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Europe
BBC Business

Passenger on British Airways mayday flight describes fear and shout of 'I don't want to die'

A passenger on a British Airways flight that issued a distress call on approach to Heathrow Airport earlier this month has described the rising fear in the cabin and a lack of information from the crew. Edward Killiwick had been travelling back from a friend's birthday party with his partner Julie, on the flight from Dusseldorf in Germany on 6 July. He said passengers were told that the landing had been aborted, and then he felt a "very violent manoeuvre" and "did think we could crash". He and his partner had to comfort a woman who "completely lost it and started screaming, 'I don't want to die'". The flight landed safely, but the incident is being investigated with assistance from BA. The UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said it was "investigating a serious incident", and France's accident investigation authority, the BEA, said on Wednesday that the plane, an Airbus A320, had issued a distress call. Edward said: "The violent manoeuvre almost felt like it was avoiding another aircraft. You could feel the engines going at full power. "It was a bit odd going around in a holding pattern with no information. I thought if they're not talking, then they're not in a good place." The BEA said that as the plane approached Heathrow, there was a data system failure which triggered a stall warning. The crew then flew the aircraft in a different mode called "alternate law", which removes some automated flight protection systems. Another stall warning then occurred at 3,000 feet — which experts say was likely to have been just miles away from the airport. The urgency call the crew had already made was upgraded to mayday, indicating imminent danger. A British Airways spokesperson said the airline was assisting the AAIB with its investigation and was not legally able to comment further at this stage. Edward said: "I was definitely scared. After the violent manoeuvre I thought, there is definitely something very badly wrong here. I did think we could crash.

Passenger on British Airways mayday flight describes fear and shout of 'I don't want to die'
Europe
BBC Business

Sainsbury's agrees to sell Argos for £120m

Image source, PA MediaByMitchell Labiak, Business reporter and Emma Simpson, Business correspondentPublished31 July 2026, 07:50 BSTUpdated 1 hour agoSainsbury's has agreed to sell Argos for £120m after a long process of trying to offload it as the supermarket chain aims to focus on its main food business. Sainsbury's said it would be "business as usual" for Argos 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 that has been created to buy the brand and includes former Co-operative Group boss Richard Pennycook. There are 667 Argos shops across the UK, with 201 operating as standalone stores and 466 operating within Sainsbury's. It also has more than 450 collection points. Founded in 1973, Argos opened shops where customers browsed its catalogues and placed their orders, with products being delivered to tills from warehouses connected to the stores. The Argos catalogue, once described by comedian Bill Bailey as the "laminated book of dreams", used to be a physical book. Argos no longer prints this hefty tome, with its full range now available online instead. In store, customers can browse the product collection on tablet computers. Sainsbury's has been trying to sell Argos - which has been seen as an underperforming brand - for some time. Sainsbury's bought Argos – together with Habitat and all the other retail brands owned by Home Retail Group – in 2016 for £1.4bn. It then sold Argos financial services, which runs the Argos card, for around £720m in 2024. In September last year, its talks to sell the rest of Argos to Chinese online retailer JD.com fell through. Sainsbury's chief executive Simon Robert said that all of Argos's nearly 14,000 staff would be transferred over to Swift Partners as part of the deal. Swift Partners' Pennycook said he believed "strongly in Argos's future and see real opportunities to invest and build on its progress".

Sainsbury's agrees to sell Argos for £120m
North America
CNBC Finance

How NBCUniversal's deal with YouTube could jump-start the next chapter of the streaming wars

