United Kingdom

    A murder investigation has been launched after a 60-year-old woman was found stabbed to death in a luxury home. Sadie Hartley, 60, who is believed to be a company director, was found with multiple stab wounds at her £500,000 property after her colleagues raised the alarm. She had last been seen at a conference in Manchester on Thursday and concerned colleagues contacted the police on Friday night after she failed to turn up for work. Her family say they last heard from her on Thursday evening. Police found her at the five-bedroomed detached property she lives at in the village of Helmshore, Lancashire, and have launched a murder investigation. Neighbours say the area has been plagued by crime in recent months, with burglaries and thefts of high performance cars. Martin Fro...

    Temperatures are expected to fall to as low as minus 10C in rural Scotland over the weekend as the winter chill sets in across the UK. Freezing conditions will affect most parts with the Met Office issuing yellow ice warnings covering the east coast of Scotland and England as well as Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of south-west England and the Midlands. With largely clear skies and no cloud cover, the public are being urged to take care on untreated roads and paths hit by frost. Saturday is forecast to be frosty but many areas will stay dry and enjoy sunny spells. Wintry showers will persist in eastern areas. Rural parts of the Highlands and Aberdeenshire will face the lowest temperatures, forecasters said, while around 5cm to 10cm (2-4in) of snow could fall on higher g...

    Weather forecasters have warned of freezing temperatures and snowy conditions in Britain this weekend, when temperatures could drop to -14C causing chaos on the roads and for rail travellers. Met Office forecaster Emma Sharples told the Daily Telegraph: "There are still snow showers to come for northern and western parts this evening. Overnight Northern Ireland, western and northern parts of Scotland and down through Wales might see a few centimetres." The snow could move as far south as Cornwall and Dartmoor, while the east coast is expected to be worst hit, with snow reaching as far as the Thames Estuary and Kent. Meteorologist Leon Brown at The Weather Channel tells us a frosty and dry weekend is ahead for much of the country, with plenty of sunshine too. "Saturday nigh...

    The UK is braced for a new wave of bad weather after forecasters issued warnings of heavy snow in parts of England and Scotland. The Met Office put amber be prepared alerts in place for south-east Scotland and the Shetland Islands. Snow started falling on Wednesday evening in Central Scotland and the east of the country while Scottish Borders Council has opened its emergency planning centre in preparation. About 3-6 cm of snow was expected quite widely, with the possibility of more than 10 cm on higher ground. Yellow "be aware" warnings were also issued, covering south and central Scotland, northern England, Yorkshire and Humber and the East Midlands. The warnings are valid until 9 am on Thursday, with commuters warned of travel disruption in some areas. In north-west Engl...

    Ice, sleet and lows of 8C possible as Arctic air blows through UK. Ice, sleet and snow is expected in the north of England and in Scotland as fresh Arctic air blows through the UK this week, bringing down temperatures to as low as 8 degrees Celsius. Car owners have been warned of hazardous driving conditions after the Met Office issued a yellow weather warning for ice across much of Scotland, the north west of England, Northern Ireland, Wales and the West Midlands for Wednesday morning. Heavy showery rain moving through the west of England with the risk of hail and thunder is expected to bring snow to parts of the north of England on Wednesday, and to high ground in Northern Ireland, southern Scotland and the hills of Wales. But temperatures across are set to fall in gener...

    House prices have broken free from reality and defied gravity for far too long, but they are an asset like anything else, and there are six clear reasons a nasty correction looms in the coming year. Global asset price crash Asset prices around the world soared as central bankers embarked on the greatest money printing experiment in history. While much of that money flowed into the stock market, a great deal also found its way into house prices. What we are now witnessing on trading screens around the world is the unwinding of the era of monetary excess, and house prices will not escape the fallout. The end of easy money began when the US stopped its third quantitative easing programme in October 2014. That date marks the point the US balance sheet, or amount of money in th...

    Britain is bracing itself for more severe weather after snow and heavy rain brought disruption to parts of the country. Police Scotland declared a "major incident" as dozens of homes were evacuated in Aberdeenshire when the swollen River Don burst its banks. Water also spilled from the River Ythan as emergency services mounted an operation to rescue residents. Up to 6cm of snow fell in Northumberland, while a number of roads were blocked and vehicles became stranded because of snow in southern Scotland. Forecasters said a cold air mass across northern Britain had brought the risk of icy conditions over the weekend. The Met Office has issued yellow be aware warnings for ice and rain across Scotland and northern England on Saturday, with heavy showers also expected in South ...

    My first response to the notion of a universal basic income (UBI) was: “Well, really. That is never going to happen! I mean, it’s completely unaffordable. I mean, it would be political suicide for any progressive party suggesting it.” And then I may have started to froth at the mouth slightly and ask if it would be paid to refugees. Yet this year will see a UBI paid to residents of Utrecht and 19 other Dutch municipalities. Everyone will get about £150 a week, whether working or not. The unemployed won’t find themselves penalised for finding work, and the hope is that the state will spend less money snooping on benefit claimants, moving on the homeless or locking up those driven to crime. Advocates of this radical idea are keen to quash any notion that recipients of free m...

    British Prime Minister David Cameron is poised to do a deal with Europe that would strip away incentives for EU workers to come to Britain - a move that could hand him a big "win" ahead of next summer's planned referendum on Britain's EU membership, The Telegraph has learned. The outlines of a deal acceptable to all sides have emerged following December's European Council summit where Mr Cameron made an impassioned case for Britain's need to curb the wave of migration that has hit the country since it opened its doors to new EU states in 2004. Mr Cameron had demanded the right to make non-British EU workers wait four years before claiming in-work benefits, but was roundly rebuffed at the summit on the grounds that it would infringe the core EU principle of non-discriminati...

    Great British Bake-Off winner Nadiya Hussain has revealed that she was targeted by an anti-Islamic hate mob on social media. The mother of three and her family needed a police guard at their home after she received racist threats on Twitter following her win. The 31-year-old, who won the nation's hearts as much with her inventive bakes as her witty one-liners, was speaking on ITV's Loose Women when she revealed that she was bombarded with abuse and insults for being a hijab-wearing Muslim. Nadiya, who is of Bangladeshi origin and a practising Muslim, frequently demonstrated her pride in both her British roots and her Muslim faith, drawing on both influences in creating her spectacular bakes. And while she remained undeterred by the online abuse, the police took the threats...