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Quebec said Friday it will send two more firefighting aircraft to California, a day after one of the province’s water bombers collided with a drone while battling the wildfires ravaging the Los Angeles area.

Mercedes-Benz's core car sales fell in 2024, a tough year for the auto industry marked by waning demand in a weak economy, especially in key market China, the German luxury carmaker said on Friday. It sold 1,983,400 cars during the year, down 3% versus 2023, weighed down by a 7% drop in China and a 3% decline in Europe. Annual sales of battery-electric cars (BEV) dropped by 23% to 185,100 vehicles, adding pressure on the carmaker as new, harsher EU CO2 emission reduction targets take effect this year, which could potentially mean costly pooling deals or hefty fines for Mercedes if the BEV sales don't pick up.

In its annual results for the period ending 30 September 2024, Chrysalis revealed £31m was spent on share buybacks, with the board planning to continue its capital return programme and return up to £100m to shareholders. The board is also looking for returns of at least 25% in net realised gains on asset sales, further bolstering capital returns to the trust's shareholders. Chrysalis agrees settlement with Revolution Beauty «The year to 2024 has seen significant change for your company, both in the way that it is run, and also in market sentiment surrounding its portfolio hold...

90-hour work week debate rages, industry leaders Harsh Mariwala, Harsh Goenka and Rajiv Bajaj have weighed in, saying work-life balance is not optional but is essential, and working hard to succeed is not about the hours clocked in. The suggested practise of working for long hours, if at all required to be followed, must start from the top. Larsen & Toubro (L&T) Chairman SN Subrahmanyan had sparked an online outrage with his comments, asking, «how long can you stare at your wife» while advocating a 90-hour work week and suggesting that employees should even give up Sundays. Following his remark, Subrahmanyan's remuneration, which, as per the company's annual report for 2023-24, stood at Rs 51.05 crore and was 534.57 times the median remuneration of the company's employees, has attracted attention from netizens.

career catfishing," where young professionals accept job offers but fail to show up on their first day without notifying their employers. This new phenomenon has sparked debates on corporate culture and workplace ethics. According to The New York Post, a survey by CVGenius, a résumé-building platform, found that 34% of Gen Z workers (aged 27 and under) admitted to engaging in career catfishing. The trend, perceived as an assertion of independence, is reportedly a response to frustrations stemming from exhaustive hiring processes, including lengthy applications and delayed responses from hiring managers. «Our survey found that Gen Z workers, in particular, reported opting for creative ways to put themselves first before their jobs,» explained the UK-based researchers, who surveyed 1,000 employees across generations.

Just Dial on Friday reported a net profit of Rs 131.31 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2024 which was up 43% over Rs 92 crore reported in the year ago period. The Reliance Retail Ventures promoted company reported net revenues at Rs 287.33 crore in Q3FY25, higher by 8.4% over Rs 265 crore reported in the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year. The October-December quarter earnings were announced after market hours and shares of Just Dial today ended at Rs 1034.60 on the BSE, down by Rs 40.35 or 3.75% over the Thursday closing price.

Donald Trump was formally sentenced Friday in his hush money case, but the judge declined to impose any punishment. The outcome cements Trump’s conviction while freeing him to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine. This makes him the first former US president ever sentenced for a crime. Justice Juan Merchan delivered the decision on Friday, a day after the US Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Trump’s legal team to delay sentencing before the Republican leader’s inauguration on January 20. ALSO READ: Once-in-a-1,60,000-year comet G3 ATLAS to be visible from Earth on this day. It could shine as bright as Venus

Biden's administration announced on Friday that it's expanding sanctions against Russia's critically important energy sector, unveiling a new effort to inflict pain on Moscow for its nearly 3-year-old war in Ukraine as President-elect Donald Trump gets set to return to office vowing to quickly end the conflict. The outgoing Democratic administration billed the new sanctions as the most significant to date against Moscow's oil and liquefied natural gas sectors, the driver of Russia's economy. Officials said the sanctions, which punish entities that do business with the Russians, have the potential to cost the Russian economy upward of billions of dollars per month. More than 180 oil-carrying vessels that are suspected to be part of a shadow fleet utilised by the Kremlin to evade oil sanctions as well as traders, oil field service firms and Russian energy officials are also targeted by the new sanctions.

Donald Trump was sentenced Friday in his hush money case, but the judge declined to impose any punishment. The outcome cements Trump's conviction before he returns to power before while freeing him to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine. Trump's sentence of an unconditional discharge caps a norm-smashing case that saw the former and future president charged with 34 felonies, put on trial for almost two months and convicted by a jury on every count. Yet, the legal detour — and sordid details aired in court of a plot to bury affair allegations — didn't hurt him with voters, who elected him to a second term.

