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EDF Energy chief Vincent de Rivaz insists nuclear power station will go ahead, but cannot say when – this farce must end soon

“I will start by saying clearly and categorically that Hinkley Point C will go ahead,” declared Vincent de Rivaz, the chief executive of EDF Energy, the UK end of the French state-owned company that is supposed to be building the £18bn nuclear plant in Somerset.

So that’s a definite yes? Not exactly. It’s a definite maybe because, as de Rivaz was obliged to concede in the next breath to MPs on the energy select committee, he cannot say when an investment decision will be made.

Related: Hinkley Point is a costly mistake, but only France can pull the plug | Simon Taylor

Bookmaker’s shares slide after bad run of results and customers imposing betting limits on the themselves

Dire horse racing results at the Cheltenham festival and high-value online customers imposing restrictions on their own gambling have triggered a profit warning for bookmaker William Hill.

In a surprise trading update on Wednesday, the bookmaker said it expected operating profit for this year to fall to between £260m and £280m, from £291m last year. Analysts average forecast was for profit of £307m from a range of £284m-318m.

Bookmaker earned enough in three hours last year to cover recent ‘voluntary payment’ for encouraging problem gambling

Bookmaker earned enough in three hours last year to cover recent ‘voluntary payment’ for encouraging problem gambling

Bookmaker Paddy Power took less than three hours last year to bring in enough money to cover its recent £280,000 donation to good causes after encouraging problem gambling and failure to prevent money laundering.

The Irish firm’s 2015 results, its last before a £5bn merger with Betfair, reveal that it pulled in revenues of €1.09bn (£850m) in 2015.

Analysis reveals 61% of shops located in areas with greater numbers of non-UK born citizens

The bookmaker Paddy Power is targeting minority ethnic communities with controversial fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs), according to a new analysis.

The study, which uses Gambling Commission data, reveals that 61% of Paddy Power’s 349 betting shops are located in areas with above average levels of non-UK born population.

Related: When the chips are down: what it’s like to gamble everything away | Sarah Marsh

Related: Paddy Power case highlights scourge of fixed-odds betting terminals

This week it emerged that Paddy Power was the subject of a Gambling Commission report that found the bookmaker had encouraged a gambler until he lost his home, five jobs and his family.

The man was a frequent user of fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs) – roulette machines that allow bets of up to £100 every 20 seconds. Paddy Power staff became aware that the man was working five separate jobs to fund his gambling and “had no money”. Despite concerned employees informing senior management, shop staff were instructed to try to increase the customer’s visits and time spent in the gambling premises. Senior management were also found to have “repeatedly overruled” a shop manager’s suspicions that another customer was using FOBTs to launder Scottish bank notes. This is especially concerning when 633 suspicious activity reports related to money laundering were flagged in betting shops last year.

Related: Paddy Power 'encouraged gambler until he lost his home, jobs and family'

Related: The gambling machines helping drug dealers 'turn dirty money clean'

Miner boasted it can remain ‘comfortably cash generative’ despite fact it is still 75% below its 2011 float price

No firm that has just swung from a profit of $4.2bn (£3bn) to a loss of $8bn can claim to be out of the woods – especially if net debt stands at $26bn. For all that, the picture at Glencore looks less dreadful than it did six months ago.

The miner’s trading and marketing division chipped in top-line earnings of $2.5bn, down only 12%, suggesting its chief, Ivan Glasenberg, was right about the resilience of the old part of Glencore’s empire.

Related: New-look Barclays: the same, but worse

When Paddy Power launched a new advertising campaign with the tagline “You’re Welcome!” last year, its chief marketing officer told a trade magazine that “the Paddy Power brand has always been about two things – being as generous as we can with our customers, and behaving in a mischievous way”. Thanks to a damning account of its failures on customer protection and crime prevention, published by the Gambling Commission on Monday, we can now add a third: exploitation, of the most cynical and deliberate kind.

Related: Paddy Power 'encouraged gambler until he lost his home, jobs and family'

Related: Offshore initiative could help racing and betting sort out old differences

Bookmaker also failed to stop its fixed-odds betting machines being used to launder the proceeds of crime, says Gambling Commission report

Bookmaker Paddy Power encouraged a problem gambler to keep betting until he lost five jobs, his home and access to his children, according to a report by the Gambling Commission.

The company also failed to perform sufficient checks to ensure customers were not using its betting machines to launder the proceeds of crime. The betting regulatorsaid Paddy Power would make a voluntary payment of £280,000 to a “socially responsible” cause following its findings.

