Retailers hope ‘panic weekend’ will bring Christmas cheer to UK sales

Retailers are hoping for a last-minute dash for the shops this weekend after a lacklustre run-up to Christmas, with UK households forecast to spend £3.4bn, up more than 12% on the same weekend in 2024.Almost 50m shopping trips will be made by last-minute Father Christmases over the weekend, according to research by analysts GlobalData for Vouchercodes.co.uk, the vast majority of which will be to retail destinations including high streets and shopping malls

Why is Truth Social owner Trump Media merging with a fusion energy firm?

Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, announced a merger on Wednesday with a company developing fusion energy technology.TAE Technologies, an energy company founded in 1998, will join with Trump Media via a $6bn merger that it promises will propel it to build “the world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant” next year.The move signals that the president and his family continue to look for profit-seeking ventures outside of Truth Social, which remains tiny compared with rival platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).Here is what we know about the deal so far.The media company, which has dabbled in financial services, is engineering a huge pivot and diving headfirst into nuclear energy

Elon Musk’s massive 2018 Tesla pay package restored by Delaware court

Elon Musk’s controversial $56bn pay package from Tesla was reinstated by the Delaware supreme court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the vast compensation deal as “unfathomable”.The reinstated pay package could be worth as much as $139bn today, according to the New York Times. The decision comes less than two months after Tesla shareholders approved a new plan that could be worth $1tn to Musk, already the world’s richest person, in a decade’s time. Musk’s fortune currently stands at an estimated $600bn.Rescinding the pay deal would be “inequitable”, and would leave Musk “uncompensated for his time and efforts over a period of six years”, the Delaware supreme court justices wrote, echoing arguments from Tesla board members earlier this year

‘A black hole’: families and police say tech giants delay investigations in child abuse and drug cases

Max Osterman was 18 when he connected with a drug dealer on Snapchat who used the handle skyhigh.303. Max would message him whenever he wanted to buy Percocet, and they would meet. After about a year, and just days after their last exchange, Max collapsed. The pills he ordered had been laced with fentanyl

Australia close on Ashes victory over England on day four of third Test – as it happened

Ok, that’s enough from this page for one day, I’ll see you back here when the caravan pitches up in Melbourne. Time to redirect you to the more considered content from the likes of Geoff Lemon, Barney Ronay, and first, Ali Martin.“Maybe I’m clutching at straws but surely managing to take the third Test into the fifth day constitutes a moral victory for England in the Ashes?” pleads Colum Fordham. “Ah how sweet is the taste of victory!”Jim Lines asks the question that once began as a taunt but must now be given serious sporting (if not financial) consideration. “With the anomalous exception of 2010/11, the Aussie-hosted Ashes have been embarrassingly one-sided for decades

Australia on cusp of Ashes triumph as Nathan Lyon dulls England’s glimmer of hope

There was a time when England players threw around phrases like “the more the better”, such was their confidence in the chase. But tasked with knocking off a world record 435 runs to stop Australia winning this Ashes series at the earliest opportunity, one suspects similar words were not uttered on Saturday.Instead, having picked up six cheap wickets first thing to set up this unlikely five-session challenge, it was first about seeing where they could get to by stumps. The upshot was 206 for six from 63 overs which, while progress of sorts on this malfunctioning tour, means Australia will go into the final day of this third Test within touching distance of an unassailable 3-0 lead.Still, Pat Cummins and his men seem like a patient bunch