Category: 3. Business

  • Taxpayer cash protected as crackdown on rogue landlords expands

    Taxpayer cash protected as crackdown on rogue landlords expands

    • Around 400,000 households receiving housing support to be better protected from rogue landlords thanks to an expanded crackdown scheme.
    • After a successful trial, 41 local authorities across England will now be empowered to better protect their local communities against non-compliance.
    • Comes as local authorities will be able to recover up to 24 months of rent from landlords who flout the rules – double the previous limit thanks to the Renters’ Right Act.

    The scheme – successfully trialled in three council areas – protects public money by stopping it being wasted on unsafe housing through Rent Repayment Orders.

    These legal orders clamp down on landlords who operate properties without the required licence, ignore improvement notices, or leave their houses in mouldy, dire conditions, and will now be expanded to a further 38 local authorities in England – helping to drive up living standards across the country. The scheme gives councils streamlined access to Universal Credit data which is crucial for completing Rent Repayment Order applications.

    One of the trial areas – Camden, North London – is using the data sharing to recover nearly £100,000 in housing support and make a fraud referral, taking taxpayer cash out of the pockets of rogue landlords and back into the public purse.

    Following successful results, the scheme – led by the Department for Work and Pensions and supported by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – is now being expanded. This includes areas such as Enfield, where nearly 30,000 households receiving housing support are set to be better protected for the future.

    This comes alongside expanded provisions under the Renters’ Rights Act allowing local authorities to seek Rent Repayment Orders for up to 24 months of rent – double the previous 12-month limit.

    Minister for Social Security and Disability Sir Stephen Timms said:

    Thanks to this pilot, private renters in receipt of housing support will have stronger protections against landlords who fail to meet public standards.

    No one should live in unsafe or unsuitable housing. We are giving local authorities the tools they need to deter bad housing practice, and ensuring better value for money by upholding safe standards.

    Councillor Richard Olszewksi, Leader of Camden Council, said:

    Everyone deserves a safe place to call home. With more than a third of households in Camden privately renting, it’s vital that we ensure landlords are meeting important safety and management standards for residents.

    This pilot helps us take further action against rogue landlords and regain the public money they wrongly pocketed. We’re investing this into more enforcement action and improving private sector housing conditions for everyone across the borough.

    Living in a decent, safe home is fundamental to health and work, and vulnerable renters who live in unsuitable accommodation are limited in their ability to take on work.

    Enforcing better standards will drive up living standards through incentivising better practice in the future, as well as protecting taxpayer cash.

    Justice for Tenants said:

    This pilot has shown that we can deter criminality in the private rented sector and help fund housing enforcement services by making those who break the law shoulder more of the cost.

    This pilot is a massive win for all law-abiding landlords, tenants receiving public funds, the NHS, and every taxpayer in the country.

    Additional Information:

    The 38 further areas set to benefit from the expansion in our scheme include:

    • London: Barnet, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham (LBHF), Waltham Forest, Havering, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets, Enfield.
    • North West: Wigan, Sefton.
    • Yorkshire & The Humber: Leeds, Rotherham, North Lincolnshire, Calderdale.
    • East Midlands: Gedling, Nottingham City, Erewash.
    • North East: County Durham, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Gateshead, Northumberland, Darlington.
    • South West: Plymouth, Gloucester, Bristol.
    • South East: Horsham, Portsmouth, Oxford City.
    • East of England: King’s Lynn & West Norfolk, Colchester, Dacorum, Peterborough, East Suffolk.
    • West Midlands: Shropshire, Telford, Bromsgrove and Redditch, Coventry.

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  • Japan’s Yen Debasement – Robin J Brooks

    Japan’s Yen Debasement – Robin J Brooks

    The Bank of Japan hiked its policy rate this week and yet the Yen tumbled. At first glance, that might seem puzzling, but really there is no puzzle. Japan’s longer-term interest rates – which are what drive the Yen – are much too low given massive public debt. As long as that remains true, the Yen will continue its debasement cycle.

    The chart above shows real effective exchange rates across all major countries around the world. These exchange rates measure the true strength of a currency vis-à-vis its trading partners, factoring in also what inflation is doing across countries. The gray area shows the range between the strongest and weakest real effective exchange rates. The blue line is the Turkish Lira, which for many years has been the weakest currency globally. The black line is the Japanese Yen, which is now almost as weak as the Lira.