The government introduced a point of consumption tax in December 2014, and has increased the duty on machine games from 20% to 25%

Bookmaker William Hill has announced a drop in operating profit of 22% for 2015, blaming gambling taxes imposed on its UK online and retail businesses.

The company reported operating profits of £291.4m for last year, down from £372.2m in 2014. It said additional gambling duties of £87m resulted in the slump.

Local authority and Stoke-based online betting company to offer relocation payments as well as help paying off tuition fees of maths graduates

Stoke-on-Trent city council has teamed up with online betting company Bet365 to offer to pay off the tuition fees of maths graduates in order to persuade them to become maths teachers in the city.

The chief schools inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, has previously singled Stoke-on-Trent out for its poor maths results. The city is one of the five worst-performing local authorities in the country for maths and has been ranked by Ofsted as 144th out of 152 localities in England for GCSE A*-C grade attainment.

Lisa and Gerry Cannings of Peterborough decided to delay collecting their prize as they were having their house decorated

A couple who won a £32.5m rollover Lotto jackpot but waited a week to claim their winnings have been named.

Lisa Cannings, 48, and her husband, Gerry, 63, from near Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, matched their numbers in the 13 February draw.

The extent of potential corruption in tennis is under scrutiny once more after a leading sports gambling watchdog stated that 73 matches suspected of suspicious betting activity were reported to the Tennis Integrity Unit in 2015 – more than three times the number of incidents involving any other sport.

Earlier this month, the Guardian revealed that two international tennis umpires were secretly banned and four others face being thrown out of the sport for life on charges of serious corruption after allegedly taking bribes from betting syndicates in exchange for manipulating live scores on the International Tennis Federation’s Futures Tour.

Related: Revealed: tennis umpires secretly banned over gambling scam

Brits now spend £1bn a week on fixed-odds betting terminals – our readers talk about the human cost of this habit

Britain has a gambling problem: figures show that nearly £1bn a week is being spent on fixed-odds betting terminals, and a Times investigation revealed that the NHS is prescribing £10,000-a-year drugs for some of the worst gamblers. Campaigners say the industry has been allowed to grow unchecked over the past five years, despite problem gambling being linked to violence and poor mental health.

But how dangerous can a this habit be? We asked you to tell us your experiences.

I started gambling pretty much as soon as I turned 18. I got hooked on the idea of in-play betting: keeping tabs on a game as it was going through and betting on the next game, based on statistics provided by the company. The odds here are low (evens usually) but by putting on big money you can win a lot. You can also lose a lot; sometimes I was losing £200 a night, in three bets.

I hid this from my family and my friends, at one point I even slept at the bottom of the stairs for a week so I could get to the post before my parents to hide my bank statement from them.

Gambling: it was fantastic and awful in equal measures

I’ve been around gambling all my life, my grandfather ran illegal betting on the Liverpool docks before high-street betting shops were legalised in 1961.

I’d have a bet from the age of 14 and it was little more than a hobby until I was in my mid-20s. Then it became a problem. I would gamble all my money on the horses, often paying bills and my mortgage late because of my betting habits. My then wife eventually got wise to me and made sure that my wages went directly to her to pay the bills.

I started gambling when I was around 18, just 5p-a-go fruit machines or £1 bets on football acca’s. I then started playing the bigger fruit machines in snooker clubs and then eventually fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBT). This is by far the most addictive form of gambling that’s easily accessible to anyone. I could lose £80 in one night on fruit machine, but with a FOBT you can lose that in literally seconds.

I remember being paid from my job back when I was 19 (around £900) I went to town to buy clothes and then went in the bookies. I left with nothing in my wallet, all because of the roulette on an FOBT. I had to walk five miles home because I didn’t have any money left.

Over time it becomes quite apparent that you are a gambler, and you can’t even trust yourself

I am in financial ruin, and have been for many years as a result of my gambling. There have been at least 50 occasions I can think of where, within an hour of getting paid, I lost every single penny in a bookies on roulette machines. I would allow my mind to make up any number of stories to obtain money from family or friends, and even if I hadn’t eaten for days my first call would always be the bookies. That of course was when I was trusted by people, but over time it becomes quite apparent that you are a gambler, and you can’t even trust yourself.

The reason these machines are such a problem is because you can’t walk down a street in London without seeing at least one branch of every major betting outlet.

I was hooked on FOBT machines instantly. I only went in search of the quick win and the machines allowed me to do this. This led to a life of misery, one where I ruined relationships with friends and family (some of which will never be mended).

I blew my student loans and money left over by family for university. I maxed out my overdraft, and at 21 I was in £12,000 of debt. I was able to have this cleared by my parents but after abstaining through willpower alone after a few months I was back on it.

