An excavator belches out fumes as it clears earth and rubble from between the train and bus stations in the Ukrainian town of Trostianets to make way for a reimagined transport hub.
Badly damaged in fighting with Russian forces almost two years ago, Trostianets is one of six settlements being rebuilt with state funds in a pilot programme to develop the skills and experience needed for a far broader reconstruction drive later.
Mayor Yuriy Bova said time was running out to breathe life back into towns, or risk losing millions of Ukrainians who could help redevelop the country to permanent exile in Europe.
"We're fighting for every person who should return; for every child who needs to return and build their future here," he told Reuters in the town, barely 30 km (20 miles) from Russia.
"To walk around and see this every day, that will morally traumatise a person," Bova said of the ruined northeastern town. "We need to restore everything, starting with cafes, libraries, factories, schools, hospitals."
Officials in Kyiv have also signaled the urgence of rebuilding Ukraine, an effort that will require hundreds of billions of dollars and involve more than quick fixes to critical sites such as hospitals, power stations and railways.
The war, however, shows no signs of abating. Short on cash, Ukraine is defending against new Russian attacks after its own counteroffensive failed to yield significant gains. Moscow has also resumed a campaign of mass air strikes on population centres far beyond the front line.
For Pavlo Kuzmenko, the mayor of Okhtyrka, a town only 20 km down the road from Trostianets that also bears the scars of heavy Russian bombing at the start of the war, resurrecting town squares is a luxury Ukraine cannot afford right now.
Officials in Okhtyrka were slow to finish clearing away the rubble on the main boulevard that was once the city hall and have not yet fixed the gutted department store across the street. Most schools, however, have been repaired with new windows, roofing or bomb shelters, thanks in large part to international donors.
A teacher is accused of holding an Israeli hostage in an attic.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it found rockets near a school in Gaza.
One house of the Swiss parliament votes to cut funding to Gaza. In the United States, Republican senators say Congress should do the same.
The agency is at the heart of the refugee crisis. Some see UNRWA as a critical provider of services to beleaguered Arab populations of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which Israelis often refer to as Judea and Samaria.
Others see it as an enabler of the crisis, an agency meant to perpetuate a “refugee” status no longer applicable to most Palestinians and doing it to obstruct any peace process indefinitely.
Many observers say it’s both—an essential provider of services and an obstacle to peace.
UNRWA’s defenders say it’s just doing the mission assigned by the U.N. almost three-quarters of a century ago.
Opponents say UNRWA is way too close to Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza and triggered the current war with its Oct. 7 massacre of about 1,200 Israelis.
Defenders say Israel is an apartheid state based on immoral religious discrimination. Opponents say Palestinian Arabs displaced by Israel’s 1948 War of Independence should be resettled like 135 other refugee groups overseen by the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR).
The only refugee situation UNHCR doesn’t handle is Palestine.
“It was born in sin, it exists in sin, and it operates in sin,” Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said about UNRWA.
“This is a political organization that, at the beginning, served the interests of Arab states that didn’t want to absorb Palestinian refugees into their countries,” he told The Epoch Times.
“They don’t want to rehabilitate Palestinian refugees. They want to keep them in camps and perpetuate their refugee status. It is the central pillar of the Palestinian ethos. This is the excuse for their victimhood. This is why they can get money from the international community, and why they don’t have to be responsible.”
“Unfortunately the international community cooperates with Palestine and UNRWA. Now, under the circumstances of the war, it can’t be dismantled. It’s needed for humanitarian aid. But after the war, the first thing that should be done is the dismantling of the UNRWA and the refugee camps in the Gaza Strip.”
Susan Akram, a Boston University School of Law professor and director of its International Human Rights Clinic, told The Epoch Times she doesn’t think UNRWA is controversial in the least.
“It is pretty effective for those who approach it from the perspective of international law,” she said. “We would not call it controversial. UNRWA was established with a very particular mandate (given to it by the U.N. in 1949), and it has continued to carry out that mandate.”
