LONDON — Singer Robbie Williams has revealed that he was recently diagnosed with autism, telling fans the discovery has helped him make sense of aspects of his personality and behavior that had puzzled him for years, even as he acknowledged already living with ADHD.

The 52-year-old former Take That frontman shared the news during a question-and-answer session at the Autumn/Winter launch of his clothing line, Hopeium, at Flannels in London on Aug. 13. Speaking candidly to attendees, Williams described the diagnosis in blunt terms. “I have ADHD and I just found out I have a bit of autism as well, which I actually f****** love because it explains so much,” Williams said.

Williams went on to joke about how the new diagnosis has already begun shaping the way he explains his own behavior to those around him. “It is my get-out-of-jail-free card now, and all the weird s*** that I do I just say, ‘Sorry, I’m autistic,’” he told the crowd.

The singer, who first disclosed his ADHD diagnosis in 2023, used the London event to offer a more detailed picture of how the condition affects his daily life and creative process. He described an intense, singular focus that ADHD allows him to bring to certain tasks, contrasted against significant difficulty engaging with other responsibilities. “With the ADHD you can completely and utterly concentrate on something 1000 per cent, but with absolutely everything else, you just cannot do it. Ask my kids,” Williams said.

Williams explained that he leans heavily on creative work as a way of managing anxiety and the intrusive thoughts that can otherwise dominate his attention. “What I’m completely and utterly obsessed with is creating images and making funny things,” he said. “If I’m creating images and funny things, I’m not thinking about me, because my brain is incredibly creative, and it can be creative about everything in the world that you panic or scared about.”

To illustrate the nature of those intrusive thoughts, Williams offered a specific and unusual example from a recent flight. “For example, this is how crazy I am, recently I was sitting on a plane, and I thought, ‘what if I can have telekinesis and my intrusive thoughts tell the plane to crash itself,’” he said. He described the anecdote as representative of a broader pattern he has learned to manage by redirecting his focus toward creative outlets rather than allowing such thoughts to spiral further. “So that’s the kind of level of insanity that I’m dealing with,” he said. “It’s best to train my brain to do something better than worrying about having supernatural powers and crashing a plane.”

Monday’s revelation builds on a broader, yearslong pattern of Williams speaking openly about his mental health, a subject he has addressed repeatedly throughout a solo career that began in 1997 following his departure from Take That. In October of last year, Williams disclosed that he had also been diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, a neurological condition that can cause involuntary tics, describing his own experience of the condition as manifesting primarily through what he called “inside Tourette’s.” Speaking to comedian Paul Whitehouse and researcher Dr. Mine Conkbayir for their podcast “I’m ADHD! No You’re Not,” Williams explained the concept in his own terms, describing the phenomenon as intrusive thoughts rather than the more commonly recognized physical tics associated with the condition.

Notably, Williams’ path toward his current autism diagnosis was not straightforward. During that same 2025 podcast appearance, he revealed that an earlier online autism screening test had not classified him as autistic, though it had identified certain traits associated with the condition, particularly around social interaction. “It turns out I’m not [autistic], but I’ve got autistic traits. And it’s around, social stuff, it’s about interaction,” he said at the time. When pressed by Conkbayir about why he remained convinced he might still be autistic despite the test result, Williams explained that obtaining an official diagnosis would offer him a clearer understanding of longstanding personal struggles. He said a formal diagnosis would help him gain “understanding of why I feel so uncomfortable in my skin,” adding that his sense of comfort was largely confined to very specific circumstances. “When I’m in bed, that’s my comfort zone. Anywhere outside of that bed is my discomfort zone,” he said at the time, while noting that the situation had been gradually improving.

That same conversation offered insight into the gap Williams has said exists between his public persona and his private experience of anxiety and self-doubt. He described himself as highly skilled at concealing his internal struggles behind a more confident public image. “I’m an Olympian at masking,” he said, explaining that he had learned over the course of his career to project confidence, bravado and even smugness, qualities he acknowledged had proven commercially valuable throughout his decades as a performer, even as they masked a very different internal experience.

