Reeves appoints higher pay advocate to fight skills shortages as chief economic adviser

Rachel Reeves has appointed a labour market expert who has repeatedly called for better pay and conditions in key sectors, such as social care, to reduce the UK’s reliance on migrant workers as her new chief economic adviser.Prof Brian Bell, who chairs the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), which advises the government, has been announced as the new chief economic adviser in the Treasury – a senior civil service role.He will take up the post just as the UK economy is adjusting to a plunge in net migration, which fell by more than two-thirds, to 204,000, in the year to June 2025.Some economists have predicted a further decline, towards zero net migration – but Bell rejects that forecast, expecting it to bounce back towards 300,000 a year by the end of the decade.A professor of economics at King’s College London, Bell has used his role on the MAC to make the point that the “skills shortages” bemoaned by UK employers may often reflect the failure to offer good enough terms and conditions to domestic workers

Trump ‘plans to roll back’ some metal tariffs; US inflation weaker than expected in January - business live

Time to wrap up…US inflation moderated in January to 2.4%, an easing after Donald Trump’s tariffs triggered price fluctuations last year.Prices rose 0.2% from December to January, according to data released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday measuring the consumer price index (CPI), which measures the price of a basket of goods and services. Core CPI, which strips out the volatile food and energy industries, went up 0

Elon Musk’s xAI faces second lawsuit over toxic pollutants from datacenter

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI is facing a second lawsuit alleging it is illegally emitting toxic pollutants from its enormous datacenters, which house its supercomputers and run the chatbot Grok.The new pending suit alleges xAI is violating the Clean Air Act and was filed Friday by the storied civil rights group the NAACP. The group’s 40-page notice of intent to sue alleges xAI has been polluting Black communities near its facility in Southaven, Mississippi. The pollution comes from more than a dozen portable methane gas generators that xAI set up without permits, the notice alleges.The NAACP’s first notice of intent to sue was filed last June and involves similar allegations regarding the company’s datacenter in Memphis, Tennessee

AI is indeed coming – but there is also evidence to allay investor fears

The message from investors to the software, wealth management, legal services and logistics industries this month has been clear: AI is coming for your business.The release of new, ever more powerful AI tools has coincided with a stock market slide, which has swept up sectors as diverse as drug distribution, commercial property and price comparison sites. Advances in the technology are giving increasing credulity to predictions that it could render millions of white-collar jobs obsolete – or, at least, eat into the profits of established companies.Carl Benedikt Frey, the author of How Progress Ends and an associate professor of AI and work at the University of Oxford, says investors are reassessing the value of companies that rely heavily on selling software or specialist knowledge.“AI turns once-scarce expertise into output that’s cheaper, faster, and increasingly comparable, which compresses margins long before whole jobs disappear

Winter Olympics 2026: skeleton, ski jumping, Norway win 10th gold, and more – as it happened

Righto, time for us to call it a night. Thanks for your company, we’ll be back tomorrow for day nine where nine Gold medals will be up for grabs. Buonanotte!Men’s Ice hockey: There’s a real ding dong going on over at the ice hockey arena in Milan as Denmark and the USA trade punches and goals. It’s 4-3 to USA with about 15 minutes to go… and as I type Jake Guentzel makes it 5-3 to the Americans.Speed Skating 1500m Final: Oh no! It’s a penalisation for Team GB’s Niall Treacy and he has his sixth place finish whipped away

‘Something to smile about’: Townsend salutes Scotland after shocking England

Gregor Townsend said Scotland’s supporters now had “something to smile about for the next 12 months” after his side regained the Calcutta Cup with a stunning 30-21 victory over England. The hosts ran out comfortable winners and Townsend said Scotland produced “some of the best rugby we’ve ever played” in the opening quarter.Given their wounding defeat to Italy on the opening weekend it will certainly rank among Scotland’s most memorable wins under Townsend, who has now been the architect of five Six Nations wins over England in six years. The head coach was full of praise for his players afterwards and says he was extremely proud of the reaction to the defeat by Italy.“I’m quite emotional,” Townsend told ITV Sport