Author: LoveWorld UK

Britain’s Marks & Spencer MKS.L reported the first loss in its 94 years as a publicly listed company after clothing sales were hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the best known names in UK retail said on Wednesday that it made a pretax loss before one-off items of 17.4 million pounds in the 26 weeks to Sept. 26 – its first loss since listing its shares on the stock market in 1926. The outcome was ahead of analysts’ average forecast of a 59 million pound loss and compared with a profit of 176 million pounds in the same period last year.…

Primark-owner Associated British Foods ABF.L has no plans to build an online business for the fashion retailer despite it recording a 63% slump in full-year profit due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the group said on Tuesday. Over the last decade Primark, which sells only from physical stores, has been the fastest-growing arm of Britain’s AB Foods, a group that also owns major sugar, grocery, agriculture and ingredients businesses. But the pandemic has hit Primark hard, with the clothes retailer’s adjusted operating profit for the year to Sept. 12 falling to 362 million pounds from 969 million pounds in 2018-19, reflecting the closure of…

Britain will launch a COVID-19 mass testing pilot scheme in the northwest city of Liverpool this week, offering everyone tests whether or not they have symptoms, in an attempt to find a new way to use testing to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised a “world-beating” national test-and-trace system earlier this year, whereby people with symptoms get tested and the contacts of positive cases are asked to self-isolate. But the scheme has disappointed and the government’s scientific advisory body said last month its impact on virus transmission was marginal. The United Kingdom has the highest…

It was the Halloween horror no one had been expecting: a series of mind-boggling graphs and charts presented at Saturday’s Downing Street press conference that purported to show the Covid-19 pandemic was out of control and a second national lockdown was needed.  But do the graphs and charts really support this? ROSS CLARK find outs … THE HEAT MAP This chart was designed to show that some hospitals – shown in red – already had more Covid-19 patients than at the peak of the first wave in the spring. Hospitals shown in amber have more than half as many virus patients as they had then, while green indicates…

The claim that 4,000 people could be dying from coronavirus by next month could be four or five times too high and not reflect the current situation, experts warn. The shocking figure was presented by chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance in Saturday’s TV briefing where Boris Johnson announced the UK’s second lockdown. But there are concerns that it’s out of date and inaccurate, with SAGE accused of ‘misleading’ the public and MPs by cherry-picking the scariest data. Professor Carl Heneghan, of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said he ‘cannot understand why they have used…

IZMIR, Turkey (Reuters) – A young girl was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building in the western Turkish city of Izmir on Tuesday, more than 90 hours after a deadly earthquake in the Aegean Sea killed at least 104 people. Rescuers heard Ayda Gezgin’s screams from under the rubble and managed to pull her out hours later, taking her out on a stretcher as emergency teams continued to search five apartment blocks for survivors. Images showed a rescue worker hugging Ayda after she was found under the debris, covered in dust. Crowds in the area applauded workers after…

Steve Tomlin, who runs a Renault dealership in Britain, says sales of the Zoe small electric car have shot up this year, a turnaround he partly puts down to a fading of “range anxiety”, the fear of running out of power mid-journey. The revamped model, which has accounted for a third of Tomlin’s sales for a couple of months this year, has a range of 400 km (249-mile). By contrast the previous model, which drew much lower sales, offered 300 km when fully charged. “Range anxiety has gone away and once you explain how easy it is to live day…

Oil prices fell 4% on Monday on worries that widening coronavirus lockdowns in Europe would weaken fuel demand and amid concerns about turbulence over this week’s U.S. presidential election. Brent crude futures LCOc1 for January dropped $1.49, or 3.9%, to $36.45 a barrel by 0745 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures CLc1 fell $1.58, or 4.4%, to $34.21. Brent fell as much as 5.8% and WTI as much as 6% in early trade, hitting their lowest levels since May. Countries across Europe have reimposed lockdown measures to try to slow COVID-19 infection rates that have accelerated in the past month. Global oil…

Religious groups in England have strongly criticised the new lockdown rule banning communal worship. England’s four-week lockdown will see most religious services banned. Funerals will still be allowed, with a maximum of 30 attending. The Catholic Church described the ban as a cause of “anguish” and demanded the government gives its reasons for stopping services. The Muslim Council of Britain called for an urgent review of restrictions. The Catholic Church Bishops’ Conference said communal worship had helped many during the pandemic. Cardinal Vincent Nichols and Archbishop Malcolm McMahon, president and vice president of the association, also stressed that churches had…

POGBA FAILS TO TAKE HIS CHANCE – AGAIN Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer gave Paul Pogba another chance to stake his claim for a regular starting place in his midfield but was let down by yet another poor display from the Frenchman. After last week’s goalless draw with Chelsea, in which Pogba started on the bench, there were calls for the United boss to find a way to get him back in the team. Pogba started in midweek against Leipzig in the 5-0 Champions League win but delivered a sub-par performance against Arsenal and gave away the penalty which…