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СБУ: експрацівника «Укрзалізниці» та його співмешканку затримали за підпал локомотива
Також у Вінницькій області троє студентів коледжу були затримані після підпалу регіонального відділення Укрпошти та релейної шафи
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Суд у РФ засудив жителя окупованої Ялти через збиття розвідувального літака Росії
Його звинуватили в передачі Україні дані про виліт «авіаційного комплексу радіолокаційного дозору та наведення» в січні 2024 року
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Malaysia urges Chinese firms to avoid using it to dodge US tariffs
KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia has urged Chinese companies to refrain from using it as a base to “rebadge” products to avoid U.S. tariffs, its deputy trade minister said on Monday, amid increasing export restrictions and concerns of a U.S.-China trade war.
Washington is expected to further curb exports to Chinese semiconductor toolmakers and sales of certain chipmaking equipment, including products manufactured in Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, sources have told Reuters.
Malaysia is a major player in the semiconductor industry, accounting for 13% of global testing and packaging, and is seen as well placed to grab further business in the sector as Chinese chip firms diversify overseas for assembling needs.
“Over the past year or so… I have been advising many businesses from China not to invest in Malaysia if they were merely thinking of rebadging their products via Malaysia to avoid U.S. tariffs,” Malaysia’s deputy trade minister Liew Chin Tong told a forum on Monday.
He did not specify the types of businesses.
Liew said regardless of whether the U.S. had a Democratic or Republican administration, the world’s largest economy would impose tariffs, as seen in the solar panel sector.
Washington imposed tariffs on solar exports from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia — home to factories owned by Chinese firms — last year and expanded them in October following complaints from manufacturers in the United States.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to slap an additional 10% tariff on all Chinese imports when he takes office on Jan. 20.
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У лікарні померла жінка, поранена під час ракетного удару РФ по Полтавщині 17 листопада – Пронін
17 листопада війська РФ завдали масованого удару по території України
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Biden pardons son Hunter
Washington — U.S. President Joe Biden announced Sunday he pardoned his son Hunter, who was facing sentencing this month in two federal cases.
Biden had previously pledged not to take such action, but in a statement Sunday he said the move was in response to what he called selective and unfair prosecution.
“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden said.
Hunter Biden was convicted of three felonies in June for a 2018 gun purchase. Prosecutors said he falsely claimed on a federal form to not be illegally using or addicted to drugs.
He also pled guilty in a case where he was accused of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes.
The president’s action Sunday pardoned Hunter Biden in both cases, as well as any offense he “has committed or may have committed or taken part” between January 1, 2014 to January 1, 2024.
“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” Hunter Biden said in a statement.
President Biden said in his statement that he hopes “Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.”
“For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further,” Biden said.
President-elect Donald Trump criticized the move, calling it “such an abuse and miscarriage of justice.”
Trump, in the late stages of his first term in office, pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Other Trump pardons included his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former chief strategist Steve Bannon and campaign aide George Papadopoulos.
Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters
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ДСНС: у Тернополі унаслідок атаки РФ одна людина загинула, троє – поранені
Уночі внаслідок удару російського дрона постраждав багатоквартирний будинок
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У Тернополі російський БПЛА влучив у пʼятиповерхівку, є загиблі і поранені – Надал
Тернопільська обласна військова адміністрація повідомила про одного загиблого
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Big Ten fines Michigan and Ohio State $100,000 each for postgame melee
ROSEMONT, Ill. — The Big Ten Conference announced it fined Michigan and Ohio State $100,000 each for violating the conference’s sportsmanship policy for the on-field melee at the end of the Wolverines’ win in Columbus on Saturday.
“Not only did the actions of both teams violate fundamental elements of sportsmanship such as respect and civility, the nature of the incident also jeopardized the safety of participants and bystanders,” the Big Ten said in a statement Sunday.
A fight broke out at midfield after the Wolverines’ 13-10 victory when Michigan players attempted to plant their flag on the OSU logo and were confronted by the Buckeyes.
Police used pepper spray to break up the players, who threw punches and shoves. One officer suffered a head injury when he was “knocked down and trampled while trying to separate players fighting,” a police union official said. The officer was taken to a hospital and has since been released.
