Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
CFS announces food safety report for May.
The Centre for Food Safety (CFS) of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department today (June 30) released the findings of its food safety report for last month. The results of about 6 400 food samples tested (including food items purchased online) were found to be satisfactory except for six unsatisfactory samples that were announced earlier. The overall satisfactory rate was 99.9 per cent.
A CFS spokesman said that about 2 000 food samples were collected for microbiological tests, and about 4 400 samples were taken for chemical and radiation level tests.
The microbiological tests covered pathogens and hygiene indicators; the chemical tests included testing for pesticides, preservatives, metallic contaminants, colouring matters, veterinary drug residues and others; and the radiation-level tests included testing for radioactive caesium and iodine in samples collected from imported food from different regions.
The samples comprised about 1 600 samples of vegetables and fruit and their products; about 500 samples of cereals, grains and their products; about 600 samples of meat and poultry and their products; about 1 300 samples of milk, milk products and frozen confections; about 900 samples of aquatic and related products; and about 1 500 samples of other food commodities (including beverages, bakery products and snacks).
The six unsatisfactory samples comprised two mushroom samples and a prepackaged dried lily bulb sample detected with metallic contaminants exceeding the legal limit, a white radish sample and a melon sample detected with pesticide residues at levels exceeding the legal limit, and a pig ear sample found to contain Salmonella.
The CFS has taken follow-up actions on the above-mentioned unsatisfactory samples, including informing the vendors concerned of the test results, instructing them to stop selling the affected food items, and tracing the sources of the food items in question.
The spokesman reminded the food trade to ensure that food is fit for human consumption and meets legal requirements. Consumers should patronise reliable shops when buying food and maintain a balanced diet to minimise food risks.
Separately, in response to the Japanese Government’s discharge of nuclear-contaminated water at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Station, the CFS will continue enhancing the testing on imported Japanese food, and make reference to the risk assessment results to adjust relevant surveillance work in a timely manner. The CFS will announce every working day on its dedicated webpage (www.cfs.gov.hk/english/programme/programme_rafs/daily_japan_nuclear_incidents.html) the radiological test results of the samples of food imported from Japan, with a view to enabling the trade and members of the public to have a better grasp of the latest safety information.
AI tools gather information about you from many types of devices, including smartphones.Prostock-Studio/Getty Images
Like it or not, artificial intelligence has become part of daily life. Many devices – including electric razors and toothbrushes – have become “AI-powered,” using machine learning algorithms to track how a person uses the device, how the device is working in real time, and provide feedback. From asking questions to an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot to monitoring a daily fitness routine with a smartwatch, many people use an AI system or tool every day.
While AI tools and technologies can make life easier, they also raise important questions about data privacy. These systems often collect large amounts of data, sometimes without people even realizing their data is being collected. The information can then be used to identify personal habits and preferences, and even predict future behaviors by drawing inferences from the aggregated data.
As an assistant professor of cybersecurity at West Virginia University, I study how emerging technologies and various types of AI systems manage personal data and how we can build more secure, privacy-preserving systems for the future.
Generative AI software uses large amounts of training data to create new content such as text or images. Predictive AI uses data to forecast outcomes based on past behavior, such as how likely you are to hit your daily step goal, or what movies you may want to watch. Both types can be used to gather information about you.
Generative AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini collect all the information users type into a chat box. Every question, response and prompt that users enter is recorded, stored and analyzed to improve the AI model.
OpenAI’s privacy policy informs users that “we may use content you provide us to improve our Services, for example to train the models that power ChatGPT.” Even though OpenAI allows you to opt out of content use for model training, it still collects and retains your personal data. Although some companies promise that they anonymize this data, meaning they store it without naming the person who provided it, there is always a risk of data being reidentified.
ChatGPT stores and analyzes everything you type into a prompt screen. Screenshot by Christopher Ramezan, CC BY-ND
Predictive AI
Beyond generative AI assistants, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok continuously gather data on their users to train predictive AI models. Every post, photo, video, like, share and comment, including the amount of time people spend looking at each of these, is collected as data points that are used to build digital data profiles for each person who uses the service.
The profiles can be used to refine the social media platform’s AI recommender systems. They can also be sold to data brokers, who sell a person’s data to other companies to, for instance, help develop targeted advertisements that align with that person’s interests.
Many social media companies also track users across websites and applications by putting cookies and embedded tracking pixels on their computers. Cookies are small files that store information about who you are and what you clicked on while browsing a website.
One of the most common uses of cookies is in digital shopping carts: When you place an item in your cart, leave the website and return later, the item will still be in your cart because the cookie stored that information. Tracking pixels are invisible images or snippets of code embedded in websites that notify companies of your activity when you visit their page. This helps them track your behavior across the internet.
This is why users often see or hear advertisements that are related to their browsing and shopping habits on many of the unrelated websites they browse, and even when they are using different devices, including computers, phones and smart speakers. One study found that some websites can store over 300 tracking cookies on your computer or mobile phone.
Here’s how websites you browse can track you using cookies or tracking pixels.
Data privacy controls – and limitations
Like generative AI platforms, social media platforms offer privacy settings and opt-outs, but these give people limited control over how their personal data is aggregated and monetized. As media theorist Douglas Rushkoff argued in 2011, if the service is free, you are the product.
Many tools that include AI don’t require a person to take any direct action for the tool to collect data about that person. Smart devices such as home speakers, fitness trackers and watches continually gather information through biometric sensors, voice recognition and location tracking. Smart home speakers continually listen for the command to activate or “wake up” the device. As the device is listening for this word, it picks up all the conversations happening around it, even though it does not seem to be active.
Some companies claim that voice data is only stored when the wake word – what you say to wake up the device – is detected. However, people have raised concerns about accidental recordings, especially because these devices are often connected to cloud services, which allow voice data to be stored, synced and shared across multiple devices such as your phone, smart speaker and tablet.
If the company allows, it’s also possible for this data to be accessed by third parties, such as advertisers, data analytics firms or a law enforcement agency with a warrant.
Privacy rollbacks
This potential for third-party access also applies to smartwatches and fitness trackers, which monitor health metrics and user activity patterns. Companies that produce wearable fitness devices are not considered “covered entities” and so are not bound by the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act. This means that they are legally allowed to sell health- and location-related data collected from their users.
Concerns about HIPAA data arose in 2018, when Strava, a fitness company released a global heat map of user’s exercise routes. In doing so, it accidentally revealed sensitive military locations across the globe through highlighting the exercise routes of military personnel.
Smart speakers can collect information even when they’re sleeping. recep-bg/Getty Images
Such partnerships can expand corporate and government reach into everyday consumer behavior. This one could be used to create detailed personal profiles on Americans by linking their consumer habits with other personal data. This raises concerns about increased surveillance and loss of anonymity. It could allow citizens to be tracked and analyzed across multiple aspects of their lives without their knowledge or consent.
Some smart device companies are also rolling back privacy protections instead of strengthening them. Amazon recently announced that starting on March 28, 2025, all voice recordings from Amazon Echo devices would be sent to Amazon’s cloud by default, and users will no longer have the option to turn this function off. This is different from previous settings, which allowed users to limit private data collection.
Changes like these raise concerns about how much control consumers have over their own data when using smart devices. Many privacy experts consider cloud storage of voice recordings a form of data collection, especially when used to improve algorithms or build user profiles, which has implications for data privacy laws designed to protect online privacy.
Implications for data privacy
All of this brings up serious privacy concerns for people and governments on how AI tools collect, store, use and transmit data. The biggest concern is transparency. People don’t know what data is being collected, how the data is being used, and who has access to that data.
Companies tend to use complicated privacy policies filled with technical jargon to make it difficult for people to understand the terms of a service that they agree to. People also tend not to read terms of service documents. One study found that people averaged 73 seconds reading a terms of service document that had an average read time of 29-32 minutes.
Data collected by AI tools may initially reside with a company that you trust, but can easily be sold and given to a company that you don’t trust.
AI tools, the companies in charge of them and the companies that have access to the data they collect can also be subject to cyberattacks and data breaches that can reveal sensitive personal information. These attacks can by carried out by cybercriminals who are in it for the money, or by so-called advanced persistent threats, which are typically nation/state- sponsored attackers who gain access to networks and systems and remain there undetected, collecting information and personal data to eventually cause disruption or harm.
While laws and regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act aim to safeguard user data, AI development and use have often outpaced the legislative process. The laws are still catching up on AI and data privacy. For now, you should assume any AI-powered device or platform is collecting data on your inputs, behaviors and patterns.
Using AI tools
Although AI tools collect people’s data, and the way this accumulation of data affects people’s data privacy is concerning, the tools can also be useful. AI-powered applications can streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks and provide valuable insights.
But it’s crucial to approach these tools with awareness and caution.
When using a generative AI platform that gives you answers to questions you type in a prompt, don’t include any personally identifiable information, including names, birth dates, Social Security numbers or home addresses. At the workplace, don’t include trade secrets or classified information. In general, don’t put anything into a prompt that you wouldn’t feel comfortable revealing to the public or seeing on a billboard. Remember, once you hit enter on the prompt, you’ve lost control of that information.
Remember that devices which are turned on are always listening – even if they’re asleep. If you use smart home or embedded devices, turn them off when you need to have a private conversation. A device that’s asleep looks inactive, but it is still powered on and listening for a wake word or signal. Unplugging a device or removing its batteries is a good way of making sure the device is truly off.
Finally, be aware of the terms of service and data collection policies of the devices and platforms that you are using. You might be surprised by what you’ve already agreed to.
This article is part of a series on data privacy that explores who collects your data, what and how they collect, who sells and buys your data, what they all do with it, and what you can do about it.
The Conversation will be hosting a free webinar on practical and safe use of AI with our tech editor and an AI expert on June 24 at 2pm ET/11am PT. Sign up to get your questions answered.
Christopher Ramezan receives funding from the Appalachian Regional Commission.
Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
The Government announced today (June 30) the appointments of Mr Jacky Lio Veng-hei and Professor Hui Kai-lung as non-official members of the Industry Advisory Committee (IAC) on General Business (GB) of the Insurance Authority for a term of two years from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2027.
Welcoming the appointments, a spokesman for the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau said, “With their rich professional knowledge, we believe Mr Lio and Professor Hui will tender insightful advice to the IAC and facilitate the growth of the insurance industry.
“We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the two outgoing members, Dr Fung Hong and Professor Tang Heiwai, for their unwavering support and valuable contributions to the IAC during their tenure.”
The IAC on GB is a statutory committee established under the Insurance Ordinance (Cap. 41) to advise the Insurance Authority on matters relating to general business. Members come from different lines of business with expertise within the insurance industry, as well as from related fields such as fintech, medical, legal and academia.
Nato leaders agreed to ramp up defence spending to 5% of their countries’ economic output by 2035 at a summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25. US president Donald Trump, who has spent months saying Europe should take more responsibility for its own security, described the pledge as “a monumental win for the US” and a “big win” for western civilisation.
A few months earlier, in March, the EU also launched its long-awaited white paper on defence. This provides a blueprint for improving Europe’s readiness to respond to military threats by 2030. On top of the fact that global military spending has surged in the past ten years, these developments indicate that the world’s largest nations now prioritise military over economic diplomacy.
One of the main ideas behind military diplomacy is that increased defence spending acts as a deterrent to future conflicts. The nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union during the cold war provides some support for this argument. The prospect of mutual destruction was so great that it acted as a deterrent to nuclear war.
But is increased defence spending really the necessary price for greater peace and prosperity? My research on interactions between firms, geopolitics and the political economy of defence indicates that this is no “big win” for society or economic productivity.
Deterrence requires a level of brinkmanship if it is to work. But as American economist Thomas Schelling pointed out in his 1960 book, The Strategy of Conflict, the problem with brinkmanship is that it relies on deliberately allowing a situation to get somewhat out of hand, with the intention of forcing the other party to back down.
This can result in strategic blunders. Efforts by the former US president, Richard Nixon, to engineer such a situation in 1969 by threatening to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam failed to gain credibility with the Soviets and North Vietnamese. This undoubtedly helped convince North Vietnam that it could survive the war and locked the US into a much longer conflict.
