Vodafone whistleblowers warned executives about plight of high street store staff

Whistleblowers warned a series of senior Vodafone executives – including the current chief executive, Margherita Della Valle – that scores of its franchised store owners faced financial ruin about two years before a high court claim accused the company of “unjustly enriching” itself.Vodafone employees made repeated complaints to their superiors about the company slashing commissions paid to the small businesses running the company’s high street retail network, according to a string of current and former Vodafone employees. The cost-cutting tactics resulted in a group of 62 of about 150 Vodafone franchise operators filing a £120m-plus legal claim last December.The telecoms company, which is valued at about £17bn on the London Stock Exchange, has said: “We refute the [legal] claims but will be fully engaging in [a mediation] process with a view to resolving this commercial dispute.”However, the emergence of warnings to senior management reveals for the first time how some of the mobile operator’s own staff appeared to support the franchisees over their own employer

US food delivery app DoorDash offers to buy UK rival Deliveroo for $3.6bn

DoorDash is offering to buy its UK-based rival Deliveroo for $3.6bn (£2.7bn), Deliveroo said on Friday.Deliveroo said that its board was in talks with DoorDash over the offer and that a firm offer had not been made, according to statement sent to the Guardian. Should a firm offer of £1

Goodbye, Skype. I’ll never forget you

I doubt many people are mourning the demise of Skype. The sky-blue platform that revolutionized the video call, the medium for long-distance relationships in the early 2010s, had not been relevant for almost a decade when Microsoft announced its impending death. My own relationship with Skype’s clunky tangle of video, voice and chat peaked in 2011 – the same year Microsoft purchased it for a headline-making $8.5bn, only to let it wither in the shadow of professionalized, less-pixelated options. By 2014, it was basically obsolete, as video calls shifted to more integrated apps like FaceTime, and my college schedule did not allow for glitchy, hours-long catchups

‘I didn’t eat or sleep’: a Meta moderator on his breakdown after seeing beheadings and child abuse

When Solomon* strode into the gleaming Octagon tower in Accra, Ghana, for his first day as a Meta content moderator, he was bracing himself for difficult but fulfilling work, purging social media of harmful content.But after just two weeks of training, the scale and depravity of what he was exposed to was far darker than he ever imagined.“The first day I didn’t come across any graphic content, but gradually I started coming across very graphic content like beheadings, child abuse, bestiality. When I first came across that ticket I was very shocked. I didn’t even look at my computer because it was very disturbing for me

London Marathon 2025: elite races and more – live

It can’t just me be who, every time they hear the name Sammi Kinghorn – 100m Olympic champ, marathoner as of today – thinks of this.Oh, it is? Ah.It’s not Denise, it’s Richard Whitehead starting this race, but the effect is similar.The wheelchair races are massed on the start line, the gun to be fired by Denise Lewis. To do what she did, before lottery funding, is so badass it deserves its own category, and she announces, in her capacity as chair of UK Athletics, that London will be bidding to host the 2026 World Athletics Championships

Chris Eubank Jr beats Conor Benn by unanimous decision – as it happened

And the winner is … Chris Eubank Jr! He’s just won a 12-round unanimous decision over Conor Benn in their middleweight grudge match. All three judges scored it 116-112, as did the Guardian.That’s all for tonight. Thanks for following along with us and be sure to check out the full report of tonight’s main event here.“Maybe 14 months out of the ring played a factor,” a downcast Conor Benn says