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As the clock ticked down towards 12.01am Eastern Standard Time on 12 March, Liam Bates kept refreshing his browser.

Over the preceding weeks, Marcegaglia, the stainless steel company whose long products division he headed up, had rushed to melt and ship as much metal as it could from its furnaces in Sheffield across to the east coast of America, ahead of the imposition of tariffs.

Stainless steel

UK and US industrially interlocked

Of all the varieties of steel, stainless steel – an alloy of iron and chrome, along with other elements like nickel, molybdenum and carbon – is among the most important. Unlike most other iron alloys, which can rust when they encounter oxygen, stainless steel has a passive film that protects it from corrosion and can even self-heal. That makes it essential not just for use in sinks and cutlery (where most people will encounter it on a daily basis) but, arguably even more essential, in surgical instruments, heavy machinery and the pipes and ducts out of sight but essential to keeping civilisation working.

The trick of how to make stainless steel in large quantities was discovered here in Sheffield by Harry Brearley, and while the laboratories he worked for shut down long ago, the furnace at Marcegaglia, in an industrial park just outside the city, can trace a continuous thread back to him. This furnace used to be owned by British Steel, the nationalised corporation responsible for most of Britain’s steel manufacture until the days of privatisation.

Marcegaglia steel furnace
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Marcegaglia steel furnace in Sheffield

Ever since the invention of stainless steel, Britain has melted, cast and exported vast quantities of the stuff to America. For all that the US has a sizeable stainless steel sector, the two countries’ stainless sectors have nonetheless been industrially interlocked since the days of Henry Ford. You can see it in the way Marcegaglia functions.

It melts down scrap in its electric arc furnace in Sheffield – an enormous cauldron whose electrodes create a storm of lightning that consumes the same power as a sizeable northern city – and adds the relevant alloy ingredients to form a long, heavy metallic bar, a billet as it’s known. That billet is then shipped across the Atlantic to the company’s other site, where the billets are processed into bars that are then sold into the North American market. It is a single economic organism, split only by an ocean.

But today that ocean and that cross-country split have become an enormous problem. The last time Donald Trump imposed tariffs on steel imports, back in 2018, so-called “intermediate” products like the billet made by Marcegaglia and then processed in America were excluded from the duties. This time around, the initial tariff rules had no such exemptions. The upshot was that any steel arriving in American ports after 12.01am Eastern Standard Time on 12 March – including Marcegaglia’s half-finished stainless billets – would incur hefty 25% tariffs.

A race against time

All of which was why Liam Bates had raced to get as much steel as possible into the US before that deadline. But as he refreshed his browser in the run-up to that deadline, he noticed two straggling shipments, still stuck on the Atlantic. The two ships, the Eva Marie and the Atlantic Star, were, between them, carrying about $12m of steel and they had been due to dock in the US on 10 or 11 March. If so, they would have avoided having to pay those 25% tariffs. But now storms and squalls were spreading across the North Atlantic. Would they stray into the ships’ path, disrupting shipping?

If the cargo arrived late, it would obliterate any margin the company hoped to make on its steel. And since those bars were destined for Marcegaglia’s own plant, the company would have to pay all those costs itself (tariffs are technically paid by the importer). Somehow, Bates had found himself helplessly witnessing an unexpected collision of politics and weather – with profound commercial consequences.

Of all the metal items Britain exports to the US, stainless steel is by far and away the biggest category. And the vast majority of that steel comes from the melt shop at Marcegaglia. But the quandary facing Liam Bates, and those companies he sells to in the US, helps illustrate the difficulties of economic policy-by-tariff.

Americans will see cost of most things go up

The prevailing theory behind the White House measures is that by raising the price of all imported metals, it will encourage domestic producers to build new production. It will help the US to reindustrialise – or so says Donald Trump. And in the long run, that might well prove right. Already, metals producers are raising money, promising to restart old, mothballed smelters. After all, if your main overseas competitors have seen their prices rise by 25%, that’s quite a competitive opportunity.

