Afghanistan: Boris Johnson to hold emergency Cobra meeting as crisis worsens August 13, 2021 Prime Minister Boris Johnson will convene an emergency Cobra meeting this afternoon over the escalating crisis in Afghanistan. The UK last night said it will deploy around 600 troops to the country to help evacuate British nationals as the Taliban continues its rapid advance. The militant group today took control of the southern city of [...]
Gatwick calls for simpler travel rules after fresh £250m loss August 13, 2021 Gatwick Airport this morning called on the government to simplify its existing travel rules as it nursed a £244.6m loss for the first half of 2021. Just 569,000 people used the Crawley airport in the first six months of the year, despite the gradual easing of travel restrictions. With 75 per cent of British adults [...]
US insurance giant Gallagher snaps up Willis reinsurance arm in $3.25bn deal August 13, 2021 US insurance giant Arthur J. Gallagher has announced it will buy the treaty reinsurance brokerage arm of Willis Towers Watson for a proposed cash consideration of $3.25bn (£2.35bn). It comes just over a fortnight after Willis agreed to terminate a $30bn (£22.9bn) merger agreement with Aon, in what would have created the world’s largest insurance [...]
Buyers look to Notting Hill as prime central sales rise 8% on pre-pandemic levels August 13, 2021 Demand for prime central properties is 31 per cent ahead of July 2019 as buyers prioritise green spaces following the pandemic. Sales in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea are up 8 per cent compared to June and July 2019, according to estate agents Winkworth. There has been a [...]
Paradise at National Theatre: Kae Tempest play a partial success August 13, 2021 Everything old is new again. The National Theatre is back with its first full-capacity show since lockdown, and like the Young Vic it has decided to run with a modern reimagining of a work from antiquity. Directed by Ian Rickson, with a script by the Ted Hughes Award-winning and Mercury Prize-nominated spoken word artist Kae [...]
Wework narrows losses amid hybrid working shift August 13, 2021 Office sharing startup Wework narrowed its losses in the second quarter as companies increasingly turn to hybrid working strategies after the pandemic. Net loss slipped to $922.5m (£666m) in the three months to the end of June, down from $1.1bn in the same quarter last year. Revenue for the period was $593m, down from $882m [...]
UK’s ‘R’ rate tightens as Covid cases plateau August 13, 2021 The UK’s Covid-19 ‘R’ rate may now be below 1.0, the UK’s health security agency said today, suggesting coronavirus cases may no longer be growing exponentially. The health authority said that the estimated range for the ‘R’ rate, which measures how many people a person with Covid is likely to infect, is now between 0.8 [...]
Sir Richard Branson sells $300m of Virgin Galactic stock August 13, 2021 Sir Richard Branson has sold $300m worth of shares in Virgin Galactic, a regulatory filing showed, with the proceeds earmarked to help support the billionaire’s other ventures. The 71-year-old, who last month flew to the edge of space in his firm’s first ever manned flight, sold 10.5m shares, or about 4.0 per cent of the [...]
Poly Network offers hacker behind biggest ever DeFi attack $500k reward August 13, 2021 Poly Network has offered a reward of $500k to a hacker who returned funds stolen in a $600m (£460m) attack earlier this week. In messages encoded in transactions on the blockchain, Poly Network thanked the hacker for returning the majority of the funds and offered them a bug bounty for identifying a flaw in the [...]
Job ads dip for first time in two months August 13, 2021 Job vacancies fell for the first time in two months suggesting that severe worker shortages that have plagued the UK labour market are starting to clear, according to new figures released today. Data from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation shows the number of active job postings dropped by 2,000 over the last week, the first [...]