People in Britain now spend £1bn a week on fixed-odds betting terminals. We want to hear from readers about the human cost of this habit

The scale of Britain’s gambling problem has come under the spotlight with figures showing that nearly £1bn is being spent a week on fixed-odds betting terminals.

It’s not the only indication of our addiction to betting. A Times investigation reveals that the NHS is prescribing £10,000-a-year drugs for some of the worst gamblers, and that calls to the country’s leading gambling helpline rose by a third last year alone. Campaigners say ministers have allowed the industry to grow unchecked over the past five years, despite its dangers.

Gambling on tennis online has grown to such an extent it has now overtaken horse racing and is second only to football, but with it there has been sharp rise in suspicious activity

The numbers suddenly entered head-spinning territory. When the Swiss-based data and betting company Sportradar shelled out a reported $70m in December last year for a five-year deal with the International Tennis Federation to be its exclusive data partner, it caused a sharp intake of breath within the industry. It was definitive proof that away from the telephone numbers of the broadcasting and sponsorship deals that have fuelled the growth of global sport over the past three decades, another hugely lucrative revenue stream had emerged for the international federations and governing bodies of the world’s biggest sports.

Sources close to the deal said the figures involved represented a 500% increase on the company’s previous deal with the ITF, which controls the Davis Cup and 1,500 smaller tournaments each year on the lower rungs of the professional tennis ladder that ultimately reaches to the upper regions of the grand slams.

Related: Minister will call tennis authorities to account over gambling scandal

Tennis authorities will be asked by a Parliamentary committee why they kept sanctions secret against umpires who had been banned for betting offences, amid calls from MPs for a specialist sport crime unit to help deal with the issue.

Related: Revealed: tennis umpires secretly banned over gambling scam

Related: Tennis’s Futures circuit, where it only takes a minute for those in the know to cash in

• Umpires allegedly conspired with betting syndicates to cheat odds
• Guardian investigation forces tennis authorities to make bans public
• Questions over a $70m data deal inadvertently facilitating corruption

Two international tennis umpires have been secretly banned, while four others face being thrown out of the sport for life on charges of serious corruption, the Guardian can reveal.

Umpires from Kazakhstan, Turkey and Ukraine are among those alleged to have taken bribes from betting syndicates in exchange for manipulating live scores on the International Tennis Federation’s Futures Tour – which allowed crooked gamblers to place bets already knowing the outcome of the next point.

Related: Tennis betting scandal: how a culture of secrecy aids corruption | Owen Gibson

Related: Tennis match-fixing allegations leave questions to be answered | Sean Ingle

6 February 1913: A columnist believes gambling is doing more harm than any other social evil, and welcomes the Betting Advertisement Bill

It would be an excellent thing if every elector, without respect to party, would write to his representative in Parliament and urge him to support the Betting Advertisement Bill when it comes before the House of Commons. It is admittedly only a partial measure which leaves much still to be done. But it is excellent as far as it goes, and if those who know feel that it goes as far as it was wise to attempt at the outset then we ought to make sure of getting it, with the steady determination to get more when we can.

I fear that many middle-class people have no idea what a curse to the nation betting and gambling are to-day. Unless they happen to have a young relative who has got himself into financial or other trouble by backing horses they hardly realise the existence of the evil. And even if they have such a proof of its existence they are inclined to look on gambling as a youthful folly which a little experience in life will cure, and which, if the process of cure is not too expensive, need not be made too much of. Of gambling as a national canker, injuring all decent sport, undermining character, and fostering crime, they have little or no knowledge. And when anyone with knowledge speaks of it in this way they suspect sentimental exaggeration and puritan fanaticism. Well, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, if that opinion is founded on any serious attempt to arrive at the true facts.

Reading about Safari Club International holding its Ultimate Hunters’ Market in Las Vegas, I remembered how much I detested Las Vegas when I visited three years ago. SCI gives its members “an opportunity to compete with other trophy hunters to earn awards for killing the largest or most types of animals”. The rarer the better, according to the idiots who take part. No matter that 45 major airlines have banned the transport of some or all types of hunting trophies. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, remember?

When I checked into my hotel on that four miles of monstrosity known as the Strip, I was handed a key card adorned with a photograph of a pouting bikini-clad woman, with a telephone number underneath, urging me to call if I wanted to “party”. In my room I found several leaflets telling me I could order a “girl” to my room to keep me company. Outside were several men wearing T-shirts advertising various sex entertainment establishments.

Related: Sex, guns and ammo: inside the world's largest gun industry trade fair

Sunset in the Nevada desert is a thing of rare beauty, but on the Strip there is literally nowhere to see it