Seeking a valid US passport for that 2023 trip? Buckle up, wishful traveler, for a very different journey before you venture to the airport. A much-feared backup of US passport applications has hit a wall of government bureaucracy as worldwide post-pandemic travel rebounds – with too few humans to handle the load. The result is a maddening pre-travel purgatory defined, at best, by costly uncertainty. With family dreams and big money on the line, passport seekers describe a slow-motion agony of waiting, worrying, holding the line, refreshing the screen, complaining to Congress, paying extra fees and following incorrect directions. Some applicants are buying additional plane tickets in order to rush to collect passports being processed by government offices in other cities, in order to get their hands on it in time to make the flights they booked in the first place. So grim is the outlook that US officials aren’t even denying the problem or predicting when it will ease. They’re blaming the epic wait times on lingering pandemic-related staffing shortages and a pause of online processing this year. That’s left the passport agency flooded with a record-busting 500,000 applications a week. The deluge is on-track to top last year’s 22 million passports issued, the state department said. “With Covid, the bottom basically dropped out of the system,” secretary of state Antony Blinken told a House subcommittee on 23 March. When demand for travel all but disappeared during the pandemic, he said, the government let contractors go and reassigned staff that had been dedicated to handling passports. Meanwhile, after avoiding travel during the pandemic, many forget where they stashed their passport or when it expires, until it’s too late for planned upcoming travel. “To get a passport appointment these days is like winning the lottery lol,” wrote one hopeful traveler on Twitter.<br/>
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Italy's Industry Minister Adolfo Urso said on Monday that airlines benefiting from the country's tourist boom have hiked their prices too much, and demanded an explanation. Urso instructed the government-appointed inflation watchdog to summon the main airlines operating on Italian routes for meetings on Tuesday because current fares "are not justified even by inflation." The meetings will be held remotely, one-to-one, with Ryanair, Wizz Air, easyJet, AeroItalia, ITA Airways and NEOS, Urso's spokesman said, confirming the minister's comments which were made to Italian news agency AdnKronos. In recent months Urso has convened similar talks over the price of pasta and baby products. It remains to be seen whether the panel of public bodies and consumer associations which was set up to monitor unusual price movements can affect producers' and retailers' actions, but Urso said it would exert its "moral suasion". Italy's tourist association Assoturismo forecasts arrivals this summer to top their bumper pre-COVID levels of 2019, and airlines have raised prices in response to the demand. In December, Italy's antitrust regulator opened an inquiry into possible price-fixing for flights in and out of the island of Sicily by airlines including Ryanair, Wizz Air and easyJet. On Monday the civil aviation authority Enac said it had held a meeting with airlines to make sure they were prepared to ensure "safety and efficiency" ahead of the increase in traffic expected over the peak summer months of July and August.<br/>
The UK emissions trading scheme (ETS) will be reformed next year to tighten limits on carbon dioxide pollution and expanded in 2026 to include new sectors, the relevant authority said on Monday. Introduced in 2021 for an initial phase lasting until 2030, it replaced the UK's participation in the European Union's ETS. Designed to incentivise industry to cut emissions, the scheme forces participants from energy intensive industries, the power generation sector and aviation to buy permits to release CO2. Building on the first years of trading and a consultation held last year, the UK Emissions Trading System Authority has decided that industries covered by the scheme will need to bring down emissions at a faster rate to reach net zero goals. This will lower the so called net-zero cap for Phase 1 to the top of the consulted range of 887-936m allowances, the authority said. The current cap is 1,365m, according to the consultation papers. At the same time, the authorities will release an addition 53.5m allowances from reserves between 2024 and 2027 to ensure that there is no sudden drop in allowance supply between 2023 and 2024, it said. The level of freely allocated allowances which industry receives to shield it from international competition in markets with no or lower carbon pricing has also been guaranteed until 2026, the authority said.<br/>
Russian airlines’ combined passenger traffic grew 21% year on year from January to May, the TASS news agency reported on Monday, citing Alexander Neradko, the head of Federal Air Transport Agency Rosaviatsiya. Neradko was quoted as saying Russian air traffic in May almost caught up with levels seen two years ago, before Russia’s economy, including the airline sector, was hit by Western sanctions due to the Ukrainian conflict. <br/>
Israel’s anti-government protest movement launched a series of major disruptions on Monday, including an attempt to sow chaos at the international airport, over a renewed official attempt to weaken the judiciary. The standoff coincides with an unusually fierce Israeli military operation in the northern West Bank that killed nine Palestinians and injured several dozen, some critically. Such operations depend partly on military reservists, some of whom are stepping up their role in the protests. The police arrested four people at Ben Gurion Airport after a “violent disturbance” that saw officers attacked, according to a statement around 6 p.m. local time. Since January, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing religious coalition announced a comprehensive plan to overhaul the courts, protests have occurred at least weekly, accusing the government of seeking authoritarian powers. But demonstrations slowed after Netanyahu put the plan on hold to allow for negotiations. The talks recently broke down and the government introduced one key element into the legislative process — removing from judges the power to void appointments or decisions as “unreasonable.” The combination of the failed talks and the revived legislation has lit up the protest movement once again. The last “day of disruption” by demonstrators was on May 4. Now such actions are under way again. On Monday, hundreds of protesters briefly blocked a gate to the port of Haifa. More disruptions could be ahead.<br/>
US property catastrophe reinsurance rates rose by as much as 50% at a key July 1 renewal date, broker Gallagher Re said in a report on Monday, with states such as California and Florida increasingly hit by wildfires and hurricanes. Reinsurers insure insurance companies, and have been raising rates in recent years because of steepening losses, which industry players put down in part to the impact of climate change. Higher reinsurance rates can affect the premiums which insurers charge to their customers. US reinsurance rates for policies which previously faced claims for natural catastrophes rose 30-50%, Gallagher Re said. Reinsurance rates for similar policies in Florida rose 30-40%, the broker added. Some insurance firms have pulled out because of the risk of heavy losses. State Farm said in May it would stop selling new insurance policies to homeowners in California. Reinsurance rates for some types of aviation war policies rose by up to 100% on the July 1 renewal date, Gallagher Re said. Industry players point to ongoing liability claims following two Boeing 737 MAX crashes, legal battles over planes stuck in Russia and the destruction this year of aircraft at Khartoum airport as contributing to higher aviation war rates.<br/>
People's behaviour when they evacuate a plane is to be studied by experts. Cranfield University, in Bedfordshire, and the University of Greenwich, London, are looking for hundreds of volunteers to take part in a trial. By studying what people do, the findings will look to improve safety measures, organisers said. Four hundred recruits will be filmed as they leave a stationary Boeing 737 at Cranfield's Digital Aviation Research and Technology Centre. "Researchers will explore the choices made by passengers during evacuation scenarios and investigate the influence of the cabin design upon participants' decisions," organisers said. Zuzana Chin, from Cranfield University, said: "Understanding human behaviour during aircraft evacuation scenarios is crucial for enhancing safety measures." Volunteers need to register for the sessions between 15 and 20 August. They will board the demonstration plane and experience an evacuation scenario, but emergency slides will not be used. They will be filmed as they are told to leave their seats and make their way to an exit door. Following the evacuation, they will answer a number of questions including why they chose a certain seat and why they went to a particular exit. The study will analyse choices made by participants aged 18 to 65.<br/>