Hunters & Frankau, which has imported Cuban cigars into the UK for more than 230 years, says it would have to cut its portfolio by 75 per cent if it is required to supply cigars in plain packaging under the Tobacco and Vapes Act. Importers want hand-rolled cigars exempted, and a government consultation on the packaging rules closes on 2 October.

The Act received Royal Assent in April, with provisions taking effect between now and 2029. Its central measure, a ban on selling tobacco to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009, follows a plan announced by Rishi Sunak in 2023.

The government has refused to exempt handmade cigars from plain packaging in the legislation. Baroness Merron, a health minister, told the House of Lords: “It is absolutely not this government’s intention for any future packaging requirements to put any small businesses, including specialist tobacconists, out of business.”

“Seventy per cent of the cigar market in the UK is Cuban,” said Jemma Freeman, chairman of Hunters & Frankau, which supports hundreds of small businesses across the UK and Gibraltar.

She said: “If Hunters & Frankau are in a position where we have to provide plain packaging, we believe we will have to reduce our portfolio by 75 per cent. If that happens, the specialist tobacconists can’t survive, the numbers don’t work.”

Each box of Cuban cigars already carries a government-issued sticker, added in Havana under strict security conditions, bearing a hologram, bar code and date stamp that establish its value and provenance.

Freeman said top-tier suppliers such as Habanos would take a dim view of plans to wrap cigars individually and in plain paper, asking: “If they are taken out of their packaging, which is part and parcel of their presentation and their intrinsic value, and if the importing nation cannot maintain the integrity of the unit, why would they send it to the market?”

Exporting countries raise concerns

Ambassadors to the UK from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Honduras wrote to Sir Keir Starmer in October 2025 setting out how the legislation would damage their export economies, and the Department of Health and Social Care responded with the case for the changes.

The ambassadors are understood to have written back in February, questioning the lack of “product-specific analysis that treats handmade cigars as a distinct category separate from mass-market tobacco products” and emphasising that “handmade cigars account for significantly less than 1 per cent of UK tobacco consumption”.

Andrew Griffith, the shadow chancellor, said the government was “ignoring all the evidence, trampling over respected WTO [World Trade Organisation] rules and failing to respond to the ambassadors of cigar exporting countries”.

Eddie Sahakian, who is taking over Davidoff of London from his father, Edward, sees the legislation as the end game for the shop.

ASH says cigars should not be exempt

Helen Duffy, a representative of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), said on LBC that young people have started smoking with cigarillos and that cigars therefore cannot have an exemption.

According to IRI, a market research agency, only 2.5 million of the 400 million cigars sold in the UK in 2024 are estimated to have been hand-rolled, with the rest machine-made cigarillos such as King Edwards.

Hazel Cheeseman, chief executive of ASH, said that “regardless of how they are made, or where they are from, cigars are tobacco products and are harmful to health”.

She added: “The government is right to consider communicating that fact through standardised packaging. When the government exempted cigars from previous legislation, the tobacco industry exploited the loophole to market cigarillos to younger consumers and consumption increased. Cigar shops have already adapted to standard pack laws in Canada, New Zealand and Ireland so there is no reason why the same cannot happen in the UK.”

Importers say none of those countries consumes large volumes of cigars, and argue that giving wealthy people another reason not to spend money in London would be self-sabotage.

The government’s consultation on tobacco and vape packaging proposes extending standardised packaging and picture warnings to all cigars and cigarillos. Individually wrapped cigars do not currently need picture warnings, the consultation states. It closes at 11:59pm on 2 October.

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Peter Simon, the founder of Monsoon and Accessorize, is selling a significant portion of his personal art collection at Christie’s in London, in three sales in October that could fetch up to £126.7m.

Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection comprises nearly 200 pieces and includes works by Francis Bacon, Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Hurvin Anderson. The collection is estimated to be worth between £86.5m and £126.7m.

It will be the highest-value collection from a single owner offered at Christie’s in London. The auction house said the collection “stands as one of Britain’s foremost modern and contemporary art collections”.