After the Ohio State players confronted their rivals at midfield, defensive end Jack Sawyer grabbed the top of the Wolverines’ flag and ripped it off the pole as the brawl moved toward the Michigan bench.
“We respect the Big Ten Conference’s decision in this matter,” Ohio State said in a statement. “What happened post-game yesterday was unfortunate. Good sportsmanship is always important in everything we do at Ohio State. Moving forward, we will continue to examine and address our post-game protocols to ensure our student-athletes, coaches, visiting teams and staff safely exit the field.”
Ohio State police said in a statement that “multiple officers representing Ohio and Michigan deployed pepper spray.” Michigan players could be seen rubbing their eyes after exposure to the chemical irritant.
Michigan coach Sherrone Moore said after the game both teams could have handled the situation differently.
“So much emotions on both sides,” he said. “Rivalry games get heated, especially this one. It’s the biggest one in the country, so we got to handle that better.”
A Michigan athletic department spokesman said Sunday night the football program would have no comment beyond the team’s remarks Saturday.
The scuffle was one of many that broke out Saturday in rivalry games across the country.
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Biden has AIDS Memorial Quilt at White House, observing World AIDS Day
Washington — President Joe Biden on Sunday had the AIDS Memorial Quilt spread on the White House South Lawn for the first time in observance of World AIDS Day.
Gathered with the president and his wife, Jill, were survivors, family members and advocates to memorialize the lives lost to the epidemic. The president emphasized the federal government’s support for the 1.2 million people in the United States living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which can lead to AIDS.
“This movement is fully woven into the fabric and history of America,” Biden said. “For all the lives lost, for all those that are still alive, look at what you’ve already done to change the hearts and minds, to save lives across the country and around the world. That’s the power of this movement.”
There were 124 sections of the quilt on the lawn to commemorate people who died due to AIDS-related illnesses. Conceived in 1985, the quilt made its first public appearance in 1987. There was also a red ribbon, a symbol of support and awareness for those with HIV and AIDS, draped across the South Portico of the White House.
There are 40 million people around the world with HIV, according to the White House.
Introducing Biden was Jeanne White-Ginder, whose son, Ryan White, contracted AIDS through a tainted blood transfusion at the age of 13 and died in 1990 at the age of 18. She said her son’s experience taught America that “we needed to fight AIDS and not the people who have it.”
The Ryan White CARE Act became law in 1990, and White-Grinder recalled being at the U.S. Capitol to speak for the measure and met Biden when he was a senator from Delaware.
The president also saluted Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert until leaving the government in 2022, Fauci was in attendance at the event as he worked to treat AIDS, though he’s known by much of the country for his efforts to address the coronavirus pandemic that made him a target of criticism by many Republican lawmakers.
The Biden administration has sought to make investments to stop the epidemic, and the stigmas attached to people with HIV. Among other steps, it has worked to expand access to PrEP, or the pre-exposure prophylaxis, which at-risk populations use to prevent HIV infections.
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Trump nominates former aide Kash Patel to head FBI
Donald Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel, a loyalist of the U.S. president-elect, to be director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has added to the list of Trump’s unconventional appointments to top-level jobs in his nascent administration.
Trump named Patel, 44, to lead the country’s top criminal investigative agency on late Saturday, saying he “is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending justice, and protecting the American people.”
Patel held three defense, intelligence and national security posts in the first Trump administration but has endeared himself to the incoming chief executive by vowing to clean out the “deep state” at the FBI. He also said he would launch a campaign of retribution against Trump’s adversaries, including FBI agents who have investigated the once-and-future president, journalists and others.
During his first term, Trump suggested naming Patel as the deputy FBI director, but then-Attorney General William Barr, now a Trump critic, said the appointment would only occur “over my dead body.”
Patel has vowed to close the FBI headquarters in Washington and dispatch many of its agents across the country to fight crime, not launch more intelligence-gathering operations.
Trump’s first hurdle in installing Patel as the FBI director is that there already is an FBI director, Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump and whose 10-year term extends to 2027.
