UK Supermarkets under pressure to explain high prices
Supermarket executives will be questioned by MPs on Tuesday over why food prices are still rising as some wholesale costs are falling.
The UK's biggest grocers - Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, and Morrisons - will face a parliamentary committee examining the cost of a weekly shop.
The price of goods continues to grow but not as steeply as in recent months, according to the latest figures.
Food inflation reached 14.6% in June, the British Retail Consortium said.
That is down from 15.4% in the year to May, but it does not mean prices are falling, just that they are rising at a slower pace.
British Retail Consortium chief executive Helen Dickinson said: "If the current situation continues, food inflation should drop to single digits later this year."
However, food prices remain a key reason why the overall rate of inflation in the UK remains stubbornly high.
And with many hard-pressed households also facing rising rents or mortgage costs, there is pressure on the supermarkets to defend the high cost of shopping.
On Tuesday, MPs will grill senior supermarket bosses about food and fuel price inflation, asking if prices will come down this year.
Politicians, trades unionists and the governor of the Bank of England have all questioned why prices on supermarket shelves have not fallen as rapidly as the cost of some ingredients such as wheat.
They have suggested that retailers may be failing to pass on savings and are banking the profit instead.
The Competition and Markets Authority is examining the issue.
Supermarkets deny they are profiteering from high prices and claim their profits are being squeezed.
The grocers say they are cutting prices where they can, arguing that falls in commodity prices take time to filter through to the consumer.
Most of the big chains have recently introduced high-profile price cuts to staples, with Sainsbury's on Monday the latest to announce it was investing £15m to reduce the cost of basics such as rice, pasta, and chicken.
Tesco, Morrisons, M&S, Aldi and Lidl have all reduced prices on basic foods such as bread, milk, and butter in the past few months.
However, some items such as milk and eggs remain relatively expensive compared to pre-Covid prices.
"These latest price cuts will help reassure customers that we will continue to pass on savings as soon as we see the wholesale price of food fall," said Rhian Bartlett, food commercial director at Sainsbury's, and one of the executives due to appear before MPs on Tuesday.
As well as pointing to recent price cuts, the executives are likely to tell the committee that not all commodities have been falling in price, said Ged Futter, a retail analyst, and former senior buying manager at Asda.
"Yes, prices have come down for some things, but other things have gone up like sugar, potatoes [and] chocolate," he said.
Wheat, which has fallen in price on global markets, is largely supplied by UK growers, and food manufacturers will still be buying last year's crop at last year's prices, Mr. Futter said.
"They won't get a new price until they get into a new contract. Just because prices have gone down globally that doesn't mean the price here goes down immediately," he said.
Similarly, cheese sold today has been made with milk bought up to 12 months ago, so won't reflect recent falls in milk prices, he said.
Jamie Keeble, co-founder of sausage and burger maker Heck which supplies most of the major supermarkets, told the BBC's Today program that the price of pork was expected to remain high for the next 18 months.
He said the only way supermarkets could lower their prices was by asking suppliers to cut costs, but he added: "We're certainly not in the position to start giving cost decreases on our products.
"At the end of the day, [the supermarkets] are going to have to take a cut in their margins if they really want to lower the prices on the shelf, that's the only way to do it."
The British Retail Consortium has previously said there is typically a three- to nine-month lag for price falls to be reflected in shops.
Mr. Futter thinks supermarket executives will point to other costs affecting food retail, from rising wages to the added charges related to Brexit, such as veterinary certificates.
A study by academics at the London School of Economics last month found nearly a third of food price inflation since 2019 was due to Brexit.
Source- BBC
West Ham reject Manchester City's £90m bid for captain
West Ham have rejected a bid of £90m from Treble winners Manchester City for captain Declan Rice.
City's offer was thought to have included an £80m initial payment but is short of the £100m the Hammers want.
Arsenal are expected to make a third bid for the 24-year-old England midfielder.
The Gunners' second proposal of an initial £75m in four payments, plus £15m in add-ons, was turned down by West Ham last week.
Rice's contract with the Hammers expires in 2024, although it has the option for a one-year extension until the summer of 2025.
Following the club's Europa Conference League victory over Fiorentina earlier this month, chairman David Sullivan said he was "99%" sure Rice would leave West Ham this summer.
Although they have lined up Chelsea's Mateo Kovacic in a £25m deal, the loss of Ilkay Gundogan to Barcelona means City manager Pep Guardiola is keen to bolster his midfield options, with Rice viewed as the ideal candidate.
