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Pay growth eases to 3.4% as businesses face pressure from soaring energy costsUnemployment in the UK has unexpectedly risen to 5% while wage growth has slowed, according to official figures, in the first snapshot of how companies are reacting to the impact of the Iran war.The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the rate of unemployment was up in the three months to March, from 4.9% in February, a rate that City economists had expected to hold. Continue reading...

Airline says travellers are leaving it longer to book and those buying flights later this year could face higher pricesBusiness live – latest updatesRyanair is “confident” it will not face a jet fuel shortage this summer amid fears over widespread cancellations linked to the Iran war, but warned holidaymakers booking their flights later this year could face higher fares.Neil Sorahan, the chief financial officer at the budget airline, said he was “increasingly confident that we will not see any supply shocks this summer”. Continue reading...

Ken Murphy’s pay could rise even higher following scrapping of food waste target and weakness of rivalsBusiness live – latest updatesThe boss of Tesco made £10.8m last year, about £1m more than the year before, as the UK’s biggest supermarket hit its highest share of the market in a decade.Ken Murphy could make even more this year after being handed a 3% rise in basic pay to £1.54m and cutting food waste was scrapped as a target for his long-term bonus, according to Tesco’s annual report. Continue reading...

• The American Medical Association’s May 15, 2026 advocacy update says physicians and healthcare groups are urging Congress to strengthen the No Surprises Act. • The update also says the AMA is seeking physicians’ stories to support ongoing advocacy, indicating the organization is building a record of billing and patient-protection problems. • The issue matters because surprise medical bills remain a major consumer complaint and a persistent policy fight among doctors, insurers and lawmakers.

• The Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand increased 1.4 percent in April 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with prices rising 6.0 percent over the 12-month period. • Final demand services advanced 1.2 percent while final demand goods increased 2.0 percent, showing divergence in price pressures across economic sectors. • The April PPI data signals persistent inflationary pressures in producer-level pricing, which often precedes consumer price increases and informs Federal Reserve monetary policy decisions.

• U.S. IPO deal count increased 36% quarter-over-quarter and 78% year-over-year in Q1 2026, with transaction values up 91% from Q1 2025 but flat from Q4 2025. • Top 10 IPOs totaled over $6 billion, led by Forgent Power Solutions at $1.74 billion in industrials, followed by Janus Living at $966 million in real estate. • Healthcare dominated with 40% of top IPO volume including Minimed Group, Generate Biomedicines, Eikon Therapeutics, and Aktis Oncology; industrials claimed three spots.

• Alibaba Cloud introduced a new multimodal agent suite, Tongyi AgentStudio, on May 8, 2026, embedding vision, speech, and document‑processing capabilities into a single enterprise‑oriented platform. • The suite supports up to 128 concurrent tool calls per session and can autonomously manage procurement, HR ticketing, and multi‑cloud cost‑optimization workflows, with early pilots at Chinese banks reporting a 32% reduction in internal‑service turnaround time. • Alibaba says Tongyi AgentStudio is now priced at $1.20 per million input tokens for large‑enterprise contracts, below the rate of comparable Western agents, reinforcing its strategy of undercutting global cloud rivals.