Author: SKYNEWS

Tide, the business banking services platform, is closing in on a share sale that will put it within touching distance of becoming the latest British fintech to attain a $1bn valuation.Sky News has learnt that Tide, which is chaired by the City grandee Sir Donald Brydon, is arranging the sale of a chunk of existing shares at a roughly 30% premium to its most recent funding round in 2021. Sources said the secondary share sale was at an advanced stage and could be finalised imminently.Tide, which launched in 2015, has amassed 575,000 small and medium-sized business customers, with a further…

A new species of sea creature has been discovered in UK waters.Previously, there were only thought to be two species of the pleurobranchid genus of sea slug – none of whom had ever been seen in UK waters before now. But scientists from the Centre for Environmental Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) working in waters off the southwest of England discovered a third species.It has been named Pleurobranchaea britannica, and it was found during expeditions carried out in 2018 and 2019 in the western Channel and Celtic Sea by CEFAS and the Instituto Espanol de Oceanografía.Fourteen specimens were discovered of…

A picture of TV chefs the Hairy Bikers sat on a sofa together is believed to be one of the last of the duo before Dave Myers’ death.Myers died “peacefully at home” on Wednesday two years after revealing he had been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing treatment. He was 66 years old.Three weeks before his death, Myers’ wife shared what is thought to be one of the last photos of the motorcycle-riding cooking duo together.It shows the pair lounged on a cream-coloured sofa ready to watch the first episode in their latest BBC series, Hairy Bikers Go West, which…

For the first time in over a year house prices are more expensive than they were 12 months previously as high mortgage bills have not dampened demand for homes, according to the UK’s largest building society.While the cost of buying a house or flat slightly increased from month to month at certain points during the last year, houses were generally cheaper on an annual basis. Money blog: How Taylor Swift’s UK Eras tour is affecting hotel pricesBut annual house-price growth returned in February, increasing 0.7% month on month, Nationwide said – something that had not been recorded since January 2023.The…

Photographers have captured images of humpback whales engaging in sexual activity for the first time – and the mammals being intimate were both males. The behaviour of humpbacks has fascinated scientists for decades – but a study published this week features the first photos of the species having penetrative sex, its authors have said. It was written by marine biologist Stephanie Stack and the two photographers who captured the encounter, Lyle Krannichfeld and Brandi Romano.The whole discovery was “opportunistic,” they said, as the whales “slowly approached” the photographers’ boat while they were out in waters west of the Hawaiian island…

Olly Alexander has unveiled his new single Dizzy – which is the UK’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.The Years & Years singer will perform the track at the annual competition in Malmo, Sweden, in May, following their victory at the 2023 event with Loreen’s song Tattoo. Alexander penned Dizzy with British producer Danny L Harle and they were inspired by 1980s acts including Erasure, the Pet Shop Boys and DJ Adamski.He has described the song as being “about feeling such an intense swell of emotion for someone they totally turn your world upside down and inside out”.”We took…

Jeremy Hunt is considering ending or reducing “non-dom” tax breaks that allow wealthy individuals to live in the UK while their wealth is considered as residing overseas.Sky News understands the measure is on a list of potential revenue raising measures being assessed ahead of next week’s budget, and could be enacted to give the chancellor room to cut universal taxes. Money blog: How to quit your job and go travelling – by those who’ve done itThe move, first reported by the Financial Times, could raise more than £3bn for the exchequer and would be politically eye-catching given Mr Hunt and…

Post Office Limited (POL) “intended to pervert the course of justice” by relying on knowingly flawed cash accounts, an inquiry submission filed today alleged.Sir Edward Henry KC, who represents former sub-postmasters Lee Castleton and Seema Misra, among others, in the Post Office scandal, made the remarks in a closing statement for the Horizon inquiry. Writing for the legal firm Hodge Jones & Allen’s submission in Phase 4 of the inquiry, he accused Post Office lawyers and investigators of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice with Fujitsu staff in the litigation with Mr Castleton.The former sub-postmaster owned a branch in…

Mortgage approvals have risen to a 15-month high as overall borrowing rose, latest figures show.It’s the most recent sign that the UK recession declared for the second half of 2023 may already be over. Not since October 2022, before the mortgage rate spike in the wake of the Liz Truss mini-budget, have approvals been so high.Money blog: How to quit your job and go travelling – by those who’ve done itA total of 55,200 mortgages were approved in January, the Bank of England said, up from 51,500 in December. The number of people re-mortgaging – a figure that can represent…

Snapchat was flagged in nearly half of the crimes involving child abuse imagery over the past seven years, new figures reveal.Freedom of information requests submitted by the NSPCC children’s charity to 35 police forces showed Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were named in around a quarter of cases of child abuse imagery crimes when police linked the case with an online platform. The figures also show the number of child abuse image crimes recorded by UK police forces increased by 25% in a year, with a total of 160,000 offences recorded since 2017.The Online Safety Act, which was passed into law…