All posts tagged: vaults

Sky News gains rare access to Bank of England’s gold vaults | Money News

Sky News gains rare access to Bank of England’s gold vaults | Money News

Published by Sam Flores

Take the Central Line into the middle of London and just before the train arrives at Bank station, something strange happens Rather than approaching in a straight line, the tunnel begins to twist and turn round dramatically. The angle of the curve is part of the explanation for why there is an enormous gap between the carriages and the platform at the station – bigger than nearly anywhere else on the network. Why the curve? Why the gap? The main answer is: the tunnels have to go around the single most intriguing, and least visited place in central London: the Bank of England‘s vaults. Far deep beneath the ground, right in the heart of the financial district, is a city within a city. Some 40% of the Bank’s floor space is to be found not above ground but under the earth, and at the heart of this underground network is the biggest gold storage facility in Europe. Mark Kleinman blog: See the latest from Sky’s City editor Image: There is more gold in the vaults …

‘Repatriate The Gold’: German Economists Urge Withdrawal From US Vaults

‘Repatriate The Gold’: German Economists Urge Withdrawal From US Vaults

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Kate Connolly via The Guardian, Shift in relations and unpredictability of Donald Trump make it ‘risky to store so much gold in the US’, say experts Germany is facing calls to withdraw its billions of euros’ worth of gold from US vaults, spurred on by the shift in transatlantic relations and the unpredictability of Donald Trump. Germany holds the world’s second biggest national gold reserves after the US, of which approximately €164bn (£122bn) worth – 1,236 tonnes – is stored in New York. Emanuel Mönch, a leading economist and former head of research at Germany’s federal bank, the Bundesbank, called for the gold to be brought home, saying it was too “risky” for it to be kept in the US under the current administration. “Given the current geopolitical situation, it seems risky to store so much gold in the US,” he told the financial newspaper Handelsblatt. “In the interest of greater strategic independence from the US, the Bundesbank would therefore be well advised to consider repatriating the gold.” Stefan Kornelius, the spokesperson for Friedrich Merz’s …

The seed vaults that could save humanity

The seed vaults that could save humanity

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Amid the 872-day siege of Leningrad in the early 1940s, nine people died protecting a library. This library was not for books, but for seeds collected from around the globe. The nine who died were food scientists, starving to death alongside 700,000 of their neighbors. The library they were protecting was the world’s first seedbank, an ancestor to current-day genebanks worldwide. Genebanks are biorepositories used to store genetic material, like seeds and cells. Their origins came from a wanderlusting Russian plant-lover named Nikolai Vavilov who dreamed of a one-stop shop for seeds from all over the world for researchers, scientists, and breeders to learn from and use to fight famine. Vavilov made 115 expeditions to 64 countries, collecting 380,000 samples for the seedbank in Leningrad, growing it into an agricultural bounty so diverse and valuable, even the Germans caught wind of it. After the Nazi siege and Vavilov’s death in the Gulag, his idea turned into something even more monumental: an …