Trump would have to fire Wray or Wray would have to resign before Patel could take over. FBI directors are appointed to decade-long terms by design, so that their tenures and investigative directives are not subject to the political whims of the moment. But Trump already fired one FBI director, James Comey, in 2017, before naming Wray.
Trump says the FBI is “badly broken” and has “lost the confidence of America.”
Patel faces a Senate confirmation hearing and is likely to face tough questioning about how he would run the agency and oversee its more than 10,000 criminal investigative agents and another 25,000 staff members.
Patel’s appointment comes on top of other unconventional Trump appointments: vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oversee the health and human services department, talk show host Pete Hegseth, a decorated military officer with scant managerial experience, to be the Pentagon chief, and Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic-congresswoman-turned-staunch-Trump-defender, as director of national intelligence.
Trump’s first nominee to be attorney general, former Congressman Matt Gaetz, dropped out after eight days as he faced widespread scrutiny of his alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use; charges Gaetz has denied.
Some Republican senators praised Patel’s appointment. Republicans will hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate next year, meaning Patel could lose the support of three senators and still be confirmed, with Vice President-elect JD Vance casting the decisive tie-breaking vote if needed.
Senator Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Patel “represents the type of change that we need to see in the FBI. … The entire agency needs to be cleaned out.”
“There are serious problems at the FBI,” Hagerty said. “The American public knows it. They expect to see sweeping change, and Kash Patel’s just the type of person to do it.”
Another Republican senator, Ted Cruz of Texas, said Patel was a “very strong nominee” and he thought Patel would be confirmed.
“All of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, all the people pulling their hair out, are exactly the people who are dismayed about having a real reformer come into the FBI,” Cruz told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
A third Republican, Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, said, “Every president wants people that are loyal to themselves.” But he called Wray “a very good man,” adding, “I don’t have any complaints about the way that he’s done his job right now.”
Democrats are almost certain to oppose the nomination.
Senator Chris Murphy told NBC, “Patel’s only qualification is that he agrees with Donald Trump that the Department of Justice should punish, lock up and intimidate Donald Trump’s political opponents.”
Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
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LA’s sanctuary city ordinance gives hope to city’s undocumented immigrants
Los Angeles has approved a so-called sanctuary city ordinance. It’s a response to President-elect Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations when he assumes the presidency in January. The ordinance won’t stop federal officials from deporting undocumented immigrants, but it reinforces the city’s vow to protect its immigrant population. Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vazgen Varzhabetian
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US will not return nuclear weapons to Ukraine
The United States is not considering returning to Ukraine the nuclear weapons it gave up after the Soviet Union collapsed, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday.
Sullivan made his remarks when questioned about a New York Times article last month that said some unidentified Western officials had suggested U.S. President Joe Biden could give Ukraine the arms before he leaves office.
“That is not under consideration, no. What we are doing is surging various conventional capacities to Ukraine so that they can effectively defend themselves and take the fight to the Russians, not [giving them] nuclear capability,” he told ABC.
Last week, Russia said the idea was “absolute insanity” and that preventing such a scenario was one of the reasons why Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.
Kyiv inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union after its 1991 collapse but gave them up under a 1994 agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, in return for security assurances from Russia, the United States and Britain.
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Biden to spotlight Angola’s Lobito Corridor, his legacy to counter China in Africa
WASHINGTON — When U.S. President Joe Biden visits Angola in early December, he will put into focus his legacy infrastructure project aimed at securing crucial supply chains on the African continent. Called the Lobito Corridor, the project is the centerpiece of his administration’s strategy to counter China’s clout in global development.
The Lobito Corridor is a $5 billion investment across multiple sectors that is intended to revitalize and extend the 1,300-kilometer Benguela railway line. It will connect the 120-year-old Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in its second phase, to Zambia.
Announced in September 2023, much of the corridor’s financing comes from the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. The PGI is a Biden-led 2022 initiative from the Group of Seven wealthiest economies that evolved from his Build Back Better World plan launched in 2021 as a counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Once operational, it will boost access to critical minerals for the United States and its partners, including cobalt and copper, that are essential in electric vehicle manufacturing. According to a U.S. congressional report, 80% of the DRC’s copper mines are Chinese owned. China is responsible for mining 85% of the DRC’s rare earth minerals, including 76% of its cobalt.
