The woman, who has not been identified, was arrested in early hours of Thursday local time in the southeastern city of Ulsan, a South Korean police official told CNN. The police official
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The olive trees at the Green Gold Olive Oil Company’s Finca Fuensantilla in Beas del Segura, Spain, have suffered record temperatures and a lack of rainfall this year. (Alfredo Cáliz/Panos/Redux for CNN)
Manuel Heredia Halcón’s grandparents planted the olive trees in his 1,200-acre grove in Andalusia, Spain, almost a century ago.
The trees are renowned for their ability to grow in even the driest of soils, but this year, scorching temperatures and a severe lack of rainfall have taken a toll.
“We are very concerned,” Halcón told CNN Business. “You cannot replace the olive tree with any other tree or product,” he added.
Like many of Europe’s farmers, Halcón has battled extreme drought this summer — he estimates that the olive oil harvest from his farm, Cortijo de Suerte Alta, will fall by about 40% this year because of the extraordinary weather conditions.
In July, temperatures broke records to top 40 degrees Celsius (104.5 degrees Fahrenheit) across parts of France, Spain, Italy and Portugal. By early August, sweltering heat and a lack of rainfall had pushed almost two-thirds of land in the European Union into drought conditions, according to the European Drought Observatory.
Olive oil producers have been hit hard. Kyle Holland, a pricing analyst for oilseeds and grains at Mintec, a commodities data company, expects a “dramatic reduction” of between 33% and 38% in Spain’s olive oil harvest that begins in October.
Spain is the world’s biggest producer of olive oil, accounting for more than two-fifths of global supply last year, according to the International Olive Council. Greece, Italy and Portugal are also major producers.
Consumers are already paying more for olive oil. Retail prices across the European Union shot up 14% in the year to July. But prices are set to rise further in the coming months, producers and buyers told CNN Business.
“The drought is too significant. It’s simply too dry. Some trees are producing very little fruit, some trees are producing no fruit at all. This only happens when soil moisture levels are critically low,” Holland told CNN Business.
It is a warning shot for an industry reliant on a predictable life cycle for olive trees. Growers are accustomed to large swings in the harvest over a 24-month period, but climate change is already disrupting that centuries-old rhythm.
Fallen olives are seen in dry soil during the drought at Villa Filippo Berio in Vecchiano, Italy. (Noemi Cassanelli/CNN)
Paco Bujalance, Cortijo de Suerte Alta’s mill master, shows olives at the company’s grove in Albendín, Spain. (Alfredo Cáliz/Panos/Redux for CNN)
‘Impossible to have fruit’
Producing olive oil is all about timing. The trees begin to bud in March before the flowers open in May. The olives grow over the summer months before harvest in the fall.
Andalusia, Spain’s southern-most region, supplies about one third of the world’s olive oil. It is used to temperatures regularly hitting 40 degrees Celsius, but not in May, when the flowers start to bloom.
“In that moment maybe we lost 15% to 20% of the harvest,” he said.
Halcón expects to sell this year’s oil at €4 ($3.97) per kilo to his buyers, including importers in Asia and America. That’s an increase of 30% over the last year.
The heatwave coincided with a third consecutive year of little rainfall. Water levels in the Guadalquivir river, which helps irrigate the surrounding olive groves, are critically low. Halcón said he could only give his trees about half of the usual amount of water this growing season.
“Next year will be even worse because dams will be completely empty,” he said.
Juan Jímenez, CEO of the Green Gold Olive Oil Company, a family business located about 160 kilometers (100 miles) to the northeast faces similar problems.
“[The issue] is not only about how hot it was, but when it was hot,” he told CNN Business.
“In the moment when the flower of the olive comes to life, and [if it is] hot, the flower itself, it burns, so it’s impossible to have a fruit,” he added.
Jímenez’s olive trees cover 740 acres of mountainous and flat terrain. May’s soaring temperatures will likely reduce his crop by between 35% and 60% of a normal year’s harvest if rain doesn’t fall within the next few weeks.
