The British government on Wednesday said it would cap wholesale electricity and gas costs for businesses at less than half the market rate from next month, helping relieve the pressure of soaring energy costs but adding to the government's fast-rising spending.

Britain is inviting a representative from North Korea to attend Queen Elizabeth's funeral on Monday, but Afghanistan, Syria and Venezuela will not be given an invite, a foreign office source said on Wednesday.

A protein implant could cure blindness, according to a new study. Researchers found no one who had the operation was still blind two years later and three people who were blind ended up with 20:20 vision.

Conservationists have called for ministers to ban the release of millions of gamebirds to prevent the UK’s wild birds being wiped out by a “catastrophic” avian flu epidemic this winter. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said there was a significant risk that pheasants, partridge and ducks released for shooting from 1 October could spread avian influenza into wild bird populations, wreaking havoc in farmland and garden birds.

The Prince of Wales received a £1m donation for his charity from relatives of Osama bin Laden, according to a report. The Sunday Times alleged that the future king accepted the payment from Bakr bin Laden, the patriarch of the Saudi family, and his brother Shafiq.

The rise in sea levels around the UK is accelerating and has reached a rate more than double that in the first years of the 1900s. A report from the UK’s Met Office found that the seas have risen by about 16.5 centimetres (6.5 ins) since 1990 alone, driven by annual increases of 3-5.2 millimetres a year.

The UK is set to become home to the world's largest automated drone superhighway within the next two years. The drones will be used on the 164-mile Skyway project connecting towns and cities, including Cambridge and Rugby. It is part of a £273m funding package for the aerospace sector which will be revealed by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng on Monday.

A 2020 call for evidence on loot boxes, launched by the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, found that players who purchased loot boxes may be more likely to experience “gambling, mental health, financial and problem gaming-related” harms. The risk may also be higher for children and young people, it was found.

More than a million meat chickens are dying every week in the UK before reaching slaughter weight, according to a new report. An analysis of government figures by the animal welfare charity Open Cages reveals about 64 million chickens die prematurely each year in the UK. The dead birds can be incinerated or rendered into usable materials such as protein meal.

Amazon has agreed to simplify the process of canceling Prime in Europe, meaning customers in the region will be able to end their subscription in just two clicks, the European Commission has announced. The changes, which were implemented as of July 1st, should bring to an end the “multiple pages” filled with “distracting information” and “unclear button labels” that Amazon has previously used to add friction to the cancellation process.

FISH and chip dinners will soar in price because offshore wind farms are likely to gobble up too much of Britain’s waters, a report warns. Fishermen say Boris Johnson’s plans for more turbines in the sea mean half of their territory could be lost by 2050.

The British government announced a series of measures June 23, from regulations to funding active debris removal projects, intended to make the country a leader in space sustainability. George Freeman, minister for science, research and innovation, announced a package called the Plan for Space Sustainability intended to create a standard that will encourage companies, along with investors and insurers, to adopt best practices for sustainable space operations.

Immediately after British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced on Friday last week that she had approved Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States, the publisher and journalist was stripped naked and placed in a bare cell of London’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison.

A government-supported scheme that provides interest-free loans to the financially vulnerable will be expanded to reach up to 20,000 people. The no-interest loan scheme (Nils), which is backed by the Treasury but is run by credit unions and other lending organisations, successfully underwent a trial in Manchester and from September will be rolled out in other parts of the UK.

U.K. broadcaster Channel 4, which is facing the threat of being privatized by Boris Johnson’s government, has revealed an unsuccessful counter-proposal to remain independent. A key element of the proposal, which is titled “4: The Next Episode,” is creating an intellectual property joint venture (JV) proposition with an external investor as majority shareholder, which would see a significant private capital investment into Channel 4 for the first time.

The Bank of England sent a stark warning that Britain risks a double-whammy of a recession and inflation above 10% as it raised interest rates on Thursday to their highest since 2009, hiking by quarter of a percentage point to 1%. The pound fell by more than a cent against the U.S. dollar to hit its lowest level since mid-2020, below $1.24, as the gloominess of the BoE's new forecasts for the world's fifth-largest economy caught investors by surprise.

Buy now, pay later giant Klarna says it will start reporting data on customers’ usage of its products to credit bureaus in the U.K., gearing up for incoming regulations aimed at reining in the sector over fears it is putting young people into debt. Starting June 1, the Swedish fintech firm will share information on whether Brits paid off an installment loan in time or are falling behind on their payments to TransUnion and Experian, meaning such data will now start to appear on their credit reports. Klarna has around 16 million users in the country.

Britain unveiled a new taskforce on Monday to write rules forcing financial firms and listed companies to publish plans from next year for transitioning to a net zero economy by 2050.

Survey finds third have skipped meal to keep up with other costs and 20% unable at least once to afford cooking with oven.

The UK streaming boom is officially over after the number of homes with services such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ fell in the first quarter, as the cost of living crisis forced hundreds of thousands of streaming fans to slim down their subscriptions to just a few favourites.