Golden Apple 🍏

Happy Monday. Sometimes they build you up, only to let you down again - and this time it was for aliens. There’s been a twelve mile long object identified hurtling through our solar system.

A Harvard astrophysicist claimed the object was acting out of character and could legitimately be an alien craft coming to Earth. He went so far as to write a paper about it. As tempting as it is to leave it at that, it turns out not to be the case. It has now been dismissed as a standard interstellar comet, just doing space stuff. How disappointing.

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Prudential (PRU), Aviva (AV.), Admiral Group (ADM), Balfour Beatty (BBY), Page Group (PAGE).

Notable US earnings this week: Cisco Systems (CSCO), Alibaba (BABA), Applied Materials (AMAT), Deere & Company (DE).

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PROJECT WATCH

🌊 Allocation Round 7 open for government “Contracts for Difference” scheme, for low carbon project lots. Read more

💧 Statkraft secures land deal for Shetland Islands hydrogen project. Read more

📚 £1.1bn British Library extension contract goes to Mace. Read more

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Chop chop for interest rates
The Bank of England has slashed interest rates to 4%, a two-year low and the fifth cut since last summer. That creaking sound you hear? Mortgage holders exhaling in relief. But if you’re a saver... maybe don’t uncork the bubbly just yet.

This rate cut wasn’t your average Threadneedle St tea party either. For the first time in its very proper and prim history, the Monetary Policy Committee had to cast not one but two votes after an awkward 4-4 split. Enter Governor Bailey, who took the decisive tie-breaking swing after what we imagine was a painfully British standoff of polite disagreement and passive-aggressive sighing.

Rates are down thanks to a soup of bad economic ingredients: inflation that still refuses to shift off the couch, a job market doing its best impression of a deflated paddling pool, and steadily rising food and energy prices. Despite the cut, the BoE expects inflation to peak at 4% in September before (fingers crossed) settling nearer the 2% target.

Construction takes a tea break
The UK's construction sector has stumbled harder than a sunburnt Brit at a Marbella foam party. July saw the sharpest drop in activity since the dark, banana-bread-baking days of early 2020. According to S&P Global, the construction PMI slumped to 44.3 – worryingly south of the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction. Bad news for builders, worse news for Labour's 1.5 million homes promise.

Residential construction took the biggest hammering, falling faster than your house's online valuation after the neighbours put up scaffolding. Coupled with weak showings in civil engineering and commercial building, the industry is downing tools and bracing for a bumpy ride. Nearly 41% of firms said work slowed last month – a figure that should have Keir Starmer nervously thumbing through the blueprint.

POLITICS

No prison, instead no passport
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has unveiled a zero-minute deportation policy - foreign criminals will be sent packing the moment the gavel drops. No 30% of the sentence, no halfway point… just a straight conveyor belt from courtroom to cabin pressure.

The government says it’ll save £54,000 a year per prison place, though it’s keeping the right to hold onto certain offenders if they’re plotting more trouble. Since July 2024, nearly 5,200 foreign offenders have been shown the exits.

Cross-channel carousel
Within days, the UK will start returning small boat arrivals to France under a new treaty that swaps each undocumented migrant for an asylum seeker with British family ties.

The “one in, one out” pilot will start small - perhaps 50 returns a week. PM Keir Starmer, battling both falling approval ratings and Nigel Farage’s poll lead, insists it’s just one weapon in his anti-trafficking arsenal. France says it’s about smashing smuggling gangs; Britain says it’s about fairness; cynics might call it a Channel chug, paperwork in triplicate.

ACROSS THE POND

24-Karat Apple
In the latest episode of “Is this actually real life?”, the CEO of a 3.4 trillion dollar company gave the President of the United States an actual piece of 24-karat gold on live tv as he sidestepped a tariff train.

Apple's Tim Cook has quite the knack for gifting as well as gadgets, stepping beyond his $100 billion promise to thrust American manufacturing into the limelight. He presented Donald Trump with a glass plaque on an opulent 24-karat gold stand. Engraved, crafted in sunny California by a marine, and with gold sourced from Utah, it speaks of a grand strategy—or simply grandstanding.

