Hapless Thames Water is finally drinking in the last chance saloon

Call yourself barbarians at the gate? Actually, KKR hates the decades-old description, but the US private equity firm is still meant to have a fearsome reputation for doing its homework, being a cute judge of political risks and going where others fear to tread. All of which makes its 11th-hour abandonment of its £4bn bid for Thames Water very odd.The suggestion is that the big bosses in New York couldn’t stomach the political and reputational risks of owning the UK’s largest and most crisis-ridden water company. If that’s the reasoning, though, KKR should explain itself. The political risks aren’t obviously worse than six months ago – and arguably are less now that the government’s water commissioner, Sir Jon Cunliffe, is talking aloud about “how to restore the stability and predictability of the regulatory system” in his interim report published co-incidentally on Tuesday

Bank of England governor warns Trump tariffs have ‘blown up’ global trade system – as it happened

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has warned that the path of UK interest rates ‘is ‘shrouded’ in uncertainty, due to the turmoil created by trade conflict.Testifying to the Treasury committee this morning, Bailey declines to predict how he might vote at the Bank’s next meeting, in late June.Bailey believes that the path of UK interest rates, which were cut to 4.25% last month, is still lower. But, he warns, that process is harder to predict

AI pioneer announces non-profit to develop ‘honest’ artificial intelligence

An artificial intelligence pioneer has launched a non-profit dedicated to developing an “honest” AI that will spot rogue systems attempting to deceive humans.Yoshua Bengio, a renowned computer scientist described as one of the “godfathers” of AI, will be president of LawZero, an organisation committed to the safe design of the cutting-edge technology that has sparked a $1tn (£740bn) arms race.Starting with funding of approximately $30m and more than a dozen researchers, Bengio is developing a system called Scientist AI that will act as a guardrail against AI agents – which carry out tasks without human intervention – showing deceptive or self-preserving behaviour, such as trying to avoid being turned off.Describing the current suite of AI agents as “actors” seeking to imitate humans and please users, he said the Scientist AI system would be more like a “psychologist” that can understand and predict bad behaviour.“We want to build AIs that will be honest and not deceptive,” Bengio said

‘Nobody wants a robot to read them a story!’ The creatives and academics rejecting AI – at work and at home

Is artificial intelligence coming for everyone’s jobs? Not if this lot have anything to do with itThe novelist Ewan Morrison was alarmed, though amused, to discover he had written a book called Nine Inches Pleases a Lady. Intrigued by the limits of generative artificial intelligence (AI), he had asked ChatGPT to give him the names of the 12 novels he had written. “I’ve only written nine,” he says. “Always eager to please, it decided to invent three.” The “nine inches” from the fake title it hallucinated was stolen from a filthy Robert Burns poem

Carlos Alcaraz beats Tommy Paul to reach French Open semi-finals – as it happened

That’s all for tonight. Thanks as always for following along with us and be sure to check out Tumaini Carayol’s full coverage from today’s action at Roland Garros.Third set: Paul 0-6, 1-6, 4-6 AlcarazAnd the Spaniard wastes no time. A hold at love with three winners in under two minutes closes the show. The last American man standing is out of the French Open quarters and defending champion Carlos Alcaraz is through to the semis!Alcaraz breaks in ninth game of third set!Third set: Paul 0-6, 1-6, 4-5 Alcaraz* (*denotes next server)This could be it

England v West Indies: hosts win by seven wickets in third men’s cricket ODI – as it happened

Righto, Simon Burnton’s report has landed which is my cue to get outta here. The T20I series starts on Friday evening up in Durham, do join us for that. Thanks for your company – goodnight!The Captains have their say:Shai Hope: We’re disappointed and hope to come back stronger.”“There’s always some positives if we dissect it. There’s a lot of things that we can take from the series and a lot of things that we can improve on