    How can the Japanese Yen be falling when the Bank of Japan (BoJ) just hiked rates? The reason is that the Yen depends on longer-term interest rates and those are much too low. Easiest way to see this is the chart above, which shows 30-year government bond yields across advanced economies on the vertical axis and gross public debt on the horizontal axis. Germany’s 30-year yield is slightly above Japan, even though its public debt is MUCH lower. The hard truth is that Japan’s yields are still being kept artificially low and – while that’s true – the Yen will continue its debasement cycle.

    As the chart above shows, the BoJ remains a substantial buyer of government debt on a gross basis, which is how yields are being prevented from rising to their true market level. Without this buying, Japan’s longer-term yields would be MUCH higher, which would push the country into a debt crisis. So, unfortunately, given how huge Japan’s debt overhang is, the choice is between a debt crisis and currency debasement.

    There is of course a third option, which is fiscal consolidation to bring down Japan’s debt. Indeed, Japan’s government is asset-rich, which is why net debt is 130 percent of GDP and far below gross debt of 240 percent. The government could sell some of its financial assets and privatize state-owned companies. But the political consensus for this does not yet exist. Yen debasement will have to get worse before that happens.

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  • U.S. Embassy Hosts Exchange Alumni Conference

    U.S. Embassy Hosts Exchange Alumni Conference

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  • Was 2025 the year that business retreated from net zero? | Energy industry

    Was 2025 the year that business retreated from net zero? | Energy industry

    Almost a year since Donald Trump returned to the White House with a rallying cry to the fossil fuel industry to “drill baby, drill”, a backlash against net zero appears to be gathering momentum.

    More companies have retreated from, or watered down, their pledges to cut carbon emissions, instead prioritising shareholder returns over climate action.

    In the UK, the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has helped fracture the political consensus that had helped make Britain the first big economy to enshrine a commitment to cutting carbon emissions into law, in 2019. Earlier this year, the Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch, officially ditched net zero by 2050 as a Tory policy. Labour was even forced to defend its net zero policy after an attack by its former leader, Tony Blair.

    Big players in retail and automotive this week became the latest businesses to weaken pledges – a retreat that threatens devastating consequences for the climate.

    Running counter to this, many countries – notably China – have continued the march towards renewable power (which surpassed coal generation this year). Investment in clean energy, at $2tn a year, is now double that going into fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency.

    Here we look at how important industries are treating net zero.

    Cars and planes

    For a few years after the pandemic, carmakers made bold promises that they would switch their factories to electric cars within a few years. Yet that momentum for change petered out by 2024 amid disappointing growth in battery car sales. In the US, EU and UK the lobbying campaign for weaker regulations has been intense – and successful.

    A new electric Leaf car comes off the production line at the Nissan factory at Sunderland. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

    Trump has torn up US electric vehicle subsidies – costing carmakers billions of dollars – and eased emissions rules to allow them to sell more cars with polluting petrol and diesel engines. This week, Ford said it would take a $19.5bn write-down and is scrapping several EV models.

    The UK government said in April it would ease its zero-emission (ZEV) mandate. The rules still force carmakers to sell more electric cars each year, but new loopholes mean they can sell more hybrids, which combine a smaller battery with an internal combustion engine.

    And the EU this week said that 10% of carmakers’ sales could be petrol or diesel after 2035, in a significant climbdown.

    Traditional European carmakers were delighted, but manufacturers focused on electric cars said it would benefit Chinese rivals in the long term. Chris Heron, secretary general of E-Mobility Europe, a lobby group representing electric carmakers such as Tesla, Rivian and Polestar, said: “While China accelerates, Europe is hesitating, and hesitation is not a strategy.”

    If the transition is stalling for ground transport, in the air things have not even started to take off. Airbus and Boeing, the global plane-making duopoly, have both made clear that their next planes will use gas turbine engines running on kerosene.

    Airbus this year delayed plans to fly a plane using zero-emission “green” hydrogen by 2035, while supplies of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) – the solution of choice for many in aviation – remain nugatory compared with the vast size of global demand.

    Neither did UK government policy on aviation inspire confidence that net zero remained front and centre. Two London airports, Gatwick and Luton, had significant expansion plans signed off by ministers, meaning tens of thousands of additional flights a year at each.

