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Chancellor's claim to be helping trade met with disbelief in England and Wales amid soaring staff costs, energy bills and other overheadsEmma Harrison has begun to wonder how her business will survive in recent weeks. The managing director of the Three Hills pub in Bartlow, Cambridgeshire, is struggling to see how she will make a profit after examining the impact of her rising tax bill.“I'm really terrified about this coming year,” Harrison says. “We're a well-run pub, we've won lots of awards, but this is going to be really hard.” Continue reading......

Demands for oversight grow after inquiry calls sector an 'unregulated free for all' and families seek stronger safeguardsMinisters are expected to back calls to regulate England's funeral industry for the first time, after a series of scandals over the handling of remains.Bereaved families have called for a new investigatory body and rules governing professional qualifications after an official inquiry declared the sector an “unregulated free for all”. Continue reading......

Thousands of Jamaican workers who come to the US on an H-2A visa say they aren't sure if they'll be able to return from one year to the nextFarm worker Owen Salmon has picked apples in upstate New York for almost a decade, some 1,500 miles (2,400km) from home. In the midst of harvest season this year, Hurricane Melissa, a record-breaking category 5 hurricane, made landfall in Jamaica.“It was terrifying,” said Salmon, whose wife and two children were at home near Black River, a town on the country's south-western coast. “For days, I couldn't hear from them. When I finally did, I heard my roof was completely gone. My wife and kids had to run for their lives, but thank God they're alive.” Continue reading......

Launch of third generation of Leaf follows investment of more than £450m into model, including £300m direct to UKNissan has started the production of its latest electric car in Sunderland, a crucial step in the UK automotive industry's transition away from petrol and diesel.The Japanese manufacturer will launch the third generation of the Leaf on Tuesday, which was the first mass-market battery electric car to be built in the UK. Nissan has made 282,704 Leaf models at the north-east England plant so far. Continue reading......

Government says arrangement will bring in extra £400m on top of more than £15bn of existing annual trade with KoreaThe UK has signed a new trade deal with South Korea designed to increase exports of cars, Scottish salmon and Guinness canned in Britain.Keir Starmer described the deal, which replaces an existing agreement, as “a huge win for British business and working people”. It follows UK deals with India and the US, and the free trade agreement with the EU clinched this year. Continue reading......

Company to scrap several electric models and focus on gas and hybrid as US president pulls support for EVsFord said on Monday it will take a $19.5bn writedown and is killing several electric-vehicle models, in the most dramatic example yet of the auto industry's retreat from battery-powered models in response to the Trump administration's policies and weakening EV demand.Ford, based in Dearborn, Michigan, said it will stop making the F-150 Lightning in its electric vehicle form, but will pivot to producing an extended-range electric model, a version of a hybrid vehicle called an Erev, which uses a gas-powered generator to recharge the battery. Continue reading......

Maduro regime accuses Caribbean nation of participating in 'theft of Venezuelan oil' as tensions mount in regionVenezuela has accused the government of Trinidad and Tobago of taking part in the US seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela's coast last week, as Donald Trump's four-month pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro continues to reverberate across the region.In a statement on Monday, the Maduro regime accused Trinidad and Tobago of participating in “the theft of Venezuelan oil, committed by the US administration on 10 December with the assault on a vessel transporting this strategic Venezuelan product”. Continue reading......

Pledge to invest billions in UK paused, with Washington citing lack of progress on trade barriers across pondThe US has paused its promised multi-billion-pound investment into British tech over trade disagreements, marking a serious setback in US-UK relations.The £31bn “tech prosperity deal”, hailed by Keir Starmer as “a generational stepchange in our relationship with the US” when it was announced during Donald Trump's state visit, has been put on ice by Washington. Continue reading......

There is a hint of feudalism about the way the unelected body has treated those who love the track like its serfsIt has taken the better part of a decade but the Jockey Club, the private, self-appointed body that has wielded immense power in racing for nearly 300 years, seems poised to realise its long-standing ambition to see one of the sport's most historic racecourses bulldozed for housing. If the King George VI Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day is on your racing bucket list, next week's renewal might be one of the final chances to tick it off.That, sadly, is the only conclusion to be drawn from what was almost a throwaway comment by Jim Mullen, the Jockey Club's new chief executive, to the Racing Post's industry editor, Bill Barber, over the weekend. Continue reading......

Britain's fifth-biggest grocers postpones goal by 15 years, to 2050, saying new ambitions cover whole supply chainMorrisons has become the first UK supermarket chain to postpone its net zero carbon emission targets, delaying them by 15 years to 2050.Britain's fifth-biggest grocer said its new targets would cover the entire supply chain, as well as Morrisons stores, including emissions from agriculture and land-use sources. Continue reading......

Bus and train initiative comes as government struggles to survive corruption and sexual harassment allegationsSpain's socialist-led government is to launch a national public transport pass that will allow people to travel anywhere in the country by bus or train for a flat monthly fee of €60 (£52.70).The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, unveiled the initiative on Monday, saying it would come into effect in the second half of January and was intended “to change the way Spaniards understand and use public transport for ever”. Continue reading......

