Pope Francis on Wednesday called on people to remember Ukrainian children suffering in the cold this Christmas.

“Let us think of the many children in Ukraine who suffer, suffer so much, because of this war,” he said in unprepared remarks at the end of his weekly general audience in the Vatican.

The pope has been making appeals for Ukraine at nearly every public appearance, usually at least twice weekly, since Russia invaded its neighbour in February.

“The majority of those that I have seen here can’t manage to smile,” he said, referring to Ukrainian children who have found shelter in Rome with Italian families and charities.

“It is grave when a child loses the capacity to smile. These children carry within themselves the tragedy of that war, so inhumane, so harsh. Let us think of the Ukrainian people this Christmas – without electricity, without heating, without the essential things they need to survive,” he said.

Russia has been pounding Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since October, destroying or damaging half of it.

Last week the pope urged people to spend less on Christmas celebrations and gifts this year and send the difference to Ukrainians to help them get through the hunger and cold of winter.

The Vatican has also launched a crowdfunding campaign to send thermal underwear to Ukraine.

Countries in Europe and beyond are working to supply transformers, switches and cables as well as diesel generators needed to light and heat the country in winter.

In Lithuania, a giant, disused electrical transformer built in 1980 in present-day Ukraine has been dusted off and prepared for shipment. It will travel by sea to Romania and then back to Ukraine, possibly in the coming weeks.

Rokas Masiulis, head of Lithuania’s power grid, said his company was searching warehouses for anything else Ukraine might need to repair the damage done to its electricity system by repeated Russian missile attacks.

“The Ukrainians say they are fine to receive anything, including things that are not working or broken, as they can fix the equipment themselves,” he told Reuters.

While the West rushes to replenish Kyiv’s stocks of arms and ammunition, countries in Europe and beyond are also in a race to supply transformers, switches and cables as well as diesel generators needed to light and heat the country in winter.

Ukraine has shared a list with European countries of some 10,000 items it urgently needs to maintain power.

Former members of the Soviet Union and the ex-Communist bloc have a major part to play based on their proximity and that some grids in the region still have hardware compatible with Ukraine’s.

Masiulis said the greatest need was for auto-transformers, like the one destined for Ukraine. Worth around 2 million euros ($2.13 million), it weighs nearly 200 tonnes and took two weeks to be stripped of removable parts and drained of oil for transport.

“We are in the process of updating our grid, and everything we strip down we send to Ukraine,” he said.
Latvia, Lithuania’s northern neighbour and also once part of the Soviet Union, said it was sending five large transformers to Ukraine, two of which were ready move soon.

Since early October, Russian forces have targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing blackouts and forcing millions of people to endure sub-zero temperatures with little or no heating.

Moscow says the strikes are justified as part of its “special military operation” to degrade Ukrainian forces. Kyiv and the West see the barrage as a cynical attack on civilians to break their spirit and weaken the enemy.

Regional European bodies and countries including Azerbaijan, France, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland and individual companies have already sent thousands of pieces of equipment to Ukraine.

“We are searching all over the world for replacements of the equipment destroyed during the attacks,” Yaroslav Demchenkov, Ukraine’s deputy energy minister, said in early December.

Ukraine had managed to avoid a “total collapse” of the power distribution system, he said, but disruptions are significant. Some 80% of Kyiv region was without electricity for two days this week after Russian missile and drone attacks.

Estimating the total value of the support is impossible, given the fragmented and hurried nature of the response, but transformers and generators worth tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars have been shipped.

Challenges include finding the right hardware to match Ukraine’s needs. As a former member of the Soviet Union, its power system is not always compatible with other countries, including neighbours to the north.

The supply of generators cannot match demand, company officials said, especially as some of the most necessary deliveries can take months.

“Unfortunately, high-voltage transformers, which we need the most, are not there yet,” Oleksandr Kharchenko, director at the Energy Industry Research Center based in Kyiv, said on Ukrainian state television on Wednesday.

He said there were a few in the world that could be shipped, but did not expect them to arrive before February at the earliest.

Lithuania’s transmission grid operator has already sent hundreds of smaller transformers, which reduce the voltage as it travels from power station to end-user, and its gas grid has supplied spare parts to Ukraine.

