Chief executive says increase in national insurance contributions could mean more expensive groceries

Food sales at Sainsbury’s have been boosted by a return to the office and fewer people dining out in restaurants, as the retailer warned of possible price rises as a result of having to pay £140m more next year in national insurance contributions [NICs].

The supermarket chain’s pre-tax profits were £356m for the six months to mid-September, up 4.7% on the same period last year, driven by a 5% increase in sales in its grocery business.

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Partner in company due to receive shipment arrested after 13 tonnes of drug discovered at port of Algeciras

Spanish police and customs officers have intercepted the largest consignment of cocaine ever to reach the country, seizing more than 13 tonnes of the drug, hidden in a cargo of bananas shipped from Ecuador.

Spain’s Policía Nacional said the seizure was the second largest recorded in Europe and one of the largest anywhere in the world.

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Borrowing costs reduced for second time this year and Fed expected to cut US rates later today

The Bank of England has cut interest rates for a second time this year in a closely watched decision following the UK government budget and Donald Trump’s election as US president.

In a decision widely expected in financial markets, the Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) voted by a majority to reduce the base rate from 5% to 4.75%.

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Healthcare providers report unprecedented demand for reproductive and gender-affirming medications: ‘We’ve never seen this before’

When the presidential election results were handed down on Wednesday, Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of Aid Access, the No 1 supplier of abortion pills by mail in the United States, was huddled in a Paris apartment with her team of eight American physicians and 15 support staff. The group – which usually operates remotely, shipping out more than 9,000 abortion pills a month – had convened in person before the election, knowing they might have to spring into action.

They were right: as news of Trump’s victory spread, the website received more than 5,000 requests for abortion pills in less than 12 hours – a surge even larger than the day after Roe v Wade fell. “I can see all the new requests ticking in as we’re talking,” Gomperts said in a phone call on Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve never seen this before.”

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Christian nationalists will hope for increased political influence after key voting bloc helps to deliver at the polls

At a Republican watch party early Tuesday evening in the Milwaukee suburbs, Dimitra Anderson, a 64-year-old bellydancer, clutched her boa constrictor – a pet that travels with her everywhere – and issued a confident proclamation: “I’m ecstatic because I believe he’s going to win in a tidal wave.”

The night was young, no swing states had been called yet, but Anderson, who describes herself as a born-again believer, had been following the preachings of the self-styled prophets of the Christian right. They were saying Trump would win.

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(Warner Records)
They sold millions as the most poppy and emotional band in nu-metal. Now, returning with Emily Armstrong as frontwoman, they remain just as dynamic

In September, Linkin Park’s comeback single The Emptiness Machine entered the UK singles chart at No 4. You could see that as an extraordinary state of affairs: an august metal band whose lead singer died seven years ago – recently replaced with the largely unknown Emily Armstrong – gatecrashing a Top 5 that spent most of 2024 as the exclusive domain of a handful of pop and pop-dance artists, most of them too young to remember the 2000 release of Linkin Park’s debut album Hybrid Theory first-hand.

Then again, perhaps not. For one thing, the nu-metal scene that birthed them has been enjoying a resurgence in interest: quite aside from a wave of early 00s nostalgia, there’s an intriguing correlation between the genre’s feel-my-pain angst and the emotional tenor of latter-day pop. Perhaps more importantly, Linkin Park always stood slightly apart from their rap-rock peers. One popular line is that they were to nu-metal what Def Leppard were to glam metal, not just because of their vast sales figures or the expensive, radio-friendly sheen to Hybrid Theory’s sound, but because, like Def Leppard, they never bothered to conceal their pop leanings.

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The PM echoes Tony Blair in his pledge to be tough on crime – but he is less interested in the causes behind the Channel crossings

• Enver Solomon is chief executive of the Refugee Council

It may not be one of the government’s five stated missions , but Keir Starmer is making disrupting the criminal gangs behind cross border migration his own crusade. The prime minister told the annual assembly of Interpol in Glasgow on Monday it was his “personal mission to smash the people-smuggling gangs”.

This government seems to be replacing its predecessor’s “stop the boats” slogan with “smash the gangs”. The focus is on enforcement, including rapid prosecutions, echoing the government’s response to the far-right violence in August. Starmer, who is meeting other leaders at the European political community summit in Hungary on Thursday, also wants to establish a new security pact with the EU to overcome the fact that Brexit has hamstrung efforts to clamp down on the crossings – in particular, by removing access to the EU-wide fingerprinting database.

Enver Solomon is chief executive of the Refugee Council

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Network hopes to deliver projects across Essex, Norfolk, Kent and Suffolk, crucial to ‘decarbonising’ power system, year earlier

National Grid is considering whether it can fast-track two controversial power cable projects to help the government meet its pledge to create a clean electricity system by 2030.

The FTSE 100 energy company is reviewing plans to build a 114-mile (184km) power line from Tilbury in Essex to Norwich, which is expected to begin construction in 2027 and carry electricity from offshore windfarms by 2031.

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Trump says he will choose personnel who will make life ‘affordable, safe, and secure’ as Harris says: ‘this is not a time to throw up our hands’

• US election results 2024: live map and tracker
• Senate and House results 2024: live maps and tracker
• The key swing states and counties that handed Trump the White House

Rudy Giuliani will appear in a New York City courtroom on Thursday to explain to a federal judge why he hasn’t surrendered his valuables as part of a $148m defamation judgment, the Associated Press reports.

US District Judge Lewis Liman ordered the former New York City mayor to report to court after lawyers for the two former Georgia election workers who were awarded the massive judgment visited Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment last week only to discover it had been cleared out weeks earlier.

The judge had set an 29 October deadline for the longtime ally of once-and-future President Donald Trump to surrender many of his possessions to lawyers for Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.

Representatives for Giuliani did not respond to an email from Reuters on Wednesday seeking comment.

While Kemi Badenoch was the first politician since the US presidential election result to publicly challenge Keir Starmer over Labour’s previously tense relationship with Donald Trump, she is unlikely to be the last.

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