Happy Monday. As the cost of living soars, there appears to be very few exceptions - including historic lifejackets from sunken ships.

Last week the only life jacket from the Titanic to be sold in an auction went for a staggering £670,000! The lifejacket was worn by first class passenger Laura Mabel Francatelli, who even signed the floatation device.

It was expected to fetch £250k-£350k at auction, the whopping winning bid of £670k makes you wonder how you calculate the inflation rate of a 114 year old lifejacket!

Notable UK earnings this week: Associated British Foods (ABF), trading updates (not earnings) from Reckitt (RKT) and Unilever (ULVR).

Notable US earnings this week: Tesla (TSLA), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Boeing (BA), Proctor & Gamble (PG), PepsiCo (PEP), Intel (INTC).

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🌊 Geotechnical work set for Bowdun offshore wind site in Scotland. Read more

🔋 £2.5bn Gigafactory approved to replace Coventry Airport. Read more

Rolls Royce sign govt nuclear contract
Rolls‑Royce SMR and Great British Energy – Nuclear signed a contract on 13 April 2026 to kick off work on three small modular reactors (SMRs) at Wylfa, Anglesey, with the National Wealth Fund offering up to £599 million to speed development. The deal follows the government's 2025 Spending Review, which carved out £2.6 billion to get Britain’s SMR programme moving.

The contract lets Rolls‑Royce SMR start site‑specific design, regulatory engagement and planning immediately, and to order critical components from the supply chain. It also buys the certainty the company says it needs to ramp up recruitment - which is welcome news for the engineering firms and apprentices still wondering where the next big build will come from.

Rolls‑Royce pitches a factory‑built approach - about 90% of each 470 MWe unit will be built in controlled conditions, with on‑site work largely assembly of pre‑tested modules (roughly 16m by 4m). Think less mud, more module - a bit like IKEA for nuclear, but with better instructions and fewer Allen keys. The design promises 60 years of baseload generation if all goes to plan.

This isn’t just a local story. Rolls‑Royce already has continental commitments - an initial three SMRs at Wylfa and up to six in Czechia after ČEZ took a 20% stake and signed for deployment - signalling the UK’s SMR tech could become an export market (we’d actually be making stuff people want!).

No bonus for South East Water boss
South East Water chief executive David Hinton has said he will not take a bonus for the current financial year after a dressing-down by the EFRA Committee - though he will continue to pocket a £400,000 salary. It’s a decent pay packet even without the extra, which some customers may find a tad galling after being left without water.

The company’s supply failures in Kent and Sussex between 2020 and 2023 affected more than 286,000 people, with Tunbridge Wells hit hardest in December and January. Households had no tap water, some schools shut, and people couldn’t shower, bathe or flush - hardly the sort of modern inconvenience anyone wants to remember from the winter.

Backpack Brexit breakthrough
Britain and Brussels have dusted off the old student suitcase: the UK will rejoin Erasmus+ from 2027, reopening study and work placements across Europe. The deal - inked in Brussels - promises 100,000 participants in year one, from apprentices to school groups, with a handy 30% discount on the UK’s contribution.

Ministers pitch it as a post-Brexit reset with practical perks: better career prospects for less advantaged students and a welcome return of continental cultural mingling.

Trial and triumph
The NHS is attempting a speed run. Clinical trial set-up times have dropped from 169 to 122 days, edging toward the government’s 150-day target. Less paperwork, more patients: faster approvals mean earlier access to experimental treatments, with some trials launching in just 70 days. Backed by £137m and a bureaucratic bonfire, the UK is keen to look like the place to be for global research - where cutting-edge science meets, at last, a cutting-through system.

Prison paperwork purge
And in prisons, the filing cabinet is finally facing extinction. After a spate of wrongful releases, ministers are spending up to £82m to digitise the system, introducing a single “Justice ID” with biometrics to track inmates from arrest to release. Paper trails and alias confusion - prime culprits - are being replaced with databases and scans. Errors are already down by a third; the ambition is near-zero. It’s less “open the wrong door” and more “computer says no” - which, for once, is rather the point.

Fast-track push for “magic” medicine
President Trump has signed an executive order directing $50 million and an instruction for the FDA to fast‑track reviews of psychedelics such as psilocybin and ibogaine, telling a laughing Oval Office crowd, “Can I have some, please?” He stood flanked by a motley guest list - Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr Mehmet Oz, ex‑Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell and podcaster Joe Rogan - who, Rogan says, texted the president asking about ibogaine. Yes, policy by podcast guest list. Welcome to 21st‑century drug reform.

