US warns of 'economic D-Day' against Iran

25:14So it's a fairly significant amount, but Singapore is a very high-costing place to live. So$55 ,000 is a lot, but it doesn't go an awful way far in this country. Right. So is the idea that it's just going to be a cash payment, or is it going to be done in terms of targeted subsidies for things like housing and childcare and that sort of thing? Yeah, this is basically a package of several payment handouts really that will be given to the parents of children from birth up to the age of 17. So when they're born, as an example, there is an initial payment of about 8 ,000 US dollars. And there's several payments that go through up to age 17 when they get a similar payment of about 8 ,000 US dollars, which goes towards their further education.

26:09And in terms of how far Singapore is struggling with a low birth rate, I mean, is it one of those things that people say? I mean, you hear young people discuss openly that, you know, maybe they would consider having kids, but they just don't quite think that they can afford it. Or if they are going to have kids, maybe they'll, you know, it'll just be one kid. Is this something that is spoken about? Yeah, I mean, Singapore is a society with very high levels of education. And inevitably, when you get higher levels of education, especially with women, people tend to put off having children until a bit later in their lives.

26:53Maybe they want to get more financial security. And that's certainly the situation in Singapore. You have, you know, young men and women looking to get into the housing ladder, looking to build up their careers before they have children. And so the age at which people are having their first children is getting later and later. One of the ways in which countries can sometimes deal with falling birth rates is to be more relaxed about the idea of immigration, about getting people in from outside who maybe bring families with them or at least can contribute and pay taxes. what's the feeling in Singapore about that about how to strike the balance there?

27:36Yes Singapore has basically had a history of being very pro-immigration so it's always invited people from all over the world and actually you know if you think about the demographic almost everyone in Singapore either they themselves their parents their grandparents or their great-grandparents came from somewhere else in the world. And that was Owen Walker the Financial Times' Singapore correspondent.

28:09You're with NewsHour. It's live from the BBC in London. I'm Tim Frax. On this day, the 24th of August, 35 years ago, Ukraine declared its independence, reclaimed its independence from Moscow, from the collapsing Soviet Union. Today, of course its future as a sovereign intact country is again under threat from Moscow. Hence the solemnity and the emotion on display at the ceremony today in Kiev.

28:42Amid today's choreography and pageantry there's also been a sense from those who watched the war closely that we are potentially at a pivotal moment. The front lines may not be shifting much may not have shifted much for some time now. But both Ukraine and Russia are throwing damaging punches deep inside each other's territory, albeit with different levels of firepower. Russia has a self-replenishing stock of cruise and ballistic missiles, against which Ukraine has its very effective long-range drones, which nonetheless carry a much smaller payload. So how much difference will today's offer from international allies of Ukraine make?

29:18Chaired by Britain's Prime Minister Andy Burnham, this coalition has offered to hand over the blueprints to let Ukraine build the components for the long-range scalp missile. This is how the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Pieskov reacted to that news.

29:37Britain is participating in this war on the side of the Kiev regime. Britain methodically and regularly pours fuel on the fire and plots to prevent any progress in the peace process. To which the British Prime Minister Andy Burnham in Kiev today said he wouldn't let Russian rhetoric deter his support. Despite Russia's outrageous threats to my country, we will continue our support for Ukraine's defence. I know you need more help to protect your skies and your civilians. I know how hard the winters have been and the need to be ready this year when the knights draw in. That's why later today I will take up the reins of the Coalition of the Willing alongside President Macron and Chancellor Mertz.

30:32Andy Burnham in Kiev today. Vladimir Habrylov is a retired Major General and the former Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defence. He currently works with the Atlantic Council think tank and advises the Ukrainian defence industry. um general havrilov very good to have you on the program uh how much difference in the first instance do you think these um these new cruise missiles these scout missiles might make first of all we have been using this capability which originally was from united kingdom and then from france it's storm shadow and scalp we started to use them in 23 as a medium medium strike capability to reach Russian targets in occupied territory and later we started to use it against Russian targets in the nearby regions of Russia next to our border with very high efficiency that's why it's not long-range capability which we really need in this stage of the war but nevertheless it's very effective to target and to destroy Russian launching ballistic equipment.

