U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will testify next week at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on U.S.-China trade issues, a spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee said on Wednesday.

Lighthizer has been the lead negotiator in ongoing trade negotiations with Beijing as the world’s two largest economies seek to find agreement amid a bitter dispute that has seen both sides impose tariffs on imports.

In a statement, the committee said the hearing was scheduled for Feb. 27, just days ahead of President Donald Trump’s March 1 deadline that the Republican U.S. leader has said could slide.

China and the United States began their latest round of talks this week.

 
…

Національний банк України зміцнив офіційний курс гривні до долара на 21 лютого до 27,09 гривні за долар порівняно з 27,17 грн/дол, встановлених на сьогоднішній день.

Курс гривні до євро на 21 лютого складає 30,72 порівняно з 30,68 сьогодні.

У середині січня під час своєї підсумкової доповіді у Верховній Раді голова Національного банку України Яків Смолій заявив, що обсяги міжнародних резервів України сягнули найвищого рівня за останні п’ять років завдяки зміцненню гривні.

Читайте також: Навіщо Україні гроші МВФ і скільки доведеться повернути​

За його даними, національна валюта протягом року зміцнилася на 1,4%, що дозволило Нацбанку купувати валюту на міжбанківському ринку.

Зміцненню гривні, пояснив він, сприяла жорстка монетарна політика, сприятливі ціни на український експорт і високий врожай.
…

A year ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin sailed to victory in what challengers dubbed a “filthy election.” Facing weak candidates — some likely encouraged to run by a Kremlin eager to give the poll a veneer of greater competitiveness — Putin basked in his re-election, promising a flag-waving rally of loyalists off Moscow’s Red Square that “success awaits us.”

But with less than a month to go before marking the anniversary of his re-election, Putin faces rising public frustration with his rule and unprecedented dips in his approval ratings. In a recent opinion poll, nearly half of those surveyed said the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Putin, who has held power since succeeding Boris Yeltsin in 1999, had always been guaranteed victory in an election timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the Russian annexation of Crimea. Many pro-Putin voters interviewed by VOA last year said they were backing him because he had restored Russian strength and transformed the country from a regional power to a global player.

The domestic political landscape has changed since then, and the spell of Russian foreign adventurism doesn’t have the pull it once had, say analysts. The 66-year-old Russian leader appeared to acknowledge that Wednesday in his first address to parliament since his re-election.

Shift in focus

He went much more lightly on foreign and military issues in contrast to his last annual address in which he saber-rattled and unveiled a raft of new missiles, bragging about their stealth and speed. This time, he focused more on domestic challenges.

In response to rising public anger at the country’s economic malaise, Putin pledged to increase spending on development and social benefits, announcing a jump in child benefits along with tax breaks for families. He also pledged to almost double disability support payments. Putin boasted that for the first time, the country’s currency reserves cover external debt obligations and said economic growth should exceed 3 percent by 2021.

“Thanks to many years of common work and the results achieved, we can now direct and concentrate enormous financial resources on our development goals for our country,” Putin said.

“Nobody gave these funds to us; we did not borrow them. These funds were earned by millions of our citizens, the whole country,” he added.

“In the near future, this year, people should feel real changes for the better,” Putin pledged.

A tough sell

Whether Putin can deliver and reverse his growing unpopularity waits to be seen.

Analysts say Russians are unlikely to be satisfied with just words when it comes to quality of life issues, including the delivery of public services, municipal amenities or, more often than not, their absence, and on health and safety issues. It is the everyday “parochial” issues that worry them, including the potentially deadly consequences of shoddy and unsafe municipal housing and the reckless discarding of trash as Russia runs out of landfill sites.

Last year, thousands protested when dozens of children, in the town of Volokolamsk near Moscow, were hospitalized with suspected poisoning, the result of noxious gases emanating from an overfull local landfill.

In the past, when his political star has waned, Putin has turned to adventurism abroad to shore up support, offering foreign policy triumphs to whip up his domestic standing. That is unlikely to work moving forward, say analysts such as Mikhail Dmitriev.

