Підвищену пенсійну допомогу з наступного року отримають понад дві тисячі людей, чиї рідні загинули, захищаючи Україну
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The World Bank on Monday warned of a significant 12% rise in the debt burden of the world’s low-income countries to a record $860 billion in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and called for urgent efforts to reduce debt levels. 

World Bank President David Malpass told reporters the bank’s International Debt Statistics 2022 report showed a dramatic increase in the debt vulnerabilities facing low- and middle-income countries; he also urged for comprehensive efforts to help countries reach more sustainable debt levels. 

“We need a comprehensive approach to the debt problem, including debt reduction, swifter restructuring and improved transparency,” Malpass said in a statement accompanying the new report. 

He said half of the world’s poorest countries were in external debt distress or at high risk of it. 

Malpass said sustainable debt levels were needed to help countries achieve economic recovery and reduce poverty. 

The report said the external debt stocks of low- and middle-income countries combined rose 5.3% in 2020 to $8.7 trillion, affecting countries in all regions. 

It said the rise in external debt outpaced gross national income (GNI) and export growth, with the external debt-to-GNI ratio, excluding China, rising five percentage points to 42% in 2020, while their debt-to-export ratio surged to 154% in 2020 from 126% in 2019. 

Malpass said debt restructuring efforts were urgently needed given the expiration at the end of this year of the Group of 20 major economies’ Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), which has offered temporary deferral of debt payments. 

The G20 and Paris Club of official creditors launched a Common Framework for Debt Treatments last year to restructure unsustainable debt situations and protracted financing gaps in DSSI-eligible countries, but only three countries — Ethiopia, Chad and Zambia — have applied thus far. 

Malpass said further debt payment freezes could be included as part of Common Framework debt restructurings, but more work was also needed to increase the participation of private sector creditors, who have thus far been reluctant to get involved. 

The report showed that net inflows from multilateral creditors to low- and middle-income countries rose to $117 billion in 2020, the highest level in a decade. 

Net lending to low-income countries rose 25% to $71 billion, also the highest level in a decade, with the International Monetary Fund, or the IMF, and other multilateral creditors providing $42 billion and bilateral creditors $10 billion, it said. 

Carmen Reinhart, the World Bank’s chief economist, said the challenges facing highly indebted countries could get worse as interest rates rose. 

The World Bank said it expanded the 2022 report to boost transparency about global debt levels by providing more detailed and disaggregated data on external debt. 

The data now include a breakdown of a borrowing country’s external debt stock to show the amount owed to each official and private creditor, the currency composition of this debt, and the terms on which loans were extended. 

For DSSI-eligible countries the data also show the debt service deferred in 2020 by each bilateral creditor and the projected month-by-month debt-service payments owed to them through 2021.  
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Southwest Airlines canceled hundreds more flights Monday following thousands of flight cancellations over the weekend but said it expects to resume normal service this week.

For the third straight day, passengers were left stranded amid confusion about what caused the cancellations.

Southwest blamed the weekend cancellations on bad weather and air traffic control issues in Florida. The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged some control issues on Friday; however, it noted that no other airlines suffered large-scale cancellations throughout the weekend. 

The union for Southwest’s pilots has denied holding a sickout in response to the airline’s decision to mandate vaccinations. 

The union asked a federal court on Friday to block the airline’s requirement that all employees get vaccinated against COVID-19. It says it does not oppose vaccinations but has argued that Southwest must negotiate with the union over any vaccine mandates before implementing them. 

Southwest said that the initial wave of flight cancellations left aircraft and crew out of place, which in turn made it difficult for the airline to recover its normal schedules and led to more canceled flights. 

In a video message to employees seen by CNBC, Southwest Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven said that staffing shortages have also played a role in the service disruption.

The airline “is still not where we need to be on staffing and, in particular, with flight crews,” he said. 

Southwest is one of several airlines that have been struggling with staffing issues for months, leading to flight cancellations and delays throughout the summer.

