sharma on Bloomberg, but “the bottom is struggling”.

Slowing wage growth, fewer job vacancies than since the pandemic and rising unemployment all tell an “uncomfortable” story. Since Labour took office, Britain has had a “K-shaped recovery”. Its “nascent top-end revival is worth protecting”, but policymakers must think harder about “how to get young people and those in AI-exposed professions in on those productivity gains”.

What next?

In the US, productivity growth “picked up after the pandemic” and has been strong for three years, said Reuters; Skarica at Morgan Stanley expects a similar pattern in Britain.

But this productivity recovery “needs to be sustained and built upon if it’s to lead to big improvements in living standards”, said Pittaway at the Resolution Foundation. If people are still “priced out of jobs without being able to find alternative opportunities”, higher productivity growth offers “a less benign picture of the economy’s performance”, said the FT.

The ONS’ Labour Force Survey is being “revamped to encourage wider participation”, said Khan in The Times. It expects to launch the Transformed Labour Force Survey next year.

North Korea has been hailed as “the world’s most surprising economic success story” by the leading US financial daily, The Wall Street Journal.

Despite being tightly controlled, technologically backward, and subject to crippling Western trade embargoes, the country has recorded year-on-year GDP growth of more than 3%, of which many advanced economies could only dream. Their unlikely success story has been “aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia” to fuel the Ukraine war, support from China, and “the ability to flout international sanctions to import more energy, components and materials”.

What has changed?

Five years after making a rare admission that the nation’s economic policies were falling short, in February Kim Jong Un addressed the Workers’ Party Congress to celebrate a turnaround, declaring “everything has fundamentally changed”. But while the supreme leader may have triumphantly taken credit for the boom, in reality “he has Russia and China to thank”, said Forbes.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, North Korea has earned an estimated $14 billion providing military support to the Kremlin, and hundreds of millions in trade and foreign aid from China. North Korea’s “emergence as a modern-day pirate state on the back of its lucrative cryptocurrency theft operations” has also helped, Shreyas Reddy of Korea Risk Group, told the Financial Times.

The effect of this influx on the so-called hermit kingdom has been sudden and startling. The regime has used some of the windfall to modernise Pyongyang with new brightly lit shopping districts filled with luxury and high-tech goods, and high-rise apartments blocks. Cars, once a rarity, are increasingly common and frequently electric, and can even be hailed with ride-sharing apps.

Outside the capital, the regime’s ambitious “20x10” regional development initiative aims to build new factories, housing and public infrastructure in 20 counties each year over a 10-year period.

All of this is an “incredible accomplishment for a country that is this poor”, regional expert Stephan Haggard told the WSJ.

Can it last?

Due to a lack of reliable data and the regime’s complete control of the media, accurately assessing what is happening on the ground in North Korea is notoriously difficult, said WioNews. But “a closer look beneath the headlines reveals a more complicated picture than either Western critics” or the Pyongyang regime acknowledge.

While the growth over the last three years appears genuine, said the Financial Times, North Korea’s “economic resurgence fell short of a genuine transformation” in that it “was mostly being driven by participation in Russia’s war in Ukraine”.

Peter Ward of the Sejong Institute in Seoul said North Korea was in the throes of a “Russian sugar high” fuelling a slew of “shovel-ready, exciting-looking projects that will catch the eye of the leader, but aren’t necessarily sustainable”.

Ultimately, said Asia Business Daily, the racks of luxury goods and the Pyongyang construction boom are “merely an optical illusion”, in that they are enjoyed “almost exclusively by the leadership and a privileged class in Pyongyang”.

North Korea remains incredibly poor. Out of its 27 million citizens, 17 million are still believed to live in extreme poverty, and the UN estimates that more than 40% of the population are undernourished. Analysts are sceptical that Kim can turn the short-term gains brought about by the war in Ukraine into sustainable long-term growth. “Knowing the North Koreans, they probably haven’t fixed the roof while the sun is shining,” said Ward.

Just a couple of years ago, Anthropic was an underdog in the AI race. Now the San Francisco start-up, co-founded by CEO Dario Amodei, is preparing to float in October “at a valuation of $2 trillion or more”, said George Hammond in the Financial Times – “a dizzying figure that would eclipse SpaceX and make the AI lab’s debut the largest-ever initial public offering”.

Booming demand

Anthropic’s growth has been astonishing even by Silicon Valley standards. Valued at around $965 billion in May, when it eclipsed arch-rival OpenAI for the first time, investors reckon the $2 trillion price tag is justified by booming demand for the Claude maker’s advanced AI models and coding tools – especially from business. Annualised revenue is expected to rise more than ten times this year to around £100-120 billion.

The usual suspects – Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase – are working on the listing, said Bloomberg. If it proceeds as scheduled, Anthropic will debut not just before OpenAI, but also before DeepSeek – the Chinese AI firm that has been grabbing increasing market share.

‘Tough’ questions

Growing Chinese competition is just one of the “tough investor questions” Anthropic will have to field, said The Wall Street Journal. Others include “tensions with the Trump administration” – which forced it to briefly pull leading models Fable 5 and Mythos 5 – and “a growing backlash” against data centres. Additionally, Anthropic faces animus in Silicon Valley, where many CEOs are “nervous about its power over the AI ecosystem”.

The recent sell-off in SpaceX’s shares after an early pop has also “reminded investors of how turbulent moving from private to public markets can be”. Still, for the moment, Anthropic is lifting “Wall Street’s animal spirits”, said Due Diligence in the FT. Come autumn, the street will be buzzing.

“Hi there. I have received your email. I have printed it off. I’m now using it to light flaming cocktails for the entire bar. Best, Lucy.”

