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DAVOS, Switzerland — From soaring debt to the Ukraine war's impact on food and energy prices, the world is facing "multiple crises", the head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said.

In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner discussed the challenges the planet is facing.

Here are three questions Steiner gave answers to: 

How is the war affecting food security?

"Essentially, Ukraine and Russia not selling grains as they would normally do on the world market has immediately translated into price rises, and in also an interruption of the supply chain.

We always have to remember there are countries that depend for 30, 40, 50 per cent of their wheat supplies for example on Ukraine. Quite a number of African countries, Arab countries, these are immediately affected. 

Secondly, hundreds of millions of people are being priced out of being able to buy their basic food for their sustenance because the impact on world prices literally means they can no longer afford the next day's meal. And that is a grave concern. 

In the United Nations, we estimate that, as of May of this year, we have well over 200 million people facing acute hunger. And the number of people that may be facing future threats is growing nowadays because of, for instance, the drought in East Africa in the Horn of Africa. 

And then you have the compounded effect of the fertiliser exports being stopped. So agriculture, in the short term is facing a supply chain shock.

"If we could find a political agreement on how to release the stocks that are currently in the silos in the Ukraine, and how Russia and Ukraine could perhaps find an international... agreement, we would have an immediate, let's say relief, both in terms of availability, but also prices would immediately come down, buying us time to also deal with the future of grain production."

What's the 

impact on debt? 

"The perhaps related phenomenon is that food prices are also driving a fiscal crisis. The ability of governments to purchase more expensive food on world markets is severely compromised as a result of the pandemic."

We estimate roughly 80 countries now essentially facing debt distress potentially this year. And this is obviously something that can quickly translate into also political rupture. 

When people are not able to feed themselves, governments are not able to provide for food in the marketplace, then politics quickly moves on to the street, and this is something that is obviously a grave concern to many of us. 

I think we have seen it in Sri Lanka. I think we could see it in Latin America, and certainly in Africa as well, because in the countries that are most likely to be facing both the extraordinary increase in price rises for food imports and energy imports. 

So we are talking really about the implications touching a significant part of humanity almost instantly, and probably for about 60 to 70 countries, all three crises are happening at the same time. And that is a group of countries that we're obviously most concerned about because that is where the international community now needs to step up. And at the moment, we're not stepping up adequately. 

The first step, I think, is to introduce more liquidity into the system. And we have to deal with the fact that governments simply have run out of money on the back of the pandemic. 

Is your messaging getting through 

at Davos? 

"I think we are struggling to some extent to comprehend both the magnitude and severity of the multiple crises that are unfolding across the globe right now." 

In terms of food security, affordability of energy, the cost of financing capital. These are very serious outlooks. And I think, to be very frank, the response by countries that are able to essentially make a difference here, whether it's the G-7, the G-20, the Bretton Woods institutions, our international platforms for responding are not yet really adequately being enabled to do so and resourced to do so.

"So the conversation also at the World Economic Forum is important because we need leaders in business. We need leaders in government, we need leaders and civil society to understand that this is a critical moment, both for crisis management, but also for the capacity of the world to continue to work together rather than against each other."

LONDON — Stock markets retreated on Tuesday on renewed concerns over weak global growth following a profit warning from the owner of Snapchat that spooked investors and further shocked the tech sector.

It comes amid concerns over the impact of China's COVID-19 restrictions on the world's second-largest economy after the United States.

Monday's strong Wall Street rally, where the Dow closed up two per cent  failed to carry over into Tuesday as Snap, the parent of social media app Snapchat, warned overnight that it saw the economic outlook as having darkened considerably.

Its share price plummeted 41.3 per cent in late morning trading. 

"Snap provided a shock," noted Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com.

The company "spooked the market with a macroeconomic warning that dented tech the most and pointed to earnings revisions that could drag the market lower for longer", he added. 

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite quickly sank more than three per cent. Shares in Facebook-parent Meta fell 8.9 per cent and Google-owned Alphabet shed 6.7 per cent.

Patrick J. O'Hare at Briefing.com said that Snap's warning impacted the broader market as investors are worried about the economic trajectory.

"The real issue hitting the market in terms of the Snap warning is the context for the warning: 'the macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than anticipated'," he said.

Pound lashed 

The pound also took a knock after an S&P Global's economic sentiment survey for Britain fell to a 15-month low. 

"The extent of the fall points to a UK economy hitting the buffers hard as the combined effect of surging energy prices, and tax rises starts to curtail economic activity," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.

