Author: SKYNEWS

Weight loss injections have been conditionally recommended for treating obesity by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the first time.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the new guidance “recognises that obesity is a chronic disease that can be treated with comprehensive and lifelong care”. While he said medication can’t solve obesity on its own, the jabs could help millions overcome it – and reduce its associated harms.According to the health agency, more than one billion people around the world are affected by obesity. By 2030, it says that figure will rise to two billion.Read more: Ozempic to Mounjaro – what…

Sir Salman Rushdie has told Sky News that Charlie Kirk’s murder was a “consequence of US gun culture”.In an interview with Sky News lead presenter Wilfred Frost, Sir Salman said he thought the assassination of Mr Kirk, a conservative US activist, was an “appalling act of violence”. “But it seems to me to be a characteristic or a consequence of America’s terrifying gun culture,” said the Booker-prize-winning author, who survived an attempt on his life at the Chautauqua Institution in New York in 2022.”When you have a situation where there are more guns in private ownership than there are people…

Virgin Media has been fined £23.8m after it disconnected vulnerable customers during a phone line migration.Regulator, Ofcom, ruled the telecoms company had placed thousands of people “at direct risk of harm”. The watchdog said users of Telecare – an emergency alarm and monitoring service – were disconnected if they failed to engage with a process, in late 2023, which switched old analogue lines to a digital alternative.Money latest: Life as an international boxer Ofcom said that Virgin Media had disclosed its own failures under consumer protection rules and its full cooperation was taken into account when determining the size of…

The death toll following flooding and landslides in Indonesia and Thailand has risen to more than 600 – with nearby Sri Lanka also reporting more than 200 deaths after a cyclone.Three people have also died in Malaysia, officials have said, due to the extreme weather in South Asia and Southeast Asia. In total, Indonesian officials said 442 people had died and Thai authorities reported 170 deaths in the southern part of the country, as of midday UK time on Sunday. Image: People move a car damaged by floods in Songkhla province, Southern Thailand. Pic: AP Image: Rescuers search for flood…

Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Shakespeare In Love, has died at the age of 88.A statement from United Agents said: “We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved client and friend, Tom Stoppard, has died peacefully at home in Dorset, surrounded by his family. “He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language.”It was an honour to work with Tom and to know him.”King Charles said in a tribute: “My…

The government is lining up bankers to conduct a review of options for Britain’s embattled steel industry amid calls for ministers to orchestrate mergers between some of the sector’s biggest players.Sky News has learnt that Evercore, the independent investment bank which now employs George Osborne, the former chancellor, was expected to be appointed in the coming weeks to oversee a strategic review of the sector. If its appointment is confirmed, Evercore will report its findings to Peter Kyle, the business secretary, and UK Government Investments (UKGI), the Whitehall agency which manages taxpayers’ interests in a range of companies, including the…

“Many women end up losing their children,” says Alessandra Korap, a community leader of the Munduruku people from the Brazilian Amazon.”Either they can’t get pregnant, or they lose their [foetus] over time. “So, women are afraid of getting pregnant.”For centuries, the indigenous Munduruku have lived in an area across what is now the states of Amazonas and Para in northern Brazil, especially around the Tapajos River.But in recent decades, villagers had been plagued by curious symptoms that they didn’t realise could be related: children unable to lift their heads, adults unable to walk any more, muscle tremors, memory loss, fading…

A senior executive at Netflix is among the contenders vying to become the next boss of Channel 4, the state-owned broadcaster.Sky News has learnt that Emma Lloyd, the streaming giant’s vice-president, partnerships, in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, is one of a handful of media executives shortlisted to replace Alex Mahon as Channel 4’s chief executive. Ms Lloyd, whose previous employers included Sky, the immediate parent company of Sky News, also served on the board of Ocado Group, from which she stepped down this month after nine years as a non-executive director.She is understood to be a serious contender…

Rachel Reeves has been accused of failing to “support the great British pub” as she promised in the budget, with owners facing skyrocketing business rates bills.In her speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday, the chancellor said she was backing small businesses by introducing “permanently lower tax rates for over 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties – the lowest tax rates since 1991”. But while the government gave itself the powers to discount the business rates bills for high street businesses through legislation earlier this year, the chancellor only implemented a reduction of a quarter of what the government…

Artificial intelligence is getting very good, very fast. Whether it’s music, text, code or imagery, the time when it was reliably possible to tell the difference between AI and human outputs is disappearing at an alarming rate.Yet for all their wizardry, AIs can also be quite useless. They make things up and misunderstand instructions. They are brilliant as toys but incompetent as assistants. All this makes it hard to know how to put AI into perspective. Is it the most important technological trend since the iPhone? Or since the industrial revolution? At this distance, it’s hard to say.There are industry…