Fallers were in the minority yesterday, but Drax was one of them as fears were raised that the power station operator could face a large blow over carbon permits in tomorrow's Budget.

Two of the four largest mobile phone operators in the US last night unveiled an audacious plan to combine, in a direct challenge to competition authorities who have already expressed concern that consumers may not always be getting a fair deal.

Next was sold last night after some grim economic data triggered caution about the high street's prospects in the year ahead.

US network Verizon will offer the iPhone 4 from February this year, ending AT&T's exclusivity on the handset.

US Outlook Al Franken, the comedian-turned-US senator who has become the leading political proponent of "net neutrality", says that new regulations adopted this week by the Federal Communications Commission are "worse than nothing" in the fight to protect the openness of the internet.

Vodafone

An Indian court has thrown out Vodafone's challenge to a tax ruling that could leave the mobile phone giant 120bn rupees (£1.7bn) out of pocket.

US Outlook: When the US built its interstate highways, it was transformed. The rapid growth of the suburbs, new horizons for tourism and a revolution in haulage – vast opportunities unfolded when Americans hit the open road. The interstates are the proudest achievement of the Eisenhower era.

Closed-door negotiations on the future of net neutrality have been halted in the US after rumours of side talks between two key participants, search giant Google and internet provider Verizon Communications.

Yesterday's front page strapline, "Google closes in on a deal to buy preferential web access", was inaccurate. As the story made clear inside, Google said it had not had talks with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google traffic. However Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, said "We are trying to find solutions that bridge between the hard core 'net neturality or else' view and the historical telecom view of no such agreement." and explained that what Google meant by net neutrality was: "If you have one data type like video, you don't discriminate against one person's video in favour of another but it's OK to discriminate across different types".

Outlook For all the billions and trillions that the internet now generates, it remains a remarkably principled endeavour. At its heart lies the sacred rule of net neutrality, a geeky way of saying that all content is equal – that a web page will download to your computer at the same speed whether it was created by the largest company in the world or an anorak in his back bedroom.

Net neutrality may be a relatively new term, but the concept behind it is far older than the internet itself.

Google stood accused last night of betraying the founding principles of the internet, as it readied a deal that will abandon key parts of its support for "net neutrality", which has guaranteed equal access to the worldwide web since its inception.