After 12 years in the planning, the north’s flagship rail scheme still has no detailed design and a £45 billion budget that the public accounts committee says was set before anyone knew what it would build.

The plan to transform train services across the north of England is at risk of sliding into the same fiasco that has engulfed HS2, according to parliament’s spending watchdog, which says the scheme still lacks a proper design and a realistic budget after more than a decade of planning.

In a withering report, the Commons public accounts committee (PAC) said Northern Powerhouse Rail had no detailed design to speak of after 12 years on the drawing board, and warned that its £45 billion budget had become “decoupled from reality”. As it stands, the committee said, the project is likely to fail to deliver the improvements promised and risks becoming yet another government infrastructure albatross.

Originally conceived as a high-speed line linking Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, the scheme has since been pared back to a series of local upgrades intended to deliver faster and more frequent services. The government revived the programme in January with a phased £45 billion vision for the north, but the PAC is unconvinced the numbers stack up.

The committee said it was “not confident that the Department for Transport (DfT) has learnt all the lessons from its past failures in its management of other rail projects”, pointing above all to the truncated HS2 north-south link. HS2 has busted its budget and could cost well in excess of £100 billion despite now running only as far as Birmingham, and is expected to be at least five years late.

On the money, the PAC was blunt. There was “no convincing plan” to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail’s aims within the £45 billion cap, it said, and no explanation of how the Treasury had arrived at the figure in the first place, with no formal design, scope or costing yet published.

Clive Betts, the PAC’s deputy chair, said there was no doubt that railways in the north needed transforming to deliver jobs, mobility and productivity. But having taken evidence from interested parties, he warned: “Our committee has heard troubling echoes of the same mistakes in loose governance that HS2 made early on.

“Much of the project remains almost impressionistic. Both the Treasury and DfT have questions to answer about the project’s £45 billion funding cap. We need to know how this figure was arrived at and how DfT will keep to it. Capping a project’s funding before it was even designed or costed feels like putting a roof on a house before the foundations are laid.”

Betts reserved particular scorn for the decision to let HS2 Ltd, the agency set up to deliver HS2, advise on Northern Powerhouse Rail, calling it laughable that a body with such a record of failure should be shaping the north’s next big scheme.

The report lands as northern leaders press for a firmer commitment to the region. Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, a vocal champion of devolution who has warned the north faces “Armageddon” without proper rail links, has continued to push for better transport connections and a shift of power away from Westminster.

The committee wants clarity, and quickly. It called on the DfT, already stretched by HS2 and the creation of Great British Railways, the new publicly controlled operator, to front up: “Within six months, the department should write to us to confirm whether Northern Powerhouse Rail is a mega-project or not.”

That question matters because the answer determines how the scheme is governed, scrutinised and funded, and the committee’s frustration is that, 12 years in, it still cannot be answered. Ministers have also faced pressure over cheaper alternatives elsewhere on the network, including a cut-price “HS2-light” line beyond Birmingham being weighed up by officials.

The Department for Transport pushed back firmly. “Northern Powerhouse Rail will deliver the biggest investment in rail connectivity in a generation, giving the north the transport links it deserves and driving growth, jobs and investment across the region,” a spokesperson said.

“NPR will not repeat the mistakes of HS2, which is why we accepted all the recommendations of the James Stewart review and are taking a disciplined, phased approach, completing detailed technical work with all stakeholders before fixing precise choices for major infrastructure.

“Since announcing NPR in January, we have worked closely with mayors to take the project forward. New joint partnership forums are already overseeing the next stage of development and Network Rail has begun developing engineering designs.”

The full findings are set out in the PAC’s report on Northern Powerhouse Rail, which draws on National Audit Office analysis showing the DfT will have spent some £410 million on the programme by March 2026. For a scheme meant to rebalance the economy, the watchdog’s message is uncomfortable: design first, cost second, and cap the budget only once you know what you are building, rather than the other way round.

---

Actor Danny Glover publicly disclosed his Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis Wednesday in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt that aired on the “Today” show, saying he has been living with the progressive brain disease for several years and that it has already begun to affect his speech, movement and memory.