The problem is: building industrial production takes time. Marcegaglia itself is planning to replace its old furnace with a newer model, but the planning process has already taken years; the construction itself will be measured in months if not years too. In other words, even if everything goes to plan, America is very unlikely to replace imported steel with domestic production within the period of Donald Trump’s term as president.

In the meantime, American consumers will see the cost of pretty much everything going up. After all, steel – ignored or dismissed as it sometimes is – is the single most important metallic substance in the world. If something isn’t made of steel it’s made in machines made of steel. And lifting some of those steel prices by 25% will travel like an economic tidal wave through US supply chains.

UK flooded with cheap imported steel

The tidal wave is already washing back elsewhere too. With so much steel now unable to get into the US at a decent price, exporters are redeploying shipments elsewhere. All of a sudden countries like the UK are seeing a flood of cheap imported steel – good news in the short run for consumers, but disastrous for what is left of Britain’s domestic industry.

Sheffield Marcegaglia steel furnace

As the deadline approached and Bates nervously refreshed his live vessel tracking map, disaster struck. The squalls across the Atlantic mounted and the Eva Marie and Atlantic Star slowed nearly to a halt. By the time midnight struck and the tariffs came into place, the two vessels were still many miles off the US coast. They had lost the race. The upshot was Marcegaglia would have to pay around $4m in tariffs – about £3m.

That a company was struck with a somewhat arbitrary fee simply to pass goods from one of its factories to another might be among the most egregious examples of the collateral economic damage wrought by trade barriers, but it is likely to be the first of many perverse episodes, with consequences all around the world. For steel is not the only metal to be hit with tariffs. If anything, the drama is even greater for another metal: aluminium.

Aluminium

The world’s biggest factory – hidden in Scotland

Here’s a riddle for you: what is the biggest factory in the world?

You’re probably thinking of vast, cavernous car production lines in Michigan, of shipyards in Korea or steelworks in China. But there’s a strong case to be made that the world’s biggest factory is instead to be found deep in the Highlands of Scotland.

Not that it looks anything like a factory. To the untrained eye, it looks, instead, like heather, forests and bubbling burns of water trickling into lochs. But the 114,000 acres of estates in Lochaber and Badenoch – the third biggest rural estate in Scotland – play a crucial role in helping produce one of the most important substances in the world.

Part of the side of the mountain running into an enormous hydroelectric power station for Fort William aluminium plant
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Part of the side of a mountain running into a hydroelectric power station for Fort William aluminium plant

The Fort William aluminium plant sits under the shadow of Ben Nevis, the tallest peak in the United Kingdom. Once upon a time, it was just one of a constellation of smelters dotted around Scotland, that made this country, all told, one of the world’s biggest aluminium producers.

For all that it is very prevalent in the earth’s crust, aluminium used to be one of the world’s most precious metals – so much so that no one had even laid eyes on it until the 19th century. When he wanted to impress his guests, Napoleon III served them dinner not on gold plates but on aluminium.

An extraordinary metal

Why? Because aluminium is very difficult – even harder than iron – to convert from the ores you find in the ground into its metallic form. Burn iron ore hot enough, in the right kind of furnace alongside the right kind of charcoal or coal, and you eventually smelt out a form of metal. But aluminium needs a different kind of force to be persuaded to loosen its bonds and form into a pure metal – the force of electricity.

So only when the Hall-Heroult process, which allows you to smelt aluminium via electrolysis of alumina (a processed version of the bauxite you get out of the ground), was invented in 1886 did aluminium become a widely available metal. Few people talk these days about the Hall-Heroult process, but it was a breakthrough of earth-shattering proportions. Aluminium is an extraordinary metal – strong but light. And those qualities make it essential in aeronautic deployments. No aluminium, no planes.

Fort William aluminium plant
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Fort William aluminium plant

It is no coincidence that the Wright Brothers’ plane at Kitty Hawk had an engine made out of aluminium. Steel would have weighed the glider down too much. And it’s no coincidence that powered flight happened shortly after aluminium became widely available. Without the Hall-Heroult process, the world would have been a very different place.