The recent confrontation between Israel and Iran also showed that brinkmanship can produce situations where there are significant casualties and no clear long-term resolution. Iran has long recognised that keeping itself near the threshold of nuclear weapons capability would offer a deterrent against external threats.
But this strategy created many opportunities for error. Israel claimed that Iran was too close to building a nuclear weapon and, alongside the US, launched strikes that they say inflicted significant damage on Iranian nuclear enrichment capabilities and military leadership.
Beyond this, it is unclear just how much military spending is needed to deter aggression. Nato allies have now committed to a big increase in defence spending – thanks largely to pressure from Trump.
However, even Nato’s previous objective that countries commit 2% of their national income to defence has proved unattractive for many governments. This has even been the case in post-conflict areas such as the Balkans, where Nato has had a heavy involvement.
A costly alternative
Boosting defence spending falls short on delivering economic prosperity, too. Analysing US military spending in the Vietnam war, economist Les Fishman noted in 1967 that military diplomacy was far more costly than its economic equivalent.
Military production requires continuously high levels of investment to maintain technological progress. This sucks public investment from other parts of the economy.
That’s not to say defence spending has an entirely negative effect on the economy. Studies have found evidence that US federal funding of military research and development results in significant increases in private business research in sectors such as chemicals and aerospace.
And, over the past decade, the value of venture capital deals in the US defence industry has grown 18-fold. This far outstrips sectors such as energy and healthcare. But such investment in military-related research and development is also often acknowledged as inefficient and not necessarily the best way to boost productivity.
Fishman pointed out that the Marshall Plan, which provided substantial economic aid to western Europe after the second world war, had a far higher return for the US.
Economic stabilisation kept the Soviet Union at bay for relatively small outlay compared to the Vietnam war, where casualties were of such a magnitude that it made any cost-benefit analysis meaningless.
Boosting defence spending also represents a lost opportunity to invest in more socially beneficial projects. This will worsen the climate crisis.
According to a study shared with the Guardian in May, the initial rearmament planned by Nato alone could have increased greenhouse gas emissions by almost 200 million tonnes a year. The expanded defence commitment will only increase this further.
Unlike defence, where the repurposing of civilian technologies for military uses carries a cost to society, many green investments involve beneficial substitutions that reduce the cost of a green transition.
The substitution of conventional fossil fuel heating and transport systems with heat pumps and electric vehicles, for example, is far more socially beneficial than repurposing civilian satellites for missile systems.
A final point is that military diplomacy is itself geopolitically destabilising. US efforts to contain communism in Asia during the 1950s and 1960s are a good example. Not only did such efforts see China align its trade with other communist states, it also ensured that self-reliance became a cornerstone of China’s economic strategy.
This all suggests that the current drive for deterrence-based military spending carries with it a huge cost for society that could ultimately prove economically wasteful and geopolitically destabilising.
Damian Tobin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Nato leaders agreed to ramp up defence spending to 5% of their countries’ economic output by 2035 at a summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25. US president Donald Trump, who has spent months saying Europe should take more responsibility for its own security, described the pledge as “a monumental win for the US” and a “big win” for western civilisation.
A few months earlier, in March, the EU also launched its long-awaited white paper on defence. This provides a blueprint for improving Europe’s readiness to respond to military threats by 2030. On top of the fact that global military spending has surged in the past ten years, these developments indicate that the world’s largest nations now prioritise military over economic diplomacy.
One of the main ideas behind military diplomacy is that increased defence spending acts as a deterrent to future conflicts. The nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union during the cold war provides some support for this argument. The prospect of mutual destruction was so great that it acted as a deterrent to nuclear war.
But is increased defence spending really the necessary price for greater peace and prosperity? My research on interactions between firms, geopolitics and the political economy of defence indicates that this is no “big win” for society or economic productivity.
Deterrence requires a level of brinkmanship if it is to work. But as American economist Thomas Schelling pointed out in his 1960 book, The Strategy of Conflict, the problem with brinkmanship is that it relies on deliberately allowing a situation to get somewhat out of hand, with the intention of forcing the other party to back down.
This can result in strategic blunders. Efforts by the former US president, Richard Nixon, to engineer such a situation in 1969 by threatening to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam failed to gain credibility with the Soviets and North Vietnamese. This undoubtedly helped convince North Vietnam that it could survive the war and locked the US into a much longer conflict.
The recent confrontation between Israel and Iran also showed that brinkmanship can produce situations where there are significant casualties and no clear long-term resolution. Iran has long recognised that keeping itself near the threshold of nuclear weapons capability would offer a deterrent against external threats.
But this strategy created many opportunities for error. Israel claimed that Iran was too close to building a nuclear weapon and, alongside the US, launched strikes that they say inflicted significant damage on Iranian nuclear enrichment capabilities and military leadership.
Beyond this, it is unclear just how much military spending is needed to deter aggression. Nato allies have now committed to a big increase in defence spending – thanks largely to pressure from Trump.
However, even Nato’s previous objective that countries commit 2% of their national income to defence has proved unattractive for many governments. This has even been the case in post-conflict areas such as the Balkans, where Nato has had a heavy involvement.
A costly alternative
Boosting defence spending falls short on delivering economic prosperity, too. Analysing US military spending in the Vietnam war, economist Les Fishman noted in 1967 that military diplomacy was far more costly than its economic equivalent.
Military production requires continuously high levels of investment to maintain technological progress. This sucks public investment from other parts of the economy.
That’s not to say defence spending has an entirely negative effect on the economy. Studies have found evidence that US federal funding of military research and development results in significant increases in private business research in sectors such as chemicals and aerospace.
And, over the past decade, the value of venture capital deals in the US defence industry has grown 18-fold. This far outstrips sectors such as energy and healthcare. But such investment in military-related research and development is also often acknowledged as inefficient and not necessarily the best way to boost productivity.
Fishman pointed out that the Marshall Plan, which provided substantial economic aid to western Europe after the second world war, had a far higher return for the US.
Economic stabilisation kept the Soviet Union at bay for relatively small outlay compared to the Vietnam war, where casualties were of such a magnitude that it made any cost-benefit analysis meaningless.
Boosting defence spending also represents a lost opportunity to invest in more socially beneficial projects. This will worsen the climate crisis.
According to a study shared with the Guardian in May, the initial rearmament planned by Nato alone could have increased greenhouse gas emissions by almost 200 million tonnes a year. The expanded defence commitment will only increase this further.
Unlike defence, where the repurposing of civilian technologies for military uses carries a cost to society, many green investments involve beneficial substitutions that reduce the cost of a green transition.
The substitution of conventional fossil fuel heating and transport systems with heat pumps and electric vehicles, for example, is far more socially beneficial than repurposing civilian satellites for missile systems.
A final point is that military diplomacy is itself geopolitically destabilising. US efforts to contain communism in Asia during the 1950s and 1960s are a good example. Not only did such efforts see China align its trade with other communist states, it also ensured that self-reliance became a cornerstone of China’s economic strategy.
This all suggests that the current drive for deterrence-based military spending carries with it a huge cost for society that could ultimately prove economically wasteful and geopolitically destabilising.
Damian Tobin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Press release
Fuel margins remain high despite lower fuel prices, CMA finds
Today’s monitoring report sets out the Competition and Market Authority’s (CMA) observations on developments in the UK’s road fuel retail market since the previous update in March 2025.
Dan Turnbull, Senior Director of Markets at the CMA, said:
While there is uncertainty over how global events will impact the price of oil, our report shows fuel margins remain high compared to historic levels despite lower prices at the pump in recent months.
The government committed to launching a ‘fuel finder’ scheme following our recommendation to help drivers compare real time prices and boost competition. Once launched, it will make it easier than ever to shop around and find the best deals.
Fuel prices
Fuel prices across the UK decreased for both petrol and diesel from end of February 2025 to end of May 2025. These movements reflect in part changing crude oil prices and refining spreads, both of which are driven by global factors.
The average petrol and diesel prices at the end of May 2025 were 132.0 and 138.4 pence per litre (ppl) respectively. This represents a decrease of 7.6 ppl and 8.4 ppl in petrol and diesel prices compared to the end of February 2025.
Fuel margins
A retailer’s fuel margin is the difference between what it pays for fuel and what it sells it at. The CMA found that fuel margins were similar to the high levels seen during its road fuel market study – a review of the market to understand the factors influencing fuel prices undertaken in 2023 – which suggests overall competition in the UK’s road fuel retail market remains weak.
Supermarket fuel margins fell from 8.9% in December 2024 to 7.9% in February 2025, before rising to 8.3% in March 2025. Non-supermarket fuel margins fell from 9.9% in December 2024 to 8.9% in January 2025, before rising to 10.4% in March 2025.
This report does not consider developments in operating costs since the road fuel market study. The CMA will undertake a review of fuel retailer operating costs in its first annual road fuel monitoring report later this year to assess whether operating cost changes are impacting fuel margins for large retailers.
Retail spreads
The CMA also looked at the retail spread – the average price that drivers pay at the pump compared to the benchmarked price that retailers buy fuel at – across the UK from March 2025 to May 2025.
Petrol retail spreads averaged 15.4 ppl, which was 1.5 ppl higher than the previous 4 months period – and still more than double the average of 6.5 ppl over 2015-19. Diesel retail spreads averaged 18.8 ppl, which was 4.6 ppl higher than the previous 4 months period and more than double the average of 8.6 ppl in 2015 – 2019.
While spread analysis can give a quick overview of trends in the sector, it is a less reliable indicator of competitive intensity than individual retailers’ fuel margins. Retail spreads increase and decrease in response to the volatility of wholesale prices but should return to a normal range over time, if the market is working well.
The CMA has taken on the new statutory monitoring function, which will provide ongoing scrutiny of prices to encourage effective competition between retailers and help keep prices low for drivers. This update is based on data provided to the CMA by fuel retailers using its new information gathering powers granted under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act.
The ‘fuel finder’ scheme will allow drivers to compare real-time fuel prices, via navigation apps, in-car devices and comparison websites. The government’s aim is to launch the scheme by the end of this year, subject to legislation and parliamentary time.
Further details about the CMA’s road fuel monitoring function, including previous reports and guidance, can be found on the collection page.
Notes to editors
The CMA issued section 311 Information Notices to the following retailers: Applegreen PLC; Arthur Foodstores Limited, Asda Express Limited, and Asda Stores Limited (Asda); BP Oil UK Limited; Esso Petroleum Company Limited; Moto Hospitality Limited; Motor Fuel Group; Rontec Roadside Retail Limited; J Sainsbury PLC; Shell PLC; Tesco PLC; and Welcome Break Group Limited.
Motor Fuel Group announced the completed acquisition of Morrisons PFSs in the UK on 30 April 2024.
All enquiries from journalists should be directed to the CMA press office by email on press@cma.gov.uk or by phone on 020 3738 6460.
Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman embarked on an official six-day visit to Spain, Portugal, and Brazil on Monday.
Leading a delegation from the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Sitharaman is set to participate in a series of high-level multilateral and bilateral engagements during the visit, which runs from June 30 to July 5, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement.
During her visit to Seville, Spain, the Finance Minister will represent India at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4), organised by the United Nations. She is scheduled to deliver India’s national statement at the conference, reaffirming India’s commitment to sustainable development and inclusive growth.
In addition, Sitharaman will deliver the keynote address at the International Business Forum Leadership Summit, themed “From FFD4 Outcome to Implementation: Unlocking the Potential of Private Capital for Sustainable Development.” Her engagements in Spain will also include bilateral meetings with senior ministers from Germany, Peru, and New Zealand, as well as discussions with the President of the European Investment Bank (EIB).
Following her engagements in Spain, the Finance Minister will travel to Lisbon, Portugal, where she is expected to meet with her Portuguese counterpart for bilateral discussions. She will also engage with prominent investors and members of the Indian diaspora to deepen economic and cultural ties between India and Portugal.
The final leg of her visit will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There, Sitharaman will represent India at the 10th Annual Meeting of the New Development Bank (NDB), where she serves as India’s Governor. She will also attend the first BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting (FMCBG), reinforcing India’s active role in shaping the economic agenda of the BRICS bloc.
