Vinicius gives Real glimmer of hope after Saka strikes for Arsenal
Real Madrid host Arsenal in the Champions League quarter-final second leg this evening looking to overturn a 3-0 deficit in front of their home fans.
The Gunners won the first leg in London in comprehensive fashion thanks to two goals from free kicks taken by Declan Rice and a third strike from Mikel Merino. Arsenal know that anything but a big defeat will be enough to send them through to the last four stage of the competition where they would face PSG after the French champions defeated Aston Villa yesterday.
Madrid, who are also aiming to catch Barcelona in LaLiga, will not believe they are out of this tie especially with their recent history of overturning losing causes to progress in the Champions League.
Jude Bellingham revealed that the hosts are focused on winning saying: “We believe so. You can’t come into a game like this thinking that there’s going to be anything other than a comeback. That’s the way we’re thinking about the game.”
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Triple killer Nicholas Prosper’s sentence referred to Court of Appeal
Triple killer Nicholas Prosper’s 49-year prison sentence has been referred to the Court of Appeal after shadow justice minister Kieran Mullan claimed it was unduly lenient.
Prosper was jailed for life with the specified minimum term at Luton Crown Court in March, after admitting killing his mother Juliana Falcon, 48, and siblings Giselle Prosper, 13, and Kyle Prosper, 16, along with weapons charges.
The violence-obsessed 19-year-old was also plotting a mass shooting at his former primary school in Luton, Bedfordshire, purely with the aim of gaining notoriety.
Passing sentence, High Court judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told Luton Crown Court that her duty to the public was met with the 49-year minimum term, rather than using “the sentence of last resort” and jailing him for the rest of his life.
Conservative shadow justice minister Dr Mullan referred the sentence to the Attorney General’s Office under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme on the day Prosper was jailed.
The scheme allows any member of the public to ask for certain crown court sentences to be reviewed, and if necessary the case will be referred to the Court of Appeal.
On Wednesday, an Attorney General Office’s spokesman confirmed the Solicitor General has referred Prosper’s sentence to the Court of Appeal.
The spokesman said: “It will be argued that Prosper ought to have been given a whole life order. It is now for the court to decide whether to increase the sentence.”
Rules were changed in 2022 to allow younger defendants aged 18 to 20 to receive whole-life orders in exceptional circumstances, but none of the orders imposed since then have been on criminals in that age bracket.
The judge said that for defendants over the age of 21, whole-life orders can be considered in cases involving two or more murders with a significant degree of premeditation or planning, or where one child is killed with similar pre-planning.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said: “The court may arrive at a whole-life order in the case of an 18 to 20-year-old only if it considers that the seriousness of the combination of offences is exceptionally high, even by the standard of offences which would normally result in a whole-life order. This is described accurately as an enhanced exceptionality requirement.
“Despite the gravity of your crimes, it is the explicit joint submission of counsel that a lengthy, finite term will be a sufficiently severe penalty, and this is not such an exceptionally serious case of the utmost gravity where the sentence of last resort must be imposed on an offender who was 18 at the time and is 19 today.”
While Prosper was “indisputably a very dangerous young man”, the risk to the public was met with a life sentence, she said.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told the court she would not impose a whole-life order because Prosper was stopped from carrying out the school shooting, having murdered his family earlier than he intended after his mother woke up.
He also pleaded guilty as soon as the charges were put to him after psychiatric reports had been completed, and he was 18 at the time of his crimes which is at the lowest end of the age bracket for whole-life terms.
Dr Mullan said at the time: “What exactly does someone have to do in this country to be sent away for life? This was the most serious of crimes – including the murder of two children. What is the point of making provision for whole-life orders if they aren’t used in cases like this? It makes a mockery of the justice system and is an insult to the victims.
“This is the latest in a series of cases that demonstrate too often there is a gap between what the majority of law-abiding members of the public would see as justice and what the judicial system delivers. It was particularly galling to read the judge give to describe as mitigation for the murderer the fact that they didn’t succeed in a plan to kill even more people. What kind of logic is that?”
One of UK’s largest companies sees £2bn wiped off shares through Trump tariffs impact
One of the UK’s largest public listed companies has seen its share price sink by 25 per cent on Wednesday, after reporting a lower annual forecast for 2025 and warning over the “uncertainty” caused by Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Bunzl is a distributor business which supplies other companies around the world with essential everyday goods such as food packaging and labels for supermarkets, catering equipment for restaurants, and masks, gloves and gowns for hospitals.
Having held a market capitalisation in excess of £10bn, the share price crash of the FTSE 100 company has seen more than £2bn wiped off that total in hours after CEO Frank van Zanten cited a “challenging trading environment”.
No other company on the London Stock Exchange’s biggest index saw a fall of more than four per cent on Wednesday, leaving Bunzl as a huge outlier as it battles with its biggest market operating cautiously amid potential import costs and a weak dollar.
“A profit warning and termination of a share buyback programme, the first such halt by any FTSE 100 firm since the dark days of Covid-19 and lockdowns, are both taking a heavy toll on shares in Bunzl and driving them to a four-year low,” said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould, explaining why the tariffs had particularly weighed on the company.
“The specialist distributor had already flagged the combination of higher input costs and price pressure in the US business in particular, where sales and profit fell in 2024. These challenges have become even more acute, especially for the food service and grocery segment. Volumes have stayed soft, prices have weakened, a customer has been lost and Bunzl has invested in its sales proposition to reaffirm its competitive position in the market.
“That is all putting a lid on profit margins after a period of strong expansion and also eroding one of the key parts of the investment case for Bunzl’s shares, namely the essential nature of the services it provides for its customers, and the pricing power this brings.”
Bunzl have halted a £200m buyback programme for this year, which sees companies buy their own shares from the market to return value to investors.
No FTSE 100 company had taken this course of action since 2020.
“It’s still all connected with the concerns about global tariffs and slowdowns…there’s nervousness in the market. Any bad news or any hint of bad news is being punished severely,” added Nick Saunders, CEO of Webull UK.
Bunzl has about 27,000 employees, with more than half of its revenue coming from North America.
The company reported higher earnings for the past year, generating an operating profit of £799.3m, about 1 per cent higher than 2023. However, its profit before income tax declined nearly 4 per cent year-on-year, and total revenues came in fractionally lower at £11.78bn. Bunzl said the decline was mainly driven by deflation across the US and Europe, which led to fiercer competition to decrease prices among suppliers.
The volume of sales was also impacted by the firm switching its focus towards own-brand products in its food services division in the US.
In the UK, Bunzl flagged a more challenging sales environment leading to weaker volumes, particularly in its safety division, which includes supplying equipment for building sites, and retail arm, with packaging for luxury fashion and jewellery firms impacted by slower consumer demand.
The company said it had a record year of acquisitions, buying 13 companies in 2024 and pledging to spend £883m.
Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst for Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “It’s been a tough year; prices have been falling in many of Bunzl’s markets after a period of rampant inflation and that’s been bad news for top line growth – but it might finally be at an inflection point.
“Key markets are showing brighter volume trends, and pricing looks set to flip positive soon, setting the stage for a stronger core business, with own-brand gains and cost efficiencies promising sustainably higher margins despite last year’s cost pressures.”
Bunzl said it expects revenues to grow in 2025 “despite significant uncertainties relating to the wider economic and geopolitical landscape”.
Additional reporting by PA