Williams has built one of the most enduring solo careers in British pop music since leaving Take That in the mid-1990s, releasing more than a dozen studio albums, including his most recent release, “Britpop,” which arrived in January. Throughout that career, he has periodically opened up about mental health struggles including anxiety and depression, gradually building a public record of candor about conditions that he has said significantly shape both his creative process and his day-to-day life.

The National Health Service in the United Kingdom defines autism as a difference in how a person’s brain develops that affects how they see and experience the world, noting that the condition can influence communication, thinking, learning and attention. Autistic individuals are also more likely to experience certain co-occurring conditions, according to NHS guidance on the subject, a pattern broadly consistent with Williams’ own disclosure of both ADHD and autism alongside his previously reported experience with Tourette syndrome.

As of this report, Williams has not indicated whether he plans to speak further publicly about his autism diagnosis or how it may influence his approach to future creative projects, live performances or public appearances, though his history of openly discussing his mental health suggests the subject is likely to come up again as he continues promoting his music and other ventures, including his Hopeium clothing brand.

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India therefore faces a delicate balancing act. It wants to make UPI financially sustainable without disturbing the conditions that helped make it ubiquitous.

It is not an impossible task. Brazil’s Pix, another hugely successful instant-payment system, is free for individuals but permits low-cost charges for businesses. Yet it is the world’s fastest-growing real-time payment system,, external used by more than 140 million people and 14 million companies, with more than four billion transactions a month averaging about $88 each.

“The key question is not simply whether UPI should remain free for every merchant transaction,” Motheram says, “but whether the pricing structure protects the marginal merchants who are still being brought into the digital payments ecosystem.”

That may be the real test of India’s next UPI experiment.

The first phase was about creating the network. The second was about getting hundreds of millions of people and millions of merchants onto it. The third is now beginning: figuring out how to pay for the system without making it less useful.

Economist Renuka Sane believes the right pricing structure could finally restore “commercial sanity”, external to India’s digital payment rails, allowing the market to price risk, fund critical infrastructure and build a more resilient payments ecosystem.

The bigger risk may not be that Indians suddenly abandon UPI because a large retailer is charged a fraction of a percentage point: experts say its network effects are now too powerful for that.

But there is a potential perception problem: a 2024 survey by polling agency LocalCircles found that 75% of UPI users said they would stop using it if transaction fees were introduced, while only 22% said they would be willing to pay.

The risk is subtler. If charging merchants makes some of them less enthusiastic about accepting UPI – or eventually discourages the smallest ones from joining – the network could begin to lose some of the frictionless quality that made it so successful.

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LONDON — Britain’s FTSE 100 index advanced modestly on Monday, recovering some ground after its first weekly decline in five weeks, as weaker-than-expected U.S. retail sales data reduced expectations for near-term Federal Reserve interest rate increases.

The blue-chip index was last trading at 10,763.14, up 13.03 points or 0.12% as of 10:06 a.m. GMT+1. The move followed a Friday close of 10,750.11, when the index fell 0.2% and logged a weekly loss of about 1.4%.

Investors pointed to Friday’s U.S. retail sales report, which showed a 0.6% month-on-month decline in July. The figure missed expectations of a 0.1% rise and marked the steepest drop since May 2025. The data, combined with softer recent payrolls and producer price readings, led markets to scale back the implied probability of a September rate hike. Treasury yields eased and the dollar softened, supporting risk sentiment into the new week.

Mining stocks helped lift the FTSE 100 in early trade as industrial metal prices firmed. Glencore, Anglo American and Antofagasta ranked among the stronger performers in the session’s initial rankings, reversing some of the pressure that weighed on the sector last week. The FTSE 350 industrial metals and mining group had posted its weakest weekly performance since late June after copper prices pulled back and production outlooks disappointed.

Software and data-related names also contributed to the rebound. Shares in Sage Group, Experian and RELX had climbed on Friday after reports of private equity interest in U.S. software firm Workday, and the sector retained some of that momentum. Pharmaceutical heavyweights showed mixed moves, with AstraZeneca among the gainers in early rankings while other names lagged.

Sterling firmed against the dollar, trading near $1.356. Broader European markets were mixed, with Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 little changed or slightly lower in early dealings. Asian equities had finished mostly higher overnight, providing a supportive backdrop for the London open.