Urban-rural divide

Dmitriev says polling data suggest the Kremlin is heading for a rocky few months with signs that dissent is likely to mount, and not just among the usual middle-class Putin skeptics and critics in the Russian capital and St. Petersburg, but in non-metropolitan Russia, in the smaller towns and villages, which traditionally have been the backbone of his support.

Raising the retirement age last year triggered the slide in Putin’s popularity. Cuts to salaries and sluggish economic growth added to the drag on his approval ratings, pollsters say. Real incomes have fallen by more than 10 percent since 2014, and nearly 40 percent of Russians say their material well-being has worsened just in the last 12 months.

Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research institution, noted in a commentary earlier this month that ordinary workers are becoming more vexed with the Kremlin’s failure to deliver higher standards of living, as Putin promised he would do during the election campaign.

“Increasingly he is getting into fights with real Russians who want to complain about government policies. Last September, when he visited the Zvezda shipyard in the Russian Far East, the president got into an argument with the workers there about their salaries. (The transcript of their conversation in which Putin massively overestimated what they were paid was subsequently removed from the Kremlin website),” according to Baunov.

Baunov says the Putin system is increasingly being found wanting and the Russian president will not be able to deliver on the growing demand for economic redistribution “at the expense of the country’s rich capitalists,” in effect the friends of Putin and businessmen close to the Kremlin.

 
…

У 2018 році в Україні зросла кількість туристів з країн Європи, а також Індії та Китаю. Про це повідомляє Міністерство економічного розвитку і торгівлі.

«У 2018 році відбулись якісні зрушення в структурі іноземного туристичного потоку до України. Держприкордонслужба зафіксувала зростання кількості туристів з неприкордонних країн, зокрема Європи: Іспанії – на 68%, Великобританії – 47,3%, Литви – 23,4%, Італії – 15,4%, Німеччини – 13,3 %, Франції – 9,2%, а також Індії – на 57,4 %, Китаю – на 38,8%, Японії – на 38,3%, Ізраїлю – на 21,7% та США – на 19%. Прикордонний рух навпаки скоротився», – мовиться у повідомленні.

За підсумками минулого року надходження від туристичного збору зросли на 29,2% і склали 90,7 мільйонів гривень, а сукупні надходження туристичного збору та податкових платежів з туристичної галузі зросли на  20,7% – до 4,2 мільярдів гривень.

«За даними українських мобільних операторів (ПрАТ «Київстар», ПрАТ «ВФ Україна», ТОВ «Лайфселл») за 2018 рік зафіксовано 162,2 млн переміщень Україною абонентів мобільного зв’язку, з них 139,8 млн – українських і 22,3 млн – іноземних. До найбільш популярних для відвідування іноземцями областей входить Закарпатська, Одеська та Харківська (набуває ролі центру ділового туризму) області. Українці найбільше відвідують Київську, Львівську, а також Полтавську, Черкаську та Дніпропетровську області», – розповіли в міністерстві.
…

Oil-rich Venezuela’s near economic collapse may make it easier for U.S.-backed opposition leaders to reverse socialist policies instituted by late President Hugo Chavez, if they are able to oust his successor, Nicolas Maduro, according to analysts.

“I do think at the very beginning, because the Venezuelan people have suffered so much there, they’re going to be willing to give a lot of political capital to the new leadership to do all of these changes,” said Dany Bahar, an Israeli and Venezuelan economist with the Brookings Institution in Washington. 

Economic collapse

In the last five years, Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by nearly half. Nationalization of much of the private sector, including the oil industry, has driven away foreign investment. Hyperinflation, aggravated by the increasing fiscal deficit, is now close to 180 percent, with prices of goods tripling every month. More than 3 million people have fled the country to escape increasing poverty.

The government-subsidized assistance programs for the poor have been plagued by chronic food and medicine shortages, due in part to corruption and declining oil revenues that account for more than 95 percent of Venezuela’s export earnings.

Maduro has claimed the humanitarian crisis in his country is a “fabrication,” and blamed U.S. sanctions and capitalist sabotage for the economic shortfall. 

The United States, as well as most of Latin America and Europe, has recognized Juan Guaido, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, as the country’s interim leader, and support opposition claims that Maduro’s reelection last year was illegitimate after he banned most opposition parties from running.