31:41Okay, so just to be clear on that, then, you're correcting me, it's not long-range, but it's longer range. Are you saying that what you really need is properly long-range, in other words, ballistic missile capability? Yes, for us, it's very important to have a long-range capability, which can be provided only by ballistic missiles and long-range drones and cruise missiles. Because of the limited access of Ukraine to the ballistic capability, we have developed our own program here and we expect to deploy it this autumn. But to reach targets somewhere in the area of Moscow, you need to have a range around 800 kilometers, which is only ballistic can provide together with drones.

32:32Scalp is important to target Russian launching sites, which they use for launching ballistic against Ukraine, and it would be very effective as well. Yeah, I mean, I guess it comes with some risk, though, doesn't it? Because already, I mean, we know that Russia can produce more than 100 ballistic missiles a month, and, you know, Ukraine is running short if it's not run out altogether. of the interceptor missiles that it needs to protect itself. Were you to start using ballistic missiles in number against Russia, you could see an even further escalation from Russia, which would be very difficult to defend against.

33:15Ballistic missile capability from Ukrainian side could be a kind of game changer in this conflict because Russia never faced this kind of ballistic challenge in this war. So the immediate next time if we deploy this missile and use it for the first time somewhere close to Moscow to destroy some refinery or defense industry enterprise, they will start thinking differently in Russia. But what about my point that actually it could cause Russia to lash out even more fiercely against your population? They are limited with escalation of this war. Really? Yes. They have a limited production capacity.

34:06They have a limited economy. They have limited even the manpower just to sustain this kind of war. That's why it is because of the sanctions, because of the other things, and because of the Ukrainian long-range deep strike Air Force we started this year in 2026. We couldn't reach the deep targets in Russia in 25-24 because we lacked that capability. Now we have it as a drone based and a cruise missile based of domestic design. That's why this capability will be on the rise inevitably. Can I just ask you in the short time that we've got left to us just very briefly the other sort of big development that lots of people are talking about is what the fired defense minister, Mikhail Fedorov, had, or he's no longer imposed, of course, saying that Russia, forgive me, Ukraine needs new elections right now.

35:06What do you think about that? First of all, our legislation, Ukrainian legislation, doesn't allow holding any elections during the wartime. Of course, it's possible to change the legislation given the constitutional majority in the parliament, but it's not easy to achieve, not realistically to achieve. Do you think it should be achieved? No, it could be achieved because it's a mixture of different parties with different positions and there is no consensus of the subject at all. Okay. All right. Well, Vladimir, we'll have to leave it there, But very grateful to you for your time, Vladimir Havrilov, former Deputy Defence Minister of Ukraine.

35:49Well, the 24th of August might be Ukraine's Independence Day. According to a prominent Canadian podcaster, the 21st of August last Friday may go down in history, he says, as Canada's Liberation Day. Because that was the day that the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, decided to walk away from the last minute trade talks aimed at defusing President Trump's threat of 50 % import taxes on a whole range of Canadian goods. for his part. President Trump has said the original sin lies with Canada for targeting US farmers with massive tariffs. One thing most people do seem agreed on, this incipient trade war could cause Canada a whole deal of economic pain given how much it exports to the US.

36:30So how much support can the Prime Minister count on? David Eby is the Premier of Canada's westernmost province, British Columbia, and joins me now. Mr Eby, thank you for your time. You're from a different party to Mark Carney. Do you support him? Yes, the Prime Minister has my full support, and not just mine. He has the support of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Look, we, like our friends and allies in the United States, they've been partners for many, many years with Canadians. But enough is enough. And everybody recognises that if the Prime Minister had signed this agreement, that the President would have just come back for more.

37:08And the only way to respond to a bully is to stand up to him. And there is clearly a bully in the White House and indifferent to the concerns of Americans who will now be paying a 50 % tax on everything from plywood, if they're building a home, cut flowers, if they're getting married, fishing rods, if they like to fish, if they like lifting weights on the ingredients in their protein shakes, or if they're feeding a baby in their baby food. It is bizarre. And so I'm proud of the Prime Minister for standing up to them. I hope that more countries will around the world. And we're settling in for the long haul here.

