Nearly £11bn wiped off UK banks after US regional banking fears spooked markets – business live

Nearly £11bn has been wiped off the value of the largest banks listed in London today.Banks were among the big fallers in today’s sell-off, with Barclays down 5.66%, NatWest losing 2.88%, HSBC down 2.5%, Standard Chartered losing 3

‘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

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

‘Legacies condensed to AI slop’: OpenAI Sora videos of the dead raise alarm with legal experts

Last night I was flicking through a dating app. One guy stood out: “Henry VIII, 34, King of England, nonmonogamy”. Next thing I know, I am at a candlelit bar sharing a martini with the biggest serial dater of the 16th century.But the night is not over. Next, I am DJing back-to-back with Diana, Princess of Wales

‘Great day for the region’: York join Toulouse in 14-team Super League

York Knights’ owner, Clint Goodchild, believes the club’s historic promotion to the Super League for the first time is a watershed moment for the whole of North Yorkshire, after they and Toulouse were granted admission to the top flight in 2026 and London Broncos missed the cut.The Knights will play in rugby league’s highest division for the first time since 1986 after they were selected by an independent panel alongside Toulouse to join the top 12 from Thursday’s IMG gradings and expand the Super League to 14 teams for the first time in more than a decade.Bradford Bulls, who finished 10th in those gradings, replace Salford Red Devils from this year’s 12-team lineup. The Knights, who were playing in League 1 as recently as 2018, and Toulouse have joined the Bulls among the elite after both dominated on the field throughout 2025.Goodchild, who bought the club in 2022, said York and the wider area were long overdue such success after the Knights became the first ­professional sporting team from there to play in a top division in almost 40 years

World-class Champion Stakes field provides fitting Ascot finale to Flat season

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”