Thursday newspaper round-up: BT buys EE, Starbucks profits, Rising wages

BT has finalised a £12.5bn deal to purchase EE from Deutsche Telecom and Orange, according to The Telegraph. Talks have been taking place since December and reports claim an agreement was reached Wednesday night.Starbucks reported a profit in Britain for the first time in 17 years, wrote The Times. The coffee company unveiled a pre-tax profit of £1.06m for the year to September compared to a £20.5m loss for the same period prior.British families will experience a huge rise in spending power for more than a decade as the impact of low inflation and rising wages sets in, The Telegraph reported. There will be an average rise of £417 in take home pay, the paper added.UBS is being investigated for tax evasion, according to the Financial Times, six years after the Swiss bank paid a $780m penalty for alike allegations.Ministers have claimed middle-class workers will save £100,000 over their lifetime thanks to a new ban on overzealous pension fees, The Telegraph reported. Charges that exceed 0.75% a year will be banned from April.Hundreds of thousands of families will lose child benefits and face higher taxes after the next general election as rising wages push them out of the current welfare and tax thresholds, according to The Times. More than 1m parents have already had their benefits cut or removed, the paper noted.The Guardian reported that anti-semitism has reached an all-time high in Britain. Reports of violence, property damage, abuse and threats against the Jewish population more than doubled in 2014, the paper said.A cross-party report claimed on Thursday that the UK should take on a larger role in the Iraqi fight against ISIS, wrote The Guardian.