Business

Train drivers will refuse to work overtime for a week – threatening disruption to services at the height of the summer holidays. The action – part of a long-running dispute over pay – will begin from 31 July, the ASLEF union announced on Monday. It will affect services across 15 train operating companies, and marks

UPDATED, 11:20 AM: The producers of Here We Are have announced the cast for the first production of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical. Francois Battiste, Tracie Bennett, Bobby Cannavale, Micaela Diamond, Amber Gray, Jin Ha, Rachel Bay Jones, Denis O’Hare, Steven Pasquale, David Hyde Pierce, and Jeremy Shamos are set for the show, which opens September 28 for a limited Off Broadway engagement at The Shed.

The government has signed an agreement to join an Indo-Pacific trading bloc, although the estimated benefit could only be £1.8bn in GDP. In announcing the formal plans to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Rishi Sunak administration highlighted the £12trn value of the combined GDPs of all the member nations if

Taylor Swift continues to make her mark in history and the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) has given the songstress a major win. The re-recorded Speak Now made its debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart joining three other Swift albums in the Top 10. Swift’s achievement marked the first time a

Gresham House, a London-listed asset manager which invests in sectors including forestry and battery storage, is in talks about a private equity takeover. Sky News has learnt that Searchlight Capital, a US-based buyout firm, is targeting a take-private of the alternative investment manager, which is run by chief executive Tony Dalwood. If completed, the deal

Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has drawn early support from a range of figures in entertainment, media and tech, including six-figure contributions from a list that includes Seth MacFarlane, Netflix’s Reed Hastings and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Among donors in entertainment, Jeffrey Katzenberg gave the highest amount, $889,600. He is serving as Biden’s campaign co-chair. His wife,

British self-made entrepreneur James Asquith has more than a million followers on Instagram and holds the record for being the youngest person to visit every single country. Post-pandemic he has also spotted an opportunity and is starting up the world’s newest airline based at Gatwick. While much of the airline industry has fallen out of

Elon Musk was busy over the weekend handling requests from followers on Twitter. The social media platform recently introduced an ad revenue-sharing program that rewards creators. However, not all creators had the opportunity to get a piece of the ad revenue pie, which was pointed out to Musk who ended up changing the rules. A

The government is poised to shelve plans to crack down on Britain’s fast-growing ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) industry amid Whitehall concerns that it could curb the availability of low-interest products. Sky News has learnt that Treasury officials have been told during recent talks with the industry that a number of its biggest players could

André Watts, one of the first Black superstars in classical music, died on Wednesday at his home in Bloomington, Ind. He was 77 and died of prostrate cancer, according to his wife. Watts had an electric stage presence, often moving to the music with his head and feet, drawing criticism from the more conservative critics.

Almost 1,000 workers at Gatwick Airport, including baggage handlers and check-in staff, will stage eight days of strikes from later this month. Staff will strike in a dispute over pay, the union Unite announced, at the start of the school summer holidays. Significant disruption, delays and cancellations are “inevitable”, the union said. The workers will

Walk the Moon is going on an indefinite hiatus. The band behind hits “Shut Up and Dance” and “Anna Sun” made the announcement on social media today. “The time has come for us to take a good, long break from touring and making records together. When we do reconvene, that will be a glorious day.

Young adults and renters are some of the groups of people worst hit by rising prices as official figures show around 1 in 20 said they’d run out of food in the past 2 weeks and couldn’t afford more. Those aged 25 to 34 were at greater risk of financial vulnerability than those over the

SAG-AFTRA members took to the picket lines outside major studios on Friday, July 14, aligning themselves and joining forces with WGA strikers who walked out on May 2. Protests are expected outside the studios and networks of Paramount, Disney, Universal, Sony, Fox and streaming giants Amazon and Netflix in Los Angeles and New York. This

Unions have won a legal challenge against a law change which allowed companies to use agency staff to fill in the roles of striking workers. The change was introduced when Kwasi Kwarteng was business secretary under Boris Johnson in July last year. Mr Justice Linden was scathing in his written judgement. Politics latest: Rishi Sunak

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher will be on the picket lines Friday on the first day of the guild’s strike against the film and television industry. She’ll be joined by Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the guild’s national executive director and chief negotiator, and members of the guild’s negotiating committee. Drescher and her team will be picketing outside Netflix’s

The UK’s national debt could hit 300% of GDP by the 2070s because of the string of major challenges still facing national governments after a “rapid succession of shocks”, according to a report for the Treasury. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility laid out how climate change, defence and the fact people were living longer

Donald Trump plans to host a screening of Sound of Freedom at his Bedminster golf club next week, seizing on the unexpected box office performance of the movie. Star Jim Caviezel and producer Eduardo Verástegui will attend, while Tim Ballard, the former government agent upon which the story is based, also will be there. The

The economy contracted in May as the additional public holiday for the King’s coronation weighed on output, according to official figures. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed negative growth of 0.1% during the month, better than economists had predicted but continuing the yo-yo pattern seen throughout the last year that has left

The new Taylor Swift album, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) has a little issue with its vinyl editions. A small number of the vinyls contain British electronica music instead of songs by the pop princess. One fan posted to TikTok about the issue, playing a cut from the album. Instead of Swift, Cabaret Voltaire’s “Soul Vine