Tread carefully with reform of bank ringfencing, chancellor | Nils Pratley

Rachel Reeves called it “the biggest set of reforms to financial regulation in a decade”, and, in one narrow sense, her Leeds Reforms would qualify for the description. If the ringfencing regime for banks were to be scrapped, we really would be entering a new era – or going back to an old one, since the separation of banks’ retail and investment banking activities was the single biggest regulatory change introduced after the 2008-09 crash to try to prevent another blow-up.Reeves on Tuesday, however, merely announced a review to look at how reforms to ringfencing could “strike the right balance between growth and stability, including protecting consumer deposits”. One hopes that does not mean outright abolition, which is what banks such as HSBC, Lloyds and NatWest have been urging on the grounds that the rules trap capital and impede growth.The stout defence of ringfencing from Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, has always felt more compelling: the regime has made banks safer and removal would increase the cost of loans and mortgages

JP Morgan chief defends independence of Fed chair amid Trump attacks

The boss of JP Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, has defended the “absolutely critical” independence of the Federal Reserve chair, as Donald Trump continues to demand immediate cuts in interest rates.The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said on Tuesday that a formal process for choosing a successor to the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, had already begun – despite the fact that his term does not end until next May.Trump has repeatedly criticised Powell, calling him “very dumb” and a “major loser”, and urging him to slash interest rates. The president posted a handwritten note to Powell on social media last week, saying: “You have cost the USA a fortune and continue to do so. You should lower the rate – by a lot!”Powell has said in turn that rate cuts have been delayed by Trump’s tariff policies, which many policymakers fear will boost inflation

Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot melts down – and then wins a military contract

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week, Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, saw its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok go Nazi. Then its CEO resigned. In the past three years of Musk’s ownership of the social network, it feels like X has weathered at least one public crisis per week, more often multiple.Last week, Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, xAI, saw its flagship chatbot Grok declare itself a super-Nazi, referring to itself as “MechaHitler”

AI chatbot ‘MechaHitler’ could be making content considered violent extremism, expert witness tells X v eSafety case

The chatbot embedded in Elon Musk’s X that referred to itself as “MechaHitler” and made antisemitic comments last week could be considered terrorism or violent extremism content, an Australian tribunal has heard.But an expert witness for X has argued a large language model cannot be ascribed intent, only the user.xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, last week apologised for the comments made by its Grok chatbot over a 16-hour period, which it attributed to “deprecated code” that made Grok susceptible to existing X user posts, “including when such posts contained extremist views”.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news emailThe outburst came into focus at an administrative review tribunal hearing on Tuesday where X is challenging a notice issued by the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, in March last year asking the platform to explain how it is taking action against terrorism and violent extremism (TVE) material.X’s expert witness, RMIT economics professor Chris Berg, provided evidence to the case that it was an error to assume a large language model can produce such content, because it is the intent of the user prompting the large language model that is critical in defining what can be considered terrorism and violent extremism content

Tara Moore, former British No 1 in doubles, handed four-year doping ban

The British tennis player Tara Moore, who was previously cleared of an anti-doping rule violation, has been handed a four-year ban after the court of arbitration for sport upheld an appeal filed by the International Tennis Integrity Agency.Moore, Britain’s former No 1-ranked doubles player, was provisionally suspended in June 2022 owing to the presence of prohibited anabolic steroids nandrolone and boldenone in a blood sample.The player said she had never knowingly taken a banned substance in her career and an independent tribunal determined that contaminated meat consumed by her in the days before sample collection was the source of the prohibited substance.Moore lost 19 months in the process before she was cleared of the rule violation, but Cas upheld the ITIA’s appeal against the first instance “no fault or negligence” ruling with respect to nandrolone.In a statement, Cas said: “After reviewing the scientific and legal evidence, the majority of the Cas panel considered that the player did not succeed in proving that the concentration of nandrolone in her sample was consistent with the ingestion of contaminated meat

Tour de France’s phoney war gets dose of reality as Pogacar v Vingegaard hits the mountains | William Fotheringham

There is always a sense of phoney war in the run-in to the Tour de France’s first stage in the high mountains, and at least one debate of the opening 10 days of this year’s race fits that context to a T. Has Jonas Vingegaard’s Visma-Lease a Bike team at times been towing the bunch deliberately in order to ensure that Tadej Pogacar retains the yellow jersey? It’s a gloriously arcane question, the kind that only comes up in the Tour’s opening phase, but it distracts from a point that could be key in the next 10 days: how the two teams manage the race will probably be decisive.Firstly, a brief explainer. The received wisdom in cycling lore is that holding the yellow jersey early in a Grand Tour can be as much a curse as a blessing, because the daily media and podium duties cut into recovery time. Hence the thinking goes that Visma might have been chasing down the odd move purposely to keep Pogacar in the maillot jaune, so that he will be answering media questions and hanging about waiting to go on the podium, while Vingegaard has his feet up