Shares in British energy firms slumped following reports that the UK government may impose a windfall tax on excess profits enjoyed by electricity producers.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has so far indicated he does not want to impose such a tax on oil and gas producers despite them also earning vast sums as prices soar.

Shares in Drax fell by 16.1 per cent, SSE by 7.7 per cent and Centrica by 7.6 per cent.

Johnson argues an exceptional levy on the likes of BP and Shell would harm their efforts to invest in greener fuels like solar and wind power.

In China, Beijing's announcement of a fresh raft of measures to stimulate the economy did little to calm investors' nerves.

China's economy has taken a hit from Beijing's zero-COVID approach to the pandemic.

Prolonged virus lockdowns have constricted supply chains, dampened demand and stalled manufacturing.

Investment banks UBS Group and JPMorgan Chase have responded by cutting their China economic growth forecasts.

"The lingering restrictions and lack of clarity on an exit strategy from the current COVID policy will likely dampen corporate and consumer confidence and hinder the release of pent-up demand," UBS economists including Tao Wang wrote in a research note.

Concerns over the Chinese economy and its impact on oil demand weighed on crude prices on Tuesday.

DAVOS, Switzerland — The question of whether the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine have sounded the death knell for globalisation has dominated the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Swiss resort Davos.

Some believe the crises have unleashed an opportunity for a transformation of international trade and supply chains as the world economy slows down.

Once advocated by anti-globalisation movements, far from the quiet rooms at Davos, talk of "deglobalisation" is back in the face of supply chain disruptions linked to the Ukraine conflict and lockdowns in China.

In the hope of building stronger networks unaffected by crises like war, deglobalisation would mean bringing production back closer to home, thus allowing the movement of goods across shorter distances.

The issue has become acute after COVID-19 and the misery at Shanghai port.

The Chinese city has become a symbol of global supply chain woes after its factories were closed for weeks and containers piled up as China sticks stubbornly to a zero-COVID strategy, causing delivery delays worldwide.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, global food prices have hit an all-time high as the two countries make up a huge share of the globe's exports in several major commodities, like wheat.

Such snags are leading many, including the world's biggest companies, to consider what production should look like in the future.

Globalisation is "temporarily pausing", Loic Tassel, president for Europe at the consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble said during an event at Davos.

"The price to pay or the time to wait is not compatible anymore with our industry," Tassel said, giving the example of Shanghai, which is the world's busiest container port.

"We are now bringing into the equation the cost and resilience of the supply chain, it was not in our mind three years ago," he said.

But rather than talk about "deglobalisation", Pamela Coke-Hamilton, director of the Geneva-based agency International Trade Centre, preferred to speak about diversification and relocalisation — where supply chains are closer and in areas where conflict is far away.

"The change will come by the shifting to near sourcing value chains," she said.

Sceptics said companies sought the cheapest options despite being aware of the risk of huge dependence on certain regions.

"We never imported so much from China as when we said we should rely on it less," noted Gilles Moec, chief economist at French insurance giant Axa, on the sidelines of Davos.

"One of the reasons why people are so nervous right now is that if China was unable to meet global demand because of the pandemic, that would be a catastrophe," he added.

Globalisation's identity crisis comes at a time when pessimism reigns over the future of the global economy.

"The horizon has darkened," said International Monetary Fund head Kristalina Georgieva at Davos on Monday.

While a global growth forecast of 3.6 per cent excludes the risk of recession right now, "it doesn't mean it is out of question" for certain countries.

The clouds are already gathering in developed countries, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

There was only 0.1 per cent growth in the first quarter of 2022, the OECD said Monday, and gross domestic product even fell by 0.1 per cent among G-7 countries.

The second quarter is likely to be equally sluggish, as the adverse effects of the Ukraine war and China's lockdowns take root.

After governments spent copiously during the pandemic, "the response to put in place is not obvious and that worries everyone a little," Axa's Moec said.

Meanwhile, inflation is pushing central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, to raise interest rates, which will make it costlier for both companies and consumers to borrow and slow economic activity.

The European Central Bank signalled on Monday the end of negative rates despite the European Commission's growth forecast for 2022 last week for the eurozone, from four per cent to 2.7 per cent.

Figures from China, the global engine of growth, revealed the pain inflicted by Beijing's strict zero-COVID policy as retail sales and factory production slumped to their lowest in over two years, while unemployment is near record levels.

