Italian coffee pot maker Bialetti to be sold to Chinese business NUO Capital

Bialetti, the Italian manufacturer of the famed stove-top moka coffee pot, has struck a deal to sell the business to an investment vehicle owned by a Chinese tycoon.Founded in 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti, an engineer who produced the first coffee pots from his workshop in Crusinallo, Piedmont, the company is being bought by Luxembourg-registered NUO Capital, which will pay €53m (£46m) for 78.6% of its shares.The deal is expected to close by the end of June before a tender for the remaining shares is launched, at a price of no less than €0.467 each, before the company is delisted from Milan’s stock exchange

After 25 years of the same housing policies pushing up demand, Australia needs a new approach | Greg Jericho

This week, the housing affordability crisis was solved when both the Labor and Liberal parties discovered that the key was to give people more money so they can bid a higher price for a home. Phew. Our long national nightmare is over.Cripes. What a joke

Spotify running again after users around world report problems

Tens of thousands of Spotify users around the world reported being unable to stream music on the app, which was hit by several hours of technical problems on Wednesday.Downdetector, which tracks platforms, showed more than 48,000 outage reports for Spotify worldwide on Wednesday afternoon.In the UK, the number of people reporting that Spotify was not functioning peaked at about 1.30pm BST, after problems began 30 minutes earlier. By 3pm, the number had fallen to about 10,000

Google sued for £5bn in UK over allegations of shutting out rivals

Google is being sued in the UK for up to £5bn in damages over allegations it shut out rivals in the internet search market and abused this dominance to overcharge businesses for advertisements. A class action filed at the competition appeal tribunal on Wednesday argues that the US company has taken actions that enable it to charge higher prices for the promotions that appear in search queries than it otherwise could in a fair market. It is alleged that Google, which is owned by Alphabet, contracted phone makers to pre-install the Google search app and Chrome browser on Android devices and paid Apple to make it the default search engine on iPhones, with the intention of shutting out competition. The claim is filed by a competition law expert, Or Brook, on behalf of thousands of businesses and alleges Google ensured its search engine had better functionality and more features for Google’s own advertising offering than that of its competitors.A Google spokesperson said: “This is yet another speculative and opportunistic case and we will argue against it vigorously

Four-stage 2025 Women’s Tour of Britain set for northern England and Scotland

The 2025 women’s Tour of Britain will go ahead in northern England and the Scottish Borders in early June, despite speculation that this year’s event was in difficulty.Buoyed by news that the men’s and women’s Tour de France will start in Britain in 2027, this summer’s four-day women’s race will start in Yorkshire on 5 June and end in Glasgow.The opening two stages will take in Dalby Forest, the North York Moors national park and the Tees Valley, before heading to the Scottish Borders on stage three, before the final stage on a city-centre circuit in Glasgow.The Scottish rider Neah Evans said: “I started my cycling journey after a taster session at the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome so Glasgow is a special place to me for that.”Jonathan Day, managing director of British Cycling Events, said: “We have first visits for the race to Dalby Forest and the North York Moors national park, from where we will race through North Yorkshire and into the Tees Valley

Field Of Gold lights up Flat season by racing to Guineas favouritism

It is 21 years since the winner of Newmarket’s Craven Stakes followed up in the 2,000 Guineas over the same course and distance two‑and‑a‑half weeks later, and 34 years since Mystiko took the Free Handicap at the Craven meeting – a Classic trial that no longer exists – and went on to become the last grey to win the first colts’ Classic.Every statistic, though, is in the queue to be broken, and John and Thady Gosden’s Field Of Gold is the new 7-2 favourite to snap both sequences at once after a convincing success in the Craven Stakes here on Wednesday.On paper this looked like an unusually open running of the Craven and the market struggled to find a favourite before settling on Field Of Gold, at 100-30, just before the start. He travelled smoothly for Kieran Shoemark towards the near side before a sharp turn of foot carried him into the lead with just under a furlong to run, and Field Of Gold then extended his advantage to three-and-a-half lengths at the post.It was a second success in a major 2,000 Guineas trial in the space of five days for the Juddmonte bloodstock operation, as Andrew Balding’s Jonquil, who was with the now‑retired Sir Michael Stoute as a two-year-old, took the Greenham Stakes at Newbury on Saturday