That was an ‘amusing’ out-of-office reply from a British Airways holiday advert a couple of years ago, said Country Life, but there is more to the “philosophy” of these emails than just trying to be funny, said The Atlantic. They can be a “rote obligation or an opportunity to make a grand statement about work and life”.

For some, it is a “simple one-line email”, while others use it to “apologise profusely” for being away or “highlight their indignation at being tied to work or the internet in the first place”. Selecting the right tone requires adhering to a hidden etiquette of rules. And needless to say, ”transitioning between vacation and regular obligations can get complicated”.

‘Cry for help’

It can be frustrating to be hit with a “barrage” of out-of-office (OOO) responses to a group email you have sent, said the Financial Times. You may think your colleagues are “lazy good-for-nothings, slacking off while you toil through the long summer”, but their replies can tell you “so much more”.

Someone who says they will be “checking their emails intermittently” is almost certainly on holiday with their in-laws, and “wants to reply to your email within 17 minutes rather than the usual six”. Then there are those who are even more addicted to being permanently on call, claiming to have “no access to internet”. If they do get access, they say they will have smashed their phone, laptop and smartwatch and “thrown them into the ocean”. This is a blatant “cry for help”.

Then there are the jokey ones. “I am currently out of the office, trying to return home after a successful conquest involving a large wooden horse. It may take me some time.” This person has not checked their company policy and will “shortly be unemployed”.

I went through a phase of setting “funny” out of offices, said Sophia Money-Coutts in Country Life. But I “shudder with horror now” thinking about it. “Life’s too short; time is too precious to agonise” over what you write. “Straightforward is the way to go for everyone involved.”

That said, the “aggressive approach” is by far the worst. Some people not only declare they will be away, but that “all emails will be automatically deleted during that period”. How “irritating”. This would make more sense if they were on a sabbatical or maternity leave, but “it’s quite self-important if you’re only hopping to Mallorca for a week”. And setting an OOO saying you’re off for a “mere afternoon”? A “touch pompous”.

Keep it short, said Forbes. “Your OOO is not your Instagram. Skip the mojito emoji and ‘Off to South Beach, baby!’ Nobody wants your travelogue.”

Another big mistake is not fully shutting it off when you’re back. Doing so the night before logging back on is usually best. “Don’t be that person who leaves the OOO on until three people have reminded you to turn it off.”

‘Set expectations’ before you go

There are some clear “dos and don’ts” when it comes to out-of-office messages, said BBC. And getting it wrong can have “more serious consequences than you might think”.

The optimum reply is “polite and concise”, gives a “specific return date” and at least one other point of contact if appropriate, said the etiquette consultancy Debretts . “Virtue signalling” – or going into too much detail about your time off – is another big “no-no”: it can come across as boastful, “smug”, or that you’re “trying too hard”.

It’s not really about the out-of-office message at all, said Stylist. The most effective team members “set expectations before” they go, outlining how “online” they will be, if at all. This stops colleagues of whatever seniority “second-guessing whether they should follow up” or being confused over what “contactable in an emergency” actually means.

Even sharing good news – whether from your desk or on holiday – can be a detrimental form of “presenteeism”. This can throw someone else into work mode, confuse the boundaries you have set or subliminally pressurise others to follow your example.

Most importantly, it is vital to just “trust your team. We all like to think the place will fall apart without us, but this is a damaging view that will only stop you from fully enjoying your time off.” Planning ahead of time and handing things over properly removes most of the need for communicating while on holiday. Many people forget this but “really, most things can wait”.

What happened

The U.S. gross national debt on Wednesday hit $40 trillion for the first time, just five months after reaching $39 trillion. The new debt figure is an “ominous milestone for an economy that sits on a shaky fiscal foundation after decades of borrowing to pay for the rising costs of the military, social safety net programs” and, especially since last year, President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, The New York Times said.

Who said what

The “federal government’s IOU has now more than doubled in less than a decade,” from $19.95 trillion when Trump was first sworn in, Reuters said. Much of that debt funded the Covid-19 response, including $8.4 trillion added under former President Joe Biden. But Trump has also “largely ignored the dwindling number of fiscal hawks in his Republican Party,” and his “landmark second-term” tax-and-spending bill “will ​add another $4.7 trillion in debt.”

The bipartisan “inability of lawmakers to confront the debt comes with long-term risks,” the Times said. The “best-case scenario” in an “unsustainable” fiscal trajectory, said Margaret Spellings of the Bipartisan Policy Center in a statement. “AI disruption, a recession, global war or any number of other events could quickly push us over the edge from a challenge into a full-blown crisis.”

What next?

The “exploding debt” is “already affecting Americans’ pocketbooks by raising borrowing costs” and squeezing wages, said The Associated Press. The U.S. is expected to hit the current $41.1 trillion statutory debt limit “sometime between late winter and mid-summer” of 2027, forcing Congress to “again vote on whether to raise or suspend it.”

When the young Greek-Cypriot entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou launched easyJet in 1995, in a bid “to democratise travel”, the no-frills airline operated just two routes, said Angharad Carrick on This is Money.

Since then, it has grown into the UK’s largest airline by passenger numbers – becoming synonymous with cheap holidays across Europe and setting the pace for change in the industry.

But now the orange upstart is being taken private after 26 years on the London Stock Exchange, having agreed a £5.7 billion takeover by the US private equity giant Apollo, “which some analysts believe is something of a cut-price fare in itself”.

Other airlines ‘in the crosshairs’

The words “private equity” might spark fear among easyJet customers, said Carrick, “who have seen other well-loved British brands being taken over and stripped of their assets”. Whether or not these forebodings are realised, it’s the end of an era.

Unlike its rival bidder, fellow US investment firm Castlelake, Apollo has at least obtained the royal consent of Haji-Ioannou, whose backing of the bid was vital to its success, said Ali Lyon in City AM. He described the firm as “one of the most well-resourced and experienced institutional investors in the world” and said he planned to remain an investor.