Glover, 79, sat down with Holt at his home for the conversation, which he said he chose to have publicly in part to promote awareness of a condition that affects nearly 7 million Americans age 65 and older. The actor, best known for his role as homicide detective Roger Murtaugh in the “Lethal Weapon” franchise alongside Mel Gibson, said he received his diagnosis in 2023 and has been processing it with the help of family and close friends since then.

“I could live with it, in a sense,” Glover told Holt during the “Today” interview, but acknowledged the path ahead, adding that as the disease progresses, “things are going to be different and changing.”

The announcement came just weeks before Glover’s 80th birthday on July 22.

In a separate conversation with People magazine, Glover described coming to terms with the diagnosis and offered a philosophical reflection on what living with Alzheimer’s has meant for his sense of self.

“I still have my daughter, I have friends,” Glover told People. “I want to just say, your life continues.”

He also acknowledged the uneven nature of memory as the disease progresses.

“I’m still not accepting in my mind all parts of it,” Glover said. “There are the moments that you keep remembering that validate the fact that you can remember stuff. And there are moments I’ll never forget.”

Despite the gravity of the diagnosis, Glover made clear he does not view his condition as a reason to surrender.

“There’s work to do,” he said, adding that the disease does not feel like “the end of my life.”

Glover’s daughter, Mandisa, also spoke with People about her experience as a caregiver, describing the emotional complexity of watching a parent navigate the condition’s progression.

“He is aware sometimes and then sometimes not,” Mandisa said. She described the diagnosis as “a change in the core of who you think you are or don’t think you are.”

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia and is classified as a progressive brain disorder that typically begins with mild memory loss before advancing to affect an individual’s ability to carry on conversations, complete daily activities or respond to their surroundings, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There is currently no cure for the disease, though treatments are available that can help manage symptoms and slow some aspects of its progression for certain patients.

The scale of Alzheimer’s in the United States is significant. According to data from the Mayo Clinic, nearly 7 million Americans age 65 and older are currently living with the disease, and that number is expected to grow as the population ages over the coming decades. The Alzheimer’s Association has estimated that by 2050, as many as 13 million Americans could be living with the disease if no major medical breakthrough occurs in the interim.

Glover has spent decades as one of Hollywood’s most recognizable and broadly respected figures, with a career spanning more than 50 years across film, television and stage. His role as Roger Murtaugh, the long-suffering Los Angeles police detective partnered with Mel Gibson’s volatile Martin Riggs across four “Lethal Weapon” films between 1987 and 1998, cemented his status as a mainstream cinema fixture. Among his other notable film credits are “The Color Purple,” directed by Steven Spielberg in 1985, in which Glover played the emotionally complex Mister; “Places in the Heart,” in which he starred alongside Sally Field; and “Predator 2.” His work in television earned him five Emmy Award nominations, including one for his portrayal of Nelson Mandela in a biographical television film of the same name.

Beyond his film and television career, Glover built a parallel reputation as one of the entertainment industry’s most committed and outspoken social activists, a role that earned him Hollywood’s highest humanitarian recognition. In 2022, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Oscar presented to individuals whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the film industry by promoting human welfare and contributing to addressing systemic inequities.

At the ceremony marking that award, actress Alfre Woodard paid tribute to Glover’s decades of activism, which included his role as a student organizer during his years at San Francisco State University, where he was a driving force behind a campus walkout that helped lead to the creation of the Department of Black Studies, one of the first such academic departments in the United States.

“Danny Glover always does the right thing first, without testing the prevailing winds of public opinion,” Woodard said in her tribute. “The places in his heart where he has put his time and his resources outnumber his years.”

Glover’s decision to speak openly about his Alzheimer’s diagnosis follows a pattern of public figures choosing to disclose the condition in order to reduce the stigma associated with cognitive decline in older adults and to encourage others facing similar circumstances to seek help and remain engaged with their communities. Several prominent figures across politics, entertainment and other fields have shared similar disclosures in recent years, each raising awareness of a disease that researchers have characterized as a growing public health concern for which current treatment options remain limited relative to the scale of need.