As part of the NDB’s flagship event, the Finance Minister will speak at the Governors Seminar on “Building a Premier Multilateral Development Bank for the Global South,” highlighting India’s vision for inclusive financial institutions. She is also scheduled to hold bilateral meetings on the sidelines with her counterparts from Brazil, China, Indonesia, and Russia, focusing on key areas of mutual economic interest and multilateral cooperation.
Samsung, India’s largest consumer electronics brand, today announced the launch of Galaxy M36 5G, the latest addition to the immensely popular Galaxy M Series. Designed for young Indian consumers, Galaxy M36 5G packs in a suite of AI innovations along with several segment-leading features such as 50MP OIS triple camera, Corning® Gorilla® Glass Victus®+ protection and 6 generations of Android upgrade.
“As part of our commitment to bring meaningful innovations that empower customers’ lives, we are launching the Galaxy M36 5G with segment-leading features and bringing AI innovations at an affordable price point. The stylish & durable Galaxy M36 5G complements our consumers’ lifestyle and with the introduction of Circle to Search with Google and Gemini Live, we are furthering the democratization of mobile AI across the Galaxy ecosystem,” said Akshay S Rao, Director, MX Business, Samsung India.
Democratization of AI
Galaxy M36 5G will come with Circle to Search with Google, furthering the democratization of mobile AI to even more devices in the Galaxy ecosystem. Built upon Samsung-Google collaboration, Circle to Search brings a seamless search experience to Galaxy users for images, texts and music. Additionally, it will also introduce new AI experience with Gemini Live, bringing real-time visual conversations with AI to Galaxy users. Through AI-powered assistance, Galaxy users can more naturally engage in conversational interactions that make everyday tasks easier.
All New Design And Monster Durability
With design at its forefront, Galaxy M36 5G is only 7.7mm slim with a premium camera deco and features segment-leading Corning® Gorilla® Glass Victus®+ protection- making it extremely tough as well as ergonomic. The segment leading protection not only withstands accidental slips and falls but also ensures that users are absolutely worry-free from scratches. Galaxy M36 5G features a 6.7” Full HD+ Super AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and Vision Booster technology making it the perfect device for an unparalleled viewing and smooth scrolling experience even in the outdoor conditions with bright sunlight. Galaxy M36 5G will be available in three vibrant and flaunt worthy colours- Velvet Black, Serene Green and Orange Haze.
Advanced Camera
Galaxy M36 5G will come with advanced 50MP OIS triple camera to shoot sharp photos and videos. The OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) ensures that videos are shake-free and images are blur-free, allowing users to capture their favorite moments while on the move. The cameras on Galaxy M36 5G are designed for vivid shots—even in low light, thanks to its Auto Night Mode that takes the Nightography feature to a different level. Users will also be able to record 4K videos on both front and rear cameras, capturing a wide range of colours for true-to-life output. Galaxy M36 5G will serve as a complete package with fantastic features like Photo Remaster and Object Eraser to take user experience to a whole new level. Galaxy M36 5G will also sport a 13MP high-resolution front camera for detailed, sharper selfies.
Monster Performance
Powered by 5nm-based Exynos 1380 processor, Galaxy M36 5G is fast and power-efficient. Equipped with a large vapor cooling chamber, the device will ensure efficient heat dissipation, providing users with a lag-free gaming experience and super smooth processing. With the ultimate speed and connectivity of 5G, users can stay fully connected wherever they go, experiencing faster downloads, smoother streaming, and uninterrupted browsing.
Galaxy M36 5G packs in 5000mAh battery that enables long sessions of browsing, gaming and binge watching. Galaxy M36 5G allows users to stay connected, entertained and productive without interruption. The device supports 25W fast charging, giving more power in less time.
Galaxy Experiences
Setting new industry benchmarks, Galaxy M36 5G will offer segment’s best 6 generations of Android upgrades and 6 years of security updates, ensuring a future-ready experience. Galaxy M36 5G will come with One UI 7 out of the box.
One UI 7 comes with a simple, impactful and emotive design, bringing streamlined and cohesive experience to Galaxy users. A simplified home screen, redesigned One UI widgets and lock screen allow users to intuitively and seamlessly customize their devices. For added convenience, Now Bar provides real-time updates that matter most right on the lock screen.
Galaxy M36 5G will also feature one of Samsung’s most innovative security features: Samsung Knox Vault. The hardware-based security system offers comprehensive protection against both hardware and software attacks. It will also include Samsung’s innovative Tap & Pay feature with Samsung Wallet allowing consumers to make secure payments effortlessly.
Product
Variant
Introductory Price
Offers
Galaxy M36 5G
6GB+128GB
INR 16499
Including INR 1000 Instant Bank Discount
8GB+128GB
INR 17999
8GB+256GB
INR 20999
Galaxy M36 5G will be available on Samsung.com, Amazon and at select retail stores staring July 12, 2025.
LONDON, June 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Brizy, the website creation platform known for its intuitive visual builder and multi-platform flexibility, is expanding into e-commerce with the launch of Brizy Shops – a new Cloud add-on powered by a seamless integration with Ecwid. Brizy Shops allows anyone to build and manage an online store with the same simplicity Brizy is known for.
Brizy has consistently pushed the boundaries of website creation, offering a versatile suite that spans WordPress, Brizy Cloud, and even a dedicated Shopify app. With its advanced AI website building capabilities and robust white-label solutions, Brizy has become a go-to platform for hundreds of thousands looking to simplify web development and design. The introduction of Brizy Shops further solidifies this commitment, extending Brizy’s signature drag-and-drop visual builder directly into the realm of online retail within Brizy Cloud.
A New Standard for Simplicity in e-Commerce
Brizy Shops is engineered to simplify the e-commerce journey, directly tackling the frustrations businesses often face when building and managing an online store:
No Tech Headaches: Avoid the complexities of manual setup, plugin conflicts, and constant updates. Brizy Shops offers a seamless, stable, and hassle-free foundation within Brizy Cloud.
Faster Go-to-Market: Visually build, launch, and iterate your online store with ease using Brizy’s intuitive drag-and-drop builder, getting your products to customers quicker.
Complete Flexibility: Effortlessly mix e-commerce with any other Brizy Cloud content, including landing pages, lead generation, and pop-ups, creating a harmonious online ecosystem.
Full Creative Control: Design your shop exactly how you envision it with pixel-perfect precision. Customize every detail, from product layouts to checkout flows, to create a truly bespoke shopping experience.
Brizy Shops is available to all Brizy Cloud users, with a 14-day free trial offered to let users explore and test the full e-commerce experience with no commitment. The free trial will remain available moving forward.
Promotions and Offers
For a limited time, Brizy is offering launch pricing discounts on all three Brizy Shops plans—supporting stores from 100 to unlimited products. It’s a great opportunity for early adopters to lock in savings and scale with confidence.
“We didn’t want to reinvent e-commerce – we wanted to make it actually usable for the everyday creator. Brizy Shops does that. It’s smooth, visual, and gets out of your way so you can start selling fast. Our goal has always been to remove the friction from building online. With Brizy Shops, you get the power of e-commerce without the complexity: no plugins, no coding, no guesswork. It’s the fastest way we’ve seen to go from idea to income.”, explained Dimi Baitanciuc, Co-Founder & CEO of Brizy.
Whether you’re launching a product line, selling digital goods, or offering services, Brizy Shops brings flexibility and speed to your storefront. Combined with Brizy’s AI tools, white label options, and platform reach, this launch marks a significant step in making e-commerce as easy and accessible as content creation.
About Brizy London-based Brizy is a VC-backed technology company specializing in next-generation website-building solutions. Brizy’s offerings span WordPress, Shopify, Brizy Cloud, eCommerce and White Label AI, all designed to help businesses grow their online presence with ease. www.brizy.io
LONDON, June 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Brizy, the website creation platform known for its intuitive visual builder and multi-platform flexibility, is expanding into e-commerce with the launch of Brizy Shops – a new Cloud add-on powered by a seamless integration with Ecwid. Brizy Shops allows anyone to build and manage an online store with the same simplicity Brizy is known for.
Brizy has consistently pushed the boundaries of website creation, offering a versatile suite that spans WordPress, Brizy Cloud, and even a dedicated Shopify app. With its advanced AI website building capabilities and robust white-label solutions, Brizy has become a go-to platform for hundreds of thousands looking to simplify web development and design. The introduction of Brizy Shops further solidifies this commitment, extending Brizy’s signature drag-and-drop visual builder directly into the realm of online retail within Brizy Cloud.
A New Standard for Simplicity in e-Commerce
Brizy Shops is engineered to simplify the e-commerce journey, directly tackling the frustrations businesses often face when building and managing an online store:
No Tech Headaches: Avoid the complexities of manual setup, plugin conflicts, and constant updates. Brizy Shops offers a seamless, stable, and hassle-free foundation within Brizy Cloud.
Faster Go-to-Market: Visually build, launch, and iterate your online store with ease using Brizy’s intuitive drag-and-drop builder, getting your products to customers quicker.
Complete Flexibility: Effortlessly mix e-commerce with any other Brizy Cloud content, including landing pages, lead generation, and pop-ups, creating a harmonious online ecosystem.
Full Creative Control: Design your shop exactly how you envision it with pixel-perfect precision. Customize every detail, from product layouts to checkout flows, to create a truly bespoke shopping experience.
Brizy Shops is available to all Brizy Cloud users, with a 14-day free trial offered to let users explore and test the full e-commerce experience with no commitment. The free trial will remain available moving forward.
Promotions and Offers
For a limited time, Brizy is offering launch pricing discounts on all three Brizy Shops plans—supporting stores from 100 to unlimited products. It’s a great opportunity for early adopters to lock in savings and scale with confidence.
“We didn’t want to reinvent e-commerce – we wanted to make it actually usable for the everyday creator. Brizy Shops does that. It’s smooth, visual, and gets out of your way so you can start selling fast. Our goal has always been to remove the friction from building online. With Brizy Shops, you get the power of e-commerce without the complexity: no plugins, no coding, no guesswork. It’s the fastest way we’ve seen to go from idea to income.”, explained Dimi Baitanciuc, Co-Founder & CEO of Brizy.
Whether you’re launching a product line, selling digital goods, or offering services, Brizy Shops brings flexibility and speed to your storefront. Combined with Brizy’s AI tools, white label options, and platform reach, this launch marks a significant step in making e-commerce as easy and accessible as content creation.
About Brizy London-based Brizy is a VC-backed technology company specializing in next-generation website-building solutions. Brizy’s offerings span WordPress, Shopify, Brizy Cloud, eCommerce and White Label AI, all designed to help businesses grow their online presence with ease. www.brizy.io
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani defended his democratic socialism on Sunday and argued that his focus on economic issues should serve as a model for the party, even though some top Democrats have been reluctant to embrace him.
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mamdani said his agenda of raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers and on corporations to pay for ambitious policies such as free buses, a $30 minimum hourly wage and a rent freeze was not only realistic but tailored to meet the needs of the city’s working residents.
“It’s the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty, and the rest are seemingly trapped in a state of anxiety,” he told NBC’s Kristen Welker.
Mamdani’s stunning victory over former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo in Tuesday’s primary election has some party figures worried that his democratic socialism could feed Republican attacks on Democrats as too far left ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Business leaders have also expressed concern about his policies.
Democrats have struggled to find a coherent message after their resounding loss in the November elections that saw President Donald Trump return to the White House and his Republicans win control of both chambers of Congress. A Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month showed that a majority of American Democrats believed their party needs new leadership and to be more focused on economic issues.
Earlier on Sunday, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents part of the city, told ABC’s “This Week” that he wasn’t ready to endorse Mamdani yet, saying that he needed to hear more about Mamdani’s vision.
Other prominent New York Democrats, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have also thus far declined to endorse Mamdani.
Trump, himself a native New Yorker, told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” that if Mamdani wins the mayoral race, “he’d better do the right thing” or Trump would withhold federal funds from the city.
“He’s a communist. I think it’s very bad for New York,” Trump said.