Southwest said in a tweet Monday, “While we work to stabilize our operations, we anticipate to resume normal service this week.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 

 
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More than 130 countries have agreed on sweeping changes to how big global companies are taxed, including a 15% minimum corporate rate designed to deter multinationals from stashing profits in low-tax countries. 

The deal announced Friday is an attempt to address the ways globalization and digitalization have changed the world economy. It would allow countries to tax some of the earnings of companies located elsewhere that make money through online retailing, web advertising and other activities. 

U.S. President Joe Biden has been one of the driving forces behind the agreement as governments around the world seek to boost revenue following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The agreement among 136 countries representing 90% of the global economy was announced by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which hosted the talks that led to it. The OECD said that the minimum tax would reap some $150 billion for governments.

“Today’s agreement represents a once-in-a-generation accomplishment for economic diplomacy,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. She said it would end a “race to the bottom” in which countries outbid each other with lower tax rates. 

“Rather than competing on our ability to offer low corporate rates,” she said, “America will now compete on the skills of our workers and our capacity to innovate, which is a race we can win.” 

The deal faces several hurdles before it can take effect. U.S. approval of related tax legislation proposed by Biden will be key, especially since the U.S. is home to many of the biggest multinational companies. A rejection by Congress would cast uncertainty over the entire project. 

Big U.S. tech companies such as Google and Amazon have supported the OECD negotiations. One reason is that countries would agree to withdraw individual digital services taxes they have imposed on the companies in return for the right to tax part of their earnings under the global scheme.

That means the companies would deal with just the one international tax regime, not a multitude of different ones depending on the country.

“This accord opens the way to a true tax revolution for the 21st century,” said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. “Finally, the digital giants will pay their just share in taxes in the countries — including France — where they produce.” 

On Thursday, Ireland announced that it would join the agreement, ditching a low-tax policy that has led companies such as Google and Facebook to base their European operations there. 

Although the Irish agreement was a step forward for the deal, developing countries have raised objections, and Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have indicated they will not sign up.

Anti-poverty and tax fairness advocates have said the bulk of new revenue would go to wealthier countries and offer less to developing countries that are more dependent on corporate taxes. The Group of 24 developing countries said that without a bigger share of revenue from reallocated profits, the deal would be “suboptimal” and “not sustainable even in the short run.” 

The deal will be taken up by the Group of 20 finance ministers next week and then by G-20 leaders for final approval at a summit in Rome at the end of October.

Countries would sign on to a diplomatic agreement to implement the tax on companies that have no physical presence in a country but earn profits there, such as through digital services. That provision would affect around 100 global firms.

The second part of the deal, the global minimum of at least 15%, would apply to companies with more than 750 million euros ($864 million) in revenue and be passed into domestic law by countries according to model rules developed at the OECD. A top-up provision would mean tax avoided overseas would have to be paid at home. So long as at least the major headquarters countries implement the minimum tax, the deal would have most of its desired effect. 

 
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The Italian glassblowers of Murano have survived plagues and pandemics. They transitioned to highly prized artistic creations to outrun low-priced competition from Asia. But surging energy prices are shattering their economic model. 

The dozens of furnaces that remain on the lagoon island where Venetian rulers transferred glassblowing 700 years ago must burn around the clock, otherwise the costly crucible inside the ovens will break. But the price for the methane that powers the ovens has skyrocketed fivefold on the global market since October 1, meaning the glassblowers face certain losses on orders they are working to fill, at least for the foreseeable future.

“People are desperate,” said Gianni De Checchi, president of Venice’s association of artisans Confartigianato. “If it continues like this, and we don’t find solutions to the sudden and abnormal gas prices, the entire Murano glass sector will be in serious danger.” 

A medium-size glassblowing business like that of Simone Cenedese consumes 12,000 cubic meters (420,000 cubic feet) of methane a month to keep his seven furnaces hissing at temperatures over 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) 24 hours a day. They shut down just once a year for annual maintenance in August.

