British passport contract decision postponed after De La Rue appeal

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The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue, the prime minister’s spokesperson has said.
The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rue’s contract ends in July.
The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process.
Read more De La Rue will appeal decision to give blue passport contract De La Rue said on Tuesday that it would appeal the decision.
A spokesperson for the company said: “We confirm that we are taking the first steps towards initiating appeal proceedings against the provisional decision to award the British passport contract to a part state-owned Franco-Dutch company. Based on our knowledge of the market, it’s our view that ours was the highest quality and technical..

FlyBe takes £4m hit to revenues after Beast from the East grounds 1,000 flights

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Severe cold weather in February and March saw many people’s travel plans disrupted as snow, ice and strong winds wreaked havoc across the UK
The Beast from the East wiped £4m off of Flybe’s revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airline’s estimates.
Severe cold weather in February and March saw many people’s travel plans disrupted as snow, ice and strong winds wreaked havoc across the UK. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.
In its latest trading update on Tuesday, the struggling Exeter-based carrier said its turnaround plans were starting to yield positive results.
Read more Airline competition has benefited passengers, but there are limits Revenue per seat – a closely watched measure of an airline’s financial performance – was up 9 per cent to £50.84, behind rivals such as easyJet which reported £55.99 on the same measure in January.
“Load factor”..

Sky: Now Fox offers 'legal separation' of Sky News as Murdochs battle for deal

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News channel's future must be secred even with Disney waiting in the wings
Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox is back with some fresh proposals in an attempt to find a way through the regulatory logjam that has stymied its long held ambition to acquire the part of broadcaster Sky that it doesn’t own.
Touted as further strengthening the editorial independence of Sky News, the loss making channel that represents a tiny part of the overall business but has left the deal stuck in the mud, they were accepted by Sky this morning. The plan would be for its news channel to be set up as a legally separate entity within the group with a five to seven strong board of directors, chaired by an “independent expert” with experience of journalism. Three Sky independent directors would also serve.
Clever, because the set up looks quite similar to the deal communications watchdog OfCom agreed that allowed BT to keep hold of its broadband infrastructure arm OpenReach in the face of demands ..

Elon Musk 'sleeping' in Tesla factory in attempt to fix Model 3 delays

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The CEO is still trying to prove that Tesla has what it takes to be a true mass-production company
Tesla’s Model 3 production “hell” continues.
Elon Musk, in a testy Twitter exchange, said he is “back to sleeping at the factory” while trying to fix production delays with the Model 3 electric car. It’s a move reminiscent of Tesla’s last vehicle launch—the Model X—when Mr Musk famously kept a sleeping bag near the production line so he could immediately address any hiccups.
“Car biz is hell,” Mr Musk said.
Read more Sweden steps up hunt for cobalt as electric cars boost demand The posts on Twitter came as investors await Tesla’s first-quarter production numbers, which are expected to fall short of the company’s forecasts. The exchange, with a reporter at The Information, a tech and business news site, followed a story by the outlet that Mr Musk had taken over Model 3 production from Tesla’s head of engineering, Doug Field.
About a year ago, I asked Doug to manage both engineerin..

Older Americans Are ‘Hooked’ on Vitamins

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Supported by Well Older Americans Are ‘Hooked’ on Vitamins Photo Credit Tony Cenicola/The New York Times When she was a young physician, Dr. Martha Gulati noticed that many of her mentors were prescribing vitamin E and folic acid to patients. Preliminary studies in the early 1990s had linked both supplements to a lower risk of heart disease.
She urged her father to pop the pills as well: “Dad, you should be on these vitamins, because every cardiologist is taking them or putting their patients on [them],” recalled Dr. Gulati, now chief of cardiology for the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.
But just a few years later, she found herself reversing course, after rigorous clinical trials found neither vitamin E nor folic acid supplements did anything to protect the heart. Even worse, studies linked high-dose vitamin E to a higher risk of heart failure, prostate cancer and death from any cause.
Dr. Gulati told her father he “might want to stop taking” the vitamins.
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