Bank of England governor says UK ‘not out of the woods’ on inflation, after leaving interest rates on hold – as it happened

The Bank governor, Andrew Bailey, has warned that the UK is ‘not out of the woods’ in the cost of living squeeze.Announcing today’s decision to leave interest rates on hold, Bailey said:“Although we expect inflation to return to our 2% target, we’re not out of the woods yet so any future cuts will need to be made gradually and carefully.”Food prices have been a key factor pushing up inflation, and there are forecasts that food inflation will rise towards 5.5% by the end of the year.Time to wrap up…The Bank of England has left interest rates on hold at 4% and will slow the pace of its “quantitative tightening” programme in the year ahead to avoid distorting jittery government bond markets

Novo Nordisk shares climb after positive results for anti-obesity pill

The value of the drugmaker Novo Nordisk jumped by about £9bn on Thursday after research showed that taking its new anti-obesity pill can result in almost as much weight loss as its Wegovy jab.The Danish company is racing against its US rival Eli Lilly to get a tablet treatment to market. Shares in Novo Nordisk climbed by more than 6% on hopes that it can claw back market share lost to Eli Lilly and cheaper generic versions of GLP-1 drugs.The shares had fallen by nearly 60% in the past year as sales slowed and Novo issued several profit warnings, prompting its new chief executive, Mike Doustdar, to plan 9,000 layoffs.Novo said on Thursday that a once-daily pill version of Wegovy helped people achieve “significant weight” loss in a clinical trial, with close to one in three participants losing 20% or more weight

What is new in UK-US tech deal and what will it mean for the British economy?

Donald Trump’s arrival in the UK on Tuesday night was accompanied by a multibillion-dollar transatlantic tech agreement.The announcement features some of the biggest names from Silicon Valley: the chipmaker Nvidia; the ChatGPT developer, OpenAI; and Microsoft. Big numbers were involved, with Microsoft hailing its $30bn (£22bn) investment as a major commitment to the UK – and adding, in an apparent swipe at its rivals, that it was not making “empty tech promises”.Here is a breakdown of the announcements in the UK-US “tech prosperity deal”, spelling out what is explicitly new in them.Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, hailed the “single biggest announcement” in the pact and insisted it was not an empty promise

UK is going to be ‘AI superpower’, says Nvidia boss as he invests £500m

Jensen Huang, the co-founder and chief executive of the US AI chipmaker Nvidia, has predicted “the UK is going to be an AI superpower” as he announced a new £500m investment in a British firm.Huang, who is due to join Donald Trump at Wednesday night’s state banquet with the king, said he was taking an equity stake in NScale, a UK cloud computing company, and predicted it would earn revenues of up to £50bn over the next six years.“We’re here to announce that the UK is going to be an AI superpower,” he told a press conference in London.Huang cited as evidence of Britain’s potential its universities and several companies founded in the UK, ranging from the AI giant DeepMind to the driverless car startup Wayve. “You just don’t appreciate it

All-time Los Angeles Dodgers great Clayton Kershaw to retire at end of season

Clayton Kershaw, one of the greatest pitchers of his generation, will retire at the end of the season.The 37-year-old is nearing the end of his 18th MLB season, all of which he has spent with the Dodgers.Kershaw’s final regular-season start at Dodger Stadium will be on Friday, although he is likely to appear in Los Angeles again during the upcoming playoffs.“On behalf of the Dodgers, I congratulate Clayton on a fabulous career and thank him for the many moments he gave to Dodger fans and baseball fans everywhere, as well as for his profound charitable endeavors,” Dodgers owner Mark Walter said in a statement on Thursday. “His is a truly legendary career, one that we know will lead to his induction in the Baseball Hall of Fame

Nottinghamshire stun Surrey, Glamorgan promoted and more: county cricket, day four – as it happened

Josh Tongue, thundering in on his great long legs, bowled Nottinghamshire to victory in an electric Championship slug-fest at the Oval, giving Notts a 14-point advantage over Surrey going into the final round, and putting one East Midlands hand on the trophy.It was a game full of unexpected twists with Surrey often on top in their chase of 315. Ollie Pope made 41 until he was caught off Lyndon James then Dan Lawrence and Tom Curran attacked with a bravado that had Surrey members purring. In an inspired bit of captaincy, Haseeb Hameed then called up Liam Patterson-White for one over, Curran charged him and was stumped for 33. Lawrence was lbw for 50 to Dillon Pennington but some clean ball striking from Tom Lawes once more tipped the scales