Sir Bill O’Brien obituary

The life and career of Sir Bill O’Brien, the former Labour MP, who has died aged 96, could easily have been adapted by any self-respecting novelist to provide a snapshot of the characteristic 20th-century working man (and they were always men) who becomes an admired and respected solid citizen, having successfully harnessed decades of gritty industrial experience to elected public office, first in the town hall and then at Westminster.The archetype was further richly fulfilled in O’Brien’s case as he was a Yorkshire miner, born into poverty, who learned to have the courage to speak truth to power within his own dying industry – which meant standing up to Arthur Scargill as leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) – and always to defend what he believed to be the right course of action, irrespective of political fashion.He was categorised as a moderate, but in reality he was an unapologetic pragmatist. “I’m not extreme in any way,” he once said. He would also cheerfully acknowledge that sometimes he agreed with the views of Tony Benn – regarded at the time as the arbiter of Labour’s left – and sometimes he did not

Tesla’s UK sales fall almost 60% in July as BYD surges; Neil Woodford fined and banned over fund collapse – as it happened

Just in: Sales of Teslas in the UK more than halved, year-on-year, in the UK last month as the electric carmaker’s struggles continue.Industry body data just released shows that just 987 new Teslas were registered in the UK in July, almost 60% less than the 2,462 registered in July 2024. This means Tesla’s UK market share shrank to 0.7% in July, from 1.67% a year ago

Tech’s trillion-dollar binge, Palantir’s empire and women’s privacy under attack

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week, tech companies are spending amounts of money that stretch the limits of the imagination. Donald Trump’s administration is spending more money with data analytics and surveillance firm Palantir. And women on both sides of the Pacific face the extreme difficulty of keeping intimate moments private online.In last week’s edition of the newsletter, my colleagues wrote about the upshot of Google’s earnings call: lots of money earned, but, more importantly lots of money spent on AI

Tesla shareholders sue Elon Musk for allegedly hyping up faltering Robotaxi

Tesla shareholders sued Elon Musk and the electric vehicle maker for allegedly concealing the significant risk posed by company’s self-driving vehicles.The proposed class-action suit, which accuses Musk and Tesla of securities fraud, was filed on Monday night. Tesla conducted its first public test of its self-driving taxis in late June near the company’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. That test showed the vehicles speeding, braking suddenly, driving over a curb, entering the wrong lane and dropping off passengers in the middle of multilane roads. The National Highway Transit Safety Administration (NHTSA), the main transportation regulator in the US, is investigating the Robotaxi’s pilot test

Next up, the Ashes – and England will need Ben Stokes at his all-round best | Ali Martin

The England-India epic that ended up like two weary prizefighters trading blows will live long in the memory – a 2‑2 classic for which the players on both sides deserve immense credit. Not that Mohammed Siraj, still hitting 90mph on the speed gun on the 25th day, showed weariness. If anything, he could well hold the key to solving the world’s energy problems.Plaudits in particular go to three men who stepped up bravely when other sports would have simply subbed them off: Shoaib Bashir bowled with a broken left hand at Lord’s; Rishabh Pant batted with a broken foot at Old Trafford; and then Chris Woakes, Horatio Nelson armed with a Gray-Nicolls, followed him in folklore at the Oval. Don’t be fooled by the white flannels and the stoppages for tea – Test cricket is a brutal sport

Ray French obituary

Although Ray French was a dual rugby international, winning four caps for England at rugby union and then, after signing professional terms to play rugby league, appearing four times for Great Britain, it was as the BBC’s rugby league commentator that he came to national prominence.French, who has died aged 85 after living with dementia, succeeded Eddie Waring as the BBC’s voice of the sport in 1981, spending 27 years in the role. Waring had established a public profile, beyond his verbally eccentric rugby commentaries, via frequent appearances in light entertainment shows and knockabout comedy routines. And, like Waring before him, French too became a somewhat divisive figure among a cohort of rugby league supporters who believed he entrenched a stereotypical perception of their sport. With his distinctive Lancashire enunciation, catchphrases and characteristic lexicon, his critics accused the national broadcaster of choosing a figurehead designed to “keep the sport in its place”: an idiosyncratic pastime of northern England