Polish state-controlled utility Tauron said last week it had sent 21 kilometers (13 miles) of wire, nine drums, 129 insulators, 39 transformers and 11 overhead circuit breakers, which spokesman Łukasz Zimnoch described as gifts.

Some deliveries are in response to Ukrainian requests, while private firms there order alternative supplies to keep businesses running.

Jerzy Kowalik, commercial director of Polish power generator maker EPS System, said the company was receiving many orders from Ukraine, some for dozens of large units at a time.

“There’s a problem with the availability of engines we use amid a global boom for generators fuelled by the energy crisis,” said Kowalik. His firm of about 100 employees cannot meet demand and is turning down some requests from Ukraine.

Volodymyr Kudrystski, chairman of the management board at Ukraine’s grid operator Ukrenergo, said sourcing urgently-needed transformers was complicated by the fact that Ukraine’s standard power transmission lines are 750 kilo-volts and 330 kV. Those in neighbouring Poland, for example, are 400 kV and 220 kV.

Switches, disconnectors and circuit breakers are also crucial as some 70 Ukrenergo repair crews, or about 1,000 people, work around the clock to restore power and subcontractors have been hired.

During peak hours, Ukraine consumes around 16 Gigawatts of electricity. It can import up to 10% of that from neighbouring systems, although lines linking it to Poland were damaged in recent attacks before being restored and Romania is only a marginal source so far.

That means Ukraine is drawing on its own reserves of equipment, built up in anticipation of a possible invasion, and that were sent from abroad.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said this month that 500,000 smaller generators had been imported by Ukrainian businesses, but that the country needed 17,000 large or industrial generating units to get through the winter.

Those were particularly important for critical infrastructure such as hospitals and water pumping stations.

One of the bodies overseeing energy support in Europe is the Energy Community Secretariat, an international group established by the European Union and eight member states aspiring to EU membership.

Its director, Artur Lorkowski, said more than 60 private companies in Europe from 20 countries were involved, with 800 tonnes of equipment sent already and dozens more deliveries planned.

As stockpiles of state-owned European power grids dwindle, Lorkowski expected the private sector to become more important in meeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure needs.

Talks are being held through the G7 to tap companies in the United States, Canada and Japan, he added.

“This would give us the scale that would make a difference in Ukraine,” Lorkowski told Reuters.

A first tranche of U.S. power equipment worth $13 million has been shipped to Ukraine, officials said, and two more planeloads were due to leave shortly. Ukraine has also been in talks with Japan.

Lorkowski and some other officials predicted that hardware may have to be designed and built from scratch, although such a shift would require time and money.

Ukrainian officials who want to integrate Ukraine’s economy with Western Europe are considering a major overhaul of the energy sector, although patching up the current network is the priority for now.

Some imported equipment has been donated, while countries and international lending agencies are also giving loans and grants to help Kyiv afford the repairs.

Olena Osmolovska, director of the reform support team at Ukraine’s energy ministry, said it would cost tens of billions of dollars to fully restore the energy system.

($1 = 0.9406 euros)

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s “extremely significant” visit to the United States on Wednesday will disprove Russian attempts to show that U.S.-Ukrainian relations are cooling, a senior aide to Zelenskiy said.

Political adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Zelenskiy’s trip, including talks with President Joe Biden, provided an opportunity to explain the real situation in Ukraine, what weapons Kyiv needs to fight Russia, and why it needs them.

Zelenskiy headed to Washington after visiting troops on Tuesday in the frontline city of Bakhmut, scene of some of the fiercest fighting since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

“Mr Zelenskiy’s official visit to the United States, which began immediately after his visit to the hottest point of the war – Bakhmut – is highly symbolic. And extremely significant,” Podolyak told Reuters in written comments.

“Firstly, both the visit itself and the level of planned meetings unequivocally testify to the high degree of trust between the countries. Secondly, this finally puts an end to the attempts by the Russian side … to prove an allegedly growing cooling in our bilateral relations.”

Podolyak said Russia’s portrayal of U.S.-Ukrainian relations was “not even close” to reality.

“The United States unequivocally supports Ukraine,” he said.

Podolyak said Zelenskiy would be able to show the American political elite “the real scale” of the war, its true nature and the importance of ending it properly — meaning on the right terms.