    Meanwhile, the chancellor gave resounding backing for Heathrow expansion – despite previous official work making clear that only limited growth, allied with swift progress on decarbonisation, could make a third runway in any way compatible with 2050 targets.

    Energy

    For now, UK green energy investors remain buoyed up by Labour’s aim to create a virtually carbon-free electricity system by 2030, to stick with the net zero target and its pledge for no new North Sea drilling (with caveats).

    However, the government’s green targets were dealt a blow earlier this year when the struggling Danish renewable energy company Ørsted cancelled plans for one of the UK’s largest offshore windfarms, Hornsea 4, off the Yorkshire coast.

    RWE’s Gwynt y Mor, the world’s second-largest offshore windfarm located eight miles offshore in Liverpool Bay, off the coast of north Wales. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

    Europe’s oil majors, including BP and Shell, have retreated from their climate commitments in favour of refocusing on oil and gas production. BP’s boss, Murray Auchincloss – who was dramatically ousted this week – said the company’s optimism in the energy transition had been “misplaced” and promised the company’s disillusioned shareholders that he would “fundamentally reset” BP’s strategy after its failed attempt to go green. His successor appears unlikely to change tack. Shell set out plans to pump more oil and gas while halving its green spending.

    Banks and financial services

    A swathe of financial firms have been watering down climate commitments following Trump’s return.

    The most public sign of the U-turn has been the collapse of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) in October, after a wave of departures by US banks including JP Morgan, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as well as UK lenders Barclays and HSBC. The UN-backed programme, launched in 2021, had committed firms to achieving net zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050.

    The City of London financial district. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters

    HSBC had months earlier announced it was delaying omportant parts of its climate goals by 20 years and watering down environmental targets in a new long-term bonus plan for its chief executive, Georges Elhedery, who took over last year.

    Large investment houses such as Vanguard and BlackRock have also pulled membership from a sister group known as the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, as the sector comes under pressure from Republican politicians.

    Meanwhile, there are fears Labour could water down plans to require FTSE 100 firms and financial services to adopt “credible” climate transition plans, and disclosing their carbon footprints after City lobbying.

    Retail

    Retailers and their suppliers are among those taking a hard look at net zero ambitions amid rising costs.

    Morrisons, the supermarket chain, this week delayed its ambition for net zero by 15 years until 2050, having previously set a deadline of 2035.

    The British Retail Consortium industry body set out a roadmap to next zero by 2040 but its latest stocktake indicates the industry has only met the 2025 milestone on one measure – data on logistics. Only 38% of top suppliers have committed to meeting net zero.

    Many retailers have reduced emissions in stores – with renewable energy and technology such as LED bulbs and electric vans – but most of their emissions are generated by their suppliers.

    People on a London bus look at the annual Christmas lights on Oxford Street, London’s main shopping street. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

    Even within stores the cost and complexity of shifting from gas to low-carbon heating , including the higher price of electricity compared with gas, has held back progress.

    Local authorities

    In the public sector, local councils have often taken net zero more seriously than even central government. Bristol was the first to declare a climate emergency in 2018 – a year before the government – and more than 300 other councils followed, with 90% setting net zero targets.

    But as the political landscape has changed with the rise of Reform, some local authorities, led by those dominated by Farage’s party, are rolling back on net zero commitments. In Reform-led Lincolnshire, mayor Andrea Jenkyns has vowed to block any renewables projects in her jurisdiction (putting 12,000 jobs at risk if she succeeds), while Staffordshire county council, also Reform-controlled, has rescinded its declaration of a climate emergency.

    Reform-controlled Durham council has scrapped its heat pump and solar panel scheme for government buildings, and energy efficiency upgrades such as insulation have been ditched in Kent, which is also under Reform.

    Derbyshire county council disbanded its climate change, biodiversity and carbon reduction committee the week after Reform took power, and West Northamptonshire county council abandoned its net zero target.

    However, the Green party has nearly as many councillors as Reform (893 compared with 940) and leads 14 councils compared with Reform’s 10; in those authorities the approach has been “go faster and harder wherever possible”.