Asked about Trump’s claim that he is a communist, Mamdani told NBC it was not true and accused the president of attempting to distract from the fact that “I’m fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower that he has since then betrayed.”
He also voiced no concern that Jeffries and other Democrats have not yet endorsed his candidacy.
“I think that people are catching up to this election,” he said. “What we’re showing is that by putting working people first, by returning to the roots of the Democratic Party, we actually have a path out of this moment where we’re facing authoritarianism in Washington, D.C.”
Mamdani’s criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza has set him apart from many mainstream Democrats and prompted allegations of antisemitism, which he has fiercely denied. Earlier this month, during an appearance on the political podcast The Bulwark, Mamdani declined to condemn the pro-Palestinian phrase “globalize the intifada,” which some Jews view as antisemitic and a call to violence.
Jeffries told ABC that Mamdani needed to “clarify his position” on the phrase to reassure Jewish New Yorkers.
Pressed again on Sunday, Mamdani said it was “not language that I use” but again did not condemn it. He said he did not want to determine for others what words are permissible or impermissible, arguing that Trump has done that by targeting pro-Palestinian activists for their speech.
“We have to root out that bigotry, and ultimately we do that through the actions,” he said.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, elected as a Democrat, is running as an independent in November’s election after Trump’s Justice Department dropped corruption charges against him, fueling accusations of a quid pro quo that he has denied. The Republican nominee is Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, and lawyer Jim Walden is also running as an independent.
Cuomo has not yet decided whether to remain in the race as an independent.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani defended his democratic socialism on Sunday and argued that his focus on economic issues should serve as a model for the party, even though some top Democrats have been reluctant to embrace him.
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mamdani said his agenda of raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers and on corporations to pay for ambitious policies such as free buses, a $30 minimum hourly wage and a rent freeze was not only realistic but tailored to meet the needs of the city’s working residents.
“It’s the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty, and the rest are seemingly trapped in a state of anxiety,” he told NBC’s Kristen Welker.
Mamdani’s stunning victory over former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo in Tuesday’s primary election has some party figures worried that his democratic socialism could feed Republican attacks on Democrats as too far left ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Business leaders have also expressed concern about his policies.
Democrats have struggled to find a coherent message after their resounding loss in the November elections that saw President Donald Trump return to the White House and his Republicans win control of both chambers of Congress. A Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month showed that a majority of American Democrats believed their party needs new leadership and to be more focused on economic issues.
Earlier on Sunday, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents part of the city, told ABC’s “This Week” that he wasn’t ready to endorse Mamdani yet, saying that he needed to hear more about Mamdani’s vision.
Other prominent New York Democrats, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have also thus far declined to endorse Mamdani.
Trump, himself a native New Yorker, told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” that if Mamdani wins the mayoral race, “he’d better do the right thing” or Trump would withhold federal funds from the city.
“He’s a communist. I think it’s very bad for New York,” Trump said.
Asked about Trump’s claim that he is a communist, Mamdani told NBC it was not true and accused the president of attempting to distract from the fact that “I’m fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower that he has since then betrayed.”
He also voiced no concern that Jeffries and other Democrats have not yet endorsed his candidacy.
“I think that people are catching up to this election,” he said. “What we’re showing is that by putting working people first, by returning to the roots of the Democratic Party, we actually have a path out of this moment where we’re facing authoritarianism in Washington, D.C.”
Mamdani’s criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza has set him apart from many mainstream Democrats and prompted allegations of antisemitism, which he has fiercely denied. Earlier this month, during an appearance on the political podcast The Bulwark, Mamdani declined to condemn the pro-Palestinian phrase “globalize the intifada,” which some Jews view as antisemitic and a call to violence.
Jeffries told ABC that Mamdani needed to “clarify his position” on the phrase to reassure Jewish New Yorkers.
Pressed again on Sunday, Mamdani said it was “not language that I use” but again did not condemn it. He said he did not want to determine for others what words are permissible or impermissible, arguing that Trump has done that by targeting pro-Palestinian activists for their speech.
“We have to root out that bigotry, and ultimately we do that through the actions,” he said.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, elected as a Democrat, is running as an independent in November’s election after Trump’s Justice Department dropped corruption charges against him, fueling accusations of a quid pro quo that he has denied. The Republican nominee is Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, and lawyer Jim Walden is also running as an independent.
Cuomo has not yet decided whether to remain in the race as an independent.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
Inside a senior care home, lively elders gathered around a tabletop hockey game, sharpening their minds and savoring the moment.
These brain-teasing games, once seen as children’s play, are quickly becoming the latest craze among older adults.
As China’s population ages rapidly, the once-overlooked market for senior-friendly toys is emerging as a new pillar of the booming silver economy.
For Guan Weijiang, a toy merchant in Yiwu, a bustling trade hub in east China, the shift is quite evident.
Over the past year, his online store has experienced a surge in demand for fitness and brain-training toys among older customers. Consumers aged 50 and above now make up 30 percent of his user base.
“Our two best-selling toys fall into the fitness and puzzle categories. They’re not physically demanding, but they’re fun and perfect for elderly users to exercise or pass the time,” Guan said.
“There’s actually quite a bit of overlap between toys for children and those for the elderly, as both help improve reflexes, grip strength and coordination. In fact, some children’s toys can be easily adapted for seniors with just a few simple tweaks,” Guan explained.
Recognizing the potential of senior-friendly toys as a promising niche, he decided to seize the opportunity. Within just three months of launching over 10 products designed specifically for elderly users, his shop’s sales far exceeded expectations.
On one of China’s leading e-commerce platforms, Taobao, searches for “senior-friendly toys” jumped 124 percent year on year, with transaction volumes increasing by over 70 percent. Consumers aged 55 and above now make up a growing proportion of buyers, and their purchasing frequency is accelerating.
Seeing the expanding market, an increasing number of toy manufacturers across China are shifting their focus to meet the demands of older consumers.
According to Cheng Xin from Taobao’s toys and collectibles team, the platform is seeing a wave of new shops selling toys for the elderly, with some newly established and many others converted from former children’s toy stores.
“Toys are no longer just for children or symbols of pop culture. They are lifelong hobbies that can bring joy and mental enrichment to consumers of all ages,” Cheng said, adding that Taobao plans to launch a dedicated category for senior-friendly toys, along with tailored operational support for the segment.
The rise of senior-friendly toys is not only creating new consumer demand but also catalyzing transformations across traditional industries.
Yunhe County in Zhejiang Province, widely known as China’s “Wooden Toy Capital,” stands out as a particularly striking example.
Building on decades of industrial experience, Yunhe is now integrating wooden toys with elderly care to develop an innovation-driven industry chain focused on cognitive wellness and entertainment.
The key to this transformation lies in shifting from “fun” to “function.” So far, local manufacturers have developed over 200 wooden toys designed to improve hand-foot coordination and help slow memory loss among older adults.
According to Yin Qian, president of Zhejiang Mimi Zhikang Technology Co., the company has developed over 100 wooden puzzle toys that are both entertaining and mentally stimulating.
To enhance the cognitive and rehabilitative benefits of its products, the company collaborated with the Health Science Center (HSC) of Xi’an Jiaotong University and an Alzheimer’s prevention group based in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province.
So far, the company has secured more than 30 patents and supplies products to over 500 elderly care institutions across the country.
Meanwhile, Yunhe is also eyeing international markets. In recent years, the county has expanded exports of its wooden toys to senior schools, nursing homes and community centers overseas.
“In 2024, our products were successfully exported to Germany, Japan, and other markets, where they’ve been warmly received by elderly users,” Yin said.
In the first quarter of this year, the company’s sales of elderly-oriented wooden toys rose 50 percent year on year.
According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China’s elderly population is projected to grow by more than 10 million annually over the next decade. By 2035, the silver economy is expected to account for 9 percent of China’s GDP, up from 6 percent today.
Data from market research firm iiMedia Research shows that China’s elderly care industry reached 12 trillion yuan (about 1.68 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2023, up 16.5 percent year on year. The silver economy is projected to hit around 30 trillion yuan by 2035, accounting for about 10 percent of GDP.
The innovation in niche segments is opening up new avenues in the silver economy, according to Zhang Jinsong, secretary general of the Elder Education on Aging Committee of China Gerontological Society.
“The silver economy is poised to evolve from meeting basic needs to fulfilling aspirations for quality and enjoyment,” he said. “That shift will unleash enormous potential.”
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Press release
UK-US trade deal kicks into gear: immediate tariff cuts for UK auto and aerospace sectors
The UK-US trade deal has today come into force, slashing US export tariffs for the UK’s automotive and aerospace sectors.
Immediate benefits for UK auto and aerospace sectors as tariffs are slashed under the UK-US trade deal, protecting British jobs across the country.
UK car manufacturers can now export to the US under a reduced 10% tariff quota saving hundreds of millions annually and supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs.
The UK aerospace sector also gains a major boost, with 10% tariffs on goods like engines and aircraft parts removed today and a commitment to maintain them at 0%.
From today, British car and aerospace manufacturers will benefit from major tariff reductions when exporting to the US, saving thousands of jobs, as the landmark UK-US trade deal comes into effect.
The UK is the only country to have secured this deal with the US, reducing car export tariffs from 27.5% to 10%, saving manufacturers hundreds of millions each year and protecting hundreds of thousands of jobs.
At the same time, the aerospace sector has seen the removal of 10% tariffs on goods such as engines and aircraft parts, helping make companies such as Rolls Royce more competitive and allow them to continue to be at the cutting edge of innovation.
These changes are a huge win for both sectors and will help ensure UK manufacturers remain globally competitive, protect British jobs and continue to lead in innovation and excellence.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said:
Our historic trade deal with the United States delivers for British businesses and protects UK jobs. From today, our world-class automotive and aerospace industries will see tariffs slashed, safeguarding key industries that are vital to our economy.
We will always act in the national interest – backing British businesses and workers, delivering on our Plan for Change.
Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said:
We agreed this deal with the US to protect jobs and support growth in some of our most vital sectors – and today, we’re delivering on that promise for the UK’s world-class automotive and aerospace industries.
British car manufacturers can now export to the US at a significantly reduced 10% tariff rate – down from 27.5% – and aerospace goods will see 10% tariffs removed, saving sectors hundreds of millions each year and safeguarding thousands of jobs.
This is a clear example of our Plan for Change in action: cutting costs for businesses, speeding up delivery of trade benefits, and helping UK industries thrive in a challenging global environment.
Kevin Craven, CEO of ADS said:
News that tariffs on aerospace goods are to be relaxed is welcome to the industry and regulatory bodies alike.
The UK’s aerospace sector is renowned for its innovation and excellence, and thanks to our role in the global supply chain, more than 100,000 people are employed in highly skilled jobs in the sector throughout the country.
Efforts to reach this outcome are hugely appreciated by a sector that has remained resilient against a multitude of external pressures.
Mike Hawes, Chief Executive of SMMT said:
The implementation of the new trading agreement between the UK and US is good news for US customers and a huge relief for the UK automotive companies that export to this critically important market.
It immediately slashes the punitive tariffs that brought the US export market to a standstill and threatened the viability of some of the most famous names in British manufacturing.
Securing the deal – the first and, so far, only automotive deal in place with the administration – is a diplomatic coup and provides a foundation on which to grow trade in the future. Combined with the new Industrial and Trade Strategies that have automotive at their heart, UK companies can look to the future with more optimism.
We have worked with the US and all parts of UK industry to build a quota system which is as simple, fair and effective as possible.
Thanks to the UK-US deal, the UK is the only country to be exempt from the global tariff of 50% on steel and aluminium. As the Prime Minister and President Trump have again confirmed, we will continue go further and make progress towards 0% tariffs on core steel products as agreed.
Today’s announcement demonstrates the kind of agile, sector-specific agreement outlined in the UK’s Trade Strategy — designed to deliver rapid, practical benefits for British businesses and workers in key industries.
This deal is one of many international agreements this government has secured recently to boost our economy, including a trade deal with India which will add £4.8 billion to the UK economy and £2.2 billion in wages every year, and a renewed EU deal which will add nearly £9 billion to the UK economy by 2040 on SPS and emissions measures alone.
