Energy users ‘could save £5bn a year’ if gas plants are removed from market

The government could save energy users £5bn a year by overhauling the electricity market to stop gas-fired power stations from setting the wholesale price for electricity, according to the former energy tsar.Britain relies on gas plants for about a quarter of its annual electricity use, but they play a much greater role during spells of low wind and low solar generation.Removal of gas plants from the market could lead to a drop in household electricity bills by up to £1.7bn a year by 2028, according to a research report. Energy costs for businesses and industrial users could fall by £3

Rescue plan at Thames Water is still too murky | Nils Pratley

The wannabe new owners of Thames Water say they are “fully committed to a new transparent and collaborative relationship with regulators”. Jolly good. Unfortunately, this embrace of transparency does not appear to extend to the poor old customers.At this late stage in the dance to decide Thames’s future, you’d expect London & Valley Water – the banner under which the consortium of creditors now sail – to opt for straight-talking and openness. Their pitch to rescue Thames, after all, rests on the analysis that they are the folk to inject the necessary pragmatism into a company that has lived a hand-to-mouth existence for years while promoting fantasy turnaround plans

Juliet Congreve obituary

My mother, Juliet Congreve, who has died aged 76, was a pioneer in library automation and later had a successful university teaching career specialising in human-computer interaction. For most of her professional life, she worked at Middlesex University.In the early 1980s, at Middlesex, she introduced one of the first uses of email in a UK university, enabling librarians to support inter-library loans. She quickly noticed colleagues using it to share updates, ideas and build community – not just to speed up book requests. She led the transition from paper index cards to an electronic catalogue – a complex operation across six university sites and diverse disciplines, including teacher training, art, law and engineering

Google will not be forced to sell Chrome, federal judge rules

Google will not be forced to sell its Chrome browser, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday in the tech giant’s ongoing legal battle over being ruled a monopoly last year.The company will be barred from certain exclusive deals with device makers and must share data from its search engine with competitors, the judge ruled.Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling follows months of speculation surrounding what penalties Google would face as a result of his decision last year that the company violated antitrust laws as it built what he called an online search monopoly. The ruling, one of the most significant antitrust cases in decades, resulted in an additional hearing in April to determine what actions the government should take as a remedy.Mehta’s decision to allow Google to keep Chrome represents a more lenient outcome for the company than what federal prosecutors requested: force the tech giant sell off its marquee search product and to ban it from entering the browser market for five years

Naomi Osaka back in US Open semi-finals for first time since birth of daughter

Naomi Osaka is back to her resilient ways. On Wednesday night she turned back 11th-seeded Karolina Muchova for a 6-4, 7-6 quarter-final victory at Arthur Ashe Stadium in just under two hours’ time. The former world No 1, who is just two years removed from watching the tournament from the stands, now finds herself back in a major semi-final for the first time since giving birth to her daughter, Shai, and well on her way toward reprising her mantle as a women’s tour standard-bearer.The two-time US Open champion enters Thursday’s matchup against Wimbledon finalist Amanda Anisimova as the sentimental favorite. All four times that the Japanese has reached a grand slam quarter-final in her still-young career, she has gone on to win it all

Women’s Super League 2025-26 previews No 11: Tottenham

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 10th (NB: this is not necessarily Suzanne Wrack’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)Last season’s position: 11thSomething needed to change after a disastrous 2024-25 season but pinpointing what exactly went wrong is difficult. Under Robert Vilahamn Tottenham had reached a first FA Cup final and finished sixth in the WSL at the end of the 2023-24 campaign. The club felt like it was in a really strong place with confidence in the project sky high.Fast forward to May and Spurs were one off the bottom, their cup heroics a distant memory and there was lots of head scratching. It was inevitable that Vilahamn would depart and it was probably the correct decision given the lack of cohesion on the pitch and backward slide