Author: BBC

Chris BaraniukTechnology ReporterAFP via Getty ImagesDiesel locomotives are being replaced with electric modelsEvery day, thousands of passengers heading south west on trains leaving Aldershot station pass a cluster of solar panels nestled by the tracks. Few, if any, may notice the installation. But the train they are on is drawing power from it.”On a sunny afternoon, if you are catching a train through Aldershot, a little bit of the energy for that train will come from those solar panels,” says Leo Murray, co-founder and chief executive of Riding Sunbeams, a start-up aiming to use renewable energy resources for rail electrification…

The UK’s winter flu season has begun five weeks earlier than usual, health officials are warning.The UK Health Security Agency said cases were rising quickly among children and young people – and warned the virus would soon start to spread across older age groups.The organisation urged people eligible for the flu vaccine to come forward to get protected.But they said it was too early to say how difficult and serious this year’s flu season would be.One of the concerns is that the flu season could peak before the majority of the vulnerable groups have got immunised – the vaccination campaign…

Getty ImagesChancellor Rachel Reeves is widely expected to announce some tax rises in the Budget on 26 November. This is despite Labour’s pledge before the 2024 election that it would not increase income tax, National Insurance (NI) or VAT for working people. In more recent comments, Reeves has instead talked about “keeping their taxes as low as possible”.It is not clear exactly what tax/NI changes Reeves might announce in the Budget, but these are the current rules and rates. What is National Insurance and what does it pay for?The government uses National Insurance to pay benefits and help fund the…

Imran Rahman-Jones,technology reporter and Lily Jamali,North America technology correspondentGetty ImagesMicrosoft said the Azure outage was due to “DNS issues”Websites for Heathrow, NatWest and Minecraft returned to service late on Wednesday after experiencing problems amid a global Microsoft outage.Outage tracker Downdetector showed thousands of reports of issues with a number of websites around the world over several hours.Microsoft said some users of Microsoft 365 saw delays with Outlook among other services, but by 21:00GMT, many websites that went down were once again accessible after the company restored a prior update.The company’s Azure cloud computing platform, which underpins large parts of the…

Phil Shepka,Cambridgeshire political reporter and Katy PrickettOrthopaedic AcademyKuldeep Stohr was investigated in relation to 700 planned and 100 emergency operations”A series of missed opportunities” have been revealed by a review of a surgeon who is being investigated over hundreds of surgeries involving children carried at an NHS hospital. Kuldeep Stohr was suspended by Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge earlier this year, amid concerns over surgeries that were “below the expected standard”.A “pivotal missed opportunity” came when the hospital trust failed to act upon recommendations made by an external reviewer into her work in 2016, the report said.Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation…

The Home Office has failed to meet the challenge of “crises” it has faced over several years and is “not yet fit for purpose”, the home secretary has told the BBC. Shabana Mahmood acknowledged that the department, which she was put in charge of last month, had “a range of problems” including procuring contracts and holding on to senior staff but said that she was “determined to deliver”. Mahmood was talking to the BBC while overseeing a police operation on a high street in south London aimed at tackling migrants working illegally in the UK. She said a crackdown was…

Lily JamaliNorth America Technology Correspondent, San FranciscoGetty ImagesOpenAI has completed its conversion to a for-profit entity, a move that could allow it to raise billions of dollars in investment and potentially clear the way for a stock market debut.As part of the arrangement, OpenAI and Microsoft announced changes to their partnership that leave the tech giant with a 27% stake in the ChatGPT-maker.The deal changes the relationship between the two companies, which first partnered in 2019, when OpenAI was a non-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research organisation.Under the terms, Microsoft can now pursue artificial general intelligence – sometimes defined as AI…

Sliced Bread looks into the chemical reaction that happens – and whether it’s harmful.

The government is facing a bigger-than-expected hole in the public finances as it prepares for next month’s Budget.A downgrade to the UK’s productivity performance from the government’s official forecaster could lead to the chancellor facing a £20bn gap in meeting her tax and spending rules, the BBC understands.Rachel Reeves has confirmed both tax rises and spending cuts are options in next month’s Budget.The Treasury declined to comment on “speculation” ahead of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) final forecast, which will be published on 26 November alongside the Budget.The OBR will deliver its final draft forecast, including productivity – a…

Talifhani Banks is the founder of South African delivery firm Spaza Eats.Founded in 2023, Spaza Eats focused on serving the townships and rural areas that were being ignored by existing delivery firms. Now the firm has tens of thousands of customers and has given smaller food sellers a modern delivery platform. It has also generated data that is being used to develop a larger marketplace with more services, called AnalyticsX.This is the first in a six-part video series on technology in Africa.