Drax plans to convert part of its North Yorkshire power plant into datacentre

Drax has revealed plans to convert part of its power plant in North Yorkshire into a datacentre as soon as 2027 in response to the increase in demand for AI capability.The FTSE 250 company behind Britain’s biggest power plant told investors on Thursday that it had applied for planning permission to build a 100-megawatt datacentre at its site near Selby.The centre is expected to use the land, cooling systems and transformers that were once dedicated to the power plant’s coal generation before Drax converted its generators to burn imported wood pellets.The first datacentre to be built on its site will draw electricity from the UK’s national electricity grid, but in future there could be potential to use electricity from the Drax plant.The company set out the plans to safeguard demand for its electricity in its latest trading update, weeks after the government signalled that it would curb the amount of electricity it would subsidise from 2026

The UK’s pharma deal was vital – but the GSK boss is right about US dominance | Nils Pratley

That’s gratitude, eh? It’s not even a fortnight since the government agreed to raise the prices the NHS pays for new medicines and here comes the boss of GSK, Britain’s second largest pharma firm, to extol the virtues of doing business in the US.The US is “still the leading market in the world in terms of the launches of new drugs and vaccines”, said the chief executive, Emma Walmsley, in a BBC interview, explaining why GSK invests about three times as much over there as it does at home. Alongside China, the US is also “the best market in the world to do business development”.Her comments have caused a stir but, actually, are merely a statement of reality. It would be absurd to pretend the UK has suddenly shot to the top of the competitiveness table in life sciences as a result of the multipronged price and tariffs deal at the start of this month

Musk calls Doge only ‘somewhat successful’ and says he would not do it again

Elon Musk has said the aggressive federal job-cutting program he headed early in Donald Trump’s second term, known as the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), was only “a little bit successful” and he would not lead the project again.Musk said he wouldn’t want to repeat the exercise, talking on the podcast hosted by Katie Miller, a rightwing personality with a rising profile who was a Doge adviser and who is married to Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration deputy chief of staff.Asked whether Doge had achieved what he’d hoped, Musk said: “We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful.”Doge created chaos and distress in the government machine in Washington DC, and by May more than 200,000 federal workers had been laid off and roughly 75,000 had accepted buyouts as a result of purges by Musk’s external team of often-young zealots

ICE is using smartwatches to track pregnant women, even during labor: ‘She was so afraid they would take her baby’

Pregnant immigrants in ICE monitoring programs are avoiding care, fearing detention during labor and deliveryIn early September, a woman, nine months pregnant, walked into the emergency obstetrics unit of a Colorado hospital. Though the labor and delivery staff caring for her expected her to have a smooth delivery, her case presented complications almost immediately.The woman, who was born in central Asia, checked into the hospital with a smartwatch on her wrist, said two hospital workers who cared for her during her labor, and whom the Guardian is not identifying to avoid exposing their hospital or patients to retaliation.The device was not an ordinary smartwatch made by Apple or Samsung, but a special type that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had mandated the woman wear at all times, allowing the agency to track her. The device was beeping when she entered the hospital, indicating she needed to charge it, and she worried that if the battery died, ICE agents would think she was trying to disappear, the hospital workers recalled

Leo Cullen will use lessons he learned at Leicester to help dismantle Tigers

Leicester v Leinster fixtures have become common recently – the fifth since 2022 takes place on Friday night – but the history between the sides runs far deeper. Leo Cullen, head coach of the Dublin-based province, spent a couple of seasons at Welford Road in the mid-2000s, winning the Premiership in 2006-07 and losing a Heineken Cup final against Wasps in the same season.Since 2022 the former second‑row has overseen four Champions Cup victories against his former club, including two in 2023-24. Three and a half years ago, there was a masterful quarter-final dismantling of what was then Steve Borthwick’s side. Leinster will now shoot for a hat-trick of Welford Road victories this decade, and the presence of the New Zealand international Rieko Ioane, on full debut, is sure to help

Can a nepo baby be an underdog? The remarkable rise of Shedeur Sanders

The quarterback was seen as living off his father’s name when he entered the NFL. But he has slowly started to prove himself at the Cleveland BrownsIt seems the goalposts are always moving on Shedeur Sanders, the Cleveland Browns’ rookie quarterback who keeps throwing people off.He excelled at two colleges to establish himself as a top NFL prospect, only to wind up getting picked in the fifth round of this year’s NFL draft in one of the most dramatic stock crashes in league history. He then distinguished himself in training camp, only to wind up as the back-up to the back-up. When Sanders was finally pressed into injury relief duty last month and led the Browns to just their third win of the season, the caveat was that his breakthrough had come at the expense of the even-worse Las Vegas Raiders