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Up to £464m ‘moved through more than 3,000 UK high street shell companies’
New research by anti-money laundering software provider SmartSearch suggests up to £464m has moved through more than 3,000 UK shell companies branded as hairdressers, barber shops, mini-marts and corner shops, but apparently used for money laundering and terrorist financing. The findings add to growing concern about the integrity of the UK company register, with ministers…
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Moment ‘wolf’ attacks tourists in Italian resort leaving three injured
Three tourists were injured in a suspected wolf attack at a holiday resort in Gallipoli, southern Italy, with footage of the incident capturing a man fighting off the animal after it attacked a mother and daughter. The attack, one of several recent wild animal incidents across Italy, has prompted authorities to step up monitoring and…
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Iranian rial hits record low amid US economic crackdown
Iran’s rial has slumped to a record low of 2.02 million to the US dollar as Washington unveiled a sweeping new round of sanctions designed to cut off Tehran’s remaining sources of revenue. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that any country continuing economic engagement with Iran risked US retaliation, saying it was “no longer acceptable…
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AI vendors are turning to custom hardware as Microsoft winds back the clock on Windows
A Register podcast episode discusses two parallel shifts: AI vendors increasingly moving beyond Nvidia’s GPUs towards alternative datacentre silicon, and Microsoft finally loosening long-standing restrictions in Windows 11. Register Systems Editor Tobias Mann explains why companies are turning to chipmakers such as Cerebras and Marvell to handle inference workloads, and why Waymo is developing custom…
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Minister tells social media firms to remove posts that ‘celebrate’ dangerous driving after A66 crash
Seven people, including two police officers, died after a car being pursued by police collided head-on with a marked armed response vehicle on the A66 near Middlesbrough in the early hours of Saturday. The tragedy prompted the government to demand social media platforms remove videos glorifying dangerous driving, amid concern such content may have influenced…
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Thames Water creditors accused of ‘shuffling deckchairs’ with plan for new board
A consortium of Thames Water’s creditors has proposed installing a new board, including a former Yorkshire Water chief executive and a former Openreach boss, in an attempt to persuade the government against placing the struggling utility into temporary nationalisation. The move is designed to reassure ministers, particularly Andy Burnham, who has pushed for greater public…
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Marching in the Dark review – rural Indian widows show stunning resilience as they battle poverty and taboos
Kinshuk Surjan’s documentary Marching in the Dark examines the plight of widowed women in rural Maharashtra, India’s state with the highest rate of farmer suicides, where more than 400,000 farmers have taken their own lives over the past two decades amid crippling debt and poor crop prices. The film focuses on how bereavement compounds these…
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Fears over surge in ‘garden grabbing’ as Angela Rayner waters down rules on building new homes on existing plots
Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has relaxed English planning rules to make it easier to build new homes on existing plots, including in private gardens, prompting warnings from critics of a surge in so-called “garden grabbing”. The change forms part of Labour’s drive to hit its target of 1.5 million new homes by 2029, but opponents…
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The joyriders risking innocent lives for social media clout: Calls for action as 10 teens and two policemen die in two tragedies driven by quest for likes
Calls are mounting for a crackdown on drivers who film themselves performing dangerous stunts to gain likes and views on social media, after two separate tragedies in recent days left a combined 12 people dead. In one incident, PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38, were killed when their unmarked response car was…
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Iranian rial hits record low before fresh US sanctions
Iran’s rial has slumped to a record low against the US dollar, coinciding with a warning from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent of an approaching “economic D-day” for Tehran ahead of fresh US sanctions. The currency collapse formed part of a broader bout of global market turbulence, which also took in a flare-up in US-Canada…