His monthly bills normally range from 11,000 to 13,000 euros ($12,700 to $15,000), on a fixed-price consortium contract that expired September 30. Now exposed to market volatility, Cenedese is projecting an increase in methane costs to 60,000 euros ($70,000) in October, as the natural gas market is buffeted by increased Chinese demand, uncertain Russian supply and worryingly low European stockpiles.

Artisans like Cenedese now must factor in an insurmountable increase in energy costs as they fill orders that had promised to lift them out of the pandemic crisis that stilled the sector in 2020.

“We cannot increase prices that have already been set. … That means for at least two months we are forced to work at a loss,” said Cenedese, a third-generation glassblower who took over the business his father started. “We sell decorations for the house, not necessities, meaning that if the prices are not accessible, it is obvious that there will be no more orders.” 

Cenedese, like others on the island, is considering shutting down one of his furnaces to confront the crisis. That will cost 2,000 euros ($2,300) for the broken crucible. It also will slow production and imperil pending orders.

His five glassblowers move with unspoken choreographed precision to fill an order of 1,800 Christmas ornaments speckled with golden flakes bound for Switzerland.

One starts the process with a red-hot molten blob on the end of a wand that he rolls over gold leaf, applying it evenly before handing the form to the maestro, who then re-heats it in one oven before gently blowing into the wand to create a perfect orb. It is still glowing red when he cuts it from the wand, and another glassblower grabs it with prongs to add the final flourish, a pointy end created from a dab of molten glass applied by an apprentice.

As that dance progresses, another starts, weaving and bobbing into the empty spaces. Together, they can make 300 ornaments a day, working from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

“No machine can do what we do,” said maestro Davide Cimarosti, 56, who has been working as a glassblower for 42 years.

Murano glassblowers decades ago transitioned from wood ovens, which created uneven results, to methane, which burns at temperatures high enough to create the delicate crystal clarity that makes their creations so highly prized. And it is the only gas that the glassblowers are permitted to use, by law. They are caught in a global commodities Catch-22.

For now, artisans are hoping the international market calms by the end of the year, although some analysts believe volatility could persist into the spring. If so, damage to the island’s economy and the individual companies could run deep. 

The Rome government has offered relief to Italian families confronting high energy prices but so far nothing substantial to the Murano glassblowers, whose small scale and energy intensity make them particularly vulnerable. The artisans’ lobby is meeting with members of parliament this week in a bid to seek direct government aid, which De Checchi said is possible under new EU rules put in place after the pandemic.

Beyond economic losses, the islanders fear losing a tradition that has made their island synonymous with artistic excellence. 

Already, the sector has scaled back from an industry with thousands of workers in the 1960s and 1970s to a network of mostly small and medium-sized artisanal enterprises employing some 300 glassblowers. Venice’s glassblowing tradition dates back 1,200 years, and on Murano it has been passed down from father to son for generations. But even at its reduced size and despite its creative rewards, it struggles to attract young people to toil in workshops where summertime temperatures can reach 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The value of this tradition, this history and this culture is priceless. It goes beyond the financial value of the glass industry in Murano,” said Luciano Gambaro, co-owner of Gambaro & Tagliapietra. “Over 1,000 years of culture can’t stop with a gas issue.” 

 
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A thaw in the Sino-U.S. trade dispute, as hinted in Washington this past week, would help restore global supply chains but thin the outflow of investment capital from China to Southeast Asian countries that are eager to receive it, experts say. 

Reductions in punitive import tariffs between the two powers, which have been locked in a trade dispute since early 2018, should revitalize the business of global parts providers, assemblers and sellers of high-value items such as consumer electronics, the analysts say. 

However, they say that Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, along with smaller Southeast Asian countries, should expect less investment by multinationals trying to sustain U.S.-bound exports without shipping from China. Southeast Asian countries look to that investment to build economies and lift people out of poverty. 

In addition, Taiwan gained from the trade dispute as investors moved production and capital back home from China.

