Live forever 🎸

Happy Monday. If the Oasis reunion wasn’t enough for you to feel proud of the UK, the British science scene has delivered another triumph.

Using a technique called mitochondrial donation, a baby was been born last week with the DNA of three parents (the first of its kind). In short (forgive me scientists) faulty mitochondria from the birth mother was swapped out with some premium mitochondria from a donor egg cell, all while keeping the genetic traits from mum and dad intact. The success prevented the child from inheriting a serious genetic disease. You could say it was another step toward helping us live forever?

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Relx Plc (REL), Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY), NatWest Group (NWG), Reckitt Benckiser (RKT), Centrica (CNA), RightMove (RMV).

Notable US earnings this week: Alphabet (GOOG), Tesla (TSLA), Coca-Cola (KO), International Business Machines (IBM), T-Mobile (TMUS).

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PROJECT WATCH

🏗️ Government launch Infrastructure Pipeline database. Read more

🛤️ No chance of revival for eastern leg of HS2 as government sells off land. Read more

🚂 Mace wins preferred bidder status for £200m work at Paddington Station. Read more

🔌 National Grid chooses Sumitomo for Kent-Suffolk subsea cable installations. Read more

BUSINESS & FINANCE

£42m fine for Barclays
Barclays has once again found itself in the naughty corner, slapped with a £42 million fine by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for dropping the ball on money laundering checks. It's a bit like forgetting to check your gas hob is off – except instead of a fire hazard, it's financial crime. Risk management? More like risk encouragement.

The main culprits this time? Two not-so-glittering partners: Stunt & Co (a gold dealership linked in the Fowler Oldfield money laundering scheme) and WealthTek (who weren’t permitted to hold client cash). The FCA says Barclays got a little too cosy with both, letting dodgy money slip through the cracks like a leaking roof at a discounted Airbnb.

Barclays did, for what it’s worth, fully co-operate with the FCA's probe – the regulatory equivalent of offering to wash the dishes after setting the kitchen on fire. They even got a fine discount for being helpful and voluntarily paying out to wronged clients. Though if you lose nearly £47 million, 'voluntary' starts to feel more like damage control PR in a tailored suit.

Job cuts at JLR
It’s been a bumpy ride for Jaguar Land Rover, and now 500 management roles are being shown the lay-by as the firm shifts gears to cut costs. That’s about 1.5% of its workforce opting (voluntarily, they say) to hit the redundancy road. Unlucky for some, especially with the latest figures showing UK unemployment accelerating into four-year-high territory. Just in time for summer, when everything else is supposed to slow down—apart from job losses, evidently.

JLR’s troubles trace directly back to the global trade circus. April saw the company slam the brakes on US exports—its largest overseas market—after Donald Trump (yes, still him) lobbed a 25% tariff on UK cars. While a subsequent “truce” between the UK and US has cooled the duty war down to a 10% rate, it only applies to UK-made vehicles and comes with a not-so-generous cap of 100,000 cars per year. Any more than that? You’re back to the 25% tariff. Perhaps not worth revving your engine for afterall.

POLITICS

Baby ballots
Politics is getting a youthquake. In what’s either a democratic delight or electoral déjà vu, the government is lowering the voting age to 16, just in time for the next general election. With this move, teens who can’t legally drink, gamble, or wed will now have a say in who runs the country. Cheers to that. It’s the biggest shift to the UK electorate since 1969, when we last agreed that 18-year-olds weren’t just sulky sixth-formers, they were voters.

The change is part of a sweeping new Elections Bill, which also proposes automatic voter registration and allows bank cards as valid ID at polling stations. With contactless voting, critics are fuming, suggesting the move could favour Labour (younger voters tend to lean left), while Labour claims it’s all about democracy, not demographics. Meanwhile, the National Union of Students is doing victory laps in the student union, demanding better political education and easier voter access.

Additionally, there is a tightening of the rules regarding political donations. The government is closing loopholes that let foreign billionaires tiptoe into our ballot boxes via shell companies.

Plots & precrime powers
In a chilling nod to Minority Report, the government is rolling out new legislation to tackle violence-obsessed individuals before they act, regardless of ideology. The new law will let police intervene if someone’s caught planning mass violence, even without terrorist ties.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper insists this fills a “gap in the law,” giving police the power to stop those warped by online extremism or school shooter fantasies before they make headlines. Think of it as precrime meets preventative justice, minus the psychic pool. The move follows rising concern over young, self-radicalised individuals marinating in violent content online.

ACROSS THE POND

Big, beautiful visa tax
A sneaky snippet in the apparent “One Big Beautiful Bill”, visitors to the U.S. will face what's euphemistically called a "visa integrity fee." It sounds posh until you realise it's merely a polite way of saying, "hand over your cash, please."