If so, that would be the “worst harvest in the last 10 years,” Jímenez said.
Elsewhere in southern Europe, drought conditions have also caused huge headaches. Filippo Berio sells oil in 72 countries, and sources most of it from suppliers in Italy, Spain and Greece.
It also produces its own oil from 25,000 trees in Italy. Walter Zanre, managing director of Filippo Berio’s UK division, described the Tuscan grove as “tinder-dry” this summer. In late July, a wildfire broke out very close to the company’s only factory — where all of its oils are blended, refined and bottled — engulfing it in smoke and ash.
“We’ve lived through drought situations, but I think in living memory this is the worst that anyone’s ever seen,” Zanre told CNN Business.
Price shock
Just how bad the 2022 harvest will be remains to be seen. The United States Department of Agriculture last month forecast a drop of 14% in global production, while Mintec expects it could be similar to the 30%-plus loss projected for Spain.
Benchmark producer prices for Spanish extra virgin olive oil from Andalusia hit their highest level in over five years at the end of August. And, in the past two years, they have soared by almost 80% — from €2.19 ($2.18) per kilogram in August 2020 to €3.93 ($3.90) this month.
Prices spiked in early 2021 as buyers worried poor weather would crimp supply, Mintec data shows. They shot up again in late February after Russia invaded Ukraine, when a feared drop in sunflower oil exports from the region led buyers to stock up on olive oil as a substitute.
Since June, signs that the next harvest will be poor have boosted prices again.
So far, lengthy contracts between suppliers and retailers have shielded consumers from some of the worst price increases. But shoppers can expect a significant hike in the next four months, when retailers renew their supply agreements, Holland said.
“Retailers will try not to pass on as much of these costs as they can,” he said, adding that producer prices could increase by as much as 15% above August’s already inflated levels. Even a 10% rise would put producer prices at their highest ever level, according to Mintec data.
Yacine Amor, director at the Artisan Olive Oil Company, a UK wholesaler, told CNN Business that he expects the shelf price for a half-liter bottle (18 fluid ounces) of his olive oil to rise by as much as 20% over the next few months. Amor’s customers are mostly supermarkets, delis and restaurants.
A tractor drives through an olive grove at Villa Filippo Berio in Italy. (Noemi Cassanelli/CNN)
Inside the olive oil mill room at Villa Filippo Berio. (Noemi Cassanelli/CNN)
The price of a bottle has already shot up in some major markets. In Europe, the world’s biggest consumer of olive oil, the biggest rises were recorded in the Netherlands and Greece, where retail prices jumped by more than a quarter in July compared to the same time the year before.
The same sized bottle of Filippo Berio extra virgin olive oil in the United Kingdom — the brand’s biggest market outside of the United States — now costs a record £5 ($5.76) in some stores, up from £3.75 ($4.32) at the start of the year. That’s a third more expensive.
Zanre’s biggest concern is how shoppers’ behavior may change as prices inevitably rise.
“Without question we are facing one of the most difficult periods ever experienced in the olive oil industry,” he said.
Cost are rising everywhere
Olive oil producers have weathered plenty of storms in the past, but this year, a combination of extreme weather, supply chain bottlenecks and soaring energy costs — stoked by the war in Ukraine — have caused an unprecedented squeeze.
Halcón said the cost of electricity needed to pump water to his trees has doubled, while his glass bottles are 40% more expensive.
For Zanre, too, “anything you touch in [the] supply chain” has increased in price. He believes that some costs, such as shipping fees, are unlikely to ever come down.
“The pallet the goods move on have gone up, the bottles have gone up, the labels have gone up, the caps have gone up, the energy to run the factory has gone up. Everything. And then, on top of that, we have the price of [the] oil going up,” he said.
But crisis breeds opportunity, Halcón said. Rising prices for seed oils, including sunflower oil, has made olive oil more competitive.
“If one year ago, olive oil was double [the] price, or even three times more expensive than some [alternatives], today we are maybe only 20%, 30% more expensive than seed oils,” he said.
