Elon Musk rebuffs claims that Tesla could invest in Nissan

Elon Musk has rebuffed the idea that Tesla could put money into the struggling carmaker Nissan, after a report that said a Japanese group was seeking its investment sent shares soaring.Nissan’s stock market value jumped by 9.5% on Friday after claims that the former prime minister Yoshihide Suga was among those who want the US electric carmaker to become a strategic investor, possibly in exchange for Nissan’s American factories.Musk immediately appeared to reject the idea but Nissan’s Tokyo-listed share price still closed at 458.80, its highest since early January during short-lived merger talks with the larger Japanese rival Honda

Rachel Reeves given smaller than expected £15bn tax boost to UK finances

A rise in self-assessment and capital gains tax receipts gave the UK’s public finances a smaller than expected £15.4bn lift in January.The surplus is still the highest since records began in 1993 and is a reversal of December’s slump, when the public finances slid to a £17.8bn deficit.However, in a blow to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, last month’s figure came in below the predictions of City economists and the government’s independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), who had expected a surplus of £20bn

Apple launches iPhone 16e and ditches home button

Apple has put the final nail in the coffin of the home button after 18 years with the release of the new iPhone 16e.The lowest-cost new iPhone replaces the 2022 iPhone SE, which was the last Apple product standing with the touch ID button, finishing off its drawn-out demise, which started with the iPhone X back in 2017.The iPhone 16e costs £599 (€709/$599/A$999) and offers a modern iPhone experience similar to the regular iPhone 15 and latest iPhone 16 but with a few bells and whistles removed to reach a slightly lower price. It replaces the previously cheapest available £599 iPhone 14 and £429 iPhone SE in Apple’s lineup, and thus marks a considerable price increase for the cheapest new iPhone when it ships on 28 February.The new iPhone has an aluminium frame, glass front and back and an 15

Microsoft unveils chip it says could bring quantum computing within years

Quantum computers could be built within years rather than decades, according to Microsoft, which has unveiled a breakthrough that it said could pave the way for faster development.The tech firm has developed a chip which, it says, echoes the invention of the semiconductors that made today’s smartphones, computers and electronics possible by miniaturisation and increased processing power.The chip is powered by the world’s first topoconductor, which can create a new state of matter that is not a solid, liquid, or gas – making it possible to design quantum systems that fit in a single chip smaller than the palm of a hand, and to create more reliable hardware, a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature reports.Paul Stevenson, a professor of physics at the University of Surrey, said Microsoft could be “very serious competitors” in the race to build the first reliable quantum computers if the company successfully built on this research.“The new papers are a significant step, but as with much promising work in quantum computing, the next steps are difficult and until the next steps have been achieved, it is too soon to be anything more than cautiously optimistic,” he said

Chess: Carlsen wins again as he qualifies for the $1.5m Saudi Esports World Cup

Magnus Carlsen’s dominance of online chess has continued this week as the world No 1 is in pole position for the concluding stages of the Chessable Masters, the first leg of the annual Champions Tour which the Norwegian has won every year since it was launched in 2020. For 2025, the tour is also a qualifier for the Esports World Cup at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in July-August, where the chess prize fund will be $1.5m.Carlsen began with a smooth 3-1 victory against Russia’s Andrey Esipenko, then defeated China’s Yu Yangyi by 2.5-0

Canada’s ice hockey win over Trump’s America was her soft power laid bare | Colin Horgan

Trump can try to co-opt hockey. But Thursday showed that wherever where you’re from, when you step onto the ice, something about you will always be CanadianIn a clip from ESPN sports-talk program Get Up that went viral last week, former National Hockey League player PK Subban weighed in on the differences between NHL hockey culture and the culture in the NBA. Usually, comparing the two – the smallest of North America’s big four pro sports leagues – is a game of numbers: revenue, viewers, salaries, that kind of thing. But over the past 10 days, passion has emerged as a new key differentiator. “You can step onto an NBA floor and go through the motions,” Subban said on ESPN