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Electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc sold 83,135 China-made vehicles in wholesale in September, smashing its record of monthly sales in China, according to a report released Sunday by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

The number marks an 8% increase from August and outpaced the more than the 5% month-over-month growth of all wholesale electric vehicle sales in China, according to CPCA data.

It set a record for Tesla’s Shanghai factory since production began in December 2019, and topped the prior sales record of 78,906 in June, as the U.S. carmaker continues to invest in China production.

Globally, Tesla last week said it delivered 343,830 electric vehicles in the third quarter, a record for the world’s most valuable automaker, but less than the 359,162 analysts on average had expected, according to Refinitiv.

Tesla quickened its China deliveries after suspending most production at the Shanghai plant in July for an upgrade, which aimed to bring the factory’s weekly output to around 22,000 units compared with levels of around 17,000 in June, Reuters previously reported.

The plant, which manufactures Model 3s and Model Ys, reopened April 19 after a COVID lockdown, but only resumed full production in mid-June.

Production accelerated despite heatwaves and COVID curbs that hit its suppliers in the southwest region of the country.

China’s BYD continued to lead the domestic EV market with 200,973 wholesale sales in September, a nearly 15% jump from August, as CPCA said higher oil prices and government subsidies continue to encourage more consumers to choose electric vehicles.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said a decision by the OPEC+ grouping to cut oil production was “unhelpful and unwise” for the global economy, especially emerging markets, the Financial Times reported Sunday.

“We’re very worried about developing countries and the problems they face,” Yellen told the newspaper in an interview.

She also criticized allies for being slow to send financial aid to Ukraine.

“The pace of transferring money to Ukraine is far too slow,” Yellen added, pointing out that some countries that had pledged assistance had not got round to disbursing it.
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America’s employers slowed their hiring in September but still added a solid 263,000 jobs — potentially hopeful news that may mean the Federal Reserve’s drive to cool the job market and ease inflation is starting to make progress.

Friday’s government report showed that last month’s job growth was down from 315,000 in August and that the unemployment rate fell from 3.7% to 3.5%, matching a half-century low. Last month’s job gain was the smallest since April 2021.

September’s slightly more moderate pace of hiring may be welcomed by the Fed, which is trying to restrain the economy enough to tame the worst inflation in four decades without causing a recession. Slower job growth would mean less pressure on employers to raise pay and pass those costs on to their customers through price increases — a recipe for high inflation.

Still, the Fed would need to see more sustained evidence that hiring and pay gains are slowing before it would moderate its interest rate hikes as it fights inflation. In September, hourly wages rose 5% from a year earlier — the slowest year-over-year pace since December but still hotter than the Fed would want. The proportion of Americans who either have a job or are looking for one slipped slightly, a disappointment for those hoping that more people would enter the labor force and help ease worker shortages and upward pressure on wages.

Leisure and hospitality companies, including hotels, restaurants and bars, added 83,000 jobs last month. Health care and social assistance employers gained 75,000 jobs, factories 22,000. But governments cut jobs. Retailers, transportation and warehouse companies reduced employment modestly.

The public anxiety that has arisen over high prices and the prospect of a recession is carrying political consequences as President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party struggles to maintain control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

In its epic battle to rein in inflation, the Fed has raised its benchmark interest rate five times this year. It is aiming to slow economic growth enough to reduce annual price increases back toward its 2% target.

It has a long way to go. In August, one key measure of year-over-year inflation, the consumer price index, amounted to 8.3%. And for now, consumer spending — the primary driver of the U.S. economy — is showing resilience. In August, consumers spent a bit more than in July, a sign that the economy was holding up despite rising borrowing rates, violent swings in the stock market and inflated prices for food, rent and other essentials.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has warned bluntly that the inflation fight will “bring some pain,” notably in the form of layoffs and higher unemployment. Some economists remain hopeful that despite the persistent inflation pressures, the Fed will still manage to achieve a so-called soft landing: Slowing growth enough to tame inflation, without going so far as to tip the economy into recession.

It’s a notoriously difficult task. And the Fed is trying to accomplish it at a perilous time. The global economy, weakened by food shortages and surging energy prices resulting from Russia’s war against Ukraine, may be on the brink of recession. Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned Thursday that the IMF is downgrading its estimates for world economic growth by $4 trillion through 2026 and that “things are more likely to get worse before it gets better.”

Powell and his colleagues on the Fed’s policymaking committee want to see signs that the abundance of available jobs — there’s currently an average of 1.7 openings for every unemployed American — will steadily decline. Some encouraging news came this week, when the Labor Department reported that job openings fell by 1.1 million in August to 10.1 million, the fewest since June 2021.

Nick Bunker, head of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, suggested that among the items on “the soft-landing flight checklist” is “a decline in job openings without a spike in the unemployment rate, and that’s what we’ve seen the last few months.”

On the other hand, by any standard of history, openings remain extraordinarily high: In records dating to 2000, they had never topped 10 million in a month until last year.

Economist Daniel Zhao of the jobs website Glassdoor argued that a single-minded focus on the job market might be overdone. Regardless of what happens with jobs and wages, Zhao suggested, the Fed’s policymakers won’t likely let up on their rate-hike campaign until they see proof that they’re actually hitting their target.

