Free school meals are to be extended to 500,000 more children, the government has said. The Department for Education has set aside £1bn to fund the change up to 2029, reports the BBC. Prime minister Keir Starmer said the policy would “help families who need it most”.
The Telegraph reports on Office for National Statistics data showing Brits took a record 20.5 million days off because of mental health in 2024, up from 14.8 million in 2023. This accounted for 13.7% of all sick days taken in Britain, the highest proportion since 2019.
People in English-speaking countries including the UK, US, Australia and Canada are more nervous about the rise of artificial intelligence than those in the largest EU economies, where excitement over its spread is higher, exclusive research shared with The Guardian suggests. People in Great Britain were among the most pessimistic about how AI will worsen the job market, with nearly a third fearing AI will replace them entirely at work, according to the Ipsos Mori poll.
The FT questions whether the nicotine pouch’s “sudden, steep rise in popularity will translate into a long-term habit for Big Tobacco, or produce merely a fleeting high” in an analysis piece. The pouches have “taken off everywhere from Premier League locker rooms to Wall Street trading floors, helping boost tobacco groups’ share prices to historic highs” it reports.
L’Oréal is poised to seal a roughly €1bn deal to buy UK skincare company Medik8, in the latest push by the French cosmetics giant to bolster its offering of premium beauty brands, reports the Financial Times. Medik8 sells science-backed serums and anti-ageing creams and would be the latest in a string of skincare acquisitions for L’Oréal under chief executive Nicolas Hieronimus.
Walmart, the largest US private sector employer, counted 2,165,465 staff worldwide as of the end of last year – almost 70,000 fewer than five years ago. In the same period Walmart boosted revenues by more than $150bn, an increase that outstrips the total annual sales of most rivals. “Wall Street analysts say the company’s expansion without job creation reflects a hard push into ecommerce and the automation of cumbersome tasks, from unloading shipping pallets to updating shelf price labels. Artificial intelligence is poised to supercharge these efforts,” reports the FT.
The Times questions whether workers who don’t come into the office have their pay cut – after the UK was named the working-from-home capital of Europe last week. “If you’re living in Cornwall instead of Canary Wharf, but drawing the same salary, we have to ask: is that fair to the company or to colleagues showing up in person every day?” a supply chain company chief argues.
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