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On Friday, July 24, firefighters battling the unprecedented forest fires in southwestern France glimpsed an equally unprecedented phenomenon: a pyrocumulonimbus, better known as a fire cloud. Already common in the western United States and Canada, fire clouds are a storm within a storm, wrought by extraordinary amounts of heat and energy that belch great plumes of fire that spawn fiery tornadoes that carbonize everything and everyone in their paths. Yet a different kind of pyrocumulonimbus, no less unprecedented, has been wreaking havoc on the country’s political landscape. It is a phenomenon where the intensifying friction between the ideological extremes at…

What was claimed The NHS is considering making attending a Premier League match an official treatment option to help tackle depression. Our verdict The NHS says this isn’t true. There was a local pilot in Gloucestershire for lower-league football, but not for Premier League tickets. We’ve spotted several social media posts claiming that the NHS is considering offering Premier League match tickets as a treatment for depression.But this is not correct. NHS England has described the claim as “not true”, explaining that although there was a small local pilot in Gloucestershire for lower-league football, this was not for Premier League…

The remains of US climber Mallory Geis have been found by rescuers following an avalanche on one of the world’s highest mountains, a local government body says.Geis was part of a 10-person expedition that was on Pakistan’s Broad Peak, on the border with China, when the avalanche happened on Thursday.According to US media, Geis was 39 and from the Texas city of San Antonio.Two other bodies – of Nadhira Ahmed Abdullah Al Harthy from Oman and Pur Bahadur Gurun from Nepal – have also been identified.All have been taken to a hospital by helicopter for “legal formalities regarding identification”, according…

Labour has stormed to a decisive victory in the Greater Manchester mayoral byelection, seizing back areas that recently fell to Reform UK and the Greens.Labour’s Bev Craig, the Manchester city council leader, will now succeed Andy Burnham and hold one of the most powerful political positions outside Westminster.Labour won 47% of first-preference votes, with Reform UK way behind on 21% and the Greens in third on 12%.The contest took place under the supplementary vote system, meaning that, as no candidate achieved more than 50%, voters’ second preferences were counted.When voters’ second choices were counted and other parties were eliminated, Labour’s…

Lawyers for President Trump said on Friday they would appeal a recent order from a judge casting doubt on the legitimacy of a $1.8 billion fund and extraordinary personal tax protections that emerged from a deal to drop his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.The notice of appeal and a request to pause the judge’s order, both filed in Federal District Court in Miami, were the latest signs that Mr. Trump was willing to pursue his fight for the fund and the tax provision even though they have badly damaged his relations with Senate Republicans and jeopardized the confirmation of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Amazon has completed a $50bn investment in OpenAI, building a roughly 5 per cent stake in the ChatGPT maker ahead of a public listing expected next year.Amazon invested $15bn into the AI company led by Sam Altman in February as part of a broader commercial partnership. The ecommerce and cloud giant said it would invest a further $35bn if certain milestones, including a public offering or a breakthrough in AI, were achieved. The company has now invested the full sum, providing the…

Rivian spinoff Also will finally start delivering its first e-bikes to customers next week, after months of delays related to unspecified supply chain issues. The company told TechCrunch on Friday that the Launch Edition of its TM-B e-bike, which retails for $4,500, has started shipping from its manufacturer to its warehouse in the U.S. Also said it expects to deliver all Launch Edition bikes between next week and September. Also began as a skunkworks project inside Rivian in 2022, after CEO RJ Scaringe started looking into making an e-bike to complement his portfolio of electric vehicles for the outdoorsy set.…

DeepSeek published DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 on Hugging Face and moved the official V4-Flash API into public beta on July 31, 2026. The model card is explicit that this is the official release superseding the preview, and that the architecture and size are unchanged. The gains come from re-post-training, not a new design. The checkpoint ships with the DSpark speculative decoding module attached, matching the structure of DeepSeek-V4-Flash-DSpark. Hugging Face reports 304B parameters for the repo, which includes that draft module on top of the 284B base. On the API side, deepseek-v4-flash now natively supports the Responses API format and is adapted for…

The European Union rolled out a new team on Friday to rein in AI companies across the world, in one of the most aggressive regulations the high-tech sector has so far faced as fears rise over the risks the rapidly advancing technology poses to people, politics and prosperity. Brussels aims to track the use of AI models for violations of its new regulations, like the publishing of sexually explicit material, fake photos and videos, and cyber threats to public infrastructure. When the bloc’s AI Act comes into force on Sunday, AI companies will be required to make clear to consumers…

A Bank of Italy study found that stablecoin-based remittances did not offer a systematic cost or speed advantage over traditional payment channels, as fiat on- and off-ramp frictions accounted for most costs and transfer delays.Researchers tested 200 USDC (USDC) remittances across 10 bidirectional payment corridors linking Italy with Brazil, Argentina, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa, comparing end-to-end costs and settlement times with traditional remittance services. They found that exchange fees and currency conversion made up most of the cost, while blockchain transaction fees represented only a small share.Geographic design of the remittance experiment. Source: Bank of ItalyAcross…