Tuesday newspaper round-up: FCA debt warning, Hurricane Maria, Trump at the UN

The government needs to step in to help tackle the mountain of debt being racked up by the most vulnerable consumers in Britain, the chief financial regulator has warned, as new data shows that personal debt burdens are continuing to rise. New figures seen by the Guardian showed the worsening consequences of Britain’s borrowing binge. According to the Money Advice Service, there are now 8.3 million people in the UK with problem debts. - Guardian

Donald Trump will use his first address to the UN general assembly on Tuesday to call for international action to confront North Korea and Iran, which he will portray as twin threats to global security, the White House said. The US president will warn member states that they risk being “bystanders in history” if they do not mobilise to confront such threats, according to a senior White House official. - Guardian

Germany’s powerful trade chief has dismissed Brexit as pipe-dream that will never happen, insisting that markets remain calm only because investors are entirely discounting the political noise from Westminster. “Brexit is just talk so far. I doubt it will ever happen,” said Anton Börner, president of the German federation of trade and services (BGA) and voice of the country’s exporting interests. - Telegraph

The Caribbean island of Dominica has been “brutalised and devastated” by category 5 Hurricane Maria, the prime minister of the country has said. The eyewall of the hurricane barrelled into Dominica’s eastern coast on Monday evening, crossing towards the former British colony’s capital, Roseau, on the south-west side. - Guardian

A funding crisis in social housing will continue unless the government “breaks with the past” to provide financial backing for new affordable homes, the head of an influential housing sector body will say today. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money could be saved by building social housing instead of channelling housing benefit to private landlords, David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, will tell the organisation’s annual conference. - The Times

Ryanair has written to 400,000 passengers to tell them that their flight has been cancelled after it admitted to a “mess-up” on pilot rostering that left 18 million ticket holders wondering if their holiday plans would be ruined. In a hastily arranged press conference in Dublin on Monday afternoon amid a passenger revolt and a slump in the company’s share price, the normally combative chief executive Michael O’Leary apologised “unreservedly” for “a mess of our own making”. - Guardian

Google has angered online shopping websites with what they say is a derisory offer to alter its search results in Europe. The internet giant, which was fined €2.4bn (£2.1bn) by the EU in June for exploiting the power of its search engine to promote its separate online shopping service, has proposed a set of changes that it hopes will see the company avoid further fines. However, the offer, which has not yet been made public, has been attacked by online shopping sites, who say the changes would simply see Google take all of the industry’s profits. - Telegraph

The Royal Bank of Scotland will not be forced to sell 300 branches that it had planned to spin off under its Williams and Glyn brand, the European Commission has said, marking a significant win for boss Ross McEwan after more than eight years of uncertainty. The bank had been trying to sell W&G since 2009, as it was one of the conditions the EU set in return for approving the Government's 2008 £45.5bn bail-out. - Telegraph

The Conservative electoral consultants Sir Lynton Crosby and Jim Messina won’t forget in a hurry just how wrong their predictions were for this year’s general election. However, the two remain firm believers in their methods and are bringing to the corporate world the kind of customer profiling that they have previously produced for politicians. Outra, a new digital marketing company backed by them, aims to combine publicly available data on consumer behaviour with deeply personalised polling data on customer preferences to help retailers and other companies. - The Times

The Gates Foundation has agreed to invest up to $40 million in one of the UK’s most promising biotech companies to support its development of immunotherapies for infectious diseases. The investment from the world’s richest man in Immunocore comes two years after the privately owned, Abingdon-based company raised $320 million in the biggest private financing for a life sciences business in Europe. - The Times

The countryside is facing a shortfall of 33,000 affordable homes over the next five years despite builders making record profits at a time of rising rural homelessness. Profits at Britain’s three biggest builders have quadrupled since 2012 to £2.2 billion, yet they regularly cite financial constraints when cutting affordable homes in developments. Builders miss targets for affordable homes in the countryside by 18 houses a day, research by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) shows. - The Times

Shoppers across the country could soon be paying for goods using only their fingers as British start-up Sthaler begins its roll-out into convenience stores and entertainment venues. The brand, which is run by former music industry executive Nick Dryden, has signed deals with a number of retailers in the UK and with a major bank in Denmark to roll the product out across a variety of shops, restaurants and bars. - Telegraph

A British tech start-up aims to raise tens of millions of pounds to build a complete map of parking spaces to allow driverless cars to find a spot and put wardens out of business. AppyParking, founded in 2013, has raised £2.25m from two early stage investors in preparation for a much bigger funding round next year. - Telegraph

Seldom has the term "dirty money" been more appropriate. The discovery of tens of thousands of euros flushed down Geneva toilets has left detectives perplexed. Bundles of shredded €500 notes were discovered blocking toilets near the safe-deposit room of a branch of the UBS bank, and also in the lavatories of three nearby restaurants. - Telegraph