Reeves to say cuts to City red tape will bring trickle-down benefits to households

Rachel Reeves will claim that cutting red tape for City firms will have trickle-down benefits for households across Britain, as she tries to drum up support for a new financial services strategy.A raft of regulatory reforms are due to be announced by the chancellor on Tuesday, in what the Treasury says will be the “biggest financial regulation reforms in a decade”. It will come before her Mansion House address to City bosses during a dinner at Guildhall in London on Tuesday evening.Under the “Leeds reforms” – which Reeves will announce during a “summit” with top City executives in West Yorkshire – the chancellor will declare that paring down burdensome regulation is key to unleashing UK growth and ultimately ensuring that households are better off.“I have placed financial services at the heart of the government’s growth mission – recognising that Britain cannot succeed and meet its growth ambitions without a financial services sector that is fighting fit and thriving,” Reeves will say

Hot weather lifts UK spending as fans and sports gear add to sales

Retail sales in the UK recovered in June as hot weather drove spending on electric fans, sports and leisure equipment, but households remained under pressure from high living costs.The snapshot from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) showed total sales grew by 3.1% year on year in June, after a sharp drop in May, as record-breaking temperatures and promotional offers encouraged consumers to spend.Official figures showed UK retail sales collapsed by 2.7% in May, the sharpest monthly decline in almost two years, in a “dismal” month for supermarkets as the economy unexpectedly shrank by 0

xAI announces $200m US military deal after Grok chatbot had Nazi meltdown

The week after its Grok chatbot identified itself as “MechaHitler” and generated antisemitic posts, Elon Musk’s xAI firm announced a contract with the US Department of Defense worth nearly $200m. The deal is for developing and implementing artificial intelligence tools for the agency.The DoD on Monday also announced similar contracts with $200m ceilings with several other major US-based artificial intelligence developers, including Google, Anthropic and OpenAI. The agency is partnering with the General Services Administration to make these companies’ AI tools available for use throughout the federal government.“Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our joint mission-essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems,” the US chief digital and AI officer Dr Doug Matty said in a statement

Elmo’s X account posts racist and antisemitic messages after being hacked

Hackers gained access to the X account of the puppet Elmo over the weekend and used it to post racist and antisemitic threats as well as make profane references to Jeffrey Epstein. Sesame Workshop was still trying to regain full control on Monday over the red character’s account.“Elmo’s X account was compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts. We are working to restore full control of the account,” a Sesame Workshop spokesperson said on Monday. Sesame Workshop is the non-profit behind Sesame Street and Elmo

Ben Stokes left drained after pushing through ‘dark places’ in England win

Ben Stokes said he expended every last ounce of his energy in pursuit of victory after England brought an end to a day of slow-building drama and mounting tension with the defeat of India by the wafer-thin margin of 22 runs in the third Test. “I thought I had taken myself to some pretty dark places before,” he said, “but today …”A game in which both sets of players sometimes allowed their emotions to boil over – behaviour that Stokes said he was “all for” – ended when Shoaib Bashir, playing through the pain of a broken finger that will rule him out for the final two Tests, dismissed Mohammed Siraj to put England 2-1 up in the series.“Obviously it was a great game, a close game,” said Stokes, who hauled himself through mammoth spells of 9.2 and 10 overs across the final day. “You’d think I should be saying it was [one of my best wins], but it’s just quite hard to get my head around it at the moment

Stokes is a destiny man who loomed over Lord’s like the angel of the north | Barney Ronay

The England captain can realistically set his sights on winning the series against India, then the Ashes“I’m not tired. I’m not tired. I’m not tired.” Really, Ben? Really? Well, you’re pretty much on your own in that case old boy, after a day where simply watching Ben Stokes being Ben Stokes felt like a full contact sport, psychodrama, soap opera, and in its stickiest moments like a man engaged in an act of public self‑medication by Test cricket.This fifth day at Lord’s was entirely dominated by Stokes, who loomed over it like the angel of the north, arms outspread, another note in his own extraordinary sporting life