Trump stated that lowering oil prices would immediately bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, arguing that the high oil prices are prolonging the conflict. He emphasized that Gulf nations should have taken such measures long ago, as they bear partial responsibility for regional developments.

During his campaign, Trump frequently highlighted the need to end the Ukraine war. Earlier this week, he warned that if an agreement on Ukraine is not reached soon, he would impose heavy taxes, tariffs, and sanctions on goods imported from Russia into the U.S.

Reuters reported that as Trump increases pressure on Moscow to end the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed concern about the economic strain the conflict has placed on Russia, a country heavily reliant on oil and gas exports.

Trump also called on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to increase Saudi investments in the U.S. from $600 billion to $1 trillion, calling the crown prince “an extraordinary man.” He expressed confidence that Riyadh would agree, citing strong relations between the two nations.

The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, nearing its third year, has no clear resolution in sight. Trump’s proposals highlight the interplay between global oil markets, geopolitical tensions, and economic strategies as potential levers to end the conflict.

Trump’s push for increased Saudi investment and his call to lower oil prices reflect his broader strategy of leveraging economic influence to achieve political goals. However, the effectiveness of these measures in addressing the Ukraine conflict and stabilizing global markets remains uncertain.

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The report, compiled jointly by Statistics Korea and the Korea Immigration Service, analyzed the quality of life for 1.56 million foreign residents this year. They included temporary workers, highly skilled professionals, students, ethnic Koreans and spouses of Korean citizens.

Of the respondents, 90.4 percent expressed a desire to remain in Korea after their current stay ends, up from 89.6 percent in 2023. Permanent residents and naturalized Koreans were not included in the survey.

A total of 61.6 percent of the aforementioned respondents this year said they were thinking about extending their visas. The other 16.9 percent seek to secure permanent residency and another 10.3 percent want to acquire Korean citizenship.

The findings come as Korea is on the cusp of becoming a multicultural society, which, according to the OECD, is defined by foreign nationals exceeding 5 percent of the total population. The foreign population reached 4.89 percent in 2023.

In 2023, Korea experienced the second-fastest growth rate of immigrants globally, at 50.9 percent, trailing only the United Kingdom, which saw a 52.9 percent increase, according to the OECD.

Under the circumstances, 84.3 percent of the surveyed foreign nationals said they were satisfied with life in Korea this year. The rate went up from 80.4 percent in 2022.

Over the 2022-24 period, the ratio of those satisfied with their job advanced from 68.6 percent to 72.6 percent.

The ratio of those satisfied with their income also moved up from 53.3 percent to 58.2 percent.

Concerning housing conditions, the ratio of those who are satisfied increased from 79.2 percent to 84 percent.

The 2024 report showed that foreign workers totaled 1.01 million, representing an increase of 87,000 individuals, or 0.2 percentage points, from a year earlier.

It was the first time that the number surpassed the 1 million mark, as Korea is grappling with a declining population and is increasingly relying on immigrant workers to do a range of jobs.

Of the 1.01 million, 956,000 were wage workers, the majority of whom were employed by small and medium-sized enterprises.

A total of 51.2 percent of these wage workers earned a monthly income of between 2 million won ($1,389.94) and 3 million won. The ratio went up from 50.6 percent in 2023.

In the 2022-23 period, those earning 3 million won or more per month also rose from 35.8 percent to 37.1 percent.

When asked about the difficulties of living in Korea, 34.7 percent of foreign nationals surveyed this year responded with “None.” However, 29.8 percent identified language as a barrier, while 13 percent cited loneliness.

With regard to discrimination, 17.4 percent of respondents said that they have experienced it.

About 54.5 percent of those who felt they were discriminated against said it was due to their country of origin, while 31.2 percent attributed it to the language barrier.

The victims of discrimination responded passively, with only 15.3 percent publicly addressing the issue.

Among foreign nationals with children, under 18, 35.7 percent reported facing challenges in their children’s education, with more than half of which citing difficulty helping with homework. Nearly half of the foreign residents expressed that their children’s education costs are burdensome.

When asked to identify the obstacles to becoming a member of Korean society, 44.7 percent cited language as a barrier, while 11.8 percent considered religion a problem.

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Mahmoud looks spent; he’s 45 but looks older. Grey-haired, unshaven, bespectacled — financial anxiety has worn him out. He owns no home, holds no significant assets and dares not think about the future. “Let’s make it to tomorrow is our motto,” he says.

