FTSE 100 hits fresh record high as gold heads for best day since 2008; SpaceX buys xAI in $1.25tn deal – business live

Britain’s FTSE 100 share index has hit another record high at the start of trading.With a risk-on mood gripping markets, the Footsie has gained 21 points, or 0.2%, to touch a fresh intraday high of 10,362 points.This means the index has risen by 4.3% so far this year

UK shoppers buy more fruit and yoghurt in healthy start to 2026

Britons started 2026 by buying more healthy food such as fruit and yoghurt as they attempted to hit new year health goals, while grocery price inflation eased to the lowest level since April, research has shown.Annual grocery inflation fell back to 4% in the four weeks to 25 January from 4.7% in December, offering some relief for shoppers, according to a monthly snapshot of the grocery sector from the research company Worldpanel by Numerator.Consumers turned to healthy eating, it said, with sales volumes of fresh fruit and dried pulses up 6% year on year, while fresh fish was up 5%, poultry 3% and chilled yoghurt 4%. Cottage cheese sales jumped by 50% and it was bought by 2

French headquarters of Elon Musk’s X raided by Paris cybercrime unit

Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company’s former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.“A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, the national police cyber unit and Europol,” the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network.It added in a statement that Musk and Linda Yaccarino had been summoned for voluntary questioning “in their capacity as de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events”. Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year.The prosecutor’s office said it was examining “alleged complicity” in offences related to the platform, including the spreading of child abuse images and sexually explicit deepfakes, the denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organised group

‘Deepfakes spreading and more AI companions’: seven takeaways from the latest artificial intelligence safety report

The International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market.Commissioned at the 2023 global AI safety summit, it is chaired by the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who describes the “daunting challenges” posed by rapid developments in the field. The report is also guided by senior advisers, including Nobel laureates Geoffrey Hinton and Daron Acemoglu.Here are some of the key points from the second annual report, published on Tuesday. It stresses that it is a state-of-play document, rather than a vehicle for making specific policy recommendations to governments

The Breakdown | England must overcome history of post-Lions hangovers to lift Six Nations title

All that performance data, all those fixture permutations. All the gym sessions and marginal selections. Not to mention all those finger-in-the-wind tournament previews. But what if identifying the winner of the 2026 Six Nations basically involves overlooking all of that – and is shaped by an underlying factor so simple that it is staring everybody in the face?Interested in finding out what this magic bullet might be? OK, here goes. Without cheating (or consulting your new friend Monsieur AI), spot the common link in the following sequence of years: 2022, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2006, 2002, 1998, 1994, 1990, 1984, 1981, 1978, 1975, 1972, 1969 and 1967? Tricky, isn’t it? Even years, odd years, irregular gaps … if you were a statistician seeking a mathematical pattern you would be sat there gazing at the numbers for a long time

Butler did it: 11 years on, was the NFL’s most criticized call actually the right decision?

The last time the Seahawks and Patriots met in a Super Bowl, a dramatic interception by an undrafted rookie changed the history of both franchisesWhen the New England Patriots faced off against the Denver Broncos in this season’s AFC championship, Malcolm Butler was at home in Houston. He had considered attending the game in Denver or watching on TV in a No 21 Patriots jersey, which he wore in Foxboro for four seasons through the mid-to-late 2010s, but feared he might jinx the outcome. In the end, it was just him and his nerves for company.Just as Butler was feeling somewhat at peace with that setup, and the Patriots’ prospects, a bad omen intruded: His wifi glitched, delaying the broadcast as the Patriots clung on to a three-point lead in the fourth-quarter. “I was lagging bad,” Butler tells the Guardian