US economy added fewer jobs than forecast in December, but January interest rate cut very unlikely – as it happened

Newsflash: The US economy added fewer jobs than expected last month.America’s non-farm payroll rose by 50,000 in December, missing forecasts of a 60,000 rise.Employment continued to trend up in food services and drinking places, health care, and social assistance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, while retail trade lost jobs.That shows a hiring slowdown, compared with the previous month; the BLS now estimates that 56,000 jobs were created in November, 8,000 fewer than its first estimate of 64,000.Time to wrap up!Hiring held firm in the US last month, official data showed, amid uncertainty over the strength and direction of the world’s largest economy

High costs, falling returns: what could go wrong for Trump’s Venezuela oil gamble?

Donald Trump has laid claim to billions of dollars’ worth of Venezuelan crude this week, which at a stroke has handed the world’s biggest consumer of oil up to 50m barrels – but his ambitions are far greater.The White House said Venezuela would be “turning over” the nearly $3bn (£2.3bn) of crude stranded in tankers and storage facilities before it is sold on the international market and after that the US plans to control all the country’s oil sales “indefinitely”.For the Trump administration, the seizure is the first move in taking control of Venezuela’s vast crude reserves, estimated to represent almost a fifth of the proven reserves on Earth, in a push to cut the oil price to $50 a barrel.But experts have been quick to point out that the crude cargo grab could be the last easy win for the president, with no quick or cheap fix to reignite the country’s oil production

X UK revenues drop nearly 60% in a year as content concerns spook advertisers

UK revenues at Elon Musk’s X fell by almost 60% in a year as advertisers pulled their spending over concerns about the social media platform’s content.News of the plummeting financial performance comes after X switched off the image creation function on its AI tool Grok for the vast majority of users after a widespread outcry about its use to create sexually explicit and violent imagery.In the UK, the social media site recorded a 58.3% fall in revenues from £69.1m in 2023 to £28

Spotify no longer running ICE recruitment ads, after US government campaign ends

Spotify is no long running advertisements for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the streaming service has confirmed, after the Trump administration campaign ended in late 2025.“There are currently no ICE ads running on Spotify,” the Swedish company said in a statement. “The advertisements mentioned were part of a US government recruitment campaign that ran across all major media and platforms.”Since April, the government ads have also run on Amazon, YouTube, Hulu and Max among other streaming companies, with the aim of recruiting more than 10,000 deportation officers by the end of 2025.Previously, Spotify said that the ads, which encouraged US listeners to “fulfil your mission to protect America” and offered $50,000 in signing bonuses, did not “violate our advertising policies”

All-heart Travis Head leaves indelible mark on Ashes series by playing his own game | Angus Fontaine

Fast bowler Mitchell Starc won player of this Ashes series but make no mistake, talismanic bat-out-of-hell Travis Head was the man who ripped out England’s heart and served it to them on a silver platter with a cold beer chaser.With three outlandish centuries across the five Tests, Head’s statistical contribution was immense. He scored 629 runs at an average of 62.9 and a strike-rate of 87.36

Big Bash League momentum builds but its future remains up in the air | Jack Snape

Renegades fans got a kick out of the Melbourne BBL derby last Sunday, as they watched their side triumph in the final over against the crosstown Stars. But it was Australian cricket officials who went home giddy amid an increasingly heated international contest between T20 franchise leagues.The 68,124 at the MCG – the highest BBL crowd since 2017 – were joined by almost 38,000 in Perth to watch the Scorchers beat the Strikers later that night. The combined turnout set the competition’s single-day attendance record of 105,767.It was a statement for the BBL on the same day its major global competitors held their own marquee fixtures