UK consumers saving less as taxes squeeze incomes, data shows

UK consumers saved less money during the third quarter of the year as higher taxes squeezed disposable incomes.The households’ saving ratio – which estimates the percentage of disposable income Britons save rather than spend – dropped 0.7 percentage points to 9.5%, the Office for National Statistics said. That is the lowest rate for more than a year

Bosses at City & Guilds handed million-pound bonuses after training firm is privatised

A pair of City & Guilds executives have each been awarded million-pound bonuses and sizeable salary increases after the skills charity’s business was acquired by an international company in October, the Guardian understands.The payments – which are understood to include a £1.7m award for the chief executive, Kirstie Donnelly, and £1.2m to the finance director, Abid Ismail – have emerged at a sensitive time for the training and qualifications business, as it navigates its first few months in the private sector.Last week it was revealed how City & Guilds has embarked on a £22m cost-cutting drive and is shrinking its UK workforce after being sold by its charity owner to PeopleCert, an international certification company

Extremists are using AI voice cloning to supercharge propaganda. Experts say it’s helping them grow

While the artificial intelligence boom is upending sections of the music industry, voice generating bots are also becoming a boon to another unlikely corner of the internet: extremist movements that are using them to recreate the voices and speeches of major figures in their milieu, and experts say it is helping them grow.“The adoption of AI-enabled translation by terrorists and extremists marks a significant evolution in digital propaganda strategies,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and a research fellow at the Soufan Center. Webber specializes in monitoring the online tools of terrorist groups and extremists around the world.“Earlier methods relied on human translators or rudimentary machine translation, often limited by language fidelity and stylistic nuance,” he said. “Now, with the rise of advanced generative AI tools, these groups are able to produce seamless, contextually accurate translations that preserve tone, emotion, and ideological intensity across multiple languages

A tape measure, a metal detector and a spirit level: 25 surprisingly useful things you can do with your phone

While many use our phones predominantly to doomscroll, smartphones have a range of little-known functions that could make life better and easier – from heart monitoring to even developing camera filmOur smartphones are magical things – far more than dopamine drip providers and a way to keep in touch with friends and family. Using the built-in features and easily available additional apps, there are plenty of clever things you can do with your smartphone.The iPhone’s Measure app uses augmented reality and the device’s camera to calculate everything from ceiling heights to room dimensions – handy for those DIY tasks that require a quick decision. And, good news for parents, Apple also points out that you can use it to measure a person’s height: the digital equivalent of etched markings on the wall.Metal detectors cost a pretty penny, but many modern devices have built-in magnetometers designed to help improve the accuracy of GPS within apps

‘It’s not up to me is it?’ McCullum wants to stay on despite England’s Ashes defeat

Brendon McCullum has stressed his desire to stay on as England head coach but acknowledged this is now a question for those higher up.Australia winning this much-anticipated Ashes series at the earliest opportunity has thrust McCullum’s role into the spotlight but with a multi-format contract that runs up to the end of the 50-over World Cup in late 2027, removing him would cost English cricket a seven-figure sum.Senior figures at the England and Wales Cricket Board are understood to be wary of making wholesale changes but with Australia now openly targeting a third home whitewash this century as the series moves to Melbourne and then Sydney, McCullum and the team director, Rob Key, are under pressure.Asked if he expected to be in the role come the English summer, McCullum replied: “I don’t know. It’s not really up to me, is it? I will just keep trying to do the job, try to learn the lessons that I haven’t quite got right here and make adjustments

Rob Cross opens up on struggles after second-round win against Ian White

Rob Cross doesn’t want to say what he saw at the children’s hospital in Cologne a couple of weeks ago. Some of the stories were “horrific”, he confides, but in any case they’re not his stories to tell. All he knows is that he went along with a few other players, after appearing in an exhibition the previous night, and it changed him.“You see what people are going through,” he says. “And it puts life in perspective for people whose lives are sort of OK