Barnsley rebranded UK’s first ‘tech town’ as US giants join AI push

In 2002 Barnsley toyed with a redesign as a Tuscan hill village as it sought out a brighter post-industrial future. In 2021 it adopted the airily vague slogan “the place of possibilities”. Now it is trying a different image: Britain’s first “tech town”.The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, has anointed the South Yorkshire community as a trailblazer for “how AI can improve everyday life” in the UK.In the latest move in Labour’s drive to inject AI into Britain’s bloodstream, the government has announced four US tech companies – Microsoft, Google, Cisco and Adobe – have agreed to help as the council pushes to apply AI to local schools, hospitals, GPs and businesses in Barnsley, an area of South Yorkshire which has struggled with unemployment and deprivation since the coal pits closed

US jobs report delayed again amid government shutdown

The US’s closely watched jobs report will once again be delayed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced on Monday, amid a government shutdown.The January 2026 jobs report, originally scheduled to be released on Friday, will be rescheduled when federal funding resumes. Data collection for the report has been completed, but the shutdown has forced a delay to releasing the report, which will provide crucial jobs data on the US labor market following the weakest year for job growth since 2020, with the addition of only 584,000 jobs in 2025 compared with 2 million in 2024.“The Employment Situation release for January 2026 will not be released as scheduled on Friday, February 6, 2026. The release will be rescheduled upon the resumption of government funding,” Emily Liddel, associate commissioner of the BLS, said in a statement

Palantir beats Wall Street expectations amid Trump immigration crackdown

Palantir celebrated its latest financial results on Monday, as the tech company blew past Wall Street expectations and continues to prop up the Trump administration’s push to deport immigrants.Palantir has secured millions of dollars in federal contracts amid Trump’s crackdown on immigrants. The multibillion-dollar Denver-based firm creates tech focused on surveillance and analytics, to be used by the government agencies and private companies.Palantir’s biggest US customer is the Department of Defense; it also works with the Department of Homeland Security, and the majority of its revenue comes from deals with the federal government. Palantir reported 66% year-over-year growth in revenue from government contracts, to $570m

‘A mixed blessing’: crowdfunding has changed the way we give, but is it fair and effective?

Within hours of the Bondi beach terror attack, the money had already begun to pour in. As images of the tragedy flooded social media, people from around the world donated tens of thousands of dollars to the victims, their families and first responders.Passing the hat around the neighbourhood or the local pub has always been a staple response in times of crisis. But today, that instinct to open your wallet has been exponentially supercharged via a digital simulacrum: online crowdfunding platforms.GoFundMe fundraisers have since raised more than $3m for Ahmed al-Ahmed, who tackled and disarmed one of the gunmen before he suffered three gunshot wounds to his shoulder

All aboard the ‘stoke train’: why the snowboarding experience can trump any medal | Cath Bishop

As the Winter Olympics approaches, we get to watch sports many of us have never tried. How can we connect to these sports? What should we look out for? What can we enjoy and learn? Research by three-times Olympian Lesley McKenna into what makes snowboarding meaningful offers us some great ideas.As a British athlete, coach and team manager, McKenna experienced first-hand the pressures of managing athlete performance, wellbeing and the pursuit of medals. She saw the push and pull between the inherent creativity in pipe and park snowsport events and the drive for standardisation to make it easier to compare athletes.She felt the tension between the long-term joy of pursuing these sports and the external push for short-term results

Figure skater forced to scrap Olympic routine after Minions music copyright dispute

The Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté faces a last-minute scramble to redesign his Olympic short program after a copyright dispute blocked him from using music from the Minions franchise just days before competition begins at the Milano Cortina Winter Games.The six-time Spanish national champion, who is set to make his Olympic debut in the men’s singles event, said he learned late last week that the routine he has performed throughout the 2025-26 season would not be cleared for Olympic use. Guarino Sabaté said he had submitted the music through the International Skating Union’s recommended rights-clearance process months ago and had competed with the program without issue during the season, including at last month’s European championships in Sheffield.The ruling means the 26-year-old must now adapt or replace choreography he has refined for months, a daunting task in a sport where musical timing and muscle memory are inseparable.“Finding this out so close to the biggest competition of my life was incredibly disappointing,” Guarino Sabaté said in a social media post