Emergency law passed to force loss-making steel companies to keep operating

Emergency legislation allowing the government to instruct companies to keep loss-making steel operations in England open, or face criminal penalties for their executives, were passed yesterday during an extraordinary sitting of parliament.MPs and peers trooped into Westminster for a rare Saturday sitting after prime minister Keir Starmer and a small team of cabinet ministers decided on Friday morning that special powers were needed for the business secretary Jonathan Reynolds to prevent the imminent collapse of British Steel’s Scunthorpe steelworks, with the furnaces going out, and the loss of thousands of jobs.The recall of parliament from its Easter recess, only the sixth Saturday sitting since the second world war, was ordered after negotiations with British Steel’s Chinese owners, Jingye, appeared to break down.Opening Saturday’s debate, Reynolds said the government had been in talks with Jingye since it came to power last July and had offered “substantial” support. Most recently, Labour had offered to purchase the necessary raw materials for the blast furnaces, the last primary virgin steel-making facilities in the UK, but this had been met with a counter offer from Jingye demanding “an excessive amount” of support

Why does British Steel need to be rescued by the government and what happens next?

The company has been through several owners since it was privatised in the 1980s. The latest, Jingye, was welcomed by then prime minister Boris Johnson in 2019 after private equity firm Greybull had run the firm for three years.A glut of steel on international markets and the investment needed to upgrade the works to run on renewable energy has convinced the Chinese firm that Scunthorpe is not economically viable.Ministers wanted to develop an industrial strategy – that includes domestically produced steel – before allocating any cash to individual sectors. But the crisis at British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant brought forward a decision about what kind of steel industry the UK needs

Legal Defense Fund exits Meta civil rights advisory group over DEI changes

On Friday, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) announced its decision to exit Meta’s external civil rights advisory group due to its concerns over Meta’s content moderation and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) policy changes.In January, Meta made a series of sweeping changes, including ending its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, getting rid of its factcheckers and changing its content moderation policies. These changes, which some saw as aligning Meta with the then incoming Trump administration, informed the LDF’s decision to leave the civil rights advisory group.That month, following Meta’s decision to its changes, the LDF joined a coalition of other civil rights organisations that were part of Meta’s external civil rights advisory group to express discontent with the company’s decision.“These changes are devastating for free expression because they will subject members of protected groups to more attacks, harassment, and harm, driving them off Meta’s services, impoverishing conversations, eliminating points of view, and silencing dissenting and oft-censored voices,” the companies wrote in a 14 January letter to Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg

‘Amazon slayer’: the Dublin minnow taking on the giants in drone deliveries

One drone lifts up into the sky at a shopping centre on the outskirts of Dublin, then another. They rise to 70ft (21 metres), tilt forward and zip away in different directions, each carrying a paper bag.On a sleepy morning in the Irish capital the takeoffs build to a steady one every few minutes, with barely anyone glancing at the constant stream of aircraft buzzing back and forth.“No one’s looking up – no one ever looks up,” says the man responsible, Bobby Healy, the founder of the Dublin startup Manna Aero.People probably should take notice, because the drones are part of an effort to realise an ambition shared by Amazon, the Google sister company Wing and the Californian startup Zipline: instant, autonomous home delivery

Scottie Scheffler struggles in unfamiliar Masters role of tortoise chasing the hare | Andy Bull

For a small man, Rory McIlroy casts a long shadow. On Saturday, it covered every single one of the 52 other men in the field at the Masters, so that even the world’s No 1 golfer, Scottie Scheffler, found himself playing in the shade. Scheffler is a popular golfer, and a particular favourite with the fans around here after winning the tournament twice in the past three years, but as McIlroy’s round went on, Scheffler’s gallery started to thin quicker than Jordan Spieth’s hair. By the time he made the turn, you could pretty much take your pick of the positions around whichever green he was on. The centre of gravity was with McIlroy, back on the previous green

Rory McIlroy’s golden eagles put him within sight of Masters destiny

It is now or never. Surely it is now or never.Rory McIlroy will take a lead into the closing round of the Masters for the first time since 2011. That sentence barely does justice to a Saturday of high drama at Augusta National where McIlroy created history then threatened to feature in his own Shakespearean tragedy once more before re-establishing daylight between himself and the field. That sentence barely does justice, either, to what McIlroy is on the verge of