Greggs puts up price of sausage roll by 5p to £1.35 amid rising costs

Greggs has added 5p to the price of a sausage roll and 10p to a latte coffee as it leans on some of its bestsellers to soak up rising wage, energy and packaging costs.The UK’s largest bakery chain said it had no plans for further price increases at present and it expected inflation to ease this year as it admitted it had sold fewer items in the run-up to Christmas amid a “very tough, challenging market”.The “targeted” rises mean a sausage roll now costs £1.35 in most shops, up from £1.30 a year ago, while a latte will now cost £2

Trump plans to use Venezuela’s huge crude reserves ‘to cut US oil price to $50 a barrel’

Donald Trump plans to use Venezuela’s vast crude reserves to establish control of most of the western hemisphere’s oil in an attempt to drive the market price down to about $50 (£37) a barrel, according to reports.The US president has repeatedly raised the prospect of producing enough crude from Venezuela’s oilfields to drive down the US oil price from more than $56 a barrel today to about $50 in an effort to cut energy costs for consumers, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited senior Trump administration officials.Global oil markets have already recorded significant losses in recent years due to an oversupply of crude. Prices slumped by almost 20% in 2025, marking the biggest annual loss since the Covid-19 pandemic and the first time the oil market has recorded three consecutive years of annual losses.As well as driving market prices lower, officials reportedly claimed Trump’s plans to control Venezuela’s oil reserves, which are the largest in the world, include cutting Russia and China’s access to the South American country in order to establish a western hemisphere oil production stronghold

Tunbridge Wells residents without water again as supplier blames cold weather

Residents of Tunbridge Wells have been left without water again, just a month after a major outage.South East Water said 6,500 households have no water at all, while thousands more have “intermittent supplies”.It blamed the cold weather for the disruption, which caused a “series of burst water mains”. The company had previously been found to be spending more paying dividends and servicing its debt pile over two years than investing in infrastructure.The company said it had set up water bottle stations and was delivering water to priority customers

M&S Christmas food sales soar but clothing suffers from cyber-attack fallout

Marks & Spencer revealed strong sales of food over the important Christmas trading period but clothing sales fell back as it continues to battle the after-effects of last year’s crippling cyber-attack.The company said its clothing, homeware and beauty business was also affected by “fragile consumer confidence and milder weather”.In November, M&S revealed that underlying profits had more than halved to £184.1m in the six months to 27 September, from £413.1m a year before, after it had to halt online orders for more than six weeks because of the cyber breach

Trump says he plans crackdown on defense firms over executive pay and stock buybacks

Donald Trump has claimed he plans to crack down on executive compensation and shareholder payouts at military defense contractors, as his administration looks to dramatically ramp up spending on the armed forces.In a series of posts on social media, the US president said he wants to increase the military budget to $1.5tn – and complained that defense giants had been failing to swiftly deliver “vital” equipment to the US and its allies across the world.The firms are paying “exorbitant” salaries to their top executives and vast dividends to shareholders while equipment is “NOT BEING MADE FAST ENOUGH”, Trump said.He said he would “not permit” dividends and stock buybacks by defense companies, or allow them to pay executives more than $5m, until they started to accelerate deliveries and build new and modern production plants

Starmer vows to review franchise legislation in response to Vodafone case

The prime minister has promised to review laws governing franchising agreements, in response to the case of a former Vodafone store manager whose family alleges took his own life following pressure from the FTSE 100 telecoms group.Keir Starmer said in the Commons on Wednesday that he would “look closely” at the outcome of a high-profile legal claim against Vodafone.The comments follow a Guardian investigation in December, which revealed claims that Adrian Howe, a former Vodafone employee who had agreed to become a franchisee in 2018, drowned after becoming convinced his deal with the multinational company would prove financially disastrous.Rachael Beddow-Davison and Dan Attwal also told the Guardian about how commission cuts by Vodafone in 2020 caused their franchising companies to run up huge debts, which they each said contributed to them attempting to kill themselves.Beddow-Davison and Attwal are two of a group of 62 former Vodafone franchisees who brought a high court claim in 2024, alleging the telecoms company “unjustly enriched” itself and which MPs have compared to the Post Office Horizon IT scandal