Latest news with #disruption
BBC News
10 hours ago
- Automotive
- BBC News
M5 roadworks on track as Wellington businesses impacted
Major resurfacing work that left some business owners "petrified" is causing less disruption than expected, says the local weeks into the M5 Junction 26 closure at Wellington, Somerset Council said it was on track and on budget to complete the £5.7m upgrade project work by locals and businesses were not happy with the closure of the junction and the A38 link road when it was announced. One trader since says it has been a "nightmare" to travel up and down the councillor Richard Wilkins, lead member for transport and waste at Somerset Council, said: "Of course, people were extremely worried but the roads have coped really well." Mr Wilkins added: "We're still on track, the work is progressing. We should be finished on time. About 8,000 tonnes of asphalt have already gone down and that's of a total of about 16,000."We'll get this done, get it finished and have a fantastic new road at the end of it." Seb Toon, owner of TLC Garage Services, said the closure had had "quite a bit of an impact"."Jobs we normally do on the motorway that were previously a 19-mile (31km) round-trip are now more like 40 miles (64km)," he added."It's taking us an hour sometimes to get back from Taunton to here, which has been a bit of a nightmare." Meanwhile, Emma Slocom, director of Apple Campers at Foxmoor Business Park in Wellington, said it had been "harder" for some of their customers who come from Bristol and Cornwall."We're based at Foxmore business park which is just off junction 26 so it's been a big disruption but it's not been as bad as we expected," Ms Slocom added.
BBC News
10 hours ago
- BBC News
Isle of Man ferry services resume after days of cancellations
Ferry services have resumed in the Isle of Man after two days of cancellations due to a generator engineers travelled to the island on Monday to work on the issue, which impacted the fast craft ferry, between Douglas and Dublin set sail shortly before 07:00 BST, with sailings to Liverpool due resume that crossing and its evening return have both been pushed back by an hour, the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company said. The ferry is now due to set sail from Douglas to Liverpool at 16:00, with its return scheduled for 20: government-owned ferry firm has thanks passengers for their patience during the disruption, which saw eight services cancelled and passengers offered transfers to the Heysham sailings instead. Read more stories from the Isle of Man on the BBC, watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer and follow BBC Isle of Man on Facebook and X.
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The Independent
a day ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Moscow airport chaos after cyberattack hits dozens of flights
& Filipp Lebedev Russia's Aeroflot cancelled dozens of flights on Monday following a crippling cyberattack. A pro-Ukrainian hacking group, Silent Crow, claimed responsibility for the incident, stating it was linked to the war in Ukraine. The cyberattack caused significant disruption at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport during a peak holiday period, leading to passenger frustration. Senior Russian lawmaker Anton Gorelkin described the event as a 'digital attack' on the country, prompting a criminal investigation and concern from the Kremlin. Silent Crow claimed to have deeply penetrated Aeroflot's network, destroying servers and gaining control of employee computers, with threats to release personal data.
The Australian
a day ago
- Business
- The Australian
Fast food chain GYG is aiming for world domination
Guzman y Gomez, the Mexican-inspired fast food chain started by an American in Australia, wants to disrupt the global restaurant market and overtake McDonald's to become the best and the biggest. It's an ambitious goal, even for the $2.9bn listed company, which has become the poster-child for disruption in the fast food industry by flipping the switch on the standard quick service restaurant (QSR) formula by focusing on fresh food at low prices. The business, which opened its first restaurant in Sydney's trendy inner-city Newtown in 2006, currently operates 257 stores across Australia, Singapore, Japan and the US and this year broke the billion dollar revenue mark. Locally, GYG continues to outperform the overall QSR category, reporting 9.4 per cent sales growth, while the category declined. The Mexican-inspired fast-food business is not shy about its plans to become No 1 – it wants to open 1000 restaurants across Australia, and continue to grow its presence in Singapore and Japan, where it currently has five and 21 restaurants, respectively. GYG also wants to keep expanding in the US, where it will open its seventh restaurant soon and plans to have 15 in the next few years. The ambitious growth strategy is unsurprising to anyone who has spent time with GYG founder and co-CEO Steven Marks. The native New Yorker is bursting with passion and infectious ambition, which, along with a laser focus on quality and customer experience, has been embedded into every layer of the brand and product. 'GYG is fast food for this generation and you can see that in our revenue growth and our comp sales growth – the numbers don't lie,' Mr Marks told The Australian. 