Official figures put Iran’s annual inflation rate at around 34 percent. Unofficial estimates are higher. Prices are soaring. The currency is in free fall: 72,000 tomans buys one US dollar. The exchange rate impacts nearly all goods and services but its psychological effects defy metrics.

For over five years, Iranians have been enduring severe economic pressure. In 2019, inflation jumped from 10% to over 50%, with food prices soaring over 85%. Millions of people have been thrust below the poverty line—almost one in three, according to government officials.

The story of Mahmoud, whose full name is being withheld for his safety, mirrors that of untold numbers of hard-working but frustrated Iranians whose ambitions have been dashed by the moribund economy.

In 2019, Mahmoud worked in the marketing department of an Iranian app store. He earned 7 million tomans a month ($540 back then), almost half of which he paid as rent for a modest apartment in Tehran. He tried to save a little every month.

That summer, Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign began to bite. Life was evidently costing more. Many Iranians scrambled to convert their meager savings into more stable assets—gold, land, a small apartment on the outskirts of larger cities, a vehicle even.

Mahmoud had 35 million tomans in the bank. He could buy 2,700 dollars. But then his employer offered to match his savings with a loan. He now had enough to purchase a domestically assembled foreign car or a small apartment outside Tehran. He felt he had to ask around and make an informed decision. That 70 million tomans was all he had.

“I never thought an apartment I had viewed and could almost afford would cost almost three times as much a few weeks later,” Mahmoud recalls. The hesitation had proven costly.

Mahmoud had flashbacks of a similar blow six years prior. During yet another inflationary spike in 2013, Mahmoud’s father sold his home to buy a larger one. By the time the deal was closed, the money he had received could not buy the property he had just sold, let alone a better one.

“That was a big chunk of what dad had gathered in a lifetime. Gone, vanished in a month,” Mahmoud recalls with pain. “I never thought it would happen to me. I was sure I could move fast because I wasn’t selling a house. I had cash.”

He was indeed fast. Just not fast enough. The tiny apartment he could just about afford was now firmly out of reach. And this was not even in Tehran. It was more than 10 miles outside the capital—in a monstrous assembly of shoddy blocks built by the government.

The Mehr Housing Project was intended to provide affordable housing for low-income families. But it became yet another money-making machine for well-placed speculators who purchased them in bulk and rented them to the very people the project was meant to serve.

Mahmoud, priced out of a property he would have sneered at a few years prior, decided to invest his fast-dwindling savings in stocks. The company he worked for offered shares at a discounted price. It was aiming to go public the following year, promising good returns.

Five years later, the company is still not listed.

“My investment has grown but not much,” Mahmoud laments. “Had I bought a car instead, it would be double what my shares are worth today. And I’m reluctant to sell it now, fearing the company going public the minute I cash out.”

Mahmoud has had to move three times in the past five years, each time to a less pleasant neighbourhood. He earns four times what he earned in 2019. But the dollar, a rough indicator of cost of living in Iran, is more than five times what it was then. He feels—and he is, in real terms—considerably poorer.

“My rent was half my salary then. Now it’s two-thirds,” Mahmoud says, his voice rising and shaking. “We earn in tomans and spend in dollars. A decent apartment in a decent neighborhood in Tehran costs around $300,000 dollars. That’s comparable to prices in the US. It’s just that our was are not even a tenth of theirs.”

Inflation in Iran shows nao sign of abating. Low productivity, mismanagement, and long-lasting US-led sanctions have created chronic inflation that makes the vast majority of Iranians poorer by the year, if not month.

“You know the so-called five stages of grief, right? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance,” Mahmoud says with a bitter smile. “Well, most people I know are somewhere between four and five. And they all earn well above average.”

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Also known as maize, corn’s success story has, to a large extent, been buried under the media attention that the politics of sugar and wheat usually garner. Yet, maize yields have tripled over the last two decades and according to a report by the Pakistan Business Council (PBC), production has surged over six times – going from 1.6 million tons to 10.6 million tons – a growth that stems from private sector investment, particularly in the form of the import of hybrid seeds and significantly by the absence of government intervention.

For context, about two-thirds of Pakistan’s total corn production of approximately 10 million tons is used for poultry feed, and the remaining is for livestock fodder and other commercial purposes as well as human consumption. While demand is mainly driven by the poultry feed and the dairy sector, corn has myriad applications for consumer goods as well as intermediate goods in the manufacturing sector. In fact, every part of the corn kernel finds a use; the oil is extracted from the germ, starch goes to industry for various products, protein is dried for poultry feed, and fibre is dried for cattle feed.