But, ultimately, it was probably the price that swung the matter: Apollo’s offer is an 81% premium on the airline’s share price prior to takeover speculation. EasyJet now becomes “the first large European carrier to be held in private markets” – assuming Apollo’s formula for persuading EU regulators to nod through the deal works.

It may not be the last, said Hugh Leask on CNBC. This deal could presage a flurry of interest in European budget airlines from private equity buyers, with Jet2 especially “in the crosshairs”.

‘Blow the budget-airline market wide open’

Reports that easyJet will be “loaded” with £3 billion in debt after the takeover are disturbing, said Dominic O’Connell in The Times. Moody’s, the credit-rating agency, has already signalled its disquiet.

Still, Apollo has some experience of airlines, said Peter Campbell in the Financial Times: previous investments include Aeroméxico and Sun Country Airlines, which it listed on Nasdaq in 2021. It has already signalled its intention to take easyJet “upmarket”, with more “business-focused product features on key routes”.

That might suit rivals like Ryanair, but it won’t please cash-conscious travellers. Indeed, this deal could “blow the budget-airline market wide open”, said Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph – as well as fuelling more soul-searching in the City about leading British companies being taken private on the cheap. “It may not be long before we need a FTSE 50, or even a FTSE 30, to reflect how few significant companies are left.”

With Saudi Arabia ending its funding of LIV Golf after this season, the league is at a crossroads, moving away from its largest controversy while still in need of new financial backing. Now it appears LIV may have found some, announcing last week that it has secured investors to bring it into the 2027 season and beyond. But some major questions about the tour’s future linger.

‘Supporting the path forward’

LIV Golf has an “agreement in place with a lead investor, signed by the investor and approved by the board, to anchor the transaction and play a key role in supporting the path forward for the league’s next era, driven by and for the players,” the tour’s CEO, Scott O’Neil, said in a statement. O’Neil “didn’t identify the investor or how much money will be injected into the league,” said ESPN, though he hopes to “finalize terms in the coming weeks.”

A new backer would mark a significant changing of the guard for LIV Golf, which has been financed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund since its 2022 founding. This partnership has elicited backlash, as the fund is “chaired by Mohammed bin Salman — the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and the man who a U.S. intelligence report named as responsible for approving the operation that led to the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” said CNN. Saudi Arabia has also been accused of widespread human rights abuses.

With bin Salman pulling his funding after 2026, there is “no need to root for LIV’s demise, especially since the moral argument against it — the Saudi backing — is now out of the picture,” said The Athletic. Whoever the new investors are, however, they “won’t remotely approach the fantasy golf funding of Saudi Arabia’s trillion-dollar Public Investment Fund,” meaning the next season of LIV Golf will likely look very different.

‘A talent exodus’

It is a “reality that the Saudi Public Investment Fund invested billions into the league with no return,” and any newer investments “won't stretch as far as the previous financial backing did,” said Bleacher Report. It also remains to be seen how the players themselves will factor into the new-look league, as LIV Golf finds itself looking to bring in fresh golfers for the upcoming season.

LIV Golf “must contend with a talent exodus,” as it has seen “major winners Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed return to the PGA Tour under a program that caps some of their future earning opportunities,” said Sportico. Other big-name golfers “left the league for different reasons.” One of the main question marks is Bryson DeChambeau, the “league’s biggest star” whose expiring contract “looms large over LIV’s future.” Golf industry insiders believe DeChambeau “could command a deal with a total value somewhere between $200 million and $500 million.”

The tour wants to put golfers at the forefront either way, as during the next phase, players “will be majority equity holders in the league,” said Sportico. But “how that structure will play out, especially with the prospect of new investors coming on board, is unclear.” Many are still looking forward to the potential new phase of LIV Golf despite all the current unknowns. If the “league is reduced to a parade of fading 40-somethings who want to play 10 team-centric events a season while bouncing from continent to continent, what’s the harm in that?” said The Athletic. “More golf is better than less golf.”

Disputing credit card charges may be the new way to stick it to corporations. More consumers are engaging in friendly fraud, disputing real charges or purchases in order to get their money back. The trend reflects a distrust in corporations as well as overall economic instability.

‘Expensive, onerous process’

Friendly fraud involves the use of charge-backs, which are “when a customer goes to their bank, as opposed to the merchant, to dispute a charge,” said NerdWallet. “When the customer requests their money back, the bank contacts the business’s payment processor.”

Then the “bank verifies whether the charge-back request is legitimate” and reverses the charge if it is, said NerdWallet. Most incorrect charge-backs tend to be honest mistakes as a “cardholder identifies a purchase on their transaction statement as fraudulent and disputes it,” when in reality, “they or someone else in their household may have made the purchase,” said Mastercard.

Transaction disputes have also “traditionally been used to address certain types of crimes committed against consumers,” like if “someone steals your wallet and goes on a shopping spree, or if you put a deposit on a wedding venue that goes out of business before the big day,” said Bloomberg. The credit card issuer “claws the funds back from the offending merchant’s bank, on top of a charge-back penalty fee,” which is an “expensive, onerous process” that “incentivizes merchants to be honest transactors and resolve issues with customers before charge-backs are filed.”

‘Existential threat’

What was once an accidental error or a way to stop theft is now sometimes a tool to obtain free merchandise. Friendly fraud is a “costly form of charge-back abuse in which consumers dispute legitimate credit card transactions to recover their money while keeping the purchased goods or services,” said the technology publication Tekedia. Though the phenomenon is not new, it is becoming more common. There were “158 million transaction disputes in 2025, an increase of 29% from 2021, significantly outpacing general growth in card transactions,” said Bloomberg.