The Lobito Corridor is expected to cut transportation costs, open access to arable agricultural land and drive climate-resilient economic growth, Helaina Matza, acting special coordinator for the PGI at the U.S. Department of State, said Tuesday in a briefing to reporters.
The PGI’s investments will “amplify the impact of that infrastructure” with projects such as developing solar energy, local electricity networks and desalination efforts, she said.
The project is championed by Angolan President Joao Lourenco. Angola owes about $17 billion to China, more than a third of its total debt. The debt is mostly in the form of infrastructure development loans, backed by oil, that funded the country’s economic recovery following three decades of civil war that ended in 2002.
PGI to counter BRI
Since launching the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, in 2013, China has become the main backer of global development financing. In Africa, Beijing has signed loan commitments with 49 African governments and seven regional institutions.
From 2013 to 2021, China provided $679 billion for infrastructure projects around the world, according to a U.S. government analysis, while the U.S. provided $76 billion.
The U.S., alongside G7 partners, announced in 2022 that the PGI aims to mobilize $600 billion by 2027 as an alternative to infrastructure financing models that are “often opaque, fail to uphold environmental and social standards, exploit workers and leave the recipient countries worse off.”
That’s a lot of financing to catch up to in a few years, and Lobito is “the first and the most developed” project in that effort, said Witney Schneidman, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“That’s the A+ project, but I don’t see a whole lot of other projects,” Schneidman told VOA.
The PGI’s other project, the Luzon Corridor, was launched in April to support connectivity between Subic Bay, Clark, Manila and Batangas in the Philippines.
In Lobito, the U.S. works mostly with European partners. In Luzon, the U.S. is teaming up with Japan to secure critical industries such as semiconductors.
The White House pushed back against the notion that Biden has scaled back his global infrastructure ambitions to the two corridors.
“We’ve mobilized more than $60 billion, just the U.S., and that’s a part of the larger G7,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told VOA in a briefing earlier this month.
“And that’s not just been for two corridors,” he said. “That’s been for investments across Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.”
US-Africa strategy
In August 2022, the Biden administration launched an Africa strategy that “reframes the region’s importance to U.S. national security interests,” the strategy says.
Later that year, Biden hosted the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, where he pledged the U.S. to invest $55 billion in Africa over three years.
“We are overdelivering on that thus far,” Frances Brown, senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council, said in a briefing Tuesday. “We’ve invested more than 80% of that commitment.”
But much of that $55 billion was allocated under existing programs and does not bring the kind of megaproject that is “visible to the average African that says the United States financed that in the way that the Chinese do,” said Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Which is why the Lobito Corridor stands out, Dizolele told VOA. It is the “one palpable project that people can look at and say, ‘If this is implemented, then maybe it would move things forward.’”
On a continent where the presence of Chinese financing, businesses and migrants are so prevalent that many African countries teach Mandarin in schools and incorporate Chinese characters in public signage, that’s a start.
Moving forward, activists hope the U.S. will not set aside social and environmental concerns that have besieged projects under Chinese financing.
“We have to ensure that we can hear all stakeholders engaging in the process,” said Sergio Calundungo, founder of the Social Observatory of Angola.
So far, civil society groups have not been invited to the table, but they are ready to ensure that local communities can “share as much as possible the prosperity through this important infrastructure,” he told VOA.
Will it continue?
President-elect Donald Trump will enter office in January. While some are concerned that the U.S. commitment to Africa might falter under his America First doctrine, analysts point to initiatives taken under his first administration.
In 2018, the Trump administration launched Prosper Africa, an initiative that brings together U.S. government services to help investors do business on the continent. In 2019, it launched the Blue Dot Network, an international certification mechanism to ensure infrastructure projects meet environmental and social standards.
They were aware that infrastructure investments needed “to foster economic growth, to foster stability, but also for U.S. interests globally when competing with China,” said Joseph Lemoine, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center. “I’m hopeful that they will continue those efforts,” he told VOA.
Trump also launched the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation in 2020. The DFC is an agency that functions as America’s development bank, with $60 billion in lending capacity.
