Bank of England expected to leave interest rates on hold as oil and gas prices surge; UK pay growth hits five-year low– business live

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.The world’s central bankers are facing a conundrum right now. With the Middle East crisis pushing up energy prices, inflation risks lingering, and economies looking weak, should they cut borrowing costs to support growth or raise them to subdue prices?Rather than make a choice yet, there’s a strong temptation to wait and see.And that’s why the Bank of England is expected to leave interest rates on hold at noon, after its latest monetary policy committee meeting.Before the Iran conflict started, an interest rate cut today was seen as an 80% chance by the money markets

UK wage growth slows sharply as unemployment holds steady

Wage growth slowed sharply in the three months to January according to the latest snapshot of the jobs market from the Office for National Statistics.Average earnings fell to 3.8% in the three months to January, from 4.2%, which was a larger fall than forecast by City economists. It was the slowest rate of wage growth in more than five years

‘Alright mate?’: Amazon pins UK hopes on AI upgrade of Alexa

“Commiserations, mate, Chelsea lost 3-0 in the Champions League last night against Paris Saint-Germain,” says Alexa as it attempts to break the news gently to an awaiting Blues fan. Such is the injection of personality and understanding that Amazon hopes will lead to Britons re-engaging with their millions of Alexa devices, restoring it to the cutting edge of voice assistants rather than resigned to being a glorified egg timer.After its early access launch last year in the US, the long-awaited generative AI upgrade Alexa+ is finally making its debut in the UK, supporting eight years of existing devices strewn through more than half of UK households. With the UK being Amazon’s most engaged market and more than 40 accents to contend with across the UK and Ireland, the “next-generation ambient AI assistant” has its work cut out for it.The service will be available immediately for new purchases of Amazon’s latest generation of Echo and Show devices, with an invite system in operation for existing devices, which Amazon’s head of Alexa and Echo, Daniel Rausch, insists will progress faster than it did in the US

‘We don’t tell the car what it should do’: my ride in a self-driving taxi

Driverless ‘robotaxis’ will be accepting fares in Britain’s biggest city by the end of next year. Can they deal with London’s medieval roads, hordes of pedestrians and errant ebikers? I got in the passenger seat to find out‘I’m really excited to show you this,” says Alex Kendall, the CEO of Wayve, as he gets behind the wheel of one of the company’s electric Ford Mustangs. Then he does … nothing. The car pulls up to a junction at a busy road in King’s Cross, London, all by itself. “You can see that it’s going to control the speed, steering, brake, indicators,” he says to me – I’m in the passenger seat

Jack Draper adds new string to his bow as he rebuilds his game

Two and a half hours into one of the most unforgettable battles of his career, Jack Draper resolved to attack without hesitation, regardless of the outcome. On two pivotal points in his Indian Wells fourth-round match against Novak Djokovic, at 4-4 in the tie-break and then on match point at 6-5, Draper forced himself inside the baseline and unleashed two backhands, those shots driving him to victory.It would have been understandable for Draper to have played passive tennis in those decisive moments. Not only did Indian Wells mark his second ATP tournament back after sustaining a bone bruise to his left arm that forced him off the tour for seven months, the injury has forced him to make dramatic changes to his game.Draper returns to the circuit using natural gut strings in a hybrid string setup

Judge in rugby brain injury lawsuit tells legal teams to hurry up as cases drag on

The judge overseeing the pretrial phase of the two landmark litigation cases about brain injuries in rugby has issued another rebuke to the legal teams on both sides over their lack of progress.Senior Master Jeremy Cook started the latest round of case management hearings by reminding both the defendants and the claimants that “it won’t have escaped anybody’s notice that some of these claims are now over five years old, and we haven’t made much progress”.Since the cases involve claims of degenerative brain diseases, Cook said, time is at a premium. He has told both sides to provide him with written updates between now and a scheduled case management hearing in October, when both sides will be required to have identified their lists of 28 lead claimants from among the hundreds involved.The idea is these 28 will then be whittled down into a smaller group, who will represent the entire cohort