The trend takes an economic toll. The “volume of disputes has become so cumbersome that more retailers are farming out the whole process of investigating and defending against fraud claims to third-party vendors that specialize in helping them hold on to more of consumers’ money,” said Bloomberg. Increased levels of chargebacks can also affect prices. “Large retailers fold the cost of lost revenue, lost product and lost labor that fraudulent charge-backs create into the prices everyone pays.” But “for small merchants those losses quickly become an existential threat to their ability to continue operating.”

‘Retaliate against retailers’

The rise of friendly fraud is directly tied to growing distrust of companies and corporations. Friendly fraud is a “way to retaliate against retailers over poor customer service, delayed deliveries, strict return policies or dissatisfaction with purchases,” said Tekedia. People may not even be aware they are committing fraud, as many small value disputes are approved quickly and without much investigation. There are “people that feel like, oh, this is just sticking it to the man, so to speak,” Jim Mortensen, a strategic adviser in the fraud and anti-money-laundering practice at the research firm Datos Insights, said to Bloomberg.

Economic circumstances also contribute to the rise of stealing and fraud. “One thing in the last two to three years has been that the cost of living in most developed markets has put quite a significant squeeze on consumers, particularly younger consumers on lower income,” a senior research analyst at Juniper Research who focuses on digital payments told Bloomberg. While engaging in friendly fraud sounds intriguing, it is “unethical and, in some jurisdictions, may constitute fraud,” said Tekedia. “Repeated abuse can result in account closures, damaged relationships with financial institutions and even legal consequences.”

What happened

The Federal Reserve Bank on Wednesday held its benchmark interest rate steady, but it “left the door open” to future rate changes “if inflation remains elevated,” said NPR. By a vote of 9-3, the bank’s rate-setting committee left short-term borrowing rates “in a range between 3.5% and 3.75%.” Holding the rate steady will impact the “cost of credit throughout the economy,” including for “auto loans, business financing and credit cards.”

Who said what

The split vote shows Fed officials have “splintered over how the central bank should tackle elevated inflation,” said The New York Times. “Pressure is building” at the Fed to “act on inflation that has run above its target for five years,” said The Wall Street Journal. The no-votes have “underscored officials’ fraying patience with looking past another price shock” amid tariff and AI-related market turbulence.

What next?

That three policymakers voted to increase the rates suggests that “in the coming months,” said the Times, the debate among economists “will center not on whether the central bank will lift borrowing costs, but when.”

What happened

A federal judge in California on Monday paused Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, agreeing with 12 states that the merger of two of Hollywood’s remaining five major movie studios could run afoul of antitrust laws. The combined company would also amalgamate CBS, CNN, HBO Max, Paramount+ and dozens of cable channels. The “pause will last only 14 days,” said The New York Times. But in her ruling, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín “raised the prospect of a much longer delay.”

Who said what

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, hailed the ruling as a “critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day,” he said in a statement. Paramount said the lawsuit’s “antitrust arguments are without merit” and it would “vigorously defend” its “lawful, pro-competitive” merger. Along with the dozen states, the merger is being challenged in court by a group of consumers, the Writers Guild of America and Paramount shareholders.

What next?

Martínez-Olguín said in her order she would consider issuing a longer injunction at an Aug. 3 hearing. Any lengthy delay in the merger, which had been set to be completed as soon as Tuesday, would “have huge financial costs for Paramount,” NPR said. Starting Oct. 1, it has to pay Warner shareholders “roughly $650 million for every 90 days the deal is set back.”

For months, equity markets have been able to treat higher oil prices, higher government bond yields and vast AI costs “as separate problems arriving on different days”, said Stephen Innes on Investing.com. But Wall Street is now finally on “the collision course it had spent weeks pretending would never happen”.

The catalyst was the Strait of Hormuz, where the standoff between Washington and Tehran entered a dangerous new phase, pushing the price of Brent crude up by more than 10% to $85/barrel, the highest in four weeks. For investors, central bankers and governments, the spectre of an inflation shock that many had hoped was behind us has hoved back into view.

No shelter

“I’m left wondering why the smart money failed to hedge against what was always a highly probable breakdown of this fragile ceasefire,” said Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times. “The interim peace deal was clearly resting on a knife’s edge, yet investors chose the comfort of short-term optimism over geopolitical probability. Again.” Iran isn’t the only conflict vexing the oil market, said Javier Blas on Bloomberg. “What matters for Main Street” isn’t the cost of crude, but of petrol, diesel and jet fuel. On that score, the concurrent escalation of the Ukraine War in recent weeks is troubling, given shortages in global refining capacity, in Russia and beyond.

The difficulty investors face is finding shelter from these geopolitical crises, said James Mackintosh in The Wall Street Journal. “In the old investment paradigm, government bonds acted as shock absorbers, with prices rising and yields falling when the economy takes a hit.” But that doesn’t work when shocks are inflationary – particularly “when government debt levels are so high”.

Challenge for Burnham

Bonds have suffered a painful sell-off on both sides of the Atlantic, with prices of benchmark ten-year UK gilts spiking above 5% for the first time since May. Bond yields have broadly tracked oil prices since the start of the Iran conflict, said Mehreen Khan in The Times. And, once again, the UK – highly exposed to global energy and food prices – is vulnerable. Andy Burnham’s economic inheritance as the incoming PM is suddenly looking much more troubling.

“Rising gilt yields eat into the government’s fiscal buffers” by raising the cost of servicing debt, and the unknown identity of the new chancellor is adding to the jitters in debt markets. Some investors are already voting with their feet. Asset manager Rathbones has slashed its gilts holding, as a hedge against potential “fiscal irresponsibility” – out of fear that Burnham “does a Truss”. Given an increasingly fragile fiscal backdrop, more may follow.

Just days away from her expected departure, Rachel Reeves defended her legacy to the “great and the good of the City” in the annual Mansion House speech, said the Financial Times.

