Social Democratic Party leader Antti Rinne listens during an interview in Helsinki, Finland April 9, 2019. Picture taken April 9, 2019. REUTERS/Attila Cser
April 11, 2019
By Anne Kauranen
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland’s Social Democrats, who may be returned to power for the first time in 20 years on Sunday, plan to raise taxes to fund the country’s generous welfare system as it struggles to cope with a rapidly aging population.
Antti Rinne’s Social Democrats have led in the polls for almost a year, with many Finns concerned over the future of public services and welfare due partly to the cost of caring for its growing ranks of pensioners.
“We need to strengthen our welfare society – and that needs money,” Rinne, a former union strong man, told Reuters in an interview ahead of parliamentary elections on Sunday.
He said raising taxes would also help combat inequality in Finnish society.
The left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SDP) topped the most recent poll with 19.0 percent support, Finland’s public broadcaster Yle reported on Thursday, although it would need to build a coalition to form a stable government.
“We need to spread our tax base and we need to strengthen it. That’s a big policy change here in Finland if we do that,” Rinne said.
The current center-right government’s policies have hurt the income of less privileged groups such as pensioners, families with children, students and the unemployed, Rinne said.
Since the last parliamentary elections, in 2015, centrist Prime Minister Juha Sipila has made preventing Finland from taking on more debt one of the government’s main goals together with pulling the country out of the three-year recession that eventually ended in late 2015.
Last year, Sipila’s government managed to cut Finland’s outstanding debt for the first time in a decade.
But the tight finances led to austerity measures and spending cuts such as reductions in unemployment benefits, pension freezes and cuts to public sector holiday pay, which made his government deeply unpopular.
“That’s not a fair way to do it,” Rinne said, adding he would adopt a different strategy to balance the public finances.
“We can collect a little bit over 1.5 billion euros more in taxes, but not via income taxes,” he said.
He suggested raising some consumption taxes as well as the capital gains tax, which now stands at 30 percent and at 34 percent for gains above 30,000 euros ($34,000).
Rinne’s talk of raising taxes is unlikely to drive off his supporters, many of whom value highly Finland’s huge welfare state.
A poll commissioned by the tax authority in 2017 found 79 percent of Finns were happy with their taxes, up 10 percentage points from a similar poll four years earlier.
One of Rinne’s election promises has been to increase all state pensions of less than 1,400 euros per month by 100 euros, a reform worth 700 million euros that would help “more than 55,000 pensioners escape poverty”, he said.
But taxpayers’ solvency might have its limits in the coming years, not only due to the increasing costs of caring for a rapidly aging population, but also because Finland will have to spend an estimated 7-10 billion euros on renewing its equally aging fighter jet fleet.
To Rinne’s disappointment, his party’s performance in the polls has declined in the weeks ahead of the election day, while the nationalist Finns Party has made significant gains, rising to second place, ahead of the SDP’s traditional opponent, the center-right National Coalition in the latest Yle poll.
If the SDP wins on Sunday, Rinne will have to team up with at least one of his main rivals such as the National Coalition’s chair and finance minister Petteri Orpo – who has called Rinne’s economic policies “irresponsible” – or with Sipila’s Centre Party, to be able to form a majority government.
Rinne has ruled out forming a government with the nationalists led by Jussi Halla-aho, an anti-immigration hardliner, who was fined by the Supreme Court in 2012 for blog comments linking Islam to paedophilia and Somalis to theft.
“My values are not similar to Jussi Halla-aho’s values, and it seems very difficult (for us) to be in the same government,” Rinne said.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen; Additional reporting by Attila Cser; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
Canadian activist Faith Goldy was banned from Facebook and Instagram Monday in the latest example of censorship directed toward conservatives.
In a Twitter post, Goldy said she was booted from the two platforms, writing, “Somehow Canada’s state media had enough advance warning to get a piece out before even I found out!”
“Our enemies are weak & terrified. They forget most revolutions were waged before social media!” she added.
In an interview with Big League Politics, the former Toronto, Canada mayoral candidate responded to the censorship, saying, “They consider me to be a ‘Dangerous Individual.’”
A Facebook spokesperson touching on the matter stated, “Individuals and organizations who spread hate, attack or call for the exclusion of others on the basis of who they are have no place on Facebook.”
