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LONDON — Indian conglomerate Tata Group announced plans Wednesday to build a £4 billion ($5.2 billion) electric car battery factory in Britain to supply its Jaguar Land Rover brands, bolstering the country's efforts to phase out fossil fuel vehicles.

Britain plans to ban the sale of new high-polluting diesel and petrol cars from 2030, forcing its car manufacturing sector to switch production to electric vehicles.

The factory — Tata Group's first gigafactory outside India — will be built in Somerset, southwest England, after the site reportedly beat competition from Spain.

"Tata Group will be setting up one of Europe's largest battery cell manufacturing facilities in the UK. Our multibillion-pound investment will bring state-of-the-art technology to the country," said Tata Chairman N. Chandrasekaran.

The government said the factory will be a "huge boost to the UK's automotive sector", providing almost half of the battery production that the UK will need by 2030.

The investment would "secure UK-produced batteries for another Tata Sons investment, Jaguar Land Rover, as well as other manufacturers in the UK and Europe, the government said.

Production is due to begin at the factory in 2026, creating up to 4,000 jobs and thousands more in the wider supply chain.

The UK's goal of phasing out new diesel and petrol cars is part of its long-standing goal to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in order to help tackle climate change.

'Significant moment' 

UK Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch said in a statement the multibillion-pound investment demonstrated that the "government has got the right plan when it comes to the automotive sector".

Greenpeace senior climate campaigner Paul Morozzo hailed the announcement as a "significant moment for the UK car industry and a signal that the government has finally started the engine in the international clean technology race, while other are speeding ahead".

But he warned that the UK government must stay on track with its 2030 target.

"Failing to do so would mean waving goodbye to any meaningful electric vehicle manufacturing sector in the UK, regardless of this new gigafactory, which would put domestic car manufacturing as a whole in jeopardy," he said.

The factory will be the UK's second electric battery plant compared to a reported over 30 that are already operational or in the pipeline across the European Union.

Nissan established Britain's first battery gigafactory in Sunderland, northeast England, in 2013 with its Leaf car.

In 2021 it also announced a further investment totalling £1 billion in a standalone battery only plant.

FRANKFURT — Tesla confirmed plans on Tuesday to drastically expand its factory near Berlin, with the goal of doubling production capacity at its only European plant to a million electric vehicles per year.

The US company said it had filed an application for the expansion of the Gruenheide site with the regional environment ministry of Brandenburg state. 

The plans will be available for public consultation from Wednesday and citizens will have two months to register any objections, the ministry said.

In a statement, Tesla said it wants to double "production capacity to 1,000,000 vehicles" annually. It also plans to ramp up battery storage production capacity at the Gruenheide gigafactory from 50 gigawatt hours annually to "100 gigawatt hours".

As well as enlarging the existing facilities, the proposals would require the construction of a new production hall. The number of employees could rise from around 10,000 currently "to possibly 22,500", Tesla said.

The Elon Musk-owned company did not give a timeline for the project.

The plant is currently churning out around 5,000 electric cars a week — amounting to 260,000 a year.

If Tesla's plans are approved, the Gruenheide factory would become Germany's largest car factory, according to the Handelsblatt financial daily, behind Volkswagen's Wolfsburg site with a production capacity of 800,000 vehicles per year.

The Gruenheide factory opened last year after an arduous two-year approval and construction process dogged by administrative and legal obstacles, including complaints from residents worried about the site's environmental impact.

The factory's water usage in particular has been a key concern among locals.

In an apparent bid to ease those worries, Tesla said the "contractually agreed quantities of fresh water will be sufficient" for the larger factory as well.

Germany's powerful IG Metall union welcomed Tesla's committment to the Brandenburg region but voiced concern about "the stark contradiction" between the ambitious plans and recent job cuts at the factory.

"Before the plant is expanded, the improvement of working conditions in Gruenheide must now finally have priority," IG Metall's Dirk Schulze said in a statement on Monday.

TUNIS — The European Union and Tunisia on Sunday signed a memorandum of understanding for a "strategic and comprehensive partnership" on irregular migration, economic development and renewable energy.

The deal, which includes financial assistance, came as Tunisia has been under fire over its treatment of migrants since February, after President Kais Saied accused "hordes" of migrants from sub-Saharan African countries of a "plot" to change the country's demographic makeup.