According to the PBC’s State of Agriculture 2023 Report, Pakistan has nearly two million chickens (they have quadrupled over the last 15 years), and the rise in poultry is correlated to the increase in the availability of quality feed. Feed is one of the main components of raising chickens and 45% of it consists of maize. Since the adoption of hybrid maize seeds in 2001, yields have increased from 18 maunds per acre to about 60 maunds, making hybrid maize one of the main reasons why Pakistan has grown as a poultry producer.

Pakistan also has the seventh largest livestock population in the world – and where there are cattle, there will be high demand for fodder; corn silage is also a popular cattle feed used in dairy farms along with some beef operations. Some call it a ‘superfood’ for farm animals because of its high protein content. In Pakistan, corn silage is of a relatively better quality because of suitable weather conditions, allowing for exports as well.

While poultry and livestock consume the lion’s share of maize production, corn derivatives have a multitude of uses for a variety of industries. For example, Rafhan Maize, an affiliate of Ingredion Inc., is one of the biggest corn refiners in the world. The company processes hundreds of thousands of tons of maize each year to produce food and industrial products. Derivatives such as cornstarch are used in the manufacturing of food items such as custard, while refining processes create flour and oil. Cornstarch is used in a range of industries and there is a growing domestic market for corn derivatives in textiles, paper, corrugated cardboard, food, pharma and detergents. For example, in textiles, starch is used as a binding and strengthening agent and is a prerequisite for weaving as it ensures that the threads do not break. On a more microscopic level, waste from the maize industry can create microbes, plants and fungi. These produce molecules with properties that go into the manufacture of household cleaning products, such as dishwashing soap and laundry detergent powder, by brands such as Unilever.

Corn’s success in Pakistan is a testament to what the private sector can achieve without government interference and with the availability of good-quality seeds.

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Iran’s commercial envoy to Qatar said the trade and economic ties between the two countries in the first two months of the current Iranian calendar year registered a 41 percent growth compared to last year.

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The changes also include a contentious new measure that allows the government to revoke permanent residence status for foreigners who deliberately fail to pay taxes or social insurance premiums, prompting concerns from those who have lived in Japan for many years.

The laws will take effect within three years of their promulgation in a landmark shift in Japan’s policy on accepting foreign workers.

The new system explicitly states it is designed to foster and secure foreign talent and to help inexperienced workers acquire skills needed to transition to the specified skilled worker scheme over three years.

It replaces the Technical Intern Training Program, which has been in place since 1993 to ostensibly develop the technical skills of foreign workers from developing nations. The program has been criticized as simply being an avenue for Japan to import cheap labor.

Workers will be able to change their workplace within the same industry under certain conditions, provided they have worked in one place for over a year and their Japanese language and professional abilities meet certain requirements.

Amid unpaid wage scandals, long hours and other abuses, the restrictions on changing employers meant many trainees under the existing program quit their workplaces. In 2022 alone, over 9,000 trainees disappeared from their place of work.

Private firms will be excluded from facilitating transfers to prevent malicious brokers from taking advantage of workers, and supervisory organizations accepting foreign candidates will have to appoint external auditors to improve accountability.

As for the specified skilled worker scheme launched in 2019 to secure foreign labor, the Japanese government has in recent years expanded the scope of industries covered by the Specified Skilled Worker No. 1 and No. 2 visas.

Specified Skilled Worker No. 1 visa holders are allowed up to five years of residency in a wide range of industries. Holders can, under certain conditions, be granted the No. 2 visa, effectively making them permanent residents who can bring family members to Japan.

As of the end of 2023, trainees under the technical internship program rose 24.5 percent from a year ago to about 404,000 people, according to the Immigration Services Agency.

The number of specified skilled foreign workers was up 59.2 percent to around 208,000, of whom just 37 were holders of the No. 2 visa, agency data showed.

With the legislation expected to increase the number of permanent residents, the revisions also introduced tougher measures to enable the government to revoke the status. Individuals such as those who intentionally fail to pay taxes and social security contributions could have their status withdrawn or changed.

The provisions sparked criticism from opposition lawmakers, with some saying individual cases should be heard before making a decision that has a significant impact on permanent residents’ lives.

