Bond market turmoil eases as Treasury minister says ‘no need’ for government intervention – business live

Harriett Baldwin MP accuses Rachel Reeves of having ‘fled to China’ rather than face MPs over the rise in public borrowing costs, because she realises her budget means she is “the arsonist”.Baldwin says yesterday’s statement from the Treasury (which said the government has an iron grip on the public finances) was an “extraordinary emergency” effort to calm the markets.Darren Jones says these “inflammatory” comments are rather surprising, and don’t reflect reality.The trip to China has been in the diary for weeks, he points out.And he rejects claims that the Treasury has intervened in the markets, saying yesterday’s statement was simply a response to questions from the media

Shares in banknote printer De La Rue soar after it confirms takeover talks

Shares in De La Rue, the 200-year-old British firm that prints banknotes for the Bank of England, have surged after it confirmed it was in talks about a possible takeover offer from a well-known City financier.Investment funds controlled by the pensions and private equity entrepreneur Edi Truell have made a conditional offer for De La Rue worth 125p a share, valuing the company at £245m.The deal would be conditional on the completion of De La Rue’s planned £300m sale of its authentication division to Crane NXT, which was announced last October.De La Rue said in a statement to the stock market that its board was “considering its options”.The firm said in December that it had been approached by Truell and companies he founded about a partial takeover, of 40% of the business

Elon Musk says all human data for AI training ‘exhausted’

Artificial intelligence companies have run out of data for training their models and have “exhausted” the sum of human knowledge, Elon Musk has said.The world’s richest person suggested technology firms would have to turn to “synthetic” data – or material created by AI models – to build and fine-tune new systems, a process already taking place with the fast-developing technology.“The cumulative sum of human knowledge has been exhausted in AI training. That happened basically last year,” said Musk in an interview livestreamed on his social media platform, X.AI models such as the GPT-4o model powering the ChatGPT chatbot are “trained” on a vast array of data taken from the internet, where they in effect learn to spot patterns in that information – allowing them to predict, for instance, the next word in a sentence

Musk ‘lying like hell’ over AfD interview, says ex-EU tech leader

A former EU leader on tech has accused Elon Musk of “lying like hell” by claiming the bloc was trying to stop an interview the owner of X had set up with the co-leader of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland.Thierry Breton, who quit as a European commissioner in September, having overseen the passage of ambitious legislation designed to regulate big tech, said Musk had been disingenuous in claiming the EU was trying to censor his discussion with Alice Weidel, due to take place on Thursday evening.The US billionaire claimed on Wednesday on his social media platform: “First, the EU tried to stop me from having an online conversation with president @realDonaldTrump. Now they want to prevent people from hearing a conversation with Alice Weidel, who might be the next chancellor of Germany. These guys really hate democracy

‘Phenomenal’ Zoe Aldcroft named England women’s rugby union captain

Zoe Aldcroft has been installed as England women’s captain for 2025, taking over from Marlie Packer, and is set to lead John Mitchell’s side into the World Cup this year.Aldcroft, who was named World Rugby’s women’s player of the year in 2021, has undertaken the role on a number of previous occasions including emphatic victories over Scotland and Wales in the 2024 Six Nations but has been appointed on a permanent basis. The Gloucester-Hartpury forward will be supported by Packer and Megan Jones, who have been named as vice-captains.“Zoe is a phenomenal rugby player who consistently performs to a high standard in the [Premiership] and at international level,” said Mitchell. “She leads by example through her world-class actions, on and off the field, and is an integral member of our leadership group

Money or the starter’s gun? AFL and NRL riches remain a lure for Olympic hopefuls | Nicole Jeffery

Teenage sprint prodigy Gout Gout has taken the headlines but Australia had an equally promising and even younger prospect at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Lima last year. A Sydney schoolboy was the youngest medallist at the event, just 15 when he leaped a personal best of 7.80m to win the bronze medal in the long jump, beating boys up to three years older than him.But there is no guarantee Mason McGroder will still be competing in athletics when Brisbane 2032 rolls around. The talented youngster is also in the Sydney Swans Academy and could pursue a career in the AFL