Alison Killing

X rolled out a new feature overnight showing where accounts are based. This network of “Trump-supporting independent women” that claimed to be “real Americans” are based in Thailand.

The photos were stolen from European models & posts pushed pro-Trump lines while targeting Islam and LGBTQ people.

UK set to limit refugees to temporary stays Shabana Mahmood is expected to say the era of permanent protection for refugees is over, in major changes to the UK's asylum and immigration system.

This contribution to the volume of human misery is yet another policy from Labour based on a false premise, in this case that refugees are overly attracted to Britain. It will increase bureaucratic limbo, thus making worse the problem of "cohesion" it purports to solve.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

YouTube video by BBC World Service Blood on the Shelves: The Secrets of Xinjiang’s Tomato Industry - BBC World Service Documentaries

You can see the full BBC documentary here on YouTube
youtu.be/dtv_1eafJn4?...

We also talked with several people from Xinjiang who had been forced to pick tomatoes - many were beaten and tortured, given impossible targets, denied food.

We bought samples of the own brand tomato pastes in several UK supermarkets and then sent them off to a company which could analyse their chemical make up and determine which country they likely came from. We could identify exactly which products likely contained XJ tomatoes

In Italy, they were bought by a company that produces own-brand goods for supermarkets around Europe. We knew which supermarkets bought the products because the Italian company was in their supplier lists - but we didn’t know which specific products were affected.

At the BBC we tracked the blue barrels of tomato paste as they travelled overland by trains set up specially to connect the region to Italy. Shipping records from Georgia (a country they transited through) allowed us to see which XJ and Italian companies were involved.

Instead, many of them were being bought by Italy - they had consistently been the largest importer of Chinese tomatoes for several years (and the majority of Chinese tomatoes are grown in Xinjiang and then exported as paste.)

But only the cotton one had any real impact - it lead to the Chinese government having to buy stockpiles of the material to stop the industry collapsing. The US didn’t import many tomatoes in the first place, so the effect was limited - others continued to buy them.

Cotton and tomato paste were two of Xinjiang’s biggest exports a few years ago and both commodities had huge amounts of forced labour in their supply chains. Then the US placed sanctions on the two products due to the ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs.

Some good news this morning - exports of Xinjiang tomatoes have collapsed. Last year I worked with the BBC to expose how XJ tomatoes produced with forced labour were making their way to UK supermarkets via Italy. 🧵

Twitter worked well as a broadcast/lurking space towards the end because there was a lot of good content and interaction to read and observe even if you didn't actively participate. It always felt more fun to actively engage though.

Childcare, cycle to work schemes and vehicle hire schemes could all face a new tax

If you think that “the slow vanishing of employee benefits” is a better trade politically than “the other lot saying you broke your promise on income tax”, you are out of your tree: www.ft.com/content/1160...

Yeah. And the light pollution too - another thing that would have messed with the birds and their migration.

If you register you'll be able to read it - you get eight free articles a month.

Thanks Alex!

Looking for a long read to go with your coffee this morning? The Line is a project of incredible hubris - we got the story of how it unravelled.

End of The Line: how Saudi Arabia’s Neom dream unravelled Mohammed bin Salman’s utopian city was undone by the laws of physics and finance

NEW: The End of the Line: the centrepiece of Saudi Arabia’s Neom gigaproject - a 500m tall, 170km long wall-like building intended ultimately to house 9 million people - can’t get out of the ground, say more than 20 former Neom architects, engineers and senior executives.
ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

The waste is genuinely obscene. That $50bn could have been used for so many other things, not to mention all the time and talent of the thousands of people who worked on this thing.

Thanks John!

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has a fantastical vision for a new way of living. But The Line, his plan for a vertical city in a vast mirrored wall, is rapidly being undone by the laws of physics and finance.

Here is an #FTEdit 🧵 of eight mind-bending facts about this moonshot in the sand 👇

The PIF took it seriously enough to have spent $50bn on it - that's the figure they gave earlier this year. But they couldn't attract the international investors that they hoped for (and needed).

The part of Mamdani's speech that I found most exciting was "you dismantle the conditions that allowed him to gain power. That's how we stop Trump — and the next one."

We need popular political figures to point out that Trump is not an anomaly and there are plenty more to take his place.

Great working on this with @alisonkilling.bsky.social, Chris Campbell, @peter.andringa.me, @ian-bott.bsky.social, @sdbernard.bsky.social and @raydouglas.bsky.social.

Come for the reporting, stay for the largest map we‘ve ever built...

It's devastating.

End of The Line: how Saudi Arabia’s Neom dream unravelled Mohammed bin Salman’s utopian city was undone by the laws of physics and finance

If you want to get in touch about Neom, my email is alison.killing@ft.com. Or DM for signal.
You can read the full story here: ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

But ultimately, the project has been undone by its scale, complexity and cost. That and an atmosphere at Neom that several former employees described as being like ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ with no dissent permitted.

There was some great work done too - to industrialise and standardise the construction process, something that many people across the industry say needs to happen. The just in time construction system they developed was impressive.

Deadlines were incredibly ambitious - so much so that piling began for the Line, even before the building that would go on top had been designed. The Line team therefore maximised the size, putting in 2.5-3m diameter piles - the biggest in the world.

Originally the first phase was to be 20 modules - a 16km chunk. Annually, the contractors would need more cement than France produces in a year. More cladding than the largest manufacturer produces each year was needed to clad it.