What is quantitative tightening and how has it affected UK finances?

The Bank of England has announced that it will scale back its multibillion-pound “quantitative tightening” programme.The process is significant for the UK economy and the public finances. But how will it work?The process is the opposite of quantitative easing – the tool used by the world’s most powerful central banks during the 2008 financial crisis.Often referred to as “printing money”, QE involved central banks buying bonds from financial institutions, such as commercial banks and pension funds. This helped to push down yields – in effect the interest rate – on bonds, lowering borrowing costs and supporting economic activity

Bank’s interest rate vote and bond plans are little help to Reeves before budget

“Gradual” and “predictable” are the watchwords at the Bank of England. But for Rachel Reeves, preparing for a tough autumn budget, a more activist approach from Threadneedle Street could have helped.The central bank had two pieces of bad news for the chancellor on Thursday: borrowing costs would be left unchanged at the current elevated level, while the Bank would proceed with a plan to sell billions of pounds in UK government bonds.Both decisions had been widely expected in financial markets. But an alternative outcome was not outside the realms of possibility and could have helped bail out the Treasury a little before the autumn budget

Meta announces first Ray-Ban smart glasses with in-built augmented reality display

Meta has announced three new pairs of AI smart glasses, including the first Ray-Bans with a built-in screen for augmented reality.The Meta Ray-Ban Display will be the first smart glasses with a heads-up display from a mainstream brand since the ill-fated Google Glass. They use a classic Wayfarer-like styling to avoid looking too obviously like wearable technology, while still having a camera, speakers and microphone.A small, bright and crisp colour display is projected on to the inside of the right lens, which appears to float just below the wearer’s eye line, and can show anything from text and images to live video calls. The display appears when interacting with the glasses, but isn’t visible from the outside

Google DeepMind claims ‘historic’ AI breakthrough in problem solving

Google DeepMind claims it has made a “historic” artificial intelligence breakthrough akin to the Deep Blue computer defeating Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997 and an AI beating a human Go champion in 2016.A version of the company’s Gemini 2.5 AI model solved a complex real-world problem that stumped human computer programmers to become the first AI model to win a gold medal at an international programming competition held earlier this month in Azerbaijan.In a performance that the tech company called a “profound leap in abstract problem-solving”, it took less than half an hour to work out how to weigh up an infinite number of possibilities in order to send a liquid through a network of ducts to a set of interconnected reservoirs. The goal was to distribute it as quickly as possible

Nottinghamshire stun Surrey, Glamorgan promoted and more: county cricket, day four – as it happened

Josh Tongue, thundering in on his great long legs, bowled Nottinghamshire to victory in an electric Championship slug-fest at the Oval, giving Notts a 14-point advantage over Surrey going into the final round, and putting one East Midlands hand on the trophy.It was a game full of unexpected twists with Surrey often on top in their chase of 315. Ollie Pope made 41 until he was caught off Lyndon James then Dan Lawrence and Tom Curran attacked with a bravado that had Surrey members purring. In an inspired bit of captaincy, Haseeb Hameed then called up Liam Patterson-White for one over, Curran charged him and was stumped for 33. Lawrence was lbw for 50 to Dillon Pennington but some clean ball striking from Tom Lawes once more tipped the scales

Keely Hodgkinson escapes boredom to lift British spirits at world championships

It has not been the greatest world championships for Britain so far, with only Jake Wightman’s 1500m silver medal lifting the gloom. But on Thursday the cavalry finally arrived in the form of Keely Hodgkinson.The Olympic 800m champion has been so bored in her hotel in the 35c heat she has even taken to staging playful indoor races with her training partner, Georgia Hunter Bell. But she dusted off the cobwebs in qualifying comfortably for Friday’s semi-finals in 1min 59.79sec