“They want to see inflation slowing down,” he said.
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Delegates at Africa’s biggest oil conference have expressed concern about rising prices after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus nonmembers who also export oil, decided this week to cut production targets.

The majority of the oil cartel’s 13 member states are in Africa, but many African countries have to import refined oil.

Speaking at the Africa Oil Week conference in Cape Town, Omar Farouk Ibrahim, secretary-general of the African Petroleum Producers Organization, said the move was aimed at ensuring stability in the global market and ensuring that prices don’t fall too low.

“I believe it’s the right thing they did in order to save the industry,” he said, “and I totally think that every country has the responsibility to protect the interests of its citizens. And if by reducing production they see that as in their best interest, so be it.”

Rashid Ali Abdallah, executive director of the African Energy Commission, said it was too early to tell what the impact of the planned cuts would be.

“I hope that the price is not shooting up, because in Africa we depend on oil products in power generation,” he said.

Natacha Massano, vice president of Angola’s National Agency for Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels, said she wasn’t sure how the announcement would affect her country. Angola is one of the two biggest oil producers in Africa; Nigeria is the other, and both are OPEC members.

“Some countries will be affected more than the others,” Massano said. “Some are benefiting — of course, the producers may benefit from the high prices, but at the same time they are paying also for all other commodities.”

Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s biggest producer, has denied colluding with Russia on the production target cut.

However, Herman Wang, managing editor of Vienna-based OPEC and Middle East News, said one couldn’t tell what was discussed behind closed doors. He said he thought the cut was clearly “a big win for Russia.”

“You know that they are trying to raise money for their war effort in Ukraine,” Wang said. “Again, like all these OPEC countries, [Russia is] heavily reliant on oil revenues, and when you have a case where the outlook for the war is quite dire, [Russia is] needing this revenue. And the other impact of this is that higher oil prices make it harder for the West to enforce and impose their sanctions on Russia. So that might have been part of the calculation here for Russia in terms of trying to get this production cut done.”

OPEC+ members said the group would cut production targets by 2 million barrels per day.

U.S. President Joe Biden called the move shortsighted, noting the global economy has been dealing with the negative impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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U.S. President Joe Biden expressed his disappointment Thursday that OPEC+ nations intend to cut oil production targets by 2 million barrels a day but said the United States has alternatives and is exploring them.

“There’s a lot of alternatives. We haven’t made up our minds yet,” Biden told reporters at the White House, without elaborating.

Wednesday’s decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, along with Russia and other oil producers, to cut production targets could help Moscow fund its war in Ukraine and hurt Biden’s chances to further cut gasoline prices for American motorists ahead of next month’s nationwide congressional elections.

Opposition Republicans have blamed Biden and fellow Democrats for the higher gas prices as they try to wrest control from Democrats of one or both chambers of Congress.

In a July trip to the Mideast, Biden had pushed Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-biggest oil producer after the U.S., to hold the line against a production cut or even boost output to the global crude oil market to keep oil prices, which directly correlate to the price motorists pay for gasoline at service stations, from increasing.

Biden said, however, that he did not regret his stopover in Riyadh to meet with Saudi leaders.

“The trip was about the Middle East and about Israel and … rationalization of positions,” he said, while acknowledging the OPEC+ production cut “is a disappointment.”

Biden made the trip to Saudi Arabia even though during his presidential campaign in 2020 he branded the longtime U.S. ally as a “pariah” state for its role in the killing and dismemberment of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, at the hands of Saudi agents in the country’s Istanbul Consulate in 2018.

One of Biden’s key congressional allies, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, voiced a more critical view of Saudi Arabia than Biden in the immediate aftermath of the oil production target cut.

“From unanswered questions about 9/11 & the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, to conspiring w/ Putin to punish the US w/higher oil prices, the royal Saudi family has never been a trustworthy ally of our nation,” Durbin said on Twitter. “It’s time for our foreign policy to imagine a world without their alliance.”

Durbin’s 9/11 reference was to the 2001 al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the U.S. that killed nearly 3,000 people. Fifteen of the 19 airline hijackers who carried out the attacks were Saudi nationals.

Three Democratic members of the House of Representatives, Tom Malinowski, Sean Casten and Susan Wild, called for an end to U.S. troop protection of Persian Gulf allies.

“If Saudi Arabia and the UAE want to help [Russian President Vladimir] Putin keep oil prices high, they should look to him for their defense,” the three lawmakers said.

Despite Biden’s diplomatic overtures in recent months to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, they said, “they have now answered … with a slap in the face that will hurt American consumers and undermine our national interests.”

The OPEC+ coalition of 23 nations said the production cut, from 43.8 million barrels a day to 41.8 million, would take effect in November. It is the first time OPEC has cut oil production targets since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, although the coalition of oil-producing countries has been undershooting its target by 3 million barrels a day this year.

With the production cut, the oil producers are hoping to curb the drop in world crude prices, which surged past $100 a barrel earlier this year but had fallen 32% in the last four months before increasing again in recent days in anticipation of the OPEC announcement.

With the drop in the price of crude over the summer months, gasoline station pump prices fell in the U.S., which in turn boosted Biden’s job approval rating as the country heads to the nationwide congressional elections on November 8.

A year ago in the U.S., gas prices averaged $3.20 a gallon (3.78 liters), and in some states fell to nearly that low in recent months. But now, with crude oil prices rising again, the national average is at $3.87 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association.

