The UK’s economy grew faster than expected in July, latest official figures have shown.

The economy expanded by 0.4% in the month, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, whereas economists had predicted no growth.

It follows growth of 0.3% in June and zero growth in May.

The ONS said expansion in the services, production and construction sectors had contributed to July’s figure.

The exchange has fixed the IPO price band at Rs 1,700 to Rs 1,785 per share, with each share carrying a face value of Rs 1. The lot size has been set at eight shares, meaning retail investors will need to invest a minimum of Rs 14,280 to bid for one lot. Further bids will have to be made in multiples of eight shares.

NSE IPO price band details

Retail investors have been allocated 35% of the issue, while 50% has been reserved for eligible institutional bidders (QIBs). The remaining portion will be available to non-institutional investors (NIIs).

At the upper end of the price band, the NSE IPO will be valued at Rs 22,561.57 crore, making it the second-largest IPO in Indian history. At this price, NSE will have a market capitalisation of Rs 4.41 lakh crore. Eligible employees participating in the IPO will receive a discount of Rs 170 per share.

Its selling shareholders in the offer for sale include SBI, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Aranda Investments (Mauritius) Pte. Ltd., MS Strategic Mauritius Ltd., New India Assurance, SBI Capital Markets, Bank of Baroda, Stock Holding Corporation of India, General Insurance Corporation of India and United India Insurance Company.

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The IPO is entirely an Offer For Sale (OFS), which means NSE itself will not receive any proceeds from the share sale.

NSE IPO bankers and lead managers

Kotak Capital, JM Financial, Morgan Stanley India, Citigroup, HSBC Securities, JPMorgan India, SBI Capital, Anand Rathi Advisors, Avendus Capital, Axis Capital, DAM Capital, Equirus Capital, HDFC Bank, ICICI Securities, IDBI Capital, IIFL Capital, Motilal Oswal, Nuvama Wealth, Pantomath Capital and 360 ONE WAM are the book running lead managers for the IPO.

When will NSE shares list?

NSE shares will be listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Allotment for eligible shareholders is scheduled to be determined by September 22, while the shares are expected to be credited to the demat accounts of eligible shareholders on September 23.

The shares will list on the bourses on September 24.

NSE IPO size trimmed

Meanwhile, NSE has cut the size of its proposed IPO offer for sale by around 15%, with several shareholders reducing the number of shares they intend to sell, according to the red herring prospectus (RHP) filed on September 10.

The total OFS has been reduced to up to 12.64 crore shares from the 14.89 crore shares proposed in the UDRHP. This represents a reduction of around 2.25 crore shares.

The entire reduction has come from eight sellers. MS Strategic (Mauritius) has reduced its offer by 0.50 crore shares, while Stock Holding Corporation of India has cut its proposed sale by 0.47 crore shares. General Insurance Corporation of India has reduced its offer by 0.45 crore shares, Bank of Baroda by 0.33 crore shares and National Insurance Company by 0.20 crore shares.

Mahagony Limited has lowered its proposed sale by 0.20 crore shares, while Indian Bank has reduced its offer by 0.10 crore shares. Individual shareholder Amit Kumar Lohia has withdrawn from the OFS entirely, removing 25,000 shares from the proposed sale. Together, these eight sellers account for the full 2.25 crore-share reduction in the OFS.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Aranda Investments (Mauritius) and TA Asia Pacific Acquisitions, however, have kept their proposed sale quantities unchanged.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

Discord users across the United States began reporting widespread access problems early Friday morning, with outage-tracking site Downdetector logging a surge in complaints starting around 12:10 a.m. EDT, primarily centered on voice call connectivity failures.

Downdetector’s official account flagged the surge in a post shortly after the reports began, asking affected users how the disruption was impacting them and directing people to its live outage map for updates. The hashtag “DiscordDown” began circulating on social media as users compared notes on the issue.

According to Sunday Guardian Live’s analysis of the outage data, 68% of reported problems were related to voice calls specifically, followed by 20% involving the mobile and desktop app and 6% involving the website. Users attempting to join voice chats reported calls taking unusually long to connect or failing outright, with the complaints suggesting voice connectivity was the primary issue affecting the platform’s users.

Independent monitoring service Entireweb reported the situation escalating significantly as the morning progressed, with 151 outage reports logged in the preceding 24 hours as of its most recent check, 25 of which had come in within just the past hour. The service recommended affected users take a break and try again later given the elevated volume of active complaints.

