Бурштинська ТЕС заявила про переключення двох своїх енергоблоків в енергетичну систему України через відключення двох енергоблоків – ЗАЕС та ХАЕС.
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On a blustery January afternoon, Professor Kang Dong-won is scouring the beach for trash — specifically, North Korean trash that’s washed ashore on the remote Yeonpyeong Island near the disputed sea border with North Korea.  

“Ah, right here,” Kang exclaims as he reaches under a heap of garbage tangled by a fraying rope. “Eskimo,” he says, holding up a blue plastic package. “North Korean ice cream.”  

It’s the 35th different type of Eskimo brand ice cream Kang has found during his past year of hunting for North Korean garbage. In total, he says he has collected 1,414 pieces of North Korean trash from South Korean beaches.   

“The waste is so diverse — food, beverages, snacks, medicines, cosmetics. It’s like a little (North Korean) market here at the beach,” says Kang, a professor of political science and diplomacy at Dong-A University in Busan, South Korea.   

Though it may seem strange, examining trash is one of the few ways to observe North Korea’s economy firsthand during the coronavirus pandemic, which has made the country more inaccessible than ever to outsiders.   

New ‘dark age’    

Since North Korea sealed its borders in February 2020, most foreigners, such as diplomats and aid workers, have left the country.  

Increased border patrols — which include shoot-to-kill orders, according to U.S. officials — have drastically reduced the flow of defectors and smuggling across the North Korea-China border.    

Meanwhile, domestic travel restrictions complicate the ability of North Koreans to covertly use Chinese cell phones to communicate with those outside the country.    

The restrictions are severing already fragile links to North Korea, plunging the country into what some observers say is a new “information dark age.” 

The situation is frustrating for scholars like Kang, who has visited Pyongyang and made several research trips to Chinese cities on the North Korea border. Since those kinds of trips are now impossible, he has instead turned to trash. 

Trash: more revealing than you may think   

During a brief garbage hunt with VOA, Kang found a diverse range of items, including toothpaste containers, instant noodle packages, fruit juice boxes, and a piece of North Korean propaganda slamming South Korean conservatives. 

Even simple commercial products can offer insights about North Korea’s economy.  

Mundane details such as ingredient lists and production dates can show what North Korea is able to produce and import during the pandemic.    

Many of the packages specify the exact North Korean factory where the product was made. In some cases, the factory is a known military facility — a detail that can indicate what products the North provides to its soldiers, Kang says.  

Even the packaging material holds clues. Newer trash, Kang says, is often composed of recycled or locally sourced product, likely because of North Korea’s import difficulties.    

The most insightful trash, according to Kang, is North Korean medicine containers, which help him better understand the kind of traditional Korean methods of healthcare often used in North Korea. “This is revealing because these items could not be easily obtained even if I were able to visit North Korea,” he says.  

Kang also pays attention to the way North Korea, perhaps the least capitalist country in the world, markets its products. In recent years, he says, North Korean brands have put more effort into creating sleek advertising on their products. “Not even North Korea can ignore the tastes and desires of its people,” he says.    

Locals unimpressed 

Although North Korean garbage can be found on several South Korean beaches, many of Kang’s trash hunts occur on Yeonpyeong Island.  

Part military outpost, part quiet fishing village, Yeonpyeong feels disconnected from the rest of South Korea. It is reachable only by a passenger ferry that runs once a day, if weather conditions allow.   

At its closest, North Korean territory is just four kilometers away from Yeonpyeong and easily visible with the naked eye. It’s not difficult to find North Korean trash here, especially at beaches facing the North.    

But many longtime residents say they barely notice the North Korean garbage. Eighty-one-year-old Oh Gui-im, who frequently collects oysters at the beach, says she’s seen a lot more than just trash wash ashore during her 55 years on the island.  

“Landmines also float around,” she told VOA. “You have no idea how much stuff comes from the North. So many products — and even human corpses.”   

Growing trend 

While local residents may be unimpressed by the trash, a growing number of Korea analysts are interested, especially when so many other sources of information about North Korea have run dry.    

“It’s kind of become, I like to say, like lunar studies,” says Chad O’Carroll, the Seoul-based chief executive of Korea Risk Group, which monitors North Korea. “Telescopes, satellite imagery — that’s pretty much how we’re having to do it.”    