“I think the nature of value chains and supply chains is interdependent, so you might get a bit more in your country as a result of people moving out of another, but at the end of the day you want a system that supports the whole chain and supports it well,” said Jayant Menon, a visiting senior fellow with the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute’s Regional Economic Studies Program in Singapore. “You don’t want this trade war interfering with it.” 

US to consider tariff exclusions 

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said October 5 that the United States would start a “targeted tariff exclusion process” for China.

Her announcement doesn’t end the trade dispute that flared under former President Donald Trump, who said China had committed years of “unfair trade practices,” but it may signal an eventual change under President Joe Biden. 

“The exclusions process is a key part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s deliberative, long-term vision for realigning the U.S.-China trade relationship around our priorities and making trade work for American workers and businesses,” the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said in the October 5 statement. 

China welcomed the move, the official Xinhua news agency said the same day. Xinhua quoted Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hua Chunying as saying, “We hope the United States will … work with China to strive for healthy and steady development of China-U.S. trade and economic relations.” 

The dispute has hit $550 billion worth of goods, including $350 billion originating in China. 

Tai said the United States had yet to review its January 2020 “phase one agreement” with China over the trade dispute. The United States had agreed to reduce tariffs, while China said it would buy more U.S. agricultural products. 

‘A rising tide raises all boats’

A reduction in Sino-U.S. tariffs would jumpstart the manufacturing of electronics, machinery and transportation equipment, Menon said. 

China’s factories generated $3.7 trillion in “real manufacturing value added” in 2017, before the trade dispute, the Boston Consulting Group reported.  Goods such as machinery and electronics – compared to lower-value items including garments and shoes – represent “most of the action” in global trade, Menon said.  

China does a bit of everything, and the consultancy says its value-added factory output had surpassed every other country in 2017.

Specific value-added imports from China include televisions, smart speakers and consumer drones. Apple, to name just one known brand, has grappled with rising costs during the trade dispute as it contracts final assembly to two Taiwanese firms with factories in China. Apple sources parts to a list of companies in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. 

“Of course, it would be better if things were better between these two countries,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with Banco de Oro UniBank in the Philippines. “A rising tide raises all boats, so if the U.S. and China are doing well, everybody benefits.”  

Limited impact on Southeast Asia, Taiwan 

Manufacturers that have steered investment out of China into Southeast Asia since 2018 are concentrated in footwear, garments and ordinary consumer goods, experts say. Those exporters have “fixed costs” and “divisible technology,” Menon said. Southeast Asian factory-heavy countries offer supportive government policies and infrastructure, as well. 

“If there’s going to be some difficulty in (Sino-U.S.) trade, then definitely peripheral countries like the Philippines would benefit,” Ravelas said. 

American companies favor Vietnam for its cheap labor especially if they lack automation, said Frederick Burke, Ho Chi Minh City-based partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie.

“We still have clients looking at Vietnam, they’re saying this is a long-term plan, the COVID-19 pandemic is going to be over before too long and they want to get in while they can,” Burke said. “Vietnam probably is still going to have some sort of a positive growth rate this year.” 

The country’s top retail, property and manufacturing conglomerate, Vingroup, declined to comment on shifts in Sino-U.S. trade, with a spokesperson saying it would “decide target markets later.”  

Manufacturers were exploring outside of China before the trade dispute as Chinese wages rose and environmental laws tightened, Menon noted. The offshoring trend will probably hold after the trade dispute, though with some tapering, he said. 

Taiwan would feel little pinch as a glut in demand for its most prized export, semiconductors, keeps growing, said Liang Kuo-yuan, president of the Taipei-based Yuanta-Polaris Research Institute.

“The demand for chips is still there and moreover there’s a natural growth following changes in the industry,” Liang said. “Perhaps in the end competitiveness will be impacted, but the issue is, it’s still early, so if you ask about next year, I’d say pretty sure Taiwan will still be very strong in semiconductors.”
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У справі заарештовані, зокрема, активи ексвласника на суму 790 мільйонів гривень
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Three U.S-based economists won the 2021 Nobel prize for economics on Monday for pioneering research on the labor market impacts of minimum wage, immigration and education, and for creating the scientific framework to allow conclusions to be drawn from such studies that can’t use traditional methodology.

