A new-look Sky News series takes viewers straight into some of the world’s most hostile environments.

From dodging gunfire in Syria to navigating gang-controlled streets in Haiti, Hotspots shines a light not only on the stories themselves but how those stories are captured – through every breath and decision.

“This is journalism at its most raw and its most genuine,” says special correspondent Alex Crawford, who stars in the series alongside chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay and their fearless teams.

It is a testament to the journalists who venture into some of the world’s most hostile and difficult to reach places to bring the truth to light.

Told using only natural sound and raw action gathered in the field – with the entire team mic’d up – Hotspots immerses audiences in unfiltered reality.

This multi-perspective coverage delivers unparalleled transparency in an era of fake news, giving viewers a real-time look at how Sky News’ eyewitness storytelling unfolds on the front lines – and the challenges journalists face to uncover the truth.

Last aired on TV in 2021, Hotspots returns with a new digital-first format and a host of exhilarating locations, including:

• Syria: Caught in the crossfire between armed groups
• Haiti: Inside displacement camps where hostility takes on a different face
• Somalia: Searching for ISIS hideouts in remote terrain
• Colombia: Tracking coca farmers deep in the Amazon
• The West Bank: Reporting under constant watch from Israeli forces
• Libya: Discovering overloaded migrant dinghies drifting in the dark

“Authenticity is what our viewers are desperate for. And we are giving it to them in spades now,” says Crawford.

“This fresh, behind-the-scenes Hotspots takes you right inside our team to give you an unvarnished look at how we operate, how we communicate and how we just plain survive in the most hostile and challenging of environments.”

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Ramsay, whose team takes viewers behind the scenes in the West Bank and Haiti, says he hopes it will provide an insight into “what it takes to bring you the news”.

“It takes a whole team to produce our stories, but as a rule you only ever see me! Hotspots gives people an opportunity to see the whole process, to see how we all work together, and to watch my team in action.

“The job is not always easy, it has its challenges as you’ll see, but I happen to think I have one of the best jobs in the world, and now through Hotspots you can (sort of) come along with me on assignment.”

Watch Hotspots on the Sky News Hotspots YouTube channel.

The death toll following flooding and landslides in Indonesia and Thailand has risen to more than 600 – with nearby Sri Lanka also reporting more than 200 deaths after a cyclone.

Three people have also died in Malaysia, officials have said, due to the extreme weather in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

In total, Indonesian officials said 442 people had died and Thai authorities reported 170 deaths in the southern part of the country, as of midday UK time on Sunday.

Rescue efforts were ongoing throughout the day, with more than four million people affected – almost three million in Southern Thailand and 1.1 million in Western Indonesia – by the effects of a tropical storm formed in the Malacca Strait.

Indonesian relief and rescue teams have used helicopters to deliver aid to people they could not access because of blocked roads on the western island of Sumatra.

Many areas have been cut off, while damage to telecommunications infrastructure has hampered communications.

Officials said on Saturday that they had received reports of people looting supply lines as they grow desperate for relief in other areas.

Hat Yai, the largest city in Thailand’s Songkhla province, received 335mm (13 inches) of rain on Friday last week, its highest single-day tally in 300 years.

After days of rain, meteorological authorities in Malaysia lifted tropical storm and continuous rain warnings there yesterday, forecasting clear skies for most of the country.

However, there are still about 18,700 people in evacuation centres, according to the country’s national disaster management agency.

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More than 200 dead in Sri Lanka

Across the Bay of Bengal, Sri Lanka’s disaster management centre said in a situation report on Sunday that 212 people had died as a result of Cyclone Ditwah.

Another 218 people have been recorded as missing across the South Asian country’s 25 districts, and more than half a million people have been affected nationwide.

The chancellor has insisted to Sky News that she did not lie to the public about the state of the public finances ahead of the budget.

Rachel Reeves is facing widespread accusations that in a speech from Downing Street on 4 November in which she laid the groundwork for tax rises, she misled the country and led the public to believe the fiscal situation was worse than it actually was.

Asked directly by Sky’s Trevor Phillips if she lied, she said: “Of course I didn’t.”

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Ms Reeves said the decision by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to review and downgrade productivity meant the forecast for tax receipts was £16bn lower than expected.

As a result, she said she needed tax rises to create more fiscal headroom (the amount by which government can increase spending or cut taxes without breaking its own fiscal rules) to reassure the financial markets and create stability in the economy.