Next week the FDA will reportedly issue national priority review vouchers for three psychedelics, a move FDA commissioner Mary Makary says could shave months - perhaps weeks - off the approval timeline. It’s the first time the agency has offered to fast‑track these compounds; a reminder that regulators can move fast when the spotlight, and the headlines, demand it. Less than a decade after the FDA rejected MDMA for PTSD in 2024, the baton seems to be passing - or at least being hurried through customs.

The White House pitched this as a response to a national mental‑health emergency: the order cites more than 14 million American adults with serious mental illness and roughly 8 million on prescriptions for those conditions.

Judge throws out Trump’s $10bn WSJ defamation claim
A US judge has dismissed Donald Trump’s billion‑dollar defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal and News Corp, including Rupert Murdoch, over a July report linking the ex‑president to Jeffrey Epstein. The WSJ said Trump’s name appeared in a 2003 “birthday book” given to Epstein and that a note included a crude drawing; Trump sued last summer seeking at least $10bn (£7.4bn).

Judge Darrin Gayles said the complaint fell well short of the US legal standard for “actual malice” - the high bar public figures must clear to win defamation claims - and dismissed the case without prejudice. That means Trump has until 27 April to file an amended complaint, and his lawyer insists the president will refile the “powerhouse” suit and keep “holding accountable those who traffic in Fake News.”

Robot race racket
Beijing has staged the future, and apparently it runs on liquid cooling. A humanoid robot from Honor, running alongside the human participants and running autonomously, stormed through the half-marathon in 50 minutes, comfortably beating the human world-record pace over the same distance.

Last year’s winning bot needed two hours and change; this year’s was practically asking for a protein shake. Not every machine covered itself in glory - one toppled at the start, another kissed a barrier - but the broader point clanked home nicely: China’s robot race is accelerating, and rather faster than most joggers.

Monkey see, copyright Do
One cheeky macaque is still causing legal mischief. The famous monkey selfie has become an unlikely mascot in the fight over AI copyright, after US courts stuck to the line that works made without a human author can’t be owned. First it was a monkey with a camera; now it’s AI with a prompt box. The result is awkward news for anyone hoping to flood the world with fully machine-made “content” and own the lot. For now, at least, humanity remains annoyingly relevant.

Satellite scramble
Amazon, never knowingly under-ambitious, is splashing $11bn on Globalstar to bulk up its satellite internet plans and muscle into Starlink’s patch. The aim is thousands of low-orbit satellites by 2028, plus internet and mobile services from the heavens. It’s Bezos-adjacent brinkmanship in orbit: more rockets, more rivalry, and presumably more opportunities to lose signal in very innovative ways.

Hack to the future
Rockstar Games has been hacked again, though insists this latest breach is small beer. Still, it’s the second bite in three years for the GTA maker, whose unfinished GTA 6 footage famously leaked last time.

Driverless detour
London’s cabs may soon have competition that doesn’t chat about the weather. Waymo’s self-driving taxis have graduated from supervised learners to (mostly) independent motorists, now navigating the capital using AI - albeit with a human still lurking in the driver’s seat like a cautious chaperone.

The cars have clocked thousands of miles to learn London’s particular brand of chaos, from cyclists to sudden lane-swapping, and are edging towards a full public launch later this year, pending approval. The pitch is safety. The public, however, remains distinctly British about it: polite, intrigued, and not entirely convinced. For now, the future is here - it just hasn’t been hailed yet.

Bomb disposal drama
In Paris, a World War Two bomb discovered during construction in Colombes forced thousands from their homes before experts detonated it on site. The operation ended safely, with residents returning by teatime.

Hungary’s hasty handover
Over in Budapest, it’s curtains for Viktor Orbán after 16 years, as Péter Magyar storms in with a landslide and a to-do list. Armed with a supermajority, he’s eyeing sweeping reforms, from media shake-ups to term limits that could bar Orbán’s return. The outgoing leader calls it “the end of an era”; the incoming one seems keen to make sure it stays that way.

Bear-faced cheek
And finally, California delivers the sort of story that writes itself: three men jailed after faking bear attacks - using a man in a costume - to claim insurance on luxury cars. Investigators, unimpressed, dubbed it “Operation Bear Claw” and promptly unmasked the ruse. The damages were real; the bear, less so. A cautionary tale, perhaps: if you’re going to stage wildlife, at least make it convincing.