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Fine of 10% of annual turnover among other potential penalties as environment secretary calls for Ofwat reviewSouth East Water could lose its operating licence after residents across Kent and Sussex faced up to a week without water.The environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, has called for the regulator to review the company's operating licence. If it were to lose it, the company would fall into a special administration regime until a new buyer was found. Continue reading......

Big tech companies cannot be trusted. It is not enough that they remove harm when they find it – the law must make their systems prevent harmOn X, a woman posts a photo in a sari, and within minutes, various users are underneath the post tagging Grok to strip her down to a bikini. It is a shocking violation of privacy, but now a familiar and commonplace practice. Between June 2025 and January 2026, I documented 565 instances of users requesting Grok to create nonconsensual intimate imagery. Of these, 389 were requested in just one day.Last Friday, after a backlash against the platform's ability to create such nonconsensual sexual images, X announced that Grok's AI image generation feature would only be available to subscribers. Reports suggest that the bot now no longer responds to prompts to generate images of women in bikinis (although apparently will still do so for requests about men).Nana Nwachukwu is an AI governance expert and a PhD researcher at Trinity College Dublin Continue reading......

Serious Fraud Office mounts seven raids on sites linked to company that raised £850m to tackle homelessnessThe Serious Fraud Office has arrested six people and raided seven sites in connection with a bribery and fraud investigation into a social housing fund.The agency estimated there had been £300m of “suspected offending” at Home Reit, which was once listed on the London Stock Exchange. Continue reading......

Government hails step towards clean power in Great Britain by 2030 – but the auction shows trade-offs are now neededOffshore windfarm contracts to fuel 12m homes in Great Britain after record auctionEd Miliband: With this record wind power auction, we've proved the rightwing doubters wrongThe government has defied gloomy price expectations for its latest auction for offshore wind capacity. The worry a few months ago was that bill payers would be forced to pay more than £100 a megawatt hour (MWh) via contracts that give developers guaranteed prices for their electricity output. In the event, winning projects landed at roughly £91/MWh.Cue some forgivable crowing from Ed Miliband, the energy secretary. “A monumental step towards clean power by 2030,” he declared. Officials pointed to calculations by the energy consultants Aurora and Baringa that £94/MWh would have been a “cost-neutral” outcome for consumers even though today's wholesale price, usually set by gas generation, is about £81/MWh (...

Staff at four private contractors with government agency contracts say training is poor, morale is low and the attrition rate is highGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastOliver* says morale is so low at the outsource call centre in Perth where he works that management has offered enticements just to get employees to come to work.In December the privately owned TSA Group ran a “12 days of giveaways” competition with more than $3,000 worth of prizes for staff working on the Centrelink phone lines, according to an internal flyer viewed by Guardian Australia. Continue reading......

Energy company also under pressure from worse oil trading performance and weaker oil pricesBusiness live – latest updatesBP has said it expects to write down the value of its struggling green energy business by as much as $5bn (£3.7bn), as it refocuses on fossil fuels under its new chair Albert Manifold.The oil company said the writedowns were mostly related to its gas and low-carbon energy divisions in its “transition businesses”, but added that wiping between $4bn and $5bn off their value would not affect its underlying profits when it reports its full-year results in February. Continue reading......

Blue-chip consultancy's boss says firm has an AI 'workforce' of 20,000 agents operating alongside its 40,000 staffBusiness live – latest updatesMcKinsey is asking graduate applicants to “collaborate” with an artificial intelligence tool as part of its recruitment process, as competence with the technology becomes a requirement in competing for top-level jobs.The blue-chip consultancy is incorporating an “AI interview” into some final-round interviews, according to CaseBasix, a US company that helps candidates apply for posts at leading strategic consulting companies. Continue reading......

US president says Jamie Dimon was wrong to suggest he was undermining independence of central bankBusiness live – latest updatesDonald Trump has hit out at the JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon, saying the Wall Street executive was wrong to suggest he was undermining the independence of the Federal Reserve.The US president and his administration have come under fire for their attacks against the Fed's chair, Jerome Powell, who is facing a criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice over alleged “abuse of taxpayer dollars” linked to renovations to the central bank's headquarters in Washington. Continue reading......

US owner scraps auction after bids from private equity firms fail to meet its £2bn sale expectations, report saysBusiness live – latest updatesCoca-Cola has reportedly abandoned plans to sell its Costa Coffee chain after bids from private equity firms failed to meet its expectations.The US soft drinks company halted discussions with remaining bidders in December, according to the Financial Times, ending a months-long auction process. Continue reading......

For Hannah Thorogood, a first-generation Lincolnshire farmer, grazing her sheep on solar land gave her a leg-up in the industryOn a blustery Lincolnshire morning, Hannah Thorogood paused between two ranks of solar panels. Her sheep nosedived into the grass under their shelter and began to graze.“When I first started out, 18 acres and 20 sheep was as much as I could afford,” said the first-generation farmer. “Now, because I can graze this land for free, I have 250 acres and over 200 sheep. Solar grazing has given me a massive leg-up.” Continue reading......

Exclusive: Discovery comes amid growing concern over lax regulation and children being put at risk by rogue operatorsCircumcision kits have been found on sale on Amazon UK, highlighting lax regulation as concerns grow about deaths and serious harms to baby boys.In December, a UK coroner issued warnings about insufficient circumcision regulation after the death in 2023 of a six-month-old boy, Mohamed Abdisamad, from a streptococcus infection. Continue reading......

