British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to chair an emergency meeting on the economic fallout from the war in Iran on Monday, with Finance Minister Rachel Reeves and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, the government said. Investors are bracing for another stormy week in financial markets after Iran said it would strike the energy and water systems of Gulf neighbours if US President Dona...
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to chair an emergency meeting on the economic fallout from the war in Iran on Monday, with Finance Minister Rachel Reeves and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, the government said. Investors are bracing for another stormy week in financial markets after Iran said it would strike the energy and water systems of Gulf neighbours if US President Donald Trump follows through with a threat to hit Iran’s electricity grid. Britain is watching with particular unease. The country’s heavy dependence on imported natural gas, persistently high inflation and stretched public finances have pushed its government bonds into a far steeper decline than those of international peers. Advertisement “Topics expected to be covered are the economic impact of the crisis on families and businesses, energy security and the resilience of industry and supply chains alongside the international response,” Britain’s finance ministry said ahead of Monday’s so-called Cobra meeting. Cobra refers to Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, where the UK government’s emergency contingency committee meets. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband will attend as well as Starmer, Reeves and Bailey. Advertisement Reeves has said it is too soon to say what the impact of the war will be for Britain’s economy and has resisted calls for sweeping cost-of-living measures for households, saying instead that more targeted support is under consideration. The energy price shock threatens to push Britain’s inflation rate back up – possibly to 5 per cent later this year, according to some economists – and deal another setback to the slow-growth economy.
This upsetting documentary goes to the town with the most terrifyingly high levels of Pfas in the UK, tests the locals and finds that nothing has been done to help them – and now it’s simply too late Forever chemicals are not a fresh scandal that the world is only learning about now: in 2019 there was a Hollywood movie about them , based on a true story from the late 1990s. Mark Ruffalo was Rob Bi...
This upsetting documentary goes to the town with the most terrifyingly high levels of Pfas in the UK, tests the locals and finds that nothing has been done to help them – and now it’s simply too late Forever chemicals are not a fresh scandal that the world is only learning about now: in 2019 there was a Hollywood movie about them , based on a true story from the late 1990s. Mark Ruffalo was Rob Bilott, the crusading lawyer arguing that a West Virginia chemicals company was poisoning the locale. The film, Dark Waters, concerned per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Pfas), synthetic compounds that resist oil, water and heat, and which came into wide usage in the 1930s with the invention of Teflon. Their selling point is that they refuse to break down. The problem with them is that they refuse to break down, and once they’re in soil, groundwater, rivers, food or the air, they get into humans’ bloodstream, from where some Pfas are thought to play a role in causing cancer and other serious health conditions. Yet it took until February this year for the British government to come up with a plan for how to deal with Pfas, and the documentary In Our Blood: The Forever Chemicals Scandal suggests that, for at least one small town, it’s too late. Cameras arrive in Bentham, North Yorkshire, for what is by now the sadly familiar story of a community in northern England of a few thousand people, generations of whom have been proud and grateful to work at the medium-sized business that dominates the local economy. Years later, the people of the town wonder if the thing they helped to make might be bad for their health. Continue reading...