Her “valedictory” address claimed successes in reduced government borrowing and lower NHS waiting lists. “Loud applause and even whoops of support from guests” indicated support from the finance sector, too, even if possibly not reflected across the country.

But many in the audience were preoccupied by one question: “who would be in charge of the UK’s fiscal policy next week”?

What did the commentators say?

“Farewell, Rachel Reeves, the blubbing chancellor who made us all cry,” said James Moore in The Independent. According to most polling, she is by far the “most unpopular chancellor on record”. She may have resisted “juvenile attempts” to tax the billionaires advocated by many in her party, but she opted for “one of the worst possible means” to raise funds, in hitting employers with higher National Insurance.

But by far her “darkest legacy” is the “million young people not in education, employment or training”. Ultimately, despite a handful of isolated wins, Reeves has “rarely shown the kind of bravery or instinct needed for this great office”.

Reeves’ record is the worst of “any chancellor of modern times”, said financial columnist Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph. In her Mansion House speech, she primarily presented herself as the only person who could provide stability. “The trouble is, none of it was very convincing.” The economy’s “stagnant” growth only looks “tolerable” in the context of poor performances from other G7 countries, unemployment is on the rise, and debt has “soared” to close to “100% of GDP”. Given her shortcomings, her belated attempts to appeal to Andy Burnham’s regime were “cringey” at best. “It was an embarrassing end to a dismal chancellorship.”

“Barely a sector has escaped unscathed” from Reeves’ “duplicity”, said Alys Denby in CityAM. The first, and telling, blow was her “acrobatic triangulation” over the definition of a tax on “working people”, breaking her manifesto pledge by freezing thresholds. She will be remembered for “dissembling, breaking promises and making Brits poorer”.

Not everyone will be glad to see the back of Reeves, said Politico. Her tears in the Commons once sent financial markets “spiralling”: “now they’re the ones sobbing”. She is uniquely “friendly to the City”, typified by her “smoked salmon offensive” of holding regular breakfasts with City chiefs in the run-up to the 2024 election. With uncertainty over her successor, “things can only get worse” for the financial elite.

A “fair assessment” of Reeves’ tenure in No. 11 “would not be wholly negative”, said The Times’ editorial board. “She has a couple of sizeable achievements to her name.” She relaxed some of the “onerous” regulation on businesses, made reforms to the London Stock Exchange and “consolidated” the “fragmented” pensions industry. “Regrettably”, however, Reeves’ negatives “outweigh the positives”. Labour may have inherited a “sizeable fiscal problem”, but with Reeves’ “disastrous” first budget, they “exacerbated it”.

What next?

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is likely to become Reeves’ successor when Burnham’s cabinet is announced on Monday, said the Financial Times. Mahmood is on the right of the Labour Party and is viewed as a “tough operator and capable minister”, overseeing “contentious” immigration reforms. Since the reports broke, the markets have “responded positively”. Speaking on Wednesday, Burnham said that he might “ask for a little bit more” in tax, and refused to rule out a wealth tax. Whatever the selection, the future chancellor’s “big task” will be to frame a convincing autumn Budget.

“Dare I suggest there are the seeds here for a comeback” for Reeves, said Moore in The Independent. The UK is in a “precarious predication fiscally”, and we “shouldn’t underestimate” Reeves’ standing with the markets. If the Burnham project goes “horribly wrong”, he may find himself calling on someone to “steady the ship”. “The record shows that Reeves can take the blows. She could do it her way.”

If you have ever avoided giving criticism or expressing boundaries in the workplace, you may have been “bubble wrapping.” The phenomenon, in which people cushion their words or actions to protect others’ feelings, is most common among women. And this avoidance of confrontation may be inadvertently hindering upward mobility in the office.

Gendered habit

While anyone can partake in “bubble wrapping,” women are most likely to do it. Women are “often socialized to be ‘the nice one,’ ‘the helpful one’ or the person who keeps everyone together at work,” said Mukti Joy, a leadership coach and well-being strategist, to Her World. “They start confusing being valued with being easy to approve of.” More than half of women “feel pressure to be likeable at work compared with only 36% of men, and this ‘likeability labor’ means women often feel overly responsible for other people’s comfort at work,” Mandy Lehto, an executive coach and leadership expert, said to Stylist.

Examples of bubble wrapping in the workplace include apologizing unnecessarily, softening the delivery of criticism or expectations, or taking on extra tasks instead of communicating limits. Many women feel pressure to avoid confrontation because they are “far more likely to receive feedback that they’re being ‘bossy’ or ‘too direct’ when they communicate in the same way as male colleagues,” Léonie Kennepohl, a female leadership expert and co-founder of the networking platform and recruiting community Female x Finance, said to Forbes. Bubble wrapping “often comes from a good place,” but it “can make communication less effective and is arguably worse than being known as ‘bossy.’”

Harder job

This pressure to be agreeable can hinder career growth. Bubble wrapping “makes women appear less confident in leadership positions,” said Forbes. “The focus feels like it shifts from making the right business decision to protecting everyone else’s feelings,” Kennepohl said. It can “present as a person not having leadership qualities.” Bubble wrapping also “deprives people of the very feedback and challenges they need to become more resilient, capable and successful,” said Forbes.

Women often “become the colleague others vent to, the one who smooths over conflicts, explains someone’s intentions or makes sure everyone else feels comfortable,” said Her World. These added burdens often make jobs more taxing. This emotional labor has “real value because it helps build trust, psychological safety and stronger workplace relationships.” It becomes problematic “when it’s expected from the same people every time.”

Need for courage

Wanting to be kind does not mean avoiding difficult conversations. “Empathy is essential but so are boundaries,” Elaine Choi, an HR Manager, said to Her World. Practicing “carefrontation” or “being clear, honest and direct while remaining respectful and kind” can facilitate necessary conversations “without carrying everyone else’s emotional reactions on your own.” However, purposely putting yourself in uncomfortable situations may also be required at times.

