UK’s largest housebuilder to buy less land in blow to Labour’s homes target

Britain’s largest housebuilder is planning to dramatically cut back on buying new land, blaming the impact of the conflict in the Middle East and putting Labour’s ambitious housing target under more pressure.Barratt Redrow said it intended to approve between 7,000 and 9,000 plots of land for purchase in its current financial year, far lower than previous guidance of between 10,000 and 12,000.The company, which had already committed to buying less land this year than the previous year, said “geopolitical events” had prompted the further reduction.“Now, with a less certain backdrop, given recent geopolitical events and their likely impact on mortgage rates and build cost, we are being even more selective,” the company said.As a result, Barratt Redrow now expects to spend between £700m and £800m on land this year, down from previous guidance of between £800m and £900m

IMF calls for countries to economise on energy supplies, and hails UK’s budget deficit improvement – as it happened

Newsflash: The International Monetary Fund has applauded the UK’s progress in reducing its budget deficit last year.A day after slashing the UK’s growth forecasts, the IMF cited Britain as an example of an major economy which managed to trim its borrowings, after the UK’s deficit fell from 6.1% of GDP in 2024 to 5.4% in 2025.In its latest Fiscal Monitor report, just released at its spring meeting in Washington, the IMF says:double quotation markIn 2025, the headline deficit for advanced economies excluding the United States held broadly steady at 2

Fisa surveillance vote sparks fierce debate as Congress splits on warrantless monitoring

A controversial law that grants the US government sweeping powers for warrantless surveillance is set to expire next week. Replacing it has inspired fierce debate within the White House and Congress, including a scheduled vote cancelled the day of.A coalition of progressive Democrats and far-right Republicans is pushing for reform of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), but they face strong bipartisan opposition from lawmakers advocating for an 18-month renewal with no changes, in line with Donald Trump’s demands. House GOP leaders delayed a procedural vote on a clean extension of Section 702 on Wednesday, after the chamber’s rules committee approved the measure on Tuesday night. Republican leadership was expected to bring the measure to the floor on Wednesday but canceled the scheduled vote, amid dissent from privacy advocates in their own party

Snap Inc blames AI as it lays off 1,000 workers

Snapchat’s parent company plans to lay off 16% of its employees, around 1,000 people, citing “rapid advancements in artificial intelligence”, the social media company told staff on Wednesday in an internal memo. The staff reduction is part of a wave of tech industry layoffs in the past year, with many firms blaming AI for the cuts.Snap Inc’s layoffs follow demands last month from Irenic Capital Management, an activist investor whose portfolio manager wrote a letter to the Snap Inc CEO, Evan Spiegel, calling on him to reduce costs and headcount while criticizing the company’s current strategy. In Spiegel’s memo to staff, he claimed that the layoffs would move Snap towards profitability and suggested that artificial intelligence could fill the lack of human labor.“While these changes are necessary to realize Snap’s long-term potential, we believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote

LIV Golf meeting in New York fuels speculation over rebel tour’s future

LIV Golf executives have been called to a meeting in New York amid growing speculation over the future of the Saudi Arabia-funded rebel tour.Rumours that LIV could soon be shut down had begun to circulate on social media on Tuesday evening with officials from the tour declining to respond. LIV’s next event in Mexico City will begin as planned on Thursday, although as first reported by the Daily Telegraph, the tour’s senior leadership were all absent having been diverted to New York. Many of LIV’s senior personnel, including the chief executive, Scott O’Neil, were at Augusta for the Masters last week and have stayed in the US.LIV has been under pressure for some time owing to its inability to agree a merger with the PGA Tour three years after signing a so-called “framework agreement”, with that stand-off compounded by the desire of the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) to cut costs

Sir Craig Reedie obituary

Sir Craig Reedie, who has died aged 84, was a key figure in London’s successful bid to stage the 2012 Olympics. As a member of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games from 2005 to 2013, he formed a brilliantly effective campaign partnership with Sebastian Coe, the bid leader, doing much crucial work behind the scenes, first by helping to win the support of British politicians and then by marshalling the all-important votes of Olympic delegates who would determine where the Games would go.Coe, to whom Reedie was a long-time mentor, was under no illusion that without the older man’s diplomatic skills and influential presence within the Olympic and Paralympic movement, which he had developed earlier as chair of the British Olympic Association (BOA), London might never have won the right to host the 2012 Games.Reedie chaired the BOA between 1992 and 2005, and from 1994 was also a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), ultimately serving as its vice-president from 2012 to 2016. A passionate advocate of drug-free competition (“there’s no point in any of it if the sport is not clean”), he became a founder board member of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) in 2000, rising to be its president from 2014 to 2019, and a thorn in the side of those who tried to gain advantage by taking performance enhancing substances