City & Guilds London Institute trustees accused of stalling inquiry into £166m sale

The trustees of City & Guilds London Institute have been accused of attempting to dodge accountability for a “catastrophic failure of governance” by stalling on the launch of an independent inquiry into the £166m sale of the vocational charity’s training and accreditation business last October.Members of the 148-year-old body voted overwhelmingly last month for the trustee board to trigger what would be the third investigation into how the foundation sold its operations to the private operator PeopleCert in October.However, members complained that the process then seemed to have stalled.The poll followed the Charity Commission opening a statutory inquiry in January, which was mirrored a day later by PeopleCert commissioning its own internal investigation into the deal.Neil Bates, an elected member of the City & Guilds council, which appoints and advises the trustees, said: “Why would they not be accountable for decisions made if everything was above board? It is shocking there has been such a catastrophic failure of governance – and subsequently a failure of accountability

Worried Britons ‘prepping’ for major disruption with stash of tins and cash, survey shows

Millions of Britons are “prepping” for a potential “major disruptive event” by keeping a stash of cash at home, stockpiling tinned goods or ensuring they have a battery-powered torch close to hand, new data suggests.With war raging in the Middle East and Ukraine, extreme weather becoming more frequent, and warnings that the UK’s critical infrastructure is at risk from cyber-attacks and power outages, many people feel the world has become a more dangerous and chaotic place.While some are taking steps to make sure they are not left high and dry in the event of a bank IT failure, others are preparing for a possible natural disaster, or even a societal collapse. UK experts recently advised people to have an emergency store of food in their home in case something happens that causes shortages.Link, the UK’s ATM network, tracks how people are using, and thinking about, cash and, for the first time, its researchers have asked the public about what “contingency planning” they are doing to prepare for an event that would cause “major disruption to normal services”

Google developers significantly misstate carbon emissions of proposed UK datacentres

Developers working for Google have significantly misstated how much carbon two proposed AI datacentres will contribute to the UK’s total emissions in planning documents reviewed by the Guardian.The tech company wants to build two huge datacentres – one 52-hectare (130 acre) project in Thurrock and another at an airfield in North Weald, both in Essex. To do so, developers are required to submit planning documents calculating how much carbon these projects will emit as a proportion of the UK’s total carbon footprint.In both cases, they appear to have compared one year of the proposed datacentre’s emissions with the UK’s entire five-year carbon budget, understating the significance of their emissions by a factor of five, according to experts at the tech justice nonprofit Foxglove.Greystoke, a company planning to build another datacentre in north Lincolnshire, one of the largest in the UK, also appears to have misstated the emissions of its project in the same way

What I saw at the Musk-OpenAI trial: petty billionaires, protests and a stern judge

For the past couple of weeks, on the fourth floor of a courthouse on a quiet street in downtown Oakland, the world’s richest man and one of the world’s most valuable startups have been at war over the future of artificial intelligence.Being one of the reporters in the room has felt like watching an updated, opposite-coast version of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities – ambition, ego, greed and the spectrum of social class on full display. The supporting cast has included Elon Musk fanboys, a stern judge and a who’s-who of Silicon Valley’s most influential people.All courtroom battles are theatre, but this one has proved to be a unique spectacle, with the judge chastising the lawyers for leading the witness, raising meritless objections and even too much coughing. With Musk on the stand, he griped that an opposing attorney had asked a leading question, to which the judge told him to “tell the jury you’re not a lawyer”

Glamorgan’s Norton claims hat-trick on debut, Sibley on song for Surrey: county cricket – as it happened

That’s it from us, back tomorrow. Good night!DIVISION ONEChelmsford: Essex 273 v Hampshire 235 and 58-2Sophia Gardens: Glamorgan 229 v Somerset 354 and 32-6Trent Bridge: Nottinghamshire 415 v Surrey 211-4Hove: Sussex 386-8 v Leicestershire 328Edgbaston: Warwickshire 147 and 267-3 v Yorkshire 152DIVISION TWOThe County Ground: Derbyshire 604-7dec v Northamptonshire 98-4Bristol: Gloucestershire 325 v Kent 308-8Old Trafford: Lancashire 201 and 45-3 v Middlesex 169New Road: Worcestershire 308 v Durham 207-6After that flurry of excitement at Sophia Gardens, time for me to write up. BTL remains open, of course.No century for Dom Sibley today, caught behind off Liam Patterson-White for 77. Surrey 198 for four

Aryna Sabalenka shocked by Sorana Cirstea’s comeback win at Italian Open

Aryna Sabalenka, the world No 1, suffered her earliest defeat in more than a year as she was toppled in the third round of the Italian Open by the soaring Romanian veteran Sorana Cirstea, who brilliantly held her nerve to close out a 2-6, 6-3, 7-5 win.The defeat marks a second successive surprise loss for Sabalenka, who started the clay-court season in some of the best form of her career after consecutive victories at the WTA 1000 events at Indian Wells and Miami. Until her quarter-final defeat to Hailey Baptiste at the Madrid Open last week, where Baptiste spectacularly saved six match points, Sabalenka had started the year by winning 26 of her first 27 matches.This is also the first time Sabalenka has lost before the quarter-final stage at any tournament since February 2025 and she will head to the French Open having failed to reach the semi-final in any clay-court tournament this year. Sabalenka also has fresh injury concerns to address after struggling with a lower back injury in the final stages of the match