UK lawmakers approve rescue of British Steel in emergency parliamentary session

Prime Minister Keir Starmer summoned lawmakers for the unusual Saturday sitting, only the sixth since World War II, to back a bill primarily aimed at blocking British Steel's Chinese owners, Jingye Group, from closing the two massive blast furnaces at its Scunthorpe plant in the north of England that are key in the steelmaking process. The relief in the town was evident during the interval of Scunthorpe United's soccer match, where the crowd at the Attis Arena cheered on a few dozen steelworkers on the field of play. That would mean the U.K., which in the late 19th century was the world's steelmaking powerhouse, would be the only country in the Group of Seven industrial nations without the capacity to make its own steel from scratch rather than from recycled material, which use greener electric arc furnaces rather than blast furnaces.