Here are the stories making today's business headlines.

Edinburgh Fringe performers to take shows to Aberdeen for city’s own ‘festival’

Aberdeen is launching its own international event to bring talent performing at the Edinburgh Fringe to the North-east.

A selection of comedy, circus and family acts will travel to the Granite City for a preview – or encore – to their shows at the world’s largest performance arts festival in Scotland’s capital.

The Aberdeen Performing Arts (APA) International Season will be an annual event, which has been described as “a significant milestone” in the city’s cultural calendar.

Tens of thousands of performers from around the word bring their shows to Edinburgh every year.

Next and Frasers Group eye up stricken Ted Baker

Retail groups led by two of the sector’s biggest hitters have expressed an interest in purchasing Ted Baker’s stricken European retail business.

Frasers Group, headed by Mike Ashley, and Next, led by Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise, have contacted administrators at Teneo Advisory to explore a sale of all or parts of the collapsed business.

No Ordinary Designer Label, the fashion brand’s retail and ecommerce business in Britain and Europe, was placed into administration last month.

Authentic Brands Group, which bought Ted Baker for £211 million in 2022, said that “damage done” during a tie-up with another company had been “too much to overcome”.

The Sun loses £66m amid costs from phone-hacking scandal

The Sun lost £66m last year and its online audience dropped by 4 million readers as the newspaper continued to grapple with the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal.

Total losses at the Murdoch-owned tabloid have now reached £515m over the past five years, amid declining print sales and the high cost of paying damages to victims of illegal information gathering.

The Sun is still facing a number of lawsuits including one brought by Prince Harry in a case that is due to go to trial before the high court next year.

The filings for the British arm of Murdoch’s News Corp empire also reveal that the group’s radio and television arm lost nearly £54m, mainly driven by the cost of running the rightwing news channel TalkTV, which announced last month it was going online-only amid low ratings.

Alan Bates says Post Office was run by 'thugs in suits'

Former sub-postmaster and campaigner Alan Bates has said the Post Office was being run by "little more than thugs in suits" in 2010.

In a strongly worded witness statement to the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal, he accused the Post Office of lying about the accounting system.

He also said the organisation had spent 23 years trying to "discredit and silence" him.

The Post Office apologised for hurt caused by the scandal.

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