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Ofcom received complaints from 1,881 customers who reported difficulties cancelling.

It added that some customers resorted to having to cancel their direct debits, which led to further difficulties such as missed payments impacting their credit score.

Black said Ofcom had introduced “further safeguards to prevent this from happening again”, including its “One Touch Switch” process launched in 2024, intended to make changing broadband or landline providers hassle-free.

The regulator found that Virgin Media had two-tier system of retention agents, and only agents in the second tier were able to process cancellations.

This resulted in over a million callers being made to repeat their request to at least one further agent, it said.

It said Virgin Media has made some important changes, including to improve its commission scheme, training and quality assurance and monitoring.

A Virgin Media spokesperson said it had “completely redesigned” its customer service in recent years and addressed the “historic shortfalls” through a number of improvements.

“Our customer service turnaround strategy, underpinned by significant investment, has been transformational.

“Ofcom’s latest data shows that Virgin Media is now the least-complained-about broadband provider with complaints at record lows, and complaints specifically relating to ‘difficulties leaving’ were 89% lower last year than in 2023,” the spokesperson added.

Virgin Media must pay the fine within two months and the money will be passed on to the Treasury.

The regulator said its fine was the largest it had issued under its consumer protection rules, and its third largest ever in general.

Its biggest fine of £50m was issued to Royal Mail in 2018 for breaking competition law, and its second biggest fine of £42m was for BT in 2017.

Virgin Media was fined £23.8m by Ofcom in 2025 for leaving thousands of customers without access to lifesaving telecare alarms during the digital switchover.

Additional reporting by Bernadette McCague.

Wordle players faced a relatively approachable five-letter word Thursday with puzzle number 1,846, a challenge centered on the idea of making small corrections or improvements that ultimately resolved to a common verb frequently seen in discussions of laws, rules and written documents.

Wordle, the daily word-guessing game created by Josh Wardle in 2021 and now owned by The New York Times, challenges players to identify a five-letter word within six attempts, using color-coded feedback after each guess to narrow down the correct letters and their positions. Each new puzzle rolls over at midnight in a player’s local time zone, meaning solvers around the world are frequently working through different numbered editions of the game at any given moment.

For those seeking a nudge before attempting the full solve, several outlets circulated hints throughout the day without giving away the solution outright. One set of clues described the word as meaning to make a change in order to improve or correct something, noting it is often used when discussing rules, laws or written documents, and suggesting it implies fixing or adjusting something rather than replacing it entirely. Additional structural hints confirmed the word contained two vowels with no repeated letters, and that it both began and ended with specific letters that narrowed the field of possibilities considerably for solvers paying close attention.

For players ready for the complete answer, Wordle puzzle number 1,846 for Thursday, July 9, 2026, was AMEND. The word means to make a change or correction, typically to a text, law, proposal or agreement, in order to improve it. According to a breakdown from Technobezz, the word begins with the letter A and ends with D, with the vowel A sitting in the first position and the vowel E in the fourth position, while the two middle consonants, M and N, form a natural cluster. The outlet noted an interesting bit of wordplay trivia: AMEND contains both “MEN” and “END” within it, two common Wordle answers in their own right, and is also one of the rarer solution words in the game’s history, having appeared fewer than a dozen times since Wordle’s launch.

Analysts rated Thursday’s puzzle as relatively easy to solve, assigning it a difficulty score of 2 out of 5 with a low “trap factor,” given the absence of double letters or obscure letter combinations and its vowel-heavy structure that tends to reward standard opening strategies. Technobezz estimated the average solve time at roughly 3.2 guesses, noting that words beginning with vowels, while sometimes overlooked by less experienced players, actually appear as Wordle answers more often than many players might expect, accounting for roughly 20 percent of all solutions to date.

Wednesday’s puzzle, Wordle number 1,845, told a different story in terms of difficulty. That day’s answer was DEMON, a word referring to a supernatural or evil being often depicted in mythology, religious texts and fantasy storytelling, and also used figuratively to describe an internal struggle, as in the phrase “battling one’s demons.” According to Sportskeeda, players seeking a headstart on Wednesday’s puzzle were told the word contained two vowels, featured no repeated letters, and began with the letter D, hints that helped many solvers narrow down the field relatively efficiently despite the word’s somewhat darker thematic association compared with Thursday’s more straightforward verb.