Market reforms

With the “Chavista” socialist model discredited, new Venezuelan leadership aligned with the United States would be expected to embrace strong market reforms that would entail an infusion of international aid and credit, privatizing state-controlled industries and cutting government subsidies.

“Market mechanisms have been completely destroyed. The government centralizes everything, decides who gets what, rations all sorts of goods, food, medication, everything. So, you have to get rid of that and just allow the market to reappear, which doesn’t really take very long if the situation on the ground is stable,” said Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Fighting inflation will likely be the top priority for any new government. Recommended fiscal controls would include introducing a new currency tied to international exchange rates, as was done by Brazil and Argentina in the past. Venezuela’s bolivar has lost most of its value, as the Maduro government reacted to inflation by printing more money while its oil revenues plummeted and its deficit grew.

“The moment you move from very high inflation to low inflation, the first thing that you see is a dramatic reduction in poverty rates. This is what happened in Argentina. This is what happened in Brazil, you know, at the time when they were fighting their own inflationary problems,” said de Bolle.

Privatizing oil industry

The International Monetary Fund would likely require Venezuela to lift price controls and privatize state-owned companies, including the oil and gas company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), in exchange for billions of dollars in aid and loans. The reforms and influx of capital would help ease food and medicine shortages.

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, but production has fallen from three 3 million barrels per day (bpd) in 1997 to just over 1 million bpd in 2019. Maduro contributed to the decline by putting generals in charge of the company rather than industry professionals, and replacing qualified staff with thousands of political supporters.

“If we’re generous with the interpretation, they have also been doing social programs and things like that. If we’re not generous, it has become a vehicle of corruption for the regime. So, there’s going to need to be a deep restructuring of the oil company,” said Bahar.

A U.S.-aligned government in Caracas would likely seek to restructure its debts to creditors like China and Russia, two countries that continue to support the Maduro government. China has loaned Venezuela $20 billion in exchange for future oil shipments.

Ending Venezuela’s free oil shipments of an estimated 50,000 barrels per day to Cuba, another key Maduro ally, could redirect billions of dollars to support limited social programs at home. 

If Maduro is removed from office, Washington is expected to ease oil sanctions imposed this year that are estimated to cut Venezuela’s oil exports by two-thirds. Oil sales to the U.S. had provided nearly 90 percent of Venezuela’s hard currency before the sanctions were enacted. 
…

Disputes over President Donald Trump’s border wall and California’s bullet train are intensifying the feud between the White House and the nation’s most populous state.

The Trump administration on Tuesday said it plans to cancel or claw back $3.5 billion in federal dollars allocated to California’s high-speed rail project, a move Gov. Gavin Newsom called “political retribution” for the state’s lawsuit against Trump’s declaration of a national emergency. California led a 16-state coalition in filing the suit Monday, challenging Trump’s power to declare an emergency to earn more money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“It’s no coincidence that the Administration’s threat comes 24 hours after California led 16 states in challenging the President’s farcical ‘national emergency,'” Newsom said in a statement. “This is clear political retribution by President Trump, and we won’t sit idly by.”

It’s the latest spat between Trump and California, which has styled itself as the Democratic-led “resistance” to the administration. Newsom, less than two months into his tenure, has appeared more eager to hit back at Trump than former California Gov. Jerry Brown. The lawsuit is California’s 46th against the Trump administration.

Using a broad interpretation of his executive powers, Trump declared an emergency last week to obtain wall funding beyond the $1.4 billion Congress approved for border security. The move allows the president to bypass Congress to use money from the Pentagon and other budgets.

Trump’s use of the emergency declaration has drawn bipartisan criticism and faces a number of legal challenges.

Still the president has told reporters he expects to prevail.

“I think in the end we’re going to be very successful with the lawsuit,” Trump told reporters, calling it an “open and closed” case.

Trump had earlier singled out California for its lead role in the suit, seeking to link the state’s high-speed rail project to his plan for the wall.