Jímenez is also optimistic. Olive oil is still only a tiny fraction of the global edible oils market, he said, a share he’s convinced can only grow.
“But we need to be prepared to understand that maybe this [drought] is going to happen, not once in 20 years, but one in ten, or one in five, or one in four. And we need to be prepared to do that if we want to survive in a competitive market,” he said.
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The final 2022 primary elections, conducted Tuesday, saw more clear victories for the “Make America Great Again” wing of the GOP.
The more moderate Republican running for US Senate in New Hampshire, state Senate President Chuck Morse, conceded defeat Wednesday to the 2020 election-denying retired US Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc.
In fact, it was a sweep of House and Senate races in New Hampshire for the more Trump-aligned candidates.
The Senate race was yet another case of the candidate preferred by the Republican establishment in Washington, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, falling to a candidate who pushes conspiracy theories and was aligned with former President Donald Trump. It wasn’t enough that a super PAC aligned with McConnell had poured more than $4 million into the race to pump up Morse.
In this particular case, it should also be noted that Democrats helped Bolduc along by spending millions to run ads attacking Morse and tying him to McConnell.
Democrats’ cynical strategy of helping the Trumpier GOP candidates in multiple states and races is a dangerous gamble that could either help them keep control of the Senate or could put more election deniers in office, depending on what happens in November. It also undercuts their message of trying to protect democracy.
As CNN’s political team reported in takeaways from the New Hampshire primary, “Bolduc joins a list of candidates national Republicans worry won’t be able to appeal to the broader November electorate.” Read more takeaways.
Bolduc is the kind of candidate who has talked about abolishing the FBI and repealing the 17th Amendment, which requires states to directly elect their senators.
While Trump didn’t technically endorse Bolduc and he ran unsuccessful primary campaigns in the past, he joins Georgia’s Herschel Walker, Arizona’s Blake Masters, Pennsylvania’s Dr. Mehmet Oz and Ohio’s J.D. Vance in the camp of Trump-endorsed, first-time candidates in danger of losing seats Republican leaders must win to get control of the Senate.
There was more evidence of MAGA-fication in a primary for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, which pitted two former Trump administration aides against each other.
The one who expressed confidence in elections lost.
From CNN’s report:
Where (Matt) Mowers had “confidence in New Hampshire elections,” (Karoline) Leavitt said she believed “the 2020 election was undoubtedly stolen from President Trump.” Where Mowers suggested hearings to determine whether President Joe Biden should be impeached, Leavitt unequivocally said the President should be impeached. And where Mowers said he “supports science” when asked about the newly rolled out coronavirus vaccine, Leavitt said it was “none of your business.”
CNN’s Daniel Dale writes Wednesday that more than half of Republican Senate candidates have “rejected, cast doubt upon or tried to overturn the 2020 election results.”
Nineteen of the GOP primary winners have questioned the 2020 results, according to Dale’s list, which includes five incumbent senators and 11 other candidates who could feasibly win in November.
There’s an even longer list of candidates for governor – at least 22 – and secretary of state – at least 11 – who have espoused similar theories and will be in a position to influence the way elections are carried out in their states if they win in November.
On the other hand, most of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump have been purged by GOP primary voters or had announced plans for retirement.
Most notably, Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who has helped lead the House investigation into the January 6, 2021, insurrection, lost her primary in August.
Just two of the 10 Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump, Reps. David Valadao of California and Dan Newhouse of Washington state, will be on the ballot in November. So will Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the only Republican senator who voted for impeachment and is up for reelection this year.
CNN’s Adam Wollner looked at how these few Republicans have survived and notes Murkowski is something of a political anomaly. She won reelection in 2010 with a write-in campaign after losing that GOP primary, which is the political equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
But more importantly, he identified the one thing that ties the three surviving impeachment Republicans together:
“Murkowski, Newhouse and Valadao did not face a traditional Republican primary,” Wollner wrote in August. “Instead, they participated in contests where all candidates, regardless of party, appeared on the same ballot. In California and Washington, the top two finishers move on to the general election, while the top four advance in Alaska.” Read more of Wollner’s analysis.
