Bald eagles and Lynyrd Skynyrd: is Budweiser’s all-American Super Bowl ad serious?

Featuring an unlikely animal friendship, the commercial boasts enough patriotic iconography to verge on self-parodyThree years after its sister brand, Bud Light, faced a rightwing boycott over a transgender spokesperson, Budweiser’s new Super Bowl ad, American Icons, contains absolutely nothing that could be mistaken for social progress. Instead, it features an unlikely friendship between two animals whose blood runs red, white and blue: a bald eagle and a Clydesdale horse, the Budweiser icon. An adorable foal trots out of a barn, and the viewer is injected with a single minute of American iconography so pure that it would make Lee Greenwood nauseous.The horse meets a struggling baby bird who gets caught in the rain, prompting the horse to stand over the bird as a roof. The pair become pals and grow up together, the bird riding on the horse’s back as it grows larger

Barclays reportedly cuts ties with lobbying firm co-founded by Peter Mandelson

Barclays has reportedly cut ties with the lobbying firm co-founded by Peter Mandelson, after intense scrutiny of the founders’ dealings with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Vodafone has also said it is reviewing its contract for public affairs services with Global Counsel, which Mandelson co-founded in 2010 after Labour lost the general election.Mandelson has tried to distance himself from the lobbying firm after the revelations of the extent of his relationship with Epstein sparked a major political scandal. Mandelson resigned from the Labour party on Sunday.The former minister was sacked as ambassador to the US in September after the emergence of emails that suggested he had a close relationship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial over child sex-trafficking charges

Shell will consider fossil fuel investment in Venezuela, says chief executive

Shell is considering fossil fuel investments in Venezuela worth billions of dollars, according to its chief executive.Wael Sawan said Europe’s largest oil company is weighing plans for production projects off the Venezuelan coast that could begin yielding gas in the next couple of years. “These are opportunities that could potentially be activated within months,” he told CNBC, adding that the company was now awaiting approvals.Shell’s fresh interest in the South American country has emerged a week after Venezuela passed sweeping reforms to its hydrocarbon laws to encourage increases in oil and gas production and foreign investment, in line with calls from the US president, Donald Trump, to revive the industry.Trump called for America’s biggest oil companies to reignite Venezuela’s struggling oil industry after removing the former president Nicolás Maduro last month, but the suggestion received a tepid response from executives, including the chief executive of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, who said that political stability was vital before investments could take place

Rio Tinto and Glencore abandon revived $260bn merger plan

Rio Tinto and Glencore have abandoned plans for a $260bn merger, walking away from a deal that would have created the world’s largest mining company.Rio Tinto said it was no longer considering a “merger or other business combination” with Glencore after it “determined that it could not reach an agreement that would deliver value to its shareholders”.Glencore said the key terms of the potential offer, which would have seen Rio keep both the chair and chief executive roles, “significantly undervalued Glencore’s underlying relative value contribution to the combined group”.The company added the deal did not adequately value its copper business and growth pipeline, and concluded that the merger was not in the best interests of its shareholders.It marks the third time that talks to combine the two commodities giants have collapsed, after discussions were revived last month

US job openings dropped to a five-year low in December 2025, report shows

US job openings dropped to the lowest level in more than five years in December and data for the prior month was revised lower amid a softening in labor market conditions at the end of 2025.Job openings, a measure of labor demand, decreased by 386,000 to 6.542m by the last day of December, the lowest level since September 2020, the labor department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or Jolts report, on Thursday.Data for November was revised down to show 6.928m job openings instead of the previously reported 7

Bank of England holds interest rates and ‘shocked’ over Mandelson; Rio-Glencore merger talks collapse – as it happened

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has added his voice to those condemning Peter Mandelson for leaking market-sensitive information at the time of the global financial crisis, our economics editor Heather Stewart writes.“I am shocked by what we are hearing,” Bailey said (see earlier post), when asked about the revelations at a Bank press conference.We do learn from that that there are times when … lobbying happens which has ethics attached to it which I do find shocking, frankly.Asked again about his personal feelings, Bailey, who worked with the Treasury on the response to the 2008 financial crisis, appeared to become emotional as he compared the actions of Mandelson to those of the late chancellor, Alistair Darling.Bailey reminds journalists at the Bank that he and his colleagues at the press conference, Clare Lombardelli and Dave Ramsden, all knew Darling (who died in 2023)