DFC’s first CEO, Adam Boehler, a college roommate of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, spoke openly of linking development aid to foreign policy goals. In a 2020 interview, he admitted promising $2 billion for Indonesia should the country agree to join the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords and recognize Israel.
“If you listen to all the Trump people, they want a foreign policy that’s transactional,” Schneidman at Brookings said.
Trump has promised to take a confrontational approach to China. Analysts say aligning infrastructure financing needs with Trump’s foreign policy goals may be an element in the U.S.-China rivalry that developing nations can leverage.
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‘Everything is expensive!’ Bolivia faces a shocking economic collapse
Fuel is rapidly becoming one of Bolivia’s scarcest commodities.
Long lines of vehicles snake for several kilometers outside gas stations all over Bolivia, once South America’s second-largest producer of natural gas. Some of the queues don’t budge for days.
While frustration builds, drivers like Victor García now eat, sleep and socialize around their stationary trucks, waiting to buy just a few liters of diesel — unless the station runs dry.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re going to be worse off,” said García, 66, who inched closer to the pump Tuesday as the hours ticked by in El Alto, a bare-bones sprawl beside Bolivia’s capital in the Andean altiplano.
Bolivia’s monthslong fuel crunch comes as the nation’s foreign currency reserves plummet, leaving Bolivians unable to find U.S. dollars at banks and exchange houses. Imported goods that were once commonplace have become scarce.
The fuel crisis has created a sense that the country is coming undone, disrupting economic activity and everyday life for millions of people, hurting commerce and farm production and sending food prices soaring.
Mounting public anger has driven crowds into the streets in recent weeks, piling pressure on leftist President Luis Arce to ease the suffering ahead of a tense election next year.
“We want effective solutions to the shortage of fuel, dollars and the increase in food prices,” said Reinerio Vargas, the vice rector of Gabriel René Moreno Autonomous University in the eastern province of Santa Cruz, where hundreds of desperate truckers and residents flooded main squares Tuesday to vent their anger at Arce’s inaction and demand early elections.
In a similar eruption of discontent, protesters shouting, “Everything is expensive!” marched through the streets of the capital, La Paz, last week.
Bolivians say Arce’s image has suffered not only because of the crisis but also because his government insists that it doesn’t exist.
“Diesel sales are in the process of returning to normal,” Economy Minister Marcelo Montenegro said Tuesday.
Arce has repeatedly vowed that his government will end the fuel shortages and lower the prices of basic goods by arbitrary deadlines. On November 10, he again promised he would “resolve this issue” in 10 days.
As the deadlines come and go, the black market currency exchange rate has risen to nearly 40% more than the official rate.
Arce’s office did not respond to interview requests.
“The queues are getting longer and longer,” said 38-year-old driver Ramiro Morales, who needed a bathroom after four hours in line Tuesday but feared losing his place if he went searching for one. “People are exhausted.”
It’s a shocking turnaround for the landlocked nation of 12 million people that was a South American economic success story in the 2000s, when the commodities bonanza generated tens of billions of dollars under the nation’s first Indigenous president, former President Evo Morales.
Morales, Arce’s onetime mentor, is his present-day rival in the fight to be the ruling party’s candidate next year.
But when the commodities boom ended, prices slumped and gas production dwindled. Now, Bolivia spends an estimated $56 million a week to import most of its gasoline and diesel from Argentina, Paraguay and Russia.
Economy Minister Montenegro on Tuesday pledged that the government would continue providing fuel subsidies that critics say it can’t afford.
Banners from two years ago boasting that Bolivia’s inflation is the lowest in South America still greet tourists arriving at El Alto International Airport. Now, inflation is among the highest in the region.
Fuel shortages prevent farmers from getting their produce to distribution centers and markets, triggering a sharp price hike for food staples.
Last week in La Paz and neighboring El Alto, hungry Bolivians jostled in long lines to buy rice after much-delayed shipments finally arrived from Santa Cruz, the country’s economic engine some 850 kilometers away.
With the diesel shortage affecting everything from the operation of tractors to the sourcing of machinery parts, the shortage is also hurting farmers during the crucial planting season.
“Without diesel, there is no food for 2025,” said Klaus Frerking, the vice president of the Eastern Agricultural Chamber of Bolivia.
