Please and thank you 🙏

Happy Monday. While they say manners cost nothing, that might not be the case with AI. Some amusing news last week that you may find quite reassuring - you’re not the only one being polite to ChatGPT.

Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI (that’s ChatGPT), suggested the company incurs tens of millions of additional operating costs just from people saying please and thank you in their AI queries. Since the processors guzzle energy to answer queries, additional words and phrases mean more power used. Be that as it may, I’m calling it an investment for the future.

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Zegona Communications (ZEG), Seplat Energy (SEPL), Indivior (INDV), Asos (ASC).

Notable US earnings this week: Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX), Spotify (SPOT).

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PROJECT WATCH

💉 Eni’s carbon storage project in Liverpool Bay set to go ahead. Read more

🚂 £100m plan approved for a new Baltic railway station in Liverpool. Read more

🌊 Centrica awarded one-year extension for North Sea gas storage license. Read more

ECONOMY & FINANCE

Government borrowing balloons
While most of us are still nursing chocolate hangovers from Easter or dreaming of May bank holidays, back in Westminster, Rachel Reeves probably wishes she could resurrect the UK’s public finances.

In a double-dose of economic gloom, annual public borrowing for the fiscal year hit £151.9bn — overshooting forecasts by £14.6bn and making our national piggy bank look like it’s seen better centuries.

UK businesses decided to add a touch of extra drama. The latest PMI data — essentially an economic stress test for the private sector — contracted at its fastest pace in more than two years. April's composite score slid to 48.2 (below the neutral 50 mark), putting it in full-on “shrinking violet” territory.

If Reeves wants to meet her self-imposed fiscal rules (whereby government spending must be covered by revenue by 2029–30), she may be forced into more tax rises in the autumn Budget — just what the British public love.

Interest rate cuts on the horizon?
The Bank of England might be sharpening its scissors for three more interest rate trims this year, says the International Monetary Fund – yes, even as UK inflation proves about as persistent as a cold in April.

Despite the IMF anticipating the UK will have the highest inflation in the developed world at 3.1% (bravo us?), it still reckons rates can fall. The inflation figures being largely due to sky-high utility bills — if you’ve felt personally attacked by your energy provider lately, you’re not alone.

POLITICS

Blaring beats and broadcasting battles
The Liberal Democrats want to slap a hefty £1,000 fine on "headphone dodgers" — those tone-deaf commuters who treat buses like a mobile disco.

Over at the Beeb, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has called the licence fee “unenforceable,” opening the door to radical funding overhauls that could finally end that polite letter bombardment about watching without a licence.

Toxic tides and teary-eyed teens
Water company chiefs now risk up to two years behind bars if they keep flushing Britain's waterways with illegal sewage, just as social media giants brace for £60,000 fines every time knife crime content sneaks past their filters.

Not to be outdone in the crackdown contest, young offender institutions will soon allow pepper spray — a potent reminder that even in a system with fewer young inmates, violence is booming like an oversteeped kettle. From sewage to screens to cell blocks, it’s been a week of plugging leaks with legislation — though whether it holds water is another matter entirely.

ACROSS THE POND

Bye bye, petrol food-dye
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the US Department of Health are phasing out petroleum-based artificial food dyes (as you might expect, nearly all of these are already banned in the EU and the UK). It's all part of making America healthy again, and the yanks plans to boot these dyes from their pick ’n’ mix come the end of next year.

Even as Joe Biden packed up his Oval Office tea set, the FDA had already sounded the death knell for red dye No. 3. Now the charge is led by the Health and Human Services and the FDA, asking food companies to ditch this dye before a 2027-28 deadline.

Some of the most popular products affected are; Skittles, M&Ms, Lucky Charms, Trix, Fruit Loops and Pop-Tarts. Turns out blue might not be food after all.

Designed in California, made in China India
Tech goliath, Apple, is reportedly moving its iPhone production from China to India, in order to dodge Trump’s import tax bullet, according to the FT.

With ambitions to manufacture over 60 million iPhones in India annually as early as the close of 2026. Currently, most iPhones are cradled and shipped from China. However, China has found itself in President Donald Trump's crosshairs, suffering some of his most severe tariff-targeting yet.