For Glover, the decision to share the news publicly also appears grounded in the same sense of purpose and engagement that has defined his personal and professional life for more than five decades, the conviction that there is always something meaningful to offer, regardless of circumstances.

“There’s work to do,” he said simply.

Shares of NICE Ltd. climbed Wednesday morning, recovering modestly from a 52-week low hit just two weeks ago as a broader rally in beaten-down enterprise software stocks lifted the Israeli AI contact center technology company alongside peers that have been battered by investor fears over generative AI disruption to their core business models.

Shares of the Ra’anana, Israel-based company were trading at $95.37 as of 10:34 a.m. EDT, up $4.52, or 4.98%, on the day. The advance offers some relief after a prolonged and painful selloff that has carried NICE shares from a 52-week high of $175, reached in late July 2025, down to a 52-week low of $83.10 hit on June 18, a decline of more than 52% that has made the company one of the hardest-hit names in the enterprise software sector during 2026.

Wednesday’s bounce comes on a day when the broader software category has stabilized following weeks of broad-based selling attributed to fears, sometimes described by analysts as the “SaaSpocalypse,” that generative AI tools from companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI and Google could fundamentally disrupt traditional enterprise software subscription business models. That dynamic has weighed heavily on NICE in particular because the company’s flagship CXone Mpower platform competes directly in the AI-powered contact center space, a category that some investors fear could be hollowed out by AI tools capable of performing customer service interactions autonomously without requiring a dedicated third-party software platform.

NICE has pushed back forcefully against that narrative through its annual NiCE World 2026 customer conference, held June 8 through 10 at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, where the company rolled out a series of product announcements designed to position itself not as a victim of the agentic AI wave but as one of its primary beneficiaries. The company announced that agentic AI is now natively embedded at the core of its CXone Mpower platform, framing the shift as a fundamental transformation of customer experience from human-driven support to an integrated model combining AI agents, human workers and enterprise data in a single operating environment.

NiCE said it introduced the Workforce Empowerment Suite, giving enterprises one operating model to manage, govern and empower both human employees and AI agents at scale. The company also launched NiCE Labs, a dedicated AI innovation lab established to conduct advanced research, rigorous benchmarking and rapid prototyping at the leading edge of agentic customer experience technology.

The financial results presented at the same investor and analyst day showed revenue of $768.62 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2026, up 8% year-over-year and modestly above analyst estimates of $760.92 million. Adjusted earnings per share of $2.64 also beat consensus expectations of $2.52, representing a year-over-year increase of roughly 39% in net income. Despite those beats, the stock fell sharply following the event, with multiple analysts cutting their price targets in response to concerns about the pace of longer-term revenue growth in an increasingly competitive AI-native contact center market.

Wedbush lowered its price target on NICE to $100 from $120 and maintained a Neutral rating on the shares following the investor day. Morgan Stanley maintained an Overweight rating but lowered its price target to $130 from $148. Citi reduced its target to $100 from $119, and RBC Capital lowered its target to $130 from $150.

The broadly negative analyst price target revisions reflected a common concern: while NICE’s near-term financial performance has held up reasonably well, investors are increasingly questioning whether the company’s competitive position in the contact center software market is durable over a multi-year horizon given the pace of development of AI-native alternatives. NICE has traditionally relied on its CXone platform’s breadth of capabilities, including workforce optimization, quality management, compliance recording, analytics and interaction management, as a defensible moat against competitors. That argument is now being stress-tested in real time as both established cloud software companies and smaller AI-native startups attempt to replicate those capabilities using foundation models.

A separate challenge has emerged from NICE’s European presence. Reports have circulated that France’s domestic intelligence agency was transitioning off Palantir’s tools in favor of domestic alternatives, and more broadly, a wider shift in European government and enterprise procurement sentiment toward prioritizing domestically developed or European-domiciled software vendors has created uncertainty around renewal rates for NICE’s international public-sector customer base, even if the company has not publicly quantified the impact.

