Sainsbury’s Britain’s second largest food retailer after Tesco forecasted flat profit this year as it pledged to sustain its competitive edge if a price war emerges. Last month, Asda, the number three player, flagged the start of a potential price war, saying it would take a hit to profits to finance price cuts aimed at reversing a slide in its market share. Tesco responded last week, forecasting 2025/26 adjusted operating profit in a range of up to 500 million pounds lower than analysts’ consensus expectations prior to its update. It said it was sending a message that it has the…
Author: Fatimah Idera
London risks becoming an “ageing city” as Labour hammers landlords with red tape, experts have warned. Average private rents in London jumped by 9.1pc to £2,243 per month in April, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The typical house price in the capital stands at £556,000, according to the latest UK House Price Index. Rents have been surging since the pandemic, with a tax raid on landlords and Angela Rayner’s looming Renters’ Rights Billfuelling the problem. Labour’s legislation is set to ban “no fault” evictions and will make it harder to raise rents, prompting…
President Donald Trump of the United States of America will walk away from trying to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal within days unless there are clear signs that a deal can be done, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday. “We’re not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end. So we need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks,” Rubio said in Paris after meeting European and Ukrainian leaders. “The president feels very strongly about that.…
Google illegally dominated two markets for online advertising technology, a federal judge said on Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech titan in an antitrust case brought by the U.S. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, ruled that Google unlawfully monopolised markets for publishers and servers and the market for exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers. Antitrust enforcers failed to show the company had a monopoly in advertising ad networks, she wrote. The ruling could allow prosecutors to argue for a breakup of Google’s advertising products. The U.S. Department of Justice has said that Google should have…
The Donald Trump administration could shut down nearly 30 United States embassies and consulates across the world, including some in Africa, as part of its reforms to cut costs and reduce the country’s diplomatic foreign presence. A CNN report on Wednesday reveals, citing an internal US State Department document, that the embassies in the Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Lesotho, and South Sudan are among those proposed for closure, the Punch had reported. A US consulate in South Africa may also be shut down. “The document recommends closing 10 embassies and 17 consulates. Many of the posts are in…
Israel will not allow any humanitarian aid to enter Gaza to pressure Hamas, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday as negotiations around an Israeli proposal for a Gaza ceasefire continued. Israel has said it will keep blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, as it vowed to force Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages from the 7 October attacks. Aid supplies, including food, fuel, water and medicine, have been blocked by Israel from entering Gaza since 2 March, more than two weeks before the collapse of the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group, with a return to…
An ocean world teeming with alien life may exist 124 light years away from Earth, a study by Cambridge University has hinted. The exoplanet K2-18b, which exists in the constellation Leo, appears to have an atmosphere containing huge quantities of dimethyl sulfide, a chemical only produced by living organisms such as marine phytoplankton. Quantities of the chemical are so great that they represent 20 times the biological activity of Earth. The molecule vanishes fairly quickly, suggesting something is continuing to produce it. Astrophysicists at Cambridge University have described the findings as a “huge, transformational moment” and the strongest hint yet…
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Harvard University will lose its ability to enrol foreign students if it does not meet demands from the Trump administration to share information on some visa holders, marking the government’s latest escalation against the educational institution. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also announced on Wednesday the termination of two DHS grants totalling more than $2.7 million to Harvard. Noem said she wrote a letter to Harvard demanding records on what she called the “illegal and violent activities” of Harvard’s foreign student visa holders by April 30. “And if Harvard cannot verify…
The United States of America President Donald Trump has threatened to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status on Tuesday. He said the university should apologize, a day after it rejected what it called unlawful demands to overhaul academic programs or lose federal grants. Beginning with Columbia University, the Trump administration has rebuked universities across the country over their handling of the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that roiled campuses last year following the 2023 Hamas-led attack inside Israel and the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza. Trump has called the protests anti-American and anti-Semitic, accused universities of peddling Marxism and radical left…
Australian politicians received about a$245,000 ($147,000) in match tickets from major sporting leagues over two years by the country’s most popular sporting leagues as part of a lobbying campaign against a proposed ban on advertising of online gambling, according to Reuters calculations based on government documents. Lobbying by the gambling industry against the ban has been reported previously in the media but the calculation of the total value of tickets declared by politicians in the parliamentary gift register shows the role played by sporting bodies and provides a dollar amount for the first time. Labour Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had…
