Business

LONDON — Britain will issue up to 10,500 temporary work visas to lorry drivers and poultry workers to ease chronic staff shortages, the government announced on Saturday, in a U-turn on post-Brexit immigration policy.

The short-term visas, to run from next month until late December, come as ministers grapple with a huge shortfall in drivers and some other key workers that has hit fuel supplies and additional industries.

A tanker drivers shortage has caused large queues at petrol stations in recent days, as people ignore government pleas not to panic-buy fuel after some garages closed due to the lack of deliveries. 

The decision to expand the critical worker visa scheme is a reversal by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose government had tightened post-Brexit immigration rules insisting that Britain's reliance on foreign labour must end.

It had resisted the move for months, despite an estimated shortage of around 100,000 heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers and warnings from various sectors that supplies would run short.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps nevertheless insisted he was taking action "at the earliest opportunity" and that a broader package of measures announced would ensure pre-Christmas preparations "remain on track".

"The industries must also play their part with working conditions continuing to improve and the deserved salary increases continuing to be maintained in order for companies to retain new drivers," he added.

Millions of pounds for 'skills bootcamps' 

The new measures will focus on rapidly expanding the number of new domestic drivers, and include deploying ministry of defence driving examiners to help provide thousands of extra tests over the next 12 weeks.

Meanwhile, the education ministry and partner agencies will spend millions of pounds training 4,000 people to become HGV drivers, creating new so-called "skills bootcamps" to speed up the process.

Nearly 1 million letters will also be sent to all drivers who currently hold an HGV licence, asking any not currently driving to come back to work.

Johnson has been under increasing pressure to act, after the pandemic and Brexit combined to worsen the haulier shortage and other crises emerged, including escalating energy prices.

As well as threatening timely fuel supplies, the lack of lorry drivers has hit British factories, restaurants and supermarkets in recent weeks and months.

US burger chain McDonald's ran out of milkshakes and bottled drinks last month, fast-food giant KFC was forced to remove some items from its menu, while restaurant chain Nando's temporarily shut dozens of outlets due to a lack of chicken. 

Supermarkets are also feeling the heat, with frozen-food group Iceland and retail king Tesco warning of Christmas product shortages.

This week it was the turn of the fuel sector, with growing lines of cars clogging the approaches to petrol stations following some closures and panic-buying, particularly in southeast England.

Drivers appeared less than reassured on Saturday, as queues again formed for fuel.

Mike Davey, 56, had been waiting more than half an hour to fill up at a petrol station run by the supermarket chain Tesco in Kent, southeast of London.

"I just want to get some fuel to get to work. People are just like filling up jerry cans — it's ridiculous," he said. 

"Maybe they need to bring some army drivers in," Davey added.

The government has so far resisted calls to deploy soldiers to help deliver petrol directly.

As part of the measures announced, taxpayers will also help pay for some adult HGV license applications in the next academic year — which can cost thousands of pounds — through an adult education budget fund.

KHARTOUM — Sudan's transitional government on Sunday sent a senior delegation to the Red Sea trade hub of Port Sudan to negotiate with demonstrators threatening the country's fuel supplies and revenue.

Information Minister Hamza Baloul confirmed the team's arrival while another senior official, who preferred to remain anonymous, said "the delegation won't come back [to the capital Khartoum] before solving the crisis".

A protest leader announced on September 20 that dozens of demonstrators, objecting to parts of a peace deal with rebel groups, had blocked the main container and oil export terminals in Port Sudan.

By Saturday, Sudan's Oil Minister Gadein Ali Obeid warned of "an extremely grave situation" with two pipelines blocked by the protesters.

One transports oil exports from South Sudan while the other handles Sudanese crude imports.

Sudan had reserves to last only for 10 days, Obeid's ministry said.

Neighbouring South Sudan produces around 162,000 barrels of oil per day, which are transported by pipeline to Port Sudan and then shipped to global markets.

The Khartoum government receives around $25 for every barrel of oil sold from the South, according to official figures. 

The delegation to Port Sudan, the country's main seaport, is headed by sovereign council member Shams Al Din Kabashi and other ministers.

Sudan formed the joint civilian-military sovereign ruling council months after the ouster of Omar Al Bashir, Sudan’s authoritarian ruler for 30 years, in April 2019.

It serves alongside a transitional government, headed by civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, which last October signed a peace agreement with several rebel groups.

But the eastern protesters, from Sudan's Beja minority, say that the deal with rebels from the Darfur region, Blue Nile and South Kordofan states ignored their interests. 

Speaking in Khartoum on Sunday, sovereign council chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan described the protesters' demands as "a political matter that must be dealt with politically".

While impeding access to Port Sudan, the protesters late last week also blocked the entrance to the city's airport and a bridge linking Kassala with the rest of the country.

WASHINGTON — After an investigation found she used her senior role at the World Bank to manipulate data in favour of China, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on Friday issued a statement again denying misconduct and rejecting the report.

"Let me be clear: the conclusions are wrong. I did not pressure anyone to alter any reports. There was absolutely no quid pro quo related to funding for the World Bank of any kind," Georgieva wrote in a statement. 

An independent investigation released last week found that during her time as World Bank CEO, Georgieva was among top officials who pressured staff into changing data to China's benefit in the 2018 edition of its closely watched Doing Business report.

The bank has since scrapped the report, while the US Treasury called the findings "serious".

In a statement released through US strategic communications firm SKDK rather than through the IMF, Georgieva, who took the top job at the Washington-based crisis lender in 2019, pledged changes to her management style.

"As much as I have strived to be open and inclusive, I was very sorry to learn that some staffers felt their concerns were not heard. Moving forward, I will make sure to be even more attentive to hearing staff views," she wrote.