It is important to “build self-trust by showing yourself that you value your own experience as much as other people’s,” Lehto said to Stylist. “You’re not being unkind or unprofessional.” A conscious effort to make yourself heard will likely lead to an “adrenaline surge and an internal wobble,” but “stay in tension anyway.” There is “so much coming at us that is trying to make us complacent, or to look the other way or to not sit in the discomfort,” Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, said to Big Think. “We actually need people to feel and to act with courage in their everyday life.”

After rejecting four previous overtures as “highly opportunistic”, easyJet has rolled over, said Kate Duffy on Bloomberg.

Following a month-long siege, the British budget airline has agreed in principle to be bought by the US private equity investor Castlelake, for an improved offer of £6.90 per share in cash, or about £5.5 billion – assuming it can steer its bid around tough EU rules on airline ownership.

No longer ‘no-frills’

Shares in easyJet – a once-ground-breaking “no-frills” venture, founded by Stelios HajiIoannou and floated in 2000 – jumped on the news, said Gwyn Topham in The Guardian, partly because the latest offer allows current shareholders to remain invested under Castlelake’s ownership, “rather than being forced to divest when it delists”.

But the gloom among some City analysts was palpable. Kathleen Brooks of brokerage XTB said the potential loss of such “an iconic British aviation name” was “symbolic” of the “massive For Sale sign above UK corporates” due to their persistently cheap shares – and could encourage foreign buyers to pick off even more FTSE-listed firms.

Destination ‘largely the same’

Minneapolis-based Castlelake, an experienced aviation financier and leaser, is no sector fly-by-night. And it promises business as usual at easyJet, said Robert Lea in The Times. Despite recent travails – the airline’s stock was pummelled by the Iran conflict – the Luton-based carrier is supposedly on course to make £1 billion in annual profits.

Investors still aren’t pricing in a definite sale, said Lex in the Financial Times: one “unknown” is the view of “the orange airline’s forthright founder and 15% owner” Haji-Ioannou. But shares in European rivals rose. The nightmare for them was that easyJet would succumb to a more muscular, expansionist player. That its “destination remains largely the same” under Castlelake is a source of some comfort.

American women in the workforce have long been outearned by their male counterparts. And though the difference narrowed during the Covid-19 pandemic, the gap is now increasing as overall wage growth slows and the economy shifts to jobs dominated by men.

What did the commentators say?

U.S. wage growth is “steadily slowing,” but for women it’s “slowing even more,” said Marketplace. The gap got narrower during the last three decades of the 20th century due to “more women entering the workforce, broader minimum wage protections and better access to contraception.” That progress has “stalled” during this century, pausing briefly when “demand for low-wage labor spiked” during the Covid-19 lockdown. Now the gap is widening again, largely because women are “more likely to be in lower-paid, stretched-thin jobs, covering the households’ basic needs,” said Elissa Braunstein, a professor of economics at Colorado State University, to the outlet. Overall, women “earn 16% less than men on average,” said Forbes.

“When women dominate a field, pay goes down,” said Mary Noble-Tolla at Lean In. When parks and recreation jobs shifted from a male-dominated field to one largely staffed by women, for example, “wages dropped by 57%.” Mothers are “hit the hardest” by the disparity, but closing the wage gap would be broadly beneficial. Paying women “fairly” would “cut the U.S. poverty rate in half and inject over $1.6 trillion” into the American economy.

“Women aren’t born wanting to earn less money,” said Maia Mindel at The Argument. Some commentators have made the case that women earn less than men “simply because they choose to” by taking less paid overtime and more unpaid time off. But the preference for “predictable, flexible schedules” comes “almost entirely” from women with children at home. Policymakers can bridge the gap by “broadening access to public services” like childcare and early childhood education.

The wage gap means most American households have “far fewer resources” to pay for “housing, food and healthcare,” Stefanie O’Connell said at MarketWatch. And that struggle “follows women throughout their lives,” as women over the age of 65 are more likely than men their age to live in poverty. The gap is also a “major drag on the economy” because women “make most household purchases.” When they do not have as much money to spend, “both businesses and investors pay the price.”

What next?

“There is no single policy that will close the wage gap,” said Emma Cohn and Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute’s Working Economics Blog. Possible solutions would include “pay transparency” laws that require employers to “include wage information in job postings.” Expanded medical and family leave requirements, universal childcare and an improved minimum wage would also help. Such efforts could “build an equitable economy that works for all.”

There may be a few sore heads and impeccably timed phone-calls to bosses in England this morning, after last night’s win over Mexico in the World Cup, but any football fans must be thankful they don’t live in Germany where workers will have to report to a doctor in person, to get a sick note on the first day they are ill, under sweeping new reforms.

The government is “tired of its workers calling in sick”, said the Deep Dive, but unions and family doctors are opposed to the new law.

What is Germany doing?

“The number of sick days is too high,” said Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, announcing the plan. The government is “creating a set of tools that will enable those involved, both employees and companies, to correct this,” he added.

The “tough” new rules are “aimed at boosting Germany’s stagnating economy”, wrote Hans van Leeuwen, international economics editor of The Telegraph.

Although they will be “welcomed” by employers, they have “angered” the country’s “powerful trade unions”. The services sector union, Verdi, accused Merz of creating a “culture of distrust of employees”.

Doctors also have “opposed” the new system because they believe the new requirements will “swamp” GP surgeries with “unnecessary appointments”.

What are sickness policies like elsewhere?

In the Netherlands, employers are generally obliged to pay employees on sick leave 70% of their wages for up to two years. If that amount is less than minimum wage, then the employer must boost this to the minimum wage for the first year. Norway is even more generous: it provides up to a year of income replacement at 100% of salary (subject to an earnings cap).

