Author: SKYNEWS

A young bear born to parents rescued from a Spanish circus will today undergo pioneering brain surgery.Boki, a two-year-old European brown bear, has been suffering seizures and vision problems for the last five months. MRI scans show he has hydrocephalus, a build up of fluid inside his skull that is putting pressure on his brain.It’s a condition that also occurs in humans, affecting one in every 500 births. Other cases can be triggered by illness or injury later in life.But it is believed to be rare in animals. Specialist vets working with the Wildwood Trust, near Canterbury, where Boki lives,…

US officials have confirmed they are considering breaking up Google’s “illegal monopoly” of internet searches.The tech giant could face restrictions on its own products – including its Chrome browser, Play Store and Android operating system, the US Justice Department said. It comes after a judge found in August the company had broken anti-trust laws to ensure its dominance of online searches.Officials have now outlined a series of proposals to dismantle the company’s monopoly in a court filing.The plans include blocking Google from paying other tech firms to have its search engine pre-installed or set as the default option on new…

Canadian musician Nell Smith, known for her collaborations with US rock band The Flaming Lips, has died aged 17.Her death was confirmed by Simon Raymonde, the former bassist for the Cocteau Twins and co-founder of her record label Bella Union, on Instagram. Instagram This content is provided by Instagram, which may be using cookies and other technologies. To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies. You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Instagram cookies or to allow those cookies just once. You can change your settings at any time via the…

Lab-grown meat and vegetable products may be getting closer to approval for consumption in the UK as the food safety watchdog will be researching them to ensure they are safe. Cell-cultivated products (CCPs) are a new type of food made without using traditional farming methods such as rearing livestock or growing plants and grains. Their attraction for both consumers and investors lies in their apparent sustainability as they don’t need huge amounts of land, while the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from livestock are also slashed.With the use of science and technology, cells from plants or animals are grown in a…

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, will this week hold further talks with bank bosses amid industry anxiety that she will raise the tax burden on it at this month’s budget.Sky News has learnt that Ms Reeves will meet the chief executives of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Santander UK on Wednesday. It will be the latest in a series of discussions she has held with the sector since being named chancellor in the wake of Labour’s election victory in July.Coming five days before the International Investment Summit and a fortnight before Ms Reeves’s inaugural budget, the meeting will…

Coleen Rooney claims her legal fees during her high-profile legal battle with Rebekah Vardy came up to over £1.8m, the High Court has been told.Returning to court two years after the original trial, the women’s lawyers have returned to court in a dispute over legal costs. The case, which gained worldwide attention after it came to court in the summer of 2022, was dubbed “Wagatha Christie” in a nod to the famous British crime novelist and Rooney’s detective skills.The wife of ex-England footballer Wayne Rooney accused Vardy of leaking stories from her private Instagram account to The Sun newspaper. She…

Using fluoride in drinking water to improve dental health may be less effective now than it was in the past, according to a new major review.Ten per cent of people in England have fluoride added to their drinking water by the council and the government is considering expanding the reach of fluoridation projects. But a new study found the benefits of fluoridating water seem to have declined since fluoride toothpaste became widely available in the 1970s.Academics at Manchester, Dundee and Aberdeen universities compared 157 studies looking at the effect of fluoridation on the dental health of communities.When the government began…

Actor Adam Pearson, who has a disfiguring facial condition, wants to help others learn about such differences as he plays a man with the same illness in his latest film.The British star, 39, has neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), a genetic condition that causes tumours, which are most often benign, to grow along your nerves. Pearson, who made his acting debut in the 2013 film Under the Skin, said: “There are two ways to lose your anonymity in a society – to either become famous or have a disfigurement so I’ve kind of shot myself in both feet a little bit…

Before we get onto the budget and what Rachel Reeves might do to fiddle her fiscal rules and give herself a little more room to spend, I want you to ponder, for a moment, a recent report from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).This wasn’t one of those big OBR reports that get lots of attention – such as the documents and numbers it produces alongside each budget, full of the forecasts and analyses on the state of the economy and the public finances. Instead, it was a chin-scratchy working paper that asked the question: if the government invests in…

“I went on Facebook to see if he would go the extent of meeting up with me. He did… but I never went.” Savanna Harrison, 27, is a professional “checker”, using social media to expose cheating partners after being cheated on herself. She wanted to help other women avoid the same heartbreak she felt, so she started working for a company called Lazo, which describes itself as a “tool designed to see intentions and let go of toxic relationships”.Now, she gets paid to run dozens of loyalty tests a month on people suspected of cheating on their partners.”I’ve seen some…