Though Trump did a full 180 with a temporary smartphone tariff exemption, brandishing his temporary reprieve like Monopoly's Get Out of Jail Free card, experts are waving the caution flag. Costs of electronics, Apple included, are bound to climb higher and higher due to these economic power struggles.

TECH

Celestial clashes and chrome crusades
In a week where China’s taikonauts were busy blasting off from the Gobi Desert — chests puffed, flags waving, and ambitions aimed squarely at the Moon and Mars — back down on Earth, another kind of race is brewing.

OpenAI is eyeing up Google’s Chrome like a fox in the henhouse, ready to turn the internet’s most beloved browser into an “AI-first experience”. While China builds space stations in deserts and dreams of cosmic dominance, OpenAI is plotting to conquer the very windows we view the universe through. It’s a race to the stars and the screens. After all, why merely colonise space when you can colonise cyberspace too?

Search shake-ups and spectacles of survival
Speaking of Google, Google.co.uk is being unceremoniously shoved into the annals of history — fare thee well, dear search portal, we hardly knew ye. From now on, everyone’s lumped onto the global Google.com.

Even further into the annals of history, Archaeologists in York unearthed a Roman skeleton peppered with lion-sized love bites, proving gladiators didn't just wrestle each other but took on apex predators too.

WORLD

Sandy seizures and smoky sanctions
In the tempestuous waters of the South China Sea, China’s coastguard have done a spot of extreme sandcastle claiming, hoisting their flag on a tiny sandbank to the tune of international eyebrow-raising.

Across the South China Sea and into the smoky alleys of Hong Kong, authorities are blowing strawberry smoke on vapers’ vice — from April 2026, lighting up an e-cigarette in public could earn you a free six-month stay in prison plus a fine hefty enough to make your wallet wheeze.

Boozy banquets and Pompeian power plays
Out in the lush wilds of Guinea-Bissau, chimps have been caught sharing fermented fruit in a scandalous show of early social drinking, a fruity little hint that the origins of our own merry tipples might be older — and hairier — than we thought.

Meanwhile, in the ash-preserved streets just outside Pompeii, a new discovery is rewriting ancient gender scripts: a life-sized sculpture of a priestess and a man, standing side by side, with no wedding bands in sight. She’s taller, prouder, and likely the star of the show—throwing envy-ridden parties so legendary, the wine flowed like a primal Guinea-Bissau bash, and Vesuvius itself angled for a plus-one to crash the bash.

There’s still tea in the pot...
The Teapot weekly quiz

Cuppa Chat: Cheat Sheet

✉️🛳️ A letter written by a Titanic passenger five days before it sank sold for a record £300,000 at a UK auction.

🐶🔍 Valerie, the miniature dachshund, survived 529 days lost in Australian wilderness, rescued with aid of owner’s t-shirt scent trail. Volunteers searched over 5,000 km to safely recover her, using cameras and a remote trap.

🎤🎸 Noel and Liam Gallagher performed a secret set in London, filmed for a promotional release before Oasis's massive reunion tour.

🛡️📑 The identities of members of Britain's special forces were leaked online for over a decade, reportedly exposing at least 20 soldiers' details. The MoD has since addressed the data breach, ensuring the sensitive information's removal and affected personnel's protection.

🎨🗑️ A Dutch town hall mistakenly disposed of 46 artworks during renovations, including an Andy Warhol print of Queen Beatrix, worth approximately €15,000.

🌞🔥 The UK is set to experience its warmest April weather in seven years, with southern England potentially reaching 27°C later this week. Concerns rise as a lack of rainfall may lead to wildfires, impacting central southern England and North Yorkshire.

🏆🔴 Liverpool are crowned Premier League champions, thrashing Tottenham 5-1 at Anfield. This marks their 20th league title, matching Manchester United's record.

⚽️🏆 Manchester City defeated Nottingham Forest 2-0 to reach their third consecutive FA Cup final. City's goals from Rico Lewis and Josko Gvardiol set up a final against Crystal Palace on 17th May.