Artificial intelligence could cause a global economic downturn, the Bank of England’s governor has warned. Andrew Bailey is the latest in a “throng of figures” to highlight the risks posed by the most advanced versions of AI technology, said The Guardian.

What did he say?
“Frontier” AI models are “showing increasingly sophisticated autonomy and problem-solving abilities, as well as threat capabilities”, Bailey said in a two-page letter to international finance ministers and central bank governors. The advanced models risk destabilising the “highly interconnected” global financial system through cyberdisruption that “can spread across jurisdictions”, he wrote.

How would AI cause a bubble?
The inflated valuations of companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Nvidia have triggered warnings of a stock market “bubble”. This is a “significant run-up in stock prices without a corresponding increase in the value of the businesses they represent”, said The Motley Fool.

The markets are always in debt, said Andrew Neill in the Daily Mail. But suddenly there’s “a big new kid on the block” in the form of America’s AI “hyperscalers”, which are “investing several trillion dollars to roll out their transformative technology” on “borrowed money”. And they’re borrowing from private credit markets, an “expensive, unregulated, opaque source of debt”. Meanwhile, “voracious governments” are competing with the AI giants for credit, “pushing up the cost of borrowing”. But if AI share prices “came tumbling down”, they’d bring the “whole stock-market caboodle with them”.

So what can be done?
Bailey said the sector should prioritise “appropriate steps to support safe and responsible model release and deployment on a global basis”. But he warned that “recent developments” have shown that “many jurisdictions do not have the protocols in place to manage the development, release, and deployment of advanced frontier AI models, heightening risks for the financial sector and beyond”.

A “touchstone of British factual television” will draw to a close this month, said Radio Times. Two 90-minute episodes of one of the world’s longest-running documentaries will air on ITV in an “epic and moving end to a television landmark”.

Inspired by a Jesuit maxim – “give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man” – the Up series began in 1964, when 14 seven-year-olds from a variety of backgrounds were interviewed about their thoughts and aspirations for the future. The tenth and final iteration will feature many of them, but they have mixed views on the show’s practices.

‘Snapshot of Britain’s social history’
This  “groundbreaking” series has been described as the “Bayeux tapestry of television”, said The Guardian. Over the last six decades, the children’s progress has been “creating a snapshot of Britain’s social history”.

But this instalment will have some “noticeable differences”. Michael Apted, the researcher who found, selected and interviewed the participants, died in 2021. Director Asif Kapadia, who was chosen to replace Apted, has called the final chapter, “70 Up”, the “most beautiful thing I’ve ever made”.

‘Outrageous’ inequality
Over the course of the show, we have seen the participants “grow up, marry, separate, have careers, suffer illness and depression”, said The Independent. Two of the show’s subjects have died. Lynn Johnson, who became a librarian in east London, passed away in 2013. Nick Hitchon, a Yorkshire farmer’s son who became a nuclear scientist, approached the programme wanting to record a final message after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died in 2023, just “hours” after his final “heartbreaking” interview.

Some cast members have accused Apted of “pursuing an agenda and have been intermittently unhappy at how they were portrayed”. In some,  “you can see a reluctance to continue to appear on screen warring with a sense of duty – a generational one, perhaps – not to disrupt a historic enterprise”.

Considering the aims and scope of the project, it is “outrageous” that only four girls were chosen alongside 10 boys, cast member Jackie Bassett told The Mirror. Bassett, alongside two friends from the same “working-class east London” primary school, and “solo upper-class Suzy”, were the only female participants.

Kimi Antonelli crowd-surfs in celebration after winning the F1 Italian Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver started from 19th place on the grid but staged a remarkable comeback to claim victory in his home race in Monza.

Clive Mason / Getty Images

Shandy is “poised for a resurgence”, said Jane Denton on This Is Money. The thirst-quenching mix of lager and lemonade has become an “unlikely” drink of choice for 20-somethings seeking lower-alcohol options that “don’t compromise on taste”.

Shandy started life in 1850s England as “shandygaff” – a mixture of beer and ginger ale – before the “gaff” was dropped and replaced with lemonade for a citrussy twist. After a long period of popularity, it “started going out of fashion” in the 1990s, School of Booze found Jane Peyton told the publication, but now shandy is “undergoing a revival”.

Ocado sales have climbed by 40% year-on-year and other supermarkets are reporting similar surges in demand. Shandy is also “easy to make at home”, said Rachel Dixon in The Guardian, and “shouldn’t get you too sloshed”. Use a “chilled glass”, pour in classic or cloudy lemonade up to the halfway point and then “slowly add the beer”.

For a fruity twist, try mixing lager with pink grapefruit soda, or pale ale with lime soda. Or for a sweeter tipple, blend lager with cola to create an amber-brown coloured cocktail that’s known as diesel in Germany. “Yes, it’s a thing.”

If you’d rather buy a ready-to-drink option, try Pillars Radler, said Melissa Cole in The Telegraph. Packaged in a “suitably nostalgic” stubby bottle with a “charming” yellow label, it blends “quality” lager with orange zest and lemon juice for a touch of “refreshing acidity”. 

Could Labour lose London?
Jonn Elledge in The New Statesman
Having already lost Scotland and the “red wall”, Labour must now contest Keir Starmer’s “inconveniently located” seat in central London – “one bit of Labour Britain that might prove immune” to Andy Burnham’s “charms”, writes Jonn Elledge. Burnham’s at pains to show that “arguing the rest of the country has had a raw deal is not an inherently anti-London stance”. But a more equal distribution of cash may mean “giving London a worse deal”, creating “an easily exploited source of resentment”.

Israeli ministers keep telling everyone their brutal plans – so why doesn’t the world take them seriously?
Nesrine Malik in The Guardian
The “gap between what is being inflicted on Palestinians” and an “appropriate reaction” from the “international community” now “yawns so wide that it swallows reality itself”, writes Nesrine Malik. Israel has “detailed a scheme for the illegal ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians” from Gaza “by every way possible”, and has also “approved the biggest settlement expansion in the West Bank in decades”. Why are these “stated goals” not being “met with appropriate sanctions, trade and arms embargos, and international censure”?

The Nineties king who fuelled Britain’s dreadful excess culture
Will Gore in The i Paper
In the 1990s, Chris Evans was “virtually unavoidable”, writes Will Gore. His “ebullient and chaotic sense of humour was infectious” and we were “lulled into believing that the good times would live forever”. The nation “remains in many ways broken by a rollicking decade of which Evans was a remarkable emblem ”. We “thought the all-nighter would go on and on”. Now, “we’re still living with the hangover and trying to figure out a different way of doing things”.