Source- BBC
BET Awards 2023: The winners list
The BET Awards, known as "culture's biggest night," aired Sunday night live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, honoring notable names in music, film, sports and entertainment.
Here is the list of awards announced during the broadcast:
Best Female Hip Hop Artist
Latto
Video Director of the Year
Teyana “Spike Tey” Taylor
Best New Artist
Coco Jones
Viewer’s Choice Award
"Break My Soul," Beyoncé
Best International Act
Burna Boy (Nigeria)
BET Her
"Break My Soul," Beyoncé
Lifetime Achievement Award
Busta Rhymes
Source- ABC
Facebook owner launches virtual reality subscription service
Facebook owner Meta has launched a virtual reality (VR) subscription service as it tries to make that part of its business profitable.
Meta says paying users will get access to two new games a month.
For the first three months of the year, the parent company of Instagram saw a $4bn (£3.1bn) loss in its VR unit.
Meta faces competition from firms including technology giant Apple, which unveiled its highly anticipated mixed-reality headset this month.
On Monday, the company said the Meta Quest+ service, which costs $7.99 a month or $59.99 for an annual subscription, was compatible with its Quest 2, Quest Pro, and upcoming Quest 3 headsets.
In 2021, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg unveiled plans to build a "metaverse" - an online world where people can play games, work and communicate in a virtual environment, often using VR headsets.
"Over time, I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we're building towards," Mr Zuckerberg said.
In February last year, Meta unveiled several ambitious artificial intelligence projects, and Mr. Zuckerberg described AI as "the key to unlocking the metaverse".
The company reported a profit of $5.7bn for the first three months of this year, surpassing market expectations.
However, its Reality Labs division, which produces VR headsets and other products, reported a net loss of $4bn for the period.
Earlier this month, Apple unveiled its Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, in its first major hardware launch in almost a decade.
Apple's headset, which will be released early next year in the US, will be priced at $3,499.
That is considerably more than other headsets currently available in the market. Meta's VR headsets are priced between $299.99 and $999.99.
Source- BBC
Traffic Cops' Jobs Changing as Some Cities Ban Minor Traffic Stops
American roads are changing. Whether it's the challenging public discussion about the best way for police officers to conduct traffic stops or the rise in traffic fatalities during the pandemic, things are different out there. That's why, from Michigan to New York, strategies to make roads safer for everyone are changing, too.
In Michigan, the Ann Arbor City Council voted 9–0 earlier this month to propose a new law that would reduce police officers’ ability to pull someone over for "minor offenses." The proposed Driving Equality Ordinance draws a line between routine traffic stops and eventual incarceration outcomes for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). The council's proposed solution is to take away an officer's right to pull someone over for minor offenses such as a cracked windshield.
The stakes for these pretextual stops can also be higher than being locked up, too. "The harms of traffic stops are not equally felt," the proposal reads. "More than a quarter of people killed in traffic stops are Black, despite Black people making up only 12 percent of the population." The proposal also notes that stops for minor offenses "are disproportionately carried out against people of color and return negligible public safety benefits."
"When you get pulled over, you have to wonder if I did something wrong or am I being profiled," the founding chairperson of Ann Arbor’s Independent Police Oversight Commission, Lisa Jackson, told local ABC 7 News.
A final vote on the proposed law is scheduled for early July. Bigger cities, including Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, have passed similar legislation in recent years, as Bloomberg has reported.
Over in Washington, D.C., the city’s Department of Transportation has a different idea to reduce the number of traffic deaths, crashes, and other traffic violations. In partnership with The Lab @ D.C. (a part of the city government), the city will send text messages and physical mail to drivers who have had some sort of traffic citation or violation. The customized messages are meant to get drivers to think about their actions and will reference details about the driver’s vehicle, the violations it has been connected to in the past, and a warning that the vehicle is at higher risk of a crash than others because of this history.
According to the Washington Post, one of the mailers includes the text: "Someone in your household is driving dangerously. Your vehicle has a history of speeding and/or running red lights and this is placing the drivers and passengers of your vehicle at a high risk of getting into a crash."
The city created a list of 100,000 high-risk drivers, and a subset of these people will get the text or mail messages (or both). Drivers can opt out of the messages after the first one. During the 12-month program, the DOT and The Lab will then see which category of drivers, if any, see any noticeable improvements.
