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Qatar will provide natural gas supplies to Syria with the aim of generating 400 megawatts of electricity a day, in a measure to help address the war-battered countrys severe electricity shortages, Syrian state-run news agency SANA reported Friday. Syrias interim Minister of Electricity Omar Shaqrouq said the Qatari supplies are expected to increase the daily state-provided electricity supply from two to four hours per day. Under the deal, Qatar will send two million cubic meters of natural gas a day to the Deir Ali power station, south of Damascus, via a pipeline passing through Jordan. Qatars state-run news agency said that the initiative was part of an agreement between the Qatar Fund for Development and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of Jordan in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program and aims to address the countrys severe shortage in electricity production and enhance its infrastructure. Syrias economy and infrastructure, including electricity production, has been devastated by nearly 14 years of civil war and crushing Western sanctions imposed on the government of former President Bashar Assad. Those who can afford it rely on solar power and private generators to make up for the meager state power supply, while others remain most of the day without power. Since Assad was ousted in a lightning rebel offensive in December, the countrys new rulers have struggled to consolidate control over territory that was divided into de facto ministates during the war and to begin the process of reconstruction. The United Nations in 2017 estimated that it would cost at least $250 billion to rebuild Syria, while experts say that number could reach at least $400 billion. The United States remains circumspect about the interim government and current President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of the Islamist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Washington designates HTS as a terrorist organization and has been reluctant to lift sanctions. In January, however, the U.S. eased some restrictions, issuing a six-month general license that authorizes certain transactions with the Syrian government, including some energy sales and incidental transactions.
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E-Commerce
We all know influencing can pay wellbut just how well? Philadelphia-based influencer Brandon Edelman, known online as @bran_flakezz, recently went viral on TikTok after revealing he made $768,000 last year, primarily from brand partnerships and creator funds. After taxes and expenses, he pocketed net earnings of just over $300,000. Known for his self-described “feral party content,” Edelman discussed his TikTok career on Your Rich BFF, a finance podcast hosted by Vivian Tu. “So $768,000 is the top number, 20 percent of that goes to management, so were down to, like, what $550k? From $550k, $200,000 of that goes to taxes, Edelman said. Just the way it goes. Now were down to $330k. After the $330k, you have your expenses. I have a team now, so its like, lawyer, accountant, therapist . . . its insane. After doing the math, the 28-year-old revealed he wound up pocketing, probably about $300,000still a far cry from his previous $40,000 salary working in the fashion industry. I grew up, literally, dirt poor, so this is insane, he told Tu. My parents made enough money to put food on the table, but they didn’t have savings. We lived paycheck to paycheck. I knew when I grew up, I wanted to be more financially secure. (Fast Company has reached out to Edelman for comment.) Edelmans transparency has encouraged a wave of salary disclosures across social media. Still, Edelman is the exceptionnot the rule. In 2023, 48% of creator-earners made $15,000 or less, according to a 2024 report by the Wall Street Journal, pointing to figures from NeoReach, an influencer marketing agency. Just 13% made upwards of $100,000. Theres also the racial pay gap to account for. Influencers like @aliyahsinterlude and @claaaarke joined the conversation on TikTok, addressing pay disparities and the different expectations put upon creators of color in the industry. A 2024 report from SevenSix Agency, a British influencer marketing and talent management agency, revealed stark pay disparities based on ethnicity, with white influencers earning up to 50% more than their BAME counterparts. For example, when it comes to Instagram Reels, white influencers earn an average of 1,637.62 ($2,100.92) per post, while Black influencers make 1,080.41 ($1,386.07). South Asian influencers average 1,135.00 ($1,456.10), Southeast Asian influencers 700.63 ($898.85), and East Asian influencers 1,009.55 ($1,295.16). Edelman acknowledged this pay disparity in a follow-up video on his TikTok page. This is why salary transparency is important, he explained. In every industry, in every walk of life. We don’t know what we don’t know. For us to be able to have open conversations about what we are making gives us the edge to then negotiate what we are actually worth.