On Twitter, Trump claimed the “failed Fast Train project” was beset by “world record setting” cost overruns and had become “hundreds of times more expensive than the desperately needed Wall!”

The estimated cost for a San Francisco-to-Los Angeles train has more than doubled to $77 billion. That’s about 13 times the $5.7 billion Trump sought unsuccessfully from Congress to build the wall.

Hours later, the U.S. Department of Transportation told California it planned to cancel nearly $1 billion in federal money allocated to the rail project and wanted the state to return $2.5 billion it had already spent.

Trump’s comments about a “failed” project followed Newsom’s comments last week that the current plan for an LA-San Francisco train would cost too much and take too long. Instead, he said he’d focus immediately on a line through the Central Valley while still doing environmental work on the full line. That work is a requirement for keeping the federal money.

Still, the U.S. Department of Transportation said Newsom’s remarks reinforced concerns about the project’s ability to deliver. The department wrote Newsom’s comments mark a “significant retreat from the State’s initial vision and commitment and frustrated the purpose for which the Federal funding was awarded.”

California Republicans who have long called the project a waste of money applauded the Trump administration’s move to take back the money.

“It is time to move on from the broken high-speed rail project and redirect our efforts to infrastructure projects that work for Californians,” said U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, a city on the train’s route.

But Newsom said the state intends to keep the money. Losing it would be a major blow to the chronically underfunded project.

“This is California’s money, and we are going to fight for it,” he said.

The agreement with the federal government allows the administration to withhold or take back the money if the state fails to make “adequate progress” or “complete the project or one of its tasks.”

If the federal government decides to take the money back, it doesn’t have to wait for California to write a check. Instead it could withhold money from other transportation projects.

Tuesday’s comments won’t be the last; the administration has given California until March 5 to formally respond.

 
…

Hundreds of orange robots zoom and whiz back and forth like miniature bumper cars — but instead of colliding, they’re following a carefully plotted path to transport thousands of items ordered from online giant Amazon.

A young woman fitted out in a red safety vest, with pouches full of sensors and radio transmitters on her belt and a tablet in hand, moves through their complicated choreography.

This robot ballet takes place at the new Amazon order fulfillment center that opened on Staten Island in New York in September.

In an 80,000-square-meter (855,000-square-foot) space filled with the whirring sounds of machinery, the Seattle-based e-commerce titan has deployed some of the most advanced instruments in the rapidly growing field of robots capable of collaborating with humans.

The high-tech vest, worn at Amazon warehouses since last year, is key to the whole operation — it allows 21-year-old Deasahni Bernard to safely enter the robot area, to pick up an object that has fallen off its automated host, for example, or check if a battery needs replacing.

Bernard only has to press a button and the robots stop or slow or readjust their dance to accommodate her.  

Human-robot ‘symphony’

Amazon now counts more than 25 robotic centers, which chief technologist for Amazon Robotics Tye Brady says have changed the way the company operates.

“What used to take more than a day now takes less than an hour,” he said, explaining they are able to fit about 40 percent more goods inside the same footprint.

For some, these fulfillment centers, which have helped cement Amazon’s dominant position in global online sales, are a perfect illustration of the looming risk of humans being pushed out of certain business equations in favor of artificial intelligence.

But Brady argues that robot-human collaboration at the Staten Island facility, which employs more than 2,000 people, has given them a “beautiful edge” over the competition.

Bernard, who was a supermarket cashier before starting at Amazon, agrees.

“I like this a lot better than my previous jobs,” she told AFP, as Brady looked on approvingly.  

What role do Amazon employees play in what Brady calls the human-robot “symphony?”

In Staten Island, on top of tech-vest wearers like Bernard, there are “stowers,” “pickers” and “packers” who respectively load up products, match up products meant for the same customers and build shipping boxes — all with the help of screens and scanners.

At every stage, the goal is to “extend people’s capabilities” so the humans can focus on problem-solving and intervene if necessary, according to Brady.  

At the age of 51, he has worked with robotics for 33 years, previously as a spacecraft engineer for MIT and on lunar landing systems of the Draper Laboratory in Massachusetts.

He is convinced the use of “collaborative robots” is the key to future human productivity — and job growth.