Separate tracker IsDown, which specifically monitors Discord’s voice service, recorded a more modest three user reports in the 24 hours leading up to its check just after midnight Eastern time, illustrating how quickly the reported issue appeared to escalate in the hours that followed. One user report captured by IsDown earlier in the week described being stuck on a “waiting to connect” message when attempting to use voice chat, with the same issue affecting friends in different countries simultaneously.

Not every monitoring service reached the same conclusion about the scope of Friday’s disruption. StatusGator characterized Discord as “operational” as of its most recent check at 3:57 a.m. UTC, while still logging 16 user-submitted outage reports over the preceding 24-hour period. Similarly, UptimeRobot’s automated check, run from North America just after 4 a.m. GMT, did not detect any unusual response times or error codes affecting the platform, a pattern of conflicting readings that has periodically characterized Discord outages in the past, given that the company’s official status page has, at times, continued to show the service as fully operational even while independent trackers and user reports pointed to a genuine disruption.

Discord has a well-documented history of voice-specific outages that have not always been immediately reflected on its own official status page. During one previous incident, Downdetector reports spiked to well over 7,500 within a short window, with users reporting server connection issues and voice chat failures displaying an “awaiting endpoint” error message, even as Discord’s status page continued showing the service as operational throughout that disruption. That earlier outage was ultimately traced back to a concurrent issue affecting Google Cloud Platform, the infrastructure provider Discord primarily relies on, with Discord’s own issues clearing up shortly after the underlying Google Cloud disruption was resolved.

Discord, the widely used voice, video and text communication platform originally built around gaming communities but now used broadly for a wide range of online communities, has grown into one of the most heavily trafficked messaging platforms globally, making even relatively brief disruptions to core features like voice chat a significant source of user frustration and social media attention.

For users experiencing ongoing issues Friday, UptimeRobot recommended standard troubleshooting steps, including attempting to access Discord from an alternative browser, device or network, such as a mobile hotspot, disabling any active VPN connection, clearing the device’s DNS cache, and restarting the home router before concluding that a broader platform-wide outage is responsible for the disruption. If Discord loads and functions normally from a different network or device, the underlying issue is more likely tied to a user’s own local internet connection rather than reflecting a genuine service-wide problem.

Given Discord’s function as a primary communication tool for millions of users, including gaming communities, hobbyist groups, professional teams and informal friend circles, disruptions specifically affecting voice chat functionality tend to draw significant and immediate user frustration, given how central real-time voice communication has become to how many people use the platform on a daily basis.

Outage-tracking platforms including Downdetector, Entireweb, StatusGator and IsDown each compile crowdsourced reports from affected users and cross-reference them against automated server checks to help determine whether a genuine, widespread service disruption is underway, as opposed to isolated technical issues affecting only a subset of users. The notably conflicting readings across different monitoring services during Friday’s incident, ranging from Entireweb’s escalating report of 151 complaints to StatusGator’s more modest count and UptimeRobot’s clean automated check, underscore the inherent difficulty in definitively characterizing the scope of a disruption like this one in real time, particularly for issues that may affect certain regions, connection types or specific platform features, such as voice calling, more severely than others.

As of early Friday morning, Discord had not issued a detailed public statement specifically addressing the cause of the reported voice call and connectivity issues. Affected users were advised to continue monitoring both Downdetector’s live outage tracker and Discord’s own official status page for further updates, while the company worked, without formal public acknowledgment as of the time of this report, to address whatever underlying issues were contributing to the voice connectivity problems affecting users across the United States early Friday.

American consumers are facing higher costs as the war in Iran pushes energy prices higher, with U.S. households having spent over $100 billion more this year due to elevated gasoline and diesel prices, an economist says.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told FOX Business that “higher oil prices and energy more broadly” have been the main economic consequence of the Iran war felt by U.S. households.

“The war has added about $115 billion in additional costs through higher gasoline prices, what we pay at the pump; diesel that goes to everything that’s put on a truck from groceries to Amazon packages; and jet fuel. So, if you fly in an airplane, you can pay more because you have to pay for the cost of that fuel,” Zandi said.

“If you add that all up, it’s about $115 billion. And if you divide by the number of households, that’s about $860 per household. So, a typical household is spending $860 more on energy than they otherwise would have if there had been no war.”