Cook, affectionately labelled the “Trump Whisperer”, is back on the domestic scene thanks to Apple’s $600 billion commitment to US production. This includes expanding their current deal with Corning who make the glass for iPhones and iWatches. As part of an even bigger picture, the investment in US manufacturing effectively means Apple dodges the tariffs on importing those all important semi-conductors from overseas.

RFK takes a shot at vaccine funding
In a move that could ruffle more feathers than an American Independence Day turkey, the US vaccine programme just took a monumental cut worth $500 million (£375.8 million for those keeping tabs on the exchange rate). Unfortunately, this isn't about trimming the turkey - it's about slashing funding for vaccine development projects, with COVID-19 and flu jabs finding themselves on the chopping block.

Leading this charge is Robert F Kennedy Jr or RFK Jr - he's decided to halt 22 projects focusing on mRNA vaccines. This latest development is seen as just another chapter in the saga of reducing US vaccine initiatives.

While RFK Jr paints this as a pivot towards what he calls "safer, broader vaccine strategies", Mike Osterholm, a seasoned expert from Minnesota, is calling it the "most dangerous decision in public health" he's seen in five decades. To put it differently, Osterholm didn't mince his words..

TECH

Checkmate, chatbot
The rivalry between OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk just spilt onto the chessboard - and Altman’s o3 model walked away undefeated. In a Kaggle-hosted AI chess tournament, o3 beat Grok4 in the final, with Google’s Gemini taking third.

“Blundering” was grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura’s verdict, livestreamed to thousands. Musk shrugged, claiming xAI “spent almost no effort on chess.” Still, bragging rights are bragging rights — and right now, they’re parked firmly in OpenAI’s trophy cabinet.

Beijing bytes
Beijing just opened Robot Mall, selling everything from robo-dogs to eerily lifelike Albert Einsteins. With over 100 models on offer, customers can browse, buy, get spare parts, and even watch robots cook dinner at the themed restaurant next door.

The opening coincides with China’s $20bn robotics push and the World Robot Conference, and it comes ahead of the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games. Events include dance, football, and track.

NASA goes nuclear
NASA’s new marching orders: get a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor on the Moon in just five years. Interim boss Sean Duffy says it’s about powering a future lunar base - and beating China and Russia to the punch.

Unlike solar panels, a reactor can keep running during the Moon’s two-week-long nights, enabling life support and science in places sunlight never reaches. At 100 kW, it’s small by Earth standards - roughly 33 kettles on at once - but big enough to keep astronauts alive and the Artemis mission in play.

First homegrown rocket launch
Glasgow-based Skyrora just became the first British company licensed to launch a rocket from UK soil, with the Civil Aviation Authority giving its Skylark L the nod for up to 16 flights a year. The catch? The Shetland spaceport won’t be ready until 2026, and the rocket is strictly suborbital - think “edge of space-station”.

Skyrora may even shift the launch to Australia’s Woomera site before year’s end, echoing history: the last successful British orbital rocket, Black Arrow, launched from there in 1971.

WORLD

Martian millions
From the Sahara to Sotheby’s, a 24.7kg slice of Mars has made a far bigger leap than Neil Armstrong - travelling 225 million kilometres before fetching £3.2m in New York. Niger, where it was found, is asking the rather important question: “Hang on, who said you could take that?”.

Sotheby’s insists the paperwork is pristine, but international law on meteorites is fuzzier than a sheep in a snowstorm. For now, the world’s largest Martian rock is tucked away in a private collection, and Niger is lawyering up faster than you can say “Red Planet robbery”.

Border blare becomes border bare
The Korean border is sounding a little… quieter. North Korea has begun dismantling its giant propaganda loudspeakers, those towering boomboxes of barking animals and political slogans.

South Korea’s new president Lee Jae Myung had already silenced his own K-pop-blaring speakers, signalling a thaw in relations - though technically the two countries are still at war. It’s the first time in years the DMZ nights might be free of sonic warfare. Next step: cross-border karaoke.

Australia’s teen tech takedown
Australia has extended its under-16 social media ban to include YouTube, pulling the plug on teen accounts from December. Kids can still watch videos, but uploading, commenting, or subscribing will be off-limits.

The government says it’s protecting children from harmful content; Google says it’s overreach; lawyers smell billable hours. With fines up to £25.7m for tech companies that fail to comply, this isn’t just a polite screen time suggestion, it’s a digital do-not-dare.

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