How effective is it? Israelis across the political spectrum of that deeply divided country say it sponsors schools teaching hate to generations of Palestinian schoolchildren, making peace or a two-state solution impossible.
A UNRWA teacher was accused of having held one of the Israeli hostages seized by Hamas on Oct. 7. The agency rejected the claim as “unsubstantiated.” But an Israeli TV reporter, Almog Boker, posted on X that a released hostage said the teacher, a father of 10 children, had held him in his attic for nearly 50 days, barely providing food and neglecting his medical needs.
And Mr. Boker said another abductee had been held captive by a Gazan doctor simultaneously caring for children.
“These are not isolated incidents; these civilians are terrorists,” Mr. Boker said. “Present at the Saturday massacre, they’re now revealed as integral to holding hundreds captive, including women and children.”
On Dec. 1, 2023, in a public statement, UNRWA said it hadn’t been able to substantiate whether the Israeli journalist’s allegations about an UNRWA teacher holding an Israeli hostage were “genuine or false.”
“UNRWA reiterates that it takes all allegations of breach of U.N. principles extremely seriously and immediately investigates them,” the agency said.
“Defamation attacks and the spread of misinformation about UNRWA—from any side—directly endanger the lifesaving operations of the agency and its staff operating on the ground.”
Israel has long maintained that Hamas used schools and health facilities, which in Gaza are operated by UNRWA, to shield its terror operations.
The Israeli government on Jan. 3 released a video interview of a Gaza civilian who says a Hamas operative herded his group into Al Shifa Hospital when they were trying to follow IDF instructions to flee south. Terrorists were living under the hospital, but knowing Israeli soldiers were coming, they emerged and hid among the civilians. “I felt that we are human shields,” the civilian said.
The Israeli military said on Jan. 3 that it had dismantled an 800-foot tunnel underneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which UNRWA operates.
Israel and the United States doubled down on assertions that the hospital has shielded not only a Hamas tunnel underneath but a command hub that was also used to store weapons.
Hamas had destroyed documents and electronics just before the IDF’s Nov. 15 seizure of the hospital, a U.S. National Security Council spokesman said.
The refugee crisis began when the U.N. partitioned the land into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs, in 1947. Israel took the deal. Local Arabs and surrounding Arab states did not. Their armies invaded Israel on the first day of its independence in 1948.
Around 700,000 Arab residents fled, some out of fear, and others because they were encouraged to by Arab leaders, who assured them the war would be over in a few weeks.
A similar number of Jews fled Arab states in North Africa and the Middle East, places where Jews had lived for hundreds or even thousands of years. They came to Israel.
Some Arabs stayed in Israel. Today they are citizens, vote, and have representatives in Israel’s Knesset.
Arabs who fled found themselves in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The U.N. agency was established in 1949 to administer to them. It is distinct from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which was created in 1950 for all other refugee crises around the world. The Palestinians are the only refugees with their own U.N. agency.
Are They Still Refugees?
Words like “refugees” and “refugee camps” can be misleading. They often don’t fit the realities on the ground. Gaza communities started 75 years ago look no different than areas around them, with permanent buildings decades old, occasional fancy villas, and a street grid. Families may be into their fourth and fifth generations living there. They may be marked off with gates setting them off from the adjoining city, but otherwise look the same.
“When the general public thinks of a traditional United Nations refugee camp, we’re thinking of those tent camps set up on the borders of Syria, handling massive refugee populations out of the Syrian Civil War,” Eli Sperling, a teaching fellow at the University of Georgia’s Israel Institute, told The Epoch Times.
“We’re thinking tents. We’re thinking temporary infrastructure. We’re thinking something that resembles a camp.
“There is basically nothing that you would see while walking around these areas … that would indicate this is a refugee camp,” he said.
There are even fancy neighborhoods with villas in some of the “camps,” said Mr. Michael.
