UK food inflation ‘could hit 9%’, trade body warns as Reeves meets retail chiefs

Food inflation could hit 9% in the UK this year even if the strait of Hormuz opens within the next few weeks, figures suggest, as the Iran war pushes up energy prices.The Food and Drink Federation (FDF), which represents 12,000 food and drink manufacturers, has predicted prices will rise by “at least” 9% by the end of 2026, almost tripling a forecast of 3.2% that was made before the Middle East conflict.The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, met supermarket bosses on Wednesday to discuss how to ease any impact of cost inflation on prices at the till, while global markets rallied on remarks from Donald Trump suggesting the war could end in “two to three weeks”.The FTSE 100 shut 1

Starmer’s ‘five-point plan’ was not a plan | Nils Pratley

‘We have a five-point plan for the immediate crisis,” declared the prime minister during his remarks from Downing Street on Wednesday. Really? Two of his five points were measures on energy bills that pre-date the Iran war. One was a description of support for a sub-set of consumers but dodged the key question of who else could get help.Another stated the government’s longstanding energy strategy in unchanged terms. The last was a diplomatic policy, presumably shoehorned into the cost-of-living passage because a five-point plan sounds better than a four-point one

Claude’s code: Anthropic leaks source code for AI software engineering tool

Anthropic accidentally released part of the internal source code for its AI-powered coding assistant, Claude Code, due to “human error”, the company said on Tuesday.An internal-use file mistakenly included in a software update pointed to an archive containing nearly 2,000 files and 500,000 lines of code, which were quickly copied to developer platform GitHub. A post on X sharing a link to the leaked code had more than 29m views early on Wednesday, and a rewritten version of the source code quickly became GitHub’s fastest-ever downloaded repository. Anthropic issued copyright takedown requests to try to contain the code’s spread. Within the code, users spotted blueprints for a Tamagotchi-esque coding assistant and an always-on AI agent, per the Verge

SpaceX confidentially files to go public at $1.75tn, reports say

SpaceX has confidentially filed for an initial public offering on the US stock market, according to reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. The IPO is set to be one of the most closely watched and highly valued listings in market history.Elon Musk’s company, which has become a dominant power in both space travel and satellite communications, could potentially seek a valuation upwards of $1.75tn. The confidential filing will give regulators a period to review and discuss the company’s financial disclosures before investors and the public are able to view them

Jaden Ivey’s release isn’t a victory for inclusion. It’s a lesson in athlete expendability | RK Russell

When the Chicago Bulls waived Jaden Ivey on Monday, after he made a series of unprompted anti-LGBTQ and religiously charged comments on social media, the move was framed as a response to “conduct detrimental to the team.” On the surface, the situation appears straightforward: a player said something controversial, and the organization acted.But there’s a version of this story where Ivey is still in the league. Where he and his publicist create a swift and thoughtful apology, where his overnight inclusion education uses all the key buzzwords to prove his newfound allyship, maybe he pays a fine or makes a small donation, and he’s able to go back on to the court and live out his dreams in the NBA, a league which has been pro-LGBTQ+ for more than a decade. Ivey’s words exposed his beliefs

‘He’s phenomenal’: American teen fast becoming athletics’ next big thing

Fire on the boards. Slack jaws off it. Last week, I was fortunate enough to be yards away from the 17-year-old American high school student Cooper Lutkenhaus when he powered away from a strong 800m field in Torun to become the youngest world champion in track and field history. But no sooner had the applause died down than the search for superlatives began.“He’s like David Rudisha,” said Eliott Crestan, the Belgian who took world indoor championship silver behind Lutkenhaus