Author: Admin

People on hold to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for more than 30 minutes would get £30 off their tax bill under a Reform UK government, Robert Jenrick has announced.Reform’s economy spokesman said HMRC’s treatment of taxpayers was “offensive to working people” and his party would tie the pay of senior HMRC officials to customer service targets.To prevent abuse, the tax credit for phone delays would be limited to two occasions in a given tax year, Jenrick said.HMRC has said it has improved its response times since a highly critical report by a committee of MPs, external, in January 2025,…

More than 60,000 seats on Thameslink trains are set to be upgraded as part of plans announced by Greater Thameslink Railway (GTR), less than 100 days after it came under public ownership.All 115 Thameslink trains will get new seat cushions and backrests, replacing the much-criticised seats dubbed “ironing boards” by passengers.The work is expected to begin in 2027 and take place over a two-year period.First-class seats would also receive upgraded seat cushions, while seat-back tables would be installed on the 70 trains that do not currently have them, GTR added.The seat upgrades are part of wider improvements planned for the…

Multi-billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has announced that it will build its largest launch site yet in the southern US state of Louisiana.Construction of the $100bn (£73bn) project – named Starbase, Louisiana – is due to start next year, with the 125,000-acre (50,585-hectare) site expanding on the company’s operations beyond its current Texas headquarters and locations in Florida.It will be used to “support thousands of Starship flights a year with missions launching to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond,” SpaceX said on Tuesday.In June, SpaceX shares started trading on New York’s technology-focused Nasdaq in the world’s biggest ever…

Firms across Europe have been switching to electricity from fossil fuels for their industrial needs, encouraged by subsidies from EU funds.While that is helping bring down emissions of climate-warming gases, it has also made firms more vulnerable to power cuts.And in Spain and Portugal that threat was made painfully clear last year.On both sides of the border, firms are looking for ways to avoid disruption. “The industrial sector has been one of the first to look at storage systems, since it can’t have its production drop off too abruptly,” says Miguel Matias, founder of the Portuguese energy services company Self…

AutoZone (AZO +0.59%) shares are trading around $3,027 on Aug. 25. That’s down 26.9% over the past year and 20% over the past six months, and the stock is hovering just 4.3% above 52-week lows. For a company that just posted its best quarterly sales growth in three years, that decline invites a question: Is the market seeing a problem that the numbers aren’t showing yet, or is this simply a valuation reset for a stock that ran hot? Today’s Change(0.59%) $17.90Current Price$3,027.34Key Data PointsMarket Cap$49BMarket cap calculated using publicly traded shares outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or…

Instagram is making one of the most tedious parts of creating Reels easier. The company announced Tuesday in a Threads post that it’s rolling out “First Draft,” a new editing feature that automatically trims selected video clips and removes pauses, pulling together the best moments into an initial cut.  Instagram says the process can produce a first pass in under 10 seconds, potentially saving creators significant editing time while making video creation more approachable for people who don’t have much experience with editing software. Instead of manually working through every clip, creators can start with an automatically assembled draft and…

The S&P 500 may have hit a new all-time high this month, but that doesn’t necessarily mean consumers are feeling good about the economy. While consumer sentiment has rebounded from its historic lows, July retail sales data surprised to the downside at $763.6 billion, down 0.6% from the previous month. One data point doesn’t create a trend (and the number was still up 5% from July 2025), but it was the first month-over-month retail sales decline since October 2025, and investors have been watching retail sector earnings closely over the last week. Walmart Inc. (NASDAQ: WMT) and Home Depot Inc. (NYSE:…

Bitcoin has entered the early stages of a new bull market after a 24% rally pushed key onchain and demand indicators into bullish territory, according to CryptoQuant.The analytics firm’s Bull Score jumped to 80 from 30 over the past week, hitting its highest level since October 2025 as eight of the index’s 10 underlying indicators now flashing bullish. Bitcoin (BTC) climbed above $80,000 during the rally, but CryptoQuant said a weekly close above its 365-day moving average, currently around $83,000, is needed to confirm the shift to a new bull market.The shift has been supported by accelerating spot demand, while…

In brief XRP closed at $1.4554 on the latest daily candle, down from a $1.5505 high. The 50-day moving average sits below the 200-day, with a death cross still active. The medium-term structure says bearish, but XRP isn’t alone. The crypto market flipped from fear to “extreme greed” this week for the first time since 2024, and the Ripple-linked XRP rode that wave hard.XRP, the cryptocurrency created by the co-founders of Ripple, erased its most bearish signal last week and took off, registering a 46% gain over seven days and topping a $91 billion market cap.Myriad: Where does XRP price…

As startups stay private longer, the market for buying and selling shares in venture-backed companies before they go public has become increasingly active — and heated. EquityZen has been operating in that market since 2013. The New York-based company operates a marketplace for shares of privately held companies, giving employees and other shareholders a way to sell stock before a company goes public or is acquired. Morgan Stanley announced plans to acquire EquityZen in October 2025 and completed the deal in January 2026, bringing the company under the investment bank’s umbrella. Phil Haslett, co-founder and chief strategy officer of EquityZen.…