Train drivers secure 3.6% pay rise after threat of strikes on busy UK routes

City firms tapped for case studies to try to convince global watchdog that London has cleaned up its act The government is asking bankers and lawyers to provide feelgood stories about how they blocked dirty money from entering the UK, as ministers try to prove the UK’s money-laundering controls are working. The Treasury’s call for evidence is meant to illustrate that the UK has upped its game when it comes to preventing financial crime, particularly since its last dismal assessment by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) global crime watchdog in 2018, which fuelled allegations that London had become a hub for “dirty money”...

A growing number of people are rediscovering their love of plastic bricks in later life and boosting the Danish company’s bottom line In a cosy cafe in Kingston upon Thames on the outskirts of London, nine people gather in the early evening to drink and talk. To the casual observer it may look like a book club, but when the friends reach into their bags it’s not paperbacks they produce – but packs of Lego. Geoff Lay, who organised the gathering, worked in software development before recently starting Noble Brick, a Lego-focused events organisation...

Project in Zambia shows how teaching young women to negotiate better can have a long-term impact on their prospects Women making their way in patriarchal societies down the ages have always had to wield their meagre economic power deftly. New evidence from a fascinating research project in Zambia suggests that’s a skill that can be learned. A team of female US academics have been gathering data for more than a decade, which shows that teaching young women to negotiate better can have a long-term impact on their prospects...