Bank of England governor says UK ‘not out of the woods’ on inflation, after leaving interest rates on hold – as it happened

The Bank governor, Andrew Bailey, has warned that the UK is ‘not out of the woods’ in the cost of living squeeze.Announcing today’s decision to leave interest rates on hold, Bailey said:“Although we expect inflation to return to our 2% target, we’re not out of the woods yet so any future cuts will need to be made gradually and carefully.”Food prices have been a key factor pushing up inflation, and there are forecasts that food inflation will rise towards 5.5% by the end of the year.Time to wrap up…The Bank of England has left interest rates on hold at 4% and will slow the pace of its “quantitative tightening” programme in the year ahead to avoid distorting jittery government bond markets

Novo Nordisk shares climb after positive results for anti-obesity pill

The value of the drugmaker Novo Nordisk jumped by about £9bn on Thursday after research showed that taking its new anti-obesity pill can result in almost as much weight loss as its Wegovy jab.The Danish company is racing against its US rival Eli Lilly to get a tablet treatment to market. Shares in Novo Nordisk climbed by more than 6% on hopes that it can claw back market share lost to Eli Lilly and cheaper generic versions of GLP-1 drugs.The shares had fallen by nearly 60% in the past year as sales slowed and Novo issued several profit warnings, prompting its new chief executive, Mike Doustdar, to plan 9,000 layoffs.Novo said on Thursday that a once-daily pill version of Wegovy helped people achieve “significant weight” loss in a clinical trial, with close to one in three participants losing 20% or more weight

What is new in UK-US tech deal and what will it mean for the British economy?

Donald Trump’s arrival in the UK on Tuesday night was accompanied by a multibillion-dollar transatlantic tech agreement.The announcement features some of the biggest names from Silicon Valley: the chipmaker Nvidia; the ChatGPT developer, OpenAI; and Microsoft. Big numbers were involved, with Microsoft hailing its $30bn (£22bn) investment as a major commitment to the UK – and adding, in an apparent swipe at its rivals, that it was not making “empty tech promises”.Here is a breakdown of the announcements in the UK-US “tech prosperity deal”, spelling out what is explicitly new in them.Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, hailed the “single biggest announcement” in the pact and insisted it was not an empty promise

UK is going to be ‘AI superpower’, says Nvidia boss as he invests £500m

Jensen Huang, the co-founder and chief executive of the US AI chipmaker Nvidia, has predicted “the UK is going to be an AI superpower” as he announced a new £500m investment in a British firm.Huang, who is due to join Donald Trump at Wednesday night’s state banquet with the king, said he was taking an equity stake in NScale, a UK cloud computing company, and predicted it would earn revenues of up to £50bn over the next six years.“We’re here to announce that the UK is going to be an AI superpower,” he told a press conference in London.Huang cited as evidence of Britain’s potential its universities and several companies founded in the UK, ranging from the AI giant DeepMind to the driverless car startup Wayve. “You just don’t appreciate it

Keely Hodgkinson escapes boredom to lift British spirits at world championships

It has not been the greatest world championships for Britain so far, with only Jake Wightman’s 1500m silver medal lifting the gloom. But on Thursday the cavalry finally arrived in the form of Keely Hodgkinson.The Olympic 800m champion has been so bored in her hotel in the 35c heat she has even taken to staging playful indoor races with her training partner, Georgia Hunter Bell. But she dusted off the cobwebs in qualifying comfortably for Friday’s semi-finals in 1min 59.79sec

Piastri and Norris ‘in control of own destiny’ in F1 world championship battle

Oscar Piastri has insisted that he and his McLaren teammate, Lando Norris, are in control of their own destiny as they fight for the Formula One world championship after the pair were involved in a highly controversial swap imposed by the team at the Italian Grand Prix.Given the pair are in a two-horse race for the title, the question of team orders playing a potentially decisive role loomed large after Monza. Max Verstappen won the race but McLaren’s decision to have Piastri return second place to Norris, after the British driver lost the position due to a slow pit stop caused by a faulty wheel gun, was contentious.With Norris claiming second place he gained three points on his teammate in the championship standings, narrowing the gap to 31 points. Many fans were aggrieved at the perceived manipulation of the result and the Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, warned that the team’s use of team orders in an effort to be as fair as possible to both drivers risked setting precedents that would become increasingly hard to manage in the title run-in