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Business

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Finance

Gotta buy ’em all: how Pokémon card collecting became race against scalpers

Fans trying to access latest releases are being priced out in a cut-throat market driven by crypto-like hype The runaway demand for Pokemon cards is because they are being hyped “like crypto”, according to one young fan who had spent the night queueing outside a London store to make sure he did not miss out on the latest card release. Before its 10am opening on Friday, the line outside the pop culture store Forbidden Planet in central London snaked past five others and, despite its strict sales policy, was probably “50/50” fans and resellers, said Kai, who had been there since 3am. Continue re

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Finance

Job cuts, lost customers and a £22bn debt pile: what has gone wrong at Virgin Media O2?

The company has lost 182,000 broadband and 644,000 mobile customers in two years and is operating in an increasingly competitive market competition Mike Fries may be totting up swingeing job cuts, a £22bn debt pile and the loss of hundreds of thousands of customers, but he appears to be putting a brave face on the situation. “In our minds, anyway, this is not a crisis,” the boss of the co-owner of Virgin Media O2 said this week. The UK telecoms company, which offers broadband, TV, landline and mobile services, had just announced £800m in cost savings, including potentially cutting up to a quar

The Guardian
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Finance

Trump may have lost but don’t bet Democrats can fix the economy

There’s not much they can do over the next couple of years to alleviate angry voters’ stress over prices It was the economy, again. Although Donald Trump largely ignored it, voters’ acute concerns over the rising cost of living fuelled a political upheaval for the ages that is likely to deliver the biggest swing toward Democrats since Watergate, granting them the largest House majority in nearly four decades alongside their biggest edge in the Senate since 2008. Still, having come to power promising to restore affordability, the new crop of Democrats are soon to discover that there is not much

The Guardian
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Finance

TikTok accused of helping to promote sex industry to girls

Researchers say popular performers covertly market OnlyFans content and tell followers about wealthy lifestyle TikTok is helping to promote and normalise the sex industry, allowing “sexfluencers” to post videos aimed at marketing pornographic content they have uploaded elsewhere on sites such as OnlyFans, a report indicates. After studying non-explicit content posted on TikTok over the course of a year by some of OnlyFans’ most popular young female performers, researchers said the women buried coded references to pornography in “girly lifestyle content” that showed them shopping, playing with

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Finance

Infantino caught in the web as tide turns against Trump in midterms and leaves Fifa exposed | Barney Ronay

Trump Exposed Reactor Core Syndrome very much in play after Democrat landslide – and Fifa’s president may pay a price Oh baby, clamp me in your repulsive mouthparts. Sink your unusually large and venomous fangs into my abdomen. And yes, we are doing this in the White House cabinet rooms, out there in plain sight of the watching world, just a gleaming golden ball between us. But it’s fine. Probably. Now take a sip of those sweet, sweet tiny male arachnoid entrails. An exciting new study was published over the summer into the habits of the Australian redback spider. The research made headlines f

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Finance

Nationwide launches savings account with ‘market leading’ 5.3% interest

Many experts think fixed rate on 30-month term will still look good after Bank of England raised base rate A savings account paying “market-leading” 5.3% interest was launched this week by Nationwide building society. It’s only for Nationwide members – but there are more than 19 million of them. The account was launched just a couple of days before the Bank of England pushed up the main base rate to 4%, a move that will be welcomed by many savers. Continue reading...

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Finance

Strait of Hormuz could reopen as part of Qatari plan for Iran nuclear inspections

Trump still considering new assault on Iran nuclear sites – though threats less credible after Vance remarks Qatar, the lead mediator in the US-Iran conflict, is seeking to persuade Tehran to allow UN nuclear weapons inspectors to visit Iran’s bombed nuclear sites, including those housing the country’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Iran would not be required to make any commitment that the stockpile would be removed from the country, with other options on the table, including reducing the uranium content by down-blending it. Continue reading...

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Finance

The PM’s small measures aim to help the public take back control – and we know how powerful that can be | Gaby Hinsliff

E-bikes, noisy headphones, flytipping: Burnham is weighing in on areas that make a difference to how people feel about life Imagine waking up one morning to find a humiliating video of you, filmed without your knowledge or control, plastered all over social media. Maybe you were sweating at the gym; or maybe at work, in a bar, or walking down the street, where you never realised the stranger hassling you for your number was covertly filming for his social media channel dedicated to shaming women who won’t date him. This week ministers hinted at a potential crackdown on so-called pervert glasse

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Finance

What’s the point? Ten years after the Paris treaty, are climate talks getting anywhere?

Its key temperature goal has been missed but experts say the agreement is still proving a vital moral compass for progress It was a curious way of conducting negotiations. Ahead of the 2025 climate summit, in the Amazonian port of Belém last year, the Brazilian hosts had taken off the table the issue that most had assumed would be at its heart: concrete plans from each country laying out exactly what they would be doing to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Brazil was insisting, instead, that these plans – the bedrock of the Paris agreement – were the business of national governments and not

The Guardian
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