Wednesday newspaper round-up: British Steel, Japan/US, net zero
By Michele Maatouk
Date: Wednesday 18 Feb 2026
(Sharecast News) - British Steel has secured an order worth tens of millions of pounds to supply rail for a high-speed electric railway in Turkey, amid continuing uncertainty over the long-term future of the government-controlled steelworks in Scunthorpe. The site will supply 36,000 tonnes of rail to ERG International Group, the company announced, in what it called an "eight-figure agreement". - Guardian
Japan has drawn up plans for investments in US oil, gas and critical mineral projects worth about $36bn under the first wave of a deal with Donald Trump. The US president and Sanae Takaichi, Japan's prime minister, announced a trio of projects including a power plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, billed by the Trump administration as the largest natural gas-fired generating facility in US history. - Guardian
Ed Miliband will fail to meet his net zero targets unless he spends an extra £75bn on renewables, a leading energy consultancy has said. Wood Mackenzie has warned the UK does not currently have enough wind and solar to decarbonise the grid, claiming nearly all of the Energy Secretary's 2030 clean power targets are "out of reach". - Telegraph
lon Musk's SpaceX is bidding for a secretive contract to build swarms of voice-controlled drones for the US military. The Pentagon has launched a $100m (£74m) competition to develop an AI bot that can be used to translate voice or written commands from soldiers to a fleet of drones. Mr Musk's SpaceX is one of the companies pitching for a share of the work, Bloomberg reported. - Telegraph
Regulators are investigating a potential fraud after the collapse of a high-street law firm left hundreds of staff and customers in limbo. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) confirmed that at least £1 million in client funds was thought to be missing from PM Law, which operated 24 branches stretching from Yorkshire to Kent. - The Times
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