Since Amazon went all-in on robotics with the 2012 acquisition of logistics robot-maker Kiva, gains have been indisputable, Brady says.

They’ve created 300,000 new jobs, bringing the total number of worldwide Amazon employees up to 645,000, not counting seasonal jobs.

“It’s a myth that robotics and automation kills jobs, it’s just a myth,” according to Brady.

“The data really can’t be denied on this: the more robots we add to our fulfillment centers, the more jobs we are creating,” he said, without mentioning the potential for lost jobs at traditional stores.

The ‘R2D2’ model

For Brady, the ideal example of human-robot collaboration is the relationship between “R2D2” and Luke Skywalker from “Star Wars.”

Their partnership, in which “R2D2” is always ready to use his computing powers to pull people out of desperate situations “is a great example of how humans and robots can work together,” he said.

But despite Brady’s enthusiasm for a robotic future, many are suspicious of the trend — a wariness that extends to the corporate giant, which this month scrapped high-profile plans for a new New York headquarters in the face of local protests.

Attempts by Amazon employees to unionize, at Staten Island and other sites, have so far been successfully fought back by the company, further fuelling criticism.

At a press briefing held last month as part of the unionization push, one employee of the facility, Rashad Long, spoke out about what he said were unsustainable work conditions.

“We are not robots, we are human beings,” Long said.

Sharing the benefits

Many suspect Amazon’s investment in robotics centers aims to eventually automate positions currently held by humans.

For Kevin Lynch, an expert in robotics from Northwestern University near Chicago, the development of collaborative robots is “inevitable” and will indeed eventually eliminate certain jobs, such as the final stage of packing at Amazon for instance.

“I also think other jobs will be created,” he said. “But it’s easier to predict the jobs that will be lost than the jobs that will be created.”

“Robotics and artificial intelligence bring clear benefits to humanity, in terms of our health, welfare, happiness, and quality of life,” said Lynch, who believes public policy has a key role to play in ensuring those benefits are shared, and that robotics and AI do not sharpen economic inequality.

“The growth of robotics and AI is inevitable,” he said. “The real question is, ‘how do we prepare for our future with robots?”
…

Гривня зміцнилася стосовно долара на 1 копійку, свідчать дані на сайті Національного банку України.

На 20 лютого вартість одного долара встановлена на рівні 27 гривень 17 копійок.

Євро знецінився на 11 копійок до 30 гривень 68 копійок.
…

Zimbabwe could run out of bread in a week after flour stocks dwindled due to the country’s failure to pay for imported wheat, according to a confidential letter written to bakers by the country’s grain millers’ group on Monday.

The southern African nation is in the grip of a severe shortage of U.S. dollars that has sapped supplies of fuel and drugs, as President Emmerson Mnangagwa struggles to live up to pre-election promises to quickly revive the troubled economy.

Zimbabwe imports wheat, which it blends with its local crop to make flour for bread, the country’s second major staple after maize meal.

The Grain Millers Association (GMAZ) general manager Lynette Veremu wrote to the National Bakers Association of Zimbabwe (NBAZ) to tell them the country not pay for 55,000 tons of wheat in bonded warehouses in Mozambique and Harare.

“We regret to advise that the current stocks for foreign wheat for bread flour have depleted to 5,800 tonnes and… we are left with less than eight days of national bread flour supplies,” the letter said.

GMAZ spokesman Garikai Chaunza confirmed the letter, saying “this is the situation we are faced with.”

Ngoni Mazango, the president of the bakers’ group, was not immediately available to comment.

The central bank lists wheat among priority imports like fuel and drugs, but has struggled to pay suppliers in the past.

GMAZ said in December it owed foreign suppliers $80 million for past wheat imports.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya did not answer calls to his mobile phone.
…

Germany and France on Tuesday launched a drive to overhaul the European Union’s competition rules to facilitate the creation of world-leading companies. They pushed forward a project to create a car battery consortium aimed at catching up with Asian rivals.

A German-French “manifesto for a European industrial policy fit for the 21st century” agreed on by the countries’ economy ministers reflects worries that the continent risks falling far behind in the development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and electric mobility.