While the process wasn’t dreamt up in the UK, British industrialists rapidly embraced it, building smelters all over the country. But the catch with aluminium is that you can’t smelt it without a big and (this is important) very reliable supply of power. Turn off the power to those enormous carbon electrodes inside an aluminium smelter and in a matter of hours the metal at its base will solidify, effectively destroying it. More than nearly any other industrial process, this is not something you can just switch off willy-nilly, which helps explain why smelters aren’t typically dependent on variable power sources like wind and solar.

It also explains why, throughout history, these plants have been seen as some of the most important industrial locations throughout the world. The Fort William plant provided most of the aluminium used in Spitfires during WWII. It was repeatedly targeted by the Luftwaffe – indeed there is an old German bomb kept as a memento just near the turbines that power the cells here.

Fort William aluminium dam
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Fort William aluminium dam

Some of the world’s earliest smelters were powered by hydroelectricity – most notably the ones which drew their power from the Niagara Falls plants near Buffalo, New York. But the Fort William plant was subtly but importantly different. Those other hydro plants would typically piggyback off a big dam generating power from a big river – such as the ones you find in the US or Canada, or the fjords of Norway. But none of Britain’s rivers is quite powerful enough or with a reliable enough flow to provide that kind of uninterrupted power.

Radical design

So the designers of the Fort William plant did something radical. They bought up vast stretches of the countryside around Ben Nevis (including Ben Nevis itself). And within that estate, they built a series of dams to collect the rainwater trickling down from local watersheds. Those dams weren’t there to generate power for homes – they were there to collect the water and channel it through a series of tunnels, running 16 miles through the hills and through the flanks of Ben Nevis. Then the water, collected from those 114,000 acres, feeds five pipes running down the side of the mountain which run into an enormous hydroelectric power station.

Fort William aluminium dam

There are many aluminium smelters around the world and many hydroelectric dams. But none are quite like this one. The point being that without the estate, without all those trickling streams and heather-covered watersheds, the plant here simply wouldn’t function. It is all part of a single ecosystem.

These days the plant is connected to the national grid, meaning it also serves another function: balancing. This comes back to one of the dysfunctions of the grid: it doesn’t have enough high-voltage lines connecting Scotland, with all its wind farms, and the south. So on windy days, when there’s too much power in Scotland, instead of curtailing those farms and wasting the electricity, the plant can suck in extra power from the Scottish section of the grid and leave its water where it is as a sort of battery.

Competition from China

The problem the plant has faced is that these days aluminium is a commodity metal. And it’s becoming harder and harder to compete with the cheap metal being exported from China. China dominates the global supply of the metal, in large part because its suppliers benefit from cheap energy and generous government subsidies – neither of which are available in the UK. As the years have gone by, the workers at Fort William have watched as, one by one, every other plant in Britain was shuttered. Rumours still abound that they may eventually be next.

Fort William aluminium plant
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Fort William aluminium plant

And, much as for Marcegaglia down in Sheffield, the tariffs on aluminium will only make life tougher for Alvance, the unit of Liberty House – part of Indian-born Sanjeev Gupta’s business empire – that now owns the Fort William plant. Arguably, the impact could be even greater. The last time Donald Trump imposed tariffs on aluminium back in 2018, the rate he chose was 10%. The difference with the steel tariff level (which was 25% then and now) reflected the fact that the US imported far more aluminium than steel. Imposing severe extra costs on it would, the White House worried, cripple the American aerospace and car businesses dependent on the metal. No such concern this time around. The tariff is 25%.

Quite how that will affect the plant here in the Scottish Highlands remains to be seen. After all, Alvance itself doesn’t sell anything directly to the US, sending its large slabs of metal to other firms in England which process and roll them into sheets and specialised components, some of which end up in the US. Perhaps, as the defence industry ratchets up in the coming years, more of that aluminium will be used by domestic industry. But what’s to stop UK manufacturers doing what they’ve been doing for years, and simply opting for the cheapest metal available, which usually comes from China? Either way, life for the last remaining aluminium plant in the UK is about to get harder, not easier.