The move comes after Facebook pledged to ban “white nationalism” and white separatism from the platform nearly two weeks ago.
The social media platform’s representatives are also set to testify on Capitol Hill Tuesday about how to address “white nationalism” and extremism on the site following the New Zealand terror attack that streamed live on Facebook.
Last week, Huffington Post bragged about sending a Faith Goldy video to a Facebook spokesperson in an attempt to get her banned, but the spokesperson said it did not violate the site’s rules.
Goldy was also banned from using the popular Airbnb app last week after the company said she violated their terms of service despite failing to explain how.
In a response video posted to Twitter, Goldy suggested she’d fight harder than ever before and plugged her website faithgoldy.com as a place to find her content amid massive censorship.
Faith Goldy joins a long list of conservatives who have been targeted by social media giants, including Alex Jones who has been kicked off every major platform.
Goldy has been a guest on The Alex Jones show several times; watch the two in a recent interview below:
Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin appeared in federal court Wednesday alongside other wealthy parents to face charges they rigged test scores or paid bribes to cheat the admissions process at prestigious universities.
The actresses and Loughlin's fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, said little during the brief hearing in a packed Boston courtroom and were not asked to enter a plea. They are all free on bail.
Their appearance comes three weeks after they were among dozens of prominent parents and college sports coaches arrested in the sweeping admissions scandal that has sparked outrage and inflamed concerns that the admissions process favors the wealthy.
The scam involved bogus entrance exam scores and doctored photos to make applicants look like star athletes to get them into sought-after schools such as Yale, Georgetown and the University of Southern California.
Authorities stumbled upon the wide-ranging scam thanks to a tip from a Los Angeles executive who was ensnared in a stock manipulation probe. The investigation, which authorities are called Operation Varsity Blues, led to the biggest college admissions scheme ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department, officials say.
Loughlin, who is best known for playing Aunt Becky on the sitcom "Full House," and Giannulli are accused of paying $500,000 to get their daughters admitted as recruits to the USC crew team, even though neither is a rower.
Authorities say the couple helped create fake athletic profiles for their daughters by having them pose for photos on rowing machines. At one point, a guidance counselor at the girls' high school became concerned their applications were fraudulent, but was ultimately convinced otherwise, court records show.
The Hallmark Channel — where Loughlin starred in popular holiday movies and the series "When Calls the Heart" — cut ties with Loughlin a day after her arrest.
Huffman is charged with paying the admissions consultant at the center of the scheme $15,000 to have a proctor cheat on her daughter's SAT exam. Authorities say the "Desperate Housewives" star also discussed going through with the same plan for her younger daughter, but she ultimately decided not to.
Authorities say the consultant, Rick Singer, met with Huffman and her husband, actor William H. Macy, at their Los Angeles home and explained to them that he "controlled" a testing center and could have somebody secretly change their daughter's answers, authorities say. Huffman and Macy agreed to the plan, Singer told investigators.
Macy was not charged; authorities have not said why.
Huffman, Loughlin and Giannulli have not publicly addressed the allegations.
They and the other parents are charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud, which carries up to 20 years in behind bars. But first-time offenders typically get only a fraction of that, and experts said they believe some parents may avoid prison time if they quickly agree to plead guilty.
Other parents charged in the scheme include the former co-chairman of an international law firm and the former head of a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
Gordon Caplan of Greenwich, Connecticut, who was co-chairman at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, is accused of paying $75,000 to get a test supervisor to correct the answers on his daughter's ACT exam after she took it. Caplan's firm said after his arrest that he has been placed on a leave of absence.
Manuel Henriquez, who was CEO and chairman of Hercules Capital in Palo Alto, California, and his wife, Elizabeth Henriquez, participated in the cheating scheme and bribed the tennis coach at Georgetown to get their daughter admitted as a recruit, authorities say.
The tennis coach, Gordon Ernst, has pleaded not guilty to accepting $2.7 million in bribes to designate at least 12 applicants as recruits to Georgetown. Former UCLA men's soccer coach Jorge Salcedo, Wake Forest University women's volleyball coach William Ferguson and former USC water polo coach Jovan Vavic have also pleaded not guilty in the scheme.
