World

Rush-hour commuters in the UK faced chaos on Tuesday as railway workers launched the network’s biggest strike in more than three decades, forcing people to trek to work on foot, by bike, bus — or simply not bother at all.

The RMT rail union argues the strikes are necessary as wages have failed to keep pace with UK inflation, which has hit a 40-year high and is on course to keep rising.

Last-ditch talks to avert the work stoppage broke down on Monday, meaning more than 50,000 RMT members will walk out for three days this week.

Train and London Underground stations, normally a sea of people for the morning rush to work, were deserted or even locked, with just a skeleton service running on many networks across the country.

Passengers were warned not to travel all week, with two more days of strike action scheduled for Thursday and Saturday wreaking havoc to schedules.

In London, cab firms reported a surge in demand, while main roads were packed with buses and cars, with cyclists weaving in between.

Long queues formed at bus stops on the outskirts of London shortly after 6:00 am, but many gave up as services carried on without stopping, already full.

– ‘Frustrating’ –

Peter Chiodini, 73, a doctor, he had been “inconvenienced” by having to take the bus rather than the train and did not support the strikes.

“I think we do need a guaranteed minimum service because people are going to lose money on this, they’re going to be inconvenienced, children have to get to exams and so on,” he told AFP.

Amber Zito, 24, a canine hydrotherapist from Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, called the strikes “frustrating” after missing her train home, but supported the rail workers. 

“Everything is kind of going tits up at the moment — planes, trains, everything.

“I blame the government. I don’t blame the people who work for train companies at all, they are only trying to do what everyone wants for their job.”

The government maintains that it is an issue to be resolved by the private train operators and the unions.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he “deplored” the strikes, which he said evoked the “bad old days of the 1970s” when industrial action was far more common.

“The people that are hurting are people who physically need to turn up for work, maybe on lower pay, perhaps the cleaners in hospitals,” he told Sky News. 

– ‘Stay the course’ – 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, addressing his cabinet, urged “the union barons to sit down with Network Rail and the train companies” to thrash out a deal.

The country needed to “stay the course”, defending reforms to the rail network as needed and in the public interest.

RMT general-secretary Mick Lynch has described as “unacceptable” offers of below-inflation pay rises by both overground train operators and London Underground, which runs the Tube in the capital.

The walkouts risk causing significant disruption to major events including the Glastonbury music festival.

Thousands of teenagers taking national school exams could also be hit.

The strikes are the biggest dispute on Britain’s railway network since 1989, according to the RMT.

Rail operators, however, warn of disruption throughout the week.

Only about 20 percent of services are running during the walkouts and half of all lines are closed. Those lines that are still open are running at reduced capacity.

And as well as the above-ground rail strike, RMT members on the London Underground are staging a 24-hour Tube train stoppage Tuesday.

– Teachers, lawyers, NHS –

Countries around the world are being hit by decades-high inflation as the Ukraine war and the easing of Covid restrictions fuel energy and food price hikes.

Unions warn also that railway jobs are at risk, with passenger traffic yet to fully recover after the lifting of coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.

The strikes are compounding wider travel chaos after airlines were forced to cut flights owing to staff shortages, causing long delays and frustration for passengers.

Thousands of workers were sacked in the aviation industry during the pandemic, and the sector is struggling to recruit workers back as travel demand rebounds following the lifting of lockdowns.

Other areas of the public sector meanwhile are also set to hold strikes.

The Criminal Bar Association, representing senior lawyers in England and Wales, have voted to strike from next week in a row over legal aid funding.

Teaching staff and workers in the state-run National Health Service are reportedly also mulling strike action.

And several other transport unions are balloting members over possible stoppages that could occur in the coming weeks.

Consumers must be prepared to endure up to five years of turbulent oil markets, the head of ExxonMobil said Tuesday, citing under-investment and the coronavirus pandemic.

Energy markets have been roiled by the Ukraine war as Russia has reduced some exports and faced sanctions while Europe has announced plans to wean itself off dependency on Russian fossil fuels in coming years.