The sale includes two paintings from distinct stages of Bacon’s career. Figure in Movement, from 1978, is expected to sell for between £14m and £18m.

Study for a Figure, which is estimated to have been painted around 1945, is expected to sell for between £4m and £6m.

The collection will be presented in a special exhibition taking over the galleries at Christie’s London from 26 September until 1 October.

The auction will take place online from 1 to 20 October, with the evening sale on 14 October and the day sale on 15 October.

Simon said his early work at Monsoon, choosing prints for its clothing, had helped him to judge colour and composition in paintings.

“In the early days at Monsoon I would sit with fashion and textile designers sifting portfolio after portfolio to select works on paper which we would convert on to fabric for clothing collections,” he said.

“A critical part of the DNA of Monsoon is the colours and the prints. In retrospect, I realise this work happily honed an ability to recognise good composition with colour balance, having developed an eye for a good print, I find it helpful to zero in on the best combination of colour and composition in a picture.”

Simon added that it would give him “great pleasure to now offer part of my collection to others, freeing my mind and my walls to start in a new direction”.

Simon founded his clothing business by selling woollen coats from a market stall in Portobello Road in west London in the 1970s.

Monsoon Accessorize floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1998. Simon took the company private in a £755m deal in 2007.

Outside fashion, Simon has also invested in British homeware brand Loaf, which was founded by Charlie Marshall.

Christie’s is owned by Artémis, the holding company of François Pinault, the French billionaire behind luxury group Kering.

In 2022, the auction house’s sale of the collection of Paul Allen, the late Microsoft co-founder, fetched $1.5bn in New York, becoming the biggest art auction ever held. That collection comprised more than 150 works.

In December 2025, Christie’s said it expected global sales to rise by about 6 per cent to $6.2bn that year, as both it and Sotheby’s reported a recovery in the global art market. Bonnie Brennan, its chief executive, said at the time that “the energy has returned to the salesroom, online and across the market”.

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Shares of wire manufacturer KEI Industries declined as much as 4% to their day’s low of Rs 4,446 on the BSE on Friday after international brokerage firm Jefferies slashed the target price by 11% to Rs 6,150 from Rs 6,920, an upside of 31%. The brokerage, however, retains a Buy call on the stock.

“Ultratech’s launch has raised investor concerns on KEI’s future profitability. We believe current market price factors in approx. 300 bps loss in market share for KEI over FY26-30E in its retail segment and no offset from power or exports,” the brokerage said in a note.

Jefferies has factored in a 50 bps compression in KEI Industries’ margins over FY26-30E, while noting that the company’s retail segment remains the key area of risk from UltraTech Cement’s entry into wires and low-tension cables. Retail contributes 54% of KEI’s revenue and is primarily driven by housing.

KEI has steadily increased its retail share through branding and dealer expansion since 2017-18, with its retail market share rising from 7% in FY17 to 21% in FY26. Over the same period, the industry’s unorganised share declined from 35-40% to around 25%.

Jefferies expects KEI’s expansion into Europe and the US over the past 2-3 years to start yielding results. It also expects domestic power transmission capex to rise 2.6x in FY26E-30E versus FY21-25.

The brokerage’s price target assumes KEI’s retail market share remains at 22% over FY27E-30E, while EBITDA margin rises by 50 bps to 11.5%. However, even if KEI loses some market share, Jefferies believes the company is well placed to offset the impact through domestic power transmission cable sales and exports.
KEI Industries is trading at 36x P/E on September 2027E earnings, in line with its five-year average. Jefferies’ target price cut values the company at 40x P/E on September 2028E earnings, compared with 45x earlier, as it factors in some multiple compression following a more aggressive-than-expected launch by UltraTech.The revised valuation remains at a premium to the five-year average P/E of 36x, supported by improving visibility on exports and power transmission. Jefferies expects KEI’s EPS to grow at a 20% CAGR over FY26-29E. The key downside risk, according to the brokerage, is sharp pricing competition in cables.

