Due to heavy rains and floods in a number of settlements in the south of France, people had to be evacuated and transportation was disrupted, BFM TV reported on Thursday. In the Ardèche department, many highways were closed due to weather conditions. Children were evacuated from schools and kindergartens in Annonay due to flooding. Public transportation was suspended in the city.
In the Rhône department, rail service between Lyon and Saint-Etienne has been suspended until at least Friday morning.
Nice Côte d’Azur Airport warns of possible flight delays due to adverse weather conditions.
Currently, the highest level of weather danger has been declared in the Rhône, Loire, Haute-Loire and Ardèche departments, and the orange alert level has been set in 20 other departments.
In particular, in the east of the Upper Loire, about 10 cm of precipitation is expected, which could cause rivers to burst their banks.
Source: http://relocation.com.ua/
Associations of industrial, mining, building materials and cement producers are demanding the resumption of employee reservations, which have effectively stopped after the government suspended the process of assigning critical infrastructure status to enterprises.
“After the President drew attention to the fact that the number of reservations had tripled, the Cabinet of Ministers made a protocol decision to suspend the recognition of enterprises as critical. I emphasize that we are talking about new enterprises, not those that have been recognized as critical to the country’s economy for a long time and only need to confirm this status. But in fact, the entire reservation process has been put on hold at the level of the Ministry of Economy. We do not receive confirmations for enterprises previously recognized as critical and cannot book employees,” said Oleksandr Kalenkov, president of Ukrmetallurgprom, at a press briefing at Interfax-Ukraine.
Industrial companies are facing a serious staffing crisis. According to Kalenkov, booking 50% of employees is not enough for manufacturing companies, as the staff at the enterprises is already maximally optimized. Working in complex production requires certain qualifications, and it is impossible to quickly replace mobilized employees.
“People don’t come to work for us because we are transparent. Representatives of the TCC simply go to our checkpoint at the beginning of the day, where a thousand people pass through every day, hand out summonses and fulfill the work plan for the month ahead. This leads to the fact that people do not come to work for us because they are afraid that we will not have time to book them and they will be taken away the next day. This has actually happened, because we don’t even have time to go through this procedure,” he explained.
The situation is even more complicated with hiring employees at companies in regions close to the war zone, said Sergiy Kudryavtsev, executive director of the Ukrainian Ferroalloy Producers Association (UkrFA).
“We would like to increase the percentage of booked employees. A company located in the war zone has no way to replace a mobilized employee. We have repeatedly raised the issue with the Ministry of Defense to increase the reservation rate to at least 70%,” he said.
It is also important to allow companies to manage the reservation process independently in terms of changing the distribution of reservations among employees and refining the lists depending on the needs of the companies, Kudryavtsev said.
Changes should also be made to the process of recognizing an enterprise as critical, said Pavlo Kachur, chairman of the Ukrainian Cement Producers Association Ukrcement. According to him, the process of confirming the criticality status should be automatic based on established criteria.
One of the fundamental problems with the reservation mechanism is the lack of systematic information on the number of companies and their staff in Ukraine, said Konstantin Saliy, president of the All-Ukrainian Union of Construction Materials Manufacturers.
“In three years, we could have created a system where the Prime Minister and relevant ministries could see their industries and which enterprises are critical, and could automatically notify managers of their plans. No one knows how many mid-sized enterprises we have that are really critical. But there are no responsible persons in the government who would communicate and monitor the situation. We have a whole ministry for digitalization, so digitalize these processes,” the expert said.
In addition, the processes of booking employees in the mining, metallurgical and related industries require a specialized approach, taking into account the specifics of their work, said Georgiy Popov, representative of the National Association of the Extractive Industry of Ukraine (NADPU). According to him, the current booking periods are often insufficient, as some projects in these areas take up to five years and require the participation of highly qualified specialists.
“I support the proposals of my colleagues: we need a proper digitalization process, a specialized approach to the industry, taking into account its specifics and differences from other businesses. At the beginning of the full-scale war, there was a lot of talk about booking IT specialists. However, we should not forget that the mining business and the mining and metallurgical complex are responsible for the lion’s share of tax revenues, white-collar employment and foreign exchange earnings,” he emphasized.
Representatives of the associations called on the government, the President’s Office and relevant ministries to resume actual booking, to audit critical enterprises as soon as possible to avoid stopping the work of many companies and plants that provide significant tax revenues and materials important for the country’s defense capability.
“While we support the President’s decision to clean up the booking process, we appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers to solve the problems in this area. Not to stop the processes, but to conduct an audit and find out how so many reservations were made in six months. If the current situation drags on for days and weeks, it will lead to a halt in our work,” Kalenkov summarized.
In January-September this year, Ukrainian enterprises reduced their consumption of rolled steel by 6.92% year-on-year to 2.425 million tons.
According to a press release from Ukrmetallurgprom, 927 thousand tons, or 38.23% of the domestic rolled metal consumption market, were imported during this period.
