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Funding set aside to regenerate 20 towns and cities outlined in the Government White Paper Levelling Up, “barely begins to address the chronic under-investment of recent decades”, the Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Pete Wilcox, has warned.

The White Paper, published on Wednesday, consists of 12 “national missions” to be achieved by 2030, including missions to close gaps in wealth, employment, education, training, 5G broadband, homeownership, and life expectancy in the UK — particularly between the north and south of England. It also pledges to reduce homicide and serious violence in the worst-affected areas, and offer a “London-style” devolution deal to every part of England which requests one, supported by the £2.6-billion UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which is to be decentralised to local leaders.

One of the central proposals is to “restore local pride” in 20 towns and cities, beginning with Wolverhampton and Sheffield, with “King’s Cross-style” regeneration projects. To fund this, from April, £1.5 billion of the £1.8 million announced in the October Budget to bring 1500 hectares of brownfield land into use will be redirected towards the north and the Midlands.

In November, Wolverhampton and Sheffield were respectively promised £20 million and £37 million towards the scheme; a further £28 million was allocated to the West Midlands Combined Authority, and £13 million for the South Yorkshire Combined Authority on Sunday.

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“While it is obviously great news for the people of South Yorkshire that Sheffield will benefit from ‘levelling up’ funding, the initially promised funding barely begins to address the chronic under-investment of recent decades" – @PeteWilcox1564https://t.co/WiUJPBEfFT

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 2, 2022

St John’s Church in Keswick in the Lake District made half a hectare of land next to its graveyard that was too stony and waterlogged for burials available to the town’s then newly-formed Community Housing Trust.

The land now has 11 three-bedroomed houses and the trust has gone on to build a further 30 homes in the town on other plots. The latest four – three, three-bedroomed houses and one two-bedroom house – were built on land provided by the Methodist Church on the site of a demolished church hall.

Around half the homes built by the trust are for shared ownership and the other half are let out at rents that are truly affordable in perpetuity – measured in relation to local earnings, not market rents.

Bill Bewley, the Chair of Keswick Community Housing Trust, believes that up to 200 people have been housed as a result of the trust’s work so far with further potential plots of land for housing being explored.

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How a plot of unused church land helped families priced out of the housing markethttps://t.co/pwTlF8l8DC #Property #Housing #ChurchOfEngland #Keswick

— Estates IT® (@EstatesIT) February 3, 2022

America’s gross national debt topped $30 trillion for the first time on Tuesday, an ominous fiscal milestone that underscores the fragile nature of the country’s long-term economic health as it grapples with soaring prices and the prospect of higher interest rates.

The breach of that threshold, which was revealed in new Treasury Department figures, arrived years earlier than previously projected as a result of trillions in federal spending that the United States has deployed to combat the pandemic. That $5 trillion, which funded expanded jobless benefits, financial support for small businesses and stimulus payments, was financed with borrowed money.

The borrowing binge, which many economists viewed as necessary to help the United States recover from the pandemic, has left the nation with a debt burden so large that the government would need to spend an amount larger than America’s entire annual economy in order to pay it off.

Some economists contend that the nation’s large debt load is not unhealthy given that the economy is growing, interest rates are low and investors are still willing to buy U.S. Treasury securities, which gives them safe assets to help manage their financial risk. Those securities allow the government to borrow money relatively cheaply and use it to invest in the economy.

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Breaking News: The U.S. national debt topped $30 trillion, years ahead of schedule, as pandemic spending fueled government borrowing. https://t.co/6yUwsPvi1P

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 1, 2022

American families are feeling the financial squeeze of soaring inflation and a persistent pandemic as fractious Democrats return to Washington this week no closer to a deal on a tax and spending bill party leaders hoped would by now provide relief.

Despite gangbusters growth at a 6.9% annual rate during the final quarter of 2021, other economic measures tell a very different story. Average wages are falling behind inflation and consumer sentiment plummeted in January to the lowest in more than a decade.

More Americans are having trouble paying their bills than at any time since last March, shortly before the Biden administration began distributing stimulus checks and other relief measures. Hunger is rising again.

It’s an ominous start to a midterm election year for Democrats struggling to hold on to razor-thin majorities in Congress. President Joe Biden began his term with ambitions to address long-festering economic inequalities and lift prospects for the poor and middle class but an intra-party rift has halted progress on his centerpiece tax and social spending plan.