Three people have pleaded guilty in the scheme, including Singer, who began cooperating last year with investigators. The former head women's soccer coach at Yale, Rudy Meredith, has also pleaded guilty to accepting bribes.
Meredith inadvertently helped investigators uncover the sprawling scheme by dropping Singer's name during a recorded conversation he had last year with a father who he had solicited a $450,000 bribe from. The father was under investigation in Boston for securities fraud when he told authorities that Meredith had promised to get his daughter into the school in exchange for cash.
In news that will send most Democrats shrieking over the edge, a new Hill-HarrisX poll has found that a majority of American voters are open to reelecting President Trump for a second term.
A majority of 54 percent said they would consider voting for Trump in the poll which was conducted BEFORE the findings of the Mueller report were made public.
The survey noted that a whopping 95 percent those who voted for Trump in 2016 are geared up to reelect him in 2020.
On the flip side, a minority of 46 percent of registered voters said they won’t consider voting for Trump at all.
But interestingly, 24 percent of those who voted for Hillary Clinton are now open to voting for Trump.
Hillary is that much of a failure that a quarter of her supporters are open to voting for Trump.
A further 35 percent of Americans who did not vote in 2016 said they could vote for Trump in 2020.
Most who were surveyed cited the economy as the primary reason to reelect Trump.
“Clearly the economy is always the issue in every presidential election,” Republican pollster Ed Goeas told The Hill.
“Because that’s what it always is. Jobs, the economy, taxes. Basically, do people feel their lives are doing better economically than when that president went in?” Goeas added.
Immigration was another reason cited by voters, with 18 percent of respondents saying it was their primary reason to vote for a second Trump term.
The poll also found that twenty percent of respondents who said they are willing to vote for Trump noted that all the current Democratic presidential candidates are too left wing for their liking.
It doesn’t take a Math professor to see these numbers are leading to ‘keeping America great.’
Conservative commentator Mark Steyn appeared on Fox News' “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to discuss the latest accusations of improper physical contact by the former VP and said other Democratic presidential candidates are trying to do what Trump did in 2016 with former Florida Gov.Jeb Bush: take out the competition.
“And the Democrats are completely morally indifferent on this unless it serves their ends," Steyn told Carlson. "And what they want to do is take this guy out. The other candidates want to take him out the way Jeb Bush was taken out by Trump two to four years ago."
“But they haven't got a Trump to take out Jeb Bush with a single well-placed adjectival insult, ‘low energy Jeb.’ So you use what you have -- and that's why all these Democratic candidates have basically decided this … is the bullet that takes out Joe Biden.”
Biden responded Sunday to the allegations made against him.
"In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort," Biden's statement said. He added it “was never my intention” to act inappropriately but did not apologize.
Protestors hold Algerian flags as they attend a demonstration against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on the Place de la Republique, in Paris, France, March 10, 2019. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer
March 11, 2019
By Lamine Chikhi
ALGIERS (Reuters) – More than 1,000 judges said they would refuse to oversee Algeria’s election if President Abdelaziz Bouteflika contests it, a challenge that drew a sharp retort from the justice minister on Monday who said the judiciary should be neutral.
In a statement, the judges added their voice to anti-Bouteflika protests now in their third week by announcing the formation of a new association “to restore the gift of justice”. Bouteflika returned to Algeria on Sunday after undergoing medical treatment in Switzerland.
“We announce our intention to abstain from … supervising the election process against the will of the people, which is the only source of power,” the judges said on Sunday.
Judges should join an effort to “declare that we are the people”, the judges said in a statement.
Algerian Justice Minister Tayeb Louh, a member of Bouteflika’s inner circle, said judges should remain neutral.
“The independence and integrity of the judge must be consistent whatever the reasons,” Ennahar TV quoted him as saying.
The 82-year-old Bouteflika faces the toughest fight of his 20-year-old rule, following a tenure in which he became the north African country’s most powerful president in 30 years.
In another setback for the veteran president, who plans to stand in elections in April, clerics told the minister of religious affairs to stop pressuring them to issue pro-government sermons.
“Leave us to do our job, do not interfere,” cleric Imam Djamel Ghoul, leader of an independent group of clerics, said in remarks to reporters.
Algerians from all social classes have rejected his plan to secure a fifth term in April, a move protesters feel would perpetuate a stale political system dominated by veterans of an independence war against France that ended in 1962.
