Thursday newspaper round-up: UK housing, energy, Hinkley Point

The number of homes on the market hit a record low in July as house price growth slumped on the uncertainty in the wake of the Brexit referendum. The level of market activity, such as the amount of new buyer inquiries and the number of agreed sales, continued to fall, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). – Telegraph

The world's next energy revolution is probably no more than five or ten years away. Cutting-edge research into cheap and clean forms of electricity storage is moving so fast that we may never again need to build 20th Century power plants in this country, let alone a nuclear white elephant such as Hinkley Point. The US Energy Department is funding 75 projects developing electricity storage, mobilizing teams of scientists at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and the elite Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge labs in a bid for what it calls the 'Holy Grail' of energy policy. – Telegraph

Julian Assange will be questioned by Swedish prosecutors inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, in a possible breakthrough to the impasse over his case. The Ecuadorian attorney general delivered a document agreeing to a request by the Swedish prosecutor to question the founder of WikiLeaks. – Guardian

The Chinese company with a major stake in the proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear power station has been charged by the US government over nuclear espionage, according to the US justice department. In a 17-page indictment, the US government said nuclear engineer Allen Ho, employed by the China General Nuclear Power Company, and the company itself had unlawfully conspired to develop nuclear material in China without US approval and “with the intent to secure an advantage to the People’s Republic of China”. – Guardian

Taxpayers face a big rise in the bill for cleaning up the first generation of nuclear power stations in Britain after the company that was wrongly awarded the contract raised its estimate by £1.6 billion. Cavendish Fluor Partnership (CFP), a joint venture led by Babcock, the British defence and engineering company, has told the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) that the cost of cleaning up the 12 Magnox reactors will rise by 18 per cent to more than £10 billion, The Times has learnt. – The Times

Investors flocked to sell government bonds to the Bank of England yesterday, restoring confidence in its new £60 billion stimulus plan, which had taken a knock on Tuesday when it failed to attract enough sellers. The reverse auction of gilts with maturities of 7 to 15 years was well subscribed, attracting offers to sell £5.5 billion of stock, nearly five times the £1.17 billion the Bank ended up buying. – The Times

Some optimism has returned to the UK housing market as the initial shock of the Brexit vote begins to wear off. In the June Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors survey of estate agents and surveyors, carried out in the immediate aftermath of the vote, a large majority said they believed house prices would fall this year. – Financial Times