Today’s announcement is the result of work happening at pace between both governments to lower the burden on UK businesses, especially the sectors most impacted by the tariffs. We will now update Parliament on the implementation of quotas on US beef and ethanol, as part of our commitment to the US under this deal.
Rental properties in the Clayton area were the focus of Consumer Affairs’ renting taskforce recently to check they’re safe, secure and fit for renters to move into.
Clayton was the first suburb the taskforce visited when it began targeting rental open for inspections last year. Officers revisited the area to make sure rental providers were aware of their obligations to meet minimum standards and advertise properties fairly.
There were 14 officers in the field inspecting rental properties in Clayton. They also spoke with the renters at the inspections and shared information about their rights.
In good news, most properties inspected by the taskforce meet the minimum standards, but unfortunately around one in eight still fail to measure up. The most common issues are mould, windows without blinds or curtains, heating that doesn’t meet the legal specifications, and kitchens without stovetops.
The taskforce has done inspections in several Melbourne suburbs, as well as Geelong and Bendigo. More targeted inspections are planned for the second half of 2025.
Consumer Affairs Victoria uses a range of early interventions such as proactive inspections, education and awareness campaigns to prevent breaches.
If the taskforce identifies a property that does not meet the standards, officers first work with property managers and rental providers to make sure repairs happen before a renter moves in.
It’s an offence to let a renter move into a property that doesn’t meet minimum standards. Maximum penalties of more than $11,000 for individuals and more than $59,000 for companies may apply.
The taskforce has issued over 80 fines totalling more than $670,000 for rental offences. These include not advertising a rental property at a fixed price, not lodging a bond with the Residential Tenancies Bond Authority and failing to meet the minimum standards.
The current ‘Funda-rentals’ campaign and the taskforce’s in-field presence has helped raise awareness of renters’ rights and renting rules, including how to report potential breaches.
Renters who see an advertised rental property they think doesn’t meets minimum standards can report it anonymously.
New Zealand’s mental health crisis is well documented in the government’s 2018 inquiry, He Ara Oranga, which shows one in five people experience mental illness or significant mental distress.
Failure to account for these needs has resulted in physicians facing pressure to admit psychiatric patients to medical wards that are not designed or resourced to care for them. This compromises patient safety and rights as well as fundamental standards of care.
Our new research highlights the clinical, ethical and legal consequences of this practice and calls for urgent action.
Dementia includes psychiatric features
The memory deficits of dementia are well known but the condition also includes psychiatric presentations. These are known collectively as the “behavioural and psychiatric symptoms of dementia” (BPSD). When severe, they can include intrusive behaviour, violence and inappropriate sexual conduct. Such patients require admission and specialist treatment.
Hospitals routinely expect medical wards to admit dementia patients presenting with BPSD when no psycho-geriatric bed is available. Yet it is impossible for staff on medical wards to adhere to even basic standards of care.
Medical wards are also not designed for aggressive patients. People can enter and exit freely, potential weapons (scissors, for example) are accessible, there are no seclusion rooms or low-stimulus areas, and nursing stations are not secure.
Medical staff are not trained in de-escalation or restraint and ward pharmacists are not specialised in the medications required to treat BPSD.
Those presenting with physical or sexual violence also need dedicated security, well beyond what healthcare assistants on “patient watches” can provide. Most healthcare assistants are women, which creates a grossly inadequate level of safety when managing violent male patients.
Admissions have included physically robust patients who have seriously assaulted family or carers. This includes one man who committed a fatal assault and another who was sexually aggressive and stabbed a family member.
High rates of mixed-gender bedding in hospital wards raise the risk of harm. The United Kingdom banned hospitals from placing men and women in the same room in 2010. Yet despite concerns for patient safety, New Zealand has no prohibition on this practice.
Poor policy
By comparison, Australia proposed a risk stratification approach more than 20 years ago whereby severe dementia patients would be managed in secure units with dedicated security staff and specialist psycho-geriatric care.
This model is used throughout Australia in policy and planning. In New Zealand, severe dementia is defaulted to medical wards even in cases where patients are presenting solely due to extreme violence.
According to the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights, patients are entitled to an appropriate standard of care. Admitting someone with dementia to medical wards that cannot meet basic standards of care clearly breaches this right.
BPSD admissions also significantly compromise the rights of other patients. The risks are again demonstrable rather than potential. International media reports have documented male dementia patients assaulting female patients in medical wards without the necessary security measures.
Medical staff in New Zealand hospitals have also witnessed numerous incidents of intrusion and harassment as well as assaults of other patients by dementia patients inappropriately admitted to medical wards with BPSD.
We should also recognise indirect impacts of people with severe dementia being admitted on medical wards. Many patients wait overnight for admission, increasing their risk for complications, and breaching rights to privacy and dignity.
When psychiatric patients occupy medical beds, they contribute to admission delays, complications and rights breaches for medical patients awaiting beds.
We need to ask why the practice continues when harm is so obvious. The answer appears to be about cost. When physicians relent and admit psychiatric patients, the risks are high but the financial cost is low. The consequences are born by elderly and frail patients seldom able to advocate for themselves.
Change relies on health leaders and funders caring about safety, rights and basic standards of care. Unfortunately, the Wellington experience and the decision to cut beds in Dunedin suggest change will not happen unless physicians consistently refuse the admission of psychiatric patients. But this is a morally distressing position to be put in.
New Zealand must urgently address the shortage of psycho-geriatric beds. Until these are in place, temporary secure accommodation must be made available under the care of mental health specialists.
Medical teams can no longer be expected to manage the mental health crisis as well as their own medical workloads. It is unsafe, unethical and untenable for all involved.
Cindy Towns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: United States Senator for Washington Maria Cantwell
06.29.25
“It Is Those Who Can Least Afford It Who Are Going To Be Hit The Hardest”– In Speech on Senate Floor, Cantwell Shows How GOP’s Budget Sells Out the American People
Cantwell: From kicking 17 million Americans off Medicaid & other health insurance to effectively cancelling state AI protections, the budget proposed by Congressional Republicans is a cash grab for corporations & the rich — at the expense of everyone else
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, as the Senate prepares to vote on a new budget that would gut $930 billion from Medicaid, funnel resources to special interests via massive corporate tax breaks, and add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) delivered a speech on the Senate floor to highlight how various provisions included in the 940-page document ultimately sell out the American people.
“This bill would make the entire health care system less responsive and more expensive for everyone by dismantling Medicaid and shifting more of the cost burden on to states — and threatening the very existence of rural hospitals. This bill also sells spectrum out from under our national defense and safety agencies and forces states to choose between protecting their citizens from dangerous AI or providing broadband service, and just gives away big breaks to companies like Meta — that’s Facebook — or Google, who I’m sure at this point in time don’t really need that additional tax break. Clearly, though, the most [egregious] and certainly most destructive part of the bill, of this reconciliation, is the changes to health care,” Sen. Cantwell said.
“You’re going to increase the cost of uncompensated care. You’re going to make people wait to go to emergency rooms and then they’re going to be sicker,” she said. “It’s ten times more expensive to deal with somebody at an emergency room than just get health insurance and get covered.”
“Yes, extending the 2017 tax cuts does help some middle-class families, and we would support that. But all the hits in other areas — like health insurance — mean they will lose money overall. The lowest 20% of income brackets are hit even harder. In this massive bill, it is those who can least afford it who are going to be hit the hardest,” Sen. Cantwell concluded.
Her speech can be watched in full HERE; a transcript is HERE.
Sen. Cantwell, who serves as ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee and Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, has been fighting this proposed budget every step of the way.
To sound the alarm on proposed Medicaid cuts, Sen. Cantwell hosted a virtual press conference on Friday with Republican leaders from red states – Utah, North Carolina, and Missouri. On Monday, she delivered another speech on the Senate floor highlighting the story of the Winterrose family in Richland, WA, who rely on Medicaid to ensure their 5-year-old daughter can live at home. Last month, she convened a group of health care providers across Washington state for a virtual press conference to highlight statewide opposition to the cuts. The same day, 23 Republican members of the Washington state legislature sent a letter to the entire Washington state federal congressional delegation, urging the delegation to “protect Medicaid funding for Washington State.”
When details of her Republican colleagues’ plan to slash Medicaid were made public earlier this year, Sen. Cantwell toured the state to hear from folks who would be directly impacted by the cuts. Doctors, patients, and health care providers in Seattle, Spokane, the Tri-Cities, and Wenatchee warned that such cuts would devastate Washington state’s health care system and limit access to lifesaving care.
Sen. Cantwell also released a snapshot report highlighting the impact that Medicaid cuts would have on Washington state’s highly-ranked long-term care system for seniors and people with disabilities. In February, she released a snapshot report that demonstrated how cuts would harm health care access in Washington state, and she followed up with a report in March that dove into impacts on the Puget Sound region. Last week, the Senator released a fact sheet that warned of dire consequences for reproductive health care in Washington state if the Republican reconciliation bill is passed.
In her remarks today, Sen. Cantwell also discussed new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), available here, of the impact of the Republican plan’s cuts to Medicaid. In addition, a Joint Economic Committee (JEC) fact sheet, available here, provides updated estimates for all 50 states and D.C. of the estimated number of people losing their health insurance. The JEC data broken down by Congressional District is available here.
A previous version of the bill included a provision that would have required the federal government to sell off millions of acres of public land. On Tuesday, Sen. Cantwell held a virtual press conference with the mayor of Boise, professional climbers, a leader from outdoor gear retailer REI, and a spokesperson for a hunting and angling advocacy group to fight back – yesterday, the provision was dropped.
Earlier this week, Sen. Cantwell criticized new reconciliation bill language released by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) which forces states receiving Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding to choose between expanding broadband or protecting consumers from harms caused by artificial intelligence for ten years. Cruz’s new language would also auction spectrum critical to national defense: “The newly released language by Chair Cruz continues to hold $42 billion in BEAD funding hostage, forcing states to choose between protecting consumers and expanding critical broadband infrastructure to rural communities,” Sen. Cantwell said earlier this week. “Forty state attorneys general oppose the AI moratorium that would leave every American vulnerable to AI-assisted fraud, theft, and abuse at a time when we should be strengthening consumer protections. This bill would auction off spectrum essential for military drone operations and risk grounding both civilian and military aircraft due to interference with airplane altimeters. It would jeopardize our weather tracking radar systems and the bands we rely on for WiFi connectivity. And for what? So telecommunications companies—the same ones that failed to protect Americans from Salt Typhoon—can profit and Trump can hawk more of his $47.45 phone plans. This is a fundamental threat to our national defense and a massive giveaway to China.” Sen. Cruz claims that the ten-year moratorium on states’ enforcement of AI laws applies only to a new $500 million appropriation. However, concerns remain that the bill’s text still leverages broadband funding to deny states the ability to protect their citizens from AI-assisted fraud, theft, and abuse.
The Senate is currently scheduled to vote on the budget bill late tonight or early tomorrow morning. If the bill passes the Senate, it will go back to the House for at least 72 hours of consideration before a House vote.
Cities have a central role to play tackling climate change. They contribute 67–72% of the greenhouse gas emissions which are heating up the planet.
At the same time, cities are increasingly at risk from global warming. Flood, fire and drought are affecting everything from the cost of insuring homes and businesses, through to impacts on health and safety.
This is critical given 90% of Australians live in urban areas. Globally, cities are home to more than four billion people.
Our new study identifies 16 priority actions to address climate change in the construction and management of cities.
Building smarter
Climate change must be a key consideration when designing, building and managing our cities. The emissions generated need to be minimised and eventually eliminated.
We must build in locations, and in ways, that reduce climate risks. But policies governing how our cities are designed and constructed don’t achieve this.
A recent study of three local government areas identified only limited action on adaptation and mitigation. Other research has found few urban development policies include carbon reduction goals that meet international targets.
The National Housing Accord will see more than one million houses built by 2029. These new homes must address the climate challenge.
16 areas for priority action
The priority areas in our new study were informed by interviews with more than 150 stakeholders working in urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, sustainability, construction and property.
Priority areas for minimising damaging emissions generated by cities. CC BY
The actions they identified cover the entire life cycle of the built environment.
