Senate Republicans confirmed half a dozen of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees last week, continuing a quick pace to green-light as many of his picks as possible. While the Senate GOP is moving fast to confirm Trump’s judicial nominees, the president and some of his allies want to see an over-century-old tradition in the Senate that provides bipartisan guardrails to the judicial nomination process be eviscerated. They contend that the blue slip tradition is slowing...
Innovate UK has awarded more than £300,000 in funding to a collaboration between the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Sustainable Innovation and UK healthtech company Sanome, to accelerate the development of an AI-enabled system for the early detection of hospital-acquired infections. The 18-month SMART grant will support the co-design and roll-out of MEMORI, a Class IIb CE-certified software-as-a-medical-device (SaMD) platform that analyses real-time clinical data to predict infection risk up to seven days before symptoms...
Lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee are expected to be face-to-face with Ghislaine Maxwell Monday, the notorious accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring with the late billionaire pedophile. Maxwell is due to appear virtually before the congressional panel at 10 a.m. ET while currently serving out her sentence at a Texas prison. Her deposition will be behind closed doors, meaning it will not be viewed publicly unless...
Neither party has put a stake in the ground on the issue that will drive the next presidential election cycle. Artificial intelligence is expected to transform the global economy at a dizzying pace, radically reordering nearly every industry and bringing with it unprecedented disruptions in the labor market. Nobody is prepared to address what could be the biggest issue of 2028. In a recent earnings call, xAI founder Elon Musk described an exciting era of...
A High Court judge has ruled that thousands of people affected by a major data breach at Capita can continue with their legal action against the outsourcing group, in a decision being described as a landmark for large-scale data privacy claims in the UK. In a judgment handed down on 9 February, Master Dagnall rejected arguments from Capita’s legal team that solicitors acting for more than 8,000 claimants had abused the court process. Capita had...
The business secretary, Peter Kyle, has urged small businesses to rediscover Britain’s exporting spirit, calling on entrepreneurs to take a “leap of faith” and start selling overseas with the backing of government finance and advice. Speaking to an audience of small business owners at the UK Trade and Export Finance Forum in London last week, Kyle warned that the UK was losing momentum as an exporting nation. Official figures show that the proportion of UK...
Ocado is preparing plans that could see up to 1,000 jobs cut as part of a renewed effort to rein in costs, following a difficult year for its automated warehouse technology business. Up to 5 per cent of the group’s global workforce could be affected, according to people familiar with the discussions, although talks remain at an early stage and no final decision has been taken. An announcement could come as soon as this month....
Training workers to use artificial intelligence will be “critical” to managing disruption in the UK labour market, according to Andrew Bailey, who said there were already signs that AI was reshaping careers and hiring patterns. Speaking at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Bailey said the long-term impact of AI on employment remained “highly uncertain”, but warned that early indicators pointed to meaningful change. “In the UK, in the last three years, new online...
Royal Mail has urged small and medium-sized businesses to apply for its £1 million apprenticeship levy fund during National Apprenticeship Week (9–15 February), as it steps up efforts to help address skills shortages across the SME sector. Applications are open for the second round of the fund, which is available to businesses with up to 250 employees that sell products online. The funding can be used for any government-accredited apprenticeship, spanning areas from industry-specific roles...
Tesco is pressing ahead with a major expansion of its convenience estate after buying a number of former Amazon Fresh stores in London. Britain’s largest supermarket group plans to open more than 70 new Tesco Express outlets by March 2027, building on the 60 convenience stores it opened last year. The retailer already operates just over 2,000 convenience shops across the UK and Ireland as it seeks to capture a greater share of everyday, top-up...