Canadian-born David Card of the University of California at Berkeley was awarded one half of the prize, while the other half was shared by Joshua Angrist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dutch-born Guido Imbens, 58, from Stanford University.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three have “completely reshaped empirical work in the economic sciences.”

“Card’s studies of core questions for society and Angrist and Imbens’ methodological contributions have shown that natural experiments are a rich source of knowledge,” said Peter Fredriksson, chair of the Economic Sciences Committee. “Their research has substantially improved our ability to answer key causal questions, which has been of great benefit for society.” 

Card worked on research that used restaurants in New Jersey and in eastern Pennsylvania to measure the effects of increasing the minimum wage. He and his late research partner Alan Krueger found that an increase in the hourly minimum wage did not affect employment, challenging conventional wisdom which held that an increase in minimum wage will lead to less hiring.

Card’s work also challenged another commonly held idea, that immigrants depress wages for native-born workers. He found that incomes of the native-born can benefit from new immigration, while it is earlier immigrants who are at risk of being negatively affected.

Angrist and Imbens won their half of the award for working out the methodological issues that enable economists to draw solid conclusions about cause and effect even where they cannot carry out studies according to strict scientific methods.

Speaking by phone from his home in Massachusetts, Imbens told reporters gathered for the announcement that he had been asleep when the call came.

“The whole house was asleep, we had a busy weekend.” said Imbens. “I was absolutely thrilled to hear the news.”

He said he was especially thrilled for Angrist, who was best man at his wedding. 

Unlike the other Nobel prizes, the economics award wasn’t established in the will of Alfred Nobel but by the Swedish central bank in his memory in 1968, with the first winner selected a year later. It is the last prize announced each year. 

Last week, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia for their fight for freedom of expression in countries where reporters have faced persistent attacks, harassment and even murder. 

Ressa was the only woman honored this year in any category. 

The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to U.K.-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was recognized for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee.”

 The prize for physiology or medicine went to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch. 

Three scientists won the physics prize for work that found order in seeming disorder, helping to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding our understanding of climate change. 

Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan won the chemistry prize for finding an easier and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that can be used to make compounds, including medicines and pesticides. 
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Оголошення має відбутися о 12:45 за київським часом
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After water levels at a California dam fell to historic lows this summer, the main hydropower plant it feeds was shut down. At the Hoover Dam in Nevada — one of the country’s biggest hydropower generators — production is down by 25%. If extreme drought persists, federal officials say a dam in Arizona could stop producing electricity in coming years. 

Severe drought across the West drained reservoirs this year, slashing hydropower production and further stressing the region’s power grids. And as extreme weather becomes more common with climate change, grid operators are adapting to swings in hydropower generation.

“The challenge is finding the right resource, or mix of resources, that can provide the same energy and power outputs as hydro,” said Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the California Energy Commission. 

U.S. hydropower generation is expected to decline 14% this year compared with 2020, according to a recent federal forecast. The projected drops are concentrated in western states that rely more heavily on hydropower, with California’s production expected to fall by nearly half.

The reductions complicate grid operations since hydropower is a relatively flexible renewable energy source that can be easily turned up or down, experts say, such as in the evenings when the sun goes down and solar energy generation drops.

“Hydro is a big part of the plan for making the whole system work together,” said Severin Borenstein, a renewable energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley and board member of the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s electric grid. 

Borenstein noted that hydropower is important as the state works to build out its electricity storage options, including by installing batteries that can dispatch energy when it is needed.

Ben Kujala of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, which handles power planning for the Columbia River Basin, also noted that grid operators have adapted how they deploy hydropower in recent years to ensure that it complements solar and wind energy. 

Power grids linking western regions also offer some relief. While California can face multi-year stretches of dry weather, the Pacific Northwest usually gets enough precipitation in the winter to recover and produce hydropower to export.