It also reflects anger in Berlin and Paris after EU antitrust authorities blocked the creation of a rail giant that could compete with China.

Speaking at a separate event earlier Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the EU’s stance on competition “leaves me in doubt about whether we can really produce global players this way.”

The German-French manifesto states that “the choice is simple when it comes to industrial policy: unite our forces or allow our industrial base and capacity to gradually disappear.” It advocates a European strategy for technology funding and calls for becoming “world leaders” on artificial intelligence.

After the EU blocked the merger of the rail businesses of Germany’s Siemens and France’s Alstom, Germany and France are suggesting that EU guidelines be updated to take greater account of global competition. They also advocate discussing whether the European Council — which brings together EU members’ governments — should be given a right to appeal against and override decisions on mergers by the EU’s executive Commission.

As a first step toward a European industrial policy, Germany plans to invest 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion) and France another 700 million euros in backing a drive to set up a European car battery manufacturing operation.

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier and French counterpart Bruno Le Maire said it would be led by their two countries but open to other EU countries that want to join. They said it would benefit both Germany and France, but it’s too early to say where factories might be built.

Altmaier said there are no plans at present for either state to take a direct stake, and both ministers said companies are interested — but wouldn’t name them, citing ongoing talks.

“China and South Korea have taken a big lead on electric batteries,” Le Maire said. “The question that arises is whether we want to be sovereign or not.”

He added that, if Europe abandons two “critical technologies” — batteries and self-driving cars — “you abandon your auto industry, because you depend on your foreign supplies who can increase prices or deprive you of this technology.”

“Germany and France created the automobile,” Le Maire said.

The two countries are seeking decisions in the coming weeks on setting up the consortium and whether government aid is allowed.

 
…

India’s thermal coal imports could rise by about 10 percent in 2019 due to rail transport problems and other logistical bottlenecks, an executive at the country’s largest coal trader Adani Enterprises said on Tuesday.

Thermal coal imports rose in 2018 after two years of decline, despite moves by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to cut the country’s imports in a bid to reduce the trade deficit.

Rajendra Singh, chief operating officer for coal trading at Adani Enterprises, said thermal coal imports this year could total 174 million-177 million tons.

“We expect a 10 percent increase in imported coal because of an immediate gap in supply from Coal India and power demand and demand from other sectors,” Singh said at the Coaltrans conference.

Coal is among the top five commodities imported by India, and over three-fifths of its thermal coal imports come from Indonesia, while over a fifth is imported from South Africa.

India’s 2018 thermal coal imports rose at the fastest pace in four years, adding to India’s trade deficit and hurting the valuation of the rupee, the worst performing major Asian currency in 2018.

The Adani Group, which handles about a third of India’s imported coal, expects “rail transportation challenges” to lead to a “reasonable rise in imports” until fiscal year 2021 when they will stabilize.

Singh said he expects small and medium scale industries such as the sponge iron industry, tile manufacturers, cement producers and textiles to contribute to higher demand for seaborne coal, adding that an industrial shift from petcoke to coal was fueling higher imports.

Petcoke, or petroleum coke, is a refinery byproduct which is a dirtier alternative to coal. Its usage has been banned in some parts of the country, and policy flip-flops over its usage have led to a fall in demand for the fuel.

State-run Coal India Ltd, which accounts for four-fifths of India’s coal production, supplies largely to power plants rather than small and medium-scale industries.

Smaller scale industries have used imported coal in a big way, and while higher coal imports may be bad news for India’s trade deficit, they are a boon for international miners and global commodity merchants.
…

Представники Спеціальної моніторингової місії ОБСЄ 15 лютого помітили російський стратегічний бомбардувальник, на їхню думку, над окупованим Донбасом. Про це мовиться у черговій доповіді місії, опублікованій 18 лютого.

«О 10:00 15 лютого на околиці селища Старобешеве, в районі, неконтрольованому урядом (32 кілометри на південний схід від Донецька), патруль СММ побачив об’єкт, що летів на південному сході від патруля з південного заходу на північний схід», – розповіли спостерігачі.

