apple and amazon's mixed report cards not helping boost wall street, as the dowjones index sees its worst day of the year. markets here in asia also joining the sell—off. the bank of england pulls the trigger on its first interest rate cut in four years. hello and welcome to business today. i'm arunoday mukharji. it was a tough day on wall street, with the dow sliding nearly 500 points, as recession fears re—emerged. both the s&p 500 and the tech—heavy nasdaq also closed in the red. the report cards of tech giants amazon and apple didn't do much to lift the mood, either. our north america business correspondent michelle fleury

has more on what sparked that sell—off. yes, not even amazon could lift wall street out of its funk. shares in the e—commerce giant fell more than 4%, after its reported sales grew 10%, to $148 billion. now, that marked a slowdown from the prior quarter, and it has forecast further weakening in the months ahead. it wasn't the only tech firm, either, that left investors with a sour taste. intel's stock plunged after the chip maker said it plans to cut 15,000 jobs and announced disappointing results and sales site that social media company, snap. the only bright spot, apple, despite a drop in iphone sales. wall street's jitters started even before big tech earnings came out. the dowjones fell nearly 500 points after weak economic data sparked fears that the fed won't asked —— act fast enough to avoid a

recession. the ism manufacturing index fell to its lowest level since november. now with markets reassessing the health of the us economy, the health of the us economy, the government has met monthly jobs report, which is due out a few hours from now, could bring even more fireworks. as michelle mentioned, it was a mixed bag of news out of the tech giants on thursday. tech strategist sundeep gantori from ubs explained what the latest report cards have been telling us about the tech sector and ai momentum. it has been a mixed quarterly season, so we had two great quarters injanuary and april, so expectations have gone up, so clearly companies have issued mixed guidance, or in some cases, companies have some issues, in terms of this debate. so, overall, i think it has to do with where expectations were. i don't think it is a bad quarter. but i think it is more to do with valuations. in the first half of the year,

we saw tech stocks going up on the back of expectations from al on the boost we were anticipating, but in the second quarter earnings, do you think there is a worry ai is not getting the kind of return of investment? to be fair, i don't think we're at that stage where investments in al are actually generating a lot of money today. i think we need to take a medium to longer—term approach. having said that, we had some anecdotal evidence during the results, where companies are either seeing a increase in cloud revenues growth. in fact, we see the big tech cloud growth accelerating, but investments would continue, and we would rather see this as a long—term opportunity, and not something that would make you money in the next six months. i want to talk about apple, as well, because that stood out, it bucked the trend. do you feel that has something to do with that new ai initiative announcement, as well? without going into companies, specifically, it all comes down to expectations.

broadly, we see in this reporting season companies that haven't built, i think investor reaction was a bit mixed, more positive, rather, so i think it is more with expectations, but broadly speaking, we think ai is a key trend we would like to watch in the next six months. is there a timeframe, in terms of the adaptation we are looking at, when it comes to ai and monetisation? monetisation, longer term, maybe three to four years, that is where we'll see the cap expanding. but consumer acceleration in the next three to six months. intel announced it would be cutting 15% of its workforce, as it embarks on a $10 billion restructuring programme. according to ceo pat gelsinger, those cuts will affect roughly 15,000 employees and take place this year. gelsinger added the steps were necessary, given revenues have not grown as expected, with costs too high. for the april tojune quarter, intel reported weaker revenue and profit numbers.

former cnn presenter, don lemon, has sued tesla boss elon musk and his social media platform x, alleging that he didn't receive payment for a now—defunct content deal with the platform. mr lemon launched his show on x injanuary, and was agreed to be paid $1.5 million. but it was cancelled in march, just hours after the first interview with mr musk, where the journalist asked the billionaire about his drug use and political views. court papers show that mr lemon did not sign a contract, but was reassured by mr musk that he would financially support the show. x and mr musk have not yet commented. staying with tech, two weeks after crowdstrike sparked what's been described as the largest ever global it outage, most affected computers are now back to normal, but the disruption ran up costs into billions of dollars. speaking to the bbc�*s ben thompson, the head of global cyber—security firm, the ncc group, called the incident a "wake—up call" for businesses. i think, from this incident, one of the things we have learned is just how complex

our supply chains are, and i think many businesses don't really understand that. so, crowdstrike, as i say, fantastic product, but it is probably not a strategic solution within an organisation, it is not a core finance system, not a core hr system, so for that to be able to cause these sorts of implications is quite serious, so i think what the lessons are for businesses, for supply chains, is actually you have to understand how technology fits within your operations. i think you have to be prepared, think through the scenario, so that you have plans in place, and we have to test, and i think it really does talk to a whole objective, which is about digital resilience in an interconnected world. that's fairly early days, we are starting to see regulation come through, but it is fairly early days for a lot of organisations, so there is a lot to do around this. we hear the word "resilience" a lot, what does it really mean?