The probe from an outside law firm found that Georgieva along with her associate Simeon Djankov, a former Bulgarian finance minister who created the report, and Jim Yong-kim, then-president of the bank, pressured staff to change the calculation of China's ranking to avoid angering Beijing.

The push came while bank leadership was engaged in sensitive negotiations with Beijing over increasing the bank's lending capital.

Nobel Laureate Paul Romer, who was chief economist for the World Bank during her time there and later resigned after raising separate concerns about the Doing Business rankings, said "the kind of intimidation this report describes was real" and said Georgieva arranged a "whitewash" of his criticisms.

Shanta Devarajan, a former acting chief economist of the World Bank, defended Georgieva, writing on Twitter that she specified that China's data should be verified without compromising the rankings' integrity.

"The changes to China's score were either correcting coding errors or judgment calls on questions where judgment was required," he said on Thursday.

"At no point did I feel I was being pressured," he said, adding the allegation Georgieva tampered with the data "is beyond credulity".

SHENZHEN, China — Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was headed home from Vancouver on Saturday as two Canadians released from prison in China reportedly arrived in Calgary, ending a bitter diplomatic row that has poisoned ties for three years.

Meng and the two Canadians — former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor — were detained in a bitter spat critics have called "hostage diplomacy". 

Meng, the 49-year-old daughter of Ren Zhengfei, the billionaire founder of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, was granted release in a Vancouver court hearing after three years of house arrest in Canada while fighting extradition to the United States.

This came hours after US prosecutors announced an agreement under which fraud charges against her are to be suspended and eventually dropped.

She then quickly boarded a flight to the city of Shenzhen, returning to China for the first time since her arrest at Vancouver's international airport at the behest of US authorities in December 2018.

Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the two detained Canadians had left Chinese airspace, adding they had gone through "an unbelievably difficult ordeal".

They arrived back in Calgary, western Canada on Saturday, and were shown on TV being greeted and hugged by Trudeau.

The "two Michaels" — as they have been dubbed by international media — were detained just days after Meng on what Ottawa has contended were "trumped up" espionage charges. 

In turn, Beijing called Meng's case "a purely political incident".

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said "the US Government stands with the international community in welcoming the decision" to release the men.

Speaking to reporters before heading to China, Meng said: "Over the past three years, my life has been turned upside down. It was a disruptive time for me as a mother, wife and a company executive."

China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Saturday that the detention of Meng was an "incident of political persecution against a Chinese citizen".

"The so-called 'fraud' allegation against Meng Wanzhou is totally fabricated," she said, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Huawei's 'princess' 

The resolution of the case removes a deep thorn in the relationship between Beijing, Washington and Ottawa, with China accusing the US of a political attack on one of its technology titans. 

Beijing also accused Ottawa of doing Washington's bidding by arresting and holding Meng, known inside Huawei as the "princess" of the company and its possible future leader.

Washington had accused her of wire fraud and deceiving HSBC bank, saying she tried to hide violations of US sanctions on Iran by Huawei affiliate Skycom.

But on Friday, US prosecutors settled for Meng agreeing to a statement of facts in the case.

In exchange, they agreed to defer the charges until 2022, and then drop them if Meng abides by the terms of the agreement.

In China, news of Meng's agreement was being scrubbed from the Internet.

State news agency Xinhua said she was returning to China "through unremitting efforts of the Chinese government", while the editor of state-run Global Times said she had been "finally released on a not guilty plea".

A red banner hanging at Shenzhen airport arrivals hall read "Welcome home Meng Wanzhou" and a crowd of about 200 supporters gathered waving Chinese flags and banners.

Some chanted 'Go Huawei!'

"I think China is going to... turn Meng Wanzhou's release into a big victory, a diplomatic victory," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor of Political Science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

He said the government would build a propaganda campaign to "ignore the accusations against her and give the illusion that she was wrongly accused of crimes she never committed".

'Hostage diplomacy' 

The charges and Meng's arrest were enmeshed in a broader campaign against Huawei. Washington says the firm has close links to the Chinese government and military, accusations it denies.

The company on Saturday said it will "continue to defend itself against the allegations" in US courts.

Caught in between, Ottawa sought to rally allies, including Washington, to hike pressure on Beijing to release the two Canadians.

Both were put on trial in March this year. In August, Spavor was sentenced to 11 years in prison, while there had been no decision in Kovrig's case.

"All the while Beijing has insisted that this is not a case of hostage diplomacy — but now they have made it abundantly clear that it is a hostage exchange," said Lynette Ong, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

"I think it will probably send the wrong lesson to China — that hostage diplomacy works."

NEW YORK — Google announced on Tuesday plans to buy a New York City office building for $2.1 billion, confirming its push into America's largest city despite the pandemic teleworking trend. 

According to Real Capital Analytics, quoted by the Wall Street Journal, this is the largest real estate purchase in the United States for an office building since the beginning of global spread of COVID-19. 

Google already rents the premises in Manhattan, which are located on the site of a former railroad terminal in the Hudson Square neighbourhood. 

The Silicon Valley giant envisions a campus with a total surface area of 160,000 square metres by mid-2023 that will serve as its New York headquarters for sales and partnerships. 

The final site is to be spread over three buildings between Hudson Street and Washington Street, with construction of two of them already completed.

The company, whose headquarters are in Mountain View, California, has made other billion-dollar purchases in New York City, including the $2.4 billion it plunked down on the Chelsea Market building. 

"Google has been fortunate to call New York City home for more than 20 years, during which time we have grown to 12,000 employees," said the group's CFO Ruth Porat in a statement. 

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio welcomed the news saying, "Google is leading the way here in our economic comeback."