While U.S. motorists are pinched by higher gas costs, Russia relies on gas and oil sales for a large portion of its budget to help fund its war in Ukraine. It supported the production cut, which will enable Moscow to sell oil for higher prices on the global market.
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Growth in global trade flows will be dramatically lower than expected in 2023, according to a report issued Wednesday by the World Trade Organization, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and global central banks’ efforts to fight inflation continue to take a toll.

The WTO projected that after expanding at a 3.5% pace in 2022, growth in the trade of goods in 2023 will plunge to just 1%. That’s considerably below the agency’s most recent estimate from April, which had trade expanding at a 3.4% clip next year.

WTO analysts cited various causes for the expected slowdown. Among other things, the increase in the price of energy, staple foods, fertilizer and other goods brought on by the war in Ukraine will continue reducing consumer spending on other items. Additionally, interest rate hikes in the United States and other advanced economies are expected to constrain consumers further, while China’s continuing struggle to manage COVID-19 has created ongoing production problems.

“Policymakers are confronted with unenviable choices as they try to find an optimal balance among tackling inflation, maintaining full employment and advancing important policy goals such as transitioning to clean energy,” WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in a statement.

‘No surprise’

Jake Colvin, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, told VOA that even without the geopolitical shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and problems with the global supply chain arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, there were other factors that made a slowdown in trade growth likely.

“It’s no surprise that while the party was raging for the global economy in the wake of COVID lockdowns, that the inflation hangover is real,” Colvin said. “There’s likely to be downward pressure on global trade for the foreseeable future, as this report points out, because of persistently high inflation, as well as ongoing supply chain challenges.”

Colvin pointed out that the recent surge in the strength of the U.S. dollar against other global currencies would also complicate trade issues.

“The world is grappling with the strength of the U.S. dollar,” he said. “Obviously, a strong U.S. dollar is good for U.S. consumers. It makes imports less expensive. But it makes U.S. exports more expensive. So, a strong U.S. dollar is always a headwind for American exporters. And it also is a challenge for countries around the world that have to buy things in dollars, including energy.”

Growth projections vary

The 2023 growth rates for North America and Asia are expected to be slightly above the global trend, at 1.4% and 1.1%. However, they will be significantly lower than in 2022. The WTO projects that North America will end this year with a 3.4% growth in trade, while Asia will experience 2.9% growth.

Regions projected to have positive but below average growth in 2023 include Europe at 0.8% and South America at 0.3%. That compares with projected full-year 2022 growth of 1.8% for Europe and 1.6% for South America.

Regions that can expect negative growth are Africa at -1.0% and the Middle East at -1.5%. However, both are expected to end 2022 with annual growth much higher than the global average, with Africa at 6.0% and the Middle East at 14.6%.

The seventh region in the assessment is the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a free trade bloc made up primarily of former satellite states of the Soviet Union and dominated by Russia. The data indicate that the CIS will see growth of 3.3% next year. However, the report said, that apparent growth will reflect only a partial recovery from the sharp -5.8% slowdown in trade growth the bloc is projected to have suffered by the end of 2022.

China’s challenges

The decline in forecast growth for Asia is driven in large part by China, which is experiencing reversals in imports and exports. This is the result of a combination of factors, but the most notable among them is COVID-19.

“The zero-COVID policy that President Xi [Jinping] has been pursuing … really put the squeeze on the Chinese economy,” Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told VOA. “Production is not there for what could be many export orders. Sometimes the ports are just not functioning as they normally do, so that really has hit the exports.”

He continued, “At the same time, China is a big importer, from [around] the world, and especially from many developing countries, which send a combination of raw materials and intermediate products to China, which are then made into finished products. … So China’s imports have been pretty slow lately, and this is hurting all its trading partners around the world.”

Spillover effects

In addition to a slowdown in orders from China, countries in the developing world are likely to see fewer orders for their goods from the U.S. and Europe than they have in the past, due in part to consumers being constrained by inflation and high interest rates.

Developing countries are facing the pernicious combination of lower revenues from exports, higher energy and fertilizer prices, and disruption in the global food supply. Added to that is the rising value of the U.S. dollar, which many developing countries need to purchase in order to transact business internationally.

A major concern, according to the WTO, is that this “could lead to food insecurity and debt distress in developing countries.”

Warning on restrictions

Okonjo-Iweala warned countries against reacting to Wednesday’s report by imposing export bans and taking other restrictive trade measures.

“While trade restrictions may be a tempting response to the supply vulnerabilities that have been exposed by the shocks of the past two years, a retrenchment of global supply chains would only deepen inflationary pressures, leading to slower economic growth and reduced living standards over time,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

“What we need is a deeper, more diversified and less concentrated base for producing goods and services,” she added. “In addition to boosting economic growth, this would contribute to supply resilience and long-term price stability by mitigating exposure to extreme weather events and other localized disruptions.”
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The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, along with Russia and other oil producers, on Wednesday slashed production by 2 million barrels a day, an action that could help Moscow pay for its war with Ukraine and hurt U.S. President Joe Biden’s chances to further cut gasoline prices for American motorists.

The production cut was seen as a rebuke to Biden, who visited Saudi Arabia in July in what now has turned out to be a futile effort to persuade the world’s second-biggest oil producer after the United States to refrain from cutting production.