But this year, the Northwest was also hit by extreme heat and less precipitation, according to Crystal Raymond, a climate change researcher at the University of Washington. While energy planners account for drought years, Raymond said climate change over the long term may further reduce the amounts of melting snow in mountains that fill reservoirs in the spring.

In August, California officials shut down the Edward Hyatt hydropower plant for the first time in its 60-year history after water levels at Lake Oroville sank to historic lows. The plant can produce enough power for up to 750,000 homes, but typically operates at lower levels. 

At Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border, federal officials recently said there is a 34% chance that the Glen Canyon Dam won’t be able to produce power at some point in 2023, up from a 3% chance for next year, if extreme drought persists.  

Declines in hydropower production in California this summer coincided with heat waves, forcing the state to buy extra power. To prevent outages in late September, state officials said they were deploying temporary emergency generators.

“The drought did compound the difficulty of meeting demand,” said Jordan Kern, an energy and water systems expert at North Carolina State University.

In some northwestern states, hydropower production has reverted closer to normal levels after dipping just below their 10-year ranges earlier this year. California’s hydropower levels remained at the bottom of the state’s 10-year range through June. Federal forecasts say much of the West is likely to continue to see drought conditions through the end of the year.

Declines in hydropower production mean production bumps for other energy sources. Natural gas power is expected to rise 7% in California and 6% in the Northwest this year over last, according to federal forecasts. Coal generation is forecast to rise 12% in the Northwest.

The California Air Resources Board says the state has been able to continue reducing the electricity sector’s greenhouse gas emissions despite swings in hydropower generation in recent years.
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Beekeepers Mustafa Alti and his son Fehmi were kept busy tending to their hives before wildfires tore through a bucolic region of Turkey that makes most of the world’s prized pine honey.

Now the Altis and generations of other honey farmers in Turkey’s Aegean province of Mugla are scrambling to find additional work and wondering how many decades it might take to get their old lives back on track.

“Our means of existence is from beekeeping, but when the forests burned, our source of income fell,” said Fehmi, 47, next to his mountainside beehives in the fire-ravaged village of Cokek. “I do side jobs, I do some tree felling, that way we manage to make do.”

Nearly 200,000 hectares of forests — more than five times the annual average — were scorched by fires across Turkey this year, turning luscious green coasts popular with tourists into ash.

The summer disaster and an accompanying series of deadly floods made the climate — already weighing heavily on the minds of younger voters — a major issue two years before the next scheduled election.

Signaling a political shift, Turkey’s parliament this week ended a five-year wait and ratified the Paris Agreement on cutting the greenhouse emissions that are blamed for global warming and abnormal weather events.

But the damage has already been done in Mugla, where 80 percent of Turkey’s pine honey is produced.

Turkey as a whole makes 92 percent of the world’s pine honey, meaning supplies of the thick, dark amber may be running low worldwide very soon.

Turkey’s pine honey harvests were already suffering from drought when the wildfires hit, destroying the delicate balance among bees, trees, and the little insects at the heart of the production process.

The honey is made by bees after they collect the sugary secretions of the tiny Basra beetle (Marchalina hellenica), which lives on the sap of pine trees. 

Fehmi hopes the beetles will adapt to younger trees after the fires. But he also accepts that “it will take at least five or 10 years to get our previous income back.”

His father Mustafa agrees, urging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to expand forested areas and plant young trees.

“There’s no fixing a burned house. Can you fix the dead? No. But new trees might come, a new generation,” Mustafa said.

For now, though, the beekeepers are counting their losses and figuring out what comes next.

The president of the Mugla Beekeepers’ Association, Veli Turk, expects his region’s honey production to plunge by up to 95 percent this year.

“There is pretty much no Marmaris honey left,” he said.

“This honey won’t come for another 60 years,” he predicted. “It’s not just Turkey. This honey would go everywhere in the world. It was a blessing. This is really a huge loss.”

