Nutritix

Tag: Travel

  • Warning over risky electric blankets sold online

    Warning over risky electric blankets sold online

    Illegal electric blankets are being sold online which could cause electric shocks, a consumer group warns.

    Which? found some of the products being sold are made “so poorly” they could pose “a serious risk”.

    Separately charity Electrical Safety First says it found “highly dangerous” electrical products for sale by third party sellers online.

    It wants new regulations to bolster consumer protection.

    The cost of living crisis has seen a huge rise in the popularity of electric blankets as people try to minimise use of their central heating.

    Nine out of the 11 electric blankets, throws and shawls Which? bought from third-party sellers on AliExpress, Amazon, eBay and Wish should not be sold legally in the UK.

    The consumer champion group identified problems with how the products are made, the packaging, markings and instructions.

    Which? found some products with electric wires that could easily be pulled out and others lacked the proper safety standard marks. 

    In addition to safety concerns, some of the blankets were incredibly inefficient and did not work properly. 

    All those flagged by Which? as having issues have now been removed by the online marketplaces.

    Which? is calling for sites to bear more legally responsibility for allowing unsafe and illegal products to be sold on their platform.

    The current approach puts most of the responsibility on the third-party sellers.

    Sue Davies, head of consumer protection policy at Which? said buying these products cheaply on online marketplaces can put people’s safety at risk. 

    “The government must urgently act to give online marketplaces greater legal responsibility for unsafe and illegal products sold on their sites so that consumers are no longer put at unnecessary risk of harm,” she said. 

    Last week a Private Member’s Bill was tabled by Labour MP for Gateshead, Ian Mearns, to implement more regulation in this area.

    The Bill, supported by the charity Electrical Safety First, aimed to “close a gap in the law” which has allowed online marketplaces to operate “without any responsibility” for ensuring that the products sold via their sites are actually safe. 

    Electrical Safety First found “highly dangerous” electrical products for sale by third party sellers across major online marketplaces, including Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Wish.com.

    Boss Lesley Rudd said: “Households are perpetually being left at risk from products, such as dangerous electric blankets, as people seek to keep heating costs down. 

    “Without changes to the law, people will continue to be left exposed and vulnerable.”

    AliExpress, Amazon, eBay and Wish.com all said they take safety very seriously and removed the listings that Which? flagged to them.

    None of the third-party sellers of the products provided a comment to Which?

  • Quarter of global population used site daily in December

    Quarter of global population used site daily in December

    The number of people using Facebook daily grew to an average of two billion in December – about a quarter of the world’s population.

    The bigger-than-expected growth helped drive new optimism about the company, which has been under pressure as its costs rise and advertising sales slump.

    Shares in parent company Meta surged more than 15% in after-hours trade as boss Mark Zuckerberg declared 2023 the “year of efficiency”.

    He said he was focused on cost cuts.

    “We’re in a different environment now,” he said, pointing to the firm’s revenue, which declined in 2022 for the first time in its history after years of double-digit growth. 

    “We don’t anticipate that that’s going to continue, but I also don’t think it’s going to go back to the way it was before.”

    Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, announced a major restructuring last year, including reducing office space and cutting 11,000 jobs or about 13% of staff.

    The firm said those moves cost it $4.6bn last year – hitting its profits, which were almost cut in half. It still brought it in $23.2bn in profit for the year.

    “2022 was a challenging year but I think we ended it having made good progress,” Mr Zuckerberg said. 

    In the three months to December, the firm said revenue was $32.2bn, down 4% year-on-year. 

    But that was better than many analysts had expected. 

    Meta alarmed investors last year when it posted the first-ever decline in daily Facebook users in its history and signaled it was focusing investments on virtual reality, known as the metaverse. 

    But in December, the number of users on the site daily was up 4% from a year earlier, adding users even in Europe and the US, and Canada. 

    Meta said the number of people active across all of its apps each day was up 5% year-on-year. 

    Mr Zuckerberg said the company was making progress with its video product – Reels – which it has been focused on as it faces off with rivals such as TikTok, which have gained traction, especially among younger users. 

    Mr Zuckerberg said those efforts were starting to pay off, and ad dollars were starting to follow users to the videos.

    Investors seized on the company’s forecast of lower costs and stronger sales than expected in the months ahead, helping send shares higher. 

