CEO pay soared in 2025, 20 times faster than workers’ pay

CEO pay increased 20 times faster than worker pay around the world in 2025, according to a new analysis from Oxfam and the International Trade Union Confederation, the world’s largest trade union federation.When adjusted for inflation, global worker pay declined 12% between 2019 and 2025, the equivalent of 108 days of free work during that time period. In comparison, CEO compensation increased by 54% between 2019 and 2025.The average CEO received $8.4m in total compensation in 2025 compared to $7

Man who pocketed tiles from medieval priory as boy returns them 60 years later

Fragments of a priory’s medieval tiled floor that spent almost 60 years stashed in a toffee tin after being pocketed by a nine-year-old boy during a family outing have finally been handed back.The three pieces of decorative clay tiles, dating from the late 13th to early 14th century, were taken as a souvenir by Simon White during a family visit to Wenlock Priory in Shropshire in the late 1960s.White, now a 68-year-old retired chartered surveyor, found the fragments in an old toffee tin during a house move and owned up to English Heritage. He told officials he recalled his father encouraging him to take the pieces but had always felt a little uneasy and was delighted when he rediscovered them.“I can remember the day this all happened with my father standing guard,” he said

Renault says ‘seismic shift’ in electric car interest after oil price shock – business live

Renault’s UK boss has said the Iran war oil price surge has started a “seismic shift upwards” in interest in electric vehicles.Adam Wood, managing director for the French carmaker in the UK, said that buyers were realising that it was much cheaper to charge electric cars than to fill up with petrol.Oil prices remained above $111 per barrel on Friday, with little sign that the US and Iran would reach an agreement to reopen the strait of Hormuz, a key export route for a fifth of the world’s oil.Renault said the effect of the oil price surge was translating to sales. It said enquiries about electric vehicles were up 42% on its website, and that electric vehicles accounted for almost 50% of sales in April

The world’s most expensive losers: the New York Mets are very rich … and very, very bad

The Mets have the second-highest payroll in baseball. They also own the worst record in the major leaguesA franchise once known as baseball’s lovable losers are, for the moment, merely baseball’s most expensive losers.The New York Mets wrapped a shocking April by losing 5-4 to the Washington Nationals on Thursday, dropping to a major league-worst 10-21 and burrowing even deeper into last place in the National League East – making them somehow even worse than their old rivals the Philadelphia Phillies, another wealthy-yet-terrible team. The Mets will (probably) not play at their current 52-win pace all year but their sordid first month has done immense damage to their postseason hopes. Their chances at October baseball were 87% on Opening Day, according to the analytics site FanGraphs

Watchdog weighs investigation into Farage’s undisclosed £5m gift

The UK elections watchdog is considering whether to investigate an undisclosed £5m gift received by Nigel Farage before he announced his candidacy at the last general election.The Guardian revealed this week that the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne gave the Reform UK leader the money.In a written response to the Conservative party, the Electoral Commission said it was “aware of this matter and are considering it under our regulatory remit. We will consider all the available relevant information and recommend what, if any, next steps the commission will take.”Farage had previously stated he did not intend to stand as an MP but reversed his position in June 2024, within weeks of receiving the personal gift from the Thailand-based businessman

‘I am invoking Martha’s rule’: how a woman saved her father from near death in hospital

For six awful days last summer, as her father, David, got progressively sicker in the cardiac ward of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, Karen Osenton would read the poster above his bed telling patients about their right under Martha’s rule to ask for a second opinion.Her father, a retired engineer in his early 70s who was normally extremely fit, was by then thin, jaundiced and could barely lift his head from the pillow. But his bed was right beside the nurses’ station, surely they would notice if he needed more urgent treatment?David had first gone to his GP more than a month earlier complaining of extreme breathlessness, and over the following weeks he had become increasingly thin and weak with suspected heart failure. But it had taken repeated visits to the accident and emergency ward, being sent home each time, before he was finally given a bed in a specialist cardiac unit last July.“Every day we saw him he got worse,” says Karen, a teacher from Aynho, in West Northamptonshire