Friday newspaper roundup: Carbon climbdown, rail outsourcing, pasta tariffs
By Frank Prenesti
Date: Friday 02 Jan 2026
(Sharecast News) - Ministers are poised to allow homes in England to be built without carbon-cutting technology in what experts have said is a climbdown after pressure from housebuilders. The future homes standard (FHS), due to be published in January, will regulate how all homes are built and is expected to enforce tough new regulations such as mandating solar panels on nearly all houses and high standards of insulation and heat pumps in most cases. But the Guardian has learned that the regulations are unlikely to stipulate that homes must be fitted with batteries, despite the strong advantages of combining renewable power generation with energy storage. - Guardian
Railway leaders should "think afresh" about outsourcing contracts and try to run services better, the rail minister has said, as union research indicated six major private suppliers made £150m in profits last year. Rail unions are campaigning to end the widespread outsourcing of jobs such as cleaning, security and catering, arguing that staff employed by third-party companies have worse conditions and that profits could be reinvested in the railway. Analysis by the RMT union estimated that six of the biggest UK outsourcing facilities management companies in rail - Mitie, OCS, Bidvest Noonan, Churchill, Carlisle and ABM - have profit margins on contracts averaging 11%, aggregating profits of £152m in the past year across the national railway and the London Underground. - Guardian.
The US has scrapped plans to hit Italian pasta makers with punitive tariffs, marking a victory for "Europe's Trump whisperer" Giorgia Meloni. Italy's foreign ministry said on Thursday that Washington had agreed to lower a proposed 92pc duty on several well-known Italian pasta brands. It said tariffs would now be "far below" the level previously announced. US President Donald Trump, unveiled plans in September to impose a new anti-dumping duty on two of Italy's biggest pasta producers, La Molisana and Garofalo, with dozens of other pasta companies also in the firing line. The 92% levy - which was set to come into force from January 1 - would have been on top of the 15% tariff already in place, with Washington having accused producers of selling their pasta in the US at unfairly low prices. - Telegraph
Britain's two big pharmaceutical companies and Larry Ellison's Oxford institute are among a group of organisations pressing Rachel Reeves to speed up delivery of infrastructure in the "OxCam supercluster", where delays to the promised East West Rail line are causing concern. The chancellor has made the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, a technology and life sciences hub, a key part of the government's attempts to grow the economy, vowing to create "Europe's Silicon Valley". However, a report from the Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster, backed by 46 organisations including universities, listed companies and investors, is urging Reeves to "move quicker" on delivering infrastructure commitments and a projected £78bn boost to the economy by 2035. - The Times
Poor sales have reportedly forced Apple to cut production of the Vision Pro headset that it had hoped would herald a new era in "spatial computing". The tech company also reduced marketing for Vision Pro by more than 95% last year, according to the market intelligence group Sensor Tower in figures reported by the Financial Times. Apple continues to sell iPhones, iPads and laptops in the millions each quarter, but analysts say sales of Vision Pro headsets, which cost at least £3,199 ($3,499) each, have been sluggish. - Financial Times
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