Ismail Haniyeh, the senior Hamas leader, chairman of its political bureau, and from the Al-Shati refugee camp, bought a fine half-acre beachfront property in the adjoining Rimal neighborhood in 2010. He has lived in “a palace” in Qatar since 2019, Mr. Michael said. The Gaza house, occupied by his relatives, was destroyed by an IDF air strike in November.
Mr. Haniyeh’s net worth, largely stemming from Hamas’s 20 percent tax on goods imported through tunnels from Egypt, has been estimated as high as $4 billion.
Refugees are typically stateless people, Mr. Michael said. But Palestinians now hold various travel documents up to and including passports.
Estimates range, but from 2.18 million to 2.4 million Palestinian “refugees” in Jordan now are Jordanian citizens and hold Jordanian passports.
The Palestinian Authority declared statehood during the failed 1990s Oslo Accords peace process. Palestine was accorded observer status by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012 but doesn’t vote.
Palestinian refugees—and residents of the West Bank and Gaza who aren’t refugees because they always lived there—are Palestinian citizens and have Palestinian passports, Mr. Michael said.
Ms. Akram disagreed, saying their status and travel documentation are less secure than that, and that it doesn’t apply to all Palestinians who live in Jordan. The Palestinian Authority isn’t a state, and Palestinians still meet the definition of “stateless” under international law, she said.
Mr. Sperling acknowledged that while Palestinians’ documents can permit them to travel, such papers don’t have the same strength as formal passports.
One effect of UNRWA’s unique handling of Palestinian refugees, Mr. Sperling said: 700,000 Palestinian refugees in 1949 have grown to 5.9 million today.
Descendants of other refugee populations usually aren’t classified as refugees.
Higher power demand and efforts to boost energy security pushed China’s coal production to a record-high level in 2023, according to official statistics data published on Wednesday.
Chinese coal output rose by 2.9% year-over-year to 4.66 billion metric tons in 2023, per data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported by Reuters.
Coal imports also rose last year, as some domestic mining operations were suspended for some time in 2023 due to safety inspections and concerns.
Higher demand after the COVID restrictions were lifted and higher domestic coal prices led to record-high coal imports into China, which soared by 61.8% year-on-year to 474.42 million metric tons in 2023, data from the General Administration of Customs showed last week.
In the latter part of 2023, China ramped up coal and natural gas production, imports, and consumption as its electricity demand jumped in the second half and looks to hit a record-high winter peak demand.
Chinese authorities have been keen to avoid a repeat of the 2022 shortages and spiking prices and have instructed utilities and producers to maximize imports and output before the winter.
China continues to rely on coal and coal-fired power generation to meet its growing power demand, and despite being the world's top investor in solar and wind capacity, it also plans a lot of new coal-fired electricity capacity.
During the first half of 2023 alone, China approved more than 50 GW of new coal power, Greenpeace said in a report this year. That's more than it did in all of 2021, the environmental campaign group said.
China’s coal demand is expected to drop this year and plateau through 2026, and global demand is set to decline to 2026, “but China will have the last word,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its Coal 2023 annual report.
The outlook for coal in China will be significantly affected in the coming years by the pace of its clean energy deployment, weather conditions, and structural shifts in the Chinese economy, according to the agency.
Several large U.S. regional banks reported lower profits on Wednesday, in a further sign that the income boost from interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve is starting to wane.
Charles Schwab, Citizens Financial and US Bancorp said that, along with one-off charges, the rising cost of retaining customer deposits ate into fourth-quarter net interest income (NII), the difference between what banks earn from lending and pay on deposits.
Fed rate hikes last year aimed at taming inflation boosted many lenders' NII, a core business for most regional banks. But growing competition for deposits from the country's biggest banks is eating into their profits and in some cases subduing loan growth.
Big banks have benefited from an exodus of deposits from small institutions, which were seen as riskier, after Silicon Valley Bank and two other regional lenders collapsed last year.