Beyond the daily Wordle puzzle itself, The New York Times has continued to expand its broader lineup of daily word and logic games in recent years, including Connections, Strands, the Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee and, more recently, a numeric logic puzzle called Pips. Thursday’s release schedule included Connections puzzle number 1,124, featuring categories built around cars, cocktails and floor coverings, along with Strands puzzle number 858 and a fresh set of Pips puzzles built around zone conditions involving numeric equality and inequality constraints across three difficulty tiers. Each of these games has cultivated its own dedicated daily following, with many players working through the full slate of puzzles as part of a regular routine.

For players looking to improve their average guess count or extend a personal solving streak, general strategy guidance suggests opening with words that contain a strong mix of common vowels and frequently used consonants, since this approach tends to eliminate the largest number of possible answers within the first two guesses. Analysts who track Wordle performance data have consistently found that starting words containing letters such as A, E, S, T, R, N and L tend to perform particularly well at narrowing down the field of remaining possibilities early in a given puzzle, a pattern that once again proved effective for Thursday’s relatively vowel-friendly solution.

Wordle’s rapid rise to global popularity has been well documented since its creation. What began as a simple side project shared with a small circle of friends and family in 2021 quickly gained viral traction later that year, eventually prompting The New York Times to acquire the game in early 2022. Since then, Wordle has inspired a wave of spin-off games and social media challenges across the internet, cementing its place as one of the most widely played daily digital puzzles in the world, with millions of players logging on each day to test their vocabulary and deductive reasoning skills against a fresh five-letter word.

With Thursday’s puzzle now resolved, attention turns to Friday’s edition, Wordle number 1,847, set to go live at midnight in each player’s local time zone. As with previous days, puzzle trackers and columnists covering the game are expected to publish a fresh round of hints and eventual answers for that edition as players around the world continue their daily routines of guessing, deducing and working to maintain their personal Wordle streaks heading into the weekend.

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The New York Times’ Connections puzzle returned Thursday with its 1,124th edition, a grid that puzzle trackers described as leaning toward moderate difficulty, blending mocktail terminology, music journalism, floor coverings and discontinued car models into a mix designed to trip up even experienced solvers.

Connections, edited by Wyna Liu, asks players to sort 16 words into four groups of four based on a shared theme, with categories color-coded from yellow, the easiest, through green and blue, up to purple, typically the most conceptually demanding. Players are allowed four incorrect guesses before the puzzle ends, and the game has become one of the Times’ most widely played daily offerings since its official launch in June 2023, standing alongside Wordle and the crossword as a daily ritual for millions of players around the world.

Thursday’s grid featured the following 16 words: NA, SPIRIT-FREE, VIRGIN, ZERO-PROOF, BILLBOARD, PITCHFORK, ROLLING STONE, SPIN, PERSIAN, PRAYER, SHAG, THROW, FIREBIRD, G6, GRAND PRIX and TRANS AM. According to multiple outlets that covered the puzzle, roughly half of the words carried a strong secondary meaning that could easily mislead solvers away from the correct grouping, a deliberate design choice that puzzle trackers say defines much of Connections’ ongoing appeal.

For those seeking hints before diving into the full solve, outlets circulated general clues without revealing the specific groupings. The yellow category was described as labels a bar might use to describe a mocktail, hinting at drinks made without alcohol. The green category pointed toward publications and websites that review and rank songs and albums. The blue category referenced four different types of a single common household item found on the floor. The purple category, as usual the trickiest of the four, was hinted at as model names belonging to an American car brand that stopped production in 2010.

For players ready for the complete answers, puzzle number 1,124 broke down as follows.

The yellow category, titled “Non-Alcoholic Designators,” included NA, SPIRIT-FREE, VIRGIN and ZERO-PROOF. Each term functions as a label used on drink menus or beverage packaging to indicate a beverage contains no alcohol. NA stands for non-alcoholic and commonly appears on beer cans and wine bottles, while “virgin” is the traditional bar-industry term for a cocktail made without spirits, as in a virgin mojito or virgin colada. “Zero-proof” and “spirit-free” represent more contemporary industry branding for the same concept, terms that have grown increasingly common on upscale cocktail menus in recent years. Puzzle trackers described this as the most accessible entry point into Thursday’s grid, since all four terms carry an unambiguous connection to non-alcoholic drinks.

