Business

UK toy sales rose for the first time in five years last year, offering rare optimism for a sector that has struggled since the pandemic, but industry leaders are now watching closely for any fallout from potential social media bans aimed at under-16s. The value of UK toy sales increased by 6 per cent in 2025, according to data from …

Elon Musk has raised the prospect of buying Ryanair in the latest escalation of a public war of words with the airline’s outspoken chief executive, Michael O’Leary. The exchange follows a disagreement over whether Europe’s largest low-cost carrier should install Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system across its fleet of more than 650 aircraft. O’Leary has repeatedly dismissed the idea, arguing …

More than 130 senior hotel and holiday park executives have written to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, warning that Labour’s planned changes to business rates represent the most serious threat to the sector’s viability and must not be limited to pubs alone. In a letter coordinated by UKHospitality, industry leaders said the government’s proposed relief package for pubs risks leaving large …

Unemployment remained stuck at a near five-year high in the run-up to Rachel Reeves’s November Budget, while wage growth continued to ease, reinforcing expectations that interest rate cuts are edging closer. Figures published on Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics showed the UK unemployment rate holding steady at 5.1 per cent in the three months to November. That is …

by Tristan Gaudiaut, In the immediate future, the global risk landscape will be dominated by geoeconomic confrontation, misinformation and societal polarization. But over the next ten years, climate change and its consequences will pose the greatest risk to the world. That’s according to more than 900 global experts from academia, business and politics, who were asked to evaluate 33 global risks over a …

by Anna Fleck, Around seven percent of adults identify as LGBT+, according to a survey conducted online in 31 countries in 2025 by Statista Consumer Insights. As the following chart shows, there’s notable variation between countries. The Philippines had the highest share of people identifying as LGBT+, at 11 percent, while the United States and Thailand came in a close joint second place with 10 percent …

by Tristan Gaudiaut, Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the media publishing industry, with back-end automation and coding emerging as critical areas of innovation in the sector. According to Reuters’ 2026 trends and predictions report, which surveyed almost 300 media leaders around the globe between November and December 2025, they are the two most important AI use cases in media publishing in the …

by Tristan Gaudiaut, As AI-related capabilities and vulnerabilities are accelerating at an unprecedented pace, cyber-enabled fraud continues to proliferate worldwide, with several major cybercrime cases having made the headlines recently. According to the Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 published by the World Economic Forum in January, phishing or vishing/smishing, which involves tricking users with an email or a voice/text message appearing to come from …

by Anna Fleck, Where is socializing most often considered a hobby in different countries around the world? According to data from a Statista Consumer Insights survey, Turks and Spaniards are particularly likely to include spending time with others as one of their main personal pastimes. By contrast, respondents in the United States and in urban India were far less likely to consider socializing …

by Felix Richter, With the Olympic Winter Games of Milano and Cortina just three weeks away and Sunday marking World Snow Day, it’s time to take a closer look at a pastime and industry that faces an uncertain future: winter sports. While tens of millions of skiers and snowboarders still head for the mountains during the colder months each year to follow …