Airbus issues major A320 recall after mid-air incident grounds planes, disrupting global travel

Airlines around the world cancelled and delayed flights heading into the weekend after Airbus announced on Friday that it had ordered immediate repairs to 6,000 of its A320 family of jets in a recall affecting more than half of the global fleet.The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is the main certifying authority for A320 aircraft, issued the instruction on Friday night as a “precautionary action”.The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software and is relatively simple, but must be carried out before the planes can fly again, according to the bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters.The setback appears to be among the largest recalls affecting Airbus in its 55-year history and comes weeks after the A320 overtook the Boeing 737 as the most-delivered model. At the time Airbus issued its bulletin to the plane’s more than 350 operators, about 3,000 A320-family jets were in the air

UK at risk of ‘sudden confidence crisis’ if markets lose faith in budget – as it happened

UK government borrowing costs have inched down today, as the bond markets continue to welcome the budget.The yield (or interest rate) on 10-year gilts has dipped by 1.5 basis points to 4.44%, while 30-year gilt yields are down 3.5bps

One in 10 UK parents say their child has been blackmailed online, NSPCC finds

Nearly one in 10 UK parents say their child has been blackmailed online, with harms ranging from threatening to release intimate pictures to revealing details about someone’s personal life.The NSPCC child protection charity also found that one in five parents know a child who has experienced online blackmail, while two in five said they rarely or never talked to their children about the subject.The National Crime Agency has said that it is receiving more than 110 reports a month of child sextortion attempts, where criminal gangs trick teenagers into sending intimate pictures of themselves and then blackmail them.Agencies across the UK, US and Australia have confirmed a rising number of sextortion cases involving teenage boys and young adult males being targeted by cyber-criminal gangs based in west Africa or south-east Asia, some of which have ended in tragedy. Murray Dowey, a 16-year-old from Dunblane, Scotland, killed himself in 2023 after becoming a victim of sextortion on Instagram and Dinal De Alwis, 16, killed himself in Sutton, south London, in October 2022 after being blackmailed over nude photographs

Small changes to ‘for you’ feed on X can rapidly increase political polarisation

Small changes to the tone of posts fed to users of X can increase feelings of political polarisation as much in a week as would have historically taken at least three years, research has found.A groundbreaking experiment to gauge the potency of Elon Musk’s social platform to increase political division found that when posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity were boosted, even barely perceptibly, in the feeds of Democrat and Republican supporters there was a large change in their unfavourable feelings towards the other side.The degree of increased division – known as “affective polarisation” – achieved in one week by the changes the academics made to X users’ feeds was as great as would have on average taken three years between 1978 and 2020.Most of the more than 1,000 users who took part in the experiment during the 2024 US presidential election did not notice that the tone of their feed had been changed.The campaign was marked by divisive viral posts on X, including a fake image of Kamala Harris cosying up to Jeffrey Epstein at a gala and an AI-generated image posted by Musk of Kamala Harris dressed as a communist dictator that had 84m views

‘Call us rubbish’: Ben Stokes hits back at claims that England approach is ‘arrogant’

Ben Stokes has accepted the criticism that followed his England side’s two-day defeat in Perth as part of being in the results business but said he draws a line at the notion his players were “arrogant” in their approach.That particular word was used by former Australia fast bowler Mitchell Johnson in a strongly-worded column for the West Australian newspaper and has been a theme of the wider reaction.The majority of England players sitting out a two-day tour match in Canberra this week in favour of extra training in Brisbane only added fuel to the fire.Perceptions can only be truly changed out in the middle but the size of the task ahead of England is now considerable. This much-hyped Ashes series resumes with a day-night second Test that gets underway on Thursday at the Gabba – a ground that last witnessed an England victory back in 1986

Imran Sherwani, Great Britain Olympic hockey hero, dies aged 63

Imran Sherwani, who starred in the Great Britain hockey team that won Olympic gold in 1988, has died at the age of 63, his family have announced.Sherwani revealed in 2021 that had he been diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s in 2019, and his family continue to raise awareness of the condition. He represented Great Britain and England 94 times, culminating in scoring two goals in his team’s 3-1 final victory over West Germany in Seoul.Sherwani’s second goal that effectively clinched the contest sparked a famous reaction from BBC commentator Barry Davies, who asked: “Where were the Germans? But frankly, who cares!”It sparked British hockey’s greatest moment for thousands watching at dawn back home in the UK. Imran was the third Asian player to play for GB after Sutinder Kehar and Kulbir Bhaura, his 1988 teammate