One of the first barriers to overcome is the perceived lack of agency among industry professionals to initiate or demand climate action. They perceive others, such as property owners or clients, to have more influence.
Climate change risks should be identified in the early stages of planning new developments, backed up by effective tools to make risk identification and action easier:
There were areas that were identified as being flood prone or risk prone. But there was no strategy to deal with what happens to those areas – An urban planner
Once specific projects are being considered it is important to prioritise early stage climate assessments, supported by policies which mandate climate action:
Everyone has good intentions but without big formal legislation around it, everyone’s just sort of making their way in the dark – A construction industry professional
In the design stage, steps to improve the climate knowledge and skills of the workforce beyond disciplinary boundaries is critical. The selection of low-impact products and materials will also help ensure design is more climate responsive.
The highest number of hurdles to climate action were found to occur during the costing and approvals stage. Participants spoke of a highly competitive building industry. If climate change initiatives introduced at an earlier stage aren’t required by law, they are likely to be cut.
unless there’s something in it for them in terms of return on investment, it’s going to be hard to get them to do it, unless we make them – An urban planner
During the construction phase, product and material substitutions that have detrimental environmental impact should be eliminated. Innovation should be encouraged:
If you want to push the envelope a little bit in terms of using recycled materials […] that’s a bit of a barrier. To push innovation is difficult – A landscape architect
Post-construction
Once construction is complete and buildings and public spaces are being used, it is important to invest in a thorough evaluation process. Building users should be involved to ensure buildings are maintained for optimal climate outcomes:
[We] tried to achieve the six star rating […] the client has to maintain it [the building] for a year, and that’s when things start to fall off – An architect
When it comes to area upgrades or building renewals, advocating for reuse and materials circularity is important. But the custom of demolishing and building anew, is hard to shift:
The reuse of the existing building obviously generates significantly less waste and involves less material. So, design decisions and strategic decisions around using existing buildings is really important – An urban designer
Working together
This is a time of significant change in our urban areas.
We need to make sure climate action is embedded in every stage of decision making. This may mean more efficient use, and reuse, of the existing built stock. This will require an overhaul of policies regarding building retrofits, and a change in mindsets.
The priority actions to address climate change in cities can be implemented across a range of levels for:
individual professionals – pursue development of their climate change skills, including opportunities provided by professional associations
professional practices – review internal processes to ensure climate action is mainstreamed across projects, and in company decision making
universities teaching built environment professional degrees – embed climate change knowledge, skills, and competencies across the curriculum
governments at all levels – review policy settings to mandate mitigation and adaption.
By addressing these actions, we can collectively work towards achieving our emission reduction targets and making sure our cities minimise climate change risks.
Anna Hurlimann received funding for the research reported in this article from the Australian Research Council – Discovery Grant DP200101378, with co-chief investigators Georgia Warren-Myers, Alan March, Sareh Moosavi and Judy Bush. She is a member of the Planning Institute of Australia.
Sareh Moosavi received funding for the research reported in this article from the Australian Research Council – Discovery Grant DP200101378, with co-chief investigators Anna Hurlimann, Georgia Warren-Myers, Alan March, and Judy Bush.
Source: Australian Ministers for Regional Development
Scam warning: The ACCC is aware that scammers may call, email or text to falsely offer to help get compensation from various businesses. They may use this media release about compensation to convince people their contact is real.
STOP – Don’t give money or personal information to anyone if you’re unsure. Scammers will create a sense of urgency. Don’t rush to act. Say ‘no’, hang up, delete.
CHECK – Ask yourself could the call, email or text be fake? Scammers pretend to be from organisations and entities you know and trust. Contact the organisation using information you source independently, so that you can verify if it is real or not.
PROTECT – Act quickly if something feels wrong. Contact your bank immediately if you lose money. If you have provided personal information call IDCARE on 1800 595 160. The more we talk the less power they have. Report scams to the National Anti-Scam Centre’s Scamwatch service at scamwatch.gov.au when you see them.
The ACCC has instituted proceedings in the Federal Court against Bupa HI Pty Ltd (Bupa) for breaches of the Australian Consumer Law in relation to members’ entitlements to private health insurance benefits for certain claims, affecting thousands of consumers over a period of more than five years.
Bupa has admitted to engaging in misleading or deceptive conduct and making false or misleading representations by advising members they were not entitled to private health insurance benefits for their entire claim, when in fact this was not the case. Bupa has also admitted to engaging in unconscionable conduct in connection with its assessment of 388 Mixed Coverage Claims.
Most of the claims impacted by the admitted conduct were claims for hospital treatment, in which two or more procedures were performed at the same time. In cases where part of the treatment was covered by a member’s policy and part of the treatment was not covered, Bupa incorrectly rejected the entire claim.
The ACCC and Bupa will jointly ask the Court to order Bupa to pay a total penalty of $35 million and make other orders. It is a matter for the Court to determine whether the penalty and other orders are appropriate.
Bupa started compensating affected members, medical providers and hospitals, before the start of this legal action, and to date, has paid $14.3 million to parties for more than 4,100 affected claims. The ACCC has accepted a court-enforceable undertaking from Bupa to continue compensating affected parties under its existing remediation program.
“Bupa’s conduct affected thousands of members over more than five years, and caused harm to consumers some of whom delayed, cancelled or went without treatment for which they were, at least partially, covered under their health insurance policies,” ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said.
Some consumers were left thousands of dollars out of pocket and had to personally finance expenses for some medical treatments that Bupa was in fact obliged to pay, at least in part, under its policies. Some policy holders also upgraded to more expensive policies to ensure coverage.
In addition to financial impacts, some consumers were exposed to potential medical risks or complications, physical pain and distress as a result of not proceeding with medical treatment or as a result of undergoing multiple treatments after being falsely advised they were not covered for certain procedures.
“Consumers purchase private health insurance to provide peace of mind, certainty of coverage and the ability to choose where and when to undertake their procedures. Bupa’s conduct denied certain members benefits to which they were entitled to under their private health insurance policies,” Ms Cass-Gottlieb said.
Medical providers and hospitals were also impacted by the conduct, including by not receiving the payments to which they were entitled in respect of certain claims.
Bupa has admitted that at various times between May 2018 and August 2023 it misrepresented that members were not entitled to any benefits for a Mixed Coverage Claim or Uncategorised Item Claim, when in fact, they were eligible for benefits for any treatment that was covered under their insurance policy. The misrepresentations occurred before medical treatment, when consumers were checking their coverage and entitlements with Bupa staff, as well as after a procedure due to its automatic claims assessment systems.
Bupa also admitted that between June 2020 and February 2021, it stopped manually reviewing certain Mixed Coverage Claims that had been automatically incorrectly assessed as having no benefits payable. It has admitted that this was unconscionable in certain circumstances, including where it knew that manual review was necessary to ensure it identified and paid benefits for those claims.
Bupa’s conduct occurred because Bupa staff did not have consistent and clear instructions and training for assessing Mixed Coverage Claims, and because its systems were programmed to incorrectly reject Mixed Coverage and Uncategorised Item Claims.
“Private health insurance is complex, and consumers should be able to trust their health insurer to assess and pay health insurance claims accurately,” Ms Cass-Gottlieb said.
“Bupa’s conduct is very serious and fell well short of what is expected of one of the largest health insurers in Australia. Bupa should have invested in the necessary systems, processes and training to prevent this from happening, and address it promptly when it occurred.”
A copy of the undertaking relating to the compensation is available at Bupa HI Pty Ltd.
If you consider you may have been impacted by the conduct, please contact Bupa on a number you source independently or you can complete a Remediation Form available at: www.bupa.com.au/mixedcoverage.
Bupa has cooperated with the ACCC during its investigation, including by agreeing to jointly seek declarations, penalties, an injunction, costs and other orders. The Federal Court will consider whether to make the orders sought on a date to be fixed.
Background
Bupa is one of the largest private health insurers in Australia. It is a subsidiary of Bupa HI Holdings Pty Ltd which is ultimately controlled by British United Provident Association Ltd.
Mixed Coverage Claims are claims under Bupa’s private health insurance policy that included treatment that was covered under a member’s private health insurance policy as well as treatment that was not covered under their policy.
Uncategorised Item Claims are claims that included treatment that were not assigned to a standard clinical category in Bupa’s claims assessment system.
From March to June, Samsung Electronics hosted Digital Appliances (DA) Global Tech Seminars across five regions — the United States, Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia — to showcase its latest innovations to audiences around the world. The seminars welcomed about 240 media representatives and tech influencers from 40 countries to experience Samsung’s latest AI home appliances firsthand and observe how the company is tailoring features to meet the unique needs of each region.1 Attendees also participated in Q&A sessions with product developers, who shared in-depth insights and explanations.
Samsung Newsroom recaps each regional seminar with on-site highlights and photos.
United States: Large-Capacity Washer-Dryers Win Praise for Practicality and Efficiency
▲ 2025 DA Global Tech Seminar held in the U.S.
The U.S. Tech Seminar took place on March 18 at Samsung Home, a Bespoke AI experience space in SoHo, New York City — a neighborhood synonymous with art and creative living.
American consumers tend to prioritize practicality and efficiency. Taking this into account, Samsung set up a dedicated experience zone for the large-capacity Bespoke AI Laundry Vented Combo, featuring a product cutaway mock-up that allowed visitors to intuitively understand the product’s core technologies and features. In addition, a live cooking demonstration showcased the AI capabilities of the Bespoke AI Oven, while the Bespoke AI Hybrid Refrigerator — which boosts energy efficiency using a semiconductor-based Peltier module — also mesmerized guests.
Europe: Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Takes Center Stage With Industry-Leading Suction Power
▲ 2025 DA Global Tech Seminar held in Germany
On the same day, the European Tech Seminar kicked off in Frankfurt, Germany, at World of Samsung — a global showcase designed to provide an in-depth look at Samsung’s products.
A key highlight was the Bespoke AI Jet Ultra, which features the world’s most powerful suction for a cordless stick vacuum cleaner at 400W. Samsung developers gave presentations, offering insight into the vacuum cleaner’s high-performance engineering. The Bespoke AI Jet Ultra recently earned 4.5 out of 5 stars from U.K.-based review outlet Trusted Reviews and ranked first among 43 cordless vacuums tested by German IT outlet Chip.
Latin America: SmartThings-Connected Home Appliances Growing at Twice the Global Rate
▲ 2025 DA Global Tech Seminar held in Mexico
The Latin America Tech Seminar took place on June 3 in the vibrant metropolis of Mexico City, Mexico, drawing media and influencers from 13 countries to experience Samsung’s new lineup firsthand. Consumers in the region have shown high interest in connected living, with SmartThings-connected appliance adoption growing at more than twice the global average.2
Reflecting this demand, demonstrations highlighted various features including Map View, Bixby, Routines — all easily accessible via SmartThings or the AI Home screen. Attendees also visited Sam’s House, a premium residential showroom where they engaged in hands-on interactions with Samsung’s connected products.
Southeast Asia: AI Appliances Optimized for Hot, Humid Climates
▲ 2025 DA Global Tech Seminar held in Thailand
On June 20, Samsung held the Southeast Asia Tech Seminar at a showroom in Bangkok, Thailand, where attendees explored the company’s latest products in settings simulating both commercial and residential spaces.
Through demonstrations, attendees experienced how the Voice ID feature on the Bespoke AI Family Hub refrigerator can recognize individual voices to deliver personalized responses. They also saw how Samsung is localizing AI home appliances to better suit Southeast Asia’s hot and humid climate — for example, the 1-Way Cassette system air conditioner and the Bespoke AI Top Load Washer. “The use of AI to enhance user experience and facilitate both usage and energy savings is particularly valuable and useful,” said Kemachad Gunpai of Future Trends Thailand who attended the seminar.
Southwest Asia: AI-Powered, Efficient Cooling Solutions in the Spotlight
▲ 2025 DA Global Tech Seminar held in India
Held on June 25 in Gurugram, India, the Southwest Asia Tech Seminar focused on SmartThings-connected solutions and energy-efficient features tailored to local preferences.