But while the main upshot of the trade war building across the Atlantic and the Pacific will be to make both sides worse off – that, at least, is the prediction from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – that doesn’t mean there won’t be some beneficiaries in this country. For a small but important example, let’s travel from the far north of Britain to its far south.

Tungsten

UK has one of its biggest resources in world

Drive across Dartmoor, the windswept national park in the heart of Devon, and every so often you come across the remains of an old tin mine. At Fox Tor you find the remains of alluvial mining; there is Golden Dagger Mine, which ran all the way to the 1930s, as well as the hollow stone chimney of the pumping house at Wheal Betsy.

Hemerdon tungsten mine
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Hemerdon tungsten mine

For much of the ancient era, tin – which when mixed with copper creates the alloy bronze – was what we would today call a “critical mineral”, essential for the production of the strong tools and weapons of the Bronze Age. And for centuries, the majority of Europe’s tin came from Cornwall and Devon.

That, of course, is long in the past. But just on the outskirts of Dartmoor is a site that could – just could – make this an important site for critical minerals once again. For here, beneath the soil of southwest England, is one of the world’s biggest resources of tungsten.

Tungsten among few substances on everyone’s list

Tungsten is among the 21st century’s most important critical minerals. Nearly every country has a list of these materials – the kinds of things they need to make their most important products – and the members of those lists vary by region. But tungsten is one of the few substances that feature in everyone’s list. The hardest metal in existence, with the highest melting point, it is essential in the production of hard steel tools, weapons, armour and as the electrodes inside semiconductor circuits. If you are making electronics you need tungsten. If you are going to war you need tungsten.

Hemerdon tungsten mine

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the main heyday for this mine, which contains plenty of tin as well as tungsten, was in the First and Second World Wars. Much as the Fort William plant provided aluminium for British Spitfires, Hemerdon provided the tungsten and tin needed for the weapons Britain used to fight the Nazis. But ever since then, its history has been chequered, to say the least.

It went into hibernation for decades, a sleep broken for only a single day during the Korean War. Then, a few years ago, investors tried to get it up and running again. They built a vast processing plant and began to mine the metal. But by 2019 the operation had run out of money and imploded. All that was left was an even bigger hole in the ground, a large tailings dam for waste and a hangar filled with processing equipment.

In part, the reason Hemerdon went belly-up that time was because the company made the mistake miners often make: they misjudged the type of ore they were expecting to grind through, meaning their processing plant was far less efficient than it could have been. But an even bigger challenge came back to something that will sound familiar: they were trying to compete with China.

China dominates world tungsten production – even more so than for aluminium and steel. It essentially controls the global market and, just as importantly, the tungsten price. Anyone trying to sell tungsten is contending with Chinese prices which can yo-yo for reasons no one can entirely explain. That makes it fiendishly difficult to compete.

But in recent years, new investors have begun to put fresh funds into the Hemerdon mine, hoping history will not repeat itself and this time around it can exploit that enormous ore resource. And there are at least a couple of reasons to believe (famous last words in finance) that “this time might be different”.

The first is that, in retaliation against Donald Trump’s latest metal tariffs, China has begun to put export limits on tungsten. How this will work in practice remains unclear (remember that like most markets China controls, the way tungsten sales function is almost completely opaque) but if it encourages domestic buyers to look for local suppliers, that could help the mine to find buyers. After all, in theory, it could produce a few thousand tonnes of the metal each year, which would instantly leapfrog Britain to become the world’s second or third-biggest producer (albeit a long way down from China).

Supplies matter more than ever

The second big shift comes back to defence. With the world remilitarising, all of a sudden tungsten supplies matter more than ever. And since defence suppliers pay outsized attention to where metals come from, again, that might allow a British tungsten mine to succeed where predecessors have failed.

Add to this the fact that the mine itself is nearly ready to be exploited and that the new owners reckon they’ve ironed out the problems that beset their predecessors, and it’s a compelling case. They think they could be getting metal out of the ground as soon as next year.

