Hundreds of jobs at risk as John Lewis announces closure of in-store services
Posted on Tuesday July 07, 2026

Desks offering gift wrapping and bureau de change stations will be closed at dozens of stores nationwide

John Lewis has put 200 jobs at risk as it plans to shut down desks operating gift wrapping and foreign exchange services.

The 36-strong department store chain said it had begun a consultation on redundancies as it plans to close the desks that operate bureau de change services in 30 stores, and specialist gift wrapping in 25 stores.

Read more...

EU rejects suspending biometric border controls despite 20 ‘difficult spots’
Posted on Tuesday July 07, 2026

Officials admit new post-Brexit EES system is ‘not perfect’, as airports and airlines voice fears over delays

The EU has rejected calls by airports and airlines to suspend the implementation of new fingerprinting and facial recognition border controls even though it admits there are “20 difficult spots” with queue chaos.

With only a week to go before the peak summer holiday season starts, EU officials said the new entry/exit system (EES) was “not perfect” but would tell travel industry representatives that a full suspension was “not needed” and “not possible”.

Read more...

M&S invests in fridges that can cope with weather as hot as 45C
Posted on Tuesday July 07, 2026

Retailer admits it struggled in June heatwave and also had to order more ice-cream to keep pace with demand

Marks & Spencer is investing in refrigeration equipment that can cope with weather as hot as 45C as the climate crisis is expected to drive regularly higher temperatures in the UK.

“There is no doubt we were struggling in the nine days of [recent] extreme heat,” Stuart Machin, the chief executive of the food, fashion, beauty and homewares retailer, told shareholders at the group’s annual meeting in London on Tuesday.

Read more...

Bank of England plans to ease capital rules despite AI stability fears
Posted on Tuesday July 07, 2026

Central bank’s financial policy committee members voice concern on trimming big lenders’ financial buffers

• Business live – latest updates

The Bank of England is planning to loosen capital requirements for major UK lenders, even as policymakers expressed concern about the threat to financial stability from rapid AI developments and debt-fuelled stock investments.

The central bank said on Tuesday it was looking to remove and loosen some rules introduced after the 2008 financial crisis that determine the size of the financial cushion required to absorb losses and protect consumers and taxpayers when things go wrong.

Read more...

Revealed: landmark Scottish AI project has no prospect of meeting renewables promise
Posted on Monday July 06, 2026

Exclusive: Government and developers privately acknowledged Lanarkshire datacentre site had power provision ‘issue’

• ‘It’s smoke and mirrors’: hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentre

• What are Britain’s AI growth zones and are the plans feasible or ‘complete bunk’?

A landmark AI development billed as delivering jobs and prosperity has misrepresented its plans to channel a nuclear reactor’s worth of power to a site in rural Scotland, a Guardian investigation has found.

When it was announced in January, the government promised that an £8.2bn AI datacentre complex in Lanarkshire – built by the US firm CoreWeave and the Scottish company DataVita – would be powered entirely from on-site renewables and built by 2030.

Read more...

AI altering meaning of users’ drafts on issues from abortion to climate, study finds
Posted on Monday July 06, 2026

Researchers say small changes in drafting could spread rapidly and create long-term shifts in public opinion

AI tools are twisting online messages on sensitive political topics about everything from abortion to climate change in ways that could snowball to reshape long-term public opinion, experts have said.

As tech companies push AI tools as convenient ways to redraft and summarise the massive influx of daily messages, many inject their own political biases – some leaning distinctly rightwing, others more liberal, according to a study from Oxford and Potsdam universities.

Read more...

Argentina v Egypt: World Cup 2026 last 16 – live
Posted on Tuesday July 07, 2026

⚽️ World Cup kick-off time: 12pm EDT/5pm BST, 2am AEST
⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology| Golden Boot | Email Scott

You wait all day for one Ed Aarons post … then two come along at once! Just as I was trailing his preview piece, Ed gets in touch with this communiqué from Georgia.

The atmosphere is building at the Atlanta Stadium, where temperatures are already in the 30s. Thankfully it’s fully air-conditioned inside. As you might expect, there are thousands of Argentina fans here to see if the reigning champions can book their place in the quarterfinals but not all have managed to get tickets. One has even cycled all the way from Buenos Aires to be here so let’s hope he gets lucky. There’s also plenty of Pharaohs fans wearing Mohamed Salah shirts. Can the Egyptian King inspire them to a famous victory?

Read more...

Wimbledon 2026 quarter-finals: Osaka v Muchova; Auger-Aliassime v Djokovic; Sinner and Gauff win – live
Posted on Tuesday July 07, 2026

Quarter-final action, under way in SW19 from 1pm (BST)
Wildcard Fery extends Wimbledon fairytale | Mail Tanya

Now a love hold for Struff, who’s started pretty well and leads 3-2 He looks confident, but he’s not yet been put under pressure and I wonder if he can offer more testing returns. Even if he needs to stand back to give himself a better look at Sinner’s serve, he has to try and dig into it rather than hope e can struggle to a tiebreaker.

Nana Sinner appears to have been busy knitting Jannik’s top; that, or Nike have rinsed him with gear yet again.

Read more...