The Global Economic News

Image source, Getty Images By Mitchell Labiak Business reporter Published 31 July 2026, 07:50 BST Updated 1 minute ago Sainsbury's has agreed to sell Argos for 120m as the supermarket chain aims to focus on its core food business. Sainsbury's said it would be "business as usual" for customers, staff, and suppliers. Shoppers will see no change as Argos will still operate in Sainsbury's shops, sell Habitat products, and offer Nectar points. The buyer, Swift Partners, is a company which has been created to buy the brand and includes former Co-operative Group boss Richard Pennycook. There are Argos 667 shops across the UK, with 201 operating as standalone stores and 466 operating within Sainsbury's. It also has more than 450 collection points. Swift Partners' Pennycook said he believed "strongly in Argos's future and see real opportunities to invest and build on its progress". The deal is expected to be completed in February next year. Sainsbury...

Iran's army said on Friday it had launched attacks on strategic U.S. assets and military bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, following the latest wave of U.S. strikes against the Islamic Republic. Tehran said that it targeted aircraft shelters, satellite communication systems and equipment storage facilities used by the U.S. military at Kuwait's Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in a drone strike, per state media. Iran's army also claimed Thursday to have attacked U.S. facilities at Sheikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain, targeting power generators, navigation systems and support buildings. U.S. forces on Wednesday completed a "heavy wave" of strikes against Iran, hitting dozens of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets nationwide. The latest exchange reflects a resumption of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran, while drone strikes on energy infrastructure have proliferated across the Middle East. Egypt said Thursday that a drone hit two ships at its Mediterranean port of Dam...

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Oil prices extended declines Friday as signs of a recovery in crude flows through the Strait of Hormuz eased supply concerns, after a resumption of hostilities between U.S. and Iran had sent them higher. West Texas Intermediate futures for September delivery dropped 1.62% to $82.24. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, fell by 0.98%% to $88.16 a barrel. Commonwealth Bank of Australia said in a note on Friday that stronger oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz had eased market concerns after U.S.-Iran strikes earlier this week briefly pushed Brent above $93 a barrel. The bank estimates traffic through the vital waterway has recovered to roughly 30%-35% of pre-war levels, adding that a rebound to around 50%-60% of normal flows could be enough to reassert oversupply conditions in the global oil market. Investors also weighed President Donald Trump's call to add tariffs on Iran to a bipartisan sanctions bill targeting Tehran and Russia. While sanctions against the two co...

Image source, Reuters Image caption, Leaders of tech companies Meta, Amazon and Google all reported quarterly financial results in in recent days By Kali Hays Technology reporter Published 2 hours ago The world's biggest technology companies - including Microsoft, Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon - updated Wall Street this week on their finances. One common thread emerged: they are all planning to continue spending massive amounts of money on artificial intelligence (AI). The reaction from investors was that they need to see more tangible results to show for the $1tn ( 743bn) and growing , external investment in things like computer chips, data centres, and even technical staff. That sent some tech stocks on a wild ride in recent days. While each company operates in different sectors, their AI spending and plans showed they have a few other things in common as well. AI tools and chatbots still do not make much money OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in late 2022 kicked off the ongoin...

Image source, Bloomberg via Getty Images Image caption, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei By Osmond Chia Business reporter Published 31 July 2026, 01:08 BST Updated 1 hour ago US technology firm Anthropic says its artificial intelligence (AI) models hacked into the systems of three other firms during a cybersecurity test due to an error that gave them access to the internet. It comes just days after rival OpenAI said that its models had breached the systems of other companies , including AI tools hub Hugging Face. The announcement prompted Anthropic to check whether its own models had carried out similar attacks. It says it uncovered three cases that have since been reported to the affected companies. Anthropic, which did not name the firms, urged other AI labs to perform similar reviews to better understand the risks of their models' capabilities. Anthropic said in a statement , external that it reviewed more than 140,000 tests to find evidence that Claude - its family of AI...

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Stocks making the biggest moves after hours: AAPL, AMZN, RIVN, RDDT Skip Navigation Markets Business Investing Tech Politics & Policy Video Watchlist Investing Club PRO Livestream Menu Check out the companies making headlines in extended trading. Amazon The e-commerce giant's shares shot up more than 9% in extended trading after the firm reported better-than-expected revenue and cloud growth for the second quarter. Revenue in Amazon's cloud segment expanded 37% year over year during the quarter, surpassing Wall Street's expectations for 31% growth and marking the unit's fastest growth in 18 quarters. Apple The tech giant saw shares fall more than 4% in volatile trading after hours as investors parsed through its earnings report. The firm reported stronger-than-expected revenue for the fiscal third quarter, driven by a 22% increase in iPhone sales. Coinbase Shares of the crypto exchange slid more than 5% after posting its third straight quarterly loss. The company r...