LONDON — The euro jumped one per cent versus the dollar on Monday after European Central Bank Chief Christine Lagarde signalled the end of ECB negative interest rates.

The euro struck a one-month high at $1.0688 after Lagarde said the central bank would probably draw a line under the era of negative interest rates by September owing to soaring eurozone inflation.

"That's something that we were waiting for so long," noted Swissquote analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya. 

"Lagarde is finally showing that the [inflation] situation is serious in Europe as well," 

she said.

Central banks around the world are increasing interest rates to tackle the highest inflation in decades but so far the ECB has refused to follow the likes of the Federal Reserve and Bank of England in hiking borrowing costs from record-low levels.

Eurozone inflation soared by an all-time high 7.5 per cent in April. 

The surge has been driven by soaring energy and food prices as economies reopen from pandemic lockdowns and following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Oil prices jumped more than one per cent on Monday.

Elsewhere, stock markets mostly climbed after US President Joe Biden said he was considering lifting some trade tariffs imposed on China by predecessor Donald Trump.

Tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports are due to expire in July, and Biden has faced growing calls to get rid of the punitive duties to help combat the highest US inflation in more than four decades. Ending the tariffs could help cut roaring US inflation by making imports cheaper.

Speaking in Tokyo, Biden replied "no" when asked if a US recession is inevitable.

"This is going to be a haul, this is going to take some time," Biden said.

The US economy has recovered strongly from its COVID-19 era shutdown, but the highest inflation in four decades and persistent problems in getting international supply chains flowing again are driving pessimism — and Biden's sinking poll numbers.

Biden blamed inflation on fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and other global problems and he defended US economic performance.

"We have problems the rest of the world has but less consequential," he said.

While acknowledging the high fuel prices and food supply crunches caused by the war in wheat-producing Ukraine, Biden said his administration would continue to "grow our economy, create jobs".

Last week Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said: "I really don't expect the United States to fall into a recession".

However, she cautioned that European countries, which are among the biggest US trading partners, "are more vulnerable" due to reliance on Russian energy imports.

On Wednesday, investors will be looking to the release of minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting for clues on the pace of future interest rate hikes by the US central bank.

MUSCAT — Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Oman on Monday as the two countries signed a string of trade deals and as international talks on Tehran's nuclear programme hang in the balance, leaving the Iranian republic under sanctions.

Raisi, on his second Gulf visit since taking office in August, was greeted by Sultan Haitham Bin Tareq at the airport and received a 21-gun salute at the royal palace, an Omani statement said.

Raisi's one-day trip comes at a time when renewed talks on restoring a 2015 nuclear deal are at a stalemate. Oman played a mediating role between Tehran and Washington in the build-up to the original agreement.

The countries signed 12 memoranda of understanding during the visit, including in the fields of oil and gas, transport, education, trade and investment, reported the official Oman News Agency.

"Trade exchanges between the two countries of Oman and Iran will improve definitely," Raisi said before departure, according to Iran's state news agency IRNA.

"Both countries are determined to upgrade the level of political and economic ties," he added.

A delegation of 50 Iranian businessmen travelled to Oman last week, IRNA said, adding that Iran's minister for roads and urban development has announced plans for a joint shipping line and tourist flights.

Oman is also seeking to import gas from Iran by building an offshore pipeline between the two countries, who are discussing the development of joint gas fields offshore.

The sultanate, which faces Iran across the Gulf of Oman, endured economic pain during the pandemic, with its GDP dropping 6.4 per cent in 2020 and government debt soaring. It saw rare protests over high unemployment and lay-offs last year.

Raisi visited Qatar in February, where he met with Emir Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani and took part in a conference of gas exporting countries.

Stop-start talks to bring Iran back to the 2015 deal curbing its nuclear ambitions in return for a lifting of sanctions that was abandoned by former US president Donald Trump in 2018, began in April last year.

PARIS — A slew of celebrity endorsements helped inflate a multibillion dollar bubble around digital tokens over the past year, but cryptocurrencies are crashing and some fear NFTs could be next.

NFTs are tokens linked to digital images, "collectable" items, avatars in games or property and objects in the burgeoning virtual world of the metaverse.

The likes of Paris Hilton, Gwyneth Paltrow and Serena Williams have boasted about owning NFTs and many under-30s have been enticed to gamble for the chance of making a quick profit.

But the whole sector is suffering a rout at the moment with all the major cryptocurrencies slumping in value, and the signs for NFTs are mixed at best.

