Crude oil prices rise again while UK stock market falls, dragged down by AstraZeneca – as it happened

Government bond yields dip but remain elevated, with the 10-year gilt yield close to 5% US stocks rose in early trading on Wall Street, while European stock markets are also up. The FTSE 100 index has pared earlier losses and is only down 0.1% at 10,474 now, a loss of 15 points. AstraZeneca is still the main loser with the shares tumbling 7.4% after the failure of a heart disease drug in a late-stage trial. Oil prices have see-sawed, and Brent crude is now 1% lower at $77.25 a barrel. Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow. Bye! The UK’s life sciences sector attracted more than £3bn investment in the last 12 months, and the timescale for conducting clinical trials has accelerated, according to the department for science, innovation and technology. This includes a £1bn, 10-year investment from Germany’s BioNTech announced last May, and a further £1bn 10-year commitment from Moderna for its Harwell campus; a further £500m from Belgium’s UCB Pharma in Windlesham, as well as £500m from the medical products maker Convatec in a research centre in Manchester. The average wait time to set up clinical trials has dropped from 169 to 122 days in the first half of 2025/26 a