Author: SKYNEWS

Sir Ian McKellen will not appear when the run of Player Kings resumes in the West End on Thursday night after his fall from the stage.The veteran actor, 85, was performing at London’s Noel Coward Theatre when he lost his footing in a fight scene on Monday. He was taken to hospital after the accident, with performances on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all cancelled to give him time to rest.The final London performances are on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.While he said on Tuesday he is “looking forward to returning to work”, he confirmed his understudy David Semark will go on…

The Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC) was never going to cut interest rates today. Not two weeks before a general election.Cutting the cost of borrowing would have been perceived as highly political, potentially offering support to the government, even though some Conservative politicians, such as the former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, sought to argue ahead of today’s decision that not cutting Bank rate could equally be perceived as “a political decision against the government”. So it was no surprise to see the MPC maintain Bank rate at 5.25% or, indeed, for the composition of the vote, at 7-2,…

Two people have been arrested on suspicion of running an illegal exchange thought to have traded more than £1bn worth of cryptocurrency. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) searched the London offices of the suspects, aged 38 and 44, while the Metropolitan Police seized digital devices from two residential properties in the capital. More than £1bn worth of unregistered crypto assets are believed to have been bought and sold through the exchange.Money Blog latest: Interest rates held againBoth suspects were interviewed under caution before being released on bail and the FCA says its investigation into the case was ongoing. Therese Chambers,…

Rapper Travis Scott has been arrested for “disorderly intoxication and trespassing”, police in the US have said.Scott, who has two children with Kylie Jenner, was arrested for causing a “disturbance” on a charter boat at the Miami Beach Marina, where he “was drunk, and asked to leave multiple times”, the Miami Beach Police Department said. Officers were called to the marina at 12.44 am on Thursday morning to reports of a disturbance, according to official records.The 10-time Grammy Award nominee was reportedly getting off a charter boat when the owner of the boat asked him to leave, 7News Miami said…

The Bank of England has held interest rates at 5.25% for the seventh time in a row.The decision to maintain the cost of borrowing comes despite official figures yesterday which revealed inflation had fallen to the Bank’s target of 2% for the first time in nearly three years. However, the move by its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to maintain the current 16-year high in rates had been widely expected by economists and financial markets.Seven members of the panel voted to hold rates, while the remaining two backed a 0.25 percentage point cut.Governor Andrew Bailey said policymakers “need to be sure…

The future of new oil and gas projects in the UK has been thrown into doubt following a landmark decision by the Supreme Court.The court concluded the environmental impact of emissions from burning fossil fuels must be considered in planning applications for new extraction projects – not just the impacts of the emissions produced in extracting the oil. The case hinged around an oil drilling project at Horse Hill in Surrey, granted planning permission by Surrey County Council in 2019.Local campaigner Sarah Finch argued the environmental impact of the project should have taken into account not just the carbon emissions…

Two people have been arrested after Just Stop Oil protesters painted several private jets orange at an airfield – where they claim Taylor Swift’s jet landed just hours before.It’s not clear if Swift’s jet was one of those that has been targeted by the eco-protesters, who said they are demanding an “emergency treaty” to end the use of fossil fuels by 2030. In a statement, Stansted Airport said Essex Police had arrested two people and “as a precaution runway operations were suspended for a short period”.”Shortly after 5am, Essex Police arrested two protesters who had entered the private aviation area…

Sainsbury’s is to sell its banking business to NatWest.The agreement could see NatWest take on around one million customer accounts, as well as £1.4bn of unsecured personal loans, £1.1bn of credit card balances and £2.6bn of customer deposits. The deal is expected to be completed in the first half of 2025.Sainsbury’s said customers would “not need to take any action” and there would be no immediate changes to its terms and conditions.It comes after the supermarket giant announced in January it was winding down its banking division to focus on the retail side of its business. Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon…

Inflation falling back to 2%, the magic number as far as the Bank of England and the increasingly desperate Conservative election campaign are concerned, is unequivocally welcome news.It has been a long road down from the peak of 11.1% in October 2022 and a great deal of hardship has been felt along the way. The return to earth poses questions for the Bank of England, the government, both current and future and, most importantly, in the real world, where households are desperate for relief from relentless cost pressures.The most immediate issue is for the Bank, whose Monetary Policy Committee meets…

Name any major tech brand – from Google to Amazon to Tesla to ChatGPT – and the chances are Nvidia is involved in some way.The company – which makes computer chips – may not be a household name in the UK, but it has just leapfrogged Microsoft and Apple to become the most valuable public company in the world. It is now worth more than $3.3tn (£2.6tn) – with its share price up by almost 600,000% from when it first traded on the US stock market back in 1999.If you had invested $10,000 (£7,850) in the firm back then, the…