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  • Tesla CEO Elon Musk recovers $55 billion pay package in Delaware court ruling – The Washington Post

    1. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recovers $55 billion pay package in Delaware court ruling  The Washington Post
    2. Elon Musk becomes first person worth $700 billion following pay package ruling  Reuters
    3. Elon Musk’s Delaware Court Victory Makes Him The First Person Ever Worth $700 Billion  Forbes
    4. Musk wins US court appeal of $56bn Tesla pay package  Business Recorder
    5. A US court orders the return of Elon Musk’s 2018 compensation package from Tesla to $56 billion  صحيفة مال

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  • Meta targets 2026 launch for new image and video AI models

    Meta targets 2026 launch for new image and video AI models

    Meta is fully focused on developing new AI models through its superintelligence lab, now led by Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company is working on an image and video model called “Mango” and a new text-based model internally known as “Avocado.”

    The tech giant plans to launch these models in the first half of 2026. The roadmap was revealed during an internal Q&A at Meta on Thursday by Wang and Chief Product Officer Chris Cox.

    Wang stated that Meta aims to improve the text-based model’s coding abilities while exploring new “world models” that can understand visual information, reason, plan, and act without needing training on every possible scenario.

    The push comes as Meta attempts to catch up with competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

    The company’s AI division underwent significant restructuring this year, including leadership changes and aggressive recruitment of researchers from rival firms. However, retention has been an issue, with several researchers who joined Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) having already left.

    In a major blow to the division, the company’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, revealed in November that he is leaving to create his own startup.

    While usage figures for Meta’s AI assistants are high—boosted by integration into the search bars of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—the company has yet to launch a truly successful, standalone AI product.

    This raises the stakes significantly for the first projects emerging from MSL, as Meta looks to prove it can lead the next wave of AI innovation.

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  • Court restores Elon Musk’s disputed $56 billion Tesla payday – The Washington Post

    1. Court restores Elon Musk’s disputed $56 billion Tesla payday  The Washington Post
    2. Elon Musk’s Delaware Court Victory Makes Him The First Person Ever Worth $700 Billion  Forbes
    3. Musk wins US court appeal of $56bn Tesla pay package  Business Recorder
    4. Elon Musk gets his $139 billion pay package from 2018 restored after a yearslong battle with a Delaware judge  CNN
    5. Elon Musk becomes world’s first $700B billionaire after Tesla pay deal restored  TRT World

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  • Elwood, H. & Case, S. Private sector pioneers: how companies are incorporating environmentally preferable purchasing. Greener Manag. Int. 29, 70–94 (2000).

    Google Scholar 

  • World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development. GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting Standard. (WBC, 2001).

  • U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 17 CFR 210 (USSEC, 2024).

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  • Pi Network’s Holiday Surprise: Discounts, Prizes, and New Ways to Spend Pi – CryptoPotato

    Pi Network’s Holiday Surprise: Discounts, Prizes, and New Ways to Spend Pi – CryptoPotato

    1. Pi Network’s Holiday Surprise: Discounts, Prizes, and New Ways to Spend Pi  CryptoPotato
    2. Pi DEX and AMM Liquidity Pools Update, Plus Community Holiday Commerce Event!  Pi Network
    3. Pi Coin price rises after key DEX, AMM update, as a risky pattern forms  bitget.com
    4. Pi Network updates DEX and AMM features and launches holiday event  bitget.com

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  • India’s doctors sound alarm over boom in availability of weight loss jabs | India

    India’s doctors sound alarm over boom in availability of weight loss jabs | India

    India’s leading doctors have warned of the dangers of an unregulated boom in weight loss injections, and emphasised they are not a magic pill to solve the country’s growing epidemic of diabetes and obesity.

    Demand for appetite-suppressing drugs such as Mounjaro, Wegovy and Ozempic has surged since they were introduced into the Indian market this year.

    In the eight months since it was approved for sale, Mounjaro – a jab that regulates blood sugar and suppresses appetite to help with diabetes and obesity – is now India’s highest-selling drug, overtaking antibiotics.

    Its commercial success has led its producer, the drug company Eli Lilly, to begin trials on a similar drug that works on suppressing appetite, and could be released in India in pill form by next year.

    An Eli Lilly spokesperson said: “Rising urbanisation, sedentary lifestyles, and changing diets have made weight management a growing public health priority. This convergence of high unmet need, growing awareness and improving access to innovative therapies makes India a significant market for weight loss drugs.”