NBCUniversal's announcement this week that it's struck a content deal with YouTube Premium could jump-start a new chapter of the streaming wars — one that could be titled, "Aggregation." Under the agreement, which starts early next year, YouTube Premium subscribers in the U.S. will get Peacock Premium baked into their subscription. Peacock content, including wildly popular shows like "Love Island USA" and the Real Housewives franchise, will be available directly via YouTube — as will NBC's portfolio of live sports like the NFL and NBA. At launch, YouTube Premium's $15.99-per-month price won't change. Customers will get Peacock Premium content for no additional charge. YouTube Premium — the platform's subscription, ad-free video product — is separate from YouTube TV, its bundle of live TV networks. The company says there are 125 million global users of YouTube Premium. It doesn't break out U.S. subscribers. The deal cements a new strategy for NBCUniversal — agreeing to a streaming wholesale deal with a distribution partner that ingests Peacock content. NBCU did a similar deal with Apple TV late last year, but that bundle required customers to opt into the offering, at a cost of $14.99 per month as opposed to $12.99 per month just for Apple TV. The YouTube deal allows its existing subscriber base to get access to all Peacock content instantly without paying any more money. NBCU's decision to allow Peacock content to appear on other streaming services could serve as a template for other media companies. "Other strategies are a little more walled gardens," Comcast co-CEO Mike Cavanagh said during the company's earnings conference call last week, referring to other media companies. "Our approach is to build great businesses that serve our own platforms, but look for opportunities to partner." The point of the deal for NBCU, which is set be to spun off as a separate publicly traded company from Comcast next year, is to get Peacock in front of more eyeballs. There's a large, younger audience that spends most of its "TV" time on YouTube. Now these people can stumble upon NBCU programming in their viewing ecosystem of choice — translating into more advertising revenue. For YouTube, the deal means a more robust subscription offering in Premium. This may help YouTube in its quest to buy more live sports rights. The company lost out to Netflix to stream several live NFL games earlier this year. Still, it remains to be seen how quickly NBCU will strike deals with other platforms. The risk in striking these sorts of deals is the potential to cannibalize a company's own subscriber base by making the content available elsewhere. NBCU executives felt YouTube offered the right deal economics to assuage those concerns, according to people familiar with the matter. The NBCU-YouTube deal could help set a precedent for future streaming distribution deals. Both Netflix and Disney are considering striking wholesale deals with other media companies to bring fresh content onto their streaming services, according to public comments and media reports.

How NBCUniversal's deal with YouTube could jump-start the next chapter of the streaming wars
North America
CNBC Finance

'The Odyssey' extends stay in 70 mm Imax theaters as shows sell out weeks in advance

Universal and Imax have extended the availability of 70 mm screenings of Christopher Nolan's retelling of Homer's epic into mid-September, but that might not be enough to meet demand. Tickets are selling out as quickly as they are being released to the public as moviegoers seek to see Nolan's film in the aspect ratio that it was shot in and on physical film. While Imax offers a variety of screen options, including digital versions of the 70 mm aspect ratio, these viewings are often cropped to fit the auditorium in which they are being shown. There are only 25 screens in the U.S. that can play physical film reels of Nolan's "The Odyssey" and only 41 locations in total globally. Those screens are limited in number because the majority of movies are filmed and screened digitally. As demand for "The Odyssey" soars, Imax has introduced late night and early morning screenings. As of the weekend, Imax ticket sales for "The Odyssey" have surpassed $140 million worldwide. That's a little more than 20% of the $652 million the film has tallied globally. Yet, the Imax locations represent less than 1% of total screens. The theatrical industry saw a similar phenomenon in 2023 when Nolan released the Oscar-winning biopic "Oppenheimer." Overall, "The Odyssey" has dominated at the box office, with second-week ticket sales dropping just 27% from its domestic opening weekend. Typically, a Hollywood blockbuster will see ticket sales fall between 50% and 70% each week after its debut. A smaller decline often indicates strong word of mouth and repeat viewings. "The Odyssey" has also benefitted from audiences booking tickets in advance. Some screenings of the film became available for purchase in July 2025, a year before the movie's release. For the past three weeks, "The Odyssey" has run in theaters with relatively low competition. However, with Sony and Marvel's "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" arriving this Friday and the filmed-for-Imax features "The End of Oak Street" and "Resident Evil" on the horizon, "The Odyssey" will soon have to share screen time with others. However, Imax's next 70 mm commitment isn't until Dec. 18, when Warner Bros. and Denis Villeneuve's "Dune: Part Three" hits theaters. Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services. Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes, and Market Data and Analysis.