White House officials assailed the decision in Vienna by the 23 countries that belong to the OPEC+ coalition, which analysts say could increase the risk of a global recession in the coming months. Crude oil prices had been falling for months on the world market but had risen in recent days in anticipation of the OPEC production cut.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and National Economic Council director Brian Deese said in a statement that the president “is disappointed by the shortsighted decision by OPEC+ to cut production quotas while the global economy is dealing with the continued negative impact of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“At a time when maintaining a global supply of energy is of paramount importance,” Sullivan and Deese said, “this decision will have the most negative impact on lower- and middle-income countries that are already reeling from elevated energy prices.”

Effective in November

The OPEC+ coalition said the production cut, from 43.8 million barrels a day to 41.8 million, would take effect in November. It is the first time OPEC has cut oil production targets since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, although the coalition has been undershooting its target by 3 million barrels a day this year.

Because of the underproduction of the oil-producing countries, White House national security spokesman John Kirby played down the new OPEC+ agreement.

“So, in some ways, this announced decrease really just kind of gets them back into more aligned with the actual production,” he said.

Even so, the oil producers are hoping to curb the drop in world crude prices, which surged past $100 a barrel earlier this year but had fallen 32% in the last four months before increasing to more $93 a barrel on Wednesday after the OPEC announcement.

With the drop in the price of crude over the summer months, gasoline station pump prices fell in the U.S., which in turn boosted Biden’s job approval rating as the country heads to nationwide congressional elections next month.

A year ago in the U.S., gas station prices averaged $3.20 a gallon (3.78 liters) and in some states fell to near that low in recent months. But now, with crude oil prices on the rise again, the national average is at $3.83 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association.

With Biden’s Democratic Party holding narrow control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and some pollsters predicting a Republican takeover of the House and possibly the Senate, White House officials are concerned about any increase in gasoline pump prices being blamed on Democrats, giving Republicans an electoral boost.

In addition, Russia relies on gas and oil sales for a large portion of its budget to help fund its war in Ukraine. It supported the production cut, which will enable Moscow to sell oil for higher prices on the global market.
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The World Trade Organization predicts global trade growth will slow sharply to 1 percent in 2023, down from the expected high of 3.5 percent this year. 

WTO economists say trade has played a key role in keeping the global economy running throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. While merchandise trade plunged amid lockdowns in 2020, they note it subsequently rebounded, keeping the world supplied with food, medicine and other essential goods. 

However, they say multipronged crises, including the pandemic, climate shocks and the war in Ukraine, continue to cause supply chain disruptions. Fiscal and monetary policies and inflationary pressures, they note, are causing energy and commodity prices to rise. They say low-income developing countries in particular face serious risks from insecurity and debt distress. 

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says most regions will likely register slightly positive export growth in 2023, with the exceptions of Africa and the Middle East. She expects both regions to experience negative export growth. World GDP next year is expected to slow to 2.3 percent, she says, down nearly a full percentage point from the WTO’s previous estimate. 

“Policymakers face unenviable choices as they attempt to find an optimal balance among fighting inflation, maintaining employment and advancing important policy goals such as the transition to cleaner energy,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “Trade restrictions may be a tempting response to economic distress, but these would only deepen inflationary pressures and reduce living standards.” 

Okonjo-Iweala says free trade generates growth and can help keep prices from rising. For example, keeping markets open for food trade, she says, will increase the availability of essential foodstuffs and maintain downward pressure on prices. 

“Our monitoring work on food trade has pointed to some recent backsliding on restrictions, so we need to remain vigilant,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “Looking ahead, a better response to the supply chain vulnerabilities exposed by the past two years is to build a more diversified, less concentrated base for producing goods and services.” 

Diversification will boost economic growth and contribute to supply resilience and long-term price stability, she says, adding it also can help meet current and future economic challenges. 

 
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U.N. economists warn the monetary and fiscal policies of advanced economies risk plunging the world into a recession worse than the financial crisis of 2008. UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has issued its annual Trade and Development Report 2022.

The authors of the report warn the world is teetering on the edge of a recession due to bad policy decisions by advanced economies, combined with cascading crises resulting from climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine.

They project this year’s global growth rate of 2.5 percent will slow to 2.2 percent in 2023. This, they say, will leave a cumulative shortfall of more than $17 trillion, close to 20 percent of the world’s income.

The report finds the slowdown is hitting countries in all regions, especially developing countries. It says growth rates in the poorer countries are expected to drop below three percent, damaging development and employment prospects.

UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan says middle-income countries in Latin America, as well as low-income countries in Africa, will register some of the sharpest slowdowns this year.

“In Africa, an additional 58 million people will fall into extreme poverty in 2022 adding to the 55 million already pushed into extreme poverty by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Grynspan said.

Grynspan says developing countries are facing alarming levels of debt distress and under investment. She says 46 developing countries are severely exposed to multiple economic shocks. She adds another 48 countries are seriously exposed, heightening the threat of a global debt crisis.

“So, countries that were showing signs of debt distress before COVID are taking some of the biggest hits, with climate shocks further threatening economic stability,” Grynspan said. “This is increasing the threat of a global debt crisis. So, countries urgently need real debt relief.”

Grynspan says there is still time to step back from the edge of recession if countries use available tools to calm inflation and support vulnerable groups.

