التصنيف: أخبار

F1 star Lewis Hamilton will leave Mercedes at the end of the upcoming season and join Ferrari in 2025.

“I have had an amazing 11 years with this team and I’m so proud of what we have achieved together,” the 39-year-old British driver said in a statement.

“Mercedes has been part of my life since I was 13 years old.

“It’s a place where I have grown up, so making the decision to leave was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make.

“But the time is right for me to take this step and I’m excited to be taking on a new challenge.”

Ferrari confirmed on X that he would join “on a multi-year contract” in 2025 – fans seemed to approve, with 176,000 likes in the first 40 minutes.

The seven-time champion is expected to replace Carlos Sainz at the iconic Italian team.

Sainz’s contract expires at the end of 2024, while Ferrari’s other driver, Charles Leclerc, recently agreed a new long-term deal.

Hamilton had previously been linked with Ferrari, but signed a two-year contract worth £100m last summer to stay at Mercedes.

The move ends an extraordinary partnership, with Hamilton winning six world titles between 2014 to 2020.

However, Mercedes have since fallen off the pace and he hasn’t won a race since 2021.

The team said Hamilton had triggered a release clause included in the deal he signed last year.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said the link-up had been the most successful team-driver partnership the sport had ever seen.

“However, we knew our partnership would come to a natural end at some point, and that day has now come,” said Wolff.

“We accept Lewis’s decision to seek a fresh challenge, and our opportunities for the future are exciting to contemplate.

“But for now, we still have one season to go, and we are focused on going racing to deliver a strong 2024.”

Read more:
Hamilton has chance to do something extraordinary at Ferrari – analysis

Hamilton said in his statement he would be “forever grateful” for Mercedes’ “incredible support” and Wolff’s friendship and leadership.

“I am 100% committed to delivering the best performance I can this season and making my last year with the Silver Arrows, one to remember,” he added.

The new season begins with the Bahrain Grand Prix on 28 February.

‘Dreams’ of being in red

Hamilton told ESPN last year he would be “lying” if he said he had “never thought about ending my career anywhere else”.

“I thought about and watched the Ferrari drivers on the screens at the track and, of course, you wonder what it would be like to be in red,” he added.

Former world champion Damon Hill said Hamilton was likely to still be smarting from the 2021 season, when he lost the lead in the last moments of the final race – and with it the title – after a controversial restart.

Hill told Sky that Hamilton had “been licking his wounds”.

“Maybe he didn’t think there were strong enough signs from Mercedes that they’d solved their problems, that they were going to give him an all-conquering car,” said Hill.

“He doesn’t want to hang around to make up numbers.

“Maybe Ferrari is just that added spice that you need to motivate yourself one more time for another last push at it – and what a way to go out if you’re with Ferrari.”

Asked if the move would improve his chances of winning another title, Hill said that might not be the point.

“If Ferrari’s chances are as good as Mercedes’, then why not Ferrari? Ferrari has that cachet,” he said.

“It’s also something different, there’s always a spring in your step if you change to a new team, the optimism of going somewhere different”.

A three-year-old trapped inside a toy claw machine was “having the time of his life” while his dad and police scrambled to free him.

Timothy Hopper and his son Ethan were at a shopping centre in southeast Queensland, Australia, when the boy climbed into the machine.

After entering through the prize dispenser, the boy was filmed calmly wandering around inside the box, while adults tried to coax him out.

Speaking to Australian news outlet ABC, the boy’s father said: “I had zero chance to react to it, it was unbelievable how fast he climbed up there.

“I was watching him and then I was talking to my children.”

While Mr Hopper was worried about his son, he said he “couldn’t help but laugh thinking ‘how has this happened?’ because he wasn’t hurt, he wasn’t sad, so it was easy to have a laugh when he was having the time of his life”.

“But then reality sunk in – how am I going to get him out,” he added, before sharing he called the claw machine company.

“They were asking me how much money I had put in the machine [and if the money was] stuck in the machine.