The green category, “Music Publications,” grouped together BILLBOARD, PITCHFORK, ROLLING STONE and SPIN. Each represents a well-known outlet covering the music industry, from Billboard’s famous weekly charts to Rolling Stone’s long-running cultural authority, Pitchfork’s influential album reviews, and Spin’s history as a touchstone publication for alternative and indie rock coverage. Commentary on the puzzle noted that SPIN in particular served as an effective red herring elsewhere in the grid, given its more common associations with a laundry cycle, a dance move or a public-relations angle, none of which apply to its correct placement among music outlets.

The blue category, “Kinds of Rugs,” included PERSIAN, PRAYER, SHAG and THROW. Each word describes a distinct style or type of floor covering: Persian rugs are the ornate, hand-knotted classics; prayer rugs serve a specific religious function within Islamic worship; shag refers to the retro deep-pile carpet style; and a throw rug is a small accent piece placed loosely around a room. Puzzle trackers flagged this as the day’s most deceptive category, since each word carries a strong secondary meaning capable of pulling solvers away from the correct grouping, whether that means associating “Persian” with a cat breed or nationality, “prayer” with religious practice generally, “shag” with a hairstyle or slang term, or “throw” with the verb meaning to hurl an object.

The purple category, the day’s most difficult, was titled “Pontiac Models” and featured FIREBIRD, G6, GRAND PRIX, and TRANS AM. Each word represents a specific vehicle nameplate produced by Pontiac, the American car brand that ceased production in 2010. Firebird and Trans Am both carry strong alternate associations, evoking mythology and geography respectively, while Grand Prix reads naturally as a reference to motor racing, and G6 is perhaps best known outside automotive circles as the subject of a popular song lyric referencing a private jet. Commentary on the puzzle suggested this category was likely to stump any solver without specific familiarity with Pontiac’s model lineup, since none of the four words carry an obvious surface-level connection to cars for a general audience.

Puzzle trackers described Thursday’s overall difficulty as moderate, noting that the non-alcoholic drinks category tends to click quickly once a solver spots the shared theme, while the music publications and rug categories require setting aside more obvious first impressions of certain words. The car models group, meanwhile, was widely flagged as the category most likely to stump players without a background in automotive history, given how thoroughly disguised each of its four words appeared within the broader grid.

According to general strategy guidance the Times has offered for the game, players tend to find the most success by first identifying categories that feel clearly and unambiguously defined, since building early momentum with confident correct guesses can help maintain focus heading into trickier groupings. Solvers are also encouraged to consider alternate or figurative meanings of individual words, since Connections puzzles are deliberately constructed to include significant overlap between categories, a pattern once again evident throughout Thursday’s grid.

Connections continues to draw a devoted daily following, with new puzzles released at midnight in each player’s local time zone, meaning solvers around the world are frequently working through different numbered editions of the game at any given moment. With Thursday’s puzzle now resolved, attention turns to Friday’s edition, puzzle number 1,125, set to go live at midnight in each player’s respective time zone, as players around the world continue their daily routines of guessing, deducing and working to preserve their personal Connections solving streaks.

In March 2025, the government announced plans to tighten daily living assessments for both current and future Pip claimants.

However, after more than 120 Labour MPs threatened to vote against the legislation, the government said those already receiving Pip would not be affected.

The original proposals said that people with the highest levels of a permanent condition or disability would no longer have to be reassessed at all.

The assessments involve questions about everyday tasks, with each scored from zero, for no difficulty, to 12, for most difficulty.

For example, needing help to wash your hair, or your body below the waist scores two points, but needing help to wash between the shoulders and waist is worth four points.

The government said originally that anyone claiming Pip for the first time after November 2026 would have to score at least four points for a single activity, rather than across a range of different ones.

However, this change was delayed until the wider Timms review of Pip. The final report – which will include recommendations – is due in the autumn.

The cost of Pip is forecast to rise to more than £41bn by 2030. The cuts originally proposed by the government aimed to save about £5.5bn a year by the end of the decade.

However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and Resolution Foundation said the concessions made by the government meant it would make no “net savings” by 2029-30.

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Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

By Lynn Song, Chief Economist, Greater China

Taiwan’s export growth moderated in June

Taiwan’s export growth slowed to 40.3% year-on-year in June, down from 51.7% YoY in May. This came in weaker than forecasts (market: 49.9%, ING: 46.9%), though this level obviously still represents