A Hong Kong-listed company is in talks to buy Stemcor, the historic British steel trading group, amid pressure from its lenders to secure new ownership. Sky News has learnt that GR Life Style, a property company, is the preferred bidder for Stemcor following months of talks with a series of potential buyers. City sources said
Angela Rayner is set to become the UK’s deputy prime minister if Labour wins the next general election. With Labour’s annual conference starting this weekend, here’s what you need to know about the party’s deputy leader – from her early life and career in politics to the abuse and controversy she has faced. Early life
Rishi Sunak, and his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni, have teamed up to call for more action to be taken to tackle illegal migration. Both leaders have made reducing the number of people arriving in their nations outside traditional pathways a key part of their leadership. The pair co-hosted a summit on the fringes of the
One thing that quite often puzzles people who do not work in financial markets is their tendency to treat seemingly good news as bad. We got a classic example on Friday with news that US employers added 336,000 jobs in September. That was up from 227,000 in August (a figure itself revised higher from the
JD Wetherspoon has credited a surge in sales and reduction in costs for its first annual profit since the COVID pandemic. The value pub and hotel chain, which trades from 826 sites across the UK and Ireland, reported profit before tax for the year to the end of July of £42.6m. That compared to a
Jailed Iranian women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi has won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2023. The 51-year-old campaigner was given the award “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all”. The award also recognised the hundreds of thousands of people who have
At least 40 people have been killed in flooding in the Indian Himalayan region, officials have said. The flood began on Wednesday when the waters of the glacial South Lhonak lake breached a hydroelectric dam. That triggered flash flooding in the mountainous Sikkim state of northeastern India, impacting towns and villages along the Teesta River
Labour sources at the Rutherglen and Hamilton West count were either playing a game with us about the scale of their party’s victory or were genuinely surprised. Early on at the count, they said they thought the swing from the SNP to Labour would be 7% to 8%, suggesting a gain of 15 to 22
Storms, floods and wildfires led to more than 43 million displacements of children between 2016 and 2021, UNICEF has said. The UN agency also warned that 100 million more children could be displaced by extreme weather over the next 30 years. Weather-related disasters, which are becoming more violent and frequent as greenhouse gases cause the
A box of giraffe poo has been seized by customs agents at a US airport after a woman tried to bring the faeces into the country to make a necklace. The woman had declared the small box of poo when she was selected to have her belongings inspected upon arriving at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport
Elon Musk’s $44bn (£36bn) takeover of Twitter is under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and he could be compelled to testify. According to court filings on Thursday, the case centres around concerns the world’s richest man broke federal security laws in 2022, when he bought Twitter stock. The investigation is also
The United States has shot down an armed Turkish drone operating near its troops in Syria, the Pentagon said. It was the first time Washington has brought down an aircraft of NATO ally Turkey. Turkish drones had been seen carrying out airstrikes in Hasakah in Syria on Thursday morning in a so-called American “restricted operating
The Labour Party has been accused of attempting to delay a high-profile trial against five of its former employees because the case could prove to be “embarrassing” ahead of the next general election. The party is currently engaged in a protracted legal wrangle with five former employees whom it has accused of leaking a controversial
Rishi Sunak’s speech at the Conservative Party conference fell flat with the British public, a new poll suggests. During his speech, the prime minister confirmed his long-rumoured decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester and announced plans to introduce some of the strictest smoking laws in the world. New polling
Scottish Labour has won the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. Michael Shanks replaces shamed MP Margaret Ferrier, who was ousted from her seat in August following a successful recall petition for breaching COVID restrictions during lockdown in 2020. Voters took to the polls between 7am and 10pm on Thursday and out of the 82,104 electorate,
Firefighters in Italy have brought a fire under control in the grandstand of the golf club that hosted the Ryder Cup last weekend. The large fire began near the 18th green and first fairway at the Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in Rome, at around 5pm on Thursday, Sky Italy said. Huge pillars of