The FTSE 100 remains well clear of levels seen a year earlier. The index has advanced roughly 17% over the past 12 months and sits more than 8% higher year to date, though it has given back some ground in August. Its 52-week range stretches from approximately 9,107 to a recent high near 10,989. The index last closed above 10,900 in early August before the recent pullback.

Market participants noted that last week’s decline interrupted a sustained summer advance that had pushed several European benchmarks toward or through record territory. Analysts have described the recent softness as potentially reflecting profit-taking after a strong run, with attention now focused on whether U.S. data continue to cool rate-hike expectations or whether energy prices and geopolitical developments reintroduce caution.

Oil markets remained a key variable. Crude prices had been supported in recent sessions by concerns over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, though any progress toward de-escalation could ease inflationary pressure and further reduce the likelihood of aggressive central-bank tightening. Gold held near multi-year highs, reflecting residual safe-haven demand.

Domestically, attention also turned to the UK housing market. Rightmove data showed asking prices falling 2% month-on-month in August to an average of £364,999, the largest August decline since 2018 and the sharpest annual drop since December 2023. The figures added a cautious note to the domestic economic picture even as equity markets focused on global rate expectations.

Volume on the FTSE 100 remained relatively light in the early session, consistent with typical summer trading conditions. The mid-cap FTSE 250 had ended the previous week largely flat and showed modest gains in early Monday trading, continuing a pattern of relative resilience compared with the large-cap index in recent weeks.

Looking ahead, investors will monitor further U.S. economic releases and any updates on monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. The FTSE 100’s heavy weighting toward global miners, energy companies and consumer-facing firms leaves it sensitive to both commodity price swings and shifts in interest-rate expectations.

The index’s composition, dominated by multinational companies with significant overseas earnings, has supported its performance through periods of sterling volatility. Dividend yields near 3% continue to attract income-focused investors even as valuation multiples remain elevated relative to longer-term averages.

Monday’s advance, while modest, marked a shift in tone after five sessions of pressure. Whether the rebound extends will depend on the path of U.S. data, commodity markets and broader risk appetite as the summer trading period draws toward its close. For now, the FTSE 100 has stabilized near the 10,760 level, reclaiming a portion of the ground lost in the prior week.

MADRID — The two-decade rivalry between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, widely regarded as the defining sporting duel of a generation, appears to be approaching its conclusion, as both players have separately signaled in recent days that retirement may be close at hand, driven by starkly different personal circumstances.

Ronaldo, in an interview with Vogue published Sunday, said the current season could mark the end of his playing career. “This is probably my last year of football, and I want to leave a spectacular legacy,” the 41-year-old Al Nassr forward and Portugal captain said. The remarks came just days after Ronaldo formally married his longtime partner, Georgina Rodriguez, following a relationship of roughly a decade, a milestone that has fueled speculation that the Portuguese star is preparing to shift his focus toward a more settled family life once his playing days conclude.

Ronaldo elaborated on his plans for life after football, describing a desire to fill the void the sport’s absence would leave in his daily routine. “Since the void left by soccer could be very large, I need to fill my time in various ways,” he said, adding that he expected to remain busy well beyond his final match. He pointed specifically to leisure pursuits and family time as priorities for the next phase of his life. “I want to enjoy more, travel frequently, play and watch padel, which I truly love,” Ronaldo said, referencing the racket sport that has grown increasingly popular among athletes and celebrities in recent years. He also reflected on the sacrifices of his playing career, saying he hoped to make up for lost time with those closest to him. “As the past 25 years involved many sacrifices, I want to fully enjoy what my family and I have achieved during that time,” he said.

Despite the retirement signal, Ronaldo’s actual departure from the sport may hinge on a specific personal milestone he has pursued for years: reaching 1,000 career goals. Since turning professional in 2002, Ronaldo has scored 976 goals for club and country combined, leaving him 24 short of the landmark figure. Given his well-documented determination to reach that number before stepping away, multiple outlets covering the story have suggested his actual retirement is likely to be timed around the achievement of that milestone, rather than the end of the current season strictly by the calendar. Ronaldo’s contract with Al Nassr runs through June 2027, giving him a window beyond this season in which to continue pursuing the record if needed.