Also read: SBI’s 80 paise masterstroke: How NSE IPO could deliver Rs 2,850 crore jackpot and 2,23,025% return

However, KEI Industries’ management said the company can defend its retail market share, supported by its established brand and loyal dealer network, while its prices remain competitive at 3-4% lower than other players. Management maintained its FY27E guidance of 25% revenue growth and 11-12% EBITDA margin, which implies 3-13% upside potential to the brokerage’s FY27E EPS estimates.

Within Power T&D, Extra High Voltage (EHV) cables remain highly profitable, with only two domestic players, KEI and Universal Cables, currently present in the segment.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

Stardust Solutions, an Israeli-American start-up developing technology to disperse reflective particles high in the atmosphere so that less sunlight reaches Earth, has raised $75m from investors and wants governments as customers.

The total includes a $60m round announced in October 2025 and led by Lowercarbon Capital, the climate technology investment firm co-founded by Chris Sacca. Other backers include Exor, the Agnelli family’s investment company and a major shareholder in Ferrari, along with Future Ventures, Future Positive, Lauder Partners, Attestor, Kindred Capital and former Facebook executive Matt Cohler.

Stardust was founded in March 2023 by Israeli physicists Yanai Yedvab, Amyad Spector and Eli Waxman. Yedvab and Spector previously worked as nuclear physicists for the Israeli government.

The company is registered in Delaware and headquartered outside Tel Aviv. It says it is not affiliated with the Israeli government.

Yedvab told Politico that investors were backing the idea that “we need a safe and responsible and controlled option for sunlight reflection.”

How the technology would work

Stardust’s approach is known as stratospheric aerosol injection. It sits within solar geoengineering, formally called solar radiation modification (SRM), which aims to reflect a small fraction of the sun’s energy back into space. Unlike carbon removal, it does not take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

The idea draws on the effect of large volcanic eruptions, which can temporarily cool the Earth when sulphur compounds reach the stratosphere and form aerosols that reflect sunlight. Cooling was observed after Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, and scientists have discussed deliberately reproducing the effect for decades.

Rather than releasing sulphur dioxide, Stardust is developing proprietary reflective particles, alongside dispersal and monitoring technology, and is working towards aircraft-based systems.

The company has hired Washington lobbying firm Holland & Knight as it seeks a regulatory framework and potential US government contracts.

Stardust says it is pursuing research and development, not deployment. “Our goal is to turn SRM from a scientific concept into a safe and practical option,” the company said.

It argues that humanity may eventually need an emergency brake if cuts in emissions fail to prevent dangerous warming.

Criticism and other cooling projects

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) criticised the company’s plans when the $60m financing was announced. Mary Church, CIEL’s geoengineering campaign manager, said: “Solar geoengineering is inherently unpredictable and risks further breaking an already broken climate system.”

In CIEL’s statement on the financing, Church added: “With uneven global impacts predicted, deployment would create winners and losers, undermining the rights of billions of people and raising the central question of who gets to control the global thermostat.”

CIEL also pointed to the risk of termination shock. Because solar geoengineering does not remove carbon dioxide, a pause or halt after decades of artificially suppressed warming could see temperatures rise rapidly.

Stardust is not the only company in the field. Make Sunsets, a small US start-up, launches weather balloons carrying sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere and sells what it calls “Cooling Credits”, under the slogan “Make Earth Cool Again”.

Other research efforts have been dropped. Harvard’s proposed SCoPEx experiment would have studied how tiny quantities of particles behave in the stratosphere. After years of controversy over governance and consent, Harvard announced in 2024 that it would not proceed.

The Arctic Ice Project explored spreading reflective hollow glass microspheres over Arctic sea ice to slow melting, before ending its research amid environmental and deployment concerns.

In Australia, researchers have experimented with marine cloud brightening around the Great Barrier Reef, spraying tiny seawater droplets upwards to make clouds more reflective and protect vulnerable coral.

