A £31 billion takeover pursuit and some robust blue-chip updates helped to boost the FTSE 100 index today. Anglo American, whose interests include De Beers and the giant Woodsmith polyhalite project in North Yorkshire, is the target of Australia’s BHP. Meanwhile, shares in Barclays, AstraZeneca and Unilever performed strongly after their first quarter updates.
A top European Union military officer said that a frigate that’s part of an EU miliary mission in the Red Sea to protect merchant shipping destroyed a drone launched from an area in Yemen controlled by Houthi rebels on Thursday morning. Austrian Gen. Robert Brieger, who is chair of the EU’s military committee, said that it would be crucial for the bloc to “conserve resources” over the long haul because the threat posed by Houthi attacks “will not disappear” due to its connection to the Israel-Hamas war. “The task given to the military is simply to protect merchant ships and to show the public that the European Union is not willing to accept a terrorist organization will interrupt the freedom of movement at sea,” Brieger said.
Shoplifting has hit a record high of nearly 1,200 offences a day - but the number of cases solved has fallen to a low of just one in 10.