Latest news with #WestOfEngland
BBC News
3 days ago
- BBC News
Headlines: 'Bad pub reviews' and '17th Century galleon'
Here's our daily pick of stories from across local websites in the West of England, and interesting content from social media. Our pick of local website stories A mother living in Haywood Village, Weston-super-Mare, says she has been left terrified and unsupported after months of harassment and threats from her neighbours, the Weston Mercury Live reported on a Bristol pub that has embarked on a marketing campaign with a twist, putting up a giant billboard featuring some less than complimentary customer A30 closure on Tuesday was a top post for Somerset Live, with a dramatic picture of a car engulfed in flames. Our top three from yesterday What to watch on social media People are talking about one of the sculptures for Gromit Unleashed moving away from outside the Arnolfini due to Bristol Harbour Fest this of the festival - there is excitement over this 17th Century Spanish galleon which will be at Bristol Harbour Chippenham Town Council has resecured Green Flag status, which rewards well-managed green spaces, for Monkton Park and John Coles Park.
BBC News
6 days ago
- Sport
- BBC News
West of England headlines: Railway lines restored and 70,000 bees
Here's our weekly roundup of stories from across local websites in the West of have a daily round up as well. Make sure you look out for it on the website and the local section of the BBC News app. What have been the big stories in the West this week? The government confirmed that work to restore a railway line to Portishead will definitely start, with services to begin in a few years. There will also be new stations in Wellington and were celebrations at the start of the week as Somerset's Lando Norris won his first British Grand Swindon, two very distinctive Balinese-style heads are remaining outside the Kioki nightclub in High Street, despite the council ordering them to be removed, according to Wiltshire Live.A huge colony of 70,000 bees forced demolition work on the Glover's Walk shopping centre to grind to a halt. Beekeepers called in to remove the swarms opted for "plan bee" when placing a hive on the roof to entice the insects out did not work, said the Chard and Ilminster years of restoration work to a section of Gloucester Cathedral has finished, according to Gloucestershire Live, with new grotesques Live reported that the car park at the rear of the Broadwalk Shopping Centre will never reopen. The owners said they had reached the point where "there is no repair or maintenance that can prolong its life" and the car park, along with the bingo hall and snooker hall on the same site will eventually be demolished. Top five local stories for the BBC in the West Something longer to read The Somerset County gazette has spoken to one of Taunton's famous residents - in the world of chess. Mickey Adams was once ranked fourth in the world at the height of his playing days, and still makes his living playing the told reporter Phil Hill that he once won a three-way tie in a 1990 competition using a bingo machine, picking the number nine which was called, "because it was the number of beers he drank the previous night". Explore more with our daily roundups
The Sun
11-07-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Picturesque English town is getting new £27m train line for first time in 60 years – & will cut journey times by an hour
A PICTURE-POSTCARD town in the English countryside is set to get a train line for the first time in 60 years. The quaint town, in the west of England, is currently one of the largest towns in the UK without a railway station. 2 2 However, this will not be the case for much longer, as Portishead has been given a whopping £27.6 million sum to build a new one, which will take passengers to Bristol in just 25 minutes. The Bristol to Portishead line closed way back in 1964, meaning residents have been unable to travel to the city by train for over 60 years. When the new train line opens, in three years' time, an hourly service will run to Bristol, transporting commuters from the coastal town to the bustling city. Work to start in spring 2026 Work is due to start on the train line in spring 2026, and will hopefully be completed in 2028. The neighbouring town of Pill is also set to get a new train line to Bristol. The line has already been restored for freight trains but will be made more suitable for passenger trains. Helen Godwin, the West of England mayor, said: "The West of England and North Somerset, with government backing and industry partners, will connect more people to opportunity, leisure and nature. "We're investing in jobs and economic growth. Local people will see and feel the difference from commutes being cut in half through train travel, and building this key transport infrastructure will unlock sites for much-needed new homes. "Pill and Portishead are two of the five new railway stations being built in the West over the next few years. "But