Ukrainian world heavyweight champion according to the WBA, WBO, WBC and IBO, Oleksandr Usyk, and British boxer Tyson Fury held their first press conference before the rematch for the world heavyweight title, the meeting took place in London on Wednesday, October 23, reports Suspilne Sport.
Usyk appeared in front of the audience in the image of “Hitman” from the popular media franchise. He took the stage with a briefcase containing posters of his fight against Fury – the Briton signed them at the request of his opponent.
When asked about his motivation before the rematch, the Ukrainian explained: “Only my regimen, my concentration is my motivation. That’s enough”.
Fury, for his part, reminded that the Briton has won all the rematches in his career so far. The former WBC champion hopes to be composed in the second fight with Usyk and rehabilitate himself for his debut defeat.
It is reported that the second fight between Usyk and Fury will take place on December 21 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Three major heavyweight titles will be at stake: the WBC, WBA, and WBO versions.
Agrotrade Agroholding has completed harvesting industrial hemp, which it grew on an area of about 230 hectares in Chernihiv region, the company’s press service reported on its Facebook page.
According to the report, 2024 was the final year of the agricultural holding’s hemp cultivation trials. The company has determined the best technologies and herbicide plant protection products, and understood the technical features of working with this crop.
“By changing approaches to seed harvesting and processing, we have obtained very good quality grain indicators: the oil content is high, and the acidity and peroxide values are low. The yields were slightly lower than we expected. The hemp was dry and the fiber was easily separated from the bast, so technical support during harvesting was the biggest challenge. The reason is that you can’t just pick up any harvester at any time: you need to know exactly what kind of hemp is best for what time and what kind of harvester will be optimal. These are the technical features of hemp that we have figured out,” says Oleksandr Ovsyanyk, Director of Agrotrade’s Agricultural Department.
“This year, we started harvesting later to get higher quality seeds. Due to the peculiarities of the variety and the year in general, threshing took longer than expected.
The agricultural holding emphasized that the Ukrainian market is not yet ready to consume large quantities of hemp grain, so this year’s harvest will be exported. If it can be sold profitably and in large volumes, the company will consider expanding the area.
Agrotrade Group is a vertically integrated holding company with a full agro-industrial cycle (production, processing, storage and trade of agricultural products). The company cultivates over 70 thousand hectares of land in Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv regions. Its main crops are sunflower, corn, winter wheat, soybeans and rapeseed. It has its own network of elevators with a one-time storage capacity of 570 thousand tons.
The group also produces hybrid seeds of corn and sunflower, barley, and winter wheat. In 2014, a seed plant with a capacity of 20 thousand tons of seeds per year was built on the basis of Kolos seed farm (Kharkiv region). In 2018, Agrotrade launched its own brand Agroseeds on the market.
Vsevolod Kozhemiako is the founder and CEO of Agrotrade.
Export changes in % to previous period in 2023-2024
Open4Business.com.ua
The EU Council has finally approved a financial aid package for Ukraine, including an exceptional macro-financial assistance (MFA) loan of up to EUR35 billion under the G7’s Emergency Revenue Assistance (ERA) initiative, which provides for up to USD50 billion to be repaid with proceeds from frozen Russian assets.
According to a post on the social network X of Hungary, which holds the EU presidency, a credit cooperation mechanism was also approved to help Ukraine repay loans of up to EUR45 billion (about $50 billion) provided by the EU and G7 partners under this initiative.
Earlier it was reported that the terms of the new MFA will be tied to the terms of the Ukraine Facility, and its disbursement is scheduled to begin by the end of this year.
The day before, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the US is very close to finalizing the US part of the ERA loan. “We are 99% ready,” she said. According to her, the United States is still waiting for guarantees from the European Union to introduce a longer-term sanctions regime to ensure that the profits from Russian assets remain available. Currently, the EU sanctions regime requires a unanimous extension every six months, and its extension to three years is being blocked by Hungary.
