Oct 20, 2026, 09:30 PM UTC

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry's sixth report, chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, has concluded that the adult social care sector was treated as an "afterthought" during the early stages of the pandemic.

According to the findings, government failures created conditions that allowed the virus to spread "like wildfire" among vulnerable care home residents. The report rejected claims by former ministers that a "protective ring" had been placed around care homes, noting that patients were routinely discharged from hospitals into care facilities without systematic testing or clear isolation instructions.

While the report noted that Scotland instituted isolation measures for care home discharges earlier than other UK nations, it found the sector there was similarly unprepared. Following the report's release, opposition politicians in Scotland directed sharp criticism at former Scottish government ministers over the discharge decisions.

Sources: BBC Northern Ireland, STV News, The Guardian, The Herald, The Scotsman.

Artificial intelligence cloud computing provider Nscale is currently in negotiations to supply processing infrastructure to AI research company Anthropic, according to Bloomberg. The prospective transaction could be valued at roughly $45 billion, reflecting the immense compute demands required to develop advanced foundation models.

The reported talks come amid heightened competition across the technology industry to secure specialized hardware and cloud infrastructure. Anthropic, known for its Claude AI models, relies heavily on large-scale computational clusters to build and deploy its software. If completed, the deal would represent one of the largest computing power agreements in the sector to date.

Sources: Bloomberg