In the UK, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is running a £56.8m research programme to establish whether climate cooling approaches “could ever be feasible, scalable, safe, and governable”. The agency says it funds a limited number of small-scale, carefully controlled outdoor experiments where questions cannot be answered by models.

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Surging diesel costs are squeezing America’s logging industry, with one industry leader warning that rising fuel expenses are eroding profitability for businesses that depend heavily on diesel to keep trucks and equipment running.

American Loggers Council Executive Director Scott Dane joined FOX Business’ Stuart Varney on “Varney & Co.” to discuss the pressure higher diesel costs are putting on loggers and the steps he wants the administration to take.

“We’re in trouble. There’s no question about that. I just got a text this morning from a logger… Reaching out saying that they’re dying in Virginia. The fuel costs are killing them,” Dane said.

NATIONAL AVERAGE PRICE FOR DIESEL HITS NEW RECORD HIGH AMID IRAN CONFLICT

Dane said the industry’s dependence on diesel has made the surge especially difficult to absorb, pointing to the cost of filling a logging truck and the growing share of operating expenses now going toward fuel.

“As an example, to fill up a logging truck. You’re looking at $1,350 to fill up the tank. Fuel costs used to be 25% of operating costs. Now they’re 40, 45% of the operating costs, that’s eroded any profitability within the timber industry,” he said.

FORGET GASOLINE: THIS OVERLOOKED FUEL COULD RAISE THE PRICE OF NEARLY EVERYTHING YOU BUY

The pressure is being compounded by what Dane described as stagnant prices for loggers, limiting their ability to offset higher operating costs with additional revenue.

“On our end, prices have remained flat. We’re getting paid no more today than we were getting paid 10 years ago, roughly speaking,” Dane said.

AMERICANS FACE THE MOST EXPENSIVE LABOR DAY AT THE GAS PUMP EVER RECORDED

Dane said the American Loggers Council has raised the issue with the administration and called for steps aimed at easing diesel costs, including suspending the federal diesel fuel tax and halting diesel exports.

“We have an emergency here, and under the Emergency Powers Act, the president should suspend the export of diesel out of the United States. It makes no sense,” Dane said.

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On the other side of the US, Rachel Miller, chef and owner of Nightshade Noodle Bar in the town Lynn, Massachusetts, moved to a tip-free model five years ago when they reopened after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Her motivation was to make it fairer for the kitchen staff.

“The people breaking their backs and minds in the kitchen – often the least visible and the least celebrated – were taking home a fraction of what the front staff made on tips for the same hours,” she says.

Miller says she found it “deeply unsettling” to see higher tips going to white male staff and lower tips to everyone else.

“Tipping lets guests, consciously or not, pay people differently based on gender, race, or sexuality and I was not willing to let that decide my team’s income.”

To pay the staff higher wages, Miller also increased prices at the French-Vietnamese restaurant. Its tasting menus now start from $102 (£75) for seven courses before 18:00, and $126 (£92) for nine courses.

“Our prices are higher than a comparable restaurant’s because they carry the full cost of paying people properly,” says Miller. “That is the trade, and I stand behind it.”

ATLANTA — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a formal health advisory Thursday warning of a sharp nationwide increase in reported human rabies exposures this summer, urging doctors to be vigilant about proper risk assessment and treatment as multiple states reported mass exposure events involving more than one person at a time.

From July through August, the CDC received 17% more rabies-related inquiries than during the same period in 2025, according to the agency’s Health Alert Network advisory, which flagged both a rise in human exposures to rabid or possibly rabid animals and errors in how post-exposure treatment was being administered by some providers.

“During the summer of 2026, reports of animal exposures and rabies post-exposure vaccinations have increased across the country,” the CDC said in its statement.

