BP puts North Sea oil and gas business up for sale
Posted on Friday July 31, 2026

Move will end six decades of production in area, as new CEO tries to simplify company and cut debt

• Business live – latest updates

BP has put its North Sea oil and gas business up for sale as it looks to end six decades of production from the basin.

The firm announced on Friday morning it had launched a formal process to market its North Sea business for a potential sale. The move comes as BP’s new chief executive, Meg O’Neill, tries to simplify the company and cut its debt levels.

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Healey sets budget for late October, promising to ‘spread money and power’ around UK
Posted on Friday July 31, 2026

Chancellor will have to find money for Burnham’s policies while sticking to fiscal rules as borrowing costs rise

Andy Burnham’s government has set a date for a late October budget to “spread money and power” out of Westminster as the new prime minister pushes forward his tax and spending plans.

Announcing an autumn budget for 28 October, the chancellor, John Healey, said Labour would stick to its fiscal rules with its agenda to give businesses and households stability for the future.

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Boss of £300m used-car firm was ousted after ‘orchestrated plan’ by investors, judge rules
Posted on Friday July 31, 2026

Multimillionaire Peter Waddell is also found to have been properly dismissed from Big Motoring World for gross misconduct

A multimillionaire used-car salesman was ousted from his £300m company after “a pre-conceived and orchestrated plan” devised by private equity investors that had backed his business, a high court judge has ruled.

Peter Waddell, 60, was forced out as the chief executive of the Kent-based dealership Big Motoring World in 2024 in a coup that resulted in “more-or-less open warfare” at the car seller and caused “unfair prejudice” to the investment company that held Waddell’s majority stake.

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‘It’s too fast, too big’: speed of climate crisis is devastating crops, say farmers
Posted on Friday July 31, 2026

Drought and extreme heat are killing plants, driving up prices while also making some farms economically unviable

“It’s a constant battle,” says Tim Young. He and his family have been tracking the rainfall on their Norfolk farm since 1976, and the data shows the last six years have seen two-thirds the amount of rain compared with previous years. The lack of water has become the number one risk to Young’s business.

This summer has seen record-breaking climate induced heatwaves scorch much of Europe, which combined with droughts and “apocalyptic” wildfires has made farming virtually impossible. France has faced down fires that its president, Emmanuel Macron, called the worst since the second world war and on Wednesday half of England was declared officially in drought, with July expected to be the driest on record after winter floods, according to the Environment Agency. So how are farmers bearing up under the pressure?

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AI labels to be compulsory on authentic-looking content under EU rules
Posted on Friday July 31, 2026

Companies must ensure people know when they are interacting with artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look real

From apparently conspiring to steal elections to abusing staff or performing embarrassing dance moves, the last few years have seen plenty of fake content made about politicians intended to malign its targets and mislead the public.

Now EU rules aim to stem the flood of this deceptive content: starting from Sunday, artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look authentic must be labelled.

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Anthropic’s AI Claude hacked into three organizations during cybersecurity test
Posted on Friday July 31, 2026

Company says it discovered unauthorized access during ‘proactive review’ after rival OpenAI revealed rogue agent

Anthropic ⁠said on Thursday its AI Claude model hacked ⁠systems of ⁠three ​organizations during testing, days after rival OpenAI ⁠revealed a rogue agent had gone on a days-long ⁠hacking spree at the AI ​firm Hugging ‌Face.

Claude gained ‌unauthorized access to the ‌systems during cybersecurity evaluations after a misconfiguration allowed the models to reach the internet from testing environments that ‌were supposed to be isolated, Anthropic said.

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Infantino under huge pressure after plan for World Cup sell-off sparks resignation and rebuke
Posted on Friday July 31, 2026

• Cordeiro quits as senior adviser to Fifa president

• Lamour: sell-off plan ‘defies belief and imagination’

The walls started closing in on Gianni Infantino after another dramatic day that saw one of his senior advisers resign and brought a scathing rebuke from Fifa’s own chief operating officer.

Infantino is under huge pressure after his plan to sell chunks of the World Cup to private investors met a tide of opposition from around the globe. European countries have already promised to boycott Fifa competitions if he does not shelve the scheme but Friday’s developments, which led to two key members of his inner circle distancing themselves from him, may prove equally damaging to any prospects of salvaging his presidency.

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Commonwealth Games 2026: Hunter Bell wins 800m gold; athletics and boxing on day eight – live
Posted on Friday July 31, 2026

• Latest track cycling and athletics action in Glasgow

• Medal table | In pictures: day eight | And mail Taha

Boxing: Scarlett Savannah Delgado of Canada and Preeti Preeti of India will contest the women’s 54kg final after winning their respective semi-finals. England’s Lauren Mackie and Zambia’s Catherine Mwape will fight for bronze.

Up next it’s a 65kg home nations derby between Kaci Rock (Northern Ireland) and Caitlin Rainey (Scotland). Rock is the daughter of the former Irish boxer Jim Rock (the only man to hold Irish titles in four different weight divisions) and idolised Katie Taylor growing up. Initially her father tried to dissuade Rock from taking up boxing. “Sometimes when your mum and dad tell you you can’t do something, you want to do it more and I think that’s what happened,” she told BBC Sport.

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