The Brookings Institution did a more holistic review of primary candidates from both parties and found that Republicans have embraced Trump and his brand of conservatism far more completely than Democrats have embraced their most progressive ideas.
Trump endorsed less than 13% of GOP candidates, but more than 96% of those he endorsed won their primaries.
Most Republican candidates – nearly 60% in the Brookings review – put no mention of Trump or his MAGA and America First mantras on their website. But only 30% of those candidates who didn’t push Trumpism won.
Brookings compared those figures with the percentage of Democrats who embraced the left wing of the party. Most – 72% of Democratic candidates – had no endorsement from left-wing groups and no mention of left-wing issues – anything from Medicare for all to defund the police – on their website. Nearly half of these won their primaries.
A small minority of Democrats, just about 6%, were endorsed by extremely progressive leaders like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or groups that share his priorities. Half of them won their primaries.
Brookings’ conclusion: “On the Republican side, candidates have embraced Trump – even when he has not embraced them – and done very well in the primaries because of it. On the Democratic side, the impact of Bernie Sanders’ revolution has been smaller, more muted, and less successful in primaries.”
CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to reflect which candidates former President Donald Trump has endorsed.
The US is moving $3.5 billion to the new “Afghan Fund,” but officials said they won’t release the money imminently to an institution in Afghanistan because there is no trusted institution to guarantee the funds will benefit the Afghan people, the officials said.
Instead, it will be administered by an outside body, independent of the Taliban and the country’s central bank.
“The Fund may use assets to provide Afghan banking sector liquidity, keep Afghanistan current on its debt service obligations, support exchange rate stability, transfer funds, as appropriate to public Afghan financial institutions, or any other use for the benefit of the Afghan people that is approved by the Fund’s Board of Trustees,” said a State Department official.
Down the line, transferring these funds to the Afghan central bank could happen but it would depend on two key factors: responsible management of the bank and assurances that the funds will not be diverted to terrorists or criminals, the officials added.
“We do not have that confidence today,” said a senior US official. At minimum the Afghan central bank will need to “demonstrate its independence from political influence and interference.” It will also need to demonstrate it has “instituted adequate anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism controls” and “complete a third party needs assessment and onboard a reputable third party monitoring,” the official explained.
The US has been clear in telling the central bank — known as the Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) — what steps it would need to take and reiterated those steps in a letter this week from the United States deputy secretary of the Treasury, which CNN reviewed. The letter cites the need for the DAB to demonstrate independence from Taliban influence and interference, among other expectations.
Earlier this year President Joe Biden signed an executive order allowing for the $7 billion in frozen assets from Afghanistan’s central bank to eventually be distributed inside the country and to potentially fund litigation brought by families of victims of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. The funds were frozen by the US government after the Afghan government collapsed last year and the Taliban took over control of the country.
Afghanistan — now under Taliban control for over a year — is facing a potential economic catastrophe. Lawmakers have pushed the Biden administration to release the funds in order to keep the country running, for necessities such as paying teacher salaries. Last month, the UN said that the humanitarian support being provided to the country is not enough to sustain its economy.
The timing of when the central bank could meet the expectations laid out is hard to estimate, US officials said this week. In recent months US officials have said that recapitalization of the Afghan central bank is not a “near-term option.”
Setting up the new fund will enable the funds to flow quickly, without having to go through the central bank to distribute funds.
“The people of Afghanistan face humanitarian and economic crises born of decades of conflict, severe drought, COVID-19, and endemic corruption,” said Wendy Sherman, US deputy secretary of state. “Today, the United States and its partners take an important, concrete step forward in ensuring that additional resources can be brought to bear to reduce suffering and improve economic stability for the people of Afghanistan while continuing to hold the Taliban accountable.”
The fund’s board will consist of a US and Swiss government official, as well as two Afghan economic experts. The Taliban is not part of this financing mechanism, the officials emphasized.