Messi’s retirement signal emerged from a far more painful set of circumstances. The Inter Miami forward’s father, Jorge Messi, who had also served as his longtime agent and one of the most influential figures throughout his career, died on Aug. 7 at age 68 after a long illness. Messi shared a lengthy, emotional tribute to his father on Instagram in the days that followed, offering an unusually candid look at his grief and expressing serious doubt about his footballing future.

“Dad, I still can’t believe you’re gone. It hasn’t sunk in, or rather, I don’t want it to sink in,” Messi wrote in the letter, which also detailed the difficult circumstances surrounding his father’s declining health during this year’s World Cup, held across North America. Messi described how his father had continued urging him to compete in the tournament even as his condition worsened, and how the family had held out hope that Jorge might still be well enough to travel and watch him play. Argentina ultimately reached the tournament’s final in New York before losing 1-0 to Spain, a run Messi had hoped would allow him to bring his father one more moment of triumph. “I wanted to win it to bring it to you and show you a new one. I couldn’t, my legs couldn’t take it anymore,” Messi wrote, reflecting on the physical toll the tournament had taken on him during an emotionally taxing period.

The most striking portion of Messi’s letter addressed his uncertainty about continuing to play the sport that has defined his life. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you, I don’t know how to go on. I have just been playing soccer, and now I’m not sure if I can continue this much longer,” he wrote, a passage that immediately raised widespread speculation across the football world about whether the 38-year-old eight-time Ballon d’Or winner might be nearing the end of his professional career.

Jorge Messi had guided his son’s career from Lionel’s earliest days playing in Rosario, Argentina, through his rise at Barcelona and subsequent moves to Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Miami, serving as both father and agent throughout nearly the entirety of Messi’s professional journey. His death drew an outpouring of tribute and condolence from across the sport, including from longtime rival Ronaldo, along with players such as Neymar, Luka Modrić and Carlos Alcaraz, illustrating the degree of respect the elder Messi commanded throughout the football world well beyond his son’s own accomplishments.

Since his father’s death, Messi has continued to lean on his immediate family for support during what he has described as an exceptionally difficult period, including his wife, Antonela Roccuzzo, and his three children. He has also continued to play for Inter Miami in Major League Soccer, though his form has appeared to reflect the emotional toll of recent weeks; in an MLS match against Nashville SC on Aug. 15, Messi missed a penalty kick and appeared visibly distressed on the field afterward.

Whether either player follows through on retirement in the near term remains to be seen, and neither has provided a definitive final date for stepping away from professional football. Ronaldo’s path appears tied to a specific numerical milestone he has pursued for years, while Messi’s future remains far more uncertain, shaped by grief rather than by any predetermined athletic target. Together, the two developments have prompted extensive reflection across the football world about the eventual close of a rivalry that has shaped the sport’s global narrative for more than 15 years, spanning multiple World Cups, numerous Ballon d’Or contests and some of the most closely followed individual comparisons in the history of professional sports.

Sainsbury’s highlighted recent British Retail Consortium figures showing 1,600 daily incidents of violence and abuse against shopworkers nationwide, up significantly from 455 a day in 2019-20.

The retailer added that initial trials of the facial recognition system across two stores resulted in a 46% reduction in logged incidents of theft and anti-social behaviour, with over 90% of offenders not returning.

Silkie Carlo, the director of civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, has called for Sainsbury’s to scrap the technology, arguing that it is “treating customers like criminals”.

“Serious mistakes like this are inevitable when a national retailer does hundreds of thousands of ID checks indiscriminately with this sinister surveillance tech,” she said.

Arnold, who donated a £150 goodwill voucher from Sainsbury’s to a local food bank, questioned why the system remains active elsewhere.

“If they’re suspending it in this East Dulwich store, they are conceding there’s a problem with it. Why aren’t they suspending it in every store?”

Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, external, X, external and Instagram, external. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk, external

SEOUL — Google shut down 449 Korean-language YouTube channels during the second quarter of this year after determining they had engaged in coordinated efforts to manipulate public opinion around domestic political issues, with the vast majority of the closures occurring in the weeks immediately preceding South Korea’s June 3 local elections.

