Scott Walker made multiple calls when the Democratic National Committee decided on Milwaukee. He also called his sons. The former Wisconsin governor, himself a onetime presidential contender, suggested the boys check their lease. They live downtown. Maybe they – and their neighbors too -- could Airbnb their apartments. Make some extra cash next July.
“I’m thrilled from an economic standpoint,” Walker told RealClearPolitics of the Democratic Party’s decision to bring its national convention to the Badger State. “The money being spent in Milwaukee won’t be red money or blue money. It will be green money. That’s a good thing.”
Every flack and hack, politico and politician who spoke to RCP about the decision said something similar. Eminently practical, these midwestern Republicans are bright-eyed about the pluses and the minuses of Wisconsin as a battleground in 2020. They are excited about the economic stimulus. They are also preparing for the political fight of their lives.
“Oh, absolutely,” Walker said when asked if Democrats could win Wisconsin on their way back to the White House. “We have been a blue state for years. We had a temporary reprieve from that in recent years.”
It is easy to forget that after the outsized success of Wisconsin Republicans on the national stage in the last decade. Paul Ryan (Janesville) rose from relative obscurity to become speaker of House. Die-hard party activist Reince Priebus (Green Bay) became the GOP’s national chairman and later White House chief of staff. Walker (Delavan) was the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election. The three helped reshape conservative politics and the country.
Then the cheesehead juggernaut crumbled.
Priebus resigned. Ryan retired. And around 1:30 in the morning after last Election Day, when Walker narrowly lost the governor’s mansion to Democrat Tony Evers, Sen. Ron Johnson had a rude realization. He was “the last man standing.”
As the only Republican statewide office-holder left in Wisconsin, Johnson became the de facto head of the party. He began trying to rebuild the GOP political machine, first figuring out what worked well and what had gone wrong. His assessment? He thinks Democrats can “absolutely” win back Wisconsin in 2020. He fears they may have a 100,000 to 200,000 structural vote advantage. And he expects Democrats will make his state “Ground Zero.”
“For the GOP to win,” Johnson told RCP, “when Democrats are all fired up, we have to be firing on all cylinders. We need to be just about perfect.” Near-perfection is necessary after 2016 when Donald Trump pulled off a historically unlikely upset in Wisconsin, something no other Republican has achieved since Ronald Reagan. Democrats’ turnout was down. Trump’s opponent did not bother to visit the state during the general election campaign. Trump won by roughly 23,000 votes, less than a percentage point. Among other things, he got lucky.
“Whoever the Democrats nominate certainly isn’t going to make the same mistake as Hillary Clinton did, abandoning Wisconsin,” a Trump campaign official told RCP. “The problem is they aren't going to have the early advantages of time, resources and money. The Democratic nominee this time isn’t going to be able to truly begin organizing in Wisconsin until July or August of 2020.”
Making the most of that head start, Republicans are gearing up their operation for a landscape that Trump completely tore to pieces in the last presidential campaign. His machine sputtered in the suburban counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington as those conservative hotspots cooled on the so-called chaos candidate. It more than roared back in the northern and western parts of the state as Trump flipped 23 counties from Democrat to Republican.
While he lost support among proverbial soccer moms in the wealthiest, most educated, and more Republican counties, he crushed it with rural voters. This was not an anomaly, said nonpartisan pollster Charles Franklin of Marquette University Law School. It is the new Republican normal.
Blue-collar voters, who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 before turning out for Trump four years later, mostly backed Walker in 2018. The two-term governor would also slip in the suburbs, gain traction beyond of the cities, and win more votes than ever, 1.29 million. Yet Walker still could not overcome a nationwide Democratic suburban surge.
“That shows this geographic pattern where areas that swung toward Trump seemed to move more in Walker’s direction than they had four years earlier,” Franklin told RCP. Taken together, the gubernatorial and the presidential contests provide a rough rubric for the next presidential race.
“The Democrats’ formula for winning Wisconsin is relatively straightforward,” longtime Wisconsin talk show host Charlie Sykes wrote in the Atlantic. “They need to run up big margins in Milwaukee County and Dane County (home to Madison)” -- where the University of Wisconsin flagship campus is located -- “while holding down GOP margins in the Milwaukee suburbs and in the state’s rural areas.”