Still, the US remains in contact with the Taliban for “pragmatic engagement” in support of the Afghan people and to advance America’s interests, one of the senior US officials said.
By setting up this mechanism the US is making it clear that they intend to get the frozen funds to the Afghan people, though they do not intend to recognize the Taliban which is currently leading the country.
“I think relief organizations as well as countries that care about Afghans have sought to continue to work with almost 500,000 civil servants that continue to work on behalf of the people that includes teachers and includes health workers includes engineers, and it’ll include depth technocrats as well,” said the senior US official.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect the new fund will distribute frozen money independent of the Taliban and Afghanistan’s central bank.
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Britain’s capital city expects hundreds of thousands of people to visit Queen Elizabeth II as she lies in state in Westminster Hall ahead her funeral on Monday, the mayor of London Sadiq Khan told QT, adding that the situation was “unprecedented.”
The world has not seen a funeral like this,” he said, adding, “She was loved, revered, our monarch for more than 70 years.”
“We expect to see over the course of the next few days hundreds of thousands of people personally pay their respects to her majesty the Queen, but also we expect to see prime ministers, presidents, members of the royal family, and others from across the globe,” he continued.
“The really reassuring thing is our King, King Charles III, had the best possible mentor, and the best possible apprenticeship and that’s why I’m so confident he will be a wonderful king,” he added.
As world leaders and their teams arrive in London for the Queen’s funeral, Khan said the city has never before seen such crowd and this presence.
“In just a couple of days, we will have almost 300 world leaders and their teams and entourages coming to London. I don’t think our city’s ever seen the sort of presence we’re going to see over the next few days,” Khan told Sky News.
The number of mourners far exceeds the scale of other events, such as the London Olympics and other Royal events, he said, suggesting that the crowds for the Queen’s passing are larger than all those events combined.
“If you think about the London marathon, the carnival, previous royal weddings, the Olympics — it’s all that, in one,” Khan said.
“This is a massive operation and we’re working really hard together to make sure that we can do her, we can do King Charles, we can do the Royal Family, our city, our nation, and the Commonwealth, what it deserves,” the London mayor added.
People in a 2.5-mile-long line in London to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II explained why they wanted to visit her coffin in Westminster Hall.
“I just feel like I will regret it if I don’t. And I just felt like I needed to come and say goodbye. That’s just me. And also, when my family has children — my boys have children — I’d like to teach them the history of it all. So, it just needed to be done today,” one woman told QT’s Anna Stewart as she waited in line.
A group told Stewart that they were told the line could last about five hours from where they stood, but the queue is moving.
Prince Pavlos of Greece remembers his late cousin, Queen Elizabeth II
Pavlos, Crown Prince of Greece, told QT that his cousin, Queen Elizabeth II, was “one of the kindest people I knew.”
“She was always smiling … knowledgeable about everything… and had a very good sense of humor,” he said.
He also expressed his love and praise for King Charles III, and he acknowledged the unique position of being an heir.
“What you’ve been waiting for your whole life is also the saddest day of your life,” he said.
King Charles III, according to Pavlos, is “best prepared” to inherit the Crown due to his vast knowledge of his country and the Commonwealth that he has acquired through his charity work under the Prince’s Trust.
Around 100 jobs are now at risk at King Charles III’s former official residence, union says
Around 100 employees at King Charles III’s former official residence, Clarence House, were given notice that they could lose their jobs after he became king, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) said Wednesday.
[The] decision to announce redundancies in the Royal Household during the period of national mourning is nothing short of heartless,” PCS said in a statement published on its website, calling for an “immediate halt to the redundancy process.”
Some employees have worked there for decades, PCS noted.
This is a “significant majority of the household and many of these staff will be the same people who have so diligently supported the new king during this period of mourning, working extremely hard over recent days only to be given redundancy notices as thanks,” PCS added.
“While some changes across the households were to be expected, as roles across the royal family change, the scale and speed at which this has been announced is callous in the extreme. Least of all because we do not know what staffing the incoming Prince of Wales and his family might need,” PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said.
Clarence House’s press office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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