“Fourth – weapons, weapons and more weapons. It is important to personally explain why we need certain types of weapons. In particular, armoured vehicles, the latest missile defence systems and long-range missiles,” he said.

Zelenskiy would show why providing Ukraine with such weapons would not lead to an escalation of the war, but would sharply reduce Russia’s military capabilities, Podolyak said.

“In my opinion, the visit will undoubtedly activate and optimise key areas of military cooperation, further mobilise bipartisan political support and more clearly paint a picture of the future if the war is not ended correctly,” he said.

People participate in a “March on Billionaires” event on July 17, 2020 in New York City.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• A new report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute looks at how much workers made in 2021.
• The bottom 90% of workers actually saw their wages decline in 2021, as the top 1% saw average wages grow.
• The gap between the top 1% of workers and bottom 90% has been accelerating over the last four decades.

The rich are getting even richer.

In 2021, even as wages seemed to grow for the lowest-earning workers, they were no match for how much the top 1% was making.

A new report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute looks at wage growth in 2021, using annual earnings from the Social Security Administration. They found that the top 1% saw average real wages grow 9.4% from 2020 to 2021, while the bottom 90% saw wages decline ever so slightly by 0.2%. 

“What we’ve seen over the last 40 plus years is really an acceleration of these kinds of inequalities across the wage distribution,” Elise Gould, a senior economist at EPI and a co-author of the report, told Insider. 

While the typical worker was doing a “bit better” in the tighter labor market with lower unemployment, “when you benchmark that against just how well, how tremendously well people at the very top are doing, it is dwarfed in comparison,” Gould said.

According to the report, the top 1% of earners made 14.6% of all wages in the year, compared to 58.6% of all wages going to the bottom 90% — the lowest ever share they’ve received on record.

“Even though some low-wage workers have done somewhat better, these data from the Social Security Administration show that the bottom 90% as a whole have actually suffered in the pandemic — magnifying, not lessening, the sort of pain that they felt in the 40 years prior,” Gould said.

While lower-paid workers and the middle class seem to have successfully clawed back some wage gains as labor shortages and unions pop up across the workforce, they’re still not close to touching the gains of the wealthiest over the past few decades. After adjusting for inflation, wages have climbed more for the richest Americans and more quickly.

“Wages for the top 1% grew more than seven times fast as wages for the bottom 90% between 1979 and 2021,” the EPI authors wrote. “The top 1% now amasses a record share of total earnings, while the bottom 90% share of earnings has hit a historic low.”

The following chart shows just how much wage growth has soared for the top 1% from 1979 — and how little it changed for the bottom 90% relative to the rich and very rich.

The top 1% saw their inflation-adjusted average wages measured in 2021 dollars increase from $267,464 in 1979 to $819,324 in 2021, or an increase of 206.3%. Wages for the 95th to 99th percentile saw an increase of 94.0% from 1979, with average wages standing at $215,032 in 2021.

The bottom 90% saw a much smaller increase of 28.7% based on averages in 2021 dollars — from $28,415 in 1979 to $36,571 in 2021. That change is slightly down from the 29.0% growth seen in both 2019 and 2020 for this cohort as those wages declined between 2020 and 2021.

The report is the latest dataset to illustrate just how inequality has widened and accelerated over the last few decades, as it became increasingly harder for the normal families to substantively grow their incomes while the top 1% has more money than the entire middle class. The gap between CEO and worker pay is at its highest since 1965, with the 350 top executives making 399 times more than their workers. 

That widening chasm is due to a slew of policies like keeping the federal minimum wage low, allowing discrimination in the workplace, tax cuts at the very top, and weakening worker bargaining power, according to EPI. Gould said that things like strengthening labor laws to allow the myriad of workers interested in organizing to join a union could help; so could the Federal Reserve prioritizing full employment. Other policies like raising the minimum wage, enforcing action against wage theft, and paring down non-competes might also help chip away at the growing gap.

But right now, the top 1% is making a disproportionate share of total earnings — an amount that’s only been growing.

“How did they get such a big share of the pie?” Gould said. “Well, that came out of most people, right? So that’s coming out of people primarily at the bottom of the wage distribution.”

Eleanor Lutz

• An animation showcases how the seasons change with Earth’s orbit around the sun.
• Earth’s angle causes very specific weather patterns and daylight during the course of a year.
• Most places experience four seasons, but they’re not as pronounced near the equator.

