Image of the week: Two-faced Cameron
In between trying to dismantle much-loved institutions (the NHS, the BBC) and resurrect much-hated ones (fox-hunting), British prime minister David Cameron checked in on a CEO summit in the London offices of The Times this week, where he split into two – the "real" Cameron and the flatscreen reflection of Cameron.
Any business executive present who wasn’t distracted by the accidental duplicity would have heard a message that 20 years ago would have seemed unthinkably feminist from a Conservative leader – he decried the gender pay gap and declared that he wants his daughters Nancy and Florence to have the same opportunities to rake it in as his son Arthur. Photograph: Dan kitwood/WPA Pool /Getty Images
In numbers: Fake bid spike 8
Percentage jump in the share price of Twitter on Tuesday after investors were fooled by a fake report of a takeover bid that appeared on a website that looked like Bloomberg but, crucially, wasn’t Bloomberg.
$31bn
Valuation that the entirely invented offer from imagined bidders gave the social network platform, according to the false article, which included the classic Bloombergism “people with knowledge of the situation said”.
10
Number of minutes before everybody realised that it was a hoax and Twitter’s share price was back down to where it started.
The lexicon: Staingate
"Horrific stains" are spreading across the screens of Apple Macbooks. Some of them are – OMG – small spots and some of them are – what fresh hell is this? – large patches. "There is no clear pattern as to how it starts," says the group behind the website Staingate.org.
Members of the 3,000 strong group have been told they have to pony up the €800 to repair the “cosmetic damage” to their screens and they are not happy with Apple, not happy at all. “We expect solutions,” says Staingate, presenting a gallery of sad, stained Macbooks – laptops that cost more than €2,000, but started to look terrible after as little as seven months.
Getting to know: Steve Huffman
Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman (31) has been pulled back to lead the CEO-less social/news forum, tearing him away from his more recent venture, travel search site Hipmunk. He rejoins just as the monster he created has approached a critical juncture in the free speech versus hate speech debate. The former does not mean facilitating the latter, Huffman appears to agree, posting that the "dark side" of Reddit, where "communities whose purpose is reprehensible" can flourish.
“We don’t have any obligation to support them. And we also believe that some communities currently on the platform should not be here at all.” His predecessor, Ellen Pao, got rid of “subreddits” dedicated to racism and fat-shaming. Huffman, no fool, is unlikely to champion their return.
The list: Sporting ker-ching
The wealth-trackers at Forbes have got their calculators out again, totting up the worth of the world's most valuable sports teams, and this time the European soccer giants don't have the top spots entirely to themselves.
5 Manchester United: slipped to fifth, down from third in the 2014 list. But with a value of $3.1 billion, it is still ranked way ahead of Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal.
4 Barcelona: valued at $3.16 billion, the Spanish club is basking in the financial glow of its Champions League victory.
=2 New York Yankees: the baseball team nicknamed the Bronx Bombers is valued at $3.2 billion.
=2 Dallas Cowboys: owned by Jerry Jones, the NFL's most valuable team generates $100 million annually from sponsorships alone.
1 Real Madrid: the Spanish soccer club topped the rankings for the third consecutive year, with a value of $3.26 billion.