Among its recommendations, UNCTAD urges a more pragmatic strategy that deploys strategic price controls, windfall taxes, anti-trust measures and tighter regulations on commodities speculation.
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OPEC+ will consider an oil output cut of more than a million barrels per day (bpd) when it meets on Oct. 5, OPEC sources told Reuters on Sunday.

The figure is slightly above estimates for a cut given last week, which ranged between 500,000 bpd and 1 million bpd.

OPEC+, which combines OPEC countries and allies such as Russia, is meeting in person in Vienna for the first time since March 2020.

“It is a meeting that is taking place at a very interesting global time,” one of the sources said.

The output cuts are being considered on the back of a slide in oil prices from multi-year highs reached in March and market volatility.

Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s de facto leader, first flagged the possibility of cuts to correct the market in August.
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Poland, far from being overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians seeking refuge from Russia’s invasion of their country, is seeing its economy grow, according to economists.

The latest available figures from early August show about half of the working-age people who fled Ukraine for Poland are now employed.

In an interview with VOA, World Bank economist Reena Badiani-Magnusson, who specializes in the region, called the employment statistics for the temporarily displaced people, or TDPs, released by the Polish government “impressive.”

Badiani-Magnusson quotes a National Bank of Poland study that found between 2013 and 2018, during the first wave of Ukrainian migration, the presence of Ukrainian migrants in the country had a .5% positive impact on growth.

“On top of that, we’ve done some analysis of the current crisis, and we find that should 500,000 Ukrainian displaced people be integrated into the labor market successfully, we anticipate a medium-term impact on the growth of 1.5%,” she said.

Experts interviewed by VOA said there are three main reasons why the “refugee crisis” quickly filled the Polish market with needed labor. First, Ukrainians who arrived in Poland, including many mothers with children, had high professional qualifications and wanted to work. Second, Polish authorities quickly removed most barriers to Ukrainian TDP employment. And third, the sizeable Ukrainian diaspora facilitated the adjustment and labor engagement of the newly arrived compatriots fleeing the war.

Ukrainians working below their qualifications

For many newly arrived Ukrainian women, says Ludmila Dymitrow, a coordinator at the Information Center for Foreigners in Krakow, low-skilled work is only the first step.

“We explain that even if you had a good job and a high status in your homeland, you could find it here, too, but start with something simpler. A good start can begin in different ways, even from the checkout in a store. Learn the language, and life will give you other opportunities.”

One of many Ukrainian TDPs in Krakow, Olena Kurta, a mother of two, cleans hotel rooms. She used to teach law in the city of Horlivka, in the Russia-supported so-called Donetsk People’s Republic in 2014, and later opened and ran a daycare in Kryvyi Rih.

“I want to learn the language and find another job. I haven’t decided what I want to do. I have to start everything from the beginning,” said Kurta.

Tatyana Potapova, another Ukrainian woman, came to Krakow from the village of Lyptsi near Kharkiv, captured by Russians in the early days of the invasion. In her 60s and a chemist by education and employment, she enrolled in Polish-language classes as soon as she arrived.

“I imagine that I can work as a concierge in some institution. It is my dream. I am willing even to work in a store, but preferably not in a grocery store,” said Potapova in an interview with VOA.

Polish authorities provide immediate job assistance

On March 12, 2022, the Polish parliament passed a law on assistance to Ukrainian citizens, which gave the TDPs from Ukraine the right to stay legally in Poland for 18 months and access its health care system, education, social services and labor market.

The government and local authorities assist Ukrainian TDPs in finding employment. For example, the provincial Employment Administration helps connect job seekers with employers. It also began some programs, available only to Polish citizens and Ukrainian TDPs, that included financing 85% of the cost of job training, said its director. 

The administration sent their representative to the Center for Foreigners, located in the Krakow shopping mall, to help job seekers find opportunities and apply for vacancies.

Badiani-Magnusson points to a comprehensive approach to facilitating access of Ukrainian women to the labor market.

“The Polish government and society need to be recognized and commended for their generous and open-armed support to the populations arriving, the speed and rapidity at which populations that wanted to work were able to have registered temporary protection” that provided services that allowed to integrate them into the labor market, said the economist.

Ukrainian diaspora helps new arrivals find jobs

Maciej Bukowski, president of the Warsaw-based research institute Wise-Europa, draws attention to another aspect – before the arrival of a new wave of TDPs after February 24, Ukrainians were already in Poland, arriving especially after 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, and instigated and supported aggression in Donbas.

The presence of Ukrainians helped absorb the sudden and significant wave of new refugees from Ukraine.

Barriers for Ukrainians in the Polish labor market

Still, obstacles to the employment of the Ukrainian TDPs remain. The language barrier is one of them. Even though Ukrainian and Polish are linguistically close, it still takes time and effort to be able to speak Polish fluently.

The Zustricz Foundation, an organization of Ukrainians in Krakow, offers classes for Polish-language learners, one of the popular ways to assist Ukrainian TDPs.

A second barrier is the need to care for children. Almost half of those who arrived from Ukraine after February 24 and remained in Poland (600,000) are children.

Badiani-Magnusson of the World Bank points to the need to find employment that matches the qualifications of the Ukrainian job seekers. Zustricz Foundation founder Aleksandra Zapolska agrees – there is still a need to connect employers and job seekers, especially among the most qualified.