The cash-strapped North African country, a key route for migrants trying to make their way to Europe, has since seen a rise in racially motivated attacks.

Tensions came to a head after a Tunisian man was killed on July 3 in an clash between locals and migrants in the city of Sfax.

Since then, hundreds of migrants fled their homes in Tunisia or were forcibly evicted and driven to desert areas along the borders with Algeria and Libya, left to fend for themselves in searing heat.

Speaking at the Tunisian presidential palace, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday's accord aims to "invest in shared prosperity".

"We need an effective cooperation, more than ever" on migration, von der Leyen said, announcing greater cooperation against "networks of smugglers and traffickers" and in search and rescue operations.

She was accompanied by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte, who were all in Tunisia in June for talks on ways to curb irregular migration.

'Unlimited generosity' 

Tunisia lies about 130 kilometres from the Italian island of Lampedusa, and has long been a departure point for migrants risking perilous sea journeys on makeshift boats in hopes of reaching Europe.

The International Organisation for Migration has said 2,406 migrants died or disappeared in the Mediterranean in 2022, while at least 1,166 deaths or disappearance were recorded in the first half of 2023.

Meloni on Sunday welcomed "a new and important step to deal with the migration crisis", and invited Saied to an international conference on migration on July 23.

Rutte said both the European Union and "the Tunisian people" stand to benefit from the agreement, noting that the EU is Tunisia's biggest trading partner.

The deal also covers financial aid to schools in Tunisia and renewable energy initiatives.

Saied meanwhile called for a "collective agreement on inhuman immigration and [forced] displacements of people by criminal networks".

He insisted that Tunisia "gave the migrants everything it can offer with unlimited generosity".

Hours before the announcement, AFP correspondents at the Tunisian-Libyan border saw dozens of exhausted and dehydrated migrants in a desert area, claiming they were taken there by Tunisian authorities.

In June, von der Leyen had offered Tunisia 105 million euros (around $115 million) to support measure to curb irregular migration and 150 million euros in immediate support, as well as a long-term loan of around 900 million euros.

IMF loan 'diktats'

But the long-term loan would be contingent on approval of the nearly $2 billion loan currently with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that has stalled over differences with Saied, who assumed near total governing powers since 2021.

Von der Leyen said the EU remains "ready to support Tunisia" and provide the funds "as soon as the necessary conditions are met".

But Saied has repeatedly rejected what he calls the "diktats" of the IMF before a loan is granted, even as the country struggles under crippling inflation and debt estimated at around 80 per cent of its gross domestic product.

On Sunday, Saied stood his ground saying he rejects IMF demands to lift subsidies on basic products and services, namely oil and electricity, as well as the restructuring of 100 state-owned firms.

"We must find ways to cooperate outside the framework of monetary institutions that were set up after the second world war," he said.

Stuck in the desert 

Earlier on Sunday, Libyan border agent Mohamad Abou Snenah told AFP near the Tunisian border that "the number of migrants [coming from Tunisian] keep rising every day", adding that his patrol had so far rescued 50 to 70 people.

Ibrahim, a Congolese migrant who used to live in the Tunisian city of Zarzis, told AFP he was stopped on the street on his way back from work.

"They dropped us in the desert," he said. "We've been in the desert for many days."

Tunisian rights groups said on Friday that between 100 and 150 migrants, including women and children, were still stuck on the border with Libya.

The Tunisian Red Crescent said it has provided shelter to more than 600 migrants who had been taken this month the militarised zone of Ras Jedir on the Mediterranean coast.

SIDON — Among meandering alleyways in the historic market of Lebanon's southern city of Sidon, cobblers and menders are doing brisk business, as an economic crisis revives demand for once-fading trades.

At Ahmed Al Bizri's shoe repair store, nestled among old stone arches and a crowded warren of shops and stalls, workers are busy adjusting a woman's sandals and replacing the worn-out sole of a man's shoe.

"Repairs are in high demand," said Bizri, 48, who learned the trade from his father.

People from all walks of life "come to us to repair their shoes: Rich, poor, average workers, public servants, soldiers," he added.

Since late 2019, Lebanon has been in a state of economic collapse that the World Bank says is one of the worst in modern times.

The Lebanese pound has lost around 98 per cent of its value against the US dollar, and most of the population has been plunged into poverty.