For Republicans, it is the converse. Revive the suburbs, build strength in the rural north and west, and cut losses in Milwaukee and Dane County. According to Johnson, “If we could somehow get those counties to secede into Illinois, we’d be in pretty good shape as Republicans.”
That will not happen, of course, so the senator says that on his watch, the GOP “isn’t going to ignore those [urban] areas.” Instead Republicans will try to thread the rural-urban needle, a job that will likely fall, in large part, to two congressmen.
Sean Duffy represents the rural 7th Congressional District in Trump-friendly north and northwest Wisconsin. Jim Sensenbrenner represents the 5th District in the Trump-skeptical Milwaukee suburbs. Both expressed confidence the president can win re-election, though neither is under any illusion it will be easy. Duffy told RCP that the bipartisan “State of the Union argument is the best argument” for Trump. Sensenbrenner seemed to agree, and asserted that the president should confine his tweeting to policy issues rather than slights. “We can win on the issues,” he said. “I’m not so sure we win on the personalities.”
Borrowing a phrase from the Bill Clinton era, Sensenbrenner continued: “It still is the economy, stupid. As long as that is going well and he is able to take credit for it, I think things will go very well.”
The economy, Duffy believes, will provide the crossover appeal between the blue-collar voters and the soccer moms that Trump needs to be successful. “Suburban moms care about their kids, and with this economy we have kids moving out of parents’ basements and getting jobs” he said. “Whether they are buying houses or renting their own apartments, they are out of the home.”
The Trump campaign echoed that economic sentiment and offered a preview of its Wisconsin strategy in a statement to RCP. “President Trump remembered the forgotten men and women in Wisconsin who were entirely ignored by the Democrat Party,” said Trump national press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
“He reversed President Obama's failed manufacturing jobs record, adding 473,000 manufacturing jobs in just two years compared to the 210,000 lost in Obama's two terms,” she added. “President Trump replaced the job-killing NAFTA with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a better deal that protects manufacturing jobs and secures greater access to Canada's dairy market for farmers in Wisconsin and across the nation. He continues to fight for farmers to gain access to new markets across the globe.”
It is an understandable argument for Republicans to make in a state with an unemployment rate below 3 percent. It is not so different from the pitch
Scott Walker hoped would carry him to a third term. The difference Republicans are counting on this time: a leftward lurch in the opposition party.
“I think if the president is a little more moderated in his tone, that’s helpful,” Duffy said after emphasizing the humming economy. “On the flip side of that coin,” he continued, “I think the president is going to punch really hard at the extremism coming from the left.”
Yet Wisconsin’s progressive roots run deep. The Republican Party was formed there, in the town of Rippon in the mid-19th century – as a progressive party opposed to slavery. Later, Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette, a Wisconsin governor and senator who decided that the GOP had drifted from its liberal traditions, helped formed the Progressive Party. Wisconsin voted for Franklin Roosevelt the first three times he ran for president before becoming something of a bellwether state in the mid-20th century.
But in the run-up to the 2016 race, the Democratic nominee had carried Wisconsin in seven consecutive presidential elections. And even in the cliffhanger last time, progressives could hold their heads high: Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, had defeated Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary. And Milwaukee has made three different socialists mayor.
All the same, Republicans argue that the current crop of candidates is too extreme — too far left, too anti-industry, too anti-agriculture — for the state. More than one expressed the hope that the Democrats will let Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic socialist who co-authored the Green New Deal, speak during the 2020 convention.
“You've got candidates talking about getting rid of cows,” Walker said in reference to the Ocasio-Cortez climate change legislation, which much of the 2020 crowd has already endorsed.
“That's kind of funny anywhere, but in Wisconsin messing with cows is not funny business,” he noted. “We’ve got an $80 billion agriculture industry and about half of that is dairy.”
This, then, is the Republican strategy in Wisconsin. Plug the economy. Paint the opposition as extreme. Hope, as Walker does, that after ignoring the state in 2016, Democrats’ bringing the convention to Milwaukee in 2020 will amount to “the ultimate overplay.” Bank on “radicalism coming to our backyard,” as Duffy does, energizing the GOP base.