our ambition goes further. Delivering projects like the Bristol & Portishead Line now lays the foundations for a better transport system overall for the West of England, building the suburban railway network that other places take for granted." Incredible plans to tunnel underneath UK city centre for massive train network are unveiled More UK train news This comes as bold new plans to tunnel beneath a major UK city for a massive underground train and tram network have been officially unveiled. The dramatic move aims to transform how people travel in and out of the busy urban centre and tackle future congestion. The ambitious project, based in Manchester and led by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, would see trains and trams running below ground for the first time in the city's history, aiming to ease congestion and support future economic growth Plus, a direct train service between a central Scottish city and London is due to launch as early as spring 2026. Lumo, which is part of FirstGroup, will run four return services a day to Stirling in Scotland, with the exception of Sundays, where there will be three. The route will provide first-ever direct services to London for Whifflet, Greenfaulds, and Larbert. Currently, the Lumo brand runs on the East Coast Main Line between London King's Cross and Edinburgh. The new West Coast services were due to start this year, however FirstGroup said they are "currently expected to commence mid-2026 following the delivery of the trains and staff training". Lumo's new route will link London Euston directly to Stirling, also calling at Milton Keynes, Nuneaton, Crewe, Preston, Carlisle, Lockerbie, Motherwell, Whifflet (serving Coatbridge), Greenfaulds (serving Cumbernauld) and Larbert.
Times
08-07-2025
- Business
- Times
UK shipping insurers are caught in Iran oil sanctions grey zone
A year before Marco Rubio was appointed President Trump's secretary of state, he wrote to the government of Panama urging it to investigate a number of oil tankers sailing under the country's flag. The bipartisan letter, signed by Rubio and 21 other senators, included a list of ships that the group said had allegedly transported Iranian oil in violation of US sanctions. Unknown to the senators at the time, one of the tankers listed in the letter, Seafaith, had allegedly shipped Iranian petrochemicals while carrying insurance documents from the UK. Seafaith had obtained an insurance policy from the West of England P&I Club (West), one of the twelve companies that cover most of the world's oceangoing ships against spills and accidents. The vessel was one of three identified by The Times that held insurance documents from West while exporting oil or related products from Iran, in violation of US sanctions. The Times identified four other ships that allegedly exported petrochemicals from Iran after obtaining insurance policies from another British shipping insurance syndicate, the UK P&I Club (UK P&I). There is no suggestion that either UK P&I or West has violated sanctions themselves. In common with all big shipping insurers, neither syndicate insures any sanctioned activity. This means that the insurance club's provisions do not pay out if they were triggered while the policyholder was engaged in an activity subject to sanctions. Furthermore, US sanctions on Iran are far more restrictive than those enacted by the UK, placing companies that might be subject to both regimes, given the potentially extremely broad application of US law, in a difficult situation. The US government can seek to claim jurisdiction over activity well outside its territory if it involves US dollars or touches the US financial system. The UK also, in some cases, seeks to penalise UK entities that comply with US sanctions on Iran through 'blocking legislation' that the country adopted from the EU after Brexit. Christopher Lock, an international trade partner at the law firm Sidley Austin, said that the legislation was an attempt to provide protection against the extra-territorial effects of US sanctions. 'In practice, these regulations cause compliance headaches for companies operating on both sides of the Atlantic,' he said. 'On the one hand, companies are faced with steep fines or even being sanctioned themselves for not complying with US sanctions. On the other hand, they risk either having their US compliance being challenged in European or British courts or, ultimately, criminal liability.' Nonetheless, shipping insurers are an important part of the world's maritime industry, with internationally recognised proof of liability insurance against spills and accidents needed to enter most big ports. The US Treasury seeks to place some burden on shipping insurers to monitor for suspicious behaviour through regular alerts and advisory notices, although it remains unclear who the US government considers primarily responsible for identifying suspicious tankers. Both West and UK P&I said they were investigating the details of the sanctioned voyages provided to them by The Times. UK P&I added that it used third-party tracking services to look out for suspicious ship behaviour, and regularly updated its members on sanctions rules and due diligence requirements, but that it was unable to monitor all of its members' operations in detail. West said that it abided by all sanctions regimes and had robust compliance policies in place to ensure that its members complied with applicable sanctions regimes. Charlie Brown, a senior adviser at United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group based in the US, said that the recurrence of cases such as that of the Seafaith demonstrated gaps in the wider system of maritime due diligence. 