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Straits Times
29-05-2025
- Health
- Straits Times
Air from beehives comforts patients in Turkey
FILE PHOTO: Bees enter a hive owned by beekeeper Huseyin Ceylan, who runs a facility for therapy using air from beehives to aid people recover from their ailments, in Karaburun, located in Turkey's Aegean coastal province of Izmir, Turkey, May 22, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo FILE PHOTO: Hives owned by beekeeper Huseyin Ceylan, who runs a facility for therapy using air from beehives to aid people recover from their ailments, are seen by a olive tree, in Karaburun, located in Turkey's Aegean coastal province of Izmir, Turkey, May 22, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo FILE PHOTO: Beekeeper Huseyin Ceylan, who runs a facility for therapy using air from beehives to aid people recover from their ailments poses in Karaburun, located in Turkey's Aegean coastal province of Izmir, Turkey, May 22, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo FILE PHOTO: Beekeeper Huseyin Ceylan, who runs a facility for therapy using air from beehives to aid people recover from their ailments checks his hives in Karaburun, located in Turkey's Aegean coastal province of Izmir, Turkey, May 22, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo FILE PHOTO: Senay Ilhan and Ulku Ozman breath in air from beehives through ventilators in hopes of recovering from ailments at a facility owned by beekeeper Huseyin Ceylan in Karaburun, located in Turkey's Aegean coastal province of Izmir, Turkey, May 22, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo KARABURUN, Turkey - At his farm tucked away in an idyllic valley near the Aegean Sea, beekeeper Huseyin Ceylan helps people recover from ailments by having them inhale air from hives. Ceylan says people come regularly in late spring to Karaburun, in Turkey's Aegean coastal province of Izmir, mainly to supplement conventional treatment with traditional "apitherapy," a term derived from the Greek for bees. Guests tend to stay several days in cabins in lush greenery, inhaling air from beehives for up to three hours a day, which Ceylan says helps with issues from allergies to migraines. The government does not officially recognise the therapy though it is practiced by many other beekeepers round Turkey as well as in other countries including Germany and Russia. Ceylan, who comes from a family of beekeepers and studied agriculture, started his bee farm in Karaburun 30 years ago. He has lobbied for years for the sector to be accepted, conducting research and presenting findings to officials. "We are not against what we call Western medicine. After all, it is also very important too," he said, adding that his method goes hand-in-hand with conventional treatment. "I have been doing this for fifteen years, trying to bring this into medicine." CHILDHOOD NOSTALGIA Ulku Ozman, 69, decided to try the therapy method after a friend suggested it when several surgeries and frequent use of medicines weakened her immune system. In her nearly week-long visit, Ozman and others enter a cabin where ventilators connected to beehives deliver air. Each session lasts 45 minutes, with participants moving every 15 minutes to breathe from three different beehives, each with a different smell. Guests pay around 5,000 lira ($128) per day for the treatment plus accommodation and food. Seated across from the beehives with ventilators on their faces, the guests take deep breaths. Senay Ilham, 68, has breast cancer that metastasized to her spine but is in remission after receiving conventional treatment. "This smell seems familiar. It's like it is (coming) from my childhood," she said, recalling being stung by bees while playing outside as children with beekeepers working nearby. "(The beehive air) always brings me a breeze from these things. It relaxes me both psychologically and physically." REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
16-05-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
Rubio says NATO members will agree to 5% defense spending over next decade by June summit
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the members of press, following NATO foreign ministers' informal meeting, in Antalya, Turkey May 15, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/Pool Rubio says NATO members will agree to 5% defense spending over next decade by June summit WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that all NATO members will have agreed on a goal of spending the equivalent to 5% of GDP on defense over the next decade by the 2025 NATO Summit in June. He made the comments while appearing on Fox News' "Hannity." U.S. President Donald Trump cut defence funding to NATO during the latter part of his first term in 2017-21, and has frequently complained that the U.S. is paying more than its fair share. "I can tell you that we are headed for a summit in six weeks, in which virtually every member of NATO will be at or above 2% but more importantly, many of them will be over 4% and all will have agreed on the goal of reaching 5% over the next decade," said Rubio. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said this week that Berlin backed a demand by Trump for members of the defence alliance to increase defence spending to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP). Germany in January said it met NATO's target of spending 2% of its GDP on defence in 2024. The 2025 NATO Summit will be held in the Netherlands from June 24-25. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
The Star
24-04-2025
- Politics
- The Star
Istanbul's strong quake triggers nerves and new pledges to prepare
People evacuate to Gezi Park following an earthquake, in Istanbul, Turkey, April 23, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas ISTANBUL (Reuters) - More than a thousand people in Istanbul turned to mosques, schools and other temporary shelters on Thursday after a strong earthquake rattled the Turkish metropolis a day earlier, leaving some 1.5 million buildings at risk, authorities said. The magnitude 6.2 tremor on Wednesday sent citizens dashing from shaking homes, reviving memories of a historic quake that devastated the country's southeast two years ago - and raising anxieties about the city's lack of preparedness. It hit a city that has recently seen mass protests over the arrest of its mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu. Scheduled demonstrations still occur twice weekly, with more spontaneous protests cropping up regularly. There were no deaths from Wednesday's tremor, the biggest in years in Istanbul, which sits just north of a fault line crossing the Marmara Sea. Some 5 million of the city's 16 million residents live in risky homes, data showed in 2023. While the government said preparing the city for a bigger earthquake was urgent, the opposition party - which runs the municipality and has been frustrated by what it calls inaction by the central government - said its urban transformation plan must finally be adopted. Imamoglu and some of the city's other disaster-response officials are in prison pending trial on charges brought last month that were broadly criticised as politicised and anti-democratic. From his cell outside the city, Imamoglu - who is President Tayyip Erdogan's main political rival and leads him in some polls - said on social media it was his "greatest sadness" not to be able to serve residents at this time. Dozens of people were hurt leaping from homes on Wednesday, which was the nationwide Children's Day holiday in Turkey, while concrete chunks from some buildings crashed to the ground. Seven buildings had minor damage as a result, authorities said. "The immediate shelter needs of 101,000 citizens have been effectively and comprehensively met," Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said of people who overnighted in mosques, schools and dormitories. Others slept in tents or vehicles. Murat Kurum, the urbanization minister, said about a third of the 1.5 million buildings deemed at risk "require urgent transformation - and we have no time to lose." The municipal government sought to work with Erdogan's government on infrastructure transformation to prepare for earthquakes, he said. "With a sense of national and international mobilization, our Istanbul Earthquake Council proposal must be put into action." February 2023's 7.8-magnitude earthquake was the deadliest and most destructive in Turkey's modern history, killing more than 55,000 people in the south and in neighbouring Syria, and leaving hundreds of thousands still displaced. The latest tremor also revived memories of a 1999 earthquake that killed 17,000 near Istanbul, Europe's largest city which also spans across the Bosphorus Strait to Asia. (Reporting by Jonathan Spicer, Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
