Hapless Thames Water finally drinking in last chance saloon

Call yourself barbarians at the gate? Actually, KKR hates the decades-old description, but the US private equity firm is still meant to have a fearsome reputation for doing its homework, being a cute judge of political risks and going where others fear to tread. All of which makes its eleventh-hour abandonment of its £4bn bid for Thames Water very odd.The suggestion is that the big bosses in New York couldn’t stomach the political and reputational risks of owning the UK’s largest and most crisis-ridden water company. If that’s the reasoning, though, KKR should explain itself. The political risks aren’t obviously worse than six months ago – and arguably are lesser now that the government’s water commissioner, Sir Jon Cunliffe, is talking aloud about “how to restore the stability and predictability of the regulatory system” in his interim report published co-incidentally on Tuesday

Bank of England governor warns Trump tariffs have ‘blown up’ global trade system – as it happened

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has warned that the path of UK interest rates ‘is ‘shrouded’ in uncertainty, due to the turmoil created by trade conflict.Testifying to the Treasury committee this morning, Bailey declines to predict how he might vote at the Bank’s next meeting, in late June.Bailey believes that the path of UK interest rates, which were cut to 4.25% last month, is still lower. But, he warns, that process is harder to predict

Will AI wipe out the first rung of the career ladder?

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week, I’m wondering what my first jobs in journalism would have been like had generative AI been around. In other news: Elon Musk leaves a trail of chaos, and influencers are selling the text they fed to AI to make art.Generative artificial intelligence may eliminate the job you got with your diploma still in hand, say executives who offered grim assessments of the entry-level job market last week in multiple forums.Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, which makes the multifunctional AI model Claude, told Axios last week that he believes that AI could cut half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and send overall unemployment rocketing to 20% within the next five years

Google working on AI email tool that can ‘answer in your style’

The march of artificial intelligence is predicted to bring monumental changes on a par with the advent of the internet or even the Industrial Revolution. But before all that, one of the technology’s leading figures wants it to solve a more urgent problem – the tyranny of the email inbox.Demis Hassabis, the head of Google DeepMind, has revealed he and his team are working on “next-generation email” that will deal with the daily grind of sorting through emails, replying to the most mundane ones and avoiding the need to apologise profusely for missing an important message.Hassabis was speaking at the SXSW London festival about the extraordinary growth and potential of AI. He said its impact was “overhyped in the short term”, but would lead to profound longer-term changes to society

Tommy Paul v Carlos Alcaraz: French Open quarter-finals – live

Third set: Paul 0-6, 1-6, 3-4 Alcaraz* (*denotes next server)Gut-check time for Paul, who goes down love-30 on his serve. The American then hits a couple of winners for 30-all, before a couple of Alcaraz errors hand him the hold.Third set: *Paul 0-6, 1-6, 3-3 Alcaraz (*denotes next server)Quick hold for Alcaraz, who grabs four quick points on the trot from love-15 down.Third set: Paul 0-6, 1-6, 3-2 Alcaraz* (*denotes next server)More pressure on Paul’s serve at 30-all. But the American wins the next point behind a blistering 130mph ace that Alcaraz can’t handle, then nails down the hold with a sharply angled forehand from the baseline to win a 10-shot rally

Jamie Smith’s rapid response to West Indies fireworks sets up ODI sweep for England

A day that started for England with walks and bike rides ended with runs, and plenty of them. A barrage of boundaries from Jamie Smith and Ben Duckett saw the home side take control of a match that was delayed after the players got stuck in traffic and then abbreviated by rain, before an explosive cameo from Jos Buttler saw them speed to victory by seven wickets, with 62 balls to spare.The series thus ended as it started, with a one-sided victory. The match in between was much more competitive but this was a very different display from England, whose fielding was as sharp as it had been sloppy on Sunday, and in particular from their openers, who in Cardiff had scored a combined total of nothing but here each reached rapid half-centuries.Smith might have travelled in by train, but as soon as he had a bat in his hand he was motoring