because these weren't small companies on small budgets that might be forgiven for sort of overlooking some of these plan bs. these were huge organisations you would expect would have a better plan in place, and they didn't. what does resilience look like? again, this is a wake—up call. i don't think we have, as organisations, looked at some of these things systemically, so resilience, i think, is having an end—to—end conversation about testing, both in terms of testing the deployments of software, the receipt of that software, but also testing your plans to respond. a lot of organisations are running hot and fast. testing resilience plans is sometimes a second thought. we need to get a serious conversation, at board level, about the extent to which organisations are thinking about it, testing it, have the plans in place for it, and actually understand where key elements of this, their software, can impact business operations.

now to the bank of england, which cut interest rates for the first time in four years on thursday. the cost of borrowing was lowered from a 16—year high of 5.25% to 5%. naeem aslam, chief investment officer, zaye capital markets, explained what precipitated the boe�*s decision to cut rates now. i think the signs were already there, in terms of the bank of england's own mandate and the most important one was inflation meeting its target. if you look at the overall situation in the uk's market, especially with respect to real estate, the borrowers, they are under massive pressure, in terms of the repayment, because if you have a mortgage of 300,000, and your payments were around £750 a month, but with the new interest rates, you are looking to pay something around £1,100 or £1,200, depending

on the ltv value you have in your product. so, from a consumer's perspective, and from the economy's perspective, this was coming, and then this was a right move that the bank of england had to make. but i think there is another major and another important question for investors and traders — is this enough for the uk's economy, and how much the bank of england can do more in the remaining part of this particular year, in order to ease the pressure on consumers. talking about the overall economy, it is a new government in place in the uk. chancellor rachel reeves says they have inherited fiscal burdens from the previous regime. does that complicate matters? i think it is a net—zero again, because now, if you didn't have the product in place, in terms of your mortgage, or you have a tracker mortgage, your mortgage would come down from today, or from tomorrow. so, yes, you will see some

relief, but then again, a new government in place, a previous government, which had many self—inflicted injuries, such as brexit, and i can just go on about them all day long, they left the government in a very big and dark hole, so we know that the chancellor has already talked about increasing taxes, so, yes, you are saving some money, in terms of interest rates are going down — by the way, they are still 16 years high, and people are struggling with respect to that — but then, at the same time, the chancellor is going to come out and increase more taxes on businesses and consumers, so i think we are still going to be back to square one, and the impact of a lower interest rate, from a consumer's perspective, and the economy's perspective, i'm not too optimistic about that. and that's it for this edition of business today. thanks for watching.

have a good weekend.

hey, i'm lola with the catch—up. first, a suspect at the southport stabbing attack has been named for the first time. 17—year—old axel rudakubana appeared in court, charged with three counts of murder, and ten counts of attempted murder. the judge decided to lift the ban on naming him as it was in the public interest. three girls, aged six, seven and nine, were killed during the attack at a taylor swift themed dance class on monday. a university, where a student took her own life, has been recognised for its effort to tackle gender—based violence. 18—year—old emily drouet died

in 2016, after a campaign of abuse by another student while she was studying at aberdeen university. it has now adopted a charter, called the emily test, which aims to create safe environments for students, with hopes it can be rolled out to other unis. some other stories now. jamaican dancehall artist vybz kartel has been freed from prison. he was convicted of murder, back in 2014, but that was overturned by a court in the uk this year. the artist who has collabed with the likes of jay—z and rihanna. he won't face a retrial. mrbeast has acknowledged using inappropriate language early on in his career. the youtuber has been accused of making racist comments in the past. his team—mate said he made some bad jokes and other mistakes and learned increasing influence comes with increased responsibility. time now for ten seconds of the olympic muffin man. do you know the muffin man? henrik christiansen,

a norwegian swimmer, has gone viral with his tik—toks about the chocolate muffins. tbh, they look so good. you are all caught up now, have a great night. hello and welcome to sportsday from the bbc sport centre. coming up on the programme — two giants of american sport shine at the olympics — simone biles and katie ledecky make it a day to remember for team usa. boxing controversy — a previously—banned female fighter is allowed to compete and the international olympic committee defend its eligibility rules. and the end of an era, as the curtain comes down in paris on andy murray's playing career.