Author: SKYNEWS

A$AP Rocky has pleaded not guilty to allegations he fired a gun at a former friend and collaborator outside a Hollywood hotel in 2021.A Los Angeles judge had previously found there was enough evidence for the rapper to stand trial after hearing testimony at a preliminary hearing. Rocky, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of assault with a semi-automatic firearm.He allegedly pointed a handgun at Terell Ephron in November 2021 and allegedly fired the weapon in his direction in a subsequent confrontation.After the musician entered his plea, Superior Court Judge Karla Kerlin set…

Not for the first time, Boeing is again the subject of unwanted attention from regulators and customers over safety issues.The shocking scenes on Friday night, in which a Boeing 737 MAX 9 operated by Alaska Airlines suffered a mid-air blow-out, has again raised questions over the safety of the jet. Boeing shares fell by 8% in pre-market trading today while shares of Spirit AeroSystems, which made and installed the fuselage part on the jet, were down by as much as 20%.Cause for concernThere are several reasons for investors and management at Boeing to be worried. The first is that the…

How much do we really know about Mark Zuckerberg?The creator of Facebook. One of the world’s richest men. A 39-year-old father-of-three. But is he a force for good? One man has made it his mission to try to help us answer that question.For more than a decade, university professor and privacy expert Dr Michael Zimmer has been recording “every single thing” the Facebook founder says in public, in an archive known as “The Zuckerberg Files”.Covering a period from 2004 to the present day, it features more than 1,500 transcripts of Zuckerberg’s remarks, including Facebook posts, media interviews and hundreds of…

Kate Garraway has called the public’s messages of support “an extraordinary comfort” as she goes through the “raw pain of grief” after her husband’s death.Derek Draper died aged 56 following several years of serious health complications due to coronavirus. Good Morning Britain presenter Garraway, who had chronicled his health struggles on TV, recorded a message for Monday’s show.”Thank you so much for all the wonderful messages that you have sent me,” she told viewers.”It really does mean so much to me, Darcey, Billy and all of Derek’s family. “They are an extraordinary comfort and I’m so lucky to feel connected…

The American company behind plans for a London entertainment venue that was blocked by Sadiq Khan last month has formally withdrawn its planning application, complaining that it had become “a political football”.Sky News has learnt that Madison Square Garden (MSG), Sphere Entertainment’s parent company, has written to British officials to notify them that it is pulling out of a process overseen by the Planning Inspectorate. The notification comes less than two months after the London mayor blocked plans for a 300-foot tall sphere in Stratford, east London which would have been capable of staging events in front of 23,000 people.Mr…

The owners of SoundCloud, one of the world’s largest music streaming services, are preparing for a sale that could fetch in excess of $1bn.Sky News has learnt that Raine Group and Temasek Holdings, the Singaporean state investment fund, have begun interviewing investment banks about a prospective auction of the company. Founded in 2007, SoundCloud provides artists with the tools to build their careers by providing them with an online home to publish their work.In total, more than 40 million artists have released 320 million tracks on the platform.A sale of SoundCloud would underline the scale of its turnaround in recent…

Actor Idris Elba has urged the government to immediately ban machetes and so-called zombie knives, saying it’s “time to push the agenda as strongly as we can”.The Luther star has launched a campaign called Don’t Stop Your Future, and told Sky News that “the nation wants to see that we do care about our youth”. “We’re seeing a rise not a decline and that needs to change,” Elba said. Image: Idris Elba stands in Parliament Square with clothing representing the human cost of UK knife crime. Pic: AP “What [a ban] will symbolically say is that our society has no…

Barclays is in the process of removing 5,000 roles from its global workforce as part of a renewed push by executives to slash costs and improve the bank’s profitability.Sky News has learnt that a total of roughly 5,000 jobs were shed from the British bank’s 84,000-strong ranks during 2023, with about a quarter of the reductions thought to have taken place in its UK operations. The roles have been lost through a combination of redundancies and vacancies that will not be filled following the introduction of a hiring freeze in the middle of last year, according to an insider.The level…

Professor Sir Roy Calne, a pioneering surgeon who led Europe’s first liver transplant operation in 1968, has died at the age of 93.Sir Roy died in Cambridge late on Saturday evening, his family said. The surgeon led the landmark transplant operation at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, on 2 May 1968.In 1978, he became the first doctor to use an immunosuppressant, which was found to be effective in reducing organ rejection.Immunosuppressants remain an important part of life for modern transplant patients, who take the drugs for the rest of their lives to ensure donated organs are not rejected. Nine years later, he…

Gill Catchpole, the wife of singer James Morrison, has died. Ms Catchpole, who had two daughters aged 15 and five with the singer, was found dead in her home in Whitminster, Gloucester, on Friday.In a statement, Gloucestershire Constabulary said: “Police were called to Whitminster in Gloucester at around 9.10am on Friday 5 January following concerns for the welfare of a resident.”Officers attended and the body of a woman in her 40s was found within an address.”The death is being treated as non-suspicious at this time.”The coroners and woman’s next of kin have been informed.”The couple were together for around two decades,…