"The goal is to create awareness, regardless of whether or not anybody has signed off for specific alerts," The Lab director Sam Quinney told the Post.
Source- Car and Driver
Operation-Five Cays - June 21st , 2023
Officers of the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force today (June 21st) executed search warrants at three residences in Five Cays, Providenciales, this morning.
Led by Head of Crime, Safeguarding, and Public Protection Superintendent Dean Holden, the operation commenced at 5:00 a.m. and ended around 8:00 a.m.
Superintendent Holden said: “This was a joint operation among various departments within the RTCIPF. This operation was aimed at targeting, suppressing, disrupting, and dismantling gang and criminal activities in the Five Cays district.
Several of the recent crimes committed are by illegal firearms and the RTCIPF, namely its Serious Crime Unit and the Anti-Gang and Drug Unit have been working relentlessly to limit the scourge of organized criminal activities”.
Additionally, Superintendent Holden said today’s operation held THREE objectives.
- Disrupting organized crime rings within the Five Cays district;
- Create opportunities for intelligence gathering and evidence and
- Create opportunities to engage local communities, by reassuring them the police are taking positive action against the increase in illegal firearm use.
The search for the missing Titanic sub and how it might be found
Rescue teams are in a race against time after a tourist submersible carrying five people went missing during a dive into the wreck of the Titanic.
But how are rescuers trying to find a vessel that has already been missing for nearly three days in the vast depths of the Atlantic Ocean and what will the challenges be when they do?
The crew of the Titan submersible lost contact with its surface vessel - the Polar Prince - an hour and 45 minutes after it began a dive to see the wreck on Sunday. The sub's air supply is expected to run out at about 11:00 BST (10:00 GMT) on Thursday.
The Titanic wreck lies some 435 miles (700km) south of St John's, Newfoundland, and about a dozen ships are at the scene or on the way to help the rescue mission but changeable weather and poor visibility are hampering efforts.
Prof Alistair Greig, a submarine expert from University College London, says one of the big problems is that rescuers do not know whether to look on the surface or the seabed - it is "very unlikely" to be in between - and warns searching each poses challenges.
If the sub can't send distress signals for any reason, Prof Greig says: "It's about the size of a large transit van and it's painted white so trying to see that from the air... is going to be a real challenge."
US and Canadian agencies, navies, and commercial deep-sea firms are all helping the rescue operation, which is being run from Boston, Massachusetts.
The Polar Prince has been joined by seven ships to search an area of more than 25,000 sq km with the aid of military planes and sonar buoys.
Some of those ships are carrying unmanned remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) that will be needed to scour the sea floor.
Polar Prince (on site) - A research vessel that launched the Titan submersible
Deep Energy (on site) - Commercial cable-laying ship with two ROVs that can operate down to 3,000m (10,000ft)
Atlantic Merlin (on site) - Canadian offshore supply vessel with a 4,000m winch system. Carries ROVs but it's unknown how deep they can operate
Skandi Vinland (on site) - Subsea support vessel with two ROVs but it's unknown how deep they can operate
L'Atalante (on site) - French-operated ship heading to the scene with an ROV that can operate at depths of Titanic wreckage
Horizon Arctic (on site) - Commercial vessel loaded with support equipment
Glace Bay (in the vicinity on standby) - Canadian naval ship carrying decompression chamber and ready to provide medical assistance
John Cabot (on site) - Scientific research vessel with sonar search capabilities operated by the Canadian Coast Guard
Ann Harvey (on site) - Light icebreaker vessel operated by the Canadian Coast Guard
Terry Fox (en route) - Heavy icebreaker vessel operated by the Canadian Coast Guard
Source- BBC
Boat captain convicted of drug possession loses appeal
The Court of Appeal has unanimously rejected a proposed appeal by a boat captain against his convictions and sentences for drug possession with intent to supply.
Jose Cabrera was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment and fined $20,000 to avoid spending an additional six months in custody.
The sentences took effect from the date of his remand in September 2021.
On August 28, 2021, police boarded a sailboat skippered by Cabrera at a marina in Long Island to search for illegal drugs.
The police did not find any contraband during the initial search.
Police took Cabrera, his crew member, and the boat to Exuma to carry out a more comprehensive search.
During the second search, police officers found a crocus bag containing 61 pounds of cocaine inside a wooden structure in the engine room where the batteries for the boat’s vessel were stored.