According to Ukrmetallurgprom, in January-September 2014, steel companies produced 4.821 million tons of rolled metal products (122.7% compared to the same period in 2023). According to the State Customs Service of Ukraine, about 3.323 million tons, or 68.9%, were exported. In January-September 2013, the share of exports amounted to 54.5% (2.142 million tons against a total rolled steel production of 3.929 million tons).
The share of semi-finished products in export deliveries in January-September 2024 amounted to 46.98%, which is almost the same as in January-September 2023 (45.10%). The share of flat products in export deliveries in 9M2024 is slightly higher than in January-September 2023 (39.03% and 36.65%, respectively). The share of long products is significantly lower than in January-September 2023 (13.99% in 2024 vs. 18.25% in 2023).
“In the first nine months of 2024, the domestic market capacity amounted to 2.425 million tons of rolled steel, of which 927 thousand tons, or 38.23%, were imported. In January-September 2023, the domestic market capacity amounted to 2 million 605.4 thousand tons, of which 818.4 thousand tons, or 31.41%, were imported. Thus, in the first nine months of 2024, there was a decrease in the domestic market capacity by 6.92% compared to the first nine months of 2023, with a simultaneous increase in the share of the import component by 6.82%,” the press release states.
The structure of imports in January-September 2024 is still characterized by a significant dominance of flat products over long products (79.36% and 19.19%, respectively). In January-September 2023, the dominance of flat products over long products was also significant (80.78% and 18.29%, respectively).
According to the State Customs Service, the main export markets for Ukrainian rolled steel products in January-September 2024 were the European Union (69.6%), Africa (11.7%) and the rest of Europe (7.6%).
Other European countries ranked first among metallurgical importers in the period under review (49.6%), followed by the EU-27 (28.2%), and Asia (20.6%).
As reported, Ukraine’s rolled steel market increased 2.19 times in 2023 compared to 2022, to 3 million 505.6 thousand tons. The company imported 1 million 118.6 thousand tons, or 31.91% of the domestic market for these products.
The Ministry of Commerce of China confirmed the intention to increase duties on imports of cars with large engines. Earlier it became known that Beijing is considering such a possibility along with additional restrictions on supplies of whiskey from Europe to the country.
The representative of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce He Yadong said during a press conference on Thursday that there are significant differences between China and the EU regarding the recent decision of the European Commission to impose additional duties on imports of Chinese electric cars to Europe. Beijing has invited EU representatives to visit China for further talks, he said.
According to He Yadong, the Ministry of Commerce is considering the possibility of increasing duties on imports of high-volume gasoline-powered cars into China and will make a decision after studying relevant factors.
If Beijing makes such a decision, German automakers will be the most seriously affected, said Dongshu Cui, president of the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
Total imports of cars with engines larger than 2.5 liters from the EU fell 13% to $10.2 billion in the first eight months of this year, CPCA data showed.
17 Ukrainian universities have been included in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine reports.
“Within the framework of the World Academic Summit, the British rating agency Times Higher Education has published the results of one of the most influential university rankings in the world. A total of 2095 institutions from 115 countries were evaluated. This year, a record number of Ukrainian universities were included in the ranking – 17 universities from Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Sumy, Uzhhorod, Kharkiv, and Chernivtsi. Another record is the number of Ukrainian universities that have applied to participate in the ranking – 55, which is a third more than last year,” the ministry said in a statement.
It is noted that Sumy State University took the highest position among Ukrainian universities, joining the group of universities that took places in the range of 801-1000 in the world ranking.
According to the report, all other Ukrainian institutions are in the 1501+ group.
In particular, the Bogomolets National Medical University, Mechnikov Odesa National University, and Stefanyk Precarpathian National University appeared in the ranking table for the first time.
The Ministry of Education said that according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025 methodology, universities were evaluated by 18 performance indicators grouped into five generalized indicators: educational activities, research environment, research quality, cooperation with industry, and international openness.
“In total, Times Higher Education analysts analyzed 157 million citations and 18 million scientific publications from the Scopus database, and interviewed more than 93 thousand scientists from around the world during their own reputation surveys,” the ministry added.
As reported, last year, six Ukrainian universities were included in the top thousand most sustainable universities in the annual Impact Rankings by the British rating agency Times Higher Education.
On October 16, Gas Supply Company Naftogaz Trading LLC announced its intention to enter into a voluntary health insurance agreement with Transmagistral Insurance Company for 100 employees.
According to the Prozorro electronic public procurement system, Transmagistral’s offer amounted to UAH 2.368 million, against the expected cost of UAH 3.117 million.
The tender was also attended by insurance companies Ultra Alliance and Interexpress with bids of UAH 2.383 million each, and Krayina with a bid of UAH 3.028 million.
As reported, the tender was announced on September 5. On September 9, Ultra Alliance Insurance Company filed a complaint with the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, which on September 18 ordered the tender organizer to amend the tender documents.
Transmagistral Insurance Company, registered in 2003, specializes in providing risk insurance services.