Speaking ahead of ExxonMobil’s unveiling as the fourth international partner for Qatar’s natural gas expansion, chairman and chief executive Darren Woods said major uncertainty lies ahead. 

“You are probably looking at three to five years of continued fairly tight markets,” Woods told the Qatar Economic Forum. “How that manifests itself in price will obviously be a big function of demand, which is difficult to predict.”

On top of under-investment in finding new oil sources in 2014-2015, Woods said the pandemic “really sucked a lot of revenues out of the industry”.

Woods said companies and governments needed to think long-term. “We are going to see a lot of volatility and discontinuity in the market place if we don’t get to more thoughtful policies,” he predicted.

Representatives from the Middle East energy industry also renewed calls for better planning in consumer countries.

Sheikh Nawaf Saud al-Sabah, chief executive of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, said the company was supplying all customers, but that multinational oil firms were not matching the investment of national oil enterprises.

– ‘Tremendous disruption’ –

As part of the Gulf state’s response, Kuwait was starting its first offshore oil exploration and building the world’s biggest oil refinery.

“We have never touched the offshore in Kuwait. The first offshore drill rig arrived in Kuwait a week ago and will start soon,” he said.

The new refinery would come online by the end of 2022, Sabah added.

“It will be the largest refinery in the world at 615,000 barrels of oil a day capacity,” he said adding that it would help meet increased demand from Europe and elsewhere.

Sabah said there was a “dangerous trend”, with world consumers wanting energy but not being prepared for the change from polluting hydrocarbons to green energy.

“That is a paradox here that is causing quite a tremendous disruption in the investment cycle. We are making the long-term investments, but not international oil companies.”

Sabah said the world currently produces and consumes about 100 million barrels of oil a day but that the equivalent of Kuwait’s production — about 3.5 million barrels a day — was being lost through declining fields.

Qatar’s Energy Minister Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi meanwhile criticised the “demonisation” of oil companies, and the windfall taxes on oil majors that many governments are proposing.

“I don’t see the governments coming to pitch in when they (oil companies) were losing money and borrowing when the oil price was negative in Texas,” he said.

ExxonMobil has taken a 6.25 percent stake in the expansion of Qatar’s North Field, which contains the world’s biggest natural gas reserves. 

The stake is the same as France’s TotalEnergies while Italy’s Eni and US firm ConocoPhillips have 3.13 percent shares.

Woods said the project will “bring balance to the global market”.

Business magnate Elon Musk said Tuesday that his $44 billion move to take over Twitter remained held up by “very significant” questions about the number of fake users on the social network.

Musk was reluctant to talk about the deal when asked at the Qatar Economic Forum, saying it was a “sensitive” matter.

“There are still a few unresolved matters,” Musk said by video link.

This includes whether “the number of fake and spam users on the system is less than five percent as per their claims, which I think is probably not most people’s experience when using Twitter. 

“So we are still awaiting resolution on that matter and that is a very significant matter,” the Tesla car and SpaceX exploration chief said.

Musk said there were also questions about Twitter’s debt and whether shareholders will vote for the deal.

“So I think these are the three things that need to resolved” to make the transaction happen.

Musk said he wanted to get 80 percent of the North American population and half the world’s population onto Twitter.

“That means it must be something that is appealing to people, it obviously can’t be a place where they feel uncomfortable or harassed or they will simply not use it.”

“I think there is this big difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach,” Musk added.

“You are allowed to yell whatever you want in a public space, more or less. But whatever you say, however controversial, doesn’t need to then be broadcast to the whole country. 

“So I think generally the approach of Twitter should be to let people say what they want within the balance of the law but then limit who sees that based on any given Twitter user preferences.”

He said that if the deal went ahead his role would be to “drive the product”, saying this is what he did at Tesla and SpaceX.

Musk said he expected Tesla’s number of employees to fall by about 3.5 percent in the next three months but the headcount would start rising again in a year.

Asked about the next US presidential election in 2024, Musk said he had not decided who to back but that he was ready to inject $20-$25 million into a candidate’s campaign. 

