‘Every Leon should be magical’: food chain’s co-founder on what went wrong – and how to fix it

John Vincent on bouncing back after cutting branches, refreshing the menu, and staff learning from martial arts John Vincent is going back to the future. Four years after selling Leon, the fast food chain named after his father and founded in 2004 with two friends, he has bought it back with hopes of reviving its fortunes.“In a crisis you need a pilot in full control,” the martial arts fan says, speaking to the Guardian from Leon’s headquarters near London Bridge.He is getting his metaphorical trainers on to “outrun the lion” as he ploughs his efforts and his own money into reviving the troubled chain.The former management consultant bought back Leon for a rumoured £30m-£50m – significantly less than the £100m he sold it for – from the supermarket chain Asda in October, 21 years after the first restaurant opened in Camden

December cut to UK interest rates ‘nailed on’ after economy shrinks unexpectedly by 0.1% in October – as it happened

Economists are convinced that the Bank of England will respond to the UK’s weak economic performance by cutting interest rates next week.The Bank’s monetary policy committee will make its final decision of the year on Thursday 18th December, and a rate cut to 3.75% appears highly likely now that the economy shrunk by 0.1% in October.Ruth Gregory, deputy chief UK economist at Capital Economics, says:The surprise 0

Disney wants you to AI-generate yourself into your favorite Marvel movie

Users of OpenAI’s video generation app will soon be able to see their own faces alongside characters from Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and Disney’s animated films, according to a joint announcement from the startup and Disney on Thursday. Perhaps you, Lightning McQueen and Iron Man are all dancing together in the Mos Eisley Cantina.Sora is an app made by OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, which allows users to generate videos of up to 20 seconds through short text prompts. The startup previously attempted to steer Sora’s output away from unlicensed copyrighted material, though with little success, which prompted threats of lawsuits by rights holders.Disney announced that it would invest $1bn in OpenAI and, under a three-year deal perhaps worth even more than that large sum, that it would license about 200 of its iconic characters – from R2-D2 to Stitch – for users to play with in OpenAI’s video generation app

Musk calls Doge only ‘somewhat successful’ and says he would not do it again

Elon Musk has said the aggressive federal job-cutting program he headed early in Donald Trump’s second term, known as the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), was only “a little bit successful” and he would not lead the project again.Musk said he wouldn’t want to repeat the exercise, talking on the podcast hosted by Katie Miller, a rightwing personality with a rising profile who was a Doge adviser and who is married to Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration deputy chief of staff.Asked whether Doge had achieved what he’d hoped, Musk said: “We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful.”Doge created chaos and distress in the government machine in Washington DC, and by May more than 200,000 federal workers had been laid off and roughly 75,000 had accepted buyouts as a result of purges by Musk’s external team of often-young zealots

As Sudan burns, the NBA’s embrace of the UAE shows how sport enables atrocity

While UAE-backed forces are accused of mass killings in Sudan, the NBA is deepening its partnership with the controversial Gulf state. This is what sportswashing looks likeAs paramilitary fighters from the brutal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) overran the largest city in western Sudan – carrying out mass executions, rapes and ethnic cleansing with weapons supplied by the United Arab Emirates – the NBA’s annual in-season tournament, the Emirates NBA Cup, tipped off on Halloween night, proudly sponsored by the very same Gulf state.The tournament is the most visible example of the NBA’s expanding partnership with the UAE – a partnership that includes annual preseason games in Abu Dhabi, a lucrative sponsorship deal with Emirates airlines, and plans for a new NBA Global Academy at NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus.Larger deals are expected to follow. The NBA is reportedly seeking Abu Dhabi’s investment in a new NBA-branded European league, which could launch as early as 2027

Adelaide should be England’s best chance: expect changes after Noosa debrief | Ali Martin

All being well, England’s cricketers should land in South Australia on Saturday. Those on the port side of the plane will have spotted the mighty Adelaide Oval during their descent. Although at 2-0 down in this Ashes series, a visual cue as to what is at stake next week is hardly needed.The mini-break spent licking wounds in Noosa generated headlines and interest but was hardly unprecedented as modern tours go. Among the reaction was Alex Carey recalling how Australia’s players scattered after the third Test on the 2023 Ashes tour and he personally visited Edinburgh