New North Sea oil drilling faces delay after gear accidentally dropped in sea
Posted on Saturday July 25, 2026

Exclusive: Blunder at Rosebank, UK’s biggest undeveloped oilfield, comes as government considers granting licence

Production at Britain’s biggest undeveloped oil and gasfield could be delayed for months after equipment from a rig was accidentally dropped in the North Sea, the Guardian can reveal.

Andy Burnham’s new government is under pressure from the fossil fuel industry to allow oil to be retrieved from the Rosebank site despite opposition from climate campaigners and some Labour MPs.

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‘It’s not fair’: cafe owners frustrated over exclusion from business rates cut
Posted on Friday July 24, 2026

Business owners in England say prioritising venues selling alcohol leaves vital community spaces behind

Ferdinand Geus is proud of the positive, global impact his small speciality coffee business is having.

“Around 3,000 small, family-owned farms in Yemen rely on us – we’ve persuaded many to stop growing khat, the drug, and start growing coffee instead,” said the business manager of Sheba Coffee, which supplies Yemeni coffee beans to independent cafes across the world, including the UK.

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Trump threatens EU with ‘substantial’ tariffs over fines of US tech giants
Posted on Friday July 24, 2026

After Google fined €890m by EU, US president said Brussels was ‘robbing’ American companies and taxpayers

• What to know about Trump’s new tariffs on more than 80 countries

Donald Trump has threatened the European Union with additional and “substantial” tariffs after Brussels imposed a series of steep fines on US tech giants.

The US president accused Brussels of taking “direct aim” at several American companies including Apple, Meta Platforms, Amazon and Google, writing in a Truth Social post: “The United States of America is not a ‘PIGGYBANK’ for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!”

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Can Japan avoid a Liz Truss-style shock as its PM embarks on a giant spending spree?
Posted on Saturday July 25, 2026

Sanae Takaichi’s blueprint to inject £1.7tn and double economic growth leaves many investors fearful

International investors are asking where Japan’s prime minister will find the ¥370tn (£1.7tn) of extra cash that she wants to invest in 17 industrial sectors by 2040.

Such is the scale of spending by Sanae Takaichi’s coalition government that many in her own party fear she is about to blow up the Japanese economy, triggering a Liz Truss-style economic shock.

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‘I thought, I’ve tried everything else, why not give AI a shot?’: the long-lost family reunited by ChatGPT
Posted on Saturday July 25, 2026

Avtar spent decades wondering what happened to the mother he never got to know. Thousands of miles away, Nicci was haunted by the story of a half-brother given away before she was born. How did a chatbot bring them together?

As a small boy growing up in Amritsar, India, in the 1960s, Avtar Singh used to hear whispers. Your mum isn’t really your mum, the rumours would say. Your mum lives abroad. Avtar didn’t really pay any attention to it. “I thought, the neighbours are just making up stories.” But the stories were true: the woman raising Avtar was actually his grandmother. When he was too young to remember it, his father had emigrated to Canada to work as a teacher, leaving Avtar in the care of his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, a police officer, was a fearsome authoritarian, but his grandmother brought him up with tenderness, as if he were her own son. She called him by his nickname, Titu. He felt loved.

When Avtar was around eight years old, he was told about his family in Canada: his dad, his mum and a little brother were waiting for him there, and he would soon travel to join them. Just after his ninth birthday, Avtar found himself sitting on a plane, dressed in a three‑piece suit and tie. He was travelling alone. He had never flown before. He didn’t speak a word of English. He landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Christmas Eve, 1968; his family met him at the airport and took him home. “I didn’t know what to think,” Avtar, now 66, tells me in a video call from his home in Abbotsford, British Columbia. “Before I knew it, it was the first week of January, and I was put in school.”

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Space datacenters proposed by Musk and Bezos ‘catastrophic’ for planet, experts warn
Posted on Thursday July 23, 2026

New US petition demands review of plans from tech companies amid fears of environmental destruction

Space datacenters proposed by SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and others would release staggering levels of pollution that would probably alter the Earth’s atmosphere and be “catastrophic” for the planet, space industry experts and environmental groups warn in a new petition demanding a review of their impacts.

Tech companies have collectively proposed millions of “orbital datacenters” and are pressing forward with plans, which require Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval. Among other issues, pollution from satellites and rockets burning up upon re-entry appears to be accumulating in the stratosphere at alarming levels. The spacecraft release black soot, rare metals, aluminum oxides and other pollutants with unknown effects.

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Commonwealth Games 2026: Ramsay-Peaty in breaststroke final and day two updates – live
Posted on Saturday July 25, 2026

• Action, news and reaction on opening weekend

• McColgan pulls out | Sean McCann reaches final

• 10 things to look out for at Glasgow 2026 | Mail Will

The Australian netball team is in play, taking on Tonga, and leading 23-12 after the first quarter, the holders have been quick to hit form.

The Australian Cameron McEvoy, the reigning Olympic champion at 50m, finishes second in his heat, though second overall in terms of time, behind his heat-winner, Joshua Liendo. The top 16 go through to the semis.

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Pogacar set for Tour de France glory in shortened finale as Carapaz wins stage 20
Posted on Saturday July 25, 2026

• Four-time victor holds huge lead after Alpe d’Huez

• Final stage to be shortened due to wildfires elsewhere

Tadej Pogacar’s likely victory parade on the streets of Paris will come sooner on Sunday after the final stage of the Tour de France was shortened due to wildfires elsewhere in France. The stage will now be only 89km long and will start on the Champs-Élysées, where two laps of the avenue will be followed by the now traditional circuits of the Butte Montmartre.

In a joint statement with the prefecture police, the Tour organiser, ASO, said: “The ministry of the interior has decided to redeploy a portion of the internal security forces initially mobilised for the final stage of the Tour de France, in order to reinforce the response efforts in the areas affected by the wildfires.”

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