Reeves appoints higher pay advocate to fight skills shortages as chief economic adviser

Rachel Reeves has appointed a labour market expert who has repeatedly called for better pay and conditions in key sectors, such as social care, to reduce the UK’s reliance on migrant workers as her new chief economic adviser.Prof Brian Bell, who chairs the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), which advises the government, has been announced as the new chief economic adviser in the Treasury – a senior civil service role.He will take up the post just as the UK economy is adjusting to a plunge in net migration, which fell by more than two-thirds, to 204,000, in the year to June 2025.Some economists have predicted a further decline, towards zero net migration – but Bell rejects that forecast, expecting it to bounce back towards 300,000 a year by the end of the decade.A professor of economics at King’s College London, Bell has used his role on the MAC to make the point that the “skills shortages” bemoaned by UK employers may often reflect the failure to offer good enough terms and conditions to domestic workers

Trump ‘plans to roll back’ some metal tariffs; US inflation weaker than expected in January - business live

Time to wrap up…US inflation moderated in January to 2.4%, an easing after Donald Trump’s tariffs triggered price fluctuations last year.Prices rose 0.2% from December to January, according to data released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday measuring the consumer price index (CPI), which measures the price of a basket of goods and services. Core CPI, which strips out the volatile food and energy industries, went up 0

AI is indeed coming – but there is also evidence to allay investor fears

The message from investors to the software, wealth management, legal services and logistics industries this month has been clear: AI is coming for your business.The release of new, ever more powerful AI tools has coincided with a stock market slide, which has swept up sectors as diverse as drug distribution, commercial property and price comparison sites. Advances in the technology are giving increasing credulity to predictions that it could render millions of white-collar jobs obsolete – or, at least, eat into the profits of established companies.Carl Benedikt Frey, the author of How Progress Ends and an associate professor of AI and work at the University of Oxford, says investors are reassessing the value of companies that rely heavily on selling software or specialist knowledge.“AI turns once-scarce expertise into output that’s cheaper, faster, and increasingly comparable, which compresses margins long before whole jobs disappear

Anthropic raises $30bn in latest round, valuing Claude bot maker at $380bn

Anthropic, the US AI startup behind the Claude chatbot, has raised $30bn (£22bn) in a funding round that more than doubled its valuation to $380bn.The company’s previous funding round in September achieved a value of $183bn, with further improvements in the technology since then spurring even greater investor interest.The fundraising was announced amid a series of stock market moves against industries that face disruption from the latest models, including software, trucking and logistics, wealth management and commercial property services.The funding round, led by the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and the hedge fund Coatue Management, is among the largest private fundraising deals on record.“Anthropic is the clear category leader in enterprise AI,” said Choo Yong Cheen, the chief investment officer of private equity at GIC

Winter Olympics 2026: Weston ends GB drought, Heraskevych’s appeal rejected by Cas – as it happened

What a final run! Weston finishes with a faultless ride and actually increases the gap between himself and the rest of the field. It is there! He finishes in a time of 55.61 seconds which is a new course record to boot.Weston falls to his knees on the ice. He then removes his helmet and his mouthguard and is visibly emotional, he punches the air and lets out a howl of joy

Ilia Malinin falls twice as Kazakhstan’s Shaidorov stuns field for Olympic gold

For nearly two years, Ilia Malinin has made men’s figure skating feel predictable in the most spectacular of ways. On Friday night on the southern outskirts of Milan, the Olympic Games reminded the sport, and perhaps Malinin himself, that predictability is never guaranteed on its biggest stage.The overwhelming favorite entering the free skate, the 21-year-old American instead saw the Olympic title slip away to Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov after an error-strewn performance that will go down among the biggest shocks in modern figure skating history.Shaidorov’s season-best total of 291.58 vaulted him from fifth after the short program as one favored contender after another faltered