Examining North Korean trash is not only a way to learn about North Korea’s economy, he says, it’s also a way to feel more physically connected to the country.   

“North Korea is a very abstract country and when you’re looking at it through the computer screen all day and making phone calls and researching online, it’s sometimes easy to forget that it’s just a few dozen miles away from where we’re sitting right now,” he says.    

Kang agrees. He says at first some questioned why a university professor would spend so much time looking through trash. But he says he’s found so much useful info that he’s written a book on the topic. 

“With this trash, I can see the lives of North Koreans,” he says.    

With North Korea closed indefinitely, scraps may be all that he has for a while. 

Lee Juhyun contributed to this report.
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With its borders closed and virtually all foreigners gone, North Korea is more inaccessible than ever during the coronavirus pandemic. So to learn about the reclusive country’s economy, some North Korea watchers are picking up whatever scraps they can. In some cases, that means literally examining North Korean trash, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from the inter-Korean border.

Camera: William Gallo                                     Produced by: Rod James   

 
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Чотири країни готові евакуювати своїх дипломатів з України, але НАТО, Євросоюз та інші організації евакуації наразі не планують
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The International Monetary Fund board on Monday approved a three-year $455 million loan for the Republic of Congo to help undergird the small African nation’s economic recovery. 

The global crisis lender will provide $90 million immediately under the Extended Credit Facility to help the oil-dependent country deal with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The economy “is expected to strengthen in the second half of the year, supported by vaccine rollout, social spending, and domestic arrears, payments,” IMF Deputy Managing Director Kenji Okamura said in a statement 

“However, the nascent recovery is facing significant risks, including a possible worsening of the pandemic (and) continued volatility in oil prices.” 

But reducing the nation’s “debt vulnerabilities” will be key, Okamura said, noting the government is working on restructuring its debt. 

The Republic of Congo, a land of 5 million people that abuts the vast Democratic Republic of Congo, relies on oil for most of its wealth and has built up debt to China through loans that helped build some of its petroleum infrastructure. 

The IMF estimates the economy will grow 2.4% this year, after a slight contraction in 2021. 

 
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Following the worst week for U.S. stocks since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, market volatility continued Monday — partly due to worries about Russian military movements near Ukraine.  

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 100 points after six consecutive days of losses. For most of Monday’s session, it appeared there would be a significant seventh day of losses, with the benchmark index in a free-fall, dropping 1,100 points (3.3%) before staging an extraordinary recovery.  

It was the sharpest one-day comeback for the Dow and the S&P 500 index since October 2008.  

The tech-laden Nasdaq composite closed 0.6% higher earlier in the day, trading more than 4% lower.  

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced Monday it is dispatching ships and jet fighters to eastern Europe following the increase in Russian military forces near Ukraine.  

The U.S. Defense Department also announced Monday it has placed 8,500 troops on standby for possible deployment to central and eastern Europe to bolster NATO defenses. The previous day, the State Department instructed the families of U.S. diplomats in Ukraine to leave the country.  

“The market already had downward momentum. Throwing in some geopolitical headlines was essentially another reason to sell,” according to Tom Essaye, president of Sevens Report Research. 

Investors have been anxiously eyeing anticipated action by the Federal Reserve to stem inflation because interest rate hikes could throttle growth for the U.S. economy.  

A decision on interest rates by the Fed is expected on Wednesday.  

The remarkable afternoon turnaround for the stock market followed a U.S. Treasury auction of two-year notes. 

“There was a lot of demand for that Treasury auction that came out at 1 p.m.,” Essaye told VOA. “People around the market looked and said, ‘Wow, maybe bond investors and traders aren’t quite as nervous about the Fed going crazy on rate hikes as everybody else is.’” 

The White House brushed off concern about the market volatility.  

“We focus on the trends of the economy, not any one day,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a routine briefing Monday.  

“The market is up about 15%” compared to when Joe Biden took over from Donald Trump as U.S. president, noted Psaki, adding that “unlike his predecessor, the president does not look at the stock market as a means by which to judge the economy.” 
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The Russian stock market took a dive Monday as war fears triggered a massive sell-off, with tens of billions of dollars wiped from the value of some of the country’s leading businesses.

As concerns mount that President Vladimir Putin is poised to order an invasion of neighboring Ukraine, the ruble also hit a 14-month low, prompting the Central Bank to intervene by halting its regular purchases of foreign currency to help prop up the ruble.