“In the medical field, there is a great need for nurses and doctors; for example, there is a shortage of psychiatrists. On the other hand, doctors do not fully know where to turn because not every hospital is interested at that moment; there is no such path for them to meet,” she explained.

The World Bank also says that Ukrainian entrepreneurs need help with adaptation to Polish legislation and access to finance. “You can imagine that you can have a very successful business in Ukraine, and you’d like to be able to bring those same skills into the Polish labor market,” says Badiani-Magnusson.

An uncertain outcome

Zapolska points to another problem – uncertainty about the future.

Will these people return to Ukraine? Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukrainians will return with the liberation of Ukrainian territories; the critical moment here will be the liberation of Kherson. That is why, he said, it is essential to end the war in such a way that Russia cannot continue posing a threat to Ukrainian territories.

“Many Ukrainians do not know whether they will return, and their decision often changes,” said Zapolska.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 7 million Ukrainian TDPs remain in European countries – 1.3 million in Poland. Since the start of the full-scale offensive, more than 6 million people have crossed the border from Ukraine to Poland.

VOA’s Georgian Service contributed to this report.
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Trains in Britain all but ground to a halt Saturday as coordinated strikes by rail workers added to a week of turmoil caused by soaring energy prices and unfunded tax cuts that roiled financial markets.

Only about 11% of train services were expected to operate across the U.K. Saturday, according to Network Rail. Unions said they called the latest in a series of one-day strikes to demand that wage increases keep pace with inflation that is expected to peak at around 11% this month.

Consumers were also hit with a jump in their energy bills Saturday as the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushes gas and electricity prices higher. Household bills are expected to rise by about 20%, even after the government stepped in to cap prices.

Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has been in office less than a month, cited the cost-of-living crisis as the reason she moved swiftly to introduce a controversial economic stimulus program, which includes 45 billion pounds ($48 billion) of unfunded tax cuts.

Concern that the plans would push government debt to unsustainable levels sent the pound tumbling to a record low against the dollar this week and forced the Bank of England to intervene in the bond market.

“We need to get things done in this country more quickly,” Truss said in an unapologetic column for The Sun newspaper published Saturday. “So, I am going to do things differently. It involves difficult decisions and does involve disruption in the short term.”

Many workers aren’t convinced.

Four labor unions have called three, 24-hour strikes over the next eight days, ensuring service disruptions for much of the week.

The timing is of particular concern for runners and fans trying to get to the capital for Sunday’s London Marathon, with is expected to attract 42,000 competitors.

Mick Lynch, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union, said the strikes were designed to target the annual conference of Truss’s Conservative Party, which begins Sunday in Birmingham, England.

“We don’t want to inconvenience the public, and we’re really sorry that that’s happening,’’ Lynch said. “But the government has brought this dispute on. They (put) the challenges down to us, to cut our jobs, to cut our pensions and to cut our wages against inflation.”

Lynch urged Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan to take “urgent steps to allow a negotiated settlement.” The union said the latest figures showed railway bosses benefiting from government tax cuts.

As a result of the strike, there will be no service between London and major cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle Saturday. Lingering disruptions are likely to affect service Sunday morning as well.

Runners and spectators traveling to London for the marathon, which begins at 9:30 a.m., have been warned they are likely to be frustrated by the strike.

“It is particularly disheartening that this weekend’s strike will hit the plans of thousands of runners who have trained for months to take part in the iconic London Marathon,’’ said Daniel Mann, director of industry operations at Rail Delivery Group. “That will also punish the many charities, large and small, who depend on sponsorship money raised by such events to support the most vulnerable in our community.”
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While European Union nations are still mulling a cap on gas prices, some businesses are more in a hurry for solutions to the continent’s energy crisis.

In Brussels, the epicenter of the EU, restaurant owners have imagined how a future without gas and electricity would look like for gourmets.

The guests at the dinner served at the Brasserie Surrealiste and cooked by Racines employees this week were the first to experience it: No ovens, no stoves, no hot plates, no coffee machines and no light bulbs.

Still, great food.

Just cold entrees, or slightly grilled over the flaming charcoal grill of a Japanese barbecue, served at candle-lit tables.

“The idea is to go back to the cave age,” said Francesco Cury, the Racines owner. “We prepared a whole series of dishes that just need to be grilled for a few seconds … But the search for taste, for the amazing, for the stunning, is still part of our business.”

On the menu: brioche with anchovies, porchetta and focaccia cooked on a wood fire, raw white tuna, grilled pork with beans, and ricotta cream with pumpkin jam and pistachios as desert.

But what sounds like a romantic atmosphere and a one-time experience is actually what customers could face more permanently if energy bills keep increasing.

“People see price increases of 30% to 40% in the supermarket. And we, restaurant owners, buy the same raw material, the same products. So what do we do? We increase the prices. But then on top comes the price of gas and electricity. Can we do our job without energy sources? The answer is no,” Cury said. “So we have to think a little bit more, and society has to realize how critical the situation is.”

The dramatic rise of inflation in Belgium could have been a deterrent, but 50 guests took part in the dinner Thursday organized as part of the “Brussels in the Dark” initiative involving a dozen of restaurants.