But the OBR has said it told the chancellor in its forecast on 31 October that there was a £4.2bn budget surplus, rather than a black hole following the productivity downgrade, and Trevor challenged her on why she did not say that to the nation and argue that more headroom was needed.

She replied: “I said in that speech that I wanted to achieve three things in the budget – tackling the cost of living, which is why I took £150 off of energy bills and froze prescription charges and rail fares.

“I wanted to continue to cut NHS waiting lists, which is why I protected NHS spending. And I wanted to bring the debt and the borrowing down, which is one of the reasons why I increased the headroom.

“£4bn of headroom would not have been enough, and it would not give the Bank of England space to continue to cut interest rates.”

Ms Reeves also said: “In the context of a downgrade in our productivity, which cost £16bn, I needed to increase taxes, and I was honest and frank about that in the speech that I gave at the beginning of November.”

She confirmed that the prime minister was aware of the fiscal forecasts and what she was going to say in her speech on 4 November about the challenges facing the UK economy, saying: “Keir [Starmer] and myself met regularly to discuss the budget and the choices, because these are the choices of this government.

“And I’m really proud of the choices that we made – to cut waiting lists, to cut inflation, and to build up that resilience in our economy.”

Tax rises ‘not on scale of last year’

Following her budget last year, in which she raised taxes, the chancellor was explicit to Trevor that she would “never need to do that again” or “come back for more”.

But Ms Reeves did raise taxes by freezing income tax thresholds until 2031, and implementing a range of smaller tax rises totalling £26bn, so Trevor put to her that what she said last year was not true.

She replied: “The budget this year was not on the scale of the one last year, but as I set out in my speech at the beginning of November, the context for this budget did change and I did have to ask people to contribute more.”

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She conceded that it is “true” that she said she wouldn’t have to raise taxes, and has now done so, but said it was “for reasons not in my control”, pointing to the OBR’s decision to conduct a productivity review.

But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch hit out at the chancellor’s handling of the economy, telling Trevor: “I think the chancellor has been doing a terrible job. She’s made a mess of the economy, and […] she has told lies. This is a woman who, in my view, should be resigning.”

‘I am choosing children’

Ms Reeves also told Trevor that she is “proud to be the chancellor that lifts half a million kids out of poverty” through her decision to lift the two-child cap on benefits from April, which was brought in by the Conservatives in 2017 and meant parents could only claim universal credit or tax credits for their first two children.

Trevor put to her polling that shows that while 84% of Labour members are in favour of scrapping the cap, just 37% of those who voted Labour in 2024 think it should be scrapped.

And asked if she is choosing party over country, the chancellor replied: “I am choosing children, Trevor. This lifts more than half a million children out of poverty, combined with our changes on free breakfast clubs, extending free school meals, 30 hours [of] free childcare for working parents of pre-school age children.

“You can put up those percentages, but the people I was thinking about were kids who I know in my constituency, who go to school hungry and go to bed in cold and damp homes. And from April next year, those parents will have a bit more support to help their kids.”

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper told Trevor that her party backs the decision, saying: ” First of all, we think it is morally the right thing to do. And secondly, because it saves money for the taxpayer in the longer term, because we know that children growing up in poverty end up costing the taxpayer more because they have worse health outcomes, worse educational outcomes as well.”

But she added that they are “deeply concerned” about “this double whammy stealth tax on both households and on high streets”.

‘We need growth in our economy’

But the Tory leader hit out at the decision, telling Trevor that lifting the two-child benefit cap is “not the way” to lift children out of poverty, and saying that it means the government is “taxing a lot of people who are struggling to pay for those on benefits”.

Ms Badenoch said: “About half a million families are going to be getting an uptick of about £5,000. Many other people don’t have £5,000 lying around.

“We believe that people on benefits should have to make the same decisions about having children as everybody else. And remember, we’re not talking about child benefits here. We’re talking about the universal credit element of it. You get child benefit for as many children as you have.

“But at some point, someone needs to draw a line somewhere.”

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Ms Badenoch argued that the way to ensure children are not in poverty is to “make sure that their parents have jobs and that those jobs pay well”, and said the level of unemployment has increased “every single month” since Labour came to office in July 2024.

“What we need is growth in our economy. Simply taking out from people who are struggling and giving to a different group of people is not making the economy better,” she said.