Author: SKYNEWS

Four more people have attempted to take their own life in relation to the loan charge scandal, which has left tens of thousands of contractors facing huge bills for tax their employers should have paid, Sky News has learnt.HMRC has made 17 referrals to the police watchdog (Independent Office for Police Conduct) over the suicide attempts of 14 people, up from the 13 referrals of 10 people previously known about in October 2023. The figures, revealed in response to a Freedom of Information request by Sky News, come on top of the 10 known suicides of people caught up in…

The Menendez brothers’ bid for freedom through resentencing can continue with the hearing scheduled for Thursday, a judge has ruled.Lyle, 57, and Erik, 54, received life sentences without the possibility of parole after being convicted of murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home in 1989. Lyle was 21 at the time, Erik was 18.Last year, Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon asked a judge to change the brothers’ sentence from life without the possibility of parole to 50 years to life. That would make them immediately eligible for parole because they committed the crime when…

It’s been more than 60 years since a woman travelled into space without a man. And now six of them are blasting off from Earth.Popstar Katy Perry, author Lauren Sanchez, journalist and TV presenter Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn are due to launch in Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket on Monday. It will be the latest flight of the New Shepard programme, named NS-31, and is aiming to “create a lasting impact that will inspire generations”, with the women forming the first all-female crew since Russian engineer Valentina Tereshkova’s…

China’s most recent retaliation raises the stakes, but it does so within what are now relatively predictable parameters.The latest tariff hike follows the pattern we have seen throughout the week, when Chinese retaliation has exactly matched what Donald Trump has done. There is, however, one key difference to the announcement this time.China has said that anything further is just a “numbers game” and they will simply ignore any subsequent raises from Trump.There’s a sense they are calling time on what has felt like a relentless tit-for-tat escalation. They are right, of course.Once tariffs exceed 50% or so, trade is basically…

Abercrombie & Fitch’s former chief executive is not fit to stand trial on sex trafficking charges as he is suffering from dementia, both prosecutors and his lawyers have said.Mike Jeffries has Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia and the “residual effects of a traumatic brain injury”, his defence attorneys wrote in a letter filed at a federal court in Central Islip, New York. The 80-year-old needs around-the-clock care, they added, citing evaluations by medical professionals.Prosecutors and defence lawyers are calling for Jeffries to be placed in the custody of the federal bureau of prisons for up to four months. They say…

It was going to be the revivifying event the video games industry desperately needed – instead, thanks to Donald Trump’s tariffs, the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 is experiencing a troubled birth. Barely had Nintendo announced the pre-order date and price point of the hotly awaited new handheld console when the US president slapped tariffs on China and Vietnam, among others, prompting the Japanese gaming giant to immediately suspend US pre-orders of the Switch 2. Today, Nintendo invited Sky News to be a part of the first group of journalists in the UK to try the console, and get to…

The appointment of the inaugural chair of English football’s new watchdog has been thrown into fresh uncertainty after Whitehall officials resumed contact with applicants who did not make it onto a final shortlist.Sky News has learnt that the preferred candidate to chair the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) is now “unlikely” to be drawn from a group of three contenders interviewed months ago. The search process has not been officially reopened, and insiders said the £130,000-a-year post was not expected to be readvertised.They acknowledged, however, that a shortlist including former Aston Villa Football Club chief executive Christian Purslow would probably not produce…

Rebekah Vardy has lost an appeal after claiming Coleen Rooney’s lawyers “deliberately” understated some of their client’s costs during the “Wagatha Christie” libel case.The high-profile court case took place after Mrs Rooney, wife of former Man Utd striker Wayne Rooney, accused Mrs Vardy on social media in 2019 of leaking her private information to the press. Mrs Vardy, wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, unsuccessfully tried to sue Mrs Rooney in a libel battle in 2022 that captivated some areas of the public and was later dramatised for TV.The judge ordered Mrs Vardy to pay 90% of Mrs Rooney’s…

A company started by “two blokes in a Cardiff garage” is about to launch a game-changing space factory that could start a new industrial revolution.Space Forge will ship its prototype manufacturing satellite in the coming weeks from an industrial park in the city to the US, where it will be sent into orbit on a SpaceX rocket. Sky News was given exclusive access to the company’s dust-free ‘clean room’ to watch engineers carry out final checks.ForgeStar-1 is already loaded up with the raw ingredients to make a new generation of super-efficient semiconductor chips that would be impossible to produce on…

We’ve been waiting for a while for the Office for National Statistics to deliver us some good news on the British economy – and today it came.Output grew by 0.5% in February, up from zero growth in January and higher than the 0.1% forecast by economists. Some usual caveats apply. Monthly data can be volatile and prone to revision – but it can go up as well as down.While publishing the latest figures, the ONS also revised up its January figure from -0.1% to zero.It’s clear that, across the economy, sectors performed robustly. The big surprise was manufacturing.Business surveys told…