American Bitcoin Corp’s shares fell from $2.39 to $1.90 after closing in what some are calling ‘crypto winter’ Shares in Eric Trump’s crypto mining business lost more than half their value in less than 30 minutes on Tuesday. The nosedive of American Bitcoin Corp, which triggered repeated trading halts, followed the steep decline of many cryptocurrencies and crypto-linked companies into what some observers are calling the onset of a “crypto winter”. Bitcoin’s value has fallen sharply since the start of October and erased a year of large gains. Continue reading...

Robert Reich

Pew Charitable Trusts finds plastic pollution will more than double globally by 2040 unless action taken The 66m tonnes of pollution from plastic packaging that enters the global environment each year could be almost eliminated by 2040 primarily by reuse and return schemes, significant new research reveals. In the most wide-ranging analysis of the global plastic system, the Pew Charitable Trusts, in collaboration with academics including at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, said plastic, a material once called revolutionary and modern, was now putting public health, world economies and the future of the planet at risk. Continue reading...

As beef price inflation soars to 27%, customers are turning to cheaper pork alternatives, Waitrose says Pork is the “new beef”, with Britons increasingly making the money-saving meat swap for dishes such as spaghetti bolognese or T-bone steak, according to a new report. With the latest official figures showing beef price inflation running at 27%, customers are looking to buy pork cuts that you would typically associate with beef. That list runs to free-range fillets and short ribs as well as T-bone and rib-eye steaks, Waitrose says in its annual food and drink report. Continue reading...

Reform’s leaflets promised cuts to council tax, but the leader of Lancashire County Council says no such pledge was made

Writer at Large Neil Mackay says that the hate and violence on Elon Musk’s X site was having a profoundly negative effect on him. Now he’s quit,…

Farage's headaches continue...

Letters: Let’s set the record straight on the cause of our economic woes and inability to control immigration, writes Robert Gildea. Plus a letter from Rachel Foggitt

Labour announces prevention programme as well as efforts to re-engage people who have fallen out of medical care