Beekeeper Yasar Karayigit, 45, is thinking of switching to a different type of honey to keep his passion — and sole source of income — alive.

“I love beekeeping, but to continue, I’ll have to pursue alternatives,” Karayigit said, mentioning royal jelly (or “bee milk”) and sunflower honey, which involves additional costs.

“But if we love the bees, we have to do this,” the father of three said.

Ismail Atici, head of the Milas district Chamber of Agriculture in Mugla, said the price of pine honey has doubled from last year, threatening to make the popular breakfast food unaffordable for many Turks.

He expects price rises to continue and supplies to become ever scarcer.

“We will get to a point where even if you have money, you won’t be able to find those medicinal plants and medicinal honey,” Atici said.

“It’s going to be very hard to find 100 percent pine honey,” beekeeper Karayigit agreed. “We have had so much loss.”

Looking ahead, the president of the Turkey Beekeepers’ Association, Ziya Sahin, suggests selectively introducing the Basra beetle to new areas of Mugla, expanding coverage from the current 7% to 25% of local pine forests.

“If we conduct transplantation of the beetle from one area to another and continue this for two successive years, we can protect the region’s dominance in the sector,” Sahin said.

“There will be a serious drop in honey production if we don’t do this,” he added, calling this year the “worst” of his 50-year career.

Yet despite the pain and the troubled road ahead, the younger Alti has no plans to quit.

“This is my father’s trade. Because this is passed down from the family, we must continue it,” Fehmi said.
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Low rainfall plagues one of the world’s major agricultural producers. Brazil now faces a crisis of drying dams, forcing farmers to look to more expensive and less-eco-friendly sources of power. As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, the climate change-driven issue threatens to make worse the effects of climate change
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U.S. Treasury chief Janet Yellen warned Sunday that it was “absolutely imperative” that Congress increase the country’s borrowing authority even as the immediate threat of a first-ever default on paying the government’s bills has been alleviated through early December.

“It would be a catastrophe” if the United States does not increase the ceiling on its current national debt of nearly $29 trillion, Yellen told ABC’s “This Week” show.

Yellen had said that the U.S. would run out of money to pay its bills on October 18, but Senate Republican and Democratic leaders agreed last week on an emergency $480 billion increase in the debt ceiling to pay the government’s bills through December 3, at which time the contentious political debate in Washington over an extension of the government’s borrowing authority could play out again.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and 10 other Republicans voted to clear the path for Democratic senators to increase the government’s borrowing authority on a 50-48 party-line vote last week, with the House of Representatives expected this week to assent to the temporary increase.

McConnell also said he would not cooperate with opposition Democrats in a further debt ceiling increase in December. He called on Democrats to raise it on their own through a legislative procedure known as reconciliation, in which Democrats could vote for a debt ceiling increase without the threat of Republicans blocking it with a filibuster.

Democrats so far have been reluctant to use the reconciliation process because they say it is cumbersome and time-consuming. They also say Republicans should join them in raising the debt ceiling because the country’s long-term debt has occurred under both Republican and Democratic control of the White House and Congress.

The U.S., virtually alone among the world’s countries, imposes a lid on its government spending. Yellen, however, said the figure has been increased about 70 times since 1965, either to a specific amount or suspended altogether for a year or two, since the U.S. government chronically spends more than it collects in taxes.

She has called for doing away with the debt ceiling, but that is unlikely since both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, thinking it is a winning political tactic in the U.S., repeatedly blame each other for what they contend is wasteful and unneeded spending by their opponents.

“It should be a shared responsibility (to increase the debt ceiling), not any one party,” Yellen said. “It is Congress’ responsibility.”

“We have to reassure the world that the United States is fiscally responsible,” she said, adding that if the borrowing authority is not increased before December 3, it would amount to “a self-inflicted crisis.” 

She said that if the debt ceiling is not increased, 50 million older Americans might not receive government pension benefits and that “our troops won’t know when or if they would be paid. The 30 million families that receive a child tax credit, those payments would be in jeopardy.”
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