UK asks banks for feelgood stories about keeping out dirty money

By: Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent

30 August 2026 at 14:00

City firms tapped for case studies to try to convince global watchdog that London has cleaned up its act

The government is asking bankers and lawyers to provide feelgood stories about how they blocked dirty money from entering the UK, as ministers try to prove the UK’s money-laundering controls are working.

The Treasury’s call for evidence is meant to illustrate that the UK has upped its game when it comes to preventing financial crime, particularly since its last dismal assessment by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) global crime watchdog in 2018, which fuelled allegations that London had become a hub for “dirty money”.

When Prophecy Fails review – gripping dive into a doomsday cult

The Guardian

By: Lyndsey Winship

30 August 2026 at 07:00

Studio theatre, Edinburgh
Groupwork’s physical theatre show captures the real story of a midwest mystic from the 50s and the followers she drew, in all their eerie ordinariness

In the early 1950s in the American midwest, a woman known by the alias of Marian Keech awoke in the night with the urge to write. But the words that came out weren’t her own: it was the voice of her late father, she was sure. Other voices from the beyond began to use Marian as a conduit, ultimately Jesus Christ himself, which is how Keech came to be at the centre of a doomsday cult of seemingly ordinary citizens convinced the world was about to end, but that they would be rescued by aliens from the planet Clarion.

It is such a good story, one that was captured in a landmark social psychology study at the time as well as the book When Prophecy Fails, that you could argue Scottish theatre company Groupwork don’t have a lot to do. But their treatment of the tale is deceptively simple in a very well-crafted show that does no more and no less than it needs to.

TikTok reaches $400M settlement over children’s privacy lawsuit

TechCrunch

By: Lauren Forristal

21 August 2026 at 23:25

Two years after the U.S. Department of Justice alleged that TikTok violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, it has reached a $400 million settlement.

The best plays and musicals in London (and beyond) to book in 2026

www.telegraph.co.uk for the latest news from the UK and around the world.

By: Dominic Cavendish

25 July 2026 at 12:43

These shows are the finest on stage, both the best-rated productions we have already seen and those to which we are most looking forward

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