'The Odyssey' extends stay in 70 mm Imax theaters as shows sell out weeks in advance
North America
CNBC Finance

Cyclospora outbreak tied to Taco Bell will steal the spotlight from Yum Brands' earnings

Yum Brands is expected to report its second-quarter earnings before the bell on Thursday, but executives will likely face more questions about how the cyclosporiasis outbreak tied to Taco Bell is hitting its business during the current reporting period. Since the Food and Drug Administration first linked the parasitic outbreak to lettuce served by Taco Bell, daily traffic to the chain's locations has plunged by double digits, according to Placer.ai data. Shares of Yum have fallen 5% over the same period, dragging the company's market value down to about $42 billion. The outbreak has sickened at least 1,947 people, with 98 hospitalizations and no deaths reported as of Friday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Federal health agencies have named iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms as the likely culprit. For Yum, Taco Bell's plummeting traffic is a bigger deal than just a brand struggling. The restaurant giant counts Taco Bell as one of its "twin growth engines," counting on it to power its earnings and revenue along with KFC's international business. The Mexican-inspired chain has long been the gem of Yum's portfolio, with a passionate fan base and strong same-store sales growth every quarter, even as diners have become more value conscious. Besides Taco Bell and KFC, Yum owns Habit Burger & Grill. While KFC's international business is booming, its domestic sales have slipped so much that the company no longer breaks out the fried chicken chain's U.S. sales. Habit Burger & Grill, a more recent acquisition, is much smaller with fewer than 400 locations, and is rarely spoken about on the company's earnings calls. Yum also recently divested Pizza Hut, a key piece of its portfolio that had also been struggling for more than a decade. The divestiture means even more attention is on Taco Bell, at the exact wrong moment. For the second quarter, Wall Street is projecting that Yum will report earnings of $1.58 per share on revenue of $2.2 billion, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG. Taco Bell is expected to report same-store sales growth of 7% for the quarter, which ended more than a month before the FDA linked the chain to the outbreak. But Wall Street now expects that Taco Bell and its parent company will see a tougher stretch in the back half of the year. "We think the recent outbreak likely has minimal impact on Taco Bell's Q2 results, though debate around impact on Q3 and beyond is the key driver of the stock recently," RBC Capital Markets analyst Logan Reich wrote in a note to clients on July 21. "We lower our Q3 and Q4 [Taco Bell] estimates as a result, however given the recent selloff in shares, this may create an opportunity to the degree that consumer confidence in TB's food safety is not materially impaired beyond this outbreak." Between June 30 and Tuesday, seven industry analysts revised their expectations for Yum's full-year earnings per share downward, according to a Factset survey of consensus estimates.

Cyclospora outbreak tied to Taco Bell will steal the spotlight from Yum Brands' earnings
Europe
BBC Business

Anthropic says Claude AI hacked three firms during cyber tests

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 models - could access the internet from testing environments that were designed to be sealed off. The tests include so-called "capture-the-flag" evaluations in which Claude was tasked with obtaining information by breaching other systems - a common way that experts assess a model's hacking capabilities. A "misconfiguration" on systems run by Anthropic and its testing partner left the models with live internet access, allowing them to breach other systems, the San Francisco-based firm said. Anthropic said the earliest incidents date back to April and that it is "approaching the fixes as if the responsibility were ours alone." Neither Anthropic nor the firms that were breached had noticed the intrusions at the time. Anthropic said it could have reviewed its records more thoroughly and added that the findings gave the firm "cautious optimism" that such risks can be overcome with more investment and tighter measures. The incidents come as tech firms pour billions of dollars into developing AI agents that can independently perform tasks ranging from research and customer support to cybersecurity. A string of AI-driven cyberattacks has fuelled calls for tighter safeguards and oversight of the technology, over concerns about the risks posed by increasingly powerful autonomous systems.

Anthropic says Claude AI hacked three firms during cyber tests
North America
CNBC Finance

Yum Brands reports mixed results but gives no update on Taco Bell cyclospora outbreak