But those overarching challenges haven’t gone away. And nor has another, bigger problem facing the entire industry, not just in the UK but – perhaps even more so – in the US. How can you plan in a world where you just don’t know what’s coming out of the White House in the next few days, let alone the next few years?

Consider: imagine you’re a stainless steel producer or an aluminium smelter in the US. Those 25% tariffs mean all of a sudden in theory you have a competitive advantage over anyone shipping metal into the country. All of a sudden, there’s a strong case to build a smelter or a stainless steel melting shop. So you get to work looking for backers.

Uncertainty creates challenges

But building a plant like this takes time. You need to find a site, connect it to high-voltage power, and build the facilities and all the necessary infrastructure. Best case scenario: it might take a couple of years, but even that is ambitious. And as you contemplate this and map out your plans, those backers will ask you the same nagging question you’ve been asking yourself: sure, the economics of an aluminium smelter might add up today; but what if the president changes his mind tomorrow, or next year? What if those tariffs are pulled by the next president? Then, all of a sudden, the sums very much don’t add up.

All of which is to say, uncertainty around tariffs is a challenge not just for those companies hoping to ship products to America, but for American firms hoping to benefit from this trade war. And bear in mind metals are only the first chapter of what could be a long saga, which ends up engulfing all corners of American trade. These are unpredictable times, however you look at it.

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Care whistleblower ‘who saw elderly resident being punched’ could face removal from Britain

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Care whistleblower 'who saw elderly resident being punched' could face removal from Britain

A care worker who reported the alleged abuse of an elderly care home resident, which triggered a criminal investigation, is facing destitution and potential removal from Britain after speaking up.

“Meera”, whose name we have changed to protect her identity, said she witnessed an elderly male resident being punched several times in the back by a carer at the home where she worked.

Sky News is unable to name the care home for legal reasons because of the ongoing police investigation.

“I was [a] whistleblower there,” said Meera, who came to the UK from India last year to work at the home.

“Instead of addressing things, they fired me… I told them everything and they made me feel like I am criminal. I am not criminal, I am saving lives,” she added.

Meera
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‘Meera’ spoke up about abuse she said she witnessed in the care home where she worked

Like thousands of foreign care workers, Meera’s employer sponsored her visa. Unless she can find another sponsor, she now faces the prospect of removal from the country.

“I am in trouble right now and no one is trying to help me,” she said.

More on Migrant Crisis

Meera said she reported the alleged abuse to her bosses, but was called to a meeting with a manager and told to “change your statement, otherwise we will dismiss you”.

She refused. The following month, she was sacked.

The care home claimed she failed to perform to the required standard in the job.

She went to the police to report the alleged abuse and since then, a number of people from the care home have been arrested. They remain under investigation.

‘Migrants recruited because many are too afraid to speak out’

The home has capacity for over 60 residents. It is unclear if the care home residents or their relatives know about the police investigation or claim of physical abuse.

Since the arrests, the regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), carried out an investigation at the home triggered by the concerns – but the home retained its ‘good’ rating.

Meera has had no reassurance from the authorities that she will be allowed to remain in Britain.

In order to stay, she’ll need to find another care home to sponsor her which she believes will be impossible without references from her previous employer.

She warned families: “I just want to know people in care homes like these… your person, your father, your parents, is not safe.”

She claimed some care homes have preferred to recruit migrants because many are too afraid to speak out.

“You hire local staff, they know the legal rights,” she said. “They can complain, they can work anywhere… they can raise [their] voice,” she said.

Becky Johnson
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Sky’s Becky Johnson spoke to ‘Meera’

Sky News has reported widespread exploitation of care visas and migrant care workers.

Read more:
More than 100 migrants face being in UK illegally
Immigration crackdown will fuel ‘exodus’ of nurses
New English language and UK citizenship requirements for migrants

Currently migrants make up around a third of the adult social care workforce, with the majority here on visas that are sponsored by their employers.