According to German Finance Minister Christian Lindner, with such funding from the United States, the European Union’s support will amount to “approximately EUR18 billion,” which is equivalent to about $20 billion, although the EU has approved a loan under the ERA of up to EUR35 billion as a safety net.
On October 22, the United Kingdom announced that it was providing Ukraine with a GBP2.26 billion (almost $3 billion at current exchange rates) military loan to purchase the necessary military equipment under the ERA.
Back in June, immediately after the G7 decision on the ERA initiative, Canada announced the allocation of CAD5 billion ($3.6 billion at the current exchange rate) under the initiative.
The IMF, in its updated EFF Extended Fund Facility program following the fifth review, indicated that if the war ends at the end of 2025, Ukraine will need $33.1 billion of the $50 billion to support its budget: $19.1 billion next year, $9.2 billion in 2026, and $4.9 billion in 2027.
In a negative scenario, if the war continues until mid-2026, Ukraine’s budget will need the full $50 billion to cover the deficit.
China has approved a list of investment projects worth a total of 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) planned for next year, a spokesman for China’s State Committee for Development and Reform told Xinhua news agency.
He said there are 647 projects on the list, which covers such areas as construction of urban underground pipelines, programs to support the needy through employment, strengthening emergency water reservoirs, environmental protection and restoration, transportation infrastructure, key public infrastructure including educational, medical and cultural institutions, and key agricultural storage facilities.
The department intends to promote the launch and implementation of the projects as soon as possible and make efforts to make practical progress in their implementation as early as this year, so as to provide strong support for economic growth in the fourth quarter.
In addition, a representative of the state committee noted that there is a strong enough foundation to achieve the country’s 2024 economic growth targets of about 5%.
As reported, China’s GDP grew by 4.8% in January-September. Last year, the economy grew by 5.2%.
The National Association of Extractive Industries of Ukraine, Ukrmetallurgprom, the Ukrainian Association of Ferroalloy Producers (UkrFA), the All-Ukrainian Union of Construction Materials Producers, and Ukrcement ask President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to instruct the ministries to promptly resume booking employees through the Diia portal.
“We understand and share the president’s desire to put things in order with the booking of workers. However, against the backdrop of questionable decisions by local authorities, the relevant ministries have also completely suspended the booking process,” the letter, which was seen by Interfax-Ukraine, reads.
Its authors recognize that the current reservation procedure is not perfect and contains certain flaws that allow companies that are not in fact critical enterprises to be granted the status of critical enterprises. However, in the associations’ opinion, it is primarily a matter of the possibility of obtaining such a status by decision of local state (military) administrations.
At the same time, the letter states, following a meeting held in early October and the Cabinet of Ministers’ decision to audit the decisions made on reservations, some ministries also suspended the reservation process, although it was declared that this decision did not apply to them. According to the associations, these ministries have completely suspended the processes of confirming the status of critical enterprises and booking employees for truly important enterprises that have already received this status from the relevant ministry. In addition, the possibility of booking employees through the Diia portal has been suspended until November 15.
“We are confident that your instructions were aimed at identifying risks and shortcomings for their further elimination, but were not intended to stop all processes of booking personnel for truly critical enterprises, which could completely stop the economy and lead to catastrophic consequences,” the letter says.
As reported, after the government’s protocol decision of October 8 to audit decisions on recognizing enterprises as critical to the economy, the booking process was effectively paralyzed, which caused protests from many business associations.
On October 22, the government introduced the possibility of repeated audits of companies’ compliance with the criteria of critical importance “if necessary.” The document stipulates that these inspections are to be conducted by the same authorities that initially granted the companies the status of critical. The result of such an audit may be that the company does not meet the criteria of a critical enterprise and that its status is revoked. The authorities must provide a copy of the decision based on the results of the re-inspection to the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Defense (the SBU, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the intelligence agency of the Ministry of Defense) and the Ministry of Digital Transformation within one day.
employee, reservations, UKRCEMENT, UKRMETALLURGPROM, ZELENSKY, УкрФА