He has previously indicated he could support Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis.

Rush-hour commuters in the UK faced chaos on Tuesday as railway workers launched the network’s biggest strike in more than three decades, forcing people to trek to work on foot, by bike, bus — or simply not bother at all.

The RMT rail union argues the strikes are necessary as wages have failed to keep pace with UK inflation, which has hit a 40-year high and is on course to keep rising.

Last-ditch talks to avert the work stoppage broke down on Monday, meaning more than 50,000 RMT members will walk out for three days this week.

Train and London Underground stations, normally a sea of people for the morning rush, were deserted or even locked, with just a skeleton service running on many networks across the country.

Passengers were warned not to travel all week, with two more days of strike action scheduled for Thursday and Saturday wreaking havoc to schedules.

In London, cab firms reported a surge in demand, while main roads were packed with buses and cars, and cyclists weaving in between.

Long queues formed at bus stops on the outskirts of London shortly after 6:00 am, but many gave up as services carried on without stopping, already full.

At St Albans, a commuter town north of the capital, a local newsagent next to the station told AFP: “It’s been quiet. People are working from home”.

Scott, a 43-year-old bank worker who did not want to give his full name, was among the few commuters on the near deserted platform.

He said his commute on the 8:30 am train would be extended by about 25 minutes as he would have to walk from St Pancras station to his office.

But he said there were silver linings to the strike, which he supported: “I stand a better chance of getting a seat and it not being crazy.”

– ‘Stay the course’ – 

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he “deplored” the strikes, which he said evoked the “bad old days of the 1970s”.

“The people that are hurting are people who physically need to turn up for work, maybe on lower pay, perhaps the cleaners in hospitals,” he told Sky News. 

“I absolutely deplore what they’re doing today and there is no excuse for taking people out on strike.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, addressing his cabinet, urged “the union barons to sit down with Network Rail and the train companies” to thrash out a deal.

The country needed to “stay the course”, defending reforms to the rail network as needed and in the public interest.

RMT general-secretary Mick Lynch has described as “unacceptable” offers of below-inflation pay rises by both overground train operators and London Underground that runs the Tube in the capital.

The walkouts risk causing significant disruption to major events including the Glastonbury music festival.

Schools are warning that thousands of teenagers taking national exams will also be affected.

The strikes are the biggest dispute on Britain’s railway network since 1989, according to the RMT.

Rail operators, however, warn of disruption throughout the week.

Only about 20 percent of services are running during the walkouts while lines not affected by strike action still having to reduce services.

RMT members on the London Underground are additionally staging a 24-hour Tube train stoppage Tuesday.

– Teachers, lawyers, NHS –

Countries around the world are being hit by decades-high inflation as the Ukraine war and the easing of Covid restrictions fuel energy and food price hikes.

Unions warn also that railway jobs are at risk, with passenger traffic yet to fully recover after the lifting of coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.

The strikes are compounding wider travel chaos after airlines were forced to cut flights owing to staff shortages, causing long delays and frustration for passengers.

Thousands of workers were sacked in the aviation industry during the pandemic but the sector is now struggling to recruit workers as travel demand rebounds following the lifting of lockdowns.

Other areas of the public sector are set to hold strikes.

The Criminal Bar Association, representing senior lawyers in England and Wales, have voted to strike from next week in a row over legal aid funding.

Teaching staff and workers in the state-run National Health Service are reportedly also mulling strike action.

And several other transport unions are balloting members over possible stoppages that could occur in the coming weeks.

Bangladeshi ferryman Kalu Molla began working on the Buriganga river before the patchwork of slums on its banks gave way to garment factories — and before its waters turned pitch black.

The 52-year-old has a constant cough, allergies and skin rashes, and doctors have told him the vile-smelling sludge that has also wiped out marine life in one of Dhaka’s main waterways is to blame.

“Doctors told me to leave this job and leave the river. But how is that possible?” Molla told AFP near his home on the industrial outskirts of the capital Dhaka. “Ferrying people is my bread and butter.”