Bizri said his work "has increased 60 per cent" since the crisis began, adding that people now prefer to spend up to one million Lebanese pounds (around $11 on parallel markets) to fix old shoes rather than buy new ones.

"Even people who had shoes hidden away for 20 years are bringing them out for repair," he said with a smile, boots hanging from rusty hooks and coloured laces on the walls around him.

In a shop nearby in central Sidon, fellow cobbler Walid Al Suri, 58, works with an old manual sewing machine that clicks and clacks as he pumps the pedal with his foot.

He stitches up a hole in the side of a shoe and trims the thread, covering it with black polish to camouflage the repair.

"It's true that our work has increased," he said from his workshop, a tiny space with faded green walls filled with shoes of all kinds.

But "there are no profits because the price of all the materials has gone up, from glue to needles, thread and nails," he said.

'Suffocating'

In Lebanon, a country dependent on imports, inflation has soared. 

In 2022, inflation averaged 171 percent, according to the World Bank — one of the highest rates worldwide.

"We pay for everything in dollars, not in Lebanese pounds," said Suri, who repairs around 20 shoes a day.

For that, he said he earns about $11, hardly enough to cover the basic needs of his family of three.

Some people have asked him to repair shoes that were verging on unfixable because they had no money for new ones, he said.

Elsewhere in the coastal city, Mustafa Al Qadi, 67, is mending duvets under the soft light of a window during one of Lebanon's long power cuts.

The bankrupt state provides just a handful of hours of electricity a day.

Qadi uses thick thread and deftly sews stitches into a duvet spread out on the floor, other quilts folded and rolled up around him.

"Most people patch things up" even if they are made cheaply, said Qadi, who is also an upholsterer.

"The circumstances are extraordinary — unfortunately our currency has no value," he said, his glasses slipping down his nose as he worked.

Despite the crash, Lebanese officials have failed to enact reforms demanded by international donors that would unlock bail-out funds.

Unemployment reached more than 29 percent last year, according to the World Bank.

"We hope this situation will end because we're suffocating," Qadi said.

'Forced' to repair 

In a store bearing an old-fashioned hand-painted yellow "Repairs" sign, tailor Mohammed Muazzin, 67, works away, surrounded by spools of thread and clothes waiting for attention or ready for pickup.

A woman in hijab and long robe holds up a dress to inspect Muazzin's adjustments, while another in a tank top and flowing hair waits to ask about repairing a pair of torn jeans.

"People used to buy trousers, wear them a few times and then get rid of them. Today, they give them to their brother or another relative," said Muazzin, who has been a tailor for four decades.

Even though he has up to 70 clients a day, he said that before the crisis "our earnings were higher".

Areen, 24, an unemployed teacher who declined to provide her surname, is among those who have come to Muazzin for repairs.

"The tough circumstances have forced us" to go to tailors instead of buying new clothes, she said, wearing a soft-coloured headscarf.

"Before, we would throw away clothes, shoes and bags or give them to those in need," she said.

"Now we try to get the most out of them."

UNITED NATIONS, United States — The COVID-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and the war in Ukraine have pushed 165 million people into poverty since 2020, the United Nations said Thursday, calling for a pause in debt repayments for developing countries.

Because of these shocks, 75 million people will have fallen into extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $2.15 a day, between 2020 and the end of 2023 — and 90 million more will fall below the poverty line of $3.65 a day, according to a study published by the United Nations Development Programme.

"The poorest suffer the most and their incomes in 2023 are projected to remain below pre-pandemic levels," the report said. 

"Countries that could invest in safety nets over the last three years have prevented a significant number of people from falling into poverty," UNDP chief Achim Steiner said in a statement. "In highly indebted countries, there is a correlation between high levels of debt, insufficient social spending, and an alarming increase in poverty rates."

The report called for a "debt-poverty pause" in economically struggling countries "to redirect debt repayment towards financing social expenditures and countering the effects of macroeconomic shocks".

"The solution is not out of reach for the multilateral system," the report said.

According to another UN report published on Wednesday, some 3.3 billion people, nearly half of humanity, live in countries that spend more on paying interest on debt than on education and health.

And developing countries, despite having lower levels of debt, are paying more interest, partly because of higher rates.

According to the report, the annual cost of lifting the 165 million newly poor people out of poverty would be over $14 billion, or 0.009 per cent of global output and a little less than 4 per cent of total public external debt service in 2022 for developing economies.

