Friday newspaper round-up: Rishi Sunak, councils, Oracle

(Sharecast News) - Rishi Sunak has been appointed as a senior adviser by the US technology companies Microsoft and Anthropic. The former British prime minister's pair of new jobs emerged on Thursday in letters published by Westminster's office of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba). They add to his roles as a senior adviser to Goldman Sachs International, the investment bank, and speechmaker to investment firms including Bain Capital and Makena Capital in the US, which have netted him over £150,000 a talk. - Guardian A £7 furry bouncy ball with a face is tipped to be one of the must-have toys this Christmas, according to expert buyers at Hamleys. The Ty Bouncers - essentially fluffy tennis balls - range from cats, cows and monkeys to Spider-Man and Paddington. With 80 to collect, Victoria Kay, the head of buying and merchandising at Hamleys, said the bouncy soft toys offered "uncomplicated fun". - Guardian

Across the country, councils are cash-strapped. Many are desperately searching for ways to cut spending and balance the books in a bid to avoid catastrophe. Yet rather than get a helping hand from Westminster, they were dealt a fresh blow by Rachel Reeves in last year's Budget. The Chancellor took a gamble that local authorities could bear the costs of raising employers' National Insurance contributions (NICs) to 15pc and a sharp rise in the minimum. - Telegraph

Hackers have stolen tens of thousands of personal ID photos from a messaging app popular with children after hijacking a system used for online safety age checks. Discord, an app used by millions of teenage gamers, confirmed that 70,000 government ID images might have leaked after hackers broke into a customer service provider employed to verify if users are over 18. - Telegraph

The City regulator is watching the fallout from the collapse of First Brands and Tricolor in the United States amid investor nervousness that the failures point to broader strains in the wider multitrillion-dollar market for private assets. Both First Brands, a car parts supplier, and Tricolor, a subprime auto lender, went into bankruptcy last month and were deeply entwined with the private markets, a lightly regulated corner of the financial system that has grown rapidly in the past decade. - The Times

More than 100 companies have been hit by hackers targeting Oracle's suite of business products, Google's Threat Intelligence Group has revealed. Experts at the company have published an account of the attack, linking the hack to the Russian-speaking Clop group of cybercriminals who have been active since 2020. - The Times