Bank shares lead global market fall amid jitters over US private credit

European stock markets fell on Friday and gold hit a record high after two US regional banks said they had been exposed to millions of dollars of bad loans and alleged fraud.Signs of credit stress rattled markets across Europe and Asia. In London the FTSE 100 fell 0.9%, Germany’s Dax fell 1.8%, Italy’s FTSE Mib fell 1

‘A foot out in the cold’: leaders huddle at IMF as icy economic winds blow

“The security blanket is covering us, but maybe we have a foot out in the cold.” That was the typically colourful warning from the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, this week to its gathering of finance ministers in Washington.At its spring meetings in April, the IMF said the erratic trade policies emanating from the White House, half a mile away from its glass and steel HQ, amounted to a “major negative shock” for the global economy.Since then, experts’ worst fears have not materialised – global growth has held up; frantic negotiations, agile manufacturers and new trading links have prevented supply chains collapsing.But the US economy has been cushioned against the full effects of the trade shift by the AI mega-boom – and the IMF issued a clear warning this week that it may not last

The teamwork behind Bletchley Park’s Colossus computer | Letter

Andrew Smith is right to applaud the work of Tommy Flowers for building Colossus, the world’s first digital programmable computer, delivered to Bletchley Park in 1944 (Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies, 12 October). The piece concludes with Flowers stressing: “It’s never just one person in one place” – teamwork and collaboration are key. This is even truer than the article might imply, when it says “subsequent models” of Colossus “included many new features and innovations”, as if these had been the result of Flowers working alone, just upgrading his design. Quite the contrary.It is well documented (for example, in the 2006 book Colossus by B Jack Copeland and others) that the Bletchley Park codebreakers Jack Good and Donald Michie not only utilised Colossus to help break the codes, they enhanced the computer; it was these developments that were so successfully incorporated by Flowers in subsequent machines

Olivia Williams says actors need ‘nudity rider’-type controls for AI body scans

Actors should have as much control over the data harvested from scans of their body as they do over nudity scenes, the actor Olivia Williams has said, amid heightened concern over artificial intelligence’s impact on performers.The star of Dune: Prophecy and The Crown said she and other actors were regularly pressed to have their bodies scanned by banks of cameras while on set, with few guarantees about how the data would be used or where it would end up.“A reasonable request would be to follow the precedent of the ‘nudity rider’,” she said. “This footage can only be used in the action of that scene. It cannot be used in any other context at all, and when the scene has been edited it must be deleted on all formats

Risk of wheel bashing and strategy sets up complicated US Grand Prix

At the mid-point of this season it might have been considered that the title fight between McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri would simply be decided by which driver had the edge to take the flag at each remaining meeting. Going into this weekend’s US Grand Prix, however, the contest has become far more complicated and far more interesting.While only 22 points separate the pair neither has now won for three races, the team’s longest drought of the season. Moreover, they have been beaten on merit across a variety of tracks. At the fast, low downforce challenge of Monza and Baku, where Red Bull’s Max Verstappen took the flag, and the slow, high downforce of Singapore, where Mercedes’ George Russell more than had their measure

Taunts add spice as big three vie for Champion Stakes in thrilling Ascot finale

If you were to sit down with a blank piece of paper to design an ideal finale for the 2025 Flat season, the result would probably be a race with a striking resemblance to Saturday’s Champion Stakes at Ascot.It will be run over a mile-and-a-quarter, an ideal test for speed and stamina, and on good ground, with three of the world’s top-10 racehorses on ratings going head-to-head. The double-figure field also includes some very live “dark” horses that could spring a surprise, and a runner apiece for Ireland, Britain and France, European racing’s leading nations, among the three main contenders. The strength and depth of the competition is so high that punters who successfully unravel the puzzle can expect at least a 180% return on their stake, in the space of a couple of minutes.There is even a little needle to add further spice, after Aidan O’Brien, the trainer of Delacroix, suggested to a media briefing on Thursday that John Gosden, who trains Ombudsman, the favourite, “can whinge a little bit after races, whether he wins or he loses”