British Gas owner suffers shareholder rebellion over CEO pay packet

The owner of British Gas has suffered a shareholder rebellion after handing its chief executive a multimillion pound pay packet while energy bill payers struggle with record levels of debt.Nearly 40% of Centrica’s shareholders voted against the board’s pay plans at the energy company’s annual investor meeting in Manchester on Thursday, after rising criticism of boss Chris O’Shea’s pay during the energy crisis.O’Shea’s basic salary rose 29% last year to £1.1m to take his total pay packet, including bonuses and share-related pay, to £4.3m for the year

Bank of England cuts interest rates to 4.25% and welcomes US-UK trade deal – as it happened

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has hailed the news that Britain and the United States are expected to announce a trade agreement in a couple of hours.He tells journalists at today’s press conference that the Bank has been following the issue very closely.Bailey says he hasn’t been briefed about the situation, and doesn’t know the content of the deal.But he says:We do now have news that suggests there will be an announcement, and we welcome that news.I very much welcome it, and I think it’s very well done to those involved

Tech giants beat quarterly expectations as Trump’s tariffs hit the sector

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, and this week in tech news: Trump’s tariffs hit tech companies that move physical goods more than their digital-only counterparts. Two stories about AI’s effect on the labor market paint a murky picture. Meta released a standalone AI app, a product it claims already has a billion users through enforced omnipresence. OpenAI dialed back an obsequious version of ChatGPT

Pro-Russian hackers claim to have targeted several UK websites

A pro-Russian hacking group has claimed to have successfully targeted a range of UK websites, including local councils and the Association for Police and Crime Commissioners, during a three-day campaign.In a series of social media posts, the group calling itself NoName057(16) suggested it had made a number of websites temporarily inaccessible, although it is understood the attacks were not wholly successful.The hackers sought to flood a range of websites with internet traffic in what is known as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The group wrote on X: “Britain is invested in the escalation of the [Ukraine] conflict, and we are disconnecting its resources.”Its success was limited, however, with councils in Blackburn and Darwen and Exeter among those reporting that their websites were unaffected despite the hacking group’s claims of success

LA to make Olympic history with two-venue opening ceremony in 2028

Los Angeles will make Olympic history in 2028 by staging the opening ceremony of the Summer Games across two venues: the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. LA28 organizers confirmed the unprecedented dual-venue format on Thursday, making Los Angeles the first city to open an Olympics at two stadiums simultaneously.The 14 July ceremony will also mark a milestone for the Coliseum, which organizers say will become the first venue to host Olympic events at three separate Games, following 1932 and 1984. SoFi Stadium, the $5bn home of the NFL’s Rams and Chargers which opened in 2020, will make its Olympic debut.The Olympic closing ceremony will be held on 30 July at the Coliseum, the longtime home of the University of Southern California football team

Pogacar’s absence from Giro d’Italia may offer breath of fresh air for competition

The 2025 Giro d’Italia may lack the star power of the Tour de France, but it is likely to make up for it with dynamic and unpredictable racing when it gets under way in Tirana on Friday.Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel, the top three riders in last year’s Tour de France, are not racing, but the Giro will, as ever, throw up plentiful drama.Even so, this year’s lineup has been characterised by some as a cast of Pogacar-avoidant wannabes, nearly men and fading champions who have travelled to Albania for the Grande Partenza.That’s a little unfair on a quality field that includes past Giro winners in Primoz Roglic and his Bora Hansgrohe teammate Jai Hindley, the Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz and a resurgent Egan Bernal, the Colombian climber leading Ineos Grenadiers.Yet it only serves to emphasise the dominance of the seemingly unstoppable Pogacar – who rather than defend his title, has opted to focus on July’s Tour de France – that so much of the pre-race chat has been about the Slovenian’s absence