Author: Arabian Media staff

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A group led by British engineer Rolls-Royce has won UK government backing for its bid to build the country’s first small modular nuclear reactors. The consortium has been selected as the preferred bidder out of four developers shortlisted last year. The selection marks a step forward for the technology in the UK, although SMRs are not likely to be up and running in Britain until the 2030s. It comes as the government announced £11.5bn of new state funding on Tuesday for a…

Image credit: Getty Images Gold prices declined on Tuesday, hurt by an uptick in the US dollar as market participants awaited details from the second day of trade talks between the US and China in London. Spot gold fell 0.6 per cent to $3,307.72 an ounce, as of 0502 GMT. US gold futures slipped 0.8 per cent to $3,327.50. Read-Gold set for worst drop in six months: Find out why The dollar index rose 0.3 per cent against its rivals, making gold more expensive for other currency holders. The trade talks between the world’s two largest economies encompass issues ranging…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Sal Khan tightly controls his children’s screen time and their access to social media, but the founder and chief executive of the Khan Academy, an online education organisation, is a big believer in the power of the digital world and artificial intelligence to help students get ahead.“Apps and games are clearly designed to be addictive, but technology in moderation is fundamentally neutral,” he says. “Many adults get angry with their kids but are also addicted to their phones. We should all say…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Opec does two things well: produce oil and manage the market to its advantage. The cartel has long held that cutting production and keeping the oil price high beats selling more barrels at lower prices. So when the group — led by Saudi Arabia — announced a big increase in output, it left observers baffled.All that oil will swamp demand. Opec+ — the name given to the cartel plus allies such as Russia — may add as much as 2.2mn barrels a…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK employment myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.UK pay growth cooled in the three months to April as employers cut jobs in the run-up to big increases in payroll taxes and the legal minimum wage, official data showed on Tuesday. Annual growth in average weekly wages, excluding bonuses, slowed to 5.2 per cent in the period, the Office for National Statistics said. That was below analysts’ expectations of 5.3 per cent and down from 5.5 per cent in the three months to March. Growth in total earnings, including bonuses, was…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Growth in sales of e-cigarettes is faltering on both sides of the Atlantic, challenging forecasts that vaping devices will become the dominant alternative to smoking and provide a sustainable lifeline for big tobacco.British American Tobacco, the FTSE 100 group behind Vuse e-cigarettes, said last week it expected sales of its vaping devices to fall by a mid-teens percentage globally in the first half of the year.In the US, the world’s largest vaping market, year-on-year sales of regulated devices have fallen almost every…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UK families are “seizing the moment” to snap up bargain luxury homes in exclusive London postcodes as a dwindling pool of international buyers, deterred by new non-dom tax rules, leads to double-digit price drops.Estate agents say families living in prime areas of outer London, such as Barnes or Chiswick, who may not have previously been able to afford to step up into prime inner areas of the capital, are securing a foothold in the most exclusive neighbourhoods, such as Belgravia and Kensington.“We…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Artificial intelligence, or AI, is extremely popular today, but the technology has existed for decades — the term goes all the way back to the 1950s.There have been huge advances recently, though, and these days AI can do all sorts of things, from playing chess and Pokémon to making pictures, writing computer code and completing research. As these systems become more widely used and available in schools, universities and jobs, it is essential to understand how AI works and how to use…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Entering the job market can feel daunting, particularly when there’s a lot of news around about how artificial intelligence is going to disrupt the workplace. The launch of ChatGPT three years ago triggered a whirlwind of spending by large technology companies and businesses on new AI systems. This has led to reports that companies are reducing the number of entry level jobs. After all, a few of prompts and some tools can produce research and even zippy quotes. “Applying for a job…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Maisie McInnes, from the northern English city of Hull, started selling used clothes online to help save for a deposit on a house. She began by listing old items from her own wardrobe, but now spends a couple of hours every week browsing local charity shops for stock to resell at online marketplace Vinted, where she has sold more than 6,000 items since 2019. McInnes is part of a global market for second-hand clothing worth an estimated $256bn, according to online thrift store…