'We only have 250 restaurants, that's it. McDonald's has 30,000, Chipotle's got 4000. So we're really just getting started, even though it's been 20 years, it's just the beginning,' he said. GYG's growth strategy is grounded in its commitment to fresh food and the business claims to be the nation's biggest buyer of avocados, Roma tomatoes and free-range chickens. Mr Marks has focused on ensuring that all of GYG's food and ingredients have no added preservatives, artificial flavours, colours or 'unacceptable additives', all while maintaining great flavour and taste. He's passionate about this positioning and ensuring the brand is transparent about its food and ingredients. 'The foundation of GYG since day one is that we will never, ever compromise on the quality of our food or our people,' he said. This focus is evident in the business's unwavering focus on the customer experience and the role of its culture within that. GYG's onboarding process sees every new employee, regardless of their title, spend three days working in service in one of the restaurants. The aim is to ensure that everyone in the business has an appreciation of the customer experience, said GYG chief marketing officer Lara Thom. 'It gives you an absolute appreciation of how hard the frontline teams work, and it gives you an insight into who we work for, not who works for us.' Ms Thom has been with the business for almost a decade and runs a 40-strong marketing department with an in-house advertising agency model that enables the business to pivot and react in real time to market dynamics to engage with consumers. While she credits Mr Marks as the brains behind some of the brand's most successful marketing taglines such as 'Clean is the new healthy', and 'GYG is fast food your mom says yes to', both of which are direct quotes from him, she's crafted a global marketing strategy that not only optimises and amplifies the brand values but ensures those values are embedded in every touch point of the consumer experience. 'Clean for us was not a food trend or a campaign, it was our philosophy on food and we just happened to amplify a message that was core to our business,' she said. 'A lot of brands have their moment in the sun and then they grow up and they grow out of the demographic that they first appealed to. 'The strength of GYG is knowing exactly who we are and who we're not. And that means we will always ensure that we appeal to the generation of now, and I think that's really crucial. Our strategy is to constantly appeal to that generation so that once we have someone who loves the brand, they will grow with the brand.' To achieve this, GYG has worked to ensure it turns up within people's lives, from sponsoring school sports programs to its restaurants at university campus, and its integration with food delivery platforms, where GYG burritos rank as one of the most delivered products in Australia, as well as its own GYG app, which accounts for 21 per cent of GYG's total revenue. 'Other brands have their moment in the sun but they don't have a long-term strategy or vision. They focus on chasing revenue today, or this week, or this quarter, or next year, but the vision of what the brand needs to be in 20 years hasn't been set. They're so busy banking the dollars now, they're forgetting about what's next. For us, it's very clear what's next and what the future brings because the brand is clear,' said Ms Thom. Mr Marks agrees. 'We have a saying, 'Are you good enough to get better?' At GYG, everything's about hunger, humility and curiosity. What you see in a lot of these big traditional players, they're so arrogant and they've become very complacent. For us, everybody's on the same bonus plan, the same long-term incentive plan, this is a high-performing team,' he said. GYG's impact on the market is unmissable, but with such significant and ambitious growth plans, can the Aussie-grown business continue to shake up a category that it has already disrupted? 'Disruption isn't something we think about, it is part of our DNA,' said Ms Thom. 'It's part of our mission, the vision, the values of the company and the business. 'It's quite easy to latch on to that because it permeates throughout the entire company.' 'We've transcended being an Australian brand and we're now a global brand that just happened to start in Australia.' Mr Marks agrees. 'That's what people can't get their heads around; even as a public business, people say, how can this thing be worth $3bn? They don't realise, man, this is going to be the best and biggest.' Danielle Long Editor, The Growth Agenda Danielle Long is the editor of The Growth Agenda. She joined The Australian in 2024 after two decades covering the marketing, media and advertising industry for specialist publications in Australia, Asia and the UK. The Growth Agenda Rideshare brand DiDi has launched a provocative advertising campaign as it aims to take on Uber and grow its share of the market. The Growth Agenda The impact of AI on the advertising and marketing industry is an opportunity for the market to get back to what it does best: creativity, according to WPP global creative chief Rob Reilly.
Fox News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Person dressed in Elmo costume disrupts anti-ICE protest
A person dressed in an Elmo costume caused a scene while disrupting an anti-ICE protest in Portland, Oregon, on July 26, 2025. (Credit: Katie Daviscourt/The Post Millennial)