“Bouteflika is back, we delivered a message, we need a response, and we need a response now,” pharmacist Mouloud Mohamed, 29, told Reuters.
The secretive military-based establishment known to Algerians as “le pouvoir” (the powers-that-be) appears to have stood aside while the demonstrations have taken place.
In Algiers, tens of unionists staged a protest rally outside the headquarters of the main union, UGTA, calling on its leader Abdelmadjid Sidi Said, a Bouteflika ally, to resign.
NO CLEAR REPLACEMENT
The veteran head of state has rarely been seen in public since a stroke in 2013. Last April, he appeared in Algiers in a wheelchair.
Young Algerians are desperate for jobs and angry about unemployment and corruption, and complain that their leaders still dwell on the victory over France instead of improving living standards for the future.
In the clearest indication yet that the generals sympathize with protesters, the chief of staff said the military and the people had a united vision of the future, state TV reported. Lieutenant General Gaed Salah did not mention the unrest.
His ruling FLN party urged all sides to work together to end the crisis and promote national reconciliation, Ennahar TV said. But some of its members have quit and supported the demonstrations.
Even if Bouteflika is forced from office, there is no clear replacement, raising the strong possibility that the ruling elite, dominated by veterans of the war of independence against France and their allies, will stay in place.
For years, rumors have swirled about potential successors, but no one credible has emerged who has the backing of the army and the elite and is not at least 70.
The protests come four years after Bouteflika consolidated his position by dismissing military intelligence chief Mohamed Mediene, a rival once seen as Algeria’s “Kingmaker”, a move many expected would allow the president to step aside for an ally.
Bouteflika’s dismissal of the general was the culmination of a struggle to impose his authority on military intelligence, a leading player in the civil war of the 1990s, and make the presidency the true center of national power.
(Corrects to minister of religious affairs, from minister of justice, para 8.)
(Reporting by Lamine Chikhi, Additional reporting by Hamid Ould Ahmed in Aigiers and Tarek Amara in Tunis, Writing by Michael Georgy, Editing by William Maclean)
Members of The Cranberries, bassist Mike Hogan, drummer Fergal Lawler and guitarist Noel Hogan speak to Reuters during an interview in London, Britain, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Gerhard Mey
April 26, 2019
By Hanna Rantala
LONDON (Reuters) – Irish rockers The Cranberries are saying goodbye with their final album released on Friday, a poignant tribute to lead singer Dolores O’Riordan who died last year.
“In the End” is the eighth studio album from the band that rose to fame in the early 1990s with hits likes “Zombie” and “Linger”, and includes the final recordings by O’Riordan, who drowned in a London hotel bath in January 2018 due to alcohol intoxication.
Work on the album began during a 2017 tour and by that winter, O’Riordan and guitarist Neil Hogan had penned and demoed 11 tracks.
With O’Riordan’s vocals recorded, Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawler completed the album in tribute to her.
“When we realized how strong the songs were, that was the deciding factor really… There was no point… trying to ruin the legacy of the band,” Noel Hogan said in an interview.
“It was obvious that Dolores wanted this album done because when you hear the album, you hear the songs and how strong they are, and she was very, very excited to get in and record this.”
The Cranberries formed in Limerick in 1989 with another singer. O’Riordan replaced him a year later and the group went on to become Ireland’s best-selling rock band after U2, selling more than 40 million records.
O’Riordan, known for her strong distinctive voice singing about relationships or political violence, was 46 when she died.
“She was actually in quite a good place mentally. She was feeling quite content and strong and looking forward to a new phase of her life,” Lawler said.
“A lot of the lyrics in this album are about things ending… people might read into it differently but it was a phase of her personal life that she was talking about.”
The group previously announced their intention to split after the release of “In The End”.
“We are absolutely gutted we can’t play (the songs) live because that’s something that’s been a massive part of this band from day one,” Noel Hogan said.
“A few people have said to us about maybe even doing a one off where you have different vocalists… as kind of guests of ours. A year ago that’s definitely something we weren’t going to entertain but I don’t know, I think it’s something we need to go away and take time off for the summer and have a think about.”
Critics have generally given positive reviews of the album; NME described it as “(seeing) the band’s career go full-circle” while the Irish Times called it “an unexpected late career high and a remarkable swan song for O’Riordan”.