The prices of potatoes, onions and milk have doubled in El Alto’s main wholesale food market in the past month, vendors said, overshooting the country’s nearly 8% inflation rate.
Nervous Bolivians are cutting back on their consumption.
“You have to search a lot to find the cheapest food,” said 67-year-old Angela Mamani, struggling to pull together meals for her six grandchildren at El Alto’s open-air market Tuesday. She planned to buy vegetables but didn’t have enough cash and went home empty-handed.
This week, Arce’s government presented a 2025 budget — with a 12% increase in spending — that drew backlash from lawmakers and business leaders who said it would lead to more debt and more inflation.
While the governing Movement Toward Socialism party tears itself apart in the power struggle between Arce and Morales, both politicians have seen the economic morass as a way to strengthen their positions ahead of 2025 elections.
“They deny there are problems. They blame external contexts and conflicts,” said Bolivian economic analyst Gonzalo Chávez.
Morales’ supporters last month launched 24-day protest partly targeting Arce’s handling of the economy that blocked main roads and stranded commercial shipments, costing the government billions of dollars.
Security forces broke up the rallies almost a month ago. But on Tuesday, Arce’s government continued to blame Morales’ blockades for spawning the ubiquitous fuel lines.
“We need change,” said Geanina García, a 31-year-old architect scouring the grocery hub of El Alto for cheap deals — a once-routine errand that she said had turned into a nightmare.
“People don’t live off politics, they live day to day, off of what they produce and what they earn.”
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Eggs are available but pricier as the holiday baking season begins
U.S. egg prices are rising once more as a lingering outbreak of bird flu coincides with the high demand of the holiday baking season.
But prices are still far from the recent peak they reached almost two years ago. And the American Egg Board, a trade group, says egg shortages at grocery stores have been isolated and temporary so far.
“Those are being rapidly corrected, sometimes within a day,” said Emily Metz, the Egg Board’s president and chief executive officer.
The average price for a dozen eggs in U.S. cities was $3.37 in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was down slightly from September, and down significantly from January 2023, when the average price soared to $4.82. But it was up 63% from October 2023, when a dozen eggs cost an average of $2.07.
Sometimes, supermarkets may be to blame for price spikes. During testimony in August in the Federal Trade Commission’s case seeking to block Kroger’s merger with Albertsons, Kroger’s senior director for pricing acknowledged that the company has raised the cost of milk and eggs beyond the levels of inflation.
But there are other factors behind the price increases. Metz said the egg industry sees its highest demand in November and December, for example.
“You can’t have your holiday baking, your pumpkin pie, your stuffing, without eggs,” she said.
Avian influenza is another big reason for the higher prices. The current bird flu outbreak that began in February 2022 has led to the slaughter of more than 111 million birds, mostly egg-laying chickens. Anytime the virus is found, every bird on a farm is killed to limit the spread of the disease.
More than 6 million birds have been slaughtered just this month because of bird flu. They were a relatively small part of the total U.S. egg-laying flock of 377 million chickens. Still, the flock is down about 3% over the past year, contributing to a 4% drop in egg production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The latest wave of bird flu is scrambling supplies of cage-free eggs because California has been among the hardest hit states. California, Nevada, Washington and Oregon all require eggs sold in their states to be cage-free.
“We’re having to move eggs from other areas of the country that are producing cage-free to cover that low supply in those states, because those states only allow for cage-free eggs to be sold,” Metz said.
Cage-free requirements are set to go into effect in Arizona, Colorado and Michigan next year and in Rhode Island and Utah in 2030.
Demand for such specialty eggs may also be contributing to avian flu, which is spread through the droppings of wild birds as they migrate past farms. Allowing chickens to roam more freely puts them at greater risk, said Chad Hart, a professor and agricultural economist at Iowa State University.
“It’s really hard to control that interaction between domesticated birds and wild birds,” Hart said. “Some of those vectors have been opened up because we’re asking the egg industry to produce in ways that we didn’t ask them to before.”
Metz said climate change and extreme weather are also blowing some wild birds off course.
