Author: SKYNEWS

Oppenheimer leads the nominations for this year’s Oscars – with big nods also for box office rival Barbie.Christopher Nolan’s epic exploring the true story of the first atomic bomb is up for 13 Oscars, including best director and best picture, while Greta Gerwig’s feminist take on Barbie has eight nods, including best picture. The two polar opposite films sparked the Barbenheimer phenomenon when they were both released on the same day in July last year, with many viewers watching them both on the same day. While both were huge hits, it was Barbie that won the box office battle, going…

Wm Morrison, the supermarket chain, is closing in on a £2.5bn deal to sell its petrol forecourts portfolio to another company backed by the same private equity firm.Sky News understands that Motor Fuel Group (MFG) is weeks away from agreeing the takeover of Morrisons’ fuel retailing empire. Both Morrisons and MFG are majority-owned by Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R), the American buyout firm, and the talks between them – revealed by Sky News last September – are now on the verge of a formal agreement.One source said a deal was expected to be announced by early February.Morrisons’ fuel retailing operations…

The Doomsday Clock will be reviewed on Tuesday after inching 10 seconds closer to midnight in 2023 – the closest it has ever been to a global catastrophe.But what does that actually mean? A metaphor for the dangers facing humanity, the clock is updated based on perceptions about how close humans are to destroying the world – with midnight symbolising that point.The countdown is agreed on by experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.Last year the clock moved forward due to the “mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine”. It was the first time the time had changed since…

Hollywood star Jamie Dornan was taken to hospital after a brush with poisonous caterpillars during a golfing holiday in Portugal last year, according to a friend who also needed treatment.The actor, from Northern Ireland, was on holiday with a group including journalist and former showbiz editor Gordon Smart, who recounted the story during an appearance on The Good, The Bad And The Unexpected podcast. He said that both he and Dornan fell ill while on the golf course after drinking alcohol including wine and espresso martinis the previous day. Instagram This content is provided by Instagram, which may be using…

Water company bosses have awarded themselves over £25m in bonuses and incentives since the last general election, according to analysis by Labour.The analysis found that nine water chief executives were paid £10m in bonuses, £14m in incentives and £603,580 in benefits since 2019. It comes amid outrage over illegal sewage dumping, with water firms in England seeking to hike customers’ bills by an extra £156 a year to invest in Britain’s Victorian infrastructure.Labour has pledged to give the water regulator new powers to ban payouts to bosses of firms that are illegally polluting rivers, lakes and seas if it wins…

Saoirse Ronan has revealed she was meant to have a role in the Barbie film, but didn’t get to take part.The Irish actress said she was lined up to be “a weird Barbie” in Greta Gerwig’s runaway hit. Australian actress Margot Robbie stars as the main character, Stereotypical Barbie, while Ryan Gosling plays Ken – but there are also lots of other versions of the dolls, including Judge Barbie and Mermaid Barbie, and Sugar Daddy Ken.Saturday Night Live comedian Kate McKinnon plays Weird Barbie, and Ronan told US publication Variety she would have starred alongside her. Image: Margot Robbie stars…

A group representing almost 1,000 sub-postmasters across the UK has told Sky News the Post Office Horizon system is still causing unexplained shortfalls, which are wrecking businesses.Voice of the Postmaster (VotP), which was set up to campaign for current staff, alleges the discredited IT software is still generating mysterious missing money. Marlene Wood, postmistress at Comrie Crieff Post Office in Perthshire, alleges the apparent shortfalls she has been facing are partly linked to Horizon and are eating into her profits.The 53-year-old, who has been in charge of the branch for more than four years, told Sky News: “My business is…

Justin Timberlake has given fans a taste of new music as a solo artist for the first time in almost six years. The 42-year-old American singer teased the new song “Selfish” which accompanied an Instagram Reel of him rehearsing at the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, Tennessee, where he played an intimate show on Friday evening. The short video entitled One Night Only shows Timberlake before the show wandering around the venue, microphone in hand.In videos taken of the event, Timberlake can be heard telling the crowd: “New music? Well, we didn’t get dressed up for nothing did we? All right,…

Ofcom will next week outline options for reforming Royal Mail’s service obligations that could pave the way for the abolition of Saturday postal deliveries amid warnings from the company’s boss that it may require a government subsidy to survive.Sky News has learnt the regulator will on Wednesday publish a consultation paper on the future of the Universal Service Obligation (USO), which industry sources believe is likely to include reforms such as modifying first and second-class delivery targets; following European markets such as Germany and Italy in moving to alternate-day deliveries; providing a state subsidy to support the USO; and allowing…

DPD has disabled its artificial intelligence (AI) online chatbot after a customer was able to make the bot swear and write a poem criticising the parcel delivery company.Ashley Beauchamp, 30, was trying to track down a missing parcel when he said he was going “round and round in circles” trying to get any sort of information from the company’s chatbot. “It couldn’t give me any information about the parcel, it couldn’t pass me on to a human, and it couldn’t give me the number of their call centre. It didn’t seem to be able to do anything useful,” Mr Beauchamp,…