The US Federal Trade Commission has sued Amazon, accusing it of duping customers into signing up for its Prime service without their consent and “sabotaging” efforts to undo their subscriptions. The FTC said in the heavily redacted complaint filed on Wednesday that Amazon had used “manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as ‘dark patterns’
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Hello, and welcome to Working It. I have been working from one of those cool blended co-working/hotel spaces — this one was the newly opened Birch, at the southern edge of London. (Locals may remember it as the Selsdon Park Hotel — where my parents went for dinner dances, back in the day.) It’s a
Halfway through watching Grandpa Was An Emperor, a fascinating recent documentary about Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia, I was thrown by a minor, but completely unexpected, plot twist. Not long before he was killed in a coup, one of the film’s key protagonists, Ethiopia’s agriculture minister Kassa Wolde Mariam, had appeared on the
European stocks fell on Wednesday, as traders awaited the US Federal Reserve chair’s congressional testimony, while higher than expected UK inflation reinforced views that the Bank of England would extend its tightening campaign for longer. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 dropped 0.2 per cent, following two successive days of falls, while France’s Cac 40 dropped 0.2
China has responded with outrage after US president Joe Biden called his counterpart Xi Jinping a “dictator” in a row that threatens the nascent attempt to stabilise the deteriorating relationship between the powers. Biden said at a campaign fundraising event on Tuesday that Xi had not known about an alleged spy balloon that flew over
Annual rental prices rose 5 per cent in May, the highest rate for seven years, putting UK renters under further financial strain as the cost of living crisis deepens, new data showed. Rent rises were most acute in London where they grew 5.1 per cent, according to the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday, with
UK inflation remained stuck at 8.7 per cent in May, higher than expectations of a drop to 8.4 per cent, marking the fourth month in a row that price rises have exceeded forecasts. With the cost of a broad range of goods and services rising sharply, the figures will reinforce expectations of multiple interest rate
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt on Wednesday promised to squeeze “every last drop of high inflation out of the economy”, but that arduous task could put a serious dent in the Conservative party’s strategy for a 2024 general election. Hunt is under pressure from Tory MPs to deliver significant tax cuts in next year’s spring Budget, in
The inflation figures the UK reported on Wednesday were not just objectively bad, with prices rising just as fast as a month before. They also come at a supremely sensitive time, with the Bank of England meeting to decide interest rates and mortgage costs an issue of nationwide concern. If the central bank is true
UK debt has risen above 100 per cent of gross domestic product for the first time since 1961 after public sector borrowing doubled in May. The Office for National Statistics on Wednesday said net government debt hit 100.1 per cent of GDP last month, the first time the figure exceeded 100 per cent since March
The writer is a science commentator Egg plus sperm equals embryo. It is hard to think of a more basic rule in biology. Still, rethink it we must. Last week, at a stem cell conference in Massachusetts, researchers revealed they had created “synthetic” human embryos using neither eggs nor sperm. These structures, more correctly called
Central banking is as much an art as it is a science. It involves not only making economic judgments but also communicating them effectively — a job that the big central banks have struggled to get right in recent years. In an admission of its own imperfect record, the Bank of England last week announced
Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. For decades, Crispin Odey sat atop the UK’s hedge fund scene. Lauded by many in financial circles as a charismatic maverick and known for taking high-risk bets on the market, he seemed untouchable. Until two weeks
Britain’s beleaguered mortgage borrowers are likely to escape the scale of home repossessions suffered in previous economic crises because of higher levels of housing equity and regulatory pressure on lenders, say market experts. With 1.4mn households set to roll off their fixed rate mortgages over the course of 2023 — most taken out two or
When Matthew Chamberlain woke up at 5.30am on March 8 2022 and glanced at metals prices on his phone, he immediately knew something was wrong. As the chief executive of the London Metal Exchange scrolled through his mobile — still bleary after dealing with emails until nearly 11pm the night before — he became “alarmed”
The NHS in England will struggle to hit its targets to improve strained emergency services by next year, an independent spending watchdog has concluded, against a backdrop of declining patient approval. The state of the NHS will be a key issue at the general election expected next year and prime minister Rishi Sunak is anxious
The NHS in England will struggle to hit its targets to improve strained emergency services by next year, an independent spending watchdog has concluded. In a report published on Wednesday, the National Audit Office said that, although staff numbers and funding had increased, the health service had “not been able to secure the full benefits”
Corporate America is feeling the pinch from the slowdown in Wall Street’s $1.4tn market for junk-rated loans, with a growing list of companies forced either to pay more or abandon borrowing plans. Borrowers have been hit by shifts in the market for collateralised loan obligations, or CLOs, the investment vehicles that own roughly two-thirds of
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is to call in banks to address what one Tory MP called a “mortgage bomb that is about to go off”, but he ruled out giving fiscal support to households struggling with the rising cost of mortgages. Hunt said on Tuesday he wanted to help the Bank of England “strangle” inflation and
Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to criminal tax violations and reached a deal with prosecutors over a separate firearm offence, just days after his father Joe Biden held the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign. According to a court document filed on Tuesday in Delaware federal court, Hunter Biden was charged with
Last week, I discussed the dire financial situation of the poorest countries. This week’s “summit for a new global financing pact” in Paris offers an opportunity to deal with this challenge. It also offers a chance of making the investments needed for a transition to a low-emissions economy. This is the central point of a