Among the demonstrations were AI appliances responding to sleep patterns detected by motion sensors, alongside cooling solutions tailored for Indian consumers. Attendees also received detailed explanations on how to track energy usage via SmartThings, a particularly relevant feature amid rising electricity costs. Samsung employees also explained how each product operates in AI Energy Mode to maximize efficiency and minimize energy consumption.
“Samsung will continue to develop and expand the Global Tech Seminars in ways that reflect the unique local characteristics of each region,” said Soohyuk Ro, Vice President and Head of Tech Insight Group at Digital Appliances (DA) Business, Samsung Electronics, as the seminars came to an end. “In doing so, we will provide even deeper insights into how Samsung’s AI Home and innovative AI appliances can bring meaningful benefits to daily life for everyone.”
1 Product names and features mentioned in this article may vary by region.
2 Based on internal data from Samsung, aggregated via BDC (BI & Analytics), reflecting the cumulative annual ratio of Wi-Fi-connected devices.
A funding package developed to support island businesses affected by ferry disruption is now ready to accept applications.
Businesses from eligible sectors on South Uist, Colonsay, North Uist, Eriskay, Benbecula, Berneray, Grimsay and Arran can apply.
Eligible sectors include those that rely on tourism and those that are engaged in the manufacture or movement of perishable goods, such as seafood.
£4.4 million has been allocated to the Islands Business Resilience Fund (IBRF) which was established to help address issues, such as travel disruption, that can have a disproportionate impact on people and businesses living, and operating on Scotland’s islands.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise will manage the IBRF on behalf of the Scottish Government. Applications will be accepted from 2 July until 12 noon 1 September 2025 with decisions and payments expected by 31 October 2025.
Funding awards will be based on demand and the scale size of organisations that apply for support but awards are expected to range between £3,000 and £35,000
Islands Secretary Mairi Gougeon said:
“We know that Scotland’s island communities face distinct challenges, not least in terms of their economic and social resilience. People and businesses require ferry services running reliably and frequently to support their livelihoods.
“We worked with Highlands and Islands Enterprise to refine the eligibility criteria and identify how this money can make a real difference to the businesses who need it most.
“Reliable and regular ferry services are key to this connectivity for people and businesses and we know that the current situation of delays and ongoing maintenance to some vessels has created real difficulties for some. We are determined to do everything we can to support islands, their local businesses and employers through these challenging times.”
Rachel Hunter, HIE’s director of enterprise and community support, said:
“Island businesses and social enterprises make an important contribution to local economies and provide vital rural employment that helps sustain many communities. Those operating in tourism and production or movement of perishable foods are particularly vulnerable to disruption such as we’ve seen in recent years.
“This fund is about strengthening the resilience of those organisations operating in the sectors and islands most affected. Our focus will be assessing applications promptly so that funding can be awarded as soon as possible after the closing date.”
Highlands and Islands Enterprise carried out detailed analysis of information and statistics provided by Transport Scotland and CalMac relating to ferry disruption.
The islands of South Uist, Colonsay, North Uist, Eriskay, Benbecula, Berneray, Grimsay and Arran were chosen as eligible for the Islands Business Resilience Fund as they each had more than 15% ferry disruption over the last three seasons. The average cancellations of ferry services across the Calmac network is during that time has been around 7%.
If your business pays contractors to deliver any of these services on your behalf, you may need to lodge a Taxable payments annual report (TPAR) online by 28 August:
building and construction
cleaning
courier and road freight
information technology (IT)
security, investigation or surveillance.
TPAR help us keep things fair for all businesses by making sure contractors report all their income.
On your TPAR, you need to record the:
contractor’s name, address and ABN
total amount you paid them for the previous financial year – including any GST and cash payments.
You can find these details on your contractor’s invoice. It’s the same information you use to claim income tax deductions through your tax return, and GST credits through your business activity statement.
Penalties may apply for overdue TPAR. We’ll no longer be accepting paper lodgments after 28 August 2025, so it’s important to make sure you’re set up for online lodgment.
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Source: United States Small Business Administration
ATLANTA – The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is reminding small businesses and private nonprofit (PNP) organizations in New York of the July 28 deadline to apply for low interest federal disaster loans to offset economic losses caused by excessive winds and rain occurring Aug. 19-20, 2024.
The disaster declaration covers the New York counties of Albany, Fulton, Hamilton, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Warren and Washington.
Under this declaration SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program is available to small businesses, small agricultural cooperatives, nurseries and PNPs with financial losses directly related to the disaster. The SBA is unable to provide disaster loans to agricultural producers, farmers, or ranchers, except for small aquaculture enterprises.
EIDLs are available for working capital needs caused by the disaster and are available even if the small business or PNP did not suffer any physical damage. The loans may be used to pay fixed debts, payroll, accounts payable, and other bills not paid due to the disaster.
“Through a declaration by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, SBA provides critical financial assistance to help communities recover,” said Chris Stallings, associate administrator of the Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience at the SBA. “We’re pleased to offer loans to small businesses and private nonprofits impacted by these disasters.”
The loan amount can be up to $2 million with interest rates as low as 4% for small businesses and 3.25% for PNPs, with terms up to 30 years. Interest does not accrue, and payments are not due until 12 months from the date of the first loan disbursement. The SBA sets loan amounts and terms based on each applicant’s financial condition.
To apply online visit sba.gov/disaster. Applicants may also call SBA’s Customer Service Center at (800) 659-2955 or email disastercustomerservice@sba.gov for more information on SBA disaster assistance. For people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services.
The deadline to return economic injury applications is July 28, 2025.
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About the U.S. Small Business Administration
The U.S. Small Business Administration helps power the American dream of business ownership. As the only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government, the SBA empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start, grow or expand their businesses, or recover from a declared disaster. It delivers services through an extensive network of SBA field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations. To learn more, visit www.sba.gov.
Source: United States Small Business Administration
ATLANTA – In response to an amended Presidential disaster declaration, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced the availability of low interest federal disaster loans to private nonprofit (PNP) organizations in one additional Mississippi county affected by the severe storms and flooding occurring Mar. 14-15, 2025.
The amended declaration covers the newly designated county of Montgomery.
Under this declaration, PNPs providing non-critical services of a governmental nature who suffered financial losses directly related to the disaster are eligible to apply for both physical damage loans and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDLs) from the SBA. Examples of eligible non-critical PNP organizations include, but are not limited to, food kitchens, homeless shelters, museums, libraries, community centers, schools, and colleges.
PNPs may borrow up to $2 million to repair or replace damaged or destroyed real estate, machinery and equipment, inventory, and other business assets. Applicants may also be eligible for a loan increase of up to 20% of their physical damages, as verified by the SBA, for mitigation purposes.
EIDLs are for working capital needs caused by the disaster and are available even if the PNP did not suffer any physical damage. The loans may be used to pay fixed debts, payroll, accounts payable, and other bills not paid due to the disaster.
“SBA loans help eligible small businesses and private nonprofits cover operating expenses after a disaster, which is crucial for their recovery,” said Chris Stallings, associate administrator of the Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience at the SBA. “These loans not only help business owners get back on their feet but also play a key role in sustaining local economies in the aftermath of a disaster.”
The interest rate can be as low as 3.625%, with terms up to 30 years. Interest does not begin to accrue, and monthly payments are not due until 12 months from the date of the initial disbursement. The SBA sets loan amounts and terms based on each applicant’s financial condition.
To apply online visit sba.gov/disaster. Applicants may also call the SBA’s Customer Service Center at (800) 659-2955 or email disastercustomerservice@sba.gov for information on SBA disaster assistance. For people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services.
The filing deadline to submit applications for physical property damage is July 22, 2025. The deadline to submit economic injury applications is Feb. 23, 2026.
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About the U.S. Small Business Administration
The U.S. Small Business Administration helps power the American dream of business ownership. As the only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government, the SBA empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start, grow or expand their businesses, or recover from a declared disaster. It delivers services through an extensive network of SBA field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations. To learn more, visit www.sba.gov.
Source: United States Small Business Administration
ATLANTA – The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) opened Business Recovery Centers (BRCs) in Davidson and McNairy Counties to assist small businesses, private nonprofits and residents affected by severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding occurring on April 2-24, 2025.
SBA customer service representatives will be on hand at the BRCs to answer questions about SBA’s disaster loan program, explain the application process and help individuals complete their application. Walk-ins are accepted, but you can schedule an in-person appointment in advance at appointment.sba.gov. The BRCs hours of operation are listed below.
Business Recovery Center (BRC)
Davidson County
SBA District Office, Nashville
2 International Plaza
Nashville, TN 37217
Hours: Monday – Sunday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Temporary Closed: Friday, July, 4th
in observance of 4th of July Holiday
Business Recovery Center (BRC)
McNairy County
The Latta Theatre
205 W Court Ave.
Selmer, TN 38375
Hours: Monday – Sunday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Temporary Closed: Friday, July, 4th
in observance of 4th of July Holiday
“SBA’s Business Recovery Centers have consistently proven their value to business owners following a disaster,” said Chris Stallings, associate administrator of the Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience at the SBA. “Business owners can visit these centers to meet face-to-face with specialists who will guide them through the disaster loan application process and connect them with resources to support their recovery.”
The SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program is available to small businesses, small agricultural cooperatives and private nonprofit (PNP) organizations with financial losses directly related to the disaster. The SBA is unable to provide disaster loans to agricultural producers, farmers, or ranchers, except for small aquaculture enterprises.
EIDLs are available for working capital needs caused by the disaster and are available even if the business or PNP did not suffer any physical damage. The loans may be used to pay fixed debts, payroll, accounts payable, and other bills not paid due to the disaster.
Businesses and nonprofits are eligible to apply for business physical disaster loans and may borrow up to $2 million to repair or replace disaster-damaged or destroyed real estate, machinery and equipment, inventory, and other business assets.
Homeowners and renters are eligible to apply for home and personal property loans and may borrow up to $100,000 to replace or repair personal property, such as clothing, furniture, cars, and appliances. Homeowners may apply for up to $500,000 to replace or repair their primary residence.
Applicants may also be eligible for a loan increase of up to 20% of their physical damage, as verified by the SBA, for mitigation purposes. Eligible mitigation improvements include strengthening structures to protect against high wind damage, upgrading to wind rated garage doors, and installing a safe room or storm shelter to help protect property and occupants from future damage.
Interest rates are as low as 4% for small businesses, 3.625% for PNPs, and 2.75% for homeowners and renters, with terms up to 30 years. Interest does not begin to accrue, and payments are not due until 12 months from the date of the first loan disbursement. The SBA sets loan amounts and terms based on each applicant’s financial condition.
Disaster survivors should not wait to settle with their insurance company before applying for a disaster loan. If a survivor does not know how much of their loss will be covered by insurance or other sources, SBA can make a low-interest disaster loan for the total loss up to its loan limits, provided the borrower agrees to use insurance proceeds to reduce or repay the loan.
With the changes to FEMA’s Sequence of Delivery, survivors are now encouraged to simultaneously apply for FEMA grants and the SBA low-interest disaster loan assistance to fully recover. FEMA grants are intended to cover necessary expenses and serious needs not paid by insurance or other sources. The SBA disaster loan program is designed for your long-term recovery, to make you whole and get you back to your pre-disaster condition.
To apply online, visit sba.gov/disaster. Applicants may also call SBA’s Customer Service Center at (800) 659-2955 or email disastercustomerservice@sba.gov for more information on SBA disaster assistance. For people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services.
The filing deadline to return applications for physical property damage is Aug. 19, 2025. The deadline to return economic injury applications is March 19, 2026.
###
About the U.S. Small Business Administration
The U.S. Small Business Administration helps power the American dream of business ownership. As the only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government, the SBA empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start, grow or expand their businesses, or recover from a declared disaster. It delivers services through an extensive network of SBA field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations. To learn more, visit www.sba.gov.
Source: United States Senator for Washington Maria Cantwell
06.29.25
Cantwell, Red State Leaders Warn Entire Communities Will Suffer if Residents Lose Health Insurance Due to Medicaid Cuts
Misguided legislation would leave 16 million Americans without health insurance; Officials on the ground in MO, UT, and NC say fewer federal resources means more uninsured Americans, cuts in services, and even hospital closures – with states & counties left to pick up the slack
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, joined local leaders from red states for a virtual press conference to warn that cutting 16 million Americans off of health insurance will put a dramatic strain on the budgets and health of their communities.