As part of measures announced in April in the government’s immigration white paper, the care visa route will be closed, meaning care homes will no longer be able to recruit abroad.

‘Whole system is based on power imbalance’

But the chief executive of the Work Rights Centre, a charity that helps migrants with employment issues, is warning that little will change for the tens of thousands of foreign care workers already here.

“The whole system is based on power imbalance and the government announcement doesn’t change that,” Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol told Sky News.

She linked the conditions for workers to poor care for residents.

Dr Dora
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Work Rights Centre CEO Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol

“I think the power that employers have over migrant workers’ visas really makes a terrible contribution to the quality of care,” she said.

Imran agrees. He came to the UK from Bangladesh, sponsored by a care company unrelated to the one Meera worked for. He says he frequently had to work 14-hour shifts with no break because there weren’t enough staff. He too believes vulnerable people are being put at risk by the working conditions of their carers.

Migrant workers ‘threatened’ over visas

“For four clients, there is [a] minimum requirement for two or three staff. I was doing [it] alone,” he said, in broken English.

“When I try to speak, they just directly threaten me about my visa,” he said.

“I knew two or three of my colleagues, they are facing the same issue like me. But they’re still afraid to speak up because of the visa.”

Meera

A government spokesperson called what happened to Imran and Meera “shocking”.

“No one should go to work in fear of their employer, and all employees have a right to speak up if they witness poor practice and care.”

James Bullion, from the CQC, told Sky News it acts on intelligence passed to it to ensure people stay safe in care settings.

Additional research by Leah Adin

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Donald Trump may be denied privilege of addressing parliament on UK state visit

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Donald Trump may be denied privilege of addressing parliament on UK state visit

Donald Trump may be denied the honour of addressing parliament on his state visit to the UK later this year, with no formal request yet submitted for him to be given that privilege.

It comes after President Macron’s successful state visit this week, in which he was invited to speak in front of both Houses of Parliament.

Sky News has been told the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, hasn’t so far received a request to invite the US president to speak in parliament when he is expected to visit in September.

It was confirmed to MPs who have raised concerns about the US president being allowed to address both houses.

Kate Osborne, Labour MP for Jarrow and Gateshead East, wrote to the speaker in April asking him to stop Mr Trump from addressing parliament, and tabled an early-day motion outlining her concerns.

“I was happy to see Macron here but feel very differently about Trump,” she said.

“Trump has made some very uncomfortable and worrying comments around the UK government, democracy, the Middle East, particularly around equalities and, of course, Ukraine.

“So, I think there are many reasons why, when we’re looking at a state visit, we should be looking at why they’re being afforded that privilege. Because, of course, it is a privilege for somebody to come and address both of the houses.”

But the timing of the visit may mean that any diplomatic sensitivities, or perceptions of a snub, could be avoided.

Macron addressing Parliament
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France’s President Emmanuel Macron addressed parliament during his state visit this month

Lord Ricketts, a former UK ambassador to France, pointed out that parliament isn’t sitting for much of September, and that could help resolve the issue.

In 2017, he wrote a public letter questioning the decision to give Donald Trump his first state visit, saying it put Queen Elizabeth II in a “very difficult position”.

Parliament rises from 16 September until 13 October due to party conferences.

The dates for the state visit haven’t yet been confirmed by Buckingham Palace or the government.

However, they have not denied that it will take place in September, after Mr Trump appeared to confirm they were planning to hold the state visit that month. The palace confirmed this week that the formal planning for his arrival had begun.

With the King likely to still be in Scotland in early September for events such as the Braemar Gathering, and the anniversary of his accession and the death of Queen Elizabeth on the 8th September, it may be expected that the visit would take place sometime from mid to the end of September, also taking into consideration the dates of the Labour Party conference starting on the 28th September and possibly the Lib Dem’s conference from the 20th-23rd.

Donald Trump. Pic: Reuters
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Mr Trump has said he believes the trip to the UK will take place in September. Pic: Reuters

When asked about parliamentary recess potentially solving the issue, Ms Osborne said: “It may be a way of dealing with it in a very diplomatic way… I don’t know how much control we have over Trump’s diary.