Their early songs still play on the radio. This week, “Dreams” was performed at the funeral of journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot dead in Londonderry last week as she watched Irish nationalist youths attack police following a raid.
“We wrote them as kids, as a hobby and 30 years later they are on radio and on TV, like all the time… That’s far more than any of us ever thought we would have,” Noel Hogan said.
“That would make Dolores really happy because she was very precious about those songs. Her babies, she called them and to have that hopefully long after we’re gone… that’s all any band can wish for.”
(Reporting by Hanna Rantala; additoinal reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Susan Fenton)
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren participates in the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston, Texas, U.S. April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Loren Elliott
April 26, 2019
By Joshua Schneyer and M.B. Pell
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Senator Elizabeth Warren will introduce a bill Friday that offers new protections for U.S. military families facing unsafe housing, following a series of Reuters reports revealing squalid conditions in privately managed base homes.
The Reuters reports and later Congressional hearings detailed widespread hazards including lead paint exposure, vermin infestations, collapsing ceilings, mold and maintenance lapses in privatized base housing communities that serve some 700,000 U.S. military family members.
(View Warren’s military housing bill here. https://tmsnrt.rs/2Dy5aht)
(Read Reuters’ Ambushed at Home series on military housing here. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/usa-military)
The Massachusetts Democrat’s bill would mandate both regular and unannounced spot inspections of base homes by certified, independent inspectors, holding landlords accountable for quickly fixing hazards. The military’s privatization program for years allowed real estate firms to operate base housing with scant oversight, Reuters found, leaving some tenants in unsafe homes with little recourse against landlords.
The bill would also require the Department of Defense and its private housing operators to publish reports annually detailing housing conditions, tenant complaints, maintenance response times and the financial incentives companies receive at each base. The provisions aim to enhance transparency of housing deals whose finances and operations the military had allowed to remain largely confidential under a privatization program since the late 1990s.
The measure would also require private landlords to cover moving costs for at-risk families, and healthcare costs for people with medical conditions resulting from unsafe base housing, ensuring they receive continuing coverage even after they leave the homes or the military.
“This bill will eliminate the kind of corner-cutting and neglect the Defense Department should never have let these private housing partners get away with in the first place,” Warren said in a statement Friday.
The proposed legislation comes after February Senate hearings where Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 U.S. presidential election, slammed private real estate firms for endangering service families, and sought answers about why military branches weren’t providing more oversight.
Her legislation would direct the Defense Department to allow local housing code enforcers onto federal bases, following concerns they were sometimes denied access. Warren’s office said a companion bill in the House of Representatives would be introduced by Rep. Deb Haaland, Democrat of New Mexico.
In response to the housing crisis, military branches are developing a tenant bill of rights and hiring hundreds of new housing staff. The branches recently dispatched commanders to survey base housing worldwide for safety hazards, resulting in thousands of work orders and hundreds of tenants being moved. The Defense Department has pledged to renegotiate its 50-year contracts with private real estate firms.
Congress has been quick to take its own measures. Earlier legislation proposed by senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California, along with Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, would compel base commanders to withhold rent payments and incentive fees from the private ventures if they allow home hazards to persist.
FILE PHOTO: Offices of Deloitte are seen in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar
(Reuters) – Deloitte quit as Ferrexpo’s auditor on Friday, knocking its shares by more than 20 percent, days after saying it was unable to conclude whether the iron ore miner’s CEO controlled a charity being investigated over its use of company donations.
Blooming Land, which coordinates Ferrexpo’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, came under scrutiny after auditors found holes in the charity’s statements.
Ferrexpo on Tuesday said findings of an ongoing independent investigation launched in February indicated some Blooming Land funds could have been “misappropriated”. It did not provide any details or publish its findings.
Shares in Ferrexpo, the third largest exporter of pellets to the global steel industry, were 23.4 percent lower at 206.1 pence at 1022 GMT following news of Deloitte’s resignation.
“Ferrexpo’s shares are deeply discounted vs peers … following the resignation of Deloitte, we expect downside risks to dominate Ferrexpo’s shares near term.” JP Morgan analyst Dominic O’Kane said in a note on Friday.
