UK borrowing costs rise again in blow to Reeves, as pound hits nine-month low – business live

Just in: the UK has successfully sold over £4bn of government debt, despite the jitters in the bond market which drove up borrowing costs yesterday.Britain’s Debt Management Office sold £4.25bn of five-year bonds, which mature in 2030, at an auction this morning.The auction, which Bloomberg says is the biggest sale of that maturity in more than a decade, was comfortably over-subscribed.The DMO received bids worth £12

Great Britain’s grid operator calls for extra electricity amid freezing weather

Great Britain’s energy grid operator has asked power plant owners to provide extra electricity by Wednesday evening as freezing temperatures take hold.Demand for electricity is expected to climb between 4pm and 7pm as fresh weather warnings take effect across England, with snow expected as far south as London.The National Energy System Operator (Neso) – which manages the energy systems in England, Scotland and Wales – said it needed an extra 1,700 megawatts of power generating capacity to avoid falling short of the electricity required to power homes and businesses within its normal safety margins.This shortfall, which was flagged by Neso on Tuesday evening, is roughly the equivalent of the output of two to three gas-fired power plants, or the amount of electricity needed to power about 850,000 homes.In an official market notice, the grid operator said: “We would like a greater safety cushion [margin] between power demand and available supply

Meta scrapped factcheckers ‘because systems were too complex’

The co-chair of Meta’s oversight board has said the company’s systems have become “too complex” after it decided to scrap factcheckers, as the chief executive of Elon Musk’s X welcomed the decision.Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the co-chair of the social media company’s oversight board and the former prime minister of Denmark, has said she and the departed president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, had agreed “Meta systems have been too complex”, adding that there had been “over-enforcement”.On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg made the surprise announcement that the Facebook owner would move away from using third-party checkers to flag misleading content in favour of notes from other users.The 40-year-old billionaire said that, starting in the US, Meta would “get rid of factcheckers and replace them with community notes similar to X”, as the company moves to prioritise free speech in the run-up to Donald Trump’s return to the White House.The move came only days after Clegg, Britain’s former deputy prime minister, left Meta after six years at the company, most recently in the role of president of global affairs

Mark Zuckerberg sports $900,000 watch as he calls time on Meta fact-checking

Mark Zuckerberg wore a rare Swiss watch worth nearly $900,000 as he announced a sweeping policy overhaul across Facebook and Instagram and offered to help Donald Trump take on governments deemed too censorious, according to a report.In a video message posted to Facebook on Tuesday, Zuckerberg vowed to prioritise free speech after the return of Trump to the White House, and said that Meta Platforms – the world’s largest social media business – would ditch its third-party fact-checkers and recommend more political content across its social networks.Meta, which also owns WhatsApp and Threads, plans to “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”, Zuckerberg added.Meta would also “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender” that were “out of touch with mainstream discourse”, the 40-year-old billionaire said, while wearing a Greubel Forsey “Hand Made 1” on his left wrist, Bloomberg reported. The watch retails for $895,500 before taxes, according to the outlet

Peter Hain urges South Africa to boycott Afghanistan game at Champions Trophy

The veteran anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain has called on Cricket South Africa to challenge the ban on women’s and girl’s cricket in Afghanistan. In a letter seen by the Guardian, Lord Hain urges the Cricket South Africa’s chief executive, Pholetsi Moseki, to take up the issue with the International Cricket Council before South Africa’s Champions Trophy match against Afghanistan in Karachi on 21 February.In a particularly striking passage, Hain draws a direct parallel of apartheid with the Taliban’s oppression of women’s rights in Afghanistan. “Having struggled long and hard for black and brown cricketers to represent their country like whites did exclusively for nearly a century, I hope that post-apartheid South African cricket will press for similar rights for all women in world cricket,” Hain tells Moseki. “Will South African cricket please raise the plight of Afghan women cricketers in the ICC and express firm solidarity with Afghan women and girls who wish to play?”Hain, who rose to prominence by challenging the South African rugby and cricket tours during the early 70s, reminds Moseki that female participation in sport has been outlawed since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021

The Spin | ‘Deep, minging, unpleasant’: cricket’s flooding problem is getting worse

ECB has been in touch with 27 clubs so far this storm season as the climate crisis bites. What can game do to stay afloat?The water started flowing into the New Road practice area at about 4pm on Monday afternoon, and just kept on rolling. It flooded the entire ground and half the car park, as well as the nearby racecourse, the rowing club and the public footpath – which is now a popular hang-out space for swans. The head groundsman, Stephen Manfield, a man of a remarkably perky disposition, sits on the balcony of the club’s sports bar watching the fourth flood of the season do its business, the water coming in from the burst banks of the Severn as well as round the back across the fields. For the benefit of Spin readers he pokes his measuring stick into the water – “four-and-a-half feet in the shallow end” – and still rising