Control of the White House, Republicans admit, could hinge on Trump hanging on in the state. “As Wisconsin went in 2016,” Johnson said, “so went the nation.”
Newly released video shows the moment two children were rescued at a gas station by police from a carjacking suspect in Oklahoma last month.
The Tulsa Police Department said in a Facebook post the incident happened on Jan. 11, when officers received a call about a stolen vehicle that was believed to have two children inside.
A woman later told police her two children, ages four and five, were in the car when she was inside the store and that she did not see who took the car.
Officers later found a vehicle matching the description, and confirmed it was stolen by the tag number, police said.
When the suspect pulled over into a gas station, officers moved in and initiated a traffic stop. As officers arrested the suspect the children can be seen on bodycamera video being pulled from the vehicle.
The suspect, Jarrod Gilliam, was booked into jail on two counts of kidnapping and larceny of a motor vehicle after former felony convictions, and larceny from a motor vehicle.
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“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett receiving major support from Fox over his alleged “assault” is a stark contrast to ABC’s treatment of Roseanne Barr over a series of tweets.
Smollett received the endorsement despite police reports claiming he orchestrated being the victim of a racially and homophobically-charged assaulted by Trump supporters.
“[Smollett] remains a core player on this very successful series and we continue to stand behind him,” said a joint statement from 20th Century Fox Television and Fox Entertainment.
The endorsement from the major network and studio for potentially a Class 4 felony is a stark contrast to ABC’s treatment of Roseanne Barr over a series of tweets.
Barr’s commercially successful titular sitcom was canceled almost immediately after multiple tweets targeted globalist kingpin George Soros and former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett.
Moreover, the mainstream media’s official reasoning for Barr’s termination was her tweet against Jarrett.
“Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes had a baby = vj,” said Barr’s May 2018 tweet.
Barr later claimed she had no idea Jarrett was black.
But Barr’s comments on Soros being a Nazi and his ties to ABC seems to have really triggered ABC dropping the cash cow show and actor.
Soros is tied to ABC as well as other major outlets, according to the Media Research Center.
“[Soros] has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC,” reports MRC.org.
If Barr’s tweets set the bar for termination, then doesn’t Smollett’s situation warrant the same treatment?
Logo of Calvin Klein watches is seen at the Baselworld watch and jewellery fair in Basel, Switzerland, March 26, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
March 28, 2019
(Reuters) – Apparel maker PVH Corp said on Thursday it would exit the high-end collection of Calvin Klein and shut the label’s flagship store in New York’s Madison Avenue.
The company also said it was in talks with North America apparel partner G-III Apparel Group LTD to take over the brand’s women’s jeans unit.
The company’s sales in recent quarters have been hit by the fashion missteps at the high-end Calvin Klein 205W39NYC line of clothing.
“We believe this was the right decision for the long-term health of the brand as the existing high-end business was not resonating with our core consumer,” Chief Executive Officer Emanuel said on a post earnings call.
PVH shares rose nearly 15 percent in morning trading after reporting better-than-expected results.
(Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal and Uday Sampath Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – A woman will be criminally charged for falsely reporting that an Egyptian man tried to kidnap her daughter from a West Virginia shopping mall, a police detective told The Associated Press on Friday.
Barboursville Police Detective Greg Lucas said they are going to charge Santana Renee Adams with falsely reporting an emergency incident.
The charge would be the latest turn in a sensational tale of a mother who used a gun to thwart an abduction that quickly unraveled amid inconsistencies in her story.
Authorities on Thursday announced they were dropping charges against the man, Mohamed Fathy Hussein Zayan, a 54-year-old engineer from Alexandria, Egypt, who was in the area for work. He cried as he greeted family members upon his release from jail.
Adams initially told police Zayan grabbed her 5-year-old daughter girl by the hair inside a clothing store and tried to pull her away but stopped when she produced a gun, authorities said. A criminal complaint went into further detail, describing a frightening scene where a Middle Eastern man dragged the girl by the hair as she dropped to the floor.
But the story started falling apart when no witnesses could be found and mall surveillance video didn't match up with the woman's original statement.
"There's quite a bit that doesn't line up," Lucas told the AP.
She later told investigators she may have overreacