Author: admin

  • Italy Seizes €1.3 Billion Campari Shares in Tax-Fraud Probe

    Italy Seizes €1.3 Billion Campari Shares in Tax-Fraud Probe

    Italian prosecutors ordered the seizure of around €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) in shares from the holding company that controls the drinks maker Davide Campari-Milano NV, as part of an alleged tax-fraud probe, according to a statement late Friday.

    The order from Monza’s prosecutor office, carried out by the finance police, targets alleged unpaid taxes on assets moved abroad.

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  • Rockstar Games accused of union busting in the UK

    Rockstar Games accused of union busting in the UK

    Rockstar Games, developer of Grand Theft Auto VI, has been accused of deliberately laying off employees who were trying to unionize, Bloomberg reports. The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) claims over 30 employees who were…

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  • Canva’s Affinity Combines Photo, Designer, and Publisher into One Free App

    Canva’s Affinity Combines Photo, Designer, and Publisher into One Free App

    The market for high-end graphic design software just got weirder.

    Several years ago, I wrote “Consider Switching from Creative Cloud to Affinity V2” (5 December 2022) to encourage those who were paying significant monthly…

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  • Wrexham 3-2 Coventry (Oct 31, 2025) Game Analysis

    Wrexham 3-2 Coventry (Oct 31, 2025) Game Analysis

    Kieffer Moore downed Coventry with a perfect second-half hat trick as Wrexham won 3-2 to inflict a first league defeat on the Championship leaders.

    Coventry, the only unbeaten side in the EFL, were closing in on a club-record seventh straight…

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  • Berlin Airport Briefly Closed in Latest Drone Disruption

    Berlin Airport Briefly Closed in Latest Drone Disruption

    Berlin’s main airport briefly suspended flights late Friday after drone sightings, the latest in a string of such incidents across Europe.

    Multiple flights into Berlin Brandenburg Airport were diverted to other airports in Germany, starting at about 9 p.m. local time according to the airport’s website. A British Airways plane on approach into the airport was redirected to Dresden, while an EasyJet flight from Paris was sent to Hanover.

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  • Video game Halloween costume report

    Video game Halloween costume report

    I had to take a break from writing this newsletter mid-day to rush to my kids’ K-5 school and watch them and their classmates march in a Halloween costume parade.

    He dressed in a Juan Soto Mets uniform. She’s a Minion.

    They’re in third grade…

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  • Tchéky Karyo, star of Nikita and The Missing, dies at 72

    Tchéky Karyo, star of Nikita and The Missing, dies at 72

    French actor Tchéky Karyo, who had a starring role in the film Nikita and the TV series The Missing, has died aged 72.

    Karyo, who was born in Turkey but grew up in Paris, died of a cancer on Friday, AFP news agency reported.

    Known largely for…

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  • US retailers are running out of pennies

    US retailers are running out of pennies

    US businesses are literally going penniless.

    Since the Trump administration ended minting the one-cent coins earlier this year, those still in circulation are becoming harder to find. Many stores are now rounding their cash sales down to the nearest five cents, saying there are no federal guidelines on how to proceed.

    “That adds up really quickly,” said Dylan Jeon, senior director of government relations with the National Retail Federation

    In February, President Donald Trump said producing the coin was wasteful and too expensive and called on social media to “rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time”.

    The US Mint officially stopped making pennies in May. The Treasury Department estimated shortages would start in early 2026, but they actually came much sooner. Banks can’t get pennies from the federal government, so businesses can’t get them from the banks.

    “We first heard about the issue in late August, early September,” Mr Jeon said. “It’s really impacting any business that deals with cash payments.”

    Now store clerks don’t know what to do when their tills are bare and someone needs change in pennies from a cash purchase.

    The temporary solution for many, Mr Jeon said, is rounding the price of the sale up or down to the nearest five cents so the customer can use a nickel, the next lowest tender in the US.

    But some cities, including New York, require retailers to give exact change and others don’t allow cash payments to differ from card payments for the same item, Mr Jeon said.

    To avoid lawsuits and customer complaints, many retailers have chosen to just round down.

    “You’re talking about losing up to four cents for every cash transaction across multiple stores across the country,” he said. “It’s unsustainable.”

    Many stores are now urging customers to pay in exact change. Others are hosting promotions for customers to bring in extra pennies they have at home.

    Convenience stores are some of the hardest hit by the shortage, said Jeff Lenard, a spokesperson for the National Association of Convenience Stores.

    Convenience giant Kwik Trip has announced it is rounding down to the nickel, which it says will cost it up to $3m (£2.3m) this year.

    American coins have been discontinued before, including the half-cent, three-cent and 20-cent pieces that were retired in the 1800s, Mr Lenard said. It’s been many years, though, since a staple like the penny – which entered ciruclation in 1793 – has ceased production.

    “People don’t want the penny until they can’t get it back in change,” he said.

    It costs nearly four cents to make a penny.

    But keeping the zinc and copper coins in circulation will help lower-income Americans who primarily pay in cash, said Mark Weller, executive director of Americans for Common Cents.

    “These are people that don’t have the access to checking accounts and charge cards and banking services,” he said. “You hurting lower-income groups when you start rounding transactions.”

    He also thinks the government savings from not producing pennies will be offset by the need for more nickels, which are worth five cents but cost nearly 14 cents to make.

    People watching the penny world believe there needs to be federal guidance for both businesses and shoppers on rounding, how to carry out transactions during the shortage, and generally what to do with the coins.

    “There will always be pennies out there, it’s just such a low-utilisation coin,” said Mr Jeon. “People forget about them in their pockets, they lose them in their couch, they’re sitting in jars. Those are coins that aren’t making it into circulation.”

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  • Pfizer sues Metsera, Novo Nordisk over rival obesity drug bid

    Pfizer sues Metsera, Novo Nordisk over rival obesity drug bid

    Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

    Pfizer said on Friday it had filed a lawsuit against Metsera and Novo Nordisk saying Metsera breached its merger agreement obligations in declaring the Danish drugmaker’s $8.5 billion bid for the U.S. obesity drug developer to be a superior offer.

    Pfizer asked the Delaware court where it filed the lawsuit to issue a temporary restraining order to block Metsera from terminating the agreement. The lawsuit was not immediately available in the court’s electronic filing system.

    Metsera has given Pfizer until Tuesday to raise its offer.

    Pfizer said its suit says that Novo’s bid is an illegal attempt by a dominant company in the market to bypass antitrust scrutiny and carries significant regulatory risks.

    The legal action comes as Pfizer received early antitrust clearance for its proposed $7.3 billion acquisition of Metsera from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. It granted early termination of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, more than a week ahead of the November 7 deadline.

    Pfizer, which does not currently sell a weight-loss drug, is trying to enter the fast-growing obesity market projected to reach $150 billion by the early 2030s.

    The company has faced setbacks in developing its own treatments and is looking to offset falling COVID-related revenue and looming patent expirations.

    Novo Nordisk, maker of Wegovy and Ozempic, is seeking to regain ground lost to Eli Lilly, whose drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro have shown stronger clinical results.

    Metsera’s pipeline includes experimental GLP-1 and amylin-based therapies that analysts say could generate $5 billion in peak sales.

    Metsera and Novo did not immediately reply to Reuters’ requests for comment.

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  • SpaceX launches 100th successful Starlink mission of 2025

    SpaceX launches 100th successful Starlink mission of 2025

    Oct. 31 (UPI) — A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried a payload of 28 Starlink satellites into space before decoupling and returning to Earth following a successful launch on Friday afternoon.

    The launch occurred at 1:41 p.m. PDT from the…

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