AMERICANS FACE THE MOST EXPENSIVE LABOR DAY AT THE GAS PUMP EVER RECORDED

American consumers have spent about $115 billion more this year due to the rise in energy prices amid the Iran war, Zandi said. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)

The war’s impact has hit lower- and middle-income American households the hardest. Zandi said that higher-income households have been better able to digest the higher energy costs.

“Folks that are in the top part of the income and wealth distribution, the well-to-do, they’re doing fine. They’ve got a job. They don’t have much in the way of debt. If they have any debt, it’s a mortgage that’s sitting on a very low interest rate, they own a lot of stocks and benefit from the run-up in stock value,” Zandi said.

“For lower- and middle-income Americans, it’s tough, much more difficult. Their incomes on an after-inflation basis because of the war have come to a virtual standstill, and some are actually declining. Those folks, they don’t own much stock, they may not even own a home and they have a fair amount of debt. So, they’re struggling, and the high energy costs — the fact that we’re paying over $4 a gallon — it really matters to those folks,” Zandi said.

A driver reaches for the pump at a gas station in Carolina Beach, N.C., July, 1, 2026. (Allison Joyce/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

NATIONAL AVERAGE PRICE FOR DIESEL HITS NEW RECORD HIGH AMID IRAN CONFLICT

Inflationary pressures have persisted in the economy since the COVID-19 pandemic and the pace of price growth picked up again this year due to the energy shock caused by the Iran war. Zandi noted that households were better able to deal with higher gas prices earlier this year after larger tax refunds, though their effect has diminished over time.

“Some of the ill effects of the Iran war on consumers were mitigated early on in the year because of the tax cuts,” he said. “People got bigger tax refund checks this year than last year because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That helped up and through probably May, maybe into June, but those tax cuts are now in the rearview mirror, so households are still stuck paying over $4 a gallon.”

About 20% of the world’s oil supply crosses the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran.  (FOX)

The Iran war has constrained the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz due to the threat of Iranian attacks and sea mines in the main shipping channels through the narrow waterway. While the U.S. Navy has escorted vessels through the choke point and countries bordering the Persian Gulf have utilized alternative means of transporting oil, including pipelines, oil supplies haven’t recovered to their pre-war level.

“The only relief is if the war winds down, at least in the sense that more oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz. That’s still very much a bottleneck. Oil tanker traffic is still well, well below what it was before the war started,” he said.

“Ultimately, we’ll figure it out. The oil that doesn’t go through the strait will find other ways to get into the global marketplace, pipelines and other things. And we’ll see more production in the rest of the world because you can make a lot of money now producing because prices are so high,” Zandi explained. 

“That’ll happen, but that takes time. That’s not next week, next month, next quarter, may not even be next year.”

TREASURY YIELDS HOVER NEAR MULTI-YEAR HIGHS AS ENERGY PRICES AND GOVERNMENT DEBT FUEL BOND SELL-OFF

Vessels transit the Hormuz Strait off the coast of Iran’s southern port city of Bandar Abbas Sept. 7, 2026.  (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

Zandi said that while oil prices would likely start to decline when there’s an indication that supplies are normalizing, he cautioned they’re unlikely to return to pre-war levels in the foreseeable future, in part due to the drawdown of reserves.

“I don’t think they go back to where they were pre-war because, in most scenarios, you still have to worry about the conflict restarting and the strait being shut down again. Insurance companies will demand a higher premium to pay for the risk of insuring tankers that go through the Persian Gulf,” Zandi said.

“It will take some time to restore all the inventory drawdown that has occurred,” he added, noting the moves by the U.S. to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and those by other countries like China and India from their own reserves.

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“That’s helped cushion the blow, but we won’t get back to normal, if that’s the right word, for some time until those inventories are replenished and that could take a while,” Zandi said.

Firms across Europe have been switching from fossil fuels to electricity for their industrial needs, encouraged by subsidies from EU funds.

While that is helping bring down emissions of climate-warming gases, it has also made firms more vulnerable to power cuts.

And in Spain and Portugal that threat was made painfully clear last year.

On both sides of the border, firms are looking for ways to avoid disruption.

“The industrial sector has been one of the first to look at storage systems, since it can’t have its production drop off too abruptly,” says Miguel Matias, founder of the Portuguese energy services company Self Energy, headquartered in the UK.

“A backup for a few hours, or even minutes, might guarantee that machines don’t get damaged,” he says.

And there have been more recent incidents to spur investment.

