Paul Thwaite seals largest payout for NatWest CEO since disgraced Fred Goodwin in 2006

The NatWest boss, Paul Thwaite, has clinched the largest payout for a chief executive of the banking group since his disgraced predecessor Fred Goodwin took home £7.7m in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis.Thwaite, who guided the once-bailed-out lender to full private ownership last year, was given a £6.6m pay package for 2025, with the boardroom lifting his overall pay by a third.That sum surpassed the £5

Tony Blair’s oil lobbying is a misleading rehash of fossil fuel industry spin

Ex-PM’s thinktank urges more drilling and fewer renewables, ignoring evidence that clean energy is cheaper and better for billsA thinktank with close ties to Saudi Arabia and substantial funding from a Donald Trump ally needs to present a particularly robust analysis to earn the right to be listened to on the climate crisis. On that measure, Tony Blair’s latest report fails on almost every point.The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) received money from the Saudi government, has advised the United Arab Emirates petrostate, and counts as a main donor Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, friend of Trump and advocate of AI.The latest TBI report calls for an expansion of oil and gas production in the North Sea, despite the additional greenhouse gas emissions this would generate, and abandoning the UK government’s target to largely decarbonise the electricity sector by 2030, arguing that doing so is necessary to power AI datacentres.The report claims renewable energy is too expensive

Share values of property services firms tumble over fears of AI disruption

Shares in commercial property services companies have tumbled, in the latest sell-off driven by fears over disruption from artificial intelligence.After steep declines on Wall Street, European stocks in the sector were hit on Thursday.The estate agent Savills’ shares fell 7.5% in London, while the serviced office provider International Workplace Group, which owns the Regus brand, lost 9%.The UK’s two biggest property developers, British Land and Landsec, dropped 2

Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in January

Elon Musk’s longtime fixation on a white racial majority is intensifying. The richest man in the world posted about how the white race was under threat, made allusions to race science or promoted anti-immigrant conspiracy content on 26 out of 31 days in January, according to the Guardian’s analysis of his social media output. The posts, made on his platform X, reflect a renewed embrace of what extremism experts describe as white supremacist material.“Whites are a rapidly dying minority,” Musk said on 22 January, a short time before taking the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, while reposting an Irish anti-immigrant influencer’s video about demographic change.Musk’s posts included him repeatedly claiming white people face systemic discrimination, endorsing the conspiracy that there is an ongoing genocide against white people in countries around the world and promoting a claim that white people would be “slaughtered” by non-whites if they become a demographic minority

MLR leaders hail players union deal as US league heads for six-team season

Leaders on both sides of the ball hailed a new collective bargaining agreement between Major League Rugby and its players, the union chief welcoming “a new standard” for US professional men’s rugby after a traumatic off-season in which four teams exited MLR and two merged, leaving just six on the field.“We are happy with where the talks landed,” United States Rugby Players Association executive director Chris Mattina, a former US Eagles wing, told the Guardian.“It was a really good-faith negotiation with the league. We think this really sets a new standard. It increases the protections for players, but also stabilizes the league and sets it up for success

From the foul line to the fault line: Deni Avdija, Israel and the collapse of online nuance

The danger around the Portland star is that in making crucial debates into arguments about basketball, we lose sight of what is really importantThere’s a weird, psychological tension around basketball fouls. Not unlike a trial. A single rubbered heartbeat thumps in our collective throats. In basketball litigation, the verdict is televised and delivered in public by the referee’s whistle. Deni Avdija faced more trials than a career criminal in early January, when he scored 41 points in the Portland Trail Blazers’ win over the Houston Rockets