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“We’re learning once again the pandemic is hitting families hard financially. It’s the people who have the least that continue to suffer the most.”
—@Claudia_Sahm, @JainFamilyInst https://t.co/ZbI6cLKsMO via @bpolitics @MikeDorning @elwasson

— Steve Matthews (@SteveMatthews12) January 31, 2022

On the third anniversary of the mining disaster that killed 270 people in Brumadinho, in Brazil, the Church of England Pensions Board has stepped up the pressure on companies to adopt new global safety standards.

The disaster happened when a mine-waste facility, a tailings dam, collapsed. The new Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management was developed in response by a coalition of investors led by the Pensions Board and the Council on Ethics of the Swedish AP Funds…. Now, they have published the names of the companies that have committed themselves to the new measures.

Seventy-nine mining companies — one third of those employing tailings dams — have either made a commitment to the new Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management or are still assessing their compliance. The list includes several of the largest companies, including BHP, Anglo, Glencore, Rio Tinto, and Vale.

The Brumadinho disaster of 2019 is not an isolated incident. Another 12 such collapses have been reported in the past three years. In three instances — two of which took place in Myanmar and one in Peru — workers were killed. The collapses also cause significant environmental damage.

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Pensions Board puts pressure on mining companies to adopt global safety standards https://t.co/JZiUKABDIl

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 28, 2022

Older Americans who regularly breathe even low levels of pollution from smokestacks, automobile exhaust, wildfires and other sources face a greater chance of dying early, according to a major study released Wednesday.

Researchers at the Health Effects Institute, a group that is funded by the Environmental Protection Agency as well as automakers and fossil fuel companies, examined health data from 68.5 million Medicare recipients across the United States. They found that if the federal rules for allowable levels of fine soot had been slightly lower, as many as 143,000 deaths could have been prevented over the course of a decade.

Exposure to fine particulate matter has long been linked to respiratory illness and impaired cognitive development in children. The tiny particles can enter the lungs and bloodstream to affect lung function, exacerbate asthma and trigger heart attacks and other serious illness. Earlier research has found that exposure to particulate matter contributed to about 20,000 deaths a year.

The new study is the first in the United States to document deadly effects of the particulate matter known as PM 2.5 (because its width is 2.5 microns or less) on people who live in rural areas and towns with little industry.

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Older people in the U.S. who regularly breathe even low levels of pollution from smokestacks, automobiles, wildfires and other sources face a greater chance of dying early, according to a major new study that looked at health data from 68.5 million people.https://t.co/RkgRdufFvB

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 26, 2022

The Church of England’s National Investing Bodies (NIBs) are delivering on their 2018 commitment to General Synod to engage with and disinvest from high carbon emitting companies that are not making progress to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement by 2023.

Twenty companies have made climate-related changes to stay off the Church’s restricted list since 2020.
Following extensive engagement efforts by the NIBs, nine companies made changes to meet the 2021 hurdles. As a result they stayed off the restricted list for a further year, while 28 companies that did not meet the latest climate hurdles were restricted.

These actions are part of the NIBs’ commitment to transitioning their portfolios away from companies that are unwilling to act and align their businesses with the Goals of the Paris Agreement. The climate hurdles were set by the NIBs using Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) data. Additional exacting hurdles will come into force in 2022 and 2023.

The NIBs are founding members of TPI and are investor engagement leads in the Climate Action 100+ (CA100+) global engagement initiative. As long-term investors, the NIBs will continue to engage with companies to meet their climate objectives and build alliances with like-minded investors to engage with company boards and executives.

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Twenty companies have made climate-related changes to stay off the Church’s restricted list since 2020.https://t.co/aN0w4Eu3Ib?

— St Eds Cathedral (@stedscath) January 21, 2022

When America’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released data this month showing that consumer price inflation had surged to 7 per cent, many investors were shocked. No wonder: this marks the fastest jump since 1982.

But here is another number that should spark concern: 17 per cent. That was the annual inflation rate for overall trucking costs last month, according to a (deeply buried) section of the bureau’s data. For the long-haul trucking sector, the number was even scarier: 25 per cent.

That is bad news for business — and consumers — given that almost three-quarters of freight in America is moved by trucks. Or to put it another way, if you want to understand what lies behind that scary 7 per cent inflation number, don’t just track raw material, energy or cross-border shipping costs; watch those oft-ignored truckers too.

