FTSE 100 hits record high despite AI sell-off
Posted on Wednesday July 29, 2026

Strong corporate results buoy market as investors move money away from tech and semiconductor stocks

London’s FTSE 100 stock index has touched a fresh high, driven by strong corporate results as investors moved money away from tech and semiconductor stocks amid the global tech stock sell-off.

The UK’s blue chip index rose as high as 10,951 points on Wednesday morning before falling back slightly, its best level since 27 February, the day before the US and Israel began attacks on Iran and sparked stock market volatility.

Read more...

TfL brings case worth up to £1bn against carmakers over Ulez compliance
Posted on Wednesday July 29, 2026

Transport for London claims polluting diesel vehicles had been able to enter clean air zone without having to pay

Transport for London is pursuing a potential £1bn legal action against car manufacturers over vehicles that it argues should not have been allowed to drive freely in the capital’s clean-air zone.

The high court heard that TfL was making allegations of “fraud and negligence” against manufacturers including Stellantis, Jaguar Land Rover, BMW and Nissan over their vehicles’ levels of diesel emissions.

Read more...

BMW to cut ‘as many as 8,000 jobs’ under pressure from Chinese rivals
Posted on Wednesday July 29, 2026

Layoffs will come in admin and development divisions in Germany, with production operations unaffected

BMW is planning to cut as many as 8,000 jobs in Germany, according to reports, in the latest sign of Europe’s largest carmakers reducing costs under pressure from Chinese rivals.

The Munich-headquartered company has started a voluntary redundancy programme agreed with employee representatives, a BMW spokesperson said on Wednesday.

Read more...

Greggs sales jump as iced matcha lattes and chicken rolls become heatwave hits
Posted on Wednesday July 29, 2026

Rise to £1.1bn in first six months of year for bakery chain largely down to opening of new stores

• Business live – latest updates

Iced matcha lattes and a bigger range of salads and chicken rolls helped Greggs to boost its sales during the string of summer heatwaves, as the bakery said it was adapting to the UK’s increasingly hot summers.

Total sales at Britain’s biggest fast food business rose to £1.1bn for the first six months of the year, 7.2% higher than the same period a year earlier.

Read more...

Rogue OpenAI agent that hacked startup tried to attack other firms
Posted on Wednesday July 29, 2026

ChatGPT developer says activity by autonomous tool was not at severity or scale of what occurred at Hugging Face

OpenAI has revealed that a cyber-attack carried out by a rogue AI agent had more than one victim.

The ChatGPT developer said the agent – an autonomous tool able to carry out sequences of commands without human help – had located and used logins to access four other unnamed “publicly-available services” in addition to the US startup Hugging Face.

Read more...

AI tool will lead to more child refugees being treated as adults, charity warns
Posted on Wednesday July 29, 2026

‘Racist bias’ overestimating ages in Home Office’s facial-recognition software will lead to solo children being housed with adults, says Human Rights Network

Flawed and racialised models that underpin the AI-powered age-detection systems to be introduced by the British government will endanger children, rights groups and children’s charities have warned.

Urging ministers to reverse plans to introduce facial age-estimation technology to screen migrants, critics have warned that black children arriving from conflict zones are at risk of being of thrust into the adult system.

Read more...

Stephen Fleming to be appointed England Test coach after impressing ECB
Posted on Wednesday July 29, 2026

• New Zealander will succeed Brendon McCullum

• Likely to start on South Africa tour in December

Stephen Fleming is expected to be named as England’s Test coach, after impressing the England and Wales Cricket Board in a series of interviews over the past two weeks. The 53-year-old would work alongside his predecessor, compatriot, former teammate and friend Brendon McCullum, who remains in charge of the white-ball teams.

Fleming stood down as head coach of the Indian Premier League franchise Chennai Super Kings – as well as their subsidiaries Joburg Super Kings in South Africa’s SA20 and Texas Super Kings in America’s Major League Cricket – this month. That announcement was made after CSK finished eighth out of 10 teams in this year’s IPL, following on from a last-place finish in 2025, but also less than 24 hours after McCullum was sacked by the ECB as Test coach.

Read more...

Commonwealth Games 2026: 3x3 basketball golds for England and Australia, swimming and athletics on day six – live
Posted on Wednesday July 29, 2026

• Updates from Wednesday’s live action in Glasgow

• Medal table | Day six in pictures | Mail Luke

Men’s 200m freestyle James Guy qualifies for the final with the quickest time but Scott hasn’t done enough with Tom Dean making it through depsite finishing fourth in his heat.

Men’s 200m freestyle Scott looks like he’ll miss out with heat six seeing three men, including Matt Richards of Wales and Northern Ireland’s Jack McMillan, go faster.

Read more...