Adani Wilmar as part of a strategy to exit non-core activities to focus on main infrastructure business. The conglomerate, which last month announced its exit from Adani Wilmar by selling the bulk of its stake to a joint venture partner, had on Thursday announced sale of 17.54 crore shares (13.50 per cent equity) in the company on January 10 (to non-retail investors) and on January 13 (to retail investors) at a floor or minimum price of Rs 275 apiece. The offer for sale (OFS) included an option to additionally sell up to 8.44 crore shares, or 6.50 per cent equity.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves was criticised for being «missing in action» as she flew to Beijing for meetings with Chinese government officials and businesses on Thursday (9 January), leaving Treasury secretary Darren Jones to face questions in parliament over surging borrowing costs and demands for spending cuts. Analysts split over Reeves' culpability in UK gilt chaos as US bonds follow suit Jones defended his boss to the Commons and told the House she would not break her promise to borrow money only for investment, or to cover day-to-day spending. Long-term yields on UK government d...

Gary Hall Jr. claims that fires in California destroyed everything he owned, including his ten medals. Gary Hall Jr., a former American Olympic swimmer, described the apocalyptic destruction and his own losses caused by the devastating wildfires that are still destroying Los Angeles. With the exception of a few personal belongings he hastily packed before leaving, the 50-year-old athlete told the Sydney Morning Herald that the consuming fires destroyed his rented home in the Pacific Palisades, his ten Olympic medals, the swimming pool where he taught his kids to swim, and most of his possessions, as quoted in a report by The Independent. ALSO READ Lost Angeles! Pacific Palisades totally devasted; these A-list celebrities' homes have burned to the ground

The Labor Department reported Friday that job growth was up last month from 212,000 in November. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.1% from 4.2% in November.

StoneX chief market strategist Kathryn Rooney Vera discusses the importance of cutting federal spending on Making Money.

Donald Trump is scheduled to take charge as the President of United States of America on January 22 and will announce a slew of policy-related decisions. However, the US is likely to witness a slow GDP growth in 2025. The world economy resisted battering by conflicts and inflation last year and is expected to grow a subdued 2.8 per cent in 2025, the United Nations said Thursday. In «World Economic Situation and Prospects 2025,» UN economists wrote that their positive prediction was driven by the strong although slowing growth forecast for China and the United States and by the robust performances anticipated for India and Indonesia. The European Union, Japan, and United Kingdom are expected to experience modest recovery, the report says. The report says the US economy outperformed expectations last year thanks to consumer and public-sector spending, but growth is expected to slow from 2.8% to 1.9 per cent this year.

capital on Friday as rupee hit record low amid consistent buying from retailers and stockists, according to the All India Sarafa Association. The precious metal ended the previous session at Rs 80,300 per 10 grams. However, silver traded flat at Rs 93,000 per kg on Friday.

Rahul Gandhi on Friday in a criminal defamation case filed by the grandnephew of Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The case stems from allegations that Gandhi made objectionable remarks about the late freedom fighter during a speech in London earlier this year. The defamation complaint was lodged last year by Satyaki Savarkar, the grandnephew of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who accused Rahul Gandhi of making false claims during his March 2023 speech in London.

Market Expert Ruchir Sharma says that the stock market's momentum looks likely to sputter in 2025 and that it could falter as investors grow wary of the US's mounting debt problems. The Rockefeller International chairman said he believed the US stock market could soon underperform global peers, breaking a long-running trend of US outperformance, he wrote in an op-ed article for the Financial Times. Over the next year the top stocks in the US could underperform the global market by about 10% — reflecting a much worse performance than in 2024, when the top US stocks outperformed the market by about 20%, Sharma estimated.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Think 15% vacancy rates are only a problem for owners of office towers? America has a serious housing shortage, but not for the type of apartments that real-estate investors have been building in record numbers. The national vacancy rate for multifamily apartments reached 8% in the last quarter of 2024—higher than it was before the pandemic.

Swamy Shraddananda, jailed for 30 years for killing his wife, has moved the Supreme Court seeking authorities to decide his mercy plea before the President in December, 2023. When the petition came up for hearing before a bench of Justices B R Gavai and Augustine George Masih on Friday, the bench told advocate Varun Thakur, appearing for 84-year-old Shraddananda alias Murali Manohar Mishra, to provide a copy of his plea to the Centre's counsel. It said the plea would be heard next week.