If the income losses among the already poor prior to the shocks are also included, the mitigation cost would reach some $107 billion, or 0.065 per cent of the world's GDP and around a fourth of total external public debt service, the report's authors estimated.

"There is a human cost of inaction in not restructuring developing countries' sovereign debt," Steiner said. "We need new mechanisms to anticipate and absorb shocks and make the financial architecture work for the most vulnerable."

Earlier this week Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who has been pushing for a reform of international financial institutions, denounced "our outdated global financial system, which reflects the colonial power dynamics of the era when it was created".

NEW YORK — ExxonMobil will acquire Denbury Inc., a specialist in enhanced oil recovery and carbon sequestration, for $4.9 billion as it builds out its low-carbon business, the oil giant announced Thursday.

The all-stock acquisition provides ExxonMobil with Denbury's carbon dioxide pipeline network in industrial-rich regions of the southern states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, where oil companies plan major carbon sequestration projects in response to climate change.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

"Acquiring Denbury reflects our determination to profitably grow our Low Carbon Solutions business by serving a range of hard-to-de-carbonise industries with a comprehensive carbon capture and sequestration offering," said ExxonMobil Chief Executive Darren Woods.

Oil companies have championed carbon sequestration as a major response to climate change. The process involves trapping carbon dioxide released in industrial production and shipping it through pipelines to sites where it is buried underground, removing the heat-trapping gases from the atmosphere.

Denbury also produces oil and natural gas through the process of enhanced oil recovery, which injects carbon dioxide gas into partially-produced petroleum reserves in order to coax out additional hydrocarbons.

In the first quarter of 2023, Denbury produced about 48,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, a pittance next to ExxonMobil's 3.8 million barrels per day.

Denbury's oil and gas production is "not a strategic asset for us", Woods said in an interview CNBC. 

"The value of the deal... is really the assets and the experience of storing carbon dioxide, taking advantage of that pipeline and infrastructure system in this very industrial corridor... to store that carbon dioxide."

Shares of Denbury fell 0.3 per cent to $87.53 in early trading, while ExxonMobil dropped one per cent to $105.44.

BAGHDAD — Iraq will start paying for its Iranian gas imports with oil, to circumvent the complicated mechanism agreed with Washington in order not to contravene US sanctions, the prime minister said on Tuesday.

Iranian gas is crucial for Iraq's electricity generation, but US sanctions on Iranian oil and gas impose restrictions on how Baghdad can pay for the imports.

Iraq cannot directly hand over cash to Iran, but payments must be held in a bank account and be used by Tehran to fund imports of food and medicines.

The payment system has left Iraq in heavy arrears and prompted Iran to respond by periodically switching off the taps.

Ravaged by decades of conflict and international sanctions, oil-rich Iraq relies on Iranian gas imports for a third of its energy needs. It is also beset by rampant corruption, and suffers from dilapidated infrastructure.

Ten days ago Iran halved its supply of gas to Iraq because of unpaid bills of more than $12 billion, deposited in an Iraqi bank account but which Tehran cannot use, Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al Sudani said in a televised address on Tuesday.

His office said in a statement that Baghdad and Tehran had signed an agreement on Tuesday after several days of talks for "the import of Iranian gas to fuel Iraqi power plants, in exchange for Iraqi crude oil".

"The agreement aims to address the gas supply crisis for power plants, while tackling payment issues and complications arising from US sanctions," the statement said. 

Recent gas supply stoppages have only worsened the frequent power outages much of Iraq sees during the hot summer months, when temperatures regularly reach 50ºC.

In his televised address, Sudani said: "As the American side did not give the necessary permission for the transfer of funds... the supply of Iranian gas was stopped.

"Because of the transfer mechanism and its complexity, we were unable to obtain authorisation to transfer these outstanding payments so our Iranian neighbour could continue to supply us" with gas, he said.

Sudani called the payment mechanism "complex due to the severity of the sanctions and the complicated procedures of the US Treasury", but added that a recent payment to Iran of around $1.9 billion had been made.

Tuesday's agreement with Iran meant "we will be able to guarantee that the gas will continue to flow", Sudani said.

To reduce its dependence on Iranian gas, Baghdad has been exploring several possibilities including imports from Gulf countries such as Qatar, as well as recovering flared gas from oilfields.