Australia welcomes Trump’s removal of tariffs on beef and other food imports

The Australian government has welcomed the Trump administration’s removal of tariffs on beef and other agricultural exports to the US.After previously insisting his import duties were not fuelling inflation, the US president, Donald Trump, on Saturday morning Australian time signed an executive order reversing tariffs on food imports including beef, coffee and bananas.Trump, who is facing pressure over rising consumer prices, conceded in the order that “current domestic demand for certain products, and current domestic capacity to produce certain products” had influenced the decision.Last year, meat was the Australia’s second largest export to the US, behind only non-monetary gold. Since Trump’s tariff regime came into effect in April, Australian producers have been charged a 10% export duty on most goods, including beef

Global markets struggle after tech sell-off and fears over Chinese economy

Global markets suffered another day of volatile trading after a tech sell-off that fuelled Wall Street’s worst day in a month and weak economic data from China showed an unprecedented slump in investment.The FTSE 100 fell by 1.1% in London, closing down about 100 points at 9,698, as bellwether banking stocks tumbled. Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest slumped between 2.7% and 3

AI firm claims it stopped Chinese state-sponsored cyber-attack campaign

A leading artificial intelligence company claims to have stopped a China-backed “cyber espionage” campaign that was able to infiltrate financial firms and government agencies with almost no human oversight.The US-based Anthropic said its coding tool, Claude Code, was “manipulated” by a Chinese state-sponsored group to attack 30 entities around the world in September, achieving a “handful of successful intrusions”.This was a “significant escalation” from previous AI-enabled attacks it monitored, it wrote in a blogpost on Thursday, because Claude acted largely independently: 80 to 90% of the operations involved in the attack were performed without a human in the loop.“The actor achieved what we believe is the first documented case of a cyber-attack largely executed without human intervention at scale,” it wrote.Anthropic did not clarify which financial institutions and government agencies had been targeted, or what exactly the hackers had achieved – although it did say they were able to access their targets’ internal data

People in the UK: have you received good or bad financial advice from an AI chatbot?

Tech companies are pumping billions into the growth of artificial intelligence, with OpenAI this month signing a $38bn (£29bn) cloud computing deal with Amazon as part of a $3tn datacentre spending spree.But as people increasingly use AI chatbots – such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, Meta AI and Perplexity – for advice and task completion, some observers have concerns about misinformation, hullicinations and irresponsible advice.A survey this year from KPMG and the University of Melbourne found that 80 percent of people in the UK believe AI regulation is required.We want to hear from people who have asked chatbots for financial advice. Have you asked AI tools for help with money, debt or personal finance? Were you recommended anything unexpected, or unsuitable? What was the financial result? Do you have concerns?You can tell us about askng AI tools for financial advice herePlease include as much detail as possible

In the name of their fathers: Eubank v Benn began and ended a heady era of British boxing

Their dads lit a fire that consumed me but Eubank Jr v Conor Benn embodies all that has gone wrong with the Dark TradeThirty-five years ago this month, on 18 November 1990, my life changed course when I watched Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn fight each other in Birmingham with a ferocity which left me astonished and breathless. After that savage and surreal contest, I began working on a book about boxing, Dark Trade, which allowed me to become a full-time writer.Benn and Eubank were so different that my already deep interest in boxing caught fire. I became consumed by the fight game for decades until, earlier this year, I finished writing The Last Bell, my fifth and final book about boxing. I still loved the most interesting fighters and their incredible life stories, but the controversies around the manufactured rivalry between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr left me sick at heart

Josh Hazlewood ruled out of Ashes opener but England’s Mark Wood is fit

Josh Hazlewood has been ruled out of the first Ashes Test after a second scan on the hamstring injury he initially reported during the recent Sheffield Shield match between New South Wales and Victoria found a low-grade tear.The news came hours after England announced that scans on Mark Wood, whose own participation in the opening Test had been thrown into doubt after he reported stiffness in his left hamstring on the first day of their warm-up game against the Lions at Lilac Hill, had found no damage.Hazlewood’s injury is a significant blow for an Australia side already dealing with the absence of their captain, Pat Cummins, because of lumbar bone stress. Only Mitchell Starc of their three frontline seamers remains available for selection when the series gets under way in Perth on 21 November.Sean Abbott, who was named in the Australia squad and injured his hamstring in the same Sheffield Shield game as Hazlewood, has also dropped out