“We are at a point when one needs to choose between being warm at home or eating out,” said Stephane Lepla, on a night out with his girlfriend. “Finding the balance is complicated. So yes, of course, there is a reflection on a daily basis. There are habits that need to change, that we try to change anyway, even if it is not always easy.”
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This year’s Nobel Prize season approaches as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shattered decades of almost uninterrupted peace in Europe and raised the risks of a nuclear disaster.

The secretive Nobel committees never hint who will win the prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, economics or peace. It’s anyone’s guess who might win the awards being announced starting Monday.

Yet there’s no lack of urgent causes deserving the attention that comes with winning the world’s most prestigious prize: wars in Ukraine and Ethiopia, disruptions to supplies of energy and food, rising inequality, the climate crisis, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The science prizes reward complex achievements beyond the understanding of most. But the recipients of the prizes in peace and literature are often known by a global audience, and the choices — or perceived omissions — have sometimes stirred emotional reactions.

Members of the European Parliament have called for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine to be recognized this year by the Nobel Peace Prize committee for their resistance to the Russian invasion.

While that desire is understandable, that choice is unlikely because the Nobel committee has a history of honoring figures who end conflicts, not wartime leaders, said Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Smith believes more likely peace prize candidates would be those fighting climate change or the International Atomic Energy Agency, a past recipient. Honoring the IAEA again would recognize its efforts to prevent a radioactive catastrophe at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant amid fighting in Ukraine, and its work in fighting nuclear proliferation, Smith said.

“This is a really difficult period in world history, and there is not a lot of peace being made,” he said.

Promoting peace isn’t always rewarded with a Nobel. India’s Mohandas Gandhi, a prominent symbol of nonviolence, was never so honored.

In some cases, the winners have not lived out the values enshrined in the peace prize. 

Just this week the Vatican acknowledged imposing disciplinary sanctions on Nobel Peace Prize-winning Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo following allegations he sexually abused boys in East Timor in the 1990s.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won in 2019 for making peace with neighboring Eritrea. A year later, a largely ethnic conflict erupted in the country’s Tigray region. Some accuse Abiy of stoking the tensions, which have resulted in widespread atrocities. Critics have called for his Nobel to be revoked, and the Nobel committee has issued a rare admonition to him.

The Myanmar activist Aung San Suu Kyi won in 1991 for her opposition to military rule but decades later has been viewed as failing to oppose atrocities committed against the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority.

In some years, no peace prize has been awarded. The Norwegian Nobel Committee paused them during World War I, except to honor the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1917. It didn’t hand out any from 1939 to 1943 because of World War II. In 1948, the year Gandhi died, the committee made no award, citing a lack of a suitable living candidate.

The peace prize also does not always confer protection.

Last year journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia were awarded “for their courageous fight for freedom of expression” in the face of authoritarian governments.

Following the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has cracked down even harder on independent media, including Muratov’s Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s most renowned independent newspaper. Muratov himself was attacked on a Russian train by an assailant who poured red paint over him, injuring his eyes.

The Philippines government this year ordered the shutdown of Ressa’s news organization, Rappler.

The literature prize, meanwhile, has been anything but predictable.

Few had bet on last year’s winner, Zanzibar-born, U.K.-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose books explore the personal and societal impacts of colonialism and migration.

Gurnah was only the sixth Nobel literature laureate born in Africa, and the prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers. It is also male dominated, with just 16 women among its 118 laureates.

A clear contender is Salman Rushdie, the India-born writer and free-speech advocate who spent years in hiding after Iran’s clerical rulers called for his death over his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie, 75, was stabbed and seriously injured in August at a festival in New York state.

The list of possible winners includes literary giants from around the world: Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Japan’s Haruki Murakami, Norway’s Jon Fosse, Antigua-born Jamaica Kincaid and France’s Annie Ernaux.

The prizes to Gurnah in 2021 and U.S. poet Louise Gluck in 2020 have helped the literature prize move on from years of controversy and scandal.

In 2018, the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, which names the Nobel literature committee, and sparked an exodus of members. The academy revamped itself but faced more criticism for giving the 2019 literature award to Austria’s Peter Handke, who has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes.

Some scientists hope the award for physiology or medicine honors colleagues instrumental in the development of the mRNA technology that went into COVID-19 vaccines, which saved millions of lives around the world.

“When we think of Nobel prizes, we think of things that are paradigm shifting, and in a way I see mRNA vaccines and their success with COVID-19 as a turning point for us,” said Deborah Fuller, a microbiology professor at the University of Washington.

Physics at times can seem arcane and difficult for the public to understand. But the last three years, the physics Nobel has honored more accessible topics: climate change computer models, black holes and planets outside our solar system.

Some harder-to-understand topics in physics — like stopping light, quantum physics and carbon nanotubes — could capture a Nobel award this year.

The Nobel announcements kick off Monday with the prize in physiology or medicine, followed by physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 7 and the economics award on October 10.

The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on December 10.
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Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen plan to use this year’s Freedman’s Bank Forum to highlight how federal coronavirus pandemic relief program funds have helped support Black- and minority-owned businesses.

The Treasury Department said in a statement that “the importance of expanding the community finance system will be front and center” at the Oct. 4 forum. In 2015, then-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew launched the annual Freedman’s conference to develop strategies to address persistent racial economic disparities.