The number of NFTs traded in the first quarter of this year slumped by almost 50 per cent compared to the previous quarter, according to analysis firm Non-Fungible.

They reckoned the market was digesting the vast amount of NFTs created last year, with the resale market just getting off the ground.

Monitoring firm CryptoSlam reported a dramatic tail-off in May, with just $31 million spent on art and collectibles in the week to May 15, the lowest figure all year.

A symbol of the struggle is the forlorn attempt to resell an NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet.

Dorsey managed to sell the NFT for almost $3 million last year but the new owner cannot find anyone willing to pay more than $20,000.

Molly White, a prominent critic of the crypto sphere, said there were many possible reasons for the downturn.

"It could be a general decrease in hype, it could be fear of scams after so many high-profile ones, or it could be people tightening their belts," she said.

The reputation of the industry has been hammered for much of the year.

The main exchange, OpenSea, admitted in January that more than 80 per cent of the NFTs created with its free tool were fraudulent — many of them copies of other NFTs or famous artworks reproduced without permission.

"There's a bit of everything on OpenSea," said Olivier Lerner, co-author of the book "NFT Mine d'Or" (NFT Gold Mine).

"It's a huge site and it's not curated, so you really have no idea what you're buying."

LooksRare, an NFT exchange that overtook OpenSea for volume of sales this year, got into similar problems as its rival.

As many as 95 per cent of the transactions on its platform were found to be fake, according to CryptoSlam.

Users were selling NFTs to themselves because LooksRare was offering tokens with every transaction — no matter what you were buying.

The amounts lost to scams this year have been eye-watering.

The owners of Axie Infinity, a game played by millions in the Philippines and elsewhere and a key driver of the NFT market, managed to lose more than $500 million in a single swindle.

'Like the lottery' 

"As soon as you have a new technology, you immediately have fraudsters circling," lawyer Eric Barbry noted.

He pointed out that the NFT market had no dedicated regulation so law enforcement agencies are left to cobble together a response using existing frameworks.

Molly White said strong regulation could help eliminate the extreme speculation but that could, in turn, rob NFTs of their major appeal — that they can bring quick profits.

"I think less hype would be a good thing — in its current form, NFT trading is enormously risky and probably unwise for the average person," she said.

NFTs are often likened to the traditional art market because they have no inherent utility and their prices fluctuated wildly depending on trends and hype.

But Olivier Lerner suggested a different comparison.

"It's like the lottery," he said of those seeking big profits from NFTs. "You play, but you never win." 

NEW YORK — Asian and European stocks rebounded on Friday on China's interest rate cut, but US equities gyrated amid fears that sky-high inflation will spark a recession.

"Markets have been looking for an excuse to bounce, and a China rate cut provided the reason," IG analyst Chris Beauchamp said.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) announced it would lower its five-year loan prime rate — a key interest rate governing how lenders base their mortgage rates — to 4.45 per cent from 4.6 per cent.

The move is in contrast to other major central banks — like the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England — that are raising borrowing costs to combat rocketing consumer prices.

The Chinese move sparked optimism among traders that it could boost the world's second-largest economy from its COVID-induced stupor.

"The rate cut announced by the PBOC is obviously good news and is clearly targeted at revitalising the ailing property market which continues to suffer due to the crackdown last year and COVID lockdowns this year," said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at OANDA.

"This could help to revive a hugely important part of the economy," he added, but "whether it's enough to help China hit its 5.5 per cent growth target this year is another thing". 

Asian stocks closed with gains, as did Europe's main markets although those faded as the day wore on. 

Wall Street also opened higher but later tumbled, with the S&P 500 temporarily sinking into a "bear market", a drop of more than 20 per cent from a recent peak.

The broad-based S&P 500 finished at 3,901.36, basically unchanged for the day, but down three per cent for the week and off 19 per cent from its January high point.

"Stocks remain on a shaky footing", said market analyst Fawad Razaqzada at City Index and FOREX.com.

He said investors are worried about inflation, interest rate hikes, low economic growth, stagflation, and recession.

"Perhaps most importantly for stocks, the Fed is not there to provide cushion, like before," he added, as the US central bank is raising interest rates to combat inflation.

Downcast earning reports from retailers have heightened market uncertainty at a time of rising interest rates, surging energy prices, China's COVID lockdowns and Russia's ongoing war on Ukraine.

Major stock indices have lost huge portions of their value in recent months.

In Europe, Paris and Frankfurt stocks are down between 14 and 15 per cent, while London's main index has shed a modest 3.9 per cent.