Amazon says Web Services are recovering after outage hits millions of users – as it happened

AWS has issued another update, saying that is continues to “observe recovery across all AWS services.”It added that it is succeeding across multiple “Availability Zones in the US-EAST-1 Regions.”AWS went on to say: “For Lambda, customers may face intermittent function errors for functions making network requests to other services or systems as we work to address residual network connectivity issues. To recover Lambda’s invocation errors, we slowed down the rate of SQS polling via Lambda Event Source Mappings. We are now increasing the rate of SQS polling as we experience more successful invocations and reduced function errors

Labour’s clean energy plan needs a revamp: get real on costs and ignore the artificial deadline | Nils Pratley

“I know my job is to get bills down by £300,” said Ed Miliband, the energy security secretary, in his BBC interview at the weekend, acknowledging that the government is on the hook for its pre-election promise to reduce energy bills by 2030.The problem, though, is that the bill-cutting task also seems to be falling by default to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor. It is beginning to look as if the only sure way to make energy bills fall by £300 by 2030 is to shuffle a chunk of the expense into general taxation. Miliband hinted the 5% VAT charge on bills could be removed in next month’s budget, which would cost the government £2.5bn

Pizza Hut to close 68 UK restaurants, putting up to 1,200 jobs at risk

Pizza Hut is to shut 68 of its restaurants, putting as many as 1,200 jobs at risk, after the company behind its UK venues fell into administration.DC London Pie, which owned the UK Pizza Hut franchise, appointed administrators from FTI on Monday. Eleven delivery-only sites will also close.The US hospitality company Yum! Brands, which owns the global Pizza Hut brand as well as KFC and Taco Bell, said it had bought the remainder of the UK restaurant operation in a pre-pack administration deal. The deal will save 64 Pizza Hut sites in the UK and secure the future of 1,277 workers, the company said

SlimFast’s European arm sold after struggling to compete with weight-loss drugs

The owner of Typhoo tea has snapped up SlimFast’s UK and European business in a £20.1m deal as it seeks to expand in the weight management market despite fierce competition from GLP-1 weight-loss jabs.The Irish nutrition and food company Glanbia has sold the low-calorie meal replacement shakes business to the British company Supreme after putting it up for sale earlier this year. Sales at the European operations have dropped, weighing on stronger trading in the US.The SlimFast brand has come under mounting pressure from the rapid growth of weight-loss drug blockbusters such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, made by the pharmaceutical companies Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly respectively

Secret Cinema company is bought by Hollywood power broker

The parent company behind Secret Cinema, the London-based immersive film and TV business, has been bought by the Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel.TodayTix, which is changing hands for an undisclosed sum, marks the latest acquisition by Emanuel’s new global events company, Mari, which bought the Frieze global art fair and publishing group in May for $200m (£148m).Mari is backed by Apollo Global Management and RedBird Capital Partners, which has invested in the football clubs Liverpool FC and AC Milan and is trying to push through a deal to buy the Telegraph newspaper group.Emanuel already runs the company behind World Wrestling Entertainment and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.TodayTix will now join the fold, after being bought from Great Hill Partners, a private equity company which took a controlling stake in the business in 2019

China’s economic growth slows amid Trump tariff war and property woes

China’s economy grew at its slowest pace in a year in the latest quarter amid a trade war with the US and long-running woes in its property market.Fragile domestic demand has left China’s economy heavily reliant on manufacturing and trade, at a time of mounting tensions with the Donald Trump administration.GDP rose by 4.8% year on year between July and September, down from the second-quarter growth rate of 5.2%