Despite those headwinds, NICE has continued executing on its commercial expansion strategy. NICE Actimize, the company’s financial crime and compliance division, signed a major contract with DNB Bank ASA, Norway’s largest financial services group, to deploy the NICE Actimize X-Sight Enterprise platform, consolidating DNB’s fraud detection and anti-money laundering systems onto a single cloud-native intelligence-driven platform. The win illustrates that NICE’s financial crime compliance business, which serves banks and financial institutions rather than consumer-facing contact centers, has continued to grow independently of the contact center narrative that has dominated the stock’s recent performance.

According to 16 analysts, approximately 93.75% maintain a Buy rating on NICE shares, with an average 12-month price target of $131.43, implying roughly 30% upside from recent trading levels. That disconnect between the overwhelmingly bullish analyst consensus and the stock’s 52% decline from its 52-week high reflects a broader investor skepticism about the durability of enterprise software business models in an AI-saturated environment that has not yet been resolved by any individual earnings report or product announcement.

NICE’s next earnings report is expected in early August, a date that will give investors their next opportunity to assess whether the company’s pivot toward agentic AI as a platform-level strategy is beginning to translate into new bookings, expanded customer commitments and improved revenue visibility, or whether the competitive pressures bearing down on the contact center software market are more structurally challenging than the company’s current financial results reflect. For now, Wednesday’s advance represents a stabilization trade rather than a conviction reversal, with the stock still far below where it traded just a year ago even after this morning’s nearly 5% bounce.

This article was written by

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Available for over a year

Buying a flat used to be a stepping stone to owning a house – but has this all changed?

Research is telling us that the gap in price between flats and houses has hit a 30 year high. According to the property platform Zoopla, so far this this year two-thirds of one and two-bedroom flats listed for sale still haven’t been sold.

The leasehold system in England is being blamed, in large part, for the declining popularity of flats. There are concerns about the length of leases and the maintenance and service charges often involved when owning a flat. The Government is in the process of introducing new measures to deal with some of these issues.

So today we’re asking – what does buying a flat mean for your finances? Maybe you live in one and love it! Perhaps your children do? Or are you struggling to sell and feeling a bit flattened?

Presenter Felicity Hannah puts listeners’ questions and concerns to an expert panel. Polly Gilbert is a director at the digital mortgage brokers Tembo, and Liam Spender is a trustee at the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Presenter: Felicity Hannah
Producer: Craig Henderson
Editor: Jess Quayle
Senior News Editor: Sara Wadeson

(First broadcast 3pm Wednesday 1st July, 2026)

Programme WebsiteShow less

President Donald Trump has decided not to extend the USMCA trade agreement and will instead pursue independent trade deals with Canada and Mexico, FOX Business has learned.

Wednesday marked the deadline for the six-year review, and a Trump administration official told FOX Business that the president opted against extending the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

The official indicated that Trump will instead pursue separate deals with Canada and Mexico that last for up to 10 years.

The USMCA runs until 2036, so it will remain in effect barring further actions during the negotiations over changes to the trade terms between the U.S. and two of its three largest trading partners.

Data from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) showed that in 2024, Canada and Mexico were the two largest export markets for U.S.-made goods, while Mexico was the largest source of U.S. imports and Canada ranked third in that category.

Trump negotiated the USMCA during his first term as president as a successor to NAFTA. The agreement was signed in December 2019 and took effect on July 1, 2020.

The president has sought to renegotiate the terms of the USMCA since his return to the White House, and imposed 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico last year. That spurred negotiations over the tariffs and underlying issues Trump had with trade terms between the three countries, raising uncertainty over the agreement’s future.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

‘This sort of shopping centre is our bread and butter really’

Middleton Shopping Centre is under new management after a sale was confirmed on Friday.

Middleton’s main shopping complex was put up for sale last month with an asking price of £8.5m. AG Retail – a subsidiary of the Adhan Group – are the purchasers of the site for an undisclosed fee.

The giant shopping centre comprises 324,078 sq ft of retail space across 87 units, supported by a 430‐space multi‐storey car park.