Cabrera was convicted following a trial before Magistrate Samuel McKinney, who rejected his testimony that he had no knowledge of the drugs.
Cabrera’s crew member was acquitted.
After firing a public defender and a privately retained lawyer, Cabrera represented himself at the appeal.
He argued that his conviction was unsafe because he was locked up at the police station when Sergeant Dorsett found the drugs. They found no merit in this argument as the magistrate accepted the officer’s evidence.
The court further noted that Cabrera’s complaint was undermined by his admission in the record of the interview that he was outside the boat when they did the inspection.
Cabrera also failed to convince the court to quash the fine, which he said he was unable to pay.
The appellate judges found that the imposition of a fine or an additional six months was not unduly harsh as he would effectively serve a two-year sentence for possession of dangerous drugs with intent to supply.
Source- The Nassau Guardian
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg agree to hold cage fight
Two of the world's most high-profile technology billionaires - Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg - have agreed to fight each other in a cage match.
Mr. Musk posted a message on his social media platform Twitter that he was "up for a cage fight" with Mr Zuckerberg.
Mr. Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, then posted a screenshot of Mr. Musk's tweet with the caption "send me location".
"The story speaks for itself," a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.
Mr. Musk then replied to Mr. Zuckerberg's response with: "Vegas Octagon."
The Octagon is the competition mat and fenced-in area used for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bouts. The UFC is based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mr. Musk, who turns 52 later this month, also tweeted: "I have this great move that I call "The Walrus", where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing."
He also tweeted: "I almost never work out, except for picking up my kids & throwing them in the air."
Meanwhile, 39-year-old Mr. Zuckerberg has already been training in mixed martial arts (MMA) and has recently won jiu-jitsu tournaments.
Twitter did not provide a statement when contacted by the BBC for comment.
The exchanges have gone viral with social media users debating who would win the bout, while others have posted memes including mocked-up posters advertising the fight.
Earlier this month, Meta showed staff plans for a text-based social network designed to compete with Twitter, sources have told the BBC.
It could allow users to follow accounts they already follow on Instagram, Meta's image-sharing app.
It could potentially allow the company to bring over followers from decentralized platforms such as Mastodon.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that the platform was in development.
The text-based network - which has a working title of P92 - could turn out to be a greater rival to Elon Musk's Twitter than either BlueSky or Mastodon.
Source- BBC
Gundogan out Kovacic in - what next for Man City?
Manchester City's imminent signing of Chelsea midfielder Mateo Kovacic and Ilkay Gundogan's departure are the first changes to the squad which landed last season's Treble - but are unlikely to be the last.
The 29-year-old Croatia international - who will arrive for an initial fee of £25m, potentially rising to £30m - looked like he would boost City's options in the heart of midfield.
But just hours later, the news came out that German midfielder Gundogan would be joining Barcelona this summer on a free transfer - making the reasons for Kovacic's signing a lot clearer.
Kovacic played 69 passes per 90 minutes last season - the fifth-highest total in the Premier League among central midfielders who played regularly.
He arrives with four Champions League successes to his name, three with Real Madrid, and provides the wealth of experience Pep Guardiola will be losing with Gundogan's departure.
Like Gundogan, he is able to play further forward despite preferring a more defensive role, although he does trail the German with just seven appearances per goal contribution to the former's three.
Kovacic has scored just 24 goals in 491 club appearances, compared to Gundogan's 110 in 557 career appearances.
The 32-year-old German midfielder's influence was crucial in the closing weeks of City's season with six goals in his final seven games - including a double in the 2-1 FA Cup final win over Manchester United.
It's no wonder Guardiola did not want to lose his captain but, after missing out on Jude Bellingham to Real Madrid, is Kovacic his replacement?
BBC Sport's Simon Stone, said: "It explains why City is close to signing Kovacic from Chelsea and makes you wonder if Guardiola will stop there.
"After all, there is the annual uncertainty around Bernardo Silva, while Riyad Mahrez lost his starting spot as the season came to an end and is sure to be the subject of interest.
"Further back, Aymeric Laporte won't want to risk his place in Spain's Euro 2024 squad by being on the fringes at City.
"Guardiola proved last summer he was not averse to selling what were felt to be key men to rivals when he allowed Oleskandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus to join Arsenal.
"Over the years, City has been very good at knowing when to let players go. Gundogan may not be the last through the exit door before the summer is out."
So what changes are possible this summer?
Source- BBC