MARKETS are in turmoil amid the uncertainty over Britain's place in Europe, with investor fears quickly rising over how the continent would cope after a Brexit.

U.N. aid convoys headed to two Syrian towns besieged by government forces on Tuesday to deliver life-saving food and medicine to some 30,000 people, a U.N. spokesman said.

The deliveries to the towns of Moadamiyeh and Kafr Batna, near Damascus, came after aid reached five besieged towns last week, part of a major push to reach civilians facing starvation.

“These are the first of what we hope to be a series of deliveries to meet the needs of people that humanitarian workers have not been able to reach for a long time,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

The convoys carried enough food and medical supplies to help some 20,000 people in Moadamiyeh and 10,000 in Kafr Batna, he said.

The humanitarian aid came a day after the United States and Russia agreed on a cessation of hostilities as of Saturday that could pave the way to more deliveries.

The United Nations is calling on all sides to lift starvation sieges across Syria, where it estimates that 487,000 people live, although some non-governmental organizations say the figure is much higher.

Last week, 114 trucks loaded with food and other basic goods reached 80,000 people in five besieged areas.

The United Nations is calling for “unconditional, unimpeded and sustained access” to all hard-to-reach areas, said Dujarric.

More than 260,000 people have died in Syria’s conflict, which began in March 2011 with anti-government protests but has since imploded into a multi-sided proxy war.

In this 2015 file photo, a victim of forced labor displays the scars on his shoulder during a Reuters interview in a village at Buthidaung township in northern Rakhine state. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

By Sebastien Malo

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - President Barack Obama signed a bill on Wednesday barring the import of goods produced by forced labor from entering the United States, throwing the weight of the U.S. market into the fight against global slavery.

Shipments derived from slavery, from fish to electronics and cocoa, will be kept out of the country under the new law that closes a legal loophole that allowed import of goods derived from forced labor if U.S. demand exceeded domestic production, officials said.

The measure closing the loophole from the Tariff Act of 1930 was included in a wider trade enforcement bill, which Obama signed into law at the White House in Washington.

“The mere deterrent effect of closing this loophole is a great step forward," Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told reporters on a conference call. "We're going to make sure that is heavily noted throughout the world.”

The new law could keep at bay billions of dollars worth of goods produced by forced labor, said Annick Febrey, senior associate at the advocacy group Human Rights First.

"It's a really big deal," she said. "While we as a country have said that we are against slavery, we've had this little-known rule in the Tariff Act."

The International Labour Organization estimates that 20.9 million people are victims of forced labor globally.

The illegal industry is estimated to generate $150 billion in profits per year, the agency has said.

Implementation of earlier U.S. anti-slavery measures faltered due to a need to determine if demand exceeded domestic production, Febrey said.

Enforcement of the new law should benefit from data from the U.S. Department of Labor, which has been listing goods, classified by nation, that are likely made by forced labor, officials said.

Only a few countries have laws addressing forced labor goods, including Canada where prison-labor imports are illegal and Australia where financial benefits from forced labor are outlawed, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

(Reporting by Sebastien Malo, additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe. Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)