“The Bank of Russia has decided not to purchase foreign currency on the domestic market,” the bank said in a statement. “This decision was made in order to reduce the volatility of financial markets.”

The bank regularly converts the proceeds of the country’s oil and gas exports to avoid the ruble being impacted by swings in the value of global commodities.

The bank offered no details on when it would resume buying foreign currencies. The ruble was down 2.3% in early Monday trading but steadied after the bank’s announcement.

Meanwhile, the Russian stock market plunged more than 10% on Monday but was 7% down when trading concluded. Since the start of the Russian military buildup on the borders of Ukraine in October, the market has lost more than a quarter of its value.

Anders Aslund is chairman of the International Advisory Council at the Center for Social and Economic Research, a policy group in Warsaw, Poland. Aslund predicts the market could fall much further if the geopolitical confrontation between Russia and Western powers over Ukraine worsens.

“So far, the Russian RTS stock index in USD has only fallen 27% from its high point on October 27 before Putin started threatening Ukraine,” Aslund tweeted. “It has far more to fall. In 2008, it fell by 80% from May to October (Georgia war + global financial crisis).”

Meanwhile, the European stock markets have held fairly steady in recent weeks — a blitheness that’s not necessarily reassuring, analysts say, as the European stock markets didn’t miss a beat in the immediate wake of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, a slaying that triggered World War I. 

The London and Paris bourses were “slow to grasp why Sarajevo was different and unique,” noted Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, international business editor of The Telegraph.

European investors and traders appeared Monday to take greater note of the geopolitical maneuverings, and markets nudged down lower on the news that Britain was joining the United States in withdrawing some diplomats and their families from the embassies in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. 

The German and French stock markets were down about 2% in early trading, with analysts saying a New York Times report that U.S. President Joe Biden is considering deploying 5,000 troops to bolster the defenses of Ukraine’s NATO neighbors contributed to jitters.

The London stock market also traded lower. Some analysts suggested the dips were as much the result of traders watching what the U.S. Federal Reserve might do about tightening monetary policy than the unfolding Ukraine crisis.

With the crisis deepening, the attention of the markets and Western policy makers is turning to the possible energy implications for Europe, which gets about half of its natural gas supplies from Russia. Fears have been mounting that the Kremlin might retaliate by stopping gas exports in the event the West imposes fresh sanctions on Russia. The result would be an energy shock for a continent that is already mired in an energy crunch and experiencing soaring prices.

“Should tensions between Russia and the Ukraine escalate, the initial uncertainty around its impact on gas flows would likely lead the market to once again add a significant risk premium to European gas prices,” Goldman Sachs analysts told clients.

Last week, the Reuters news agency reported the U.S. State Department has been putting together a global strategy to increase supplies of liquefied natural gas to Europe in the event a Russian invasion of Ukraine leads to gas shortages.

Amos Hochstein, senior adviser for energy security at the State Department, has been holding talks with several Middle East and North African countries, as well as companies in Europe, about how to boost gas supplies if Russia seeks to weaponize energy.

In London Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters that the intelligence about Russian intentions was “gloomy” but added that a Russian invasion was not inevitable.

“The intelligence is very clear that there are 60 Russian battle groups on the borders of Ukraine. The plan for a lightning war that could take out Kyiv is one that everybody can see. We need to make it very clear to the Kremlin, to Russia, that that would be a disastrous step,” Johnson said.

He added, “We also need to get a message (to Moscow) that invading Ukraine, from a Russian perspective, is going to be a painful, violent and bloody business. I think it’s very important that people in Russia understand that this could be a new Chechnya.”

He was referring to the brutal wars fought between Russia and Chechen rebels in the 1990s that left tens of thousands of people dead. Chechnya had waged wars of independence against Russia.

Speaking as Britain started to withdraw some embassy staff from Ukraine, Johnson said, “We do think it prudent to make some changes now.”
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A shortage of truck drivers in the U.S. has led to all kinds of troubles for consumers and businesses. That has led to some trucking companies doing all they can to get new drivers on the road. VOA’s Aunshuman Apte has more from New York City.
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«Більш того, ми незабаром почнемо другу, довготермінову програму з макрофінансової допомоги на підтримку зусиль України з модернізації»
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Згідно з оприлюдненими опівдні 24 січня показниками, довідкове значення становить 28,36 гривні
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