Зазначається, що, ймовірно, мова йде про літак Туполєв Ту-95 або Туполєв Ту-142.

Того ж дня, з 10:50 до 11:10, такий же літак, імовірно, Ту-95 або Ту-142, бачив патруль, розташований на північний схід від Любівки, непідконтрольної урядові, що за 43 кілометри на південний схід від Донецька. Він пролетів на сході від патруля з півночі на південь і потім у зворотному напрямку.

Збройний конфлікт на Донбасі триває від 2014 року після російської анексії Криму. Україна і Захід звинувачують Росію у збройній підтримці сепаратистів. Кремль відкидає ці звинувачення і заявляє, що на Донбасі можуть перебувати хіба що російські «добровольці». За даними ООН станом на кінець грудня 2018 року, за час конфлікту загинули близько 13 тисяч людей, майже 30 тисяч були поранені.
…

Glen Libby looks back fondly on his days as a Maine shrimp trawler, but he’s concerned about what seafood lovers will think if the shuttered fishery ever reopens.

“Shrimp? What are those?” he said. “There will be a market. But it depends how big of a market you’re talking about.”

Maine’s historic shrimp industry has been closed since 2013 due to a loss in population of shrimp off of New England that is tied in large part to warming oceans. And with a reopening likely several years away — if it ever happens at all — Libby and others who formerly worked in the business are grappling with how much of the industry they’ll be able to salvage if the time ever comes.

The state’s shrimp fishery was traditionally a winter industry, but it’s in the midst of its sixth straight season with no participation because of a government-imposed moratorium. Fishermen, wholesalers, distributors and others in the seafood business lament the industry wouldn’t be in a good position to return right away even if fishing for the little, sweet pink shrimp was allowed.

The region’s shrimp are much smaller than those caught in the Gulf of Mexico, which has a much more extensive fishery. Maine’s shrimp were essentially a specialty item available fresh only in the winter, though widely available in New England grocery stores.

Maine lacks processing infrastructure for the shrimp now, because that went away when the fishery closed down. The shrimp are largely absent from restaurants and stores, save for some imports from Canada. And the shrimp’s brand as a local, wintertime New England delicacy has taken a hit due to years off the market.

If Maine shrimping does come back, it will likely be at a smaller scale, centered on local retail as opposed to freezing the product for export around the country and internationally, said Bert Jongerden, general manager of the Portland Fish Exchange auction house.

“I mean, I think people would remember it. But you couldn’t be dumping millions of pounds of shrimp into the market expecting to get rid of it,” Jongerden said. “It would have to be a slow build up.”

There is no clear timeline for the return of the fishery, because its future is tied to the status of the shrimp population, which looks grim off of New England. Decisions about the future of the fishery are made by an arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, an interstate body that regulates fisheries. The panel voted in November to extend the fishing moratorium for another three years.

Scientific reports that guide the commission have consistently portrayed the shrimp population as depleted and with poor prospects for the future. The shrimp, which were also brought to land in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, were primarily fished from the Gulf of Maine, a body of water that is warming faster than most of the world’s oceans.

Maine shrimpers were mostly fishermen who harvested other fisheries, such as lobsters, scallops and cod, during other parts of the year. The lack of a shrimp season has caused them to lose income or try their luck in other fisheries.

If the fishery does return, part of its appeal could be selling the story of a local New England shrimp fishery to consumers, said Ben Martens, executive director of Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, a fishing advocacy group.

“We would have this slow ramp up where we’d have this delicious, local and highly prized resource, that restaurants, customers and especially local consumers really want,” he said.

In the meantime, Canada’s shrimp fishery for the same species is still active, but it lacks the brand of the New England-caught product, which long held cachet in Maine and beyond. And Canada’s catch has also declined. The country harvested less than 168 million pounds (76 million kilograms) of the shrimp in 2017, less than half the 2010 total and the lowest haul in at least a decade.

Stephenie Pinkham, who was executive director of the Maine Shrimp Trappers Association when it was active, is hopeful. She hears from Mainers that they miss the product, and is confident they’ll buy it if the fishery ever reopens.

“A shrimp market is definitely out there,” Pinkham said.
…