Billions spent and hypothetical returns: the AI boom explained with six charts
Posted on Sunday June 07, 2026

Expenditure is growing fast and consumer take-up accelerating. But alarm bells are sounding

The race is very much on. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which makes AI models as well as space rockets, announced last week it is seeking a $1.77tn (£1.31tn) valuation on the US stock market while Anthropic, the startup behind the Claude chatbot, said it had filed for an initial public offering. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is expected to follow.

This latest peak in the AI market comes amid a multitrillion-dollar spending spree on related infrastructure such as datacentres. Meanwhile, companies are attempting to deploy the technology in a way that makes investing in it worthwhile. Here’s a look at what stage the AI boom is at and six key charts that tell us how we got here.

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Rachel Reeves may be unpopular, but she is quietly rebalancing UK plc | Heather Stewart
Posted on Sunday June 07, 2026

Policy U-turns could define her stint at No 11 despite many sure-footed advances on devolved spending to help kickstart growth

An air of unreality settled on a Westminster conference room last week, as Rachel Reeves, upbeat in a powder pink power suit, gave a speech about boosting jobs and growth along the “OxCam corridor”.

“If we get this right, working together, this corridor will not just compete globally, it will lead globally. We can do that together!” she told the audience of investors, policymakers and entrepreneurs.

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Social housing lists ‘would take 119 years to clear at current building rate’
Posted on Sunday June 07, 2026

Research shows generations of children in England will grow up homeless unless government addresses council housing debt, charity says

It would take more than a century to clear the social housing waiting lists in England at the government’s current speed of delivering new social homes, research by Shelter has shown.

The housing charity found that more than 1.3 million households are on a waiting list for a social home, but only 12,198 were built by councils, housing associations or private developers across England last year. This equates to an average of 110 households waiting for every new social home delivered, and it would take 119 years to clear the waiting lists if building continued at the same rate.

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Tax-break trees: how woodland became a store of wealth for the rich
Posted on Sunday June 07, 2026

Attempt to turn a stretch of the English-Scottish border into a commercial forest exposes threat to habitats from wealthy investors

On the English-Scottish border a small species of butterfly, the northern brown argus, has fended off one of the biggest investors in the UK.

Todrig, with its heath moorlands and hundreds of species of flora and fauna, represents an investment that could save Britain’s wealthiest families millions of pounds in inheritance tax.

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‘A driver of political violence’: how the breakneck AI boom is fueling anti-tech extremism
Posted on Sunday June 07, 2026

Backlash against AI is taking an extremist turn, following in the footsteps of earlier techno-pessimist militants

When a 20-year-old man from Texas was arrested earlier this year for allegedly trying to burn down OpenAI’s headquarters and Sam Altman’s house, authorities found an anti-AI manifesto alongside his lighter and a jug of kerosene. It was one of a spate of attacks that has caused alarm among researchers, the tech industry and law enforcement about the rise of anti-tech extremism.

In April, an Italian “nature pilled” Instagram influencer was arrested in Rome and charged with plotting a series of anti-tech attacks that took inspiration from Ted “The Unabomber” Kaczynski. Two self-described “ecofascists” that carried out a deadly anti-Muslim attack on a mosque in San Diego last month also cited “AI slop” and JD Vance’s ties to Palantir as motivations for their violence in their manifesto. An Indianapolis city councilor woke up earlier this year to gunshots being fired into his home before finding a note that read “NO DATA CENTERS”.

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Billions spent and hypothetical returns: the AI boom explained with six charts
Posted on Sunday June 07, 2026

Expenditure is growing fast and consumer take-up accelerating. But alarm bells are sounding

The race is very much on. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which makes AI models as well as space rockets, announced last week it is seeking a $1.77tn (£1.31tn) valuation on the US stock market while Anthropic, the startup behind the Claude chatbot, said it had filed for an initial public offering. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is expected to follow.

This latest peak in the AI market comes amid a multitrillion-dollar spending spree on related infrastructure such as datacentres. Meanwhile, companies are attempting to deploy the technology in a way that makes investing in it worthwhile. Here’s a look at what stage the AI boom is at and six key charts that tell us how we got here.

Read more...

French Open men’s final: Flavio Cobolli v Alexander Zverev goes to final set – live
Posted on Sunday June 07, 2026

• Game-by-game tennis updates from 2pm UK time

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Our players, in the locker room together, are ready … and here comes Cobolli. This is the biggest moment of his life: he’ll never have experienced anything like this.

Five weeks ago, Cobolli beat Zverev 3 and 3 in the semis at Munich. It’s true that, subsequently, the outcome was reversed in Madrid, but that was on a much faster court than Chatrier – which is more similar to the one in Germany.

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Kimi Antonelli holds nerve to win chaotic F1 Monaco GP after late red flag
Posted on Sunday June 07, 2026

• Italian teenager becomes youngest winner of race

• Lewis Hamilton second but Russell pays penalty

Kimi Antonelli won the Monaco Grand Prix for Mercedes with a dominant drive from pole to flag, becoming at 19 the youngest victor on the streets of Monte Carlo, in only his second F1 race at the circuit. In a dramatic close to the race he held his nerve through two restarts under immense pressure.

The Italian delivered a consummate exhibition to take victory from Lewis Hamilton in second and the Red Bull of Isack Hadjar in third, though neither really challenged the Mercedes. However, Antonelli had to weather nervelessly the tense final moments of a safety-car restart and then a full standing start after a red flag because the track itself was breaking up at the final corner.

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