The left-wing former army officer Ollanta Humala has won Peru's bitterly contested presidential elections after his hard-right rival Keiko Fujimori conceded defeat.

In a speech to the Institute of Directors this week, George Osborne took aim at the "costly impact" of Britain's employment regulations. The Chancellor promised that the Government would publish a "wholesale review" of this area of the law. This will apparently look at the unlimited penalties applied to discrimination in employment tribunals and aim to "simplify" the administration of the minimum wage. It will also "review" those regulations that guarantee the existing pay and conditions of workers when their employer is taken over and "reform" the consultation period for collective redundancies. These are all vague words. And it is unclear what the implications will be.

The national minimum wage is to increase by 15p to £6.08 per hour from October. The below inflation rise of 2.5 per cent, which matches the recommendation of the Low Pay Commission, was criticised as "modest" by TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.

Firms should look to hire unemployed Britons as the Government's annual immigration cap for workers from outside the EU comes into force today, Immigration Minister Damian Green said.

A clown who won a seat in Brazil's Congress by a landslide has stayed true to his former profession by messing up his first vote.

The Government today fought off a legal challenge against new minimum wage legislation which comes into force on New Year's Day.

British women in their twenties have smashed the glass ceiling and are now being paid more than their male counterparts – reversing the traditional "gender gap" in pay for the first time. This is the only age group for which this is true.

Restaurants were accused yesterday of exploiting a loophole in a new law designed to ensure that staff receive the tips left by customers. In 2008, the Labour government bowed to The Independent's "fair tips" campaign by banning employers from counting tips towards the national minimum wage.

Retailers have urged the Government to limit next year's increase in the minimum wage to enable them to carry on creating jobs.

The national minimum wage will increase by 13p an hour to £5.93 today, benefiting an estimated one million mainly women workers.

He won the leadership, according to some people, because the unions levered him in with their wily ways. The sneaky trick they used this time was to give their members a vote each, who then acted in their usual selfish fashion by voting for the candidate they preferred. So it must be time for new legislation that compels the unions to be more democratic, by making them vote for the candidate that certain newspapers prefer.

More than five million people in the UK earn less than a low pay threshold, highlighting the huge level of wage inequality in the country, according to a new report today.