While Grok has introduced belated safeguards to prevent sexualised AI imagery, other tools have far fewer limits“Since discovering Grok AI, regular porn doesn't do it for me anymore, it just sounds absurd now,” one enthusiast for the Elon Musk-owned AI chatbot wrote on Reddit. Another agreed: “If I want a really specific person, yes.”If those who have been horrified by the distribution of sexualised imagery on Grok hoped that last week's belated safeguards could put the genie back in the bottle, there are many such posts on Reddit and elsewhere that tell a different story. Continue reading......

Why 'historic' process is crucial to help government hit 2030 clean energy targetsOffshore windfarm contracts to fuel 12m homes in Great Britain after record auctionEd Miliband: With this record wind power auction, we've proved the rightwing doubters wrongGreat Britain has secured enough new offshore wind to power 12m homes after the most competitive – and financially generous – subsidy auction on record.The competition to secure renewable energy support contracts was considered a crucial test of the government's pro-growth agenda and its ambition to achieve a clean power system by 2030. Continue reading......

Right to work can be proved using digital ID card, e-visa or e-passport, in change to policy government insists is not a u-turnUK politics live – latest updatesThe chancellor has insisted she is “pretty relaxed” about what form of digital ID people use to prove their right to work in the UK, amid criticism of the government's latest U-turn.It emerged on Tuesday that a central element of Labour's plans for digital ID cards was being rolled back, leaving open the possibility that people would be able to use other forms of identification to prove their right to work. Continue reading......

The only way that Britain's energy bills can come down is if we are no longer reliant on fossil fuels. Today marks a big step towards that goalOffshore windfarm contracts to fuel 12m homes in Great Britain after record auctionIn the 18 months since I became energy secretary, the government has made a simple argument: that if we want to bring down energy bills for good, Britain needs to get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuels and instead build up clean homegrown power that we control.We know that bills rocketed when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because in the international fossil fuel markets, Britain is a price-taker, not a price-maker. Renewables and nuclear, on the other hand, offer us a chance for Britain to stand on our own two feet in the world – making and setting the price of our own energy.Ed Miliband is the secretary of state for energy security and net zero and the Labour MP for Doncaster North Continue reading......

Extreme weather events and biodiversity loss identified as the biggest global threats over a 10-year timeframeEconomic conflicts between major powers are the greatest risk facing the world over the next two years, according to experts polled ahead of next week's Davos summit.Among 1,300 business leaders, academics and civil society figures surveyed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), “geoeconomic confrontation” was identified as the most pressing threat. Continue reading......

Aim is to speed up acquisition of WBD studio and streaming businesses and hold off rival Paramount bidNetflix is reportedly preparing to switch to an all-cash offer to seal its takeover offer for the studios and streaming businesses of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), as it tries to speed up the deal and fend off a rival hostile bid from Paramount Skydance.The changes to Netflix's $83bn (£62bn) offer, first reported by Bloomberg, are designed to accelerate the acquisition, which is expected to take months to conclude, and make it more palatable for WBD shareholders. Continue reading......

I'll never tire of witnessing many 'firsts' for my second-born, but this is a luxury that should be afforded to everyone, not just those who can pay for itWhen I told people I was taking more than eight months of parental leave, the main reactions I got were: “What are you going to do with all that time?” and “won't you get bored?” These questions came from every direction – including health professionals involved in my wife's pregnancy and the arrival of our second child.More than halfway through my leave, I've been reflecting on what good parental leave looks like: leave that allows families to take the time to adjust to the new rhythms of family life. Thanks to a new policy at my work that gives parents six months of paid parental leave, in addition to annual leave, I will be returning to work not when our newborn is still tiny, our toddler is adjusting to a sibling and their mum is recovering from birth, but when our son is eight months old. This is markedly different to when our first...

After a 21-year-old employee was raped and killed by her supervisor in 2021, campaigners ensured conditions at the factory were overhauled. But its order book never recoveredAsk the women working at Natchi Apparels in the historic city of Dindigul in Tamil Nadu and many will describe the turnaround in their working conditions in the garment factory over the past five years as extraordinary.On 5 January 2021 the decomposing body of Jeyasre Kathiravel, a 21-year-old Dalit woman who was an employee of Natchi, then an H&M Group supplier, was found on a strip of farmland a few miles from her village after she failed to return home following a shift on New Year's Day. Continue reading......

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial newsThe industry is hailing the bumper offshore wind auction as a breakthrough moment for the UK's ambition for clean power by 2030.Dr Douglas Parr, policy director for Greenpeace UK, said:The North Sea may be running out of gas, but it won't be running out of wind any time soon. It is the best fuel to reduce the high energy prices gas companies have inflicted on UK homes. With new wind being cheaper than new gas, new nuclear or new biomass plants and lowering prices in electricity and gas markets, this auction keeps the clean ower 2030 target, the government's most ambitious climate commitment, on track.“These new wind farms will lower our bills when they come online, and shield us against the volatile fossil fuel prices driven by the actions of unreliable petrostates.The results of the government's offshore and floating offshore wind auction represent a significant step forward in delivering the UK's evolution to clean energy.This has the capa...