‘I couldn’t sleep’: victims of UK fraud epidemic tell their story

“I couldn’t sleep. I was waking constantly thinking about it,” says Stephen of the trauma he felt after discovering he had been scammed out of £70,000 by fraudsters who tricked him into buying a fake high-interest savings bond.“I felt stupid – as a former solicitor, I thought: what was I thinking? But at the same time it was sophisticated.”Others have been scammed out of six-figure sums: Andrew White* lost £240,000 when he was buying a house. “I do think about it a lot,” he says

Drinking wine to 5: Dolly Parton launches prosecco and rosé range in UK

Whether it’s 9 to 5, Jolene or Islands in the Stream, Dolly Parton fans are no stranger to belting out her hits with a glass of wine in hand, but now they can sip her vino, too, as the singer’s “down to earth” wine range goes on sale in the UK.The brains behind Dolly Wines say they have bottled Parton’s “vivacious spirit and love for life” with the decision to branch out from selling albums to alcohol pitting the US country music star against the pop princess Kylie in the battle for the “easy drinking” top spot.With similar pricing to Kylie’s successful wines, Parton’s £11 prosecco is “deliciously fresh and zingy” while, at £9.50, her rosé is “delicate and romantic” with “lingering white strawberry flavours”.The range is a collaboration with Accolade Wines, the Australian group behind Hardys and Mud House

An ‘earthquake’ at Volkswagen – and a crisis for Germany?

The company is seen as crucial not just to local but national wellbeing – and never before have its workers been threatened in their own homeland like this‘Earthquake at Volkswagen” ran the stark headline in the Wolfsburger Nachrichten, the newspaper serving the north German city that is synonymous with the carmaker.The news that the crisis-stricken company was weighing up the closure of factories in Germany for the first time in its history, and prematurely dissolving its 30-year-old employment protection agreement as part of an attempt to save around €10bn (£8.4bn), had barely filtered through to the workers emerging from Gate 17 at VW’s main factory in Wolfsburg on Monday, where a lone reporter had been dispatched to capture reaction at shift’s end.But they did not express surprise. “The mood has been in the doldrums for some time,” one said

US economy adds 142,000 jobs in August as Fed plans to cut interest rates

US employers added 142,000 jobs last month, the labor department announced on Friday, in one of the year’s most closely watched economic news releases.The release comes as the US Federal Reserve prepares to cut interest rates for the first time since March 2020, and November’s election puts a spotlight on the state of the US economy.The reading for August was shy of the average forecast increase of 163,000 jobs by economists surveyed by Bloomberg.The labor department also cut its figures for the number of new hires for June and July by a combined 86,000 jobs, a further sign that the remarkable post-pandemic hiring boom is weakening.The headline unemployment rate also decreased from 4

Why are the Murdochs trying to buy UK property site Rightmove?

Getting into property is considered to be Lachlan Murdoch’s shrewdest and most profitable contribution to building the family empire.Shortly after the turn of the century, Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son persuaded News Corporation to take a 44% stake in REA Group, the owner of Australia’s realestate.com.au property website.More than two decades on, the media baron’s favoured son could be about to repay his father’s recent move to hand him full control if a takeover of Rightmove, the UK’s leading property website, succeeds

Telegram to shake-up features; markets slide after US job creation misses forecasts – as it happened

Newsflash: The boss of the messaging service Telegram, Pavel Durov, has announced that his app is removing or disabling some features that he says have been misused by scammers, bots and criminals.Durov says Telegram will take a new approach towards moderating content and remove some features that had been abused for illegal activity. The move comes almost two weeks after Durov was arrested in France.Writing on Telegram,and also on X (formerly Twitter), Durov says the platform is tackling the “0.001% involved in illicit activities” on the plaform