The Middle East price shock hasn’t hit Next – yet | Nils Pratley

In the context of Next, which has just reported full-year pre-tax profits of £1.16bn, an estimated £15m of extra fuel and air freight costs arising from the Middle East conflict is tiny. The sum, which in any case assumes disruption lasts three months, can be lost in the wash, or more precisely “offset by savings elsewhere”.The chief executive, Simon Wolfson, a boss who tends to err on the side of caution when guiding on profits, saw no reason not to add £8m to this year’s number as a mechanical read-through from last year’s outcome. If there wasn’t a war on, one can assume there would have been a proper profit upgrade

NS&I chief executive replaced in ‘fresh start’ over missing savings crisis; bad day for markets – as it happened

The boss of National Savings and Investments appears to have been dismissed over the £476m savings scandal at the bank.Pensions minister Torsten Bell has told MPs that he has appointed Sir Jim Harra, a senior civil servant, to take over as the chief executive of NS&I on an interim basis, replacing Dax Harkins.Bell says Harra, a former first permanent secretary at HMRC, will provide “a fresh start for NS&I”, following its failure to trace missing savings belonging to customers who have died.Updating MPs on the crisis over deceased customers’ savings, Bell says he wants to make sure NS&I has “the very best leadership” in place.Bell tells MPs: double quotation markSir Jim will undertake a review over the next three months to spell out in detail the background to this tracing problem and to set out what lessons must be learned for NSI going forward

New York City hospitals drop Palantir as controversial AI firm expands in UK

New York City’s public hospital system announced that it would not be renewing its contract with Palantir as controversy mounts in the UK over the data analytics and AI firm’s government contract.The president of the US’ largest municipal public health care system, Dr Mitchell Katz, testified last week before the New York City Council that the agreement with Palantir would expire in October.He said at the hearing that the contract, which focused on recovering money for insurance claims, was always meant to be short term, and that there was an “absolute firewall” preventing Palantir from sharing information with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said that the agency has “not had any incidents”.The contract and related payment documents shared with the Guardian by the American Friends Service Committee and first reported by the Intercept, show that NYC Health + Hospitals has paid Palantir nearly $4m since November 2023

Brussels opens investigation into Snapchat amid concern over children’s safety

Brussels has opened an investigation into Snapchat over concerns the social messaging app is exposing children to grooming, sexual exploitation and other criminality.In a separate decision on Thursday, the European Commission also said four pornographic websites were failing to prevent minors seeing adult content, harming young people’s mental health and fuelling negative gender attitudes.The investigations into five tech companies were brought under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which has come under fire from Donald Trump since coming into force two years ago. Aiming to protect European society from a wide range of internet harms, the DSA includes child safety provisions to combat cyberbullying, exposure to adult content and illegal products.The announcements came after a landmark ruling in a Los Angeles court found that two social media companies, Meta and YouTube, had deliberately created addictive products that harmed a young user

Sinner continues smooth Miami progress with win over Tiafoe as rivals fall

The past nine days at the Miami Open have not been kind to most of the world’s best male tennis players. One by one, so many have fallen, most dumped out with mediocre performances. Even ­Carlos Alcaraz, the world No 1, was not immune to the string of ­giantkillings in Florida.One man remains completely unbothered. Having broken Novak Djokovic’s 2016 record for most ­consecutive sets won at Masters 1000 events earlier in the ­tournament, ­Jannik Sinner has continued to ­bulldoze through the draw as he tries to follow up his recent Indian Wells title by winning the Sunshine Double

From Laurel Hubbard to sex testing in five years: why the Olympics U-turned on transgender rules | Sean Ingle

The IOC’s shift in position on trans women in elite sports is seismic, but new president Kirsty Coventry is reflecting a changed political climateBy any measure, it amounts to one of the most astonishing U-turns from a governing body in modern times. Four and a half years ago, the International Olympic Committee was lauding the appearance of the first transgender weightlifter, Laurel Hubbard, at an Olympics, and issuing a framework to sports saying that transgender women “should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage” over biological women.Now it has not only ripped up every last morsel of that guidance but also performed a spectacular 180-degree turn.Over 10 tightly worded pages, the IOC now states that the female category must be protected for fairness and safety reasons, and makes it clear that SRY screening – a sex test using saliva or a cheek-swab – will be used to determine biological sex.It is a monumental shift that means transgender women and athletes with differences in sex development (DSD), who were reported as female at birth but have internal testes and have undergone male puberty, are now banned from the female category at all future Olympics