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Gillian Tett: if you want to understand what lies behind that scary US 7 per cent inflation number, don’t just track raw material, energy or cross-border shipping costs; watch those oft-ignored truckers too https://t.co/pjoTTvixvr pic.twitter.com/NVm8tsQ0Lb

— FT Opinion (@ftopinion) January 21, 2022

On Boxing Day Lisa Moncur received a call from a vicar asking for help to arrange a special marriage licence for someone who was terminally ill. She has also been called on to deal with a badger whose industrious digging had uncovered human remains in a churchyard.

It was all part of her varied work as the Church of England’s diocesan registrar for both Chester and Blackburn. Registrars are personally appointed by the diocesan bishop and must be a qualified solicitor and a communicant in the Church of England.

Moncur was appointed to the diocese in Chester in 2016, and in Blackburn last year, after 20 years working as a commercial property solicitor. In that previous role, Moncur says, “I got up and knew what each day would look like” — but as a diocesan registrar she never knows what to expect and “there is never a dull day”.

Her job is to provide advice and support on ordinations, consecrations, confirmations, baptisms, marriages and burials as well as general legal advice to clergy and parishes, maintaining diocesan and parochial records, and advising on parish trusts.

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Our consultant #solicitor @LisaMoncur talks all about her varied work as the #ChurchofEngland’s #diocesan #registrar in her @TheTimes article published today – It's an interesting read: https://t.co/ChrxS0485M #CofE #dicocese #ACS

— Anthony Collins Solicitors LLP (@ACSLLP) January 20, 2022

The cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet now threatens the stability of global ecosystems upon which humanity depends, scientists have said.

Plastics are of particularly high concern, they said, along with 350,000 synthetic chemicals including pesticides, industrial compounds and antibiotics. Plastic pollution is now found from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans, and some toxic chemicals, such as PCBs, are long-lasting and widespread.

The study concludes that chemical pollution has crossed a “planetary boundary”, the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the last 10,000 years.

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“The total mass of plastics now exceeds the total mass of all living mammals”

Another toxic threshold crossed, this one driven by the petrochemical industry. Even if climate wasn’t an issue, we’d still need to end fossil fuels.

https://t.co/46R7yU1Fmw

— Climate Ad Project (@ClimateAd) January 19, 2022

Ask most local restaurateurs, and they’ll tell you that staff shortages have been hampering Charleston restaurants for the past five to 10 years.

The COVID-19 pandemic turned the problem into a crisis, and the omicron variant reminded restaurateurs how ongoing staffing struggles, coupled with positive cases, impact daily operations.

In Charleston, King Street’s Monza Pizza Bar has been closed since Nov. 6 “due to acute staffing shortages.” Smallish places like The Pass, a 647-square-foot sandwich shop, have changed operations to limit guest interactions. In Beaufort, a sign from the city’s hospitality association cautions patrons that local small businesses are extremely short staffed.

In the first week of January in the Charleston area, Chasing Sage, Jackrabbit Filly, Berkeley’s, Wild Olive, Estadio and Home Team BBQ, among others, closed for at least one day due to COVID-19 concerns or to give overworked employees extra time to decompress.

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Ask most local restaurateurs, and they’ll tell you that staff shortages have been hampering Charleston restaurants for the past five to 10 years.https://t.co/4n3MaLAmI3

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) January 18, 2022

Startups come and startups go. But few startups start with $3bn in the bank. Yet that is the fortunate position in which Altos Labs finds itself. Though preparations for the launch of what must surely be a candidate for the title of “Best financed startup in history” have been rumoured for months, the firm formally announced itself, and its modus operandi, on January 19th. And, even at $3bn, its proposed product might be thought cheap at the price. For the alchemy its founders, Rick Klausner, Hans Bishop and Yuri Milner, hope one day to offer the world is an elixir of life.

Others have tried this in the past. In 2013 an outfit called Calico Life Sciences was set up under the aegis of Google (now Alphabet), with Larry Page, one of that firm’s founders, as an interested party. It has yet to generate a product. In the same year Craig Venter, who ran a private version of the human genome project, and Peter Diamandis, who started the X Prize Foundation, got together to launch Human Longevity, though they subsequently fell out. That company, too, has gone quiet. And there are a string of other hopefuls in the field, many with billionaires like Dr Milner and Mr Page lurking in the background. Indeed, there are rumours, which Altos will not confirm, that Jeff Bezos is one of its investors—for the prolongation of life is a field that seems particularly attractive to the man (and it usually is a man) who otherwise has everything.

