We need clarity on big pharma’s tax breaks | Letters

The outgoing chief executive of the pharmaceutical company GSK says the NHS should pay more for its drugs, in order to create “the right commercial environment” and ensure “patient access to innovation” (UK must reform drug pricing to become life sciences superpower, says GSK boss, 29 October).Our research shows that UK taxpayers are already paying handsomely for “patient access to innovation” through the £3.4bn in tax relief on profits of patented drugs that the UK has granted GSK via the UK’s “patent box” tax regime. This includes £486m in 2024 alone – larger than the entire budget of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the UK’s main bioscience innovation funder.HMRC even granted UK tax relief to GSK on profits of a lupus drug, which for several years was unavailable to UK lupus sufferers, due to the price that GSK demanded from the NHS (£769

Time for Reeves to recognise reality: AstraZeneca has killed stamp duty on shares | Nils Pratley

It was one of those votes where the majority was always going to be huge. AstraZeneca’s proposal to list its shares directly on the New York Stock Exchange while retaining the quotes in London and Stockholm disadvantages nobody on the shareholder register.US investors get the chance to own AstraZeneca in full-fat form rather than via American depositary receipts (a wrapper provided by a handful of banks), a rejig that should widen the pool of potential investors and help the company with any future big deals in the US. Meanwhile, the pharma giant keeps its presence in the FTSE 100 index, upsetting no shareholders on the home front. “A global listing for global investors in a global company,” as Pascal Soriot, the chief executive, called it

‘History won’t forgive us’ if UK falls behind in quantum computing race, says Tony Blair

Tony Blair has said “history won’t forgive us” if the UK falls behind in the race to harness quantum computing, a frontier technology predicted to trigger the next wave of breakthroughs in everything from drug design to climate modelling.The former British Labour prime minister, whose thinktank and consultancy, the Tony Blair Institute, is backed by tech industry leaders including the Oracle founder, Larry Ellison, warned: “The country risks failing to convert its leadership in quantum research.”In a report calling for a national strategy for quantum computing, Blair and William Hague, a former Conservative party leader, compared the situation to the recent history of artificial intelligence, where the UK was responsible for important research breakthroughs but then ceded power to other countries, including the US, leading to a scramble to build “sovereign” AI capacity.“As we have seen with AI, a strong research and development base is not enough: it is the countries that have the infrastructure and capital for scale that capture technology’s economic and strategic benefits,” they said. “While the UK is home to the second highest number of quantum startups in the world, it lacks the necessary high-risk capital and infrastructure to scale those startups

In Grok we don’t trust: academics assess Elon Musk’s AI-powered encyclopedia

The eminent British historian Sir Richard Evans produced three expert witness reports for the libel trial involving the Holocaust denier David Irving, studied for a doctorate under the supervision of Theodore Zeldin, succeeded David Cannadine as Regius professor of history at Cambridge (a post endowed by Henry VIII) and supervised theses on Bismarck’s social policy.That was some of what you could learn from Grokipedia, the AI-powered encyclopedia launched last week by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. The problem was, as Prof Evans discovered when he logged on to check his own entry, all these facts were false.It was part of a choppy start for humanity’s latest attempt to corral the sum of human knowledge or, as Musk put it, create a compendium of “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” – all revealed through the magic of his Grok artificial intelligence model.When the multibillionaire switched on Grokipedia on Tuesday, he said it was “better than Wikipedia”, or “Wokepedia” as his supporters call it, reflecting a view that the dominant online encyclopedia often reflects leftwing talking points

Coco Gauff’s second serve the only thing between her and sustained success

World No 3 seems to have taken a step forward in linking up with Gavin MacMillan but double faults at the WTA Finals shows there is still work to be doneFor a brief, hopeful moment in the middle of an intense tussle with her compatriot Jessica Pegula, it seemed as if Coco Gauff had found her way. Gauff had struggled in the first set of their opening match at the WTA Finals in Riyadh on Sunday, but then she dug deep and slowly turned the match around. The American reached set point on her serve at 6-5 in the second set.Gauff then proceeded to hit three double faults in a row, which allowed Pegula to retrieve the break without touching the ball. Not a single attempt was even close

NCAA basketball 2025-26 predictions: from Sarah Strong to Darryn Peterson, the names you’ll know by March

The college basketball season tips off on Monday across the United States. Can the Florida men do a rare repeat? Who can fill Paige Bueckers’ star void? Our writers weigh inI’ll go with the St Thomas–Minnesota men’s team, eligible for the NCAA Tournament for the first time after making an unprecedented jump from Division III to Division I. They enter as Summit League favorites and now boast a $175m arena that’s given them a major recruiting pull. A March run could cement the Tommies as the Gonzaga of the midwest. Bryan Armen GrahamBeyond the excitement of opening night, I’m eager to see how Tennessee’s Kim Caldwell steers the ship in her second season – and where Notre Dame lands after Olivia Miles’ departure to TCU