Tuesday newspaper round-up: Executive pay, grain, Apple, global slowdown

(Sharecast News) - Six in 10 people think company bosses should be prevented from earning more than 10 times the average paid to employees, according to polling shared exclusively with the Guardian. A poll for the High Pay Centre, a thinktank that campaigns for fairer pay for workers, found that 63% of Britons said chief executives should be paid no more than 10 times the earnings of lower- or mid-ranking employees. - Guardian The director of the United Nations World Food Programme in Germany has warned that millions of tonnes of grain is stuck in Ukraine due to sea ports being blocked by Russian military action. Martin Frick said about 4.5 million tonnes of grain in containers at Ukrainian ports could not be shifted due to unsafe or occupied sea routes, some of which had been mined, as well as inaccessible ports. - Guardian

In the wake of unprecedented upheaval during the Covid crisis, much of Britain has returned to normal. From large Northern cities to seaside towns, footfall is up, restaurants are busy again and public transport use is recovering. But this rebound largely seems to have passed by the biggest city of them all. London has been left at the back of the pack as commuters and tourists stay away. The Centre for Cities, a think tank, has London languishing at the bottom of its recovery rankings. - Telegraph

Apple has been accused of breaking competition law by limiting rivals' ability to create contactless payment apps as a Brussels assault on US big tech gathers pace. Regulators in the European Union have claimed that the company is preventing competitors from easily creating a system for tap-and-go transactions on the iPhone "to the benefit of its own solution Apple Pay". Apple faces a multi-billion euro fine if found to have broken the rules. - Telegraph

Fears about the health of the global economy have mounted after downbeat data from Europe, China and the United States fuelled concern that rampant inflation, disrupted supply chains and Russia's invasion of Ukraine threaten a prolonged global slowdown. The S&P Global eurozone manufacturing purchasing managers' index fell to 55.5 last month, down from 56.5 in March and to its lowest level in 15 months. It was the third consecutive month that the figure in the survey has declined and was accompanied by a warning that the bloc had slowed to a "near standstill". - The Times