Rail passengers face disruption from Avanti strikes every Sunday until June

Passengers on Great Britain’s west coast mainline have been warned of disruption to Avanti services on every Sunday from this weekend to the end of May.Train managers represented by the the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) have said they will strike on every Sunday from 12 January to 25 May 2025, in a dispute over their pay for working on rest days.Talks between the union and the company are understood to be continuing but the strikes are still scheduled to go ahead. Meanwhile, the RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, announced on Thursday that he planned to retire in the first week of May.Avanti, which runs services between London, Birmingham and Glasgow, said passengers should try to travel before or after Sunday if possible to avoid disruption from a “significantly reduced” timetable caused by the strikes and engineering work

JPMorgan Chase requires all workers to return to office five days a week

JPMorgan Chase is summoning all staff back to the office, becoming the latest corporate giant to call time on era of remote and hybrid working sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic.The US’s largest bank, which has some 316,000 employees worldwide, announced on Friday that all workers on hybrid work schedules will be required to return to the office five days a week from March.Five years after Covid-19 emptied offices across much of the world almost overnight, prominent employers are now seeking to draw a line under a prolonged period of hybrid work and draw staff back to their desks full-time.While leading Wall Street firms have led the charge, the debate over the merits and pitfalls on remote work – for employers, employees, customers and communities – continues across multiple industries.Amazon required employees to return to the office five days a week from last week

Elon Musk heaps praise on AfD’s Alice Weidel during live talk on X

Elon Musk has praised the co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, as he repeated his claim that “only the AfD can save Germany” during a controversial live talk on his social media platform X.The virtual encounter between Musk and Alice Weidel on Thursday took place amid growing criticism over the US billionaire’s vocal support of far-right, anti-establishment parties across Europe, and accusations he is meddling in the campaign for Germany’s 23 February election.In a conversation that was at times wooden and at times almost flirtatious, Musk heaped praise on the anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin AfD, which is second in the polls with 21.5%, behind only the conservative CDU/CSU. He mispronounced the party leader’s name as “Weedel” throughout the encounter

Google and Microsoft donate $1m each to Trump’s inaugural fund

Google and Microsoft have donated $1m each to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, following in the footsteps of other major companies including Amazon, Meta, OpenAI and Uber.“Google is pleased to support the 2025 inauguration, with a livestream on YouTube and a direct link on our homepage. We’re also donating to the inaugural committee,” Karan Bhatia, Google’s global head of government affairs and public policy, confirmed in a statement to the Guardian on Thursday.The tech giant made the donation on Monday, CNBC reported. José Castaneda, a Google spokesperson, told the outlet that the company has donated to previous inauguration funds and previously hosted livestreams of inauguration ceremonies

Callum Simpson: ‘Lily would want me to carry on … I know I made her proud through my boxing’

Before the defence of his British and Commonwealth belts, the 28-year-old reflects on the tragic death of his sister“I’ve heard her voice in training sometimes,” Callum Simpson says quietly as he looks up in his apartment in Dewsbury and remembers his sister Lily-Rae who, just over four months ago, died tragically following an accident on a quad bike at the age of 19. “I hear her when the sessions are hard, especially during running sessions, and her voice will say: ‘Just keep going, keep pushing.’”West Yorkshire looks beautiful on a bitterly cold yet sunlit morning. A new year has just begun, and there is still snow on the ground, but the same raw pain churns though Simpson. The 28-year-old boxer is a composed and impressive man who will defend his British and Commonwealth super-middleweight titles against Steed Woodall in Sheffield on Saturday night

Heather Knight lends voice to plight of Afghanistan women’s team

England captain Heather Knight says that the plight of the Afghanistan women’s team has been forgotten and called for a renewed focus on giving the cricketers in exile “a voice”, amid the current controversy surrounding England men’s upcoming Champions Trophy match against Afghanistan.England are due to play Afghanistan on 26 February in Lahore and have faced calls from a number of campaign groups to boycott the match, in response to the Taliban government’s crackdown on women’s rights since returning to power in August 2021. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and CEO of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Richard Gould, have both said the onus should be on the ICC to take unified action.Knight, though, used her eve-of-Ashes press conference to argue in favour of greater support for the exiled Afghanistan women’s team. Of 25 contracted Afghanistan players, 22 fled to Australia when the Taliban returned to power, and an Afghanistan women’s XI are scheduled to play a T20 match against a Cricket Without Boarders Charity XI on 30 January at the Junction Oval in Melbourne