    The drug company Novo Nordisk is also pushing for a share of the market. It launched Ozempic this month at the competitively low price of 8,800 rupees (£73) for four jabs a month, compared with the 14,000 rupees (£115) monthly cost of Mounjaro – prices beyond the reach of the average Indian household.

    But by March next year, the drug company patents on many of these semaglutide drugs is due to expire in India. This will open the market to domestic companies who are developing their own cheaper versions, which are expected to flood the market and make prices more affordable. Experts predict the market for weight loss drugs in India will hit $150bn (£112bn) a year by the end of the decade.

    Many medical professionals and patients have hailed the wide access to these jabs as a long-overdue necessity for India, which is in the grips of a surge in obesity and diabetes that threatens to overwhelm the country’s already underfunded and overburdened healthcare system.

    According to experts, diabetes and obesity are likely to become the biggest killers in India by 2030. A recent global analysis found that India had roughly 212 million adults with diabetes, accounting for more than a quarter of the global total.

    Injection pens Wegovy on display during a news conference in Mumbai. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

    A study by the Lancet found India had about 180 million adults who were overweight or obese in 2021 – and by 2050, this could increase to 450 million, equating to almost a third of India’spredicted adult population.

    Mohit Bhandari, one of India’s leading bariatric surgeons, said he believed that the official numbers of people with diabetes and obesity in India were a “significant undercount due to poor data collection” and estimated they were more than 10% higher than government records.

    However, Bhandari is among those urging caution at the widespread and unregulated use of weight loss drugs, which he said were already being abused and mis-prescribed with possible long-term consequences.

    “The GLP-1 drugs already very important for India, they’re more than welcome,” he said. “However, there are very significant problems and caveats to this. These jabs should be properly controlled by the government.”

    Bhandari warned of the risks of allowing the drugs to be prescribed by pharmacists and GPs, many of whom are connected to certain chemist shops and benefit financially from putting patients on these jabs. The jabs are also increasingly available in gyms and beauty clinics.

    “There needs to be rigorous screening and check-ups of patients being put on these drugs,” Bhandari said. “They cause a lot of muscle loss, they can cause pancreatitis, gallstones, even blindness in some patients with certain conditions, so this regulation is crucial.”

    He called on the government to limit who can prescribe the drugs to a board of specialist doctors who would put patients on a long-term programme. “No other country will have people taking these drugs on the same scale as in India,” he said. “It means the scale of complications could get very high if there’s no strict discipline in how they are given out to patients. The drugs are good but only in safe hands.”

    Vidhi Dua, 36, has diabetes and had struggled with obesity for most of her life. She was prescribed Mounjaro and began taking it in September when her weight reached 95kg (14st).

    “I’ve tried so many things before this but I’ve never been able to get my weight down,” she said. “I’m hopeful this will work and I can finally get off insulin but it’s not easy, there are very difficult side effects on the stomach and the muscles. I think it’s worrying this has become the latest fad just for cosmetic weight loss. I don’t think people understand the impact they have on the body.”

    Anoop Misra, one of India’s most prominent endocrinologists working at Fortis hospital in Delhi, echoed the warnings. Misra said that poor dietary habits, sedentary lifestyles and environmental pollution were likely to be the key drivers of the surge in diabetes and obesity in India, which is evident in the affluent urban elite and poorer rural communities.

    Misra said he was seeing an unparalleled demand for the drugs and was now prescribing them to three to seven patients a day, after thorough counselling. He predicted that once the non-patented versions are approved for sale next year, India will become one of the world’s biggest and cheapest markets for GLP-1 drugs.

    Nonetheless, he emphasised that treating the “nationwide epidemic” of obesity and diabetes required widespread lifestyle changes and education, and weight loss jabs were only part of the solution.

    “These drugs can help, but they can not solve India’s obesity and diabetes crisis,” he said. “For most people, the foundation must remain nutrition education, healthier diets, exercise, and affordable weight loss medications when necessary.

    “A worrying trend is people seeking these drugs simply because they repeatedly default on diet and exercise. Medication cannot replace lifestyle change.”

    Misra said that there were still significant challenges ahead for India in its battle with obesity and diabetes, many of them cultural.

    “Many women tell me that if they stop preparing the calorie-dense, oil-laden dishes their husbands prefer, it leads to anger and conflict,” he said. “This shows how difficult it is to change dietary patterns in Indian households – even when families know the health risks.”

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