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E-Commerce
Life these days is expensive. The lingering effects of the pandemic, Russias invasion of Ukraine, higher fuel and energy prices, and extreme weather shocks throttling the supply chain have conspired to make many everyday necessities much less affordable. Rising food costs in particular have become a source of financial stress for millions of U.S. households. Though overall inflation has cooled from a record peak in 2022, food prices increased nearly a quarter over the past four years and are expected to continue to climb. So far this year, Americans have faced a nationwide bird flu outbreak, propelling the cost of eggs to record levels, while rising temperatures and erratic rainfall across Western Africa are escalating chocolate prices to new highs. Years of drought in the U.S. have also contributed to historically low levels of cattle inventories, hiking up beef prices. The result is skyrocketing supermarket bills, tighter household budgets, and dwindling access to food. President Donald Trumps latest trade decisions arent likely to help the situation. Amid a flood of announcements about federal funding freezes, food program terminations, and mass government layoffs, the president has been issuing on-again, off-again sanctions aimed at the United Statess biggest trading partners. In the span of a single week, he enacted blanket tariffs against goods from Mexico, Canada, and China, exempted some products under the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, and then doubled tariffs on China before threatening a new set of taxes on Canadian products. On Tuesday, he ordered his administration to double duties on Canadian steel and aluminum imports, which he subsequently walked back to 25% before those snapped into effect Wednesday morning, prompting immediate retaliation levies from Canada and the European Union. The pendulum-like nature of Trumps trade policies, economists told Grist, almost certainly means higher grocery store prices. It has already spooked financial markets and prompted major retailers like Target CEO Brian Cornell to warn that if some of the promised tariffs go into effect, customers could see sticker shock for fresh produce within days. When it comes to extreme weather shocks, which are destroying our supply chains, climate change is increasing prices and creating food inflation, said Seungki Lee, an agricultural economist at Ohio State University. If policymakers dont fully account for that by adjusting trade policies, he said, then to some degree, we will see the compounding impacts of tariffs and climate change-related shocks on the supply chain. Tariffs, or taxes charged on goods imported from other countries, are typically a negotiation tactic waged by governments in a game of international trade, with consumers and producers caught in the crosshairs. When goods enter a country, tariffs are calculated as a percentage of their value and paid by the importer. The importer may then choose to pass on the cost to consumers, which, in the case of something like fresh fruit grown in Mexico, often ends up being everyday people. Given the extent of the United Statess dependence on Canada, Mexico, and China for agricultural trade, farmers, analysts, business leaders, policymakers, and the general public have all raised concerns over the effect of tariffs on grocery store prices and the possibility of trade wars slowing economic growth. During the first Trump term, levies on China triggered retaliatory tariffs that decimated agricultural exports and commodity prices, costing the U.S. agricultural industry more than $27 billion, which the government then had to cover with subsidy payouts. To date, the U.S. has not fully recovered its loss in market share of soybean exports to China, its biggest agricultural export market. An analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit organization, found that the 2018 trade war with China was largely passed through as increases in U.S. prices, reducing consumers income by about $1.4 billion per month. Rural agricultural sectors in the Midwest and the mountain west were hit harder by Chinas retaliatory tariffs than most others, the analysis found. This time around, Trump appears to have doubled down on the tactic, though the demands and messaging of his tariff policy have remained wildly unpredictable, with economists dubbing the president an agent of chaos and confusion. All told, China, Canada, and Mexico supplied roughly 40% of the goods the U.S. imported last year. In 2023, Mexico alone was the source of about two-thirds of vegetables imported to the U.S., nearly half fruit and nut imports, and about 90% of avocados consumed nationwide. Without factoring in any retaliatory tariffs, estimates suggest that the levies imposed by Trump last week could amount to an average tax increase of anywhere between $830 and $1,072 a year per U.S. household. Im a little nervous about the increase in tension, said Lee. It could lead to an immediate shock in supermarket prices. Canada and China have since responded with tariffs of their own. Canadas tariffs imposed last week amounted to nearly $21 billion on U.S. goods, including orange juice, peanut butter, and coffee. China imposed 15% levies on wheat, corn, and chicken produced by U.S. farmers, in addition to 10% tariffs on products including soybeans, pork, beef, and fruit that went into effect on Monday. Meanwhile, Mexico planned to announce retaiatory tariffs but instead celebrated Trumps decision to postpone. On Wednesday, in response to Trumps steel and aluminum tariff hike, Canadian officials announced a second $20.7 billion wave of duties and the European Union declared it would begin retaliatory trade action next month for a range of U.S. industrial and farm goods that includes sugar, beef, eggs, poultry, peanut butter, and bourbon. With Trumps planned tariffs, Americans can expect to see fresh produce shipped from Mexicosuch as tomatoes, strawberries, avocados, limes, mangos, and papayas, as well as types of tequila and beerbecome more expensive. Other agricultural products sourced from Canada, including fertilizer, chocolate, canola oil, maple syrup, and pork are also likely to see cost hikes. New duties on potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer, and steel used in agricultural machinery coming from Canada could also indirectly elevate food prices. Many of these products, such as avocados, vegetable oils, cocoa, and mangoes, are already seeing surging price tags in part because of rising temperatures. Though theres no shortage of questions surrounding Trumps tariff policy right now, James Sayre, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis, said that even this current state of international trade uncertainty will lead to a higher grocery cost burden for consumers. All of this uncertainty is really bad for businesses hoping to import, or establish new supply chains abroad, or for any large-scale investment, said Sayre. Just this degree of uncertainty will increase prices for consumers and reduce consumer choice at the supermarket . . . even more than tariffs themselves. All the while, climate change continues to fuel food inflation, leaving American consumers to foot the bill of a warming world and the cascading effects of an administration seemingly set on upending global trade relations. It is actually a little bit hard to anticipate what we can expect from the current administration when we are seeing the burden of food inflation by tariffs or trade, and also at the same time, we have climate-related shocks on the supply chain, said Lee. Hopefully we will not see an unexpected compounding effect by these two very different animals. Ayurella Horn-Muller, Grist This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here.
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E-Commerce
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