'The appearance of vessels like Seafaith and others on the rosters of respected P&I clubs, despite their likely involvement in Iranian oil exports, illustrates the difficulty of fully policing Iran's global sanctions-evasion network,' Brown added. Vessels carrying Iranian oil employ numerous tactics to evade scrutiny, often turning off location transponders or moving products via repeated ship-to-ship transfers in open waters. Satellite imagery obtained by a company that specialises in monitoring the clandestine oil trade of Iran and other nations, detected one of these transfers between Cielo 1 and the US-sanctioned Hong Lu in March this year. According to TankerTrackers, Hong Lu had loaded up with crude oil from Kharg Island, a small outcrop in the northern part of the Persian Gulf 16 miles off the coast of Iran, which doubles as the country's main oil and petrochemical terminal. Records from West and Kpler, a shipping data and analytics business, show that once loaded with roughly two million barrels of crude oil, Cielo 1 held insurance from West for at least part of its journey to China. The vast majority, about 90 per cent, of Iran's oil exports ends up in small independent refineries in China. In March the US sanctioned a number of these Chinese 'teapot' refineries and under Trump the US has taken a considerably more stringent position on Iran. Along with oil, the US government has also turned its attention to Iran's petrochemical exports, under its campaign of 'maximum pressure' on Iran, which Trump imposed early in his administration. This policy culminated in the US bombing key nuclear sites in co-ordination with Israel last month. Vessels exporting petrochemical products from Iran have also obtained insurance policies from British insurers. In November last year TankerTrackers spotted the vessel Swift Falcon calling at Kharg Island, where, according to Kpler, it took on roughly 100,000 barrels of naphtha, a petrochemical with a number of uses. Swift Falcon had secured insurance documents from UK P&I during that voyage and 13 others that occurred between late October 2023 and May 2025, where records from Kpler show that it exported on average 290,000 barrels of naphtha from Iran on each voyage. At least one ship insured by the UK P&I Club was also featured in a report published by the US Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the US Department of Energy, in October 2024. It was accused of being involved in the export and sale of Iranian petroleum and petroleum products. According to Kpler, the vessel, which has been insured by the UK P&I Club since late August 2024, made six voyages from Iran to China while holding British insurance.
BBC News
05-06-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Headlines: Summer swims, cancer recovery and rugby stars
Here's our daily pick of stories from across local websites in the West of England, and interesting content from social media. Our pick of local website stories A tram or light rail link to Bristol Airport could be introduced as part of a £750m investment into the West of England's transport networks. It is currently the only airport in the country which is not connected to a mass transit is opposition to BT's plan to remove a phone box on Burnham seafront, with councillors saying its close proximity to the sea could help save lives in an emergency.A six-year-old boy from Swindon has rung the hospital bell to mark the end of treatment following a two-year cancer diagnosis. Tommy celebrated by taking the bell to school and showing it to his classmates.A school swimming pool near Stroud officially reopens this Sunday after a fundraiser gathered nearly £60k to fix the cracked foundations, caused by heatwave temperatures. Our top three from yesterday What to watch on social media Paul Bliss, the club chairman at Weston-super-Mare AFC, has stepped down after 39 years at the helm. He is credited for "steering the club away from near bankruptcy".A bike shed outside a listed building in Bath is encroaching halfway onto the pavement. Residents have criticised the installation as showing a "lack of consideration" for parents with prams and those with mobility scrum-half Tomos Williams has been named Premiership Player of the Season after a standout debut campaign with Gloucester Rugby.