Although the US is one of the richest countries in the world, there is no nationwide entitlement to paid sick leave in the US, so access depends largely on state laws, local ordinances and employer policies. This means coverage varies considerably. Only 14 of the 50 states have paid sick leave mandates in place, which means sick workers are often forced to rely on health insurance pay-outs to cover their wages.

In the UK employees who earn over £125 a week and are off sick for four or more days in a row, are entitled to £123.25 per week of statutory sick pay for up to 28 weeks. This equates to around 15% of the average UK weekly wage. Employees need to give their employer proof if they’re ill for more than seven days. Many employers have a sick pay policy which is more generous.

How many sick days do people take?

In 2025, 149 million working days were lost to sickness or injury in Britain – an average of more than four days per worker. On average, Americans take roughly one to three days of sick leave per year.

In Germany, workers take about three weeks, or 15 working days, of sick leave per year. This is lower than in France, but higher than Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Italy.

Whether you are after memoirs or analysis, here are the most compelling business books to pick up this summer.

1873 by Liaquat Ahamed

A “lively and compelling” account of how America’s Gilded Age economy broke the world, says The New York Times. Action sweeps from America’s railroad barons to Vienna’s stock market crash. Ahamed tackles “one of the great forgotten financial crises”, combining the nuances of high finance with some excellent vignettes, says Robin Wigglesworth in the Financial Times. The cast of characters, says The Wall Street Journal, ranges from the Rothschild clan to a “still-obscure” Karl Marx.

Super Nintendo by Keza MacDonald

How did a 19th-century Japanese playing-card manufacturer become one of the most influential companies in the entertainment world, asks Stephen Bush in the FT. This “engaging” history of the home of Mario, Zelda and Pokémon, by The Guardian’s video games editor, is a delight whether you’re a gamer or not.

Suing the Kremlin by Martin Sixsmith

“If you want to see Vladimir Putin’s soul, study the fate of Yukos,” says The Economist. An early indicator of his “authoritarian turn” was the “seizure and dismemberment” of the Russian oil giant and imprisonment of its boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Here, Sixsmith, a former BBC Moscow correspondent, charts how shareholders fought back. “Their unlikely champion was a cheery, phlegmatic London-based tax lawyer, Tim Osborne.”

Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs by Lloyd Blankfein

This memoir, from the “ultimate Goldman insider”, doesn’t quite break the bank’s “blood oath” of silence, says Literary Review. But it’s interesting on Blankfein’s ascent from working-class New York, and includes a “vivid retelling of the desperate days of September 2008”. Blankfein emerges as a “straight-arrow guy”.

Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent by Kim Bowes

This history examines the everyday finances, food and working practices of ordinary Romans in “thrilling detail”, said the FT. Don’t be put off by the 35 bar charts, said the Times Literary Supplement. This is “that rarest of birds”: an “utterly gripping piece of economic history”.

Bonfire of the Murdochs by Gabriel Sherman

“A brief, deft account” of one of the most consequential family feuds of recent corporate history, says the FT – and the costs of elevating just one child to run the empire.

Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto by Barry Eichengreen

In this “timely book”, Eichengreen – an expert on the international monetary system – puts today’s concerns about the global role of the dollar into historical context, says the FT. Technological change is important, but it all depends on “trust”.

“The stratospheric rally has left tech stocks vulnerable to sharp reversals,” said Jack Pitcher in The Wall Street Journal. This week saw another, as investors worried about “higher interest rates, stretched valuations and the prospect that billions of dollars of AI spending will outstrip the expectation of blockbuster profits”.

The declines dragged Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nasdaq down by nearly 4% over five days to Wednesday, with chip-makers the worst affected. Sandisk and Micron – key members of a small group of memory stocks that have made “parabolic gains” – were among the biggest US fallers, both down more than 13%. But investors can't really complain: even after these slides, their gains this year are 727% and 269%, respectively.

Chip-wreck

The fulcrum of the latest “chip-wreck”, said Bloomberg, was South Korea’s chip-centric Kospi index, where big falls in SK Hynix and Samsung shares triggered a circuit breaker, bringing trading to a halt before panic set in. The country’s top financial regulator, Lee Chan-jin, indicated the sell-off might have been prompted by his approval of “a batch of high-leverage”, single-stock exchange-traded funds tracking chip-makers, said Louis Juricic on Investing.com.

At launch, those funds held combined assets of $3 billion; they have since swelled to roughly $9.1 billion, with 92% bought by retail investors. These are “high-risk products”, and their leverage component means they amplify, rather than merely tracking, underlying moves. Yet “despite consumer warnings, trading hasn’t cooled”, said Lee.

Long, hot summer

A similar defiant bullishness is evident on Wall Street. “People are looking for reasons to hedge, yet stay invested,” said Julian Emanuel of Evercore. Lisa Shalett of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management told The Wall Street Journal that, despite the volatility, “I’m more inclined to be a buyer in today’s market than a seller.”

Traders are bracing for a roller-coaster into summer, when liquidity typically dries up, said Sagarika Jaisinghani on Bloomberg. Goldman Sachs partner Bobby Molavi reckons the current market is similar to the final months of the dotcom era, when investors took sudden 5% moves in their stride. “What happens if 10% breaks”, and there’s “no floor in sight”?

Gone are the days of working a grueling nine-to-five. Employees have started microshifting, a practice that involves completing duties in short, productive bursts. This allows workers to make their own schedules and save time for other obligations and hobbies.

Flexibility in the workplace has become increasingly common and sometimes even expected of hybrid and remote jobs. There may also be some benefits for business in allowing workers a freer schedule.