The scale of the increase was also reflected in pharmacy utilization data. According to weekly pharmacy figures as of Sept. 2, use of the two rabies vaccines licensed in the United States, Imovax and RabAvert, rose an estimated 33% compared with the same period last year, while use of the two licensed human rabies immunoglobulin products, KEDRAB and HyperRab, jumped 76% over that same comparison window. The CDC said at least eight state health departments have separately reported increases in rabies post-exposure prophylaxis use, treatment administration errors, or both, since July.

Despite the surge in demand, the agency emphasized that there is currently no shortage of either rabies vaccine or rabies immunoglobulin in the United States. Even so, the CDC stressed the importance of administering treatment correctly, given the risks tied to both inadequate care and unnecessary overtreatment.

“Proper administration of rabies vaccine and human rabies immune globulin is critical to ensuring patients receive effective protection while avoiding unnecessary treatment, costs, and strain on supplies,” the CDC said.

The agency’s advisory detailed several specific administration errors that have been reported by state health departments in recent weeks, including vaccines being given in the gluteal area rather than the recommended injection site, failure to properly infiltrate immunoglobulin directly into and around a wound, and instances in which immunoglobulin was improperly mixed with vaccine doses in the same syringe.

The CDC’s alert followed a high-profile rabies outbreak at a petting zoo in North Carolina, where baby goats tested positive for the virus less than two weeks before the advisory was issued, an incident that reportedly exposed hundreds of visitors to potential infection. Beyond that outbreak, recent local reports cited in connection with the advisory span a wide range of locations and animal species. Health officials in Suffolk, Virginia, confirmed a raccoon within city limits had tested positive for rabies, while a dog in Mire, Louisiana, also tested positive, prompting a warning from local veterinarians. Elmira, New York, has reported multiple rabid cats and skunks in recent weeks, and a rabies-infected bat was discovered earlier this year inside a shower house at Yosemite National Park.

Rabies is a viral disease that attacks the central nervous system and is almost always fatal once symptoms begin to appear, but the disease is considered nearly entirely preventable if post-exposure treatment is administered promptly, before symptoms start. That treatment regimen typically consists of an immediate dose of human rabies immune globulin, an antibody medication that provides protection while the body’s own immune response develops, combined with a series of at least four rabies vaccine doses administered over several weeks. According to the CDC, the regimen is nearly 100% effective when administered correctly and promptly following a potential exposure.

The CDC also noted an important distinction in its guidance regarding who should receive the immunoglobulin component of treatment specifically.

“People who have been previously vaccinated or are receiving pre-exposure prophylaxis for rabies should not receive human rabies immune globulin,” the agency said.

According to the CDC, roughly 100,000 people receive rabies post-exposure prophylaxis in the United States each year following a potential exposure, out of an estimated 1.4 million people who seek medical evaluation annually after some form of animal contact. Given the disease’s near-total fatality rate once symptoms develop, the CDC has continued urging anyone bitten, scratched, or otherwise potentially exposed to a wild or unusually behaving animal to take the situation seriously rather than dismissing what might initially appear to be a minor scratch.

Recommended immediate steps following a potential exposure include thoroughly washing the affected wound with soap and water for a full 15 minutes, followed by contacting a health care provider or local public health department the same day to determine whether post-exposure treatment is warranted, rather than waiting to see whether symptoms develop before seeking medical attention.

The CDC’s advisory was distributed through its Health Alert Network, the agency’s primary communication channel for disseminating urgent public health information to doctors, hospital networks and state and local health officials nationwide. The alert cited research published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association examining national rabies surveillance trends in 2024, alongside earlier research published in JAMA Network Open examining rabies risk and post-exposure prophylaxis administration patterns across the United States.

With rabies-related inquiries and treatment utilization both climbing sharply compared with last year, the CDC’s advisory underscores the agency’s effort to balance two competing public health priorities heading into the fall: ensuring that anyone genuinely exposed to a rabid or potentially rabid animal receives prompt and properly administered treatment, while also working to prevent unnecessary or improperly administered doses that could strain existing rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin supplies as reported exposures continue to rise across multiple states nationwide.