Shareholders in Matthew Moulding’s beauty and wellness business have voted in favour of a plan to spin off its Ingenuity ecommerce platform at a valuation of £90 million. THG, formerly known as The Hut Group, will press ahead with a divestment of its technology platform after 89 per cent of voting shareholders backed the plan at a general meeting on Friday. Ingenuity provides technology to support the online operations of retailers including Holland & Barrett, The Range and L’Oréal. The division has 13 distribution centres and employs about 3,500 people. THG launched a funding round to raise capital of £95.4 million to fund the transaction, and has secured debt funding of £55 million. The company has told investors the money will be used to fundIcelanders have voted to elect a new parliament after disagreements over immigration, energy policy and the economy forced Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson to pull the plug on his coalition government and call an early election. All polling stations managed to open despite fierce weather in the sub-Arctic nation that left roads in many areas blocked by snow. Ballot counting began after polls closed at 10pm local time, with results expected early Sunday. This is Iceland’s sixth general election since the 2008 financial crisis devastated the economy of the nation and ushered in a new era of political instability. Opinion polls suggested the country could be in for another upheaval, with support for the three governing parties plunging. Mr Benediktsson, who was named prime minister in April following the resignation of his predecessor, struggled to hold together the unlikely coalition of his conservative Independence Party with the centrist Progressive Party and the Left-Green Movement. “My expectation is like, something new (is) going to happen, hopefully,” said Horour Guojonsson, voting in the capital, Reykjavik. “We always have had these old parties taking care of things. I hope we see the light now to come in with a younger people, new ideas.” Iceland, a nation of about 400,000 people, is proud of its democratic traditions, describing itself as arguably the world’s oldest parliamentary democracy. The island’s parliament, the Althingi, was founded in 930 by the Norsemen who settled the country.
NEW YORK (AP) — Yankees slugger Aaron Judge wins his second AL MVP award after leading MLB with 58 home runs.
President-elect Trump wants to again rename North America's tallest peak
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — An online spat between factions of Donald Trump's supporters over immigration and the tech industry has thrown internal divisions in his political movement into public display, previewing the fissures and contradictory views his coalition could bring to the White House. The rift laid bare the tensions between the newest flank of Trump's movement — wealthy members of the tech world including billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and their call for more highly skilled workers in their industry — and people in Trump's Make America Great Again base who championed his hardline immigration policies. The debate touched off this week when Laura Loomer , a right-wing provocateur with a history of racist and conspiratorial comments, criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan as an adviser on artificial intelligence policy in his coming administration. Krishnan favors the ability to bring more skilled immigrants into the U.S. Loomer declared the stance to be “not America First policy” and said the tech executives who have aligned themselves with Trump were doing so to enrich themselves. Much of the debate played out on the social media network X, which Musk owns. Loomer's comments sparked a back-and-forth with venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks , whom Trump has tapped to be the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar." Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tasked with finding ways to cut the federal government , weighed in, defending the tech industry's need to bring in foreign workers. It bloomed into a larger debate with more figures from the hard-right weighing in about the need to hire U.S. workers, whether values in American culture can produce the best engineers, free speech on the internet, the newfound influence tech figures have in Trump's world and what his political movement stands for. Trump has not yet weighed in on the rift, and his presidential transition team did not respond to a message seeking comment. Musk, the world's richest man who has grown remarkably close to the president-elect , was a central figure in the debate, not only for his stature in Trump's movement but his stance on the tech industry's hiring of foreign workers. Technology companies say H-1B visas for skilled workers, used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, are critical for hard-to-fill positions. But critics have said they undercut U.S. citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right have called for the program to be eliminated, not expanded. Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an a H-1B visa himself and defended the industry's need to bring in foreign workers. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent," he said in a post. “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” Trump's own positions over the years have reflected the divide in his movement. His tough immigration policies, including his pledge for a mass deportation, were central to his winning presidential campaign. He has focused on immigrants who come into the U.S. illegally but he has also sought curbs on legal immigration , including family-based visas. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump called the H-1B visa program “very bad” and “unfair” for U.S. workers. After he became president, Trump in 2017 issued a “Buy American and Hire American” executive order , which directed Cabinet members to suggest changes to ensure H-1B visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants to protect American workers. Trump's businesses, however, have hired foreign workers, including waiters and cooks at his Mar-a-Lago club , and his social media company behind his Truth Social app has used the the H-1B program for highly skilled workers. During his 2024 campaign for president, as he made immigration his signature issue, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country" and promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But in a sharp departure from his usual alarmist message around immigration generally, Trump told a podcast this year that he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges. “I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country," he told the “All-In" podcast with people from the venture capital and technology world. Those comments came on the cusp of Trump's budding alliance with tech industry figures, but he did not make the idea a regular part of his campaign message or detail any plans to pursue such changes.There’s a ‘golden opportunity’ in bonds that investors are overlooking
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) — Garry Clark scored 15 points as Texas A&M-Corpus Christi beat Prairie View A&M 109-74 on Saturday night. Clark also contributed five rebounds for the Islanders (5-3). Dian Wright-Forde shot 5 of 6 from the field and 3 of 4 from the free-throw line to add 14 points. Jordan Roberts shot 4 of 6 from the field, including 2 for 4 from 3-point range, and went 4 for 5 from the line to finish with 14 points. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.AP Sports SummaryBrief at 5:31 p.m. ESTCorruption Prevention Begins With Addressing Root Causes – Tinubu
Australia's prime minister said Sunday he was ready to "engage" with billionaire X owner Elon Musk over his criticism of the government's ban on under-16s joining social media. Anthony Albanese hailed the parliament's Thursday passage of landmark legislation requiring social media firms to take "reasonable steps" to prevent young teens from having accounts. The law, which will come into effect after 12 months, gives few details of how it will be enforced, including how sites like Facebook, Instagram and X will verify users' ages. Musk -- who has been named Donald Trump's government efficiency chief in the incoming US administration -- posted on X last month that the law "seems like a backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians". "We will talk to anyone," Albanese said when asked if he would discuss the legislation with Musk. "With regard to Elon Musk, he has an agenda. He's entitled to push that as the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter," Albanese told Australian public broadcaster ABC. When the interviewer mentioned that Musk was also Trump's "right-hand man", the prime minister replied: "We will engage, we will engage." Social media firms that fail to comply with the new law face fines of up to Aus$50 million (US$32.5 million) for "systemic breaches". Musk's platform in October lost a legal bid to avoid a US$417,000 fine levelled by Australia's online watchdog, which has accused X of failing to stamp out harmful posts. The government will decide over the next 12 months how to implement the ban, Albanese said, insisting, however, that it would not require people to provide identification. "The obligation will be on social media companies to do everything they can to make sure that those people under 16 don't have access to social media," the prime minister said. "We know that social media companies have more information about you and I than some of our friends do," he added. "We know that they are able to do that, and the obligation will be on them." Albanese said he was "determined" to implement the legislation. "I've met parents who have had to bury their children as a result of the impact that social media has had as a result of bullying, and we need to do something about it," he said. Several social media giants have promised to work with the government on implementing the law. But they have also criticised the legislation, saying it was "rushed", full of unanswered questions, and did not take into account the views of experts who opposed it. The UN children's charity UNICEF Australia warned this week that the law was no "silver bullet" against online harm and could push kids into "covert and unregulated" spaces online. djw/mp/cwl