Ofgem approves early investment in three UK electricity ‘superhighways’

Three major UK electricity “superhighways” could move ahead sooner than expected to help limit the amount that households pay for windfarms to turn off during periods of high power generation.Current grid bottlenecks mean there is not enough capacity to transport the abundance of electricity generated in periods of strong winds to areas where energy demand is highest.The new high-voltage cable projects linking windfarms in Scotland and off the North Sea coast to densely populated areas in the south of the country could start operations by the early 2030s rather than towards the end of the decade, according to the sector regulator.This should help to cut the rising cost of paying windfarms to turn off when they generate more electricity than the grid can transport. Without better interconnection these payments, which consumers cover via their energy bills, are expected to reach more than £12bn a year by the end of the decade

BoE predicts budget measures will lower inflation, and denies uncertainty caused unusual bond market volatility – as it happened

Senior members of the Bank of England are appearing before the Treasury committee now.MPs will hear from deputy governors Clare Lombardelli and Sir Dave Ramsden, as well as two external members of the Monetary Policy Committee – Swati Dhingra and Catherine Mann.The quartet are without governor Andrew Bailey, who isn’t available due to “an unavoidable international commitment”.They will discuss the Bank’s decision to maintain interest rates at 4% in November, and also its latest Monetary Policy Report.Time to recap

EU opens investigation into Google’s use of online content for AI models

The EU has opened an investigation to assess whether Google is breaching European competition rules in its use of online content from publishers and YouTube creators for artificial intelligence.The European Commission said on Tuesday it would examine whether the US tech company, which runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet, was putting rival AI owners at a “disadvantage”.The commission said: “The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage.”It said it was concerned that Google may have used content from web publishers to generate AI-powered services on its search results pages without appropriate compensation to publishers and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content.The commission said it was also concerned as to whether Google had used content uploaded to YouTube to train its own generative AI models without offering creators compensation or the possibility to refuse

Australia launches a social media ban – and is AI a bubble about to pop?

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you from a New York City that feels much colder than last December. 🥶In a world first, Australia implemented a ban on social media use for people under 16. It’s the first country to take such a far-reaching measure. Starting on 10 December, children and teens under 16 will not be allowed to use social media in Australia

England’s Ashes approach is scrambling the brains of the next cricketing generation | Mark Ramprakash

The cracks are starting to show with this England team and with the narrative we’ve been fed for three years after another defeat. Their identity of always taking the aggressive option, of relentlessly putting pressure on their opponents, isn’t holding up to scrutiny. So far in this series they haven’t had the strength needed to achieve it, and they haven’t had the skills either.I was confident that they could win the Ashes this time, mainly because I thought there was quality in the squad and that they had adapted their game to add intelligence and adaptability to their armoury. It’s becoming clear that neither of those beliefs were completely true

Claressa Shields to open $8m deal with Detroit rematch against Crews-Dezurn

Claressa Shields will defend her undisputed heavyweight championship in Detroit on 22 February, returning home for a rematch with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in her first fight since signing a landmark $8m promotional deal. The bout will headline a Dazn card at Little Caesars Arena, the home of the NBA’s Pistons and NHL’s Red Wings where Shields attracted a near-sellout crowd for her most recent fight last July.Shields (17-0, 3 KO) and Crews-Dezurn (10-2, 2 KO) first met nearly a decade ago when they made their professional debuts against each other on the undercard of Andre Ward’s victory over Sergey Kovalev in 2016. Shields won a four-round unanimous decision that night in Las Vegas, a moment she still sees as formative. “I had just come off winning two Olympic gold medals, fresh out of the amateurs, and finding an opponent was tough,” she said in a press release announcing the fight