“But if we can manoeuvre it in a way that means that the House isn’t sitting, then that seems like a good solution, maybe not perfect, because I’d actually like him to know that he’s not welcome.”

A message from the speaker’s office, seen by Sky News, says: “Formal addresses to both Houses of Parliament are not automatically included in the itinerary of such a state visit.

“Whether a foreign head of state addresses parliament, during a state visit or otherwise, is part of the planning decisions.”

The King and Mr Trump raising a toast in 2019. Pic: Reuters
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Mr Trump made his first state visit to the UK in June 2019 during his first presidency. File pic: Reuters

It’s understood that if the government agrees to a joint address to parliament, the Lord Chamberlain’s office writes to the two speakers, on behalf of the King, to ask them to host this.

It will be Mr Trump’s second state visit.

During his first, in 2019, he didn’t address parliament, despite the fact that his predecessor, Barack Obama, was asked to do so.

It was unclear if this was due to the fact John Bercow, the speaker at the time, made it clear he wasn’t welcome to do so.

However, it didn’t appear to dampen Mr Trump’s excitement about his time with the Royal Family.

Read more from Sky News:
Two women killed as BMW crashes into care home
Officers who confronted Southport killer win bravery award

Speaking earlier this year, he described his state visit as “a fest” adding “it’s an honour… I’m a friend of Charles, I have great respect for King Charles and the family, William; we have really just a great respect for the family. And I think they’re setting a date for September.”

It is expected that, like Mr Macron, the pageantry for his trip this time will revolve around Windsor, with refurbishment taking place at Buckingham Palace.

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Liverpool retires number 20 shirt at all levels in honour of Diogo Jota

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Liverpool retires number 20 shirt at all levels in honour of Diogo Jota

Liverpool have retired the number 20 shirt in honour of Diogo Jota – the first time it has made such a gesture.

The club said it was a “unique tribute to a uniquely wonderful person” and the decision was made in consultation with his wife and family.

The number 20 will be retired at all levels, including the men’s and women’s first teams and academy squads.

A statement said: “It was the number he wore with pride and distinction, leading us to countless victories in the process – and Diogo Jota will forever be Liverpool Football Club’s number 20.”

The club called it a “recognition of not only the immeasurable contribution our lad from Portugal made to the Reds’ on-pitch successes over the last five years, but also the profound personal impact he had on his teammates, colleagues and supporters and the everlasting connections he built with them”.

Jota's wife joined Liverpool players to view tributes at Anfield on Friday. Pic: Liverpool FC
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Jota’s wife joined Liverpool players to view tributes at Anfield on Friday. Pic: Liverpool FC

Pic: Liverpool FC
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Pic: Liverpool FC

Newly-married Jota died alongside his brother when his Lamborghini crashed in northern Spain on 3 July.

Police said this week that all the evidence so far suggests Jota was the one driving the vehicle.

Liverpool teammates joined members of Jota’s family, including his wife Rute, at a huge memorial site outside Anfield on Friday.

Read more from Sky News:
Mystery in space is most likely ‘oldest comet ever seen’
Trump may be denied privilege of addressing parliament

A fan looks at messages written onto a memorial wall created near Anfield Stadium. Pic: Reuters
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A fan looks at messages on a memorial wall near Anfield. Pic: Reuters


Liverpool's captain Virgil van Dijk and Liverpool's player Andrew Robertson arrive on the day of the funeral ceremony of Liverpool's Portug
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Virgil van Dijk and Andy Robertson were among players at the funeral. Pic: Reuters

The star’s funeral took place last weekend, with Liverpool colleagues and members of the Portuguese national team in attendance.

Reds captain Virgil van Dijk carried a shirt bearing the number 20 made from flowers.

Liverpool players returned to the club’s training ground for the start of pre-season on Tuesday.

Their first game since Jota’s death will be on Sunday when they play a friendly away against Preston North End.

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