Roughly 96% of Black-owned businesses are sole proprietorships and single-employee companies. These businesses have the hardest time finding funding and are often the first to suffer during economic downturns. They often turn to financial institutions for the underserved and other non-traditional lenders for micro-loans and grants.

Earlier this month, Treasury announced that it had disbursed roughly $8.28 billion in relief funds to 162 community financial institutions across the country through its Emergency Capital Investment Program.

The forum will include a panel on new support for community finance institutions, small businesses and low wealth communities, “all in an effort to unlock the economic potential of communities of color, rural areas, and others that have experienced limits on economic opportunity,” the department said.

A February Government Accountability Office report outlined how various agencies could improve efforts to increase banking access for people who don’t have access to bank accounts.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union Administration and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were all identified for improvements.
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Nepali tea producers are increasingly worried about a proposal in India’s parliament that could make it much harder for them to sell tea to their giant southern neighbor and most important customer.

The proposal, contained in a June 2022 recommendation from India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce, calls for much stricter standards on the certificates of origin required for all Nepali tea imported into India.

Nepali tea exporters say they already face exacting requirements for entry to the Indian market, even when their products have met certification standards maintained by Japan, the United States and the international Certification of Environmental Standards organization.

“There have been constant policy changes that we have to comply [with], which makes it difficult to export tea to India,” said Shanta Banskota Koirala, co-owner and managing director of the Kanchanjangha Tea Estate and Research Center.

“Usually there is also a lot of hassle on borders, things such as asking for more documents than what was initially required, and even if provided the required documents, the work doesn’t get done on time,” Koirala told VOA.

The stakes are high for Nepal, which sells about 90% of its high-grade orthodox tea – loose-leaf tea produced by traditional methods — and about 50% of its lower-grade crush, tear and curl tea – tea whose leaves have been crushed torn and curled into pellets — to India. The industry employs almost 200,000 people in Nepal and contributes more than $40 million a year to its economy.

The orthodox tea, grown at higher altitudes in the Himalayan nation, is especially prized around the world, with its taste and quality attributed to the region’s climatic conditions, soil, the type of bushes planted and even the quality of the air.

But critics in India accuse the Nepalese exporters of mixing their product with similar-tasting tea from the neighboring Indian region of Darjeeling, which sells in India for a much higher price. The recommendation from the parliamentary committee calls for much stricter measures to ensure that all tea sold from Nepal was indeed grown in Nepal.

For the Nepalese growers, the threat of new bureaucratic hurdles is compounded by indignation over the suggestion that their tea is of lower quality than the Darjeeling variety.

“The comments from the committee on the quality of the tea has hurt the traders and farmers in Nepal,” said Bishnu Prasad Bhattarai, executive director of the National Tea and Coffee Development Board Nepal.

“We have raised our concern with the counterpart Indian government officials. We are hopeful that the trade between the two countries will go on smoothly as the two countries share good relation with each other on many fronts including trade,” Bhattarai added.

Suresh Mittal, president of the Nepal Tea Producers Association, also rejected the parliamentary committee’s complaints, pointing out that the quality of all the tea sold into India is certified by India’s Food Safety and Standards Authority.

“Without this proof of origin, we cannot sell even a single leaf abroad. We are exporting tea that has been grown and processed here in Nepal,” Mittal insisted.

Mittal said discussions on the proposal are continuing between the two countries, and that, so far, the trade in tea is proceeding smoothly.

“However, sooner or later it can be a problem for the Nepalese tea industry and will have an adverse effect to over 70% of tea industry of Nepal. We have to start looking for alternate markets,” he said.
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The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) cites top-ranked Switzerland, followed by the United States and Sweden, as the world’s most innovative economies. 

WIPO uses some 80 indicators to rank the innovative performance of 132 economies. These include measures on the political environment, education, infrastructure, business sophistication and knowledge creation of each economy.

The latest annual report shows some interesting moves in the rankings and the emergence of new powerhouses. Switzerland, once again, comes out on top. The United States moves up one position in the rankings to second place, followed by Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

A co-editor of the Global Index, Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, said 11th-ranked China is the only middle-income country to have made it this far. He said other emerging economies, such as Turkey and India, have put in strong performances, and countries in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa have made some significant upward moves.

“Several developing countries are performing above expectations relative to their level of development,” Wunsch-Vincent said. “So, these are, of course, countries which have GDP capita which are lower. Eight of [the] innovation over-performers, and that is good news, are from sub-Saharan Africa, with Kenya, Rwanda and Mozambique in the lead.”

The Global Index also focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on innovation. The report shows that research and development, as well as other investments that drive worldwide innovative activity, continued to boom in 2021. This despite the pandemic.

WIPO Director General Daren Tang said this result defied expectations. He noted that after the dot-com bust in 2001, the 2008 global financial crisis, the matrix for innovation dropped, but that was not the case for the last two years.

“In fact, the report shows that investments in global research and development in 2020, two years ago, grew at a rate of 3.3 percent,” he said. “Top corporate R&D spenders — in other words, the most innovative firms worldwide — increased their R&D spending by nearly 10 percent last year, in 2021, which is higher than pre-pandemic growth.”

On a more sobering note, Tang warned that conditions may take a turn for the worse as the pandemic recedes, as high inflation and geopolitical tensions pose new economic and social challenges. He said innovative approaches will have to be developed to help people worldwide navigate through tough times ahead.
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