PRESS REVIEW – Friday, July 17: China reacts after the UK nationalises its last remaining virgin steel factory, expropriating Chinese Jingye Group. In other news, low rainfall in May followed by three intense heatwaves have 100 French departments under water restrictions. Also, in Central Asia, a team of Spanish scientists want to refill a long-desertified lake, in the hopes of preventing further CO2 release. Finally, in the UK, a beaver has found love.
The UK government voted to nationalise British Steel, with its one remaining steelworks in Scunthorpe. Reportedly the move was to save 4,000 jobs, and because “if this were to disappear, we [the country] would become at the mercy of international markets", according to the UK business secretary, as reported in The Guardian. The Global Times reports that China has condemned the action, as the owners before the vote were the Chinese Jingye Group. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said that the British Government has "disregarded Jingye Group's important contributions to the British economy", and " seriously undermined Jingye's legitimate rights". They say the company took over a loss-making company and "injected substantial funds" into the company. However, the UK publication The Times reports that the government first stepped in 15 months ago to prevent the plant from closing, referring to “sabotage” by the Chinese owners who were apparently trying to run the plant into the ground to increase British dependency on Chinese imports.
And in France, on the front page of La Croix is a dried up, desolate Loire River following low rainfall in May and three intense heatwaves which have put the country's water supply under strain. A quarter of the France's small waterways have run dry. 100 departments are already under water restrictions and residents in some areas are now dependent on water deliveries. Le Monde features an open letter from a group of climate and nature NGOs warning against the measures laid out in the country's emergency agriculture bill, to be debated in parliament on Monday. According to the signatories, a plan to double the country's water storage capacity to continue irrigation during hot summers would promote an "every man for himself" attitude to managing the crucial resource and delay actual adaptation of the farming model.
Also in Le Monde: the poignant testimony of an organic farmer who "thought he would have more time to prepare", after a late frost, a cold spring and a string of heatwaves have sabotaged multiple crops. He pursued organic farming so that he might tell his son he had played his part, but his efforts to adapt to climate change are not sparing him its consequences.
Meanwhile in Central Asia, El País reports on the world's worst case of desertification caused by agriculture: the Aral Sea. It stands at 10 percent of its original size due to the diversion of nearby waterways for the irrigation of farmland. Spanish scientists think that by refilling it, even just to 50 percent of its original capacity, they can prevent the release of 600 million tonnes of CO2, sequestered in the former lakebed.
And finally, The Times has the scoop on beaver Steve McQueen, who gained his nickname after multiple escape attempts which his keepers attributed to his lonely heart. After a move to Wales and a "blind date" with Doris the beaver, the two welcomed their first kits in May.
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