Swiss-headquartered Ferrexpo did not provide a reason for the resignation of Deloitte, which declined to comment, while Blooming Land did not respond to a request for comment.
Funding for Blooming Land’s CSR activities is provided by one of Ferrexpo’s units in Ukraine and Khimreaktiv LLC, an entity ultimately controlled by Ferrexpo’s CEO and majority owner Kostyantin Zhevago, Ferrexpo said on Tuesday.
Ferrexpo’s board has found that Zhevago did not have significant influence or control over the charity, but Deloitte said it was unable reach a conclusion on this.
Reuters was not immediately able to contact Zhevago.
In a qualified opinion, a statement addressing an incomplete audit, Deloitte said it had been unable to conclude whether $33.5 million of CSR donations to Blooming Land between 2017 and 2018 was used for “legitimate business payments for charitable purposes”.
Deloitte said on Tuesday that total CSR payments made to Blooming Land by Ferrexpo since 2013 total about $110 million.
Ferrexpo, whose major mines are in Ukraine, has said that the investigation was ongoing and new evidence pointed to potential discrepancies.
Zhevago, 45, who ranked 1,511 on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires for 2019 with a net worth of $1.4 billion, owns the FC Vorskla soccer club and has been a member of Ukraine’s parliament since 1998.
(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar in Bengaluru and additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev; editing by Gopakumar Warrier, Bernard Orr)
Children walk past a damaged building in the aftermath of the Cyclone Kenneth in Pemba, Mozambique April 26, 2019 in this still image obtained from social media. SolidarMed via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES
April 26, 2019
By Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer
JOHANNESBURG/LUANDA (Reuters) – Cyclone Kenneth killed at least one person and left a trail of destruction in northern Mozambique, destroying houses, ripping up trees and knocking out power, authorities said on Friday.
The cyclone brought storm surges and wind gusts of up to 280 km per hour (174 mph) when it made landfall on Thursday evening, after killing three people in the island nation of Comoros.
It was the most powerful storm on record to hit Mozambique’s northern coast and came just six weeks after Cyclone Idai battered the impoverished nation, causing devastating floods and killing more than 1,000 people across a swathe of southern Africa.
The World Food Programme warned that Kenneth could dump as much as 600 millimeters of rain on the region over the next 10 days – twice that brought by Cyclone Idai.
One woman in the port town of Pemba died after being hit by a falling tree, the Emergency Operations Committee for Cabo Delgado (COE) said in a statement, while another person was injured.
In rural areas outside Pemba, many homes are made of mud. In the main town on the island of Ibo, 90 percent of the houses were destroyed, officials said. Around 15,000 people were out in the open or in “overcrowded” shelters and there was a need for tents, food and water, they said.
There were also reports of a large number of homes and some infrastructure destroyed in Macomia district, a mainland district adjacent to Ibo.
A local group, the Friends of Pemba Association, had earlier reported that they could not reach people in Muidumbe, a district further inland.
Mark Lowcock, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, warned the storm could require another major humanitarian operation in Mozambique.
“Cyclone Kenneth marks the first time two cyclones have made landfall in Mozambique during the same season, further stressing the government’s limited resources,” he said in a statement.
FLOOD WARNINGS
Shaquila Alberto, owner of the beach-front Messano Flower Lodge in Macomia, said there were many fallen trees there, and in rural areas people’s homes had been damaged. Some areas of nearby Pemba had no power.
“Even my workers, they said the roof and all the things fell down,” she said by phone.
Further south, in Pemba, Elton Ernesto, a receptionist at Raphael’s Hotel, said there were fallen trees but not too much damage. The hotel had power and water, he said, while phones rang in the background. “The rain has stopped,” he added.
However Michael Charles, an official for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said heavy rains over the next few days were likely to bring a “second wave of destruction” in the form of flooding.
“The houses are not all solid, and the topography is very sandy,” Charles said.
In the days after Cyclone Idai, heavy inland rains prompted rivers to burst their banks, submerging entire villages, cutting areas off from aid and ruining crops. There were concerns the same could happen again in northern Mozambique.
Before Kenneth hit, the government and aid workers moved around 30,000 people to safer buildings such as schools, however authorities said that around 680,000 people were in the path of the storm.