Justice Minister Ryuji Koizumi sought to tamp down concerns at a Diet session on Thursday, saying the measures would apply only to “malicious cases” and that the vast majority of holders would be unaffected.

But the pro-Seoul Korean Residents Union in Japan, widely known as Mindan, urged the Japanese government not to abuse the steps that make permanent status holders feel continuously uneasy.

“We will persistently urge the government to review the clause of the immigration law…so that the legal status of foreign nationals who have long been living in Japan would not be unreasonably destabilized,” the group said in a statement.

Japan’s foreign population hit a new high of over 3.4 million in 2023, while the number of Japanese citizens fell by 595,000 people from a year earlier to 124,352,000 as of Oct. 1, declining for the 13th straight year.

Japan faces intense competition from other parts of Asia in luring foreign workers, with South Korea and Taiwan increasingly reliant on foreign labor due to serious demographic pressures from an aging society.

While Japan was the top employment destination for Vietnamese who went abroad for work in 2018, the country was overtaken by Taiwan in 2022, data from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare showed.

Analysts say that for Japan to excel in securing talent, it not only needs to increase pay and simplify procedures for gaining work, but also build a system that supports ongoing skill enhancement and Japanese language proficiency after individuals arrive in the country.

The legislation passed the House of Councillors with the backing of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner Komeito party as well as some opposition parties, after clearing the House of Representatives last month.

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SCiFi Foods, a startup engaged in developing cultivated meat, has ceased operations and initiated the sale of its intellectual property and assets through an advisory firm.

The San Leandro, California-based company, originally founded as Artemys Foods in 2019, had rebranded to SCiFi Foods in 2022. The company aimed to produce a hybrid burger combining cultivated beef and plant-based ingredients to reach price parity with conventional beef.

The company had raised approximately $40 million from various venture capital funds and notable investors, including the British band Coldplay, according to AgFunderNews. SCiFi Foods distinguished itself by utilizing CRISPR technology to accelerate the cultivation process and by aiming to produce hybrid burgers containing around 10% cultured meat and the remainder plant-based proteins.

©SCiFi Foods

Technological breakthroughs

The company reported achieving a 1000x cost reduction in producing cultivated beef by growing edible beef cell lines in single-cell suspension. This method allowed for the use of standard large-sized bioreactors, streamlining the scaling process. SCiFi Foods then partnered with Michigan State University to test the scalability of its hybrid burgers, seeking to expedite production and gain insights into the manufacturing process.

Despite these advancements, SCiFi Foods faced funding obstacles. The founders explained in an announcement, “Last week, we shut down SCiFi operations and handed off to an advisory firm to run a sale process of our IP and assets. We did not make this decision lightly, but it was the best option as we reached the end of our runway. Unfortunately, in this funding environment, we could not raise the capital that we needed to commercialize the SCiFi burger, and SCiFi Foods ran out of time.”

The founders expressed disappointment in not being able to bring their product to market, noting the broader challenges faced by the cultivated meat and meat alternative markets. The founders hope that other companies can utilize their intellectual property and cell lines to further the development of cultivated meat. “SCiFi Foods was founded out of a sense of optimism for a better future, and we remain optimistic that one day, cultivated meat will be part of a sustainable food system,” the company stated.

Industry reflections and future hopes

SCiFi Foods’ journey began with an aspiration to create 100% cultivated meat. Initially, the technology was not advanced enough to realize this vision, leading the company to pursue a blended product strategy. Over the past five years, SCiFi Foods achieved a significant reduction in the cost of producing their burger, from $20,000 to under $15, due to advancements in cell line performance and media cost reduction.

The company’s scientific team developed beef cell lines that grow in single-cell suspension, 100% serum-free, in low-cost culture media, with a 24-hour doubling time, and achieved titers of 10 g/L in a fed-batch process. Despite these technical successes, the company was unable to secure the necessary funding amid a challenging market environment and shifting regulatory landscape.

The founders concluded their message with a reflection on the broader industry challenges and the need for continued innovation to achieve commercial viability for 100% cultivated meat. They remain hopeful that their contributions will aid in the future success of the industry.

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” the company concluded.

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A tiny electric car called the Seagull, designed by a former Lamborghini designer, starts at less than $10,000 in China. A version with a battery that can go 250 miles on a charge costs a little more, at $12,000.

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The head of Iran-Georgia joint chamber has stated that Georgia’s automobile industry is growing and Georgian cars are mostly imported to Iran as temporary entry.

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