Astronomers believe that billions of years ago, a Mars-sized object smashed into Earth, knocking our planet over and leaving it tilted at an angle.

That ancient bump is what caused the Earth’s seasons — times of the year that have very specific weather patterns and hours of daylight that vary depending on the latitude.

Most places experience four noticeable seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Below, view how the seasons change with Earth’s orbit around the Sun:

Eleanor Lutz

Eleanor Lutz, who is currently a graphics editor at The New York Times, made the animation in 2019 using open data from NASA, USGS, and Natural Earth.

“I’ve always been very interested in designs that combine science and art. When I learned to code as part of my Biology PhD, I wanted to apply coding to my design work as well,” Lutz told Insider. “I decided to create a series of astronomy maps, because there is a lot of wonderful open-source data in the astronomy community.”

The graphic showcases how seasonal changes in precipitation and temperature affect Earth’s ice, vegetation, cloud cover, and sunlight.

Earth’s tilt relative to the sun causes the seasons

Earth is currently tilted 23.4 degrees relative to the plane where most objects in the solar system orbit the sun, NASA explains. That means that as our planet travels in a nearly circular orbit around the sun, different parts of the globe receive different amounts of sunlight throughout the course of a year.

Earth’s seasons are caused by its axis being tilted about 23 degrees.

MIT/Alissa Earle

Earth is divided into a northern and southern hemisphere by an imaginary ring called the equator. When the northern hemisphere is leaning toward the sun in June, it experiences summer. That’s when the sun’s rays hit that part of Earth more directly, heating Earth’s surface. When it’s summer in the northern hemisphere, it’s winter in the southern hemisphere.

Six months later, in December, the situation is reversed: the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, and it experiences winter weather.

The tilt of the Earth’s axis also defines the length of daylight hours, which are shortest in each hemisphere’s winter. This is most dramatic at the planet’s poles, above the Arctic Circle.

In Utqiaġvik, Alaska, the northernmost town in the US, the darkness lasts from mid-November until mid-January.

Near the equator, the seasons are less pronounced, because each day the sun strikes at about the same angle. There, the duration of daytime remains almost 12 hours throughout all of the seasons.

The angle of the Earth’s tilt is relatively stable, but there are some slight shifts over large time scales (tens of thousands of years). According to NASA, the angle is slowly decreasing.

Erik Soto Ayala, 23, quit his warehouse job after launching a successful Etsy shop.

Erik Soto

• Erik Soto Ayala, an ex-warehouse forklift operator, started a side hustle to escape the 9-to-5.
• He was willing to start selling anything and researched Etsy products that had minimum competition.
• After landing on personalized wallets, he made $67,000 in profit in his first 10 months in business.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Erik Soto Ayala, a 23-year-old entrepreneur selling engraved wallets on Etsy. It has been edited for length and clarity.

While I was thankful for my warehouse job as a forklift operator and floor product stacker, I wanted to escape the 9-to-5 grind. I knew there was more to life than just clocking in and out.

I quit my job in October after almost four years — handing in my two weeks’ notice was one of my most freeing experiences ever. 

I was quitting because I’d launched a side hustle six months earlier and was making more income than my salary. I made $2,600 a month at my warehouse job. In September, my side hustle made $26,000 in revenue, and I took home $14,300. 

I tried launching side hustles before, but my Etsy store was different 

My side-hustle journey wasn’t easy. I tried launching side hustles in the past — Fulfillment by Amazon, investing in cryptocurrency, drop shipping, and even social-media management — but they all failed. I spent between $2,000 and $3,000 on each venture, working overtime to finance them.

My Etsy endeavor was different because I wasn’t chasing an oversaturated market.

I researched products with low competition instead and improved on what was already out there. Rather than selling brand names on Amazon, I saw a big opportunity with personalized gifts on Etsy.

From wood crafts to embroidery, I was open to starting an Etsy store for anything, and I was constantly brainstorming, watching YouTube videos, and reading blogs by successful Etsy sellers. 

By the middle of January, I stumbled across a video on laser engraving that caught my attention. I had never heard of or seen a laser engraver before. I felt in my gut that this was my product.

From January to February, I’d sometimes spend up to eight hours after work researching the Etsy engraving market. 