The cunning twist? This $250 fee (don't even mention our currency exchange woes) acts like a high-stakes bet—follow the visa rules and you might get your money back, just don't hold your breath while you wait. I wouldn’t want to work in that admin team with the World Cup next year.

Estimates suggest this levy could slash nearly $30 billion off the U.S. deficit over the next decade, which some might call beautiful budgeting—although it might only feel beautiful for those balancing the books stateside.

Despite millions gallivanting stateside annually, only a "small number" are expected to ask for their deposit back. With visas stretching for a number of years, they’re probably hoping you’ll forget all about it. ESTAs won’t fall into the new scheme, but they will double in price ($21 to $40).

Name: Apple. Likes: Magnets
Apple, the ecological trendsetter and tech juggernaut, is teaming up with MP Materials to splash out on a shiny new $500 million plant in Texas. This facility will recycle and manufacture rare earth magnets—the unsung heroes of tech, from iPhones to fighter jets. Is this the industrial lovechild of Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, or just a clever ruse to stave off trade squabbles with Beijing?

By 2027, Apple plans to sip home-brewed magnets free of foreign dependency. With 92% of rare earth processing currently monopolised by China, these materials—while not geologically rare—are about as easy to process as a Rubik's Cube on a runaway train.

Along with the Pentagon's recent $400 million investment in MP Materials, this marks a public-private coup, the U.S. is snipping the umbilical cord and stockpiling their future supply. The Defence Department is flexing its financial muscles, laying the groundwork for another magnet plant destined to pump out 10,000 metric tons annually by 2028.

TECH

Set sail cinematography
While Hollywood grapples with AI angst, Netflix has hit “generate” on its first-ever fully AI-assisted scene. Argentine sci-fi drama The Eternaut became the guinea pig for this grand experiment, saving time and budget with some prompt-based VFX wizardry. It’s less “lights, camera, action” and more “click, compute, collapse.” Critics call it a slippery slope to artistry’s extinction. Netflix calls it cost-effective cinematography.

Floating cost-saving seabearers, the world’s first wind-assisted tanker has been launched in China. Named Brands Hatch, and with three massive “WindWings,” it’s practically sailing into a low-carbon future, cutting CO₂ emissions by the tonne (14.5 tonnes of fuel per day saved) and waving goodbye to fossil-fuel gluttony. It’s part ship, part sail, part science fiction.

Crypto, chips
Stateside, the crypto world’s been given its first proper playbook. The US has passed its first major national cryptocurrency law, The Genius Act, aimed squarely at regulating “stablecoins”, which are crypto’s idea of a calming cuppa. Trump’s now all in on the blockchain buzz, despite once calling it a scam. Truly, the only thing stable here is the irony.

Back in Blighty, we’ve flicked the switch on the country’s most powerful supercomputer, Isambard-AI. Housed in Bristol, this silicon beast is prepped to solve NHS queues, battle climate change, and generally make our laptops feel very insecure. It’s powered by over 5,400 Nvidia GPUs and enough ambition to melt a microchip. Alongside its sibling, “Dawn” in Cambridge, it forms the UK’s new “AI Research Resource”.

WORLD

Populists and the press
This week, Japan’s government, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s ruling coalition, looks set to lose its grip in Sunday’s upper house elections, all while inflation nibbles away at the rice bowl and Washington sharpens its tariff knives. Investors, unsurprisingly, are panicking like it’s karaoke night at the bond market.

With a wafer-thin mandate and the far-right Sanseito party whispering sweet nothings of nationalism, Ishiba may find himself forced into awkward coalitions or worse, off the ballot entirely. If Japan’s economic future were a ramen bowl, right now it's all broth and no noodles.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is trading the golf course for the courtroom once again, this time suing Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal for a cool $10 billion. The paper alleged Trump sent Epstein a “bawdy” birthday note involving a dirty doodle and third-person flattery. Trump says it’s fake news, fake note, and definitely not his drawing style. It's hard to tell if this is defamation or just another chapter in the ever-growing Library of Litigious Lunacy.

Monks and morals
Thailand’s Buddhist clergy is here to raise the curtain on an operatic scandal of lust and luxury. A respected monk’s mysterious disappearance has unravelled into a salacious saga involving rogue robes and enough compromising content to make even the best blackmailer blush.

Wilawan Emsawat, the woman at the heart of the scandal, allegedly romanced senior monks before squeezing them for millions. Her bank account tells tales of temple ties and extravagant gifts, including a Mercedes-Benz and more baht than a monk’s vows should allow. At least nine monks have been defrocked, and Thailand’s temples are now scrambling for reputational incense.

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