Author: SKYNEWS

Autism rates are ‘more or less equal for men and women’, according to a study which challenges previous assumptions about its prevalence.While the neurological and developmental ⁠condition is known to be more common in young boys, Swedish researchers found there was a big rise in diagnoses among adolescent girls. And by the age of 20, the male-to-female ratio had evened out at nearly one-to-one, experts at the Karolinska Institutet reported.Researchers said the study, published in ​the BMJ, highlights a need to investigate why girls and women receive diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) later than boys and men.Previous work on…

Neil Young has cancelled his upcoming UK tour and other dates in Europe with rock band The Chrome Hearts.The Canadian-American singer, 80, apologised to fans in a post on his official website on Friday night. He said it is “not the time” to be playing live shows and said he had “decided to take a break”.Young was due to go on tour this summer with dates scheduled for locations including Manchester, Glasgow, Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and Cork.’I’m sorry to let you down’ A message posted to the Neil Young Archives website read: “I have decided to take a break and…

Morrisons, the UK’s fifth-largest supermarket chain, is exploring a £1bn property deal amid its battle to recapture the ground it has lost to rivals including Sainsbury’s and Aldi.Sky News has learnt that Morrisons, which is based in Bradford, West Yorkshire, has engaged the real estate advisory firm CBRE to evaluate options for raising finance secured against part of its large freehold store portfolio. Sources said the process was at an early stage, but that it was unlikely to involve a conventional sale-and-leaseback transaction of the kind favoured by major grocers in recent decades.One option expected to be considered is a…

Two people have been arrested in Essex for allegedly illegally dumping waste at six different illegal spots across England, the Environment Agency has said.The pair are suspected of trashing spots across Warwickshire, Derbyshire and Buckinghamshire, as the country grapples with a proliferating black market in illegal waste, dubbed the “new narcotics”. Earlier this week, the 54-year-old male and 50-year-old woman, both from Essex, were arrested in a joint raid by the Environment Agency (EA) and the Eastern Regional Special Operations Unit.The suspects were interviewed and then released as the agencies still needed to gather further information.The EA said the action…

In filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, resistance is framed as survival.While there’s no direct reference to ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), authority is shown as unpredictable, militarised and with the power to destabilise entire neighbourhoods. Since the film came out at the end of last September, those aspects have come to feel incredibly timely.”Devastatingly so,” according to its producer, Sara Murphy, after the killing by federal agents in Minneapolis of protesters Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.”I don’t think we could have anticipated just how close to home it would be,” Murphy says, “as a sort…

Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, is not given to emotional outbursts or shooting from the hip.Being measured in your public comments is part of the job description for running a central bank, and Mr Bailey has stuck to it since succeeding Mark Carney in 2020. (To understand the constraints of the job, consider the transformation in the Canadian’s public persona since he swapped Threadneedle Street for his country’s premiership).Epstein files latest – Andrew’s photo claims undermined You need javascript enabled to view this content Enable javascript to share Share King heckled over Andrew and Epstein links So…

Anthropic, one of the biggest and most influential tech companies in the world, is launching a new model: Claude Opus 4.6.Until now, this would mostly be big news for techies, where Anthropic is admired as the maker of Claude Code, the code-writing AI tool which many engineers say is taking over their work entirely. All of a sudden, however, the impact of these tools is being felt more widely, after a seemingly small release from Anthropic shook some sections of the stock market.Earlier this week, Anthropic released a plug-in to their Claude chatbot, which added new tools for legal analysis.This…

US TV host Savannah Guthrie has pleaded for the return of her mother and said the family is “ready to talk” to her captor – but asked them to provide proof she is alive.In an emotional video message posted on social media, the NBC anchor, flanked by her siblings, said: “We are ready to talk. However, we live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated. “We need to know without a doubt that she is alive and that you have her. We want to hear from you, and we are ready to listen. Please reach out to…

A wealth platform which targets professionals whose finances are becoming increasingly complex is raising nearly £8m from a syndicate of investors.Sky News understands that Sidekick, which was founded in 2022, will announce on Friday that it has secured the backing in a Series A round led by Eos Ventures and the Development Bank of Wales. Sidekick is aimed at consumers whose financial needs have outgrown the services offered by entry-level investing apps but whose wealth is less than that demanded by full-service private banks.The company’s new funding round also includes participation from funders including Koro Capital, Seedcamp, MS&AD Ventures, TheVentureCity,…

The world’s second-largest economy and major electric car maker is to ban hidden door handles, a common feature on electric vehicles (EVs). China will ban hidden door handles from next year, making it the first country to do so. Instead, cars must have a mechanical release function for handles, except for car boots, according to details released by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.Money blog: Gold set for biggest rise since 2008; Greggs taking on Costa and Starbucks with new productIt’s doing so to address safety concerns after EV accidents where electronic doors reportedly failed to operate and trapped…