According to Yonhap News Agency and South Korea’s information and communication technology industry, Google’s Threat Analysis Group released its “Q2 2026 Influence Operations Report” on July 31, detailing the scale and timing of the takedowns. The report found that Google blocked a total of 449 Korean-language channels between April and June, with 22 channels removed in April, 367 in May and 60 in June.

The concentration of closures in May was especially notable, accounting for 81.7% of the total channels removed during the entire quarter, timing that placed the bulk of the enforcement action just weeks ahead of South Korea’s nationwide local elections. Among the channels taken down in May, the largest single category consisted of 142 channels that had posted content critical of the South Korean government, according to the report.

A more detailed breakdown of the May closures showed a range of political leanings represented among the removed channels. Beyond the 142 channels critical of the government, 71 channels were found to have supported the government, 58 channels supported specific politicians, 53 channels simultaneously criticized both the government and specific political parties, and 43 channels combined support for the government with criticism of specific parties, according to reporting based on the Google report’s findings.

Google determined that the channels had engaged in what the company described as “unauthentic coordinated behavior,” a term the company uses to characterize campaigns in which multiple accounts are mobilized to create the appearance of independent, organic activity by individual users, while in fact working in concert to improperly influence the formation of specific political narratives. When accounting for the full quarter using a broader classification method that grouped channels by their overall stance toward the South Korean government, 255 of the removed channels were found to contain content critical of the government, while 151 channels contained content supportive of the government, according to Korean-language reporting on the underlying data.

Unlike its influence-operations reporting on campaigns linked to China, Russia and Iran, Google did not disclose the specific countries or organizations believed to be behind the Korean-language takedowns, nor did the company release the names of the individual channels that were removed, according to the Asia Business Daily’s reporting on the disclosure. That lack of attribution leaves open questions about who was responsible for organizing the coordinated activity, even as the scale and timing of the removals point clearly toward an effort to influence domestic political discourse ahead of a major election.

The scale of the Korean-language enforcement action stands out in part because of its novelty within Google’s broader influence-operations reporting. According to the Free Press Journal’s coverage of the disclosure, Google had not previously terminated any South Korean YouTube channels for this type of coordinated influence activity between the second quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, marking the second quarter of this year as the first period in which Korean-language content became a significant target of this specific enforcement category. By comparison, over that same earlier stretch, Google reported shutting down 9,173 channels linked to influence operations originating from China and 2,083 channels linked to Russia, underscoring how much larger those two countries’ documented influence campaigns have been relative to the newly identified Korean-language activity.

The disclosure comes amid a broader period of scrutiny facing major U.S. technology companies operating in South Korea. Just last week, the country’s media watchdog, the Korea Media Communications Commission, concluded that both Google and Apple had violated South Korean law by abusing their dominant positions within their respective app marketplaces. According to the commission, the two companies were found to have circumvented a 2021 revision to the country’s telecommunications business act, a law designed to prevent large app marketplace operators from requiring developers to exclusively use the platform’s own in-app payment systems. The commission said the specific level of sanctions against the companies would be determined at a later date, following the initial finding of violations.

Google’s influence-operations reports, published on a regular basis by the company’s Threat Analysis Group, have historically served as one of the primary public sources of information regarding coordinated, inauthentic political activity detected across Google’s platforms, including YouTube. The reports typically categorize removed content by country of origin and by the nature of the coordinated activity involved, though the company’s disclosure practices vary depending on how confident its investigators are in attributing specific campaigns to particular actors or organizations.

The timing of the Korean-language closures relative to the June 3 local elections is likely to draw continued attention from South Korean election officials, political parties and civil society organizations concerned about the integrity of online political discourse ahead of future elections. South Korea has in recent years faced growing scrutiny over the role of online platforms in shaping political narratives, particularly as political polarization within the country has intensified and as domestic political actors have increasingly turned to platforms such as YouTube to reach voters directly, outside the framework of traditional broadcast and print media.

Google has not publicly indicated whether it plans to release additional details regarding the specific actors behind the Korean-language influence campaign identified in its second-quarter report, nor has the company said whether similar coordinated activity has continued or evolved following the removal of the 449 channels in question. The company’s quarterly influence-operations reports are expected to continue tracking developments in this area, offering periodic updates on the scale and nature of coordinated inauthentic activity detected across its platforms in South Korea and other countries around the world.

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