In the half-century since a devastating independence war left its people facing starvation, Bangladesh has emerged as an often unheralded economic success story.

The South Asian country of 169 million has overtaken its neighbour India in per capita income and will soon graduate from the United Nations’ list of the world’s least developed countries.

Underpinning years of runaway growth is the booming garment trade, servicing global fast-fashion powerhouses, employing millions of women and accounting for around 80 percent of the country’s $50 billion annual exports.

But environmentalists say the growth has come at an incalculable cost, with a toxic melange of dyes, tanning acids and other dangerous chemicals making their way into the water.

Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka was founded on the banks of the Buriganga more than 400 years ago by the Mughal empire.

“It is now the largest sewer of the country,” said Sheikh Rokon, the head of the Riverine People environmental rights group.

“For centuries people built their homes on its banks to bask in the river breeze,” he added. “Now the smell of toxic sludge during winter is so horrible that people have to hold their noses as they come near it.”

Water samples from the river found chromium and cadmium levels over six times the World Health Organization’s recommended maximums, according to a 2020 paper by the Bangladeshi government’s River Research Institute. 

Both elements are used in leather tanning and excessive exposure to either is extremely hazardous to human health: chromium is carcinogenic, and chronic cadmium exposure causes lung damage, kidney disease and premature births. 

Ammonia, phenol and other byproducts of fabric dyeing have also helped to starve the river of the oxygen needed to sustain marine life. 

– ‘They are powerful people’ –

In Shyampur, one of several sprawling industrial districts around Dhaka, locals told AFP that at least 300 local factories were discharging untreated wastewater into the Buriganga river.

Residents say they have given up complaining about the putrid smell of the water, knowing that offending businesses are easily able to shirk responsibility.

“The factories bribe (authorities) to buy the silence of the regulators,” said Chan Mia, who lives in the area. 

“If someone wants (to) raise the issue to the factories, they’d beat them up. They are powerful people with connections.” 

The crucial position of the textile trade in the economy has created a nexus between business owners and the country’s political establishment. In some cases, politicians themselves have become powerful industry players. 

Further south, in Narayanganj district, residents showed AFP a stream of crimson-coloured water draining into stagnant canals from a nearby factory. 

“But you cannot say a word about it loudly,” an area resident told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We only suffer in silence.”

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), which represents the interests of around 3,500 top factories, defends its record by pointing out the environmental certifications given out to its members.

“We are going green — that’s why we are witnessing big jumps in export orders,” BGMEA president Faruque Hassan told a recent press conference.

But smaller factories and sub-contractors operating on the industry’s razor thin margins say they are unable to afford the cost of wastewater treatment.

A top garment official in the Savar industrial district, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said even most high-end factories serving major US and European brands often do not turn on their treatment machinery. 

“Not everyone regularly uses it. They want to save costs,” he said.

– ‘Facing the same fate’ –

Bangladesh is a delta country criss-crossed by more than 200 waterways, each of them connected to the mighty Ganges and Brahmatura rivers that course from the Himalayas and through the South Asian subcontinent.

More than a quarter of them are now heavily contaminated with industrial pollutants and need to be “urgently” saved, said an April legal notice sent to the government by the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA). 

Authorities have established a commission tasked with saving key water bodies, upon which close to half the country’s population depend for farming, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. 

The National River Commission has launched several high profile drives to fine factories found to have polluted rivers.

Its newly appointed chief, Manjur Chowdhury, said “greedy” industrialists were to blame for the state of the country’s waterways.

But he also admitted that the enforcement of existing penalties was inadequate to address the scale of the problem.

“We have to frame new laws to face this emergency situation. But it will take time,” he told AFP.

Any action will be too late for the five rivers that circle Dhaka and its industrial outskirts.

All are already technically dead, meaning they are completely devoid of marine life, said prominent environmental activist Sharif Jamil. 

“With factories now moving deep into the rural heartland, rivers across the country are facing the same fate,” he told AFP.