Many critical details have been deliberately left to be resolved in secondary legislation – including the introduction of guaranteed hours contractsBusiness groups urge Tory peers to stop blocking Labour's workers' rights billWill the employment rights bill be passed by Christmas? Well, the chances are slightly improved after six leading business groups published a temperature-lowering letter on Monday that said parliament, which in this instance means the blockers in the House of Lords, should get on with it.The employers, note, are still unhappy about the issue that triggered the most recent revolt by Conservative peers and a few cross-benchers: the removal of a cap on compensation claims for unfair dismissal. But they're more worried that further delays would jeopardise their negotiating victory last month, namely the government's U-turn on rights guaranteeing workers protection against unfair dismissal from day one of employment. A six-month qualifying period was adopted instead, with the blessi...

An estimated 6,000 nurses left in 2024 for roles in countries including the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Three nurses explain what made them decide to leave or stayWhen Bright Ansah, a nursing officer in Accra, goes searching for colleagues who have failed to show up for a shift at the overstretched hospital where he works, he knows where to look. “When you see 'In God we trust' on their WhatsApp status, that's when you know they're already in the US,” he says.The motto of the US has been co-opted by Ghanaian medical professionals who are leaving the west African nation in droves. Many believe their faith has finally been rewarded when, after years of planning, they reach the promised land of the well-equipped, well-resourced hospitals of the US. Continue reading......

Revolution is still being sought three decades after the landmark ruling with a Dutch lawyer calling for a collective bargaining agreement for playersOn 15 December 1995, judges at the European court of justice (CJEU) took two minutes to bring an end to a legal process that had lasted five years. The Bosman rule, as it was known, was to stand, the judges said. European football clubs were no longer allowed to demand transfer fees for players whose contracts had expired, with governing bodies stopped from capping the number of Europeans in any team. The man whose dogged legal pursuit had brought about these changes, Jean‑Marc Bosman, emerged from a crowd of cameras and well‑wishers to give his verdict. “I have got to the top of the mountain and I am now very tired,” he said.For Bosman himself, it was downhill from there. “In the past I got a lot of promises but never received anything,” he told the Observer in 2015, claiming he “earned nothing” from the changes that ensued. He went bankrupt...

Reflecting on chaos of early pandemic, former chancellor said it was 'acutely stressful' to see rising interest bill on government bondsRishi Sunak was concerned about the UK's ability to fund itself in March 2020 after the government announced rescue measures costing tens of billions of pounds to prevent mass redundancies, the Covid-19 pandemic inquiry has heard.The former prime minister, who was chancellor when the first UK lockdown was announced, said he feared foreign investors had become more concerned about Britain's ability to pay its way than other countries in a similar situation. Continue reading......

How do you sell turkey and all the luxury trimmings when the world's in chaos and the cost of living crisis continues? It's no surprise that this year's adverts are a complicated lotThere can't be anyone skirting closer to burnout, more deserving of our sympathy and complicated respect, than the people who conceive Christmas ads. The goal is straightforward: make people feel good about Christmas so that they spend more than they otherwise might. Amp up the love and affection of the season; play down the labour (emotional and otherwise); make everyone feel a bit hungrier and thirstier – job done.This must be at least the fifth year, though, that the world looks so perilous, so fraught and vexed, so sad and chaotic, that what's an honest supermarket to do? The retailers weathered the first Covid Christmas, when demand for nut multipacks and pigs in blankets was poignantly low; then they weathered Christmas 2021, when restrictions came back so unexpectedly that it wasn't unusual for a household to ha...

Outside the lavish event, workers called out the 'greed' in the industry that has left games 'being sold for parts to make a few people a lot of money'It's the night of the 2025 Game Awards, a major industry event where the best games of the year are crowned and major publishers reveal forthcoming projects. In the shadow of the Peacock theater in Los Angeles and next to a giant, demonic statue promoting new game Divinity, which would be announced on stage later that evening, stands a collection of people in bright red shirts. Many are holding signs: a tombstone honouring the “death” of The Game Awards' Future Class talent development programme; a bold, black-and-red graphic that reads “We're Done Playing”; and “wanted” posters for Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick and Microsoft CEO Phil Spencer. This is a protest.The protesters, who were almost denied entry to the public space outside the Peacock theater (“they knew we were coming,” one jokes), are from United Videogame Worke...

Approval expected next year; US investors interested27% of Prem's commercial rights were sold to CVC in 2019Prem Rugby is planning to launch a tender process to secure external investment in the competition after it has received formal approval from the Rugby Football Union to become a closed franchise league, which it expects will happen next year.The English top division engaged the investment bank Raine Group and the accountancy firm Deloitte to conduct a review of the sport's finances and potential funding options this year, and is preparing to go to market in the second quarter of 2026. Continue reading......

Jaume Collboni and 16 other city leaders urge EU to unleash billions in funding as it prepares to tackle crisisThe Guardian view on Europe's housing crisis: time for the EU to get radicalThe soaring cost of housing is akin to a “new pandemic” sweeping across Europe, the mayor of Barcelona has said, as he and 16 other city leaders urged the EU to respond to the crisis by unleashing billions in funding for the hardest-hit areas.The EU is expected to present its first-ever housing plan on Tuesday, after consultations with experts, stakeholders and the public. For months, those on the frontlines of the crisis have warned the problem is too big to ignore. Continue reading......

Some potential first-time buyer groups 'could be better served', regulator says in reviewFreelancers and gig economy workers could enjoy more flexibility over how and when they pay their mortgage under plans designed to help more people get on the property ladder.A shake-up of the rules so people whose income is “variable or irregular” could be freed up from having to make monthly mortgage payments is one of a number of changes being considered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that could make it easier for millions of “underserved” UK consumers to get a home loan. Continue reading......