‘A little bit of autonomy’

Approximately 65% of workers are interested in microshifting, according to an analysis by Owl Labs. The practice, though not labeled at the time, took off during the pandemic at the height of remote work. Covid-19’s “work-from-home requirement demonstrated that employees can work successfully from anywhere, without a boss watching over them all of the time,” said The Wall Street Journal. Now, “flexibility increasingly means giving employees more control over when they work, not just where.”

Microshifting is most common in “industries where flexible work arrangements are already common, such as IT, financial services and professional and technical services,” said the Journal. People with “caregiving responsibilities at home — for children or other relatives — are more likely to try microshifting than noncaregivers.”

Over time, management and leadership have become more “adept at giving a little bit of autonomy,” Kevin Rockmann, a professor of management at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business, said to The Associated Press. Employees have also gained the “motivation and almost the license to ask for this.”

‘It’s good to take breaks’

Microshifting can have benefits for both employers and employees. Breaking the workday into shorter chunks allows employees to “squeeze in some personal business as well,” giving them “more time to relax and enjoy” days off “rather than spend them running errands,” said Moneywise. As a result, they work when they are “most focused and productive,” and “companies get the most” out of time with them. More than half of employees (59%) “schedule personal appointments during typical work hours, and 38% take up to an hour each day for personal time,” said the analysis by Owl Labs.

“From a creativity standpoint, it’s good to take breaks,” Rockmann said to the AP. “When you stop thinking about a task is when your best ideas come to you.” Microshifting can also improve relationships, allowing more time with friends and family, all while reducing burnout. “Taking walks or attending a child’s school function can be reinvigorating for people who get drained from sitting at a desk or looking at a computer screen,” said the AP.

‘Tremendous amount of discipline’

Microshifting also has its risks. A lack of a clear schedule “can gradually weaken our ability to commit to longer stretches of uninterrupted work,” Aytekin Tank, the founder and CEO of Jotform, said at Forbes. It could also lead to a less collaborative work environment. Employees “have to be more aware of the preferred work hours of colleagues,” and if their microshifts don’t coincide, it “can lead to periods of inactivity that might ultimately slow things down,” said Moneywise.

Without structure, employees may also “fall behind on deadlines and actually wind up working round-the-clock,” said the Journal. Microshifting “requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline,” said Moneywise. If someone is “not a motivated worker (or are someone who is easily distracted), getting things done in those work blocks could be challenging.”

The pound fell and government borrowing costs rose after Keir Starmer’s resignation announcement this morning. As Andy Burnham moves closer to power, there is concern in the financial markets that the government will soon start tinkering with its current strict fiscal rules on borrowing and spending.

What are the fiscal rules?

First introduced by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997, and now in their 10th iteration, the fiscal rules are restrictions set by the government to constrain its own decisions on taxes and spending. They are intended to act as a check on politicians seeking to borrow more in the short term, leaving future generations to deal with the consequences. And they also signal to investors and taxpayers a commitment to responsible management of public finances.

Rachel Reeves set out this Labour government’s iteration of the fiscal rules in October 2024. There are three main rules: that the current government budget should be in balance or in surplus by 2029-30; that national debt should be lower as a share of the economy in 2029-30 than in 2028-9, and that some welfare spending must be subject to a (fairly loose) cap.

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility effectively marks the Treasury’s spreadsheets to see if these fiscal rules are being met. The government is currently on track to do so.

What are the issues with fiscal rules?

While clear fiscal rules can burnish a Chancellor’s credibility and reassure the financial sector, they must be possible to meet – or the markets will punish the government, as Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss found out to their cost.

Chancellors setting reasonable rules can still “be prone to wishful thinking,” said Sean O’Grady in The Independent, permitting themselves huge deficits to be balanced in future years by “unspecified cuts in public spending”. Or they can “lock themselves into a fiscal straitjacket” like Reeves did with her party’s “commitment not to raise income tax, VAT and national insurance contributions”.

The whole approach to a fiscal policy based around “pass-fail” rules needs a “rethink”, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies in February. The “fixation” with “creating ‘headroom’” against rigid rules leads to “dysfunctional” policy-making, and “aggressive ‘gaming’ of rolling targets”. A more nuanced monitoring framework of “fiscal traffic lights” could “reduce the incentive for governments to contort policy in pursuit of a particular ‘headroom‘ number”, and allow for the delivery of “more sustainable public finances”.

What might Andy Burnham do?

During his by-election campaign, Burnham committed to Reeves’ current fiscal rules, after previous suggestions he’d made about changing them caused a bond market wobble. But, with No. 10 now in his sights, there are signs that he could try to give himself more leeway.

He has been “taking advice” from former Bank of England economist Andy Haldane and former Goldman Sachs chair Jim O’Neill, said Bloomberg. Both have been calling for looser fiscal rules for some time. O’Neill has called the constraints “petty and arbitrary”, and Haldane has said the case for changing them is “overwhelming”.

Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary who masterminded Burnham’s Makerfield campaign, has also been vocal in her criticism of Britain’s fiscal framework. In an essay she wrote for a political journal last week, she called for the Treasury’s debt target to “have a longer horizon of about 10 years”, which “would potentially create more room for investment without formally abandoning the rubric”, said Bloomberg.

How the market reacts to any change in fiscal rules would “depend as much on timing and presentation as substance” – and on “the person Burnham appoints as Chancellor”. Reeves is expected to depart with Keir Starmer, and financial markets are waiting to see if she is replaced by someone from the “soft left” of the party, like Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, or from the right, such as former health secretary Wes Streeting.

“In reality, any set of fiscal rules is only really an expression of what investors are prepared to put up with in return for lending Britain money at an affordable rate of interest,” said The Independent’s O’Grady. Financial markets remain both “the unseen authors” and “the ultimate watchdogs” of fiscal rules. And “they have sharp teeth”.