Criminals ‘systematically’ targeting UK shops, costing £400m last year, say retailers
Criminal gangs are “systematically” targeting shops, retailers have warned, with 5.5m incidents of shoplifting detected last year, costing the industry an estimated £400m.The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has warned over “endemic” violence towards shop workers – who faced an average 36 incidents of violence involving a weapon every day last year – and said high levels of theft was causing “anxiety” among retail staff.Helen Dickinson, the chief executive of the BRC, called on police to consistently prioritise tackling retail crime and commit “dedicated resourcing” to the problem.The BRC research comes after the government put forward new legislation to back a stand-alone offence for assaulting a retail worker and to remove a £200 threshold for “low level” theft, which has a maximum six-month custodial sentence.
The measures form part of the crime and policing bill that is passing through parliament and is expected to be implemented this spring.Incidents of violence and abuse against shop workers fell by a fifth to 1,600 a day last financial year from 2,000 a day in 2023-24, with 13% of retailers rating the police response as good, or excellent, up from 9% a year before, according to the BRC’s annual survey of retailers on crime.However, the number of incidents remains the second highest on record and more than triple the 455 a day recorded before the Covid pandemic.The number of physical assaults was unchanged, at 118.Dickinson said: “Violence remains endemic.
No one should go to work fearing for their safety, and we must redouble our efforts to bring these numbers much further down once and for all.”She added that heavy investment by retailers in more security guards and gadgets such as facial recognition and security tags, as well as an improved response from the police in the past year, had cut violence and abuse against retail workers.Some experts argue that the rising cost of living, including the increasing price of basics such as baby formula and dairy products, and retailers’ efforts to cut labour costs by using technology such as self-checkouts have contributed to the problems.Joanne Thomas, the general secretary of the shop workers’ union Usdaw, said: “The drop in violence and abuse is welcome news, but both Usdaw and BRC data shows that retail workers continue to face unacceptable levels of violence and abuse simply as a result of going to work.“The 5.
5m incidents of shop theft are in no way a victimless crime, with Usdaw evidence showing that two-thirds of attacks on retail staff are being triggered by theft or armed robbery.Having to deal with repeated and persistent offences can cause issues beyond the theft itself, like anxiety.”The 5.5m incidents of recorded retail theft cannot be compared with prior years as the BRC survey has changed its methods in representing the data.It estimated the true number of incidents and cost of the crime could be much higher.
Dickinson welcomed the government’s promise to plough £7m over the next three years specifically into supporting an increase in the response to retail crime.The measures are part of a wider plan to improve local policing, with 13,000 additional neighbourhood and community support officers across England and Wales by 2029.However, she said: “Theft remains a huge issue, with an increasingly concerning link to organised criminal gangs, who continue to systematically target one store after another, stealing tens of thousands of pounds worth of goods in one go.“Retailers, the police and government must continue to work together, building on the great work done so far, focusing on consistent enforcement, better data and intelligence sharing, and targeted action against prolific offenders and organised gangs.“However, turning this into real impact requires sustained prioritisation and dedicated resourcing from police.
For the sake of the 3 million hard-working people in retail, this work must not stop.”
AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot’s pay rises to £17.7m
Pascal Soriot, the chief executive of Britain’s largest pharmaceutical company, received a 6.4% pay rise last year, taking his total remuneration to £17.7m.The AstraZeneca boss is in line for a further increase this year, potentially making him the UK’s highest-paid chief executive once again.Soriot received a salary of £1
Oil prices hit seven-month highs as tensions rise before US-Iran talks
Oil prices have reached seven-month highs, as traders reacted to heightened tensions between the US and Iran ahead of nuclear talks this week.US crude futures rose to $67.28 a barrel on Monday, while Brent crude touched its highest level since 31 July at $72.50 a barrel. Prices fell back late in the session, but were up again on Tuesday morning, approaching Monday’s highs
Meta agrees $60bn deal with chipmaker AMD despite AI bubble fears
The owner of Facebook has agreed to buy $60bn (£44.5bn) of artificial intelligence chips from the US semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices despite fears over the vast sums being spent on the AI industry.Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has clinched the five-year deal in which it will also buy 10% of the chip company.AMD signed a similar pact with OpenAI last year, which was hailed as a vote of confidence in its chips and software, significantly boosting its stock price.A recent series of chip supply agreements underscores the AI industry’s appetite for processors
Police AI chief admits crime-fighting tech will have bias but vows to tackle it
A police chief has admitted artificial intelligence used to boost crime fighting will contain bias but pledged to combat the risks.Labour wants a dramatic expansion of police use of AI within England and Wales, with police chiefs also believing it could help keep law enforcement up to date with new criminal threats.Alex Murray told the Guardian that a new national police AI centre would recognise the risks of bias and minimise them.Bias in use of AI in policing could result in instances where algorithms – often trained on historical data reflecting past human prejudices – systematically produce unfair outcomes, such as overtargeting minority communities or misidentifying individuals based on race, gender, or socioeconomic status.Murray, the director of threat leadership with the National Crime Agency, and the national lead for AI, said: “Once you’ve recognised and minimised [bias], how do you train officers to deal with outputs to ensure that it is further minimised?“If you talk about live facial recognition or predictive policing, there will be bias, and you need to get in the data scientists and the data engineers to clean the data, to train the model appropriately, and then to test it
US hockey was bathed in a golden Olympic glow. Then Donald Trump and Kash Patel stepped in | Beau Dure
Keeping politics at arm’s length for the US men’s hockey team’s gold-medal matchup with Canada was always going to be difficult.The game fell on the 46th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, when an underdog group of US college players upset the mighty Soviet Union team against the backdrop of the cold war. But the US team who took the ice on Sunday were no plucky band of amateurs making a stand for democracy against authoritarianism – a point underscored when the US and Canada met last year in the 4 Nations Face-Off. Canadian fans booed the Star-Spangled Banner and the US players, either unaware of, or unsympathetic to, Canadian desires to be neither the 51st US state nor the USA’s opponent in a scorched-earth trade war, dropped the gloves to fight their opponents as soon as the game commenced.Sunday’s game, though, was played with the utmost sportsmanship – and not just because Olympic rules punish fighting harshly
‘I felt tears welling in my eyes’: our readers’ Winter Olympics highlights
The magic, joy, tension, camaraderie and superhuman composure on show in Italy captivated readersMy favourite moment of the Winter Olympics was Johan Olav-Botn winning gold in the men’s individual biathlon, just a month after the death of his teammate and close friend, Sivert Bakken. Olav-Botn displayed superhuman composure – a prerequisite for anyone competing in biathlon – and he did not shut out the thought of his friend when under the highest pressure. Olav-Botn said that he “felt I was racing with him” on his last lap. To remain skiing and shooting, let alone standing, with that in mind is a feat of mental fortitude worthy of any Olympic gold. I felt tears welling in my eyes when he skied past the finish line and shouted: “Sivert, we did it!” Max Sundsbo, 22, LondonThe superb snow sports commentary from Ed Leigh and Tim Warwood
New datacentres risk doubling Great Britain’s electricity use, regulator says
Palantir deals are a threat to our data rights as UK citizens | Letters
Sam Altman defends AI’s energy toll by saying it also takes a lot to ‘train a human’
US farmers are rejecting multimillion-dollar datacenter bids for their land: ‘I’m not for sale’
Amazon’s cloud ‘hit by two outages caused by AI tools last year’
‘It’s survival of the fittest’: the UK kebab chain seeking an edge with robot slicers