Local News

The UK will be forced to agree this month to increase defence spending to 3.5% of national income within a decade as part of a NATO push to rearm and keep the US on side, Sky News understands.The certainty of a major policy shift means there is bemusement in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) about why Sir Keir Starmer's government has tied itself in knots over whether to describe an […]

The private equity firm that had been the frontrunner to lead a rescue of the UK's largest water provider - Thames Water - has pulled out.Thames Water Utilities, which is staring down the prospect of a special administration process without fresh investment, said an alternative plan was now under discussion after KKR's exit from the process. KKR was handed preferred bidder status back in March as Thames, which serves 15 […]

Human remains have been found as part of an investigation into the disappearance of a Polish woman 15 years ago.Izabela Zablocka was living in the Normanton area of Derby but lost contact with her family in August 2010, when she was 30, and has never been found. However, new information came to light last week and a murder investigation was launched.Derbyshire Police said remains believed to belong to Ms Zablocka […]

The UK has recorded its warmest spring on record - and its driest for 50 years, the Met Office has said.Provisional figures showed spring temperatures surpassed the long-term average by 1.4C - with a mean temperature of 9.5C (49.1F). That beat the previous warmest spring recorded in 2024. Temperature records were broken in all four nations in the UK - with 1.64C above the long-term average in Northern Ireland, 1.56C […]

Dreaming of a new career? Each week, we speak to someone from a different profession to discover what it's really like. Today, the Money team chats to an NHS learning disability nurse - we agreed to make them anonymous so they could provide an unfiltered view of the job. I worked with a man with a severe learning disability who was dying of cancer... He didn't understand what this meant […]

👉Listen to Politics at Sam and Anne's on your podcast app👈 Sky News' Sam Coates and Politico's Anne McElvoy serve up their essential guide to the day in British politics. This time last year, Labour and the Conservatives were in the throes of an era-defining election campaign that would end in Sir Keir Starmer winning an extraordinarily large majority.The Reform Party was little more than a buzzing bee amid the […]

Sir Keir Starmer will pledge to buy more attack submarines and put the military on a war footing as part of a major defence review - but without making any new spending promises.The lack of extra cash meant the prime minister was coming under fire for empty rhetoric even before the blueprint for the future of the armed forces is released on Monday. Defence Secretary John Healey was forced to […]

The UK appears to be on the verge of a hotter than usual summer – with the Met Office warning there's an increased risk of heatwaves in the coming months. The weather service's three-month outlook predicts it is 2.3 times more likely than normal that it will be hot in the UK between 1 June and 31 August. The average temperatures during those months range from 10-17C, with the southeast […]

A new drug could stop some breast cancer tumours from using hormones to grow, a trial has found.Results from the Serena-6 trial, carried out with the Institute of Cancer Research in London, suggest that using camizestrant could help patients stay well longer and delay the need for chemotherapy. According to Cancer Research UK, the drug works by blocking oestrogen from getting into the breast cancer cell, which researchers hope can […]