Potential Fed rate cuts this year will likely further dent NII, some banks have warned.
Charles Schwab's quarterly profit fell 47%, partly due to a 30% drop in NII on higher deposit costs. Schwab paid an average of 1.37% on deposits, compared to 0.46% a year earlier, it said.
Citizens reported a 71% decline in profit, with NII down 12%. US Bancorp's profit fell 14% as NII dropped 4.2%. On Tuesday, PNC Financial, another big regional lender, said profits shrank, with NII contracting 8%.
Citizens warned that its NII this year could be 6% to 9% below the $6.24 billion it made in 2023. Shares of Charles Schwab dropped 1.3%, US Bancorp fell 1.7%, while Citizens was up 1.9%.
"For banks, loan demand would be fairly tepid through the first half of the year, and then start to pick up again in the second half," Citizens Financial CEO Bruce Van Saun told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.
At 11 U.S. regional banks with assets of $50 billion to $100 billion, analysts expect earnings per share to drop from 2023 mostly due to increased deposit costs, according to LSEG estimates, Reuters previously reported.
Panama and Suez snarls add to industry’s overcapacity problem
Profits weaken at plastics plants that depend on propane
The Chinese petrochemical sector’s bet on profiting from a steady supply of cheap US gas to make plastics is quickly going awry, as twin choke-points for shipping upend trade flows and drive up costs.
China has invested heavily in its petchems industry in recent times. But the massive expansion in capacity accelerated last year just as the Chinese economy was stuttering, slowing consumption and creating a glut of plastics across Asia. A large proportion of the new plants use propane, which is mostly imported from the US.
Last week, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a plan to accelerate the forgiveness timeline for the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan.
Starting next month, eligible borrowers - those who have made at least 10 years of monthly payments and initially borrowed $12,000 or less for college expenses - will have their entire balances forgiven.
The Education Department is fast-tracking this debt relief months ahead of the original July 1, 2024 date.
“Beyond being the most affordable student loan repayment plan ever available, the Biden-Harris Administration designed the SAVE Plan to put community college students and other low-balance borrowers on a faster track to debt forgiveness than ever before,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.
The Education Department urges all borrowers who originally borrowed $12,000 or less to apply for SAVE as soon as possible.
The loans of eligible recipients will be discharged automatically, requiring no action on their part.
“I want folks to recognize [that it takes] 10 minutes to fill out the SAVE plan, and you could be getting an email as early as February telling you that your debt is cleared out,” Cardona said.
SAVE enrollments are on the rise
SAVE—an income-driven repayment plan that adjusts borrowers' monthly payments based on income and family size—has seen a massive surge in enrollment lately.
As of early January, 6.9 million borrowers had already enrolled in the SAVE Plan, more than double the number of people who enrolled in the Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) plan that the SAVE Plan replaced in August.
Borrowers on SAVE are repaying an estimated $374 billion in federal student loans, which amounts to nearly 30% of all Direct Loans dollars in repayment, deferment, or forbearance.
SAVE enrollees have been reporting significant financial benefits compared to the previous REPAYE Plan, with 3.9 million reportedly having a $0 payment and others saving an estimated $117 a month.
"With lower monthly payments, protection from runaway interest, and faster timelines to debt forgiveness, President Biden’s SAVE plan is not only benefiting millions of current borrowers but also providing the students of today and tomorrow with a more affordable pathway to college degrees and credentials,” Cardona said.
More forgiveness to come?
The SAVE Plan forgiveness is yet another initiative by the Biden-Harris Administration to take the burden of student debt off Americans’ shoulders.
According to Creditnews Student Debt Tracker, the administration has already approved nearly $132 billion in targeted relief for over 3.6 million borrowers.
Next up are the 6.9 million SAVE borrowers, with potentially more to come as Biden's 2024 reelection campaign goes into full swing.