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How to reverse the process of ageing? One biotech startup may have an inkling of the answer https://t.co/H00c71vNbK

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 19, 2022

The line Neil Armstrong uttered when he stepped on the Moon — “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” — is deemed problematic by the software, which suggests changing “mankind” to “humankind” or “humanity”.

The children’s cartoon Postman Pat also fails the inclusivity test, with the software preferring “mail carrier” Pat or “postal worker” Pat.

The software also offers to tweak Billy Paul’s 1970s hit Me and Mrs Jones to a more modern Me and Ms Jones, while Barry Manilow’s infamous Lola in the song Copacabana might more appropriately be referred to as a performing artist rather than a showgirl.

Other words to change include “headmaster” (Word suggests “principal”), “master” (“expert”), “manpower” (“workforce”) and “heroine” (“hero”).

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Smart guy that George Orwellhttps://t.co/ISOyzqMsca

— David Parry (@davidparry100) January 13, 2022

2. COVID-19 Vaccines Arrive as the Virus Mutates. The vaccines created to address the novel coronavirus may join the smallpox, polio, and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines as major advances in saving lives and diminishing morbidity. The speed at which COVID-19 vaccines were developed was stunning. Vaccines historically took ten to fifteen years to develop. The quickest any vaccine had been developed previously was the four years it took to create the mumps vaccine. COVID-19 vaccines were created in less than a year. Just as important, the leading COVID-19 vaccines worked stunningly well; the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are both more than 90 percent effective against early COVID-19 variants. More than 7.4 billion vaccine doses were administered in 184 countries in the first eleven months of 2021, with seventy countries making donations. Unfortunately, too many people who could have been vaccinated chose not to, and too many people who wanted to get vaccinated couldn’t. That was deadly because COVID-19 is incredibly adaptive. The Delta variant, first identified in December 2020 in India, was more infectious than its predecessors and soon became the dominant strain around the world. In November 2021, South African scientists identified the emergence of the Omicron variant. Within weeks it had been found around the world. As 2021 ended, it was unclear whether Omicron presented a greater health threat or would send the global economy into another tailspin. What was clear is that more than 5 million people globally and 800,000 Americans had died from COVID-19.

1. Countries Fail the Climate Change Challenge—Again. “A code red for humanity.” That’s how UN Secretary General António Guterres’ described the UN report released in August that concluded that humanity faces catastrophic climate change unless the emission of heat-trapping gases is slashed. But one didn’t need to read the 4,000-page report to know that. Extreme weather dominated the news in 2021, as it has for much of the past decade. Record drought wracked the American southwest. Record flooding devastated Belgium and western Germany. Epic wildfires tore through Greece. Late season monsoons ravaged India and Nepal. Climate optimists could find some developments to cheer in 2021. President Biden committed the United States to rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement on his first day in office. China agreed in September to discontinue financing coal-fired power plants overseas, and Iceland opened a facility to take carbon dioxide out of the air. At the COP-26 meeting in Glasgow in November countries pledged to take steps to address climate change, including by cutting methane emissions. But pledges aren’t accomplishments. Carbon emissions jumped in 2021 as the global economy roared back to life. Even as President Biden pushed Congress to address climate change in a major infrastructure bill, he asked OPEC to increase oil production in a bid to lower gasoline prices. He was hardly the only world leader hoping to have his cake and eat it too. The transition away from fossil fuels poses difficult choices. Mother Nature, however, doesn’t give credit for degree of difficulty.

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.@CFR_org intern Charlotte Peterson contributed to James M. Lindsay's blog post on the "Ten Most Significant World Events in 2021" in The Water's Edge https://t.co/LhNtCPIPjj

— CFR Human Resources (@CFR_HR) December 17, 2021

Less than 20% of the world’s population has managed to stockpile more than half of the globe’s maize and other grains, leading to steep price increases across the planet and dropping more countries into famine.

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'Less than 20% of the world's population has managed to stockpile more than half of the globe's maize and other grains…China is maintaining its food stockpiles at a "historically high level"' #foodsecurity #Chinahttps://t.co/rWDuhAKxrv

— Jim Baird (@JimBair62221006) December 23, 2021

In the first 10 months of this year, America’s workers handed in nearly 39 million resignations, the highest number since tracking began in 2000.

Some want better jobs. Others, a better work-life balance. Still others want a complete break from the corporate grind. Almost two years into the pandemic that left millions doing their jobs from home, many Americans are rethinking their relationship with work.