(Reporting by Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer; Writing by Emma Rumney; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Alexandra Zavis)
FILE PHOTO: A worker holds a nozzle to pump petrol into a vehicle at a fuel station in Mumbai, India, May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas
April 26, 2019
By Manoj Kumar and Nidhi Verma
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Surging global oil prices will pose a first big challenge to India’s new government, whoever wins an election now under way, especially as domestic prices have been allowed to lag, meaning consumers are in for a painful surge as they catch up.
For oil-import dependent India, higher global prices could lead to a weaker rupee, higher inflation, the ruling out of interest rate cuts and could further weigh on twin current account and budget deficits, economists warned.
But compounding the future pain, state-run fuel suppliers and retailers have held off passing on to consumers the higher prices during a staggered general election, which began on April 11 and ends on May 23, according to sources familiar with the situation.
That delay is expected to be unwound once the election is over. And there could be additional price increases to make up for losses or profits missed during the period of delayed increases, the sources said.
In some major Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, pump prices are adjusted periodically so they move largely in tandem with international crude prices.
That was what was supposed to happen in India but the election means there have been many days when pump prices have been unchanged.
In New Delhi, for example, while crude oil prices have gone up by nearly $9 a barrel, or about 12 percent, in the past six weeks, gasoline prices have only risen by 0.47 rupees a liter, or 0.6 percent.
State-controlled fuel suppliers and retailers declined to say why they had delayed price increases, or discuss whether there has been any pressure from the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A government spokesman declined to comment.
The opposition Congress party said Modi’s government was violating its own policy of daily price revision by advising the state oil companies to hold prices steady.
“The government should cut fuel taxes otherwise consumers will have to pay much higher oil prices once the elections are over,” said Akhilesh Pratap Singh, a senior leader of the Congress party.
Nitin Goyal, treasurer at the All India Petroleum Dealers Association, representing fuel stations in 25 states, said prices were similarly held down for 19 days in the southern state of Karnataka last year, when it held state assembly elections.
Only for them to surge after the vote.
“Consumers should be ready for a rude shock of a massive jump in retail prices, similar to the level we have seen in the Karnataka state election,” Goyal said.
‘CREDIT NEGATIVE’
Sri Paravaikkarasu, director for Asia oil at Singapore-based consultancy FGE, said retail prices of gasoline and gasoil prices would have been up to 6 percent, or about 4 rupee, higher if they had been allowed to rise in line with global prices.
“Indian pump prices have failed to keep up with the recent uptrend in crude prices,” Paravaikkarasu said.
“With the country’s general elections underway, the incumbent government has been keeping pump prices relatively unchanged.”
India had switched to a daily price revision in June 2017 from a revision every two weeks, as the government allowed retailers to set prices.
But the government faced protests last October when retailers raised prices by up to 10 rupees a liter after the crude oil price went above $80 a barrel, forcing it to cut fuel taxes.
Global prices rose to their highest level in 2019 on Thursday, days after the United States announced all Iran sanction waivers would end by May, pressuring importers including India to stop buying Tehran’s oil. [O/R]
Higher oil prices will mean Asia’s third largest economy is likely to see growth of less than 7 percent rate this fiscal year, economists said. Growth slowed to 6.6 percent in the October-December quarter, the slowest in five quarters.
Rating agency CARE has warned that a 10 percent rise in global oil prices could increase demand for dollars, putting pressure on the rupee and widening the current account deficit.
India’s oil import bill rose by nearly one-third in the fiscal year ending March 31 to $140.5 billion, against $108 billion the previous year.
“The increase in international oil prices is a credit negative for the Indian economy,” ICRA, the Indian arm of the Fitch rating agency, said in a note.
“Every $10/ bbl increase in crude oil prices increases the fiscal deficit by about 0.1 percent of GDP.”
Any big price rise would also build a case for the central bank to keep rates steady, or even raise them.
The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee, which cut the benchmark policy repo rate by 25 basis points this month, warned that rising oil and food prices could push up inflation.
Policymakers are worried that a sustained increase in the oil price in the range of $70-75/barrel or higher can move the rupee down by 3-4 percent on an annual basis.
The rupee has depreciated by 1.24 percent against the dollar since a year high in mid-March.
($1 = 70.1800 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Manoj Kumar and Nidhi Verma; Editing by Martin Howell and Rob Birsel)
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