At the end of January, Storm Kristin toppled thousands of electricity and telecom poles across central Portugal, cutting power and communications to hundreds of thousands of people – some for weeks.

So, companies and other organisations have been taking action.

In Spain, battery storage capacity has risen almost sevenfold since last April, from about 28 MW before the blackout to 193MW in April 2026, according to the grid operator Red Eléctrica.

And much more capacity is planned.

In December, the IDAE, Spain’s Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy, awarded €827m in EU funds to 133 energy storage projects totalling 2,400MW. Around 80% of that is battery storage.

The new capacity will be close to 10 times the amount that Red Eléctrica currently registers on the Spanish grid.

It’s all good news for battery suppliers.

“We are seeing not only an increase in demand, but also a clear evolution in customer requirements,” says Alberto Bodegas, from battery storage company Sungrow.

Traditionally, commercial and industrial clients were looking for partial or full backup solutions, Bodegas says.

Today, Bodegas says customers are demanding more advanced capabilities, such as seamless backup, meaning the switch from grid to backup occurs instantaneously and without any noticeable interruption.

This is particularly critical for sensitive environments such as hospitals and data centres.

Delivery times are also crucial for buyers, currently under tight deadlines linked to EU funding programmes. Battery companies are being pressed to meet increasingly shorter delivery dates, Bodegas says.

Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley is pushing back on Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s accusations that the automaker is becoming too reliant on China, calling them “basic misunderstandings” that could have been cleared up with “a simple five-minute call.”

In an interview Wednesday with The Wall Street Journal, Farley rejected allegations in a letter from Duffy accusing Ford of “actively intertwining its future with Chinese state-backed enterprises.”

“These are basic misunderstandings, mistruths, whatever words you want to use,” Farley told the outlet.

“We’re not enabling the Chinese to come here,” Farley added. “Actually, you could argue the opposite is the case.”

DUFFY PUTS FORD ON NOTICE OVER CHINA TIES, WARNS OF SECURITY CONCERNS

Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley is pushing back on Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s claims that the automaker is becoming too reliant on China. (Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Farley also denied Duffy’s claim that Ford had proposed a “framework” that would make it easier for Chinese automakers to establish joint ventures in the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal.

“N-O, period,” Farley said. “That’s flatly wrong. Ford does not propose any framework described in the letter. We are America’s car company.” 

The letter, made public Tuesday, urged Ford to reduce its reliance on Chinese companies, prioritize U.S. manufacturing and allied supply chains, and “promote the self-reliance and integrity of the domestic automotive industry.” 

Duffy also pointed to Ford’s battery plant in Marshall, Michigan, which licenses technology from Chinese battery giant CATL.

Duffy’s letter, made public Tuesday, urged Ford to reduce its reliance on Chinese companies. (Reuters/Brian Snyder)

Ford sharply disputed Duffy’s accusations, calling the letter “a wrongheaded attempt to capture headlines at the expense of a company that has done more for American manufacturing than virtually any other in the nation’s history.”

FORD’S US MANUFACTURING EXPANSION TO BRING ‘THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF JOBS,’ LUTNICK SAYS

The automaker said its BlueOval Battery Park Michigan facility is owned and operated by Ford, represents billions of dollars in investment and is expected to create about 1,700 American jobs. 

The company said its agreement with CATL is “a limited technology-licensing and services agreement, not a joint venture or foreign-owned manufacturing operation.”

While Farley has warned that Chinese automakers pose a threat to the U.S. auto industry, he said Ford still has to work with competitors in some areas to remain competitive, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“I sure would love the Secretary to come to Marshall, Michigan, and to Louisville like others in the administration to see our breakthrough technology innovated here in the U.S.,” Farley told the outlet.

Farley also said he was surprised Duffy aired his concerns publicly.

“We have great relationships with them that are informal where we can call each other, in either direction,” Farley said. “And we’ve never been surprised like this.”

FORD TEAMS UP WITH OUTDOOR OUTFITTER FILSON TO LAUNCH NEW BRONCO SUV

While Farley has warned that Chinese automakers pose a threat to the U.S. auto industry, he said Ford must also work with competitors in some areas to remain competitive. (Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg via Getty Images )

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On Wednesday, the White House’s Rapid Response 47 account appeared to defend the automaker, writing on X that Ford “is a GREAT American company” that has “done a tremendous job on increasing investments domestically and shoring production back to the U.S.”

FOX Business reached out to the Department of Transportation for comment.

FOX Business’ Brittany Miller contributed to this report.