Author: SKYNEWS

The north of England will directly benefit from closer trade ties with Saudi Arabia, the prime minister said as he visited the country.Sir Keir Starmer travelled to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in a bid to build closer economic ties with the two Gulf states. The trip came amid turmoil in the Middle East, with Syria’s government overthrown by rebel fighters over the weekend.Its president, Bashar al Assad, has fled the country for Moscow, according to state media.Starmer “welcomed” the fall of the “brutal” regime ahead of his visit. Syria latest: Assad flees to MoscowAs Starmer landed in…

The debate around whether fluoride should be added to tap water is not new.The practice, which is aimed at reducing tooth decay, has been ongoing for 60 years. But since fluoride toothpaste became more widely available around the 1970s, more questions have been raised about whether adding it to the drinking supply is still necessary.And with Donald Trump’s health secretary pick Robert F Kennedy Jr saying he would ban it, the issue has entered public debate yet again.Despite RFK being well known for his outlandish views on public health, it seems the fluoridation issue isn’t one that can be totally…

“You can’t flirt any more. We used to have so much more fun!”Dame Jilly Cooper, 87, looks back with nostalgia to her heyday towards the end of the last century. So do the many fans of her stories in print, audiobooks and on screen. Rivals, Disney’s dramatisation of her 1988 “bonkbuster”, set in the fictional Cotswolds county of Rutshire, has been one of the TV hits of the year on both sides of the Atlantic.A second series was commissioned. Cooper says she is “orgasmic with excitement and cannot wait for the return of my superhero Rupert Campbell-Black”, as played by…

Fourteen new trains are to be built at a Hitachi plant in County Durham, securing hundreds of jobs.The plan safeguards 700 jobs with a £500m investment for the Newton Aycliffe site. The plant and its workers had faced an uncertain future with an upcoming gap in its order book before work begins on HS2 (High Speed 2) trains.Money blog: Britons don’t want ‘thoughtful’ cash alternativeBritish transport group First Group, leasing firm Angel Trains, and Hitachi have reached a deal to order 14 five-carriage trains to run in 2027 on the new Carmarthen-London route and East Coast Mainline service. They will…

NASA has delayed its plans to send astronauts back to the moon yet again.The Artemis mission will see four astronauts sent around the moon and back, before blasting off to land on the moon’s surface a year later. But Bill Nelson, head of NASA, told a news conference the next Artemis mission has slipped to April 2026, with the subsequent astronaut landing mission, Artemis III, planned for the following year.The flight had already been delayed once, and was supposed to take off in September 2025.Now, astronauts won’t loop around the moon until 2026 and won’t land until 2027 in one…

It should have been a feel-good story: six young men, plucked from obscurity to become music stars. That’s how Neta Rozenblat, a member of boyband as1one, puts it.Pop hopefuls do not usually find themselves having to navigate fear, grief and complex political issues before the world even knows their names – but theirs is not a typical story. As1one are billed as the first-ever Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab boyband, put together following a two-year search by US hitmakers behind acts such as Maroon 5 and Kings Of Leon.While the band has found considerable support, including from big names -…

Harland & Wolff (H&W), the shipyard-owner which built the Titanic, is closing on a government-backed rescue deal with a Spanish shipping industry group.Sky News can reveal that Navantia has won approval from Downing Street to acquire H&W’s four UK shipyards in a transaction which could be formally agreed as early as next week. If confirmed on the expected terms, the agreement would salvage more than 1,000 British industrial manufacturing jobs.Whitehall sources cautioned that a deal had yet to be finalised, and remained subject to change, but acknowledged that an outline agreement had now been reached.Under the deal, they said, Navantia…

TikTok has lost an appeal against plans to ban the video-sharing app in the US.The social media platform had argued the proposal was a breach of the US First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech. TikTok pushed to overturn a law that could lead to its ban in a few months.However, the petition was dismissed on Friday by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.Its judges ruled the government’s ban was constitutional because it was designed “solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on…

A BBC report into the conduct of former BBC Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood has been put on hold at the request of the Metropolitan Police.The report into what the corporation knew about the veteran hip-hop DJ’s alleged behaviour was commissioned in 2022 and was initially expected to be published before Christmas last year. A freedom of information request by BBC News earlier this year revealed the broadcaster had spent more than £3m on the review so far.Westwood faces historical sexual abuse allegations from multiple women.The 67-year-old “strongly denies all allegations of inappropriate behaviour”. The Met Police have submitted a…

Across Europe, car companies are cutting jobs and shutting factories – to the extent that some question their very existence. So it’s worth asking the question: what’s gone wrong with Europe (and for that matter America’s) car industry?While some will reach for their own pet conclusions (Brexit! Electric vehicle deadlines! Government regulations!) in practice there’s something bigger, deeper and less parochial going on here. As the world shifts from petrol and diesel cars to their electric counterparts, a seismic shift is taking place in the global motor industry. It is a shift which threatens to cause even more pain and…