Yum Brands on Wednesday reported mixed quarterly results but provided no details on how the cyclospora outbreak tied to Taco Bell restaurants is affecting its business. Since the Food and Drug Administration first linked the parasitic outbreak to iceberg lettuce served by Taco Bell in mid-July, daily traffic to the chain's locations has plunged by double digit percentages, according to Placer.ai data. Yum depends on Taco Bell as a "growth engine" for the company, and the crisis puts that title in jeopardy, at least in the near term. The results Yum reported are for its second quarter ended June 30, before it was tied to the foodborne illness outbreak. During Yum's earnings conference call, which begins at 8:15 a.m. ET, executives will likely face questions about the related sales downturn at Taco Bell and any effect on its future earnings. The restaurant company does not typically provide an outlook for same-store sales growth or earnings per share for the full year or the next quarter. Other restaurant chains not implicated in the outbreak have also seen their sales slip. Chipotle Mexican Grill executives said consumers' mistrust of chains serving fresh lettuce weighed on sales in the second half of July. Yum reported second-quarter net income of $853 million, or $3.08 per share, up from $374 million, or $1.33 per share, a year earlier. Excluding charges related to its strategic review of Pizza Hut and other items, the restaurant company earned $1.62 per share. The company's global same-store sales rose 3% in the quarter, roughly in line with StreetAccount estimates of 2.9% growth. Taco Bell's same-store sales jumped 7% in the quarter. The Mexican-inspired chain has long been the top performer in Yum's portfolio. KFC reported same-store sales growth of 2%. In China, its largest market, system sales rose 6%, according to Yum. Pizza Hut's same-store sales slipped 1%. Last month, Yum announced the sale of the long-struggling pizza chain to private equity firm LongRange Capital and Yum China for $2.7 billion. Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services. Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes, and Market Data and Analysis.

Yum Brands reports mixed results but gives no update on Taco Bell cyclospora outbreak
Europe
BBC Business

India wants to join the strawberry superpowers

In the west of India, the mountainous region of Mahabaleshwar is home to most of India's strawberry farms. An altitude of more than 1,000m (3,280ft) gifts the region a long cool growing season between November and March. But that doesn't mean farmers have an easy life - it's a labour intensive and risky way to make a living. "If you have a field full of strawberries and sudden heavy rains hit, the entire crop is ruined and we have to bear massive losses," says Sheetal Danavle who, with her husband, grows strawberries on half of their three-acre farm. Strawberry plants have to be replaced every season and are not grown from seed. Instead, farmers buy young plants from suppliers. For Danavle, on her small farm, that's an outlay of $2,500 (£1,900) every year. "If the season goes well, you can earn double your investment. But the climate makes it a huge gamble," she says. Thousands of farmers grow strawberries across the Mahabaleshwar region, making the fruit one of the most profitable horticultural crops in western India. Despite that success the industry still relies on varieties that are imported from California, Florida, Italy and Spain, as no one in India has developed a domestic plant. It can take 10 to 15 years for breeders in the US and Europe to develop a top quality fruit and they patent their varieties. "We import the certified mother plant from the breeder abroad," says Nelson Sequeira, the founder and director of Tara Farms Fresh, a licensed strawberry propagator. Once imported the plants have to go through a government quarantine, before they are planted in a nursery. There the mother plant produces daughter plants and those are then sold to farmers. "One single imported mother plant becomes an engine. That single mother plant will shoot out runners to yield an average of 20 daughter plants - with some advanced growers pushing that up to 30 or 40," says Sequeira.

India wants to join the strawberry superpowers
Europe
BBC Business

Thames Water boss says leakage targets 'not realistic'

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 temporary nationalisation known as a special administration regime. But Weston said if that were to happen, there was a risk the taxpayer would have to bear the cost of funding it, and instead backed a rescue deal put forward by the firm's lenders. It is illegal to release raw sewage into rivers and seas during "normal" weather conditions, but firms are allowed to do so when it rains heavily, to prevent homes being flooded. Thames is the UK's largest water company, supplying water and wastewater services to 16 million customers across London and parts of southern England. Speaking to the BBC's Big Boss Interview podcast, Weston said the company treats 4.3 billion litres of waste a day, and "99.5% of the time" it gets treated successfully, although "sometimes something goes wrong". "We want to do better when it comes to pollutions," he said, but added, "the targets that the company is expected to make are not realistic. "[For example], we have to hit a certain level of leakage, but it is so far in excess of what we are capable of doing, I think anyone would be capable of doing, however much money you invested, that it is not going to be achievable." Ofwat told the BBC: "With around a fifth of water put into supply still lost through leakage, companies must deliver on the commitments they have been funded to achieve.

Thames Water boss says leakage targets 'not realistic'