Rising demand boosts Spotify to 138m paid users July 29, 2020 Spotify said today it had recovered from a coronavirus-related damp start to the second quarter, beating Wall Street expectations to report 138m in paid users. Subscribers to its Premium service, which accounts for most of the company’s revenue, were up 27 per cent from a year earlier. Analyst had on average forecast the company to [...]
Amber Heard slams Johnny Depp trial as ‘incredibly painful’ July 28, 2020 Amber Heard has described ex-husband Johnny Depp’s libel trial at the High Court as “incredibly painful”, adding that it has been “traumatic” to broadcast intimate details of her life to the public over the past few weeks. Depp is suing the Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN) and the Sun’s executive editor Dan Wootton over [...]
Johnny Depp trial: ‘Deep misogyny’ at the root of actor’s violence, court told July 27, 2020 The High Court today heard that “deep misogyny” underpinned Johnny Depp’s alleged violence against ex-wife Amber Heard, as lawyers for the Sun newspaper today made their closing submissions to round off the three-week trial. Depp is suing the Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN) and the Sun’s executive editor Dan Wootton over an article from [...]
Wall Street Journal editors hit back at ‘misinformation’ and ‘racism’ claims July 24, 2020 The Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) editorial staff have launched a scathing rebuttal of allegations that their articles propel misinformation surrounding issues such as coronavirus and racism, saying the paper vows not to “wilt under cancel culture pressure”. Almost 300 journalists at the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper on Tuesday sent a letter to WSJ’s publisher accusing the [...]
Pearson swings to a loss as pandemic forces schools to close July 24, 2020 Education publisher Pearson swung to a first-half loss as the coronavirus pandemic closed schools and test centres, but said it is on track to recover in the second half of the year. Pearson, which has withdrawn guidance for the year, said underlying sales had fallen 17 per cent in the first half of the year [...]
Daily Mail owner DMGT reports plunge in profit as coronavirus hammers publishing sector July 23, 2020 The publisher of the Daily Mail newspaper has reported a 44 per cent plunge in operating profit for the nine months to June after growth in the first five months of the year was wiped out by the Covid-19 pandemic. Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) reported adjusted operating profit of £63m for the nine [...]
High-profile Twitter users’ private messages hacked in cyber attack July 23, 2020 Twitter has admitted that at least 36 users have had their private messages hacked in a cyber attack connected to last week’s high-profile bitcoin-related hack, raising concerns that well-known victims could be extorted. Hackers last week took over the official Twitter accounts of more than 130 blue-ticked users, including politicians such as Joe Biden and [...]
BBC reaches record global audience in 2020 despite cash crunch July 23, 2020 The BBC reached its highest ever audience in 2020, the broadcaster announced today, as it faces the most serious financial difficulty in its 97-year history amid the coronavirus pandemic. The public service broadcaster announced it reached 468.2m people a week in 2020, with BBC News scooping up the bulk of the share with 438.3m weekly [...]
Ofcom orders TV, phone and internet providers to stop preying on vulnerable customers July 23, 2020 Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has ordered phone, broadband and pay-TV companies to stop threatening to disconnect vulnerable customers struggling to pay their bills amid financial uncertainty during the coronavirus pandemic. In new guidance issued this morning, Ofcom said the coronavirus pandemic has increased the likelihood of customers’ circumstances changing suddenly, making it more likely some customers [...]
Amber Heard’s former neighbour: Police said they had ‘enough’ to arrest Johnny Depp for domestic assault July 22, 2020 Amber Heard’s former neighbour today told the High Court that police said they had “enough” to arrest Johnny Depp for domestic assault following a fight between the former couple at their shared penthouse in Los Angeles in 2016. The court heard evidence from Heard’s friend and former neighbour Joshua Drew via video link from LA [...]
