Can French Connection make FCUK fashionable again?

French Connection is back on the trail of global expansion with the aid of its cheeky initials-based slogan that made it so popular in the late 1990s.The label once known for clothes bearing FCUK is seeking to reinvent itself again under the ownership of a group of British entrepreneurs based in the north of England who rescued it in 2021.This week, the former high street darling signed a licensing agreement to develop and distribute men’s and women’s apparel and accessories across North America, which is understood to include plans to revive the FCUK branding.It is the latest chapter in a rollercoaster story of success and setback. French Connection was founded in 1972 by Stephen Marks, who named it after the film starring Gene Hackman released the previous year

Impose sanctions on refineries that buy Russian crude oil to end war, says Bill Browder

Bill Browder’s fight against Vladimir Putin has seen him face threats, lawsuits, false accusations of murder and Interpol arrest warrants. A disinformation-laden film was even made about him.But 16 years after the death of his friend and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky at the hands of Putin’s regime, Browder is unrelenting in his fight for justice. It is an endeavour that, by his estimation, has cost Putin and his cronies billions of dollars already, via asset freezes and sanctions. Hence the considerable risk to his safety

US authorities reportedly investigate claims that Meta can read encrypted WhatsApp messages

US authorities have reportedly investigated claims that Meta can read users’ encrypted chats on the WhatsApp messaging platform, which it owns.The reports follow a lawsuit filed last week, which claimed Meta “can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications”.Meta has denied the allegation, reported by Bloomberg, calling the lawsuit’s claim “categorically false and absurd”. It suggested the claim was a tactic to support the NSO Group, an Israeli firm that develops spyware used against activists and journalists, and which recently lost a lawsuit brought by WhatsApp.The firm that filed last week’s lawsuit against Meta, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, attributes the allegation to unnamed “courageous” whistleblowers from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa

We have lost so much of ourselves to smartphones: can we get it back?

In 2003, the Stanford social scientist BJ Fogg published an extraordinarily prescient book. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do predicted a future in which a student “sits in a college library and removes an electronic device from her purse”. It serves as her “mobile phone, information portal, entertainment platform, and personal organiser. She takes this device almost everywhere and feels lost without it.”Such devices, Fogg argued, would be “persuasive technology systems … the device can suggest, encourage, and reward

Ollie Peake: the boy who used to sleep in his cricket gear emerges as Ashes hope for Australia

After five-year-old Ollie Peake had gone to bed in his family home in Geelong, his mother, Sarah, entered his bedroom to check on him. He was fast asleep in his cricket gear. She removed his helmet and gloves before tucking him in for the night.The next morning she asked her son why he was sleeping in his kit.“He looked at me with his beautiful, cheeky grin, and goes, ‘you didn’t know Mum, but under the covers, I had my pads on too!’ He slept in his pads,” Sarah Peake laughs at the memory

Sixmilebridge upsets Ireland’s leading stables at Sandown as Dublin festival postponed

Ireland’s most powerful stables were frustrated on both sides of the Irish Sea on Saturday. The postponement of the first day of the Dublin racing festival at Leopardstown was followed by a victory for Fergal O’Brien’s Sixmilebridge in the Grade One Scilly Isles Novice Chase at Sandown.Willie Mullins’s Kitzbuhel set off as the 10-11 favourite for Sandown’s four-runner feature event, with Gordon Elliott’s Kala Conti next in the list at 2-1, but the market leader got no further than the sixth fence, where a bad mistake unseated Paul Townend, his rider. Sixmilebridge, at 6-1, was far more fluent at his fences and having made all the running, Kielan Woods’s mount stayed on well from the last to beat Kala Conti by five lengths.“He’s in the Arkle and the three-mile novice [Brown Advisory Novice Chase at Cheltenham in March] as well,” O’Brien told Racing TV