Ministers said to be considering bill to wipe out British Steel’s debts

Ministers are reportedly considering legislation to relieve British Steel of debts that have risen to nearly £1bn, as the government considers how best to prepare the Scunthorpe steelworks for sale.The government took control of the business last month after it said its Chinese owner, Jingye Steel, planned to close the plant within days. The move required emergency legislation that was passed in a historic recall of parliament.Jingye remains the legal owner of British Steel, despite the takeover, and is owed money by the company. Those debts would probably have been wiped out in a liquidation

Government considers sale of Brexit border checkpoint in Kent – reports

The UK government is reportedly considering selling a post-Brexit border check facility in Kent that could fall out of use as a result of this week’s trade pact with the EU.The site, based in Sevington, Ashford, was erected in 2021 with capacity for 1,300 lorries that were expected to face extra checks on plants and animal goods, including dairy and meat, entering and leaving Britain after Brexit.However, the deal between the UK and EU struck earlier this week is expected to remove the need for routine health and veterinary certification on the import and export of farm products ranging from fresh meat and dairy products to vegetables, timber, wool and leather.The government is now looking for a company willing to buy or repurpose the Sevington border control point.Ministers are said to have approached Eurotunnel directly, according to the Financial Times

Scattered Spider is focus of NCA inquiry into cyber-attacks against UK retailers

A hacker community known as Scattered Spider is a key suspect in a criminal inquiry into cyber-attacks against UK retailers including Marks & Spencer, detectives have said.Scattered Spider, a loose collective of native English-speaking cybercriminals, has been strongly linked with hacks against M&S, the Co-op and Harrods. M&S said on Wednesday it will take an estimated £300m hit to profits after its systems were hacked last month.The UK’s National Crime Agency, whose remit includes combating cybercrime, said the group was a focus in its investigations.“We are looking at the group that is publicly known as Scattered Spider, but we’ve got a range of different hypotheses and we’ll follow the evidence to get to the offenders,” Paul Foster, the head of the NCA’s national cybercrime unit, told the BBC

Most AI chatbots easily tricked into giving dangerous responses, study finds

Hacked AI-powered chatbots threaten to make dangerous knowledge readily available by churning out illicit information the programs absorb during training, researchers say.The warning comes amid a disturbing trend for chatbots that have been “jailbroken” to circumvent their built-in safety controls. The restrictions are supposed to prevent the programs from providing harmful, biased or inappropriate responses to users’ questions.The engines that power chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude – large language models (LLMs) – are fed vast amounts of material from the internet.Despite efforts to strip harmful text from the training data, LLMs can still absorb information about illegal activities such as hacking, money laundering, insider trading and bomb-making

Zimbabwe come in from cold but left crying for help at early signs of mismatch | Andy Bull

Of course the first morning of the summer was the worst morning of the summer. Test cricket, like a bank holiday picnic, is a reliable way to send the English sun running, and Zimbabwe’s first day of Test cricket in this country in 22 years started under thick ripples of ominous grey cloud, and in a freezing breeze. In the shop at the bottom of the Radcliffe Road Stand staff were sent running to the stock room to fetch up fresh boxes of beanie hats and hooded tops, as the crowd, caught short by the sudden dip in temperature after weeks of good weather, made an unexpected run on their supplies of winter clothing.Zimbabwe won the toss, which was the last thing that went their way all day. “We’ll have a bowl,” said their captain, Craig Ervine, and it must have seemed like a good idea at the time

‘I’m the right man’: Zak Crawley ignores pressure with century against Zimbabwe

If Zak Crawley showed little sign of the pressure he was under as he became one of three English centurions on the opening day against Zimbabwe, it is possibly because he did not know he was under any.The opener’s place in the team was presumed to be at risk after a poor run of form was followed by heavy hints that Jacob Bethell would be parachuted straight into the team on his return from the IPL, but after scoring 124 – England’s third-highest innings of the day after Ben Duckett’s 140 and Ollie Pope’s unbeaten 169 – the 27-year-old insisted he had heard no such rumours and had felt nothing from his coaches and colleagues except support.“They obviously think I’m the right man for the job, and I have that belief in myself as well,” Crawley said. “I love being around this group, and when you play for your country you’re going to be surrounded by good players, and that pressure is going to be coming all the time. Throughout my career, from when I was very young until now, I’ve always been made a better player by people around me doing well and forcing me to be better