“My response was ‘the only thing stuck in the machine is my child, I’d love to have him back’.”

After police arrived at the scene, they told Ethan to climb to the corner of the machine and cover his eyes so they could break him loose.

An officer then broke the glass window and safely lifted Ethan out of the machine – before reuniting him with his parents.

Ethan, who was gifted a toy koala dressed as a police officer after the ordeal, told Mr Hopper: “Don’t worry dad, I won’t do it again.”

Read more from Sky News:
Outrage after woman appears in court shackled in chains
Woman mistakenly dumped into bin lorry and compacted

Senior Constable Stuart Power called the rescue a first in his 11-year policing career, and praised Ethan for making it easy by being in good spirits.

“For him to get distraught in there, it would’ve made things a lot harder to abstract him on the night,” he said.

“We directed him to the back corner and to cover his eyes which he was exceedingly happy to do, he bounced into the corner. Kids are going to be kids.”

A Capalaba Park Shopping Centre spokesperson told ABC the incident was also a first for company Retail First, and added: “We are in discussions with the claw machine vendor to review what measures can be put in place to avoid this happening again.”

At least two people have been killed and 29 injured after gas explosion in Nairobi, according to reports.

A local newspaper in the Kenyan capital said the blast happened in the Embakasi neighbourhood just before midnight on Thursday.

Wesley Kimeto, commander in charge of police in Embakasi, was quoted saying on the Standard newspaper’s X account that at least two people were confirmed dead.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive Breaking News alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News App. You can also follow @SkyNews on X or subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.

There was a time when he’d have jumped at the chance – not today, not with this president.

Alabas Farhat, Democratic representative for the state of Michigan, declined the invitation for a “meet and greet” with Joe Biden and he wasn’t alone.

Arab Muslim community leaders in the greater Detroit area snubbed the campaign visit to their neighbourhood. The problem they have is Mr Biden’s support for Israel in the war with Hamas and his opposition to a ceasefire.

“We feel absolutely betrayed,” said Representative Farhat. “He literally was elected because he wasn’t Trump. Many people actually believed that this is somebody who was the more humane option, potentially.

Read more:
Biden faces pivotal moment as he weighs retaliation for soldier deaths
How this year’s US election will shape the world
All you need to know about Trump’s legal cases
Trump hails ‘terrific’ DeSantis after rival ends campaign

“I have people from this community that campaigned so much, to the extent that when he won, they wrote his name on their birthday cake.”

Now the campaigning is against the president they fought to elect, Democrat against Democrat.

Across the street from where we met Rep Farhat, he pointed out the electronic signage urging locals to vote “uncommitted” – as opposed to Biden – in the upcoming Democratic primaries, hashtag “#genocidejoe”.

It runs parallel to an “Abandon Biden” initiative – don’t vote for his opponent, necessarily, but don’t vote for him.

It presents a serious threat to the sitting president’s prospect of re-election. The November poll will likely be decided by small margins in a small number of swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts

A survey for Bloomberg News and Morning Consult the day before Mr Biden travelled to Michigan, showed Donald Trump ahead in seven key swing states by 48% to 42%. In Michigan, it was 47% to 42% in Trump’s favour.

Any fall in support for Joe Biden in these critical places is an opportunity for his likely contender for the White House, Donald Trump – this, a former president who has pledged to tighten immigration further and expand a travel ban on people from Muslim countries.

The prospect of enabling a second Trump presidency isn’t lost on Democrats lining up against Biden.

Rep Farhat said: “They’re saying in the community (that) we’ve held out for years under Trump and we can hold out for another four, if that means we’ll stop the killing of our cousins and our loved ones overseas.

“And so, if the president doesn’t heed these words, if he doesn’t take it seriously, he’s at risk of losing the swing state of Michigan.”

A look at the figures shows Joe Biden’s vulnerability to a Muslim backlash. Michigan has one of the largest Arab American and Muslim populations in the US, numbering around 300,000. At the last election, Joe Biden won the state by 154,000 votes.

