Investment firm London Capital & Finance (LCF), whose failure in 2019 triggered one of Britain’s biggest retail investment scandals, operated as a Ponzi scheme, a London judge ruled on Thursday. The high court said former chief executive Michael Thomson and four others had knowingly participated in the fraud, misled investors and misappropriated assets in a…
Rod Stewart has said he is considering selling his five sports cars because there are so many potholes on the roads near his home. The singer’s love of sports cars has endured for more than half a century – and he now owns five. But now Stewart says he may sell them because the potholes…
The owner of Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports is being sold in a deal worth more than £1.5bn. The Spanish construction company Ferrovial and its partner Macquarie have agreed to offload the AGS Airports joint venture to AviAlliance, a German-headquartered airport operator. As part of the deal, which is expected to complete early next year,…
Chinese tech company Tencent is a gaming giant and the parent company of WeChat, the ubiquitous social messaging app in China. Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images Chinese social media and gaming company Tencent on Wednesday reported better-than-expected profit in the third quarter, spurred by growth in games, advertising and cloud services.…
Heston Blumenthal has said he fears that watching the high pressure depictions of kitchen life in the TV series The Bear could trigger a bipolar episode. The restaurateur and TV chef announced he was diagnosed with the mental health condition earlier this year, after previously receiving a positive assessment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)…
A teenager is in critical condition in a British Columbia children’s hospital, in what is believed to be Canada’s first human case of bird flu. “This was a healthy teenager prior to this, so no underlying conditions,” said the provincial health officer Bonnie Henry in a news conference on Tuesday. “It just reminds us that…
The heatwave baking northern Australia with temperatures of up to 43C is expected to continue into next week, with southern parts of the country facing warm weather and possible severe storms. A severe heatwave warning was current for much of inland Queensland, with highs of 43C at Longreach, Boulia and Richmond and 41C in Mount…
Firefighters in southern California working to contain a wildfire that has destroyed more than 130 structures in two days are hoping the current weather forecast bears out and that fierce wind gusts that have been fanning flames ease on Friday. The Mountain fire that started on Wednesday morning in Ventura county had grown to 20,485…
An “anticyclonic gloom” has been blamed for cloudy weather across parts of England, with one village receiving absolutely no sunshine since October. Odiham, in Hampshire, has reportedly recorded zero minutes of sunshine since October, but forecasters are predicting that the fog, drizzle and low cloud should start clearing from Sunday. The phenomenon, dubbed an “anticyclonic…
A New South Wales real estate agent who exposed the personal details of a tenant who left a bad Google review broke privacy laws, Australia’s information commission has found. After the tenant, who has not been named for legal reasons, gave Noonan Real Estate Agency a one-star review in 2021, the agency responded by disclosing…