    The company also said it would spend an extra $40bn to buy back shares, which dropped sharply last year amid investor doubts about the direction of the company.

  • The images that reveal male fears

    The images that reveal male fears

    Three new exhibitions explore how the femme fatale in art reflects evolving anxieties writes Cath Pound.

     The figure of the femme fatale is one of the defining literary and artistic motifs of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Artists were drawn to historical archetypes of female seduction such as Cleopatra or Lucrezia Borgia, characters from Old Testament stories including Salome, Judith, and Delilah, or mythical figures such as Circe, Helen of Troy, and Medea. Others were conjured from their male author’s imagination – Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen, Émile Zola’s Nana, and Frank Wedekind’s Lulu being some of the most notable.

    Her emergence is frequently seen as a response to anxieties arising from profound social change as women pushed for greater economic, political, and educational rights, challenging the established patriarchal order. Middle-class women who sought education were, according to the British psychiatrist Henry Maudsley, likely to damage their reproductive organs, turning them into monstrosities who threatened the survival of the human race. Fear of contagious diseases such as syphilis was another factor, with working-class prostitutes being seen as contemporary femmes fatales who could lure their clients to their doom.

    The 19th-Century image of the femme fatale was largely shaped by the Pre-Raphaelites in images such as Edward Burne Jones’ The Beguiling of Merlin (1872-77) or Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lady Lilith (1866-68). The latter sees the disobedient first wife of Adam transformed into a vain bohemian beauty admiring her luscious locks in a hand mirror.

    Were they responding to a trend or instrumental in shaping the narrative? “I think both,” says Carol Jacobi, curator of Tate Britain’s forthcoming exhibition The Rossettis. “They were responding to social trends, both the reactionary ones and the whole idea of the ‘fallen woman’, and also the women in their circle who were the New Women. At the same time, I think Rossetti creates a new visual language for the femme fatale that brings it to the mainstream and was picked up by a lot of other artists.”

  • Shell reports the highest profits in 115 years

    Shell reports the highest profits in 115 years

    Profits hit $39.9bn (£32.2bn) in 2022, double last year’s total and the highest in its 115-year history.

    Energy firms have seen record earnings since oil and gas prices jumped following the invasion of Ukraine.

    It has heaped pressure on firms to pay more tax as households struggle with rising bills.

    Opposition parties said Shell’s profits were “outrageous” and the government was letting energy firms “off the hook”. They also called for the planned increase in the energy price cap due in April to be scrapped. 

    Energy prices had begun to climb after the end of Covid lockdowns but rose sharply in March last year after the events in Ukraine led to worries over supplies.

    The price of Brent crude oil reached nearly $128 a barrel following the invasion but has since fallen back to about $83. Gas prices also spiked but have come down from their highs.

    It has led to bumper profits for energy companies, but also fuelled a rise in energy bills for households and businesses. 

    Last year, the UK government introduced a windfall tax – called the Energy Profits Levy – on the “extraordinary” earnings of firms to help fund its scheme to lower gas and electricity bills.

    Despite the move, Shell had said it did not expect to pay any UK tax this year as it is allowed to offset decommissioning costs and investments in UK projects against any UK profits.

    However, on Thursday it said was due to pay $134m in UK windfall tax for 2022, and expected to pay more than $500m in 2023.

    This may look small compared to its profits but Shell only derives around 5% of its revenue from the UK – the rest is made and taxed in other jurisdictions.

    However, critics point out that Shell is a UK-headquartered company and has been paying more to its shareholders than it spends on renewable investments.

    The government is currently limiting gas and electricity bills so a household using a typical amount of energy will pay £2,500 a year.

    However, that is still more than twice what it was before Russia’s invasion, and the threshold is due to rise to £3,000 in April. 

    The government’s windfall tax only applies to profits made from extracting UK oil and gas. The rate was originally set at 25%, but has now been increased to 35%.

    Oil and gas firms also pay 30% corporation tax on their profits as well as a supplementary 10% rate. Along with the new windfall tax, that takes their total tax rate to 75%.

    However, companies are able to reduce the amount of tax they pay by factoring in losses or spending on things like decommissioning North Sea oil platforms. It has meant that in recent years, energy giants such as BP and Shell have paid little or no tax in the UK.

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