I invested in the best laser-engraver package I could find, which cost me $1,200. I started working overtime in January to save up money to put into my Etsy store. I had saved up enough to buy the laser engraver by the end of February.

The next step was deciding what to engrave. At the beginning of March, I found myself needing a new wallet, and that’s when it hit me: “Why don’t I try engraving wallets?”

I landed on a niche product that didn’t have much competition

After searching for personalized wallets on Etsy, I saw massive potential. There were only two or three competitors on the site. I thought I could offer a better product and better customer service than what was out there. I’d noticed that the comments at my competitors’ stores were mixed at best. 

I spent $200 to buy a small order of wallets from Alibaba. When it arrived, I tested the engraver on them, and it looked great. I invested another $400 to start building my inventory.

My fiancée took product photos using my iPhone, and I uploaded them to my Etsy shop. Five days later, my first sale came in. 

I knew customer service was something I could control and use to differentiate my store, so I committed to providing the best customer service. This meant replying to customers’ comments as quickly as possible and ensuring next-day shipping.

Prioritizing customer service helped me gain an audience quickly

May was the first month my business was open. I had 16 orders, which totaled $521.20. I made it a point to keep in touch with my customers through Etsy messaging and sent a notification when their orders shipped. 

My competitors were shipping three to five days after a purchase, and customers sometimes received their orders two weeks after purchase. I was processing orders the next day. I think this is a big part of why my store took off.

By June, I had made nearly $1,000 in sales. At that point, I was buying bigger bulk orders of wallets to keep up with demand. As sales increased, I knew I had to do something different. I was still juggling my store with my full-time job.

I purchased a second engraving machine in July so my fiancée could help with fulfilling orders. I organized my time into two blocks: engraving and packing at night and customer service early in the mornings and during my breaks at work. This helped me manage work and the Etsy shop. 

My Etsy shop was successful enough that I quit my warehouse job

After six months, I’d generated over $80,000, and I quit my warehouse job in October to take my business full time.

I ran Etsy ads to test new products and spent $3,500 over the first six months. I now mainly rely on organic Etsy traffic. I selected a market and a product that people seemed to like, and as long as I deliver great customer service, I believe sales will continue to grow.

By the end of November, I’d made over six figures in revenue in only seven months of selling wallets on Etsy; $67,000 of that was profit. 

I control my hours and can be creative while running the store with my fiancée. I invest everything back into the business. I’m hoping to start paying myself a salary and have saved some money in the event the store slows down, but right now, I’m very excited about its future.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s “extremely significant” visit to the United States on Wednesday will disprove Russian attempts to show that U.S.-Ukrainian relations are cooling, a presidential adviser said.

Political adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters in written comments that Zelenskiy’s trip, including talks with President Joe Biden, provided an opportunity to explain the real situation in Ukraine, what weapons Kyiv needs to fight Russia, and why it needs them.

“Firstly, both the visit itself and the level of planned meetings unequivocally testify to the high degree of trust between the countries. Secondly, this finally puts an end to the attempts by the Russian side … to prove an allegedly growing cooling in our bilateral relations,” Podolyak said.

“This, of course, is not even close. The United States unequivocally supports Ukraine.”

He added: “In my opinion, the visit will undoubtedly activate and optimise key areas of military cooperation, further mobilise bipartisan political support and more clearly paint a picture of the future if the war is not ended correctly.”

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The Kremlin said that nothing good would come from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s trip to Washington on Wednesday and that Russia saw no chance of peace talks with Kyiv.

In a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that continued Western arms supplies to Ukraine would lead to a “deepening” of the conflict – something which could backfire on Kyiv, he warned.

“The supply of weapons continues and the range of supplied weapons is expanding. All of this, of course, leads to an aggravation of the conflict. This does not bode well for Ukraine,” Peskov said.

Zelenskiy was due to meet U.S. President Joe Biden and Congressional leaders on Wednesday in his first foreign trip since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into his country on Feb. 24.

Asked whether Moscow had any expectations that something positive could come from Zelenskiy’s trip, Peskov answered: “No”.

During his visit, the United States is also set to approve the delivery of advanced Patriot missile systems to Ukraine as part of the latest multi-billion dollar package of military support for Kyiv.

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