Trump tears up part of EU tariff deal to raise import duties on cars and lorries
Posted on Friday May 01, 2026

US president says tariff on vehicles imported from EU will rise to 25% and accuses bloc of non-compliance

Donald Trump has said he is tearing up part of the tariff deal he struck with EU leaders at his golf course in Scotland last summer, criticising Brussels for taking so long to ratify the deal.

Blindsiding Brussels late on Friday, a public holiday in much of Europe, he announced that he would be increasing tariffs on cars and lorries imported into the US from the EU from 15% to 25% from next week.

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BBC News to bear deepest cuts amid 2,000 planned job losses
Posted on Saturday May 02, 2026

Staff warned news operations face 15% cut, above BBC-wide 10% target, as corporation pushes through £600m savings plan

The BBC’s news operation is to cut costs by a steeper-than-expected 15%, with staff told to expect heavy redundancies.

The division, home to about a quarter of all BBC staff, is being saddled with one of the highest cost-cutting targets as the corporation attempts to cut as many as 2,000 jobs in the biggest downsizing of the public service broadcaster in 15 years.

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UK defence firm Ultra Electronics to pay £15m after SFO bribery investigation
Posted on Friday May 01, 2026

Company accepts it failed to prevent bribery in connection with contracts in Algeria and Oman sought through agents

The British defence company Ultra Electronics has accepted responsibility for a failure to prevent bribery and agreed to pay £15m after an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.

The penalties are part of a deferred prosecution approved by the high court on Friday, after an investigation opened in 2018 when the company referred itself to the UK law enforcement agency a month after corruption allegations were published by Algerian media.

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‘People can see it – but can’t use it’: mystery of completed East-West Rail line that has no passenger trains
Posted on Saturday May 02, 2026

The East West Rail project linking Oxford to Milton Keynes was finished in 2024. There’s just one hitch: no services

The rumbling noise in the night, still enough to waken the unhabituated, is what really goads some people living in Winslow, Buckinghamshire. Freight trains running through the new station since late 2024 prove this stretch of railway is operational. But the long-promised passenger services have yet to appear – and there is no sign of any arriving soon.

Welcome to East West Rail, open or not. For well over a decade, ministers have talked up a new railway linking Oxford to Cambridge via Milton Keynes to accelerate the drive for housing, jobs and growth – an arc of tech industry hailed as the UK’s answer to Silicon Valley.

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Pentagon inks deals with seven AI companies for classified military work
Posted on Friday May 01, 2026

OpenAI, Google, Nvidia and others agreed to ‘any lawful use’ of their tech. Anthropic, feuding with Pentagon over potential AI misuse, was not included

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The Pentagon said on Friday it had reached agreements with seven leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies: SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Reflection, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

“These agreements accelerate the transformation toward establishing the United States military as an AI-first fighting force and will strengthen our warfighters’ ability to maintain decision superiority across all domains of warfare,” the Pentagon said in statement.

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‘Awkward and humiliating’: UK job hunters share frustration with AI interviews
Posted on Friday May 01, 2026

People describe unnatural process as survey finds nearly half of job seekers have been interviewed by AI

Nearly half (47%) of UK job seekers have had an AI interview, research from the hiring platform Greenhouse has found.

In its survey of 2,950 active job seekers, including 1,132 UK-based workers, with additional respondents from the US, Germany, Australia and Ireland, it found that 30% of UK candidates had walked away from a hiring process because it included an AI interview.

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Premier League, Championship finale and WCL semi-final buildup – matchday live
Posted on Saturday May 02, 2026

⚽ All the latest ahead of a pivotal day’s football action
⚽ Ten things to look out for | Fixtures | Tables | Mail David

That Frenkie de Jong interview leads us nicely – who says this blog is just thrown together? – to La Liga’s title race. In truth, it’s not much of a race at all as Barcelona can clinch the title this weekend with four games to spare. If Barcelona win at Osasuna today and Real Madrid can’t beat Espanyol on Sunday, it’s done. Then again, maybe Barca would prefer it to roll on a week as guess who are the visitors to the Camp Nou next Sunday? Yep, Real Madrid.

Saturday
20.00 Osasuna v Barcelona

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‘Of course, it crossed my mind’: Frenkie de Jong on refusing to leave Barcelona and his World Cup pain
Posted on Saturday May 02, 2026

Midfielder broke a Barça Dutch record last week and is potentially one win from a third league title with team he visited as a teenager for fun

A warm sun bathes the Barcelona training ground as Frenkie de Jong arrives to chat. The midfielder’s work is done for the day and the Netherlands international is in his comfort zone here, the first team’s longest-serving player, a regular captain and effortlessly fluent in Spanish. It is a far cry from the day just over 10 years ago when he visited the Camp Nou.

In late December 2015 De Jong made the most of the Eredivisie’s winter shutdown to take a city break in Barcelona with his now wife, Mikky. He was 18 and days from linking up with Ajax, who had signed him four months earlier but loaned him back to Willem II, and he managed to get tickets for Barcelona v Real Betis. It is an occasion that stuck in his mind.

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