The new owners’ main priority is to get the shopping centre full again and sorting some building works for new retailers coming in.

Following weeks of rumours locally, it has been confirmed that retailer BOYES will move into the closed down Wilko store in the shopping centre. Jon-Paul Hardman, the asset manager speaking on behalf of AG Retail, added that B&M will move into the Poundstretcher store.

He added that Poundstretcher and TG Jones in the shopping centre may not leave entirely though following their recent financial troubles.

Mr Hardman said: “We tried to buy Middleton Shopping Centre three years ago but we were unsuccessful. It works for our retail model.

“This sort of shopping centre is our bread and butter really. Our first priority is to fill the centre again, that is the main plan.”

The Adhan Group is one of the largest retail owners in the north west, with a large portfolio of shopping centres. They run Golden Square Shopping Centre in Warrington, The Mall Blackburn, Belle Vale in Liverpool and Rochdale Exchange Shopping Centre – to name just a few.

According to Knight Frank, who put the shopping centre on the market, it has an annual footfall of around four million people. The estate agents added that it has a gross income of £2,332,168 per annum and an annual net income of £995,719.

This is happening at an exciting time for the town, with the Metrolink tram service planned for the area as part of a wider investment strategy – the Middleton Development Corporation.

This forms part of the overarching Northern Gateway scheme, bringing with it 20,000 jobs, Metrolink to Middleton, 1,200,000 square metres of employment floorspace, 3,000 new homes and better public areas, roads and pathways.

To find all the planning applications, traffic diversions, road layout changes, alcohol licence applications and more in your community, visit the Public Notices Portal.

Nike shares slipped ​nearly 4% in premarket trading on Wednesday, ​as investors fretted over the slower-than-expected turnaround at the world’s largest sportswear maker, ​nearly two years after Elliott Hill took the helm to revive growth.

While the company posted a modest beat in fourth-quarter revenue on Tuesday, sales in China slumped 17% and it expects sales to continue to decline in the first half ‌of fiscal 2027, underscoring ⁠the uneven ⁠nature of its recovery and raising doubts about the pace of its turnaround strategy.

“The Nike turnaround is progressing slowly,” Telsey ​Advisory Group analyst Cristina Fernandez said, adding that sales trends remain weak in large parts of the business such as ​sportswear and in international markets, and are unlikely to rebound before fiscal 2028.

Shares of European peers Adidas and Puma dropped about 1% each.

Nike has been struggling to regain momentum after losing market share to rivals such ​as Anta, Li Ning and Hoka. The stock has already fallen ⁠about 35% ‌this year.

Under Hill’s plan, the company is refocusing on sports, accelerating product innovation ​and rebuilding wholesale partnerships.
“Launched ​a year and a half ago, CEO Elliott Hill’s “Win Now” plan has brought ⁠cost reductions, more efficient inventory management, and a reorganization to align product ​development and marketing around athletics. However, improvement in results has been limited,” Morningstar ​analyst David Swartz said.The sportswear giant’s fourth-quarter revenue fell 4% to $10.97 billion. It also projected a low-to-mid-single digit percentage drop in revenue in the first half of fiscal 2027.

CHINA WEAKNESS PERSISTS Nike expects sales in China to remain under pressure as it works with retail partners to clear excess inventory, outgoing finance chief Matthew Friend said.

Greater China, which accounts for roughly 15% of Nike’s annual revenue, is ‌its third-largest market after North America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Still, some analysts said there were early signs that Nike’s efforts to reset the business in ​the region were ​gaining traction, as evidenced by a ⁠smaller decline in fourth-quarter sales compared with the company’s earlier forecast of a roughly 20% drop.

Hill also said Nike plans to launch more than a dozen new footwear styles, though he cautioned that it would ​take time for the products to deliver sustained growth.

The company said stronger World Cup-related marketing, a faster pace of product launches and a rebound in soccer demand after a slowdown in April were proof of improving momentum. It also forecast a slight expansion in first-quarter gross margin.

“Sportswear and Jordan Streetwear remain an overhang and will take time to recover, but the core business is stabilizing,” Jefferies analysts said.