Friday newspaper round-up: AI, Bentley, News Corp

Dozens of health and children’s groups have urged ministers to tackle obesity by imposing taxes on foods containing too much salt or sugar. New levies based on the sugar tax on soft drinks would make it easier for consumers to eat more healthily by forcing food manufacturers to reformulate their products, they claim. – Guardian

Artificial intelligence could displace between 1m and 3m private sector jobs in the UK, though the ultimate rise in unemployment will be in the low hundreds of thousands as growth in the technology also creates new roles, according to Tony Blair’s thinktank. Between 60,000 and 275,000 jobs will be displaced every year over a couple of decades at the peak of the disruption, estimates from the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) suggest. – Guardian

Bentley has pushed back plans to go fully electric by five years as driver uptake of battery-powered cars continues to fall short of the industry’s hopes. In an announcement on Thursday, bosses confirmed that the British marque will switch to an all-electric lineup by 2035 instead of 2030. It comes months after Bentley delayed the launch of its first electric vehicle (EV) from 2025 to 2026. Originally envisaged as a grand tourer, it will also be a “luxury urban SUV”, the company said. – Telegraph

A host of Britain’s best-known businesses have warned that jobs could be cut, hiring scaled back and prices pushed up as they absorb hundreds of millions of pounds in extra costs imposed on employers in Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget. Allison Kirkby, the chief executive of BT, said customers could be charged more for services as the telecoms group looked to offset a £100 million hit from rising national insurance contributions in the next fiscal year. – The Times

News Corporation beat estimates for first-quarter revenue on Thursday, driven by growth in its digital real estate services, book publishing and Dow Jones segments. The media and information services group, which owns publications including The Times, The Sunday Times and The Wall Street Journal, reported revenues of $2.58 billion in the three months to the end of September, compared with $2.57 billion estimated by analysts and up 3 per cent from $2.5 billion in the previous year’s first quarter. – The Times