“Policies in this legislation hamper the abilities for states to fund their Medicaid programs,” said Sen. Cantwell. “To make up for lost federal dollars, state governments will have to consider cutting reimbursements to providers, cutting types of services, cutting people from Medicaid rolls, or raising everyone’s taxes. All these decisions lead to poor health outcomes. They increase the cost for taxpayers and strain our healthcare system.”
“We have a dramatic shortage of mental health beds in our state, and our jails have come become the largest repository for individuals,” said Steve Hobbs, Missouri Association of Counties Executive Director and former Missouri State Representative (R-21), who called into the virtual presser from inside a skid steer at his farm. “Any changes to the premium tax would have a huge impact on our rural hospitals — all of our hospitals, our nursing homes, and so we’re really concerned about those changes as well.”
“No one knows exactly where the shrapnel will fall, but it will be a very large change to our state budget and the services that we can provide. So I’m really hoping we can find some other, better way forward,” said Utah State Representative Ray Ward (R-19).
In total, 16 million Americans – including over 300,000 Washingtonians – will lose the health care coverage they need to get regular check-ups, behavioral health care, family planning services, long-term care, urgent care, and more if the pending reconciliation bill passes the U.S. Senate and is signed into law. Those living in rural areas – which have a higher proportion of residents who rely on Medicaid for health insurance coverage, and where smaller hospitals operate on slimmer margins – would be hit hardest.
People without health insurance tend to wait until their health problem is an emergency before seeking care in local hospitals. This leads to more crowded emergency rooms for everyone. And hospitals must factor the uncompensated cost of additional uninsured patients into already strained finances – finances which are especially strained at rural hospitals.
The additional stress and costs to the system will be shared by everyone as premiums rise, hospitals close or cut services, and localities increase taxes to keep up with greater demand for first responders and law enforcement.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published its updated analysis, available here, after the House of Representatives narrowly passed their budget reconciliation bill with over $800 billion in cuts and significant changes to Medicaid. A Joint Economic Committee (JEC) fact sheet, available here, provides updated estimates for all 50 states and D.C. of the estimated number of people losing their health insurance. The JEC data broken down by Congressional District is available here.
Sen. Cantwell was joined at today’s virtual press conference by:
Steve Hobbs, Missouri Association of Counties Executive Director and former Missouri State Representative [link to footage]
Ray Ward, Utah State Representative (R-19) [link to footage]
Kevin Leonard, North Carolina Association of County Commissioners Executive Director [link to footage]
Wendy Sisk, CEO of Peninsula Behavioral Health
Tristan Twohig, Emergency Department Registered Nurse at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane
Video of today’s virtual press conference is available HERE; a transcript is available HERE.
The International Business Forum (IBF) will open with a high-level gathering of Heads of State, ministers, CEOs, and global business leaders to explore solutions that unlock private finance and investments for sustainable development.
The opening of the IBF will set the tone for the importance of driving solutions that unlock private finance and investments for sustainable development. The session will feature welcome addresses by Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of Spain, and António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, followed by remarks from Heads of State, Ministers, CEOs and global business leaders. Speakers will include John Denton, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce; Shinta Kamdani, CEO of Sintesa Group and Co-Chair of the Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance; and José Viñals, GISD Co-Chair and Senior Advisor to the Board of Standard Chartered. BBC presenter Rajini Vaidyanathan will serve as the moderator.
More Info: https://financing.desa.un.org/FFD4/businessforum
All the FFD4 events: https://webtv.un.org/
If you want to advertise a house online in Australia, you don’t have many options. Just two companies dominate the market.
Australia’s largest property listings platform, realestate.com.au, belongs to digital media company REA Group, which is majority-owned by Rupert Murdoch’s US-based media conglomerate News Corporation (News Corp).
REA claims average traffic of 11.9 million viewers per month, substantially more than that of its nearest rival, Domain.
That’s led to widespread concern about REA’s dominant market power and the potential for price-gouging, which are currently subject to an ongoing probe by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
Meanwhile, my research has revealed that REA has expanded into mortgage lending, an important new direction which, until now, has escaped attention.
The implications here are worth considering. News Corp, a foreign-owned media company, now has a direct stake in framing the Australian housing narrative and influencing policy, while profiting through its property platform from listings, data, and its own mortgages.
It’s a shrewd business strategy. But Australia currently doesn’t have a regulator fit for overseeing such a hybrid entity, raising serious questions about who is keeping watch.
‘Good debt’
Australian households have long accepted the prevailing narrative, promoted by the media, that housing investment is their “path to wealth”. Mortgages are endorsed as the way to manage the growing gap between flatlined wages and rising house prices.
Primed for finance in this way, many households have come to embrace mortgages as an aspirational form of “good debt”, the mark of a savvy player rather than a long-term financial burden.
This has helped fuel what could be described as a housing “frenzy”, a volatile situation in which escalating housing prices and indebtedness undermine household wellbeing. Younger generations and the disadvantaged, among others, are left out in the cold.
From newspapers to platforms to finance
As digitisation has forced legacy media players such as News Corp to seek new strategies to stay viable, so too has it disrupted the finance industry by opening it up to non-bank players.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, REA Group entered the mortgage market in 2016, starting with a partnership with National Australia Bank. It purchased mortgage brokerages the following year.
The realestate.com.au platform was then redesigned to include a mortgage portal to direct millions of Australian homeseekers to lending through those channels. This provides REA with revenue from platform leads to the bank, as well as up-front and trailing mortgage commissions from their brokers.
REA also harvests the extensive financial data supplied by millions of users via their financial profiles and the calculator tools embedded in the website.
That data, an increasingly valuable asset, can be monetised through the platform’s advertiser and homebuyer markets, and News Corp’s extensive partnerships with data broker and analytics companies.
Selling mortgages
Most recently, REA Group has taken its finance strategy one step further. In October 2024, it purchased a 19.9% stake in digital non-bank lender Athena Home Loans.
This allows REA to profit directly from its own mortgages offered to platform users through its current brokerage, Mortgage Choice.
For REA Group (and its owner, News Corp), this move is both logical and strategically compelling in a challenging media environment. As well as influencing policy, REA Group and News Corp are proficient in crafting and cross-promoting a powerful message about housing and debt to the public.
With their profit now even more directly tied to the housing mortgage market – and thereby customers’ debt – the Athena acquisition can only strengthen REA’s vested interest in the continued rise in house prices and household indebtedness. This has the potential to undermine policies to improve housing affordability.
The law can’t keep up
The power imbalance against consumers is stark. So which regulator is keeping an eye on it?
Such an initiative combining housing, finance and media can slip through the cracks in Australia’s fragmented regulatory system with its narrowly-focused legislation.
The legislation lags behind the technology as well. A platform’s persuasive design, with its algorithmic tools, predetermined paths and data harvesting, obscures its prioritisation of commercial interests over that of consumers.
Players from different industries interacting through the “black box” of a platform appear to come under looser regulatory oversight than those from a single industry or operating outside a platform.
the legislation isn’t updated in the way that […] keeps pace with the evolving technology, trends and emerging markets.
In a landscape where such complex digital initiatives are becoming the norm, regulators urgently need to update their understanding and broaden their jurisdiction to include them.
And not just in Australia. REA has confirmed that a successful trial of its initiative here will lead to its rollout across its broad global property platform network.
Nor just REA. Other companies are eyeing this space. REA’s closest competitor, Domain, is currently under acquisition by CoStar, a major digital real estate player in the United States, with the aim to challenge REA.
The rapid and major disruptions caused by such initiatives, such as Airbnb’s negative impact on housing affordability globally, can be difficult to redress retrospectively.
Somebody needs to keep watch.
REA Group declined to comment on this article.
Roberta Esbitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
If you want to advertise a house online in Australia, you don’t have many options. Just two companies dominate the market.
Australia’s largest property listings platform, realestate.com.au, belongs to digital media company REA Group, which is majority-owned by Rupert Murdoch’s US-based media conglomerate News Corporation (News Corp).
REA claims average traffic of 11.9 million viewers per month, substantially more than that of its nearest rival, Domain.
That’s led to widespread concern about REA’s dominant market power and the potential for price-gouging, which are currently subject to an ongoing probe by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
Meanwhile, my research has revealed that REA has expanded into mortgage lending, an important new direction which, until now, has escaped attention.
The implications here are worth considering. News Corp, a foreign-owned media company, now has a direct stake in framing the Australian housing narrative and influencing policy, while profiting through its property platform from listings, data, and its own mortgages.
It’s a shrewd business strategy. But Australia currently doesn’t have a regulator fit for overseeing such a hybrid entity, raising serious questions about who is keeping watch.
‘Good debt’
Australian households have long accepted the prevailing narrative, promoted by the media, that housing investment is their “path to wealth”. Mortgages are endorsed as the way to manage the growing gap between flatlined wages and rising house prices.
Primed for finance in this way, many households have come to embrace mortgages as an aspirational form of “good debt”, the mark of a savvy player rather than a long-term financial burden.
This has helped fuel what could be described as a housing “frenzy”, a volatile situation in which escalating housing prices and indebtedness undermine household wellbeing. Younger generations and the disadvantaged, among others, are left out in the cold.
From newspapers to platforms to finance
As digitisation has forced legacy media players such as News Corp to seek new strategies to stay viable, so too has it disrupted the finance industry by opening it up to non-bank players.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, REA Group entered the mortgage market in 2016, starting with a partnership with National Australia Bank. It purchased mortgage brokerages the following year.
The realestate.com.au platform was then redesigned to include a mortgage portal to direct millions of Australian homeseekers to lending through those channels. This provides REA with revenue from platform leads to the bank, as well as up-front and trailing mortgage commissions from their brokers.
REA also harvests the extensive financial data supplied by millions of users via their financial profiles and the calculator tools embedded in the website.
That data, an increasingly valuable asset, can be monetised through the platform’s advertiser and homebuyer markets, and News Corp’s extensive partnerships with data broker and analytics companies.
Selling mortgages
Most recently, REA Group has taken its finance strategy one step further. In October 2024, it purchased a 19.9% stake in digital non-bank lender Athena Home Loans.
This allows REA to profit directly from its own mortgages offered to platform users through its current brokerage, Mortgage Choice.
For REA Group (and its owner, News Corp), this move is both logical and strategically compelling in a challenging media environment. As well as influencing policy, REA Group and News Corp are proficient in crafting and cross-promoting a powerful message about housing and debt to the public.
With their profit now even more directly tied to the housing mortgage market – and thereby customers’ debt – the Athena acquisition can only strengthen REA’s vested interest in the continued rise in house prices and household indebtedness. This has the potential to undermine policies to improve housing affordability.
The law can’t keep up
The power imbalance against consumers is stark. So which regulator is keeping an eye on it?
Such an initiative combining housing, finance and media can slip through the cracks in Australia’s fragmented regulatory system with its narrowly-focused legislation.
The legislation lags behind the technology as well. A platform’s persuasive design, with its algorithmic tools, predetermined paths and data harvesting, obscures its prioritisation of commercial interests over that of consumers.
Players from different industries interacting through the “black box” of a platform appear to come under looser regulatory oversight than those from a single industry or operating outside a platform.
the legislation isn’t updated in the way that […] keeps pace with the evolving technology, trends and emerging markets.
In a landscape where such complex digital initiatives are becoming the norm, regulators urgently need to update their understanding and broaden their jurisdiction to include them.
And not just in Australia. REA has confirmed that a successful trial of its initiative here will lead to its rollout across its broad global property platform network.
Nor just REA. Other companies are eyeing this space. REA’s closest competitor, Domain, is currently under acquisition by CoStar, a major digital real estate player in the United States, with the aim to challenge REA.
The rapid and major disruptions caused by such initiatives, such as Airbnb’s negative impact on housing affordability globally, can be difficult to redress retrospectively.
Somebody needs to keep watch.
REA Group declined to comment on this article.
Roberta Esbitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