“We have birds that have been displaced by hurricanes, by wildfires, and those birds are now circulating in areas that they otherwise might not circulate or at times of the year that they otherwise may not be circulating,” she said. “And those are all new variables that our farmers are having to deal with.”
Hart said the egg industry is trying to rebuild the flock, but that also can limit supplies, since farmers have to hold back some eggs to hatch into new chickens.
Still, there is some good news on U.S. poultry farms. The price of chicken feed — which represents 70% of a farmer’s costs — has fallen significantly after doubling between 2020 and 2022, Hart said.
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More sand is in sight for a Jersey Shore resort town’s deteriorating beaches
NORTH WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY — A decade-long conflict over the condition of a New Jersey resort town’s beaches, involving tens of millions of dollars in litigation and fines, could come to an end soon.
Patrick Rosenello, the mayor of North Wildwood, says his town has reached an agreement with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to drop claims on both sides and move forward with measures to widen beaches in the community, popular with tourists from the Philadelphia area.
The agreement, which is up for a vote Tuesday by North Wildwood’s council, would resolve all outstanding disputes between the parties, the Republican mayor said. The tentative timing of the replenishment is sometime in 2025, he said.
The agreement includes canceling the $12 million New Jersey has fined North Wildwood for unauthorized beach repairs that the state says could actually worsen erosion. It also calls for the city to drop a lawsuit against the state seeking reimbursement for the $30 million it has spent trucking in sand for emergency repairs to eroded sections of its beach over the past decade.
“We agreed that we will concentrate on protecting our beaches instead of suing each other,” Rosenello said Wednesday.
At the root of the dispute is the fact that North Wildwood is virtually the only Jersey Shore community that has yet to receive a full beach replenishment project from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Officials say difficulty in getting easements from affected property owners has contributed to the delay.
Erosion had become so bad in parts of North Wildwood that protective sand dunes were obliterated, leaving homes and businesses vulnerable to flooding and wave damage in the event of a major storm, At one point in January, Rosenello posed for photos on the beach with what was left of a dune barely reaching his knees.
The state Department of Transportation did an interim replenishment project last summer after Democratic Governor Phil Murphy called the erosion in North Wildwood “shocking.” Rosenello said that work has held up well in the ensuing months.
The environmental department declined to comment on the proposed agreement. Rosenello predicted it will be approved by the council and signed and sent to the state Tuesday.
In addition to ending the litigation, North Wildwood will contribute $1 million to the eventual cost of the federal beach replenishment project once it arrives in the city, and will pay $700,000 into a state water pollution control fund, the mayor said.
The agreement also lays out a clear regulatory path for North Wildwood to obtain the environmental permits it needs to carry out other shore protection work including extension of a sea wall.
On several occasions, North Wildwood carried out emergency repairs, including construction of an earlier bulkhead without approval from the state. Shawn LaTourette, New Jersey’s environment protection commissioner, warned the town in 2023 that unauthorized work could have more serious consequences if it continues, including potential loss of future shore protection funding.
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President-elect Trump has sought Orban’s take on Ukraine war, sources say
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has held multiple phone conversations with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban since winning the November 5 presidential election, according to sources who spoke to RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service.
Hungarian government sources said Trump has sought Orban’s opinion on ending the Ukraine war, which has continued to drag on since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
On the campaign trail, Trump criticized the billions of dollars that the United States has poured into Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion.
He has also said he could end the war within 24 hours of retaking the White House, a statement that some have interpreted as meaning that Ukraine would have to surrender territory that Russia now occupies.
Orban, who has maintained friendly ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, has been critical of EU aid for Ukraine and has obstructed the bloc’s sanctions regime against Moscow.
Preparations reportedly are under way for Orban to take a second crack at a peace mission in December to bookend Hungary’s rotating EU presidency after his first attempt in July when Budapest’s tenure started.
In a move criticized by several EU leaders, Orban traveled to Moscow to meet Putin in July after a trip to Kyiv with a mystery ceasefire proposal for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He then traveled to China and finally the United States to meet Trump, who was then on the presidential campaign trail.
Details of a potential peace mission in December are not clear, but sources suggested to RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service that it may involve delivering Trump’s messages to Zelenskyy, Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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