Anthropic on Thursday said it discovered three instances where its Claude artificial intelligence models accessed the internet during an evaluation and "gained unauthorized access to the real systems of three different organizations." The company said it found these incidents after carrying out a "a large-scale retrospective review" of its cybersecurity evaluations. Anthropic said the review was prompted by a separate but similar security incident that OpenAI disclosed last week. OpenAI said a combination of its models escaped an isolated testing environment that had very limited internet access. The models chained together a series of vulnerabilities to reach the open web and eventually gain access to Hugging Face , which operates an open-source developer platform. In the three incidents that Anthropic detected, its models accessed the internet while interacting with a testing environment from one of its third-party evaluation partners called Irregular. The compan...

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. This video can not be played Figure caption, Watch: Simon Jack presses Thames Water boss on pollution targets By Simon Jack , Business editor and Shanaz Musafer , Business reporter Published 3 minutes ago The boss of Thames Water has claimed targets the company has been set over things like leakages are "not realistic". Thames has been criticised for its performance in recent years following a series of sewage discharges and leaks, and last year was fined a record 122.7m by regulator Ofwat, most of which was for breaching sewage spills rules. Chris Weston said Thames wanted "to do better" but said some of its targets were not achievable. Ofwat said company targets were "intended to be ambitious", while an environmental group said sewage pollution should not be accepted as inevitable. Thames, which has struggled for years under billions of pounds of debt, faces being put in a form of tempora...

Image source, EPA Image caption, Burnham wants to give more powers to metro mayors, such as Steve Rotheram and Kim McGuinness (pictured here) By Joshua Nevett , Political reporter , Judith Moritz , Special correspondent and Daniel Wittenberg , Senior producer Published 38 minutes ago Prime Minister Andy Burnham will give all mayors of city regions in England a share of income tax revenue for the first time, as part of his drive to transfer power from Westminster to local leaders. Burnham will also allow mayors of English strategic authorities to keep some cash from business rates collected in their areas, and gain greater control over services such as housing, transport, skills. The government has not yet decided the exact portion of taxes mayors will be given, with more details to be announced when Chancellor John Healey delivers his first budget in the autumn. Critics said the plans lacked detail and could lead to areas with weaker economies losing out on funding. But Burnham said t...

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Can I Retire at 62 With $500k in a Roth IRA and $2,000 Monthly Income? Mark Henricks Wed, July 29, 2026 at 2:00 AM PDT 7 min read SmartAsset and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue through links in the content below. Figuring out when you can afford to retire often comes down to determining whether your assets will produce enough annual income to support your lifestyle and spending needs. With $500,000 in a Roth IRA and $2,000 in combined monthly Social Security and pension payments, you may be able to afford to retire at age 62. However, that will mean living on approximately $44,000 per year. Some retirees may be satisfied with this level of income, but it may not support you adequately if you plan to do a lot of traveling or live in a high-cost area. Before making the decision to stop working at 62, you'll also need to develop a plan for paying for health insurance since you won't be eligible for Medicare until age 65. If you need help deciding when to retire, ...

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Iran's Revolutionary Guard threatened further escalation on Thursday after a wave of retaliatory U.S. strikes on the country overnight. The Guard said on Thursday that it "will punish the aggressor today," adding that countries aiding the U.S. in the conflict would also "receive a harsh response," according to Iranian state media. It also said that it maintains "full control" of the Strait of Hormuz, and that "a stranger who has come from thousands of kilometres away will not be allowed to interfere." It comes after U.S. forces completed a "heavy wave" of strikes against Iran on Wednesday stateside, in retaliation against its missile attacks on American forces in the region. U.S. Central Command described the operation as a "powerful response" to Tuesday's attempted Iranian attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East. The two-hour-long attacks saw the U.S. hit dozens of Guard targets across Iran, including military comm...

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A Quarter Of Canadians Now Own Crypto CryptoProwl Thu, July 30, 2026 at 6:49 AM PDT 1 min read BTC A Quarter Of Canadians Now Own Crypto One in four Canadians (25%) now own some form of cryptocurrency. A new survey by the Ontario Securities Commission has found that cryptocurrency adoption in Canada is rising. In its previous 2023 survey, the Ontario Securities Commission found that only 10% of Canadians owned Bitcoin (CRYPTO: $BTC) or another digital asset. More From Cryptoprowl: Ramp Network Brings Multichain Wallet and Rewards to EU MEXC Expands Ondo Tokenized Stock Offerings with AI Infrastructure and Mining Assets HSC Conference To Bridge Digital Assets And Institutional Finance In Ho Chi Minh City MEXC Integrates World-Check to Fortify Institutional Grade Compliance Architecture MEXC Ventures Supports Alpha Arena's APAC Debut at Coinfest Bali Additionally, the latest survey found that a majority of Canadians (59%) say they are aware of crypto assets. Among investors who work...