Anti-Biden sentiment is echoed in the Islamic Center of Detroit, Imam Imran Salha offered a withering criticism.

“The ink that we would use to sign that ballot (for Biden) would be through the blood of our relatives in Palestine,” he said.

“We want it to be recorded in history that President Biden was a one-term president because of the genocide against the Palestinians that he bankrolled.”

The question for Biden is how he responds. On the day he came to Michigan, he announced an executive order that will widen sanctions against Israeli settlers inflicting violence on Palestinians in the West Bank.

However, much that resonates with the Muslim community in Michigan, it doesn’t go nearly far enough.

According to Rep Alabas Farhat, the conversation needs to start with a ceasefire.

“You don’t want a president who’s going to enable the genocide that we’re seeing overseas. We don’t want our president to enable the bombing of innocent women and children and of hospitals. Now President Biden has the power to end this.”

The politics of industrial dispute are on a different level. They offered easier engagement for the president in Michigan as he came to acknowledge the endorsement for his re-election from the United Auto Workers Union.

It was photocall stuff – blue-collar backing that he will exploit for all it’s worth. There are votes in an auto industry that threads through Michigan – a place where Joe Biden needs all the friends he can find, more than ever.

Watch our new foreign affairs show, The World with Yalda Hakim, from Monday to Thursday between 9pm and 10pm on Sky News.

The owner of the farm where the remains of murdered Muriel McKay are thought to be buried has said he will let police dig there without a search warrant.

But banker Ian Marsh said it’s up to detectives to judge whether they have enough new evidence to pinpoint the precise burial site.

His offer follows Muriel’s daughter Dianne’s 4,000-mile trip to Trinidad to meet her mother’s killer Nizamodeen Hosein.

She showed him blown up photographs of the Hertfordshire farm and he pointed to the spot, telling her: “Three feet from the hedge, that’s where the body is”.

Hosein and his brother Arthur kidnapped Mrs McKay in 1969 and held her at the farm while demanding a £1m ransom.

They were caught and jailed for kidnap and murder, but denied the charges and Muriel’s fate remained a mystery.

Hosein, 76, who was deported to his native Trinidad after his release from prison, told the family recently that she collapsed and died suddenly and he buried her behind a barn.

Landowner Ian Marsh wrote to the family today: “The Marsh family understand the desire of the deceased Mrs McKay’s family to have a resolution to this matter.

“We have been patient with the multiple requests that we have received and repeat our position: we will cooperate with the police if they determine that a further search of our property is required.

Read more on this story:
Muriel McKay – the woman who vanished
Muriel McKay’s family offer landowner £40,000 to search for body

“We believe that the police will attest to the fact that the Marsh family have done everything, to date, that the police have asked of them.

“If asked by the police to give access to our land because they have compelling evidence of the whereabouts of the remains of Mrs McKay we will consent to giving the police full access to our land, no warrants will be required.

“We believe that it is important that due process and procedure is completed by the police to corroborate any evidence, including any new evidence that is being provided by the family of the deceased and/or the perpetrator.

“We are not in a position to judge that evidence, that has to be a matter for the police. I hope you understand that our trust is in the police, and we rely on them to examine all the information provided.”

‘Ball is in the police’s court’

The McKay family welcomed the offer and hope Scotland Yard will be persuaded to excavate the area indicated by the killer during their trip to Trinidad at the weekend.

Muriel’s grandson Mark Dyer, who organised the trip to the Caribbean, said: “This is good news and we feel we are at last making some progress. The ball is now in the police’s court.”

The family is due to meet police next week to discuss the next step.

Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts

Police searched part of the farm two years ago, but found nothing. The family said they searched in the wrong place.

Mrs McKay, 55, was the wife of newspaper executive Alick McKay.

The bungling brothers mistook her for Anna Murdoch, the then wife of Alick’s boss Rupert Murdoch.