UK interest rate cut likely in March as unemployment rate rises; youth joblessness to ‘increase significantly’ in coming months – as it happened

The chances of a cut to UK interest rates next month have risen, following this morning’s data showing a rise in unemployment and a slowdown in wage growth.The City money markets now indicate there’s a near-75% chance that the Bank of England lowers interest rates to 3.5% at its next meeting, in March, up from 69% last night.Investors now fully expect two rate cuts by Christmas, which would bring Bank Rate down to 3.25%

Surging prediction markets face legal backlash in US: ‘Lines have been blurred’

State lawmakers and gaming regulators across the US are escalating their fight against prediction markets, arguing that the fast-growing platforms are “basically gambling but with another name”.At least 20 federal lawsuits have been filed nationwide, disputing whether companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket should be treated as federally regulated financial exchanges, as they maintain, or as gambling operations that should be regulated like state-licensed sportsbooks.The row escalated this week, when the chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which oversees these platforms, announced that it was filing a friend-of-the-court brief in defense of “its exclusive jurisdiction over these derivative markets’”.The legal battle comes as the sector surges. More than $1bn was traded on Kalshi alone during Super Bowl Sunday, and Bloomberg reported that Kalshi’s January trading volume reached nearly $10bn, most of it tied to sports

Claims that AI can help fix climate dismissed as greenwashing

Tech companies are conflating traditional artificial intelligence with generative AI when claiming the energy-hungry technology could help avert climate breakdown, according to a report.Most claims that AI can help avert climate breakdown refer to machine learning and not the energy-hungry chatbots and image generation tools driving the sector’s explosive growth of gas-guzzling datacentres, the analysis of 154 statements found.The research, commissioned by nonprofits including Beyond Fossil Fuels and Climate Action Against Disinformation, did not find a single example where popular tools such as Google’s Gemini or Microsoft’s Copilot were leading to a “material, verifiable, and substantial” reduction in planet-heating emissions.Ketan Joshi, an energy analyst and author of the report, said the industry’s tactics were “diversionary” and relied on tried and tested methods that amount to “greenwashing”.He likened it to fossil fuel companies advertising their modest investments in solar panels and overstating the potential of carbon capture

TikTok creator ByteDance vows to curb AI video tool after Disney threat

ByteDance, the Chinese technology company behind TikTok, has said it will restrain its AI video-making tool, after threats of legal action from Disney and a backlash from other media businesses, according to reports.The AI video generator Seedance 2.0, released last week, has spooked Hollywood as users create realistic clips of movie stars and superheroes with just a short text prompt.Several big Hollywood studios have accused the tool of copyright infringement.On Friday, Walt Disney reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance which accused it of supplying Seedance with a “pirated library” of the studio’s characters, including those from Marvel and Star Wars, according to the US news outlet Axios

Winter Olympics 2026: Team GB lose crunch men’s curling tie, Norway’s Frostad wins big air

And that, my friends, is that. Another Olympic day done. Tomorrow? The ski aerials, which got postponed from today. The snowboard slopestyle, good fun. The women’s and men’s team sprint medals in cross-country

‘The whole spirit of curling is dead’: meltdown on the ice as ruckus rumbles on

Well hell’s bells, who knew the ice could get so hot? The Olympic curling community is still all in a twist about everything that’s gone on in the sport since a row broke out between the Sweden and Canada sides on Friday. “The whole spirit of curling is dead,” Canada’s Marc Kennedy said on Monday night after his team’s 8-2 victory against Czech Republic, which felt like a bold take coming from the man who started this entire farrago by repeatedly telling his Swedish opponent Oskar Eriksson to “fuck off” after Eriksson accused him of making an illegal double‑touch.On Tuesday, the Canadians were outplaying the British. They beat them handily, 9-5, which means Bruce Mouat’s team have to beat the USA team and hope other results go their way if they’re going to make the semi-finals.“Mouat gave us a couple of misses to work with,” Kennedy said