37:42There will be pain. But at the end of the day, we'll come out stronger the other end. Okay, well, that's interesting, because I can understand the principled argument that you're making. But the idea that this is going to be pain equally shared is, is not really one that you can subscribe to, is it? I mean, yes, it will be tough for some American consumers. But given that Canada exports almost three quarters of its goods to the US. Obviously, your province, British Columbia, has an extremely important export market in the US. Your economy is going to suffer that much more, at least in the first instance, isn't it?

38:17Yeah, absolutely. There's no question that the Americans have the ability to hurt Canadians disproportionate to our ability to hit back. But Canada is no joke when it comes to the United States. We're the number one customer for dozens of U.S. states. For the remainder, we're the number two customer. They're currently entering into negotiations with Mexico as well in relation to what used to be the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is now KUSMA. And I trust that the Mexicans are watching carefully what Canada is doing. There will be an impact in the United States. It won't be proportionate.

38:48But at the end of the day, to have the president say, you know, I'd like Canada to become the 51st state. I'd like Canada to not enter into trade agreements with third countries that I say they shouldn't and so on. I mean, these are attacks on our sovereignty and we just can't stand for that. We're too proud of people. We will continue to be proud Canadians. And if that means necessarily entering into a trade war that we didn't ask for, we don't want, but we are prepared to, then so be it. The prime minister has said he will go dollar for dollar with the US. There are some in Canada who have said, let's go further.

39:24Let's actually, you know, try and squeeze the Americans more by, for example, restricting energy supplies. Is that something that you would back? For us in British Columbia, for our government and I think for many Canadians, everything should be on the table. It's dangerous, though, isn't it, doing that? You could see Alberta, which is a rich province, exports a huge amount of energy to the US. It's got a binding referendum on secession coming up in a couple of months. I mean, this could tip them over, couldn't it? Well, we've seen our fuel prices at the Palm Pier in Canada go up about 40 cents a litre due to the American president's adventurism in the Middle East.

40:06Americans have seen the same. the idea that Americans could cut off energy from Canada and not see massive spikes in their costs, even beyond what they've already seen. I mean, we are so integrated. It's really hard to describe the nature of the integration of the two economies. But it's worked well for generations. And it really does only take one person with a mission to do so, apparently, to destroy all of those generations of goodwill and integration. It seems absurd to me that the president is headed in this direction, especially going into midterms. It's going to hurt Americans. It's going to increase their cost.

40:4150 % taxes are a big deal. And also it's going to hurt Canadians. It's miserable and we're going to support the Canadians that are affected. David Eby, Premier of British Columbia. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. That was David Eby, the Premier of Canada's westernmost province, joining us very early in the morning here on News Air.

41:08This is NewsHour, live from the BBC World Service. Europe's trade deficit with China has doubled over the last five years, reaching a billion dollars a day. Even long-time supporters of China trade, like Germany, are becoming increasingly critical of what they say are unfair subsidies and restricted access to the Chinese market. Ed Butler has been looking at the claims of Chinese predatory practices and reports that the tensions could be heading towards an all-out trade war.

41:39A Chinese factory making and selling robotics. This and other Chinese exports have surged of late, more than twice the pace of other global trade. They've even gained strength since Donald Trump introduced high-level tariffs, restricting China's access to the US market. So as a result, Europe says, it is taking the brunt. The trade as we have it right now between China and Europe is simply unsustainable. Maros Sefcevic is the EU Commissioner for Trade and Economics. I mean, Chinese export increased by 50 % and our export to China decreased by 30%. We are going to fight tooth and nail for every factory, for every job in the European Union.

42:26Take this small machine tools plant in northern Italy. A successful exporter, but one of many now said to be under threat, not least because of the growing barriers to the Chinese market. Stefania Pigozzi is a spokeswoman for the Italian machine tools trade body. China in 2016 represented 80 % of global machine tool export. This became 23 % last year, OK? And China becoming the first export country in the world. So this number reflects very clearly we have a problem of competition. Why a problem, though? I mean, that is competition. That's what happens everywhere. Why is it unfair? OK, according to us, Chinese companies receive very important government grants to produce.

43:23And in this way, they can compete on the basis of lower price. The precise level of these subsidies is hard to prove. But taking the example of another industry, solar panels, Brad Setzer of the US Council of Foreign Relations reckons there's been so much state support that many Chinese manufacturers are simply dumping products at a loss on the European market. Solar panels are being sold at best at cost and sometimes probably below cost. How did that come about? Local banks were willing to invest in those companies, lend to them. local governments were willing to build factories. The goal was not profits.

44:03The goal was production. With two years now of trade talks between EU and China seemingly stalled, the mood in Europe appears to be increasingly militant, even if tougher action risks reciprocal trade sanctions. But the question, says Finbar Birmingham of the South China Morning Post, is whether Europe's member states have the appetite to take on China. The problem is that the national interest often runs up against what the European Commission would see to be the European interest. So if you're Pedro Sanchez, the Prime Minister of Spain, and you see Chinese coming in with huge investments to create Spanish jobs, maybe from a European security perspective, this is not seen as ideal.

44:42But from the Spanish perspective, maybe it's a thousand jobs. Whatever they do, they're going to incur some sort of blowback. And that was Finbar, Birmingham, from the South China Morning Post, ending that report by Ed Butler. For fortresses and castles under siege back in the day, it must have been very dispiriting to see a machine with a huge long arm being manoeuvred into position. This was a trebuchet where a huge counterweight would be winched into place and then released, which would then in turn swing the arm that could hurl a huge rock. The idea was that this fearsome weapon could smash defensive walls, allowing your soldiers to pour in.

45:18Now researchers reckon they may have just identified the first known victim, at least first known in the UK, of a direct strike by the trebuchet. The discovery was made by Dr Jo Buckbury, a reader in biological archaeology at the University of Bradford in northern England. Dr Buckbury, welcome to NewsHour. Where were you looking and what did you find? So I was asked by Historic Environment Scotland to look at a group of nine individuals that were dug up at the castle and very early on sterling castle sorry yes sterling castle um and very early on it was apparent that a number of these had evidence of injuries that happened around the time of death um but the one that intrigued me most was known as skeleton 150 he was a youngish man he was in his 20s to early 30s when he died with over 160 fractures across his body.

46:15Oh my goodness. And why, I mean, other than that sounds incredibly painful and probably quite instantaneous when it comes to his death, what was it that interested you about his injuries? It was the shape of the fracture. So normally when bone breaks, it follows the grain of the bone. So it's a bit like splitting wood. But in this case, the breaks of the bone were enormous zigzags across the surface, which is really unusual. and I'd never seen anything like this before in my work as an archaeologist. So I talked to a lot of forensic specialists as well and very early on it became apparent that these are due to very high velocity injuries and nowadays we tend to see these in relation to car accidents, people who've been hit by a train, somebody who's fallen 20 plus metres with nothing interrupting their fall.

47:03So much greater forces than you would expect to see in the medieval period. OK. And you are confident that, I mean, you say a 20 metre fall. I mean, that this was caused by a large rock coming at very high velocity towards him rather than him just sort of tipping over the edge of the battlements. Yeah I mean if he'd fallen off Stirling Castle and it is on a nice rocky outcrop you know because of the shape of the walls which generally stick out a little bit more at the bottom and then the rock underneath it would have been a relatively short fall and you would bounce multiple times and each time the object hits something it slows the velocity down so it was definitely one of the hypotheses I considered but I'm pretty certain this is a major impact a single major impact across the back of this individual.

47:54So the back of his head, both shoulders, whole of his back. Right. Terribly unlucky. I mean, presumably he was spared a prolonged death by this. Absolutely. These injuries are entirely consistent with an instantaneous death, which is incredibly, I'm so thankful for that. Yeah, indeed. Well, dare I say it, he probably was as well. Anyway, more importantly, have you been able to date this? Do you know what battle this might have been? OK, so we have a radiocarbon date for him and these come with a level of uncertainty. But my colleague, Dr Cathy Batt, has done some work on that. And we know he died between 1255 and 1405.

48:32And we know that during that period, Stirling Castle was besieged four times. So with 1299, 1304, 1314 and 1337. But not all of these necessarily involved siege engines. but the one that jumps out at us is 1304 when we know that Edward I used multiple siege engines and one of those was specifically described, the war wolf, which was the largest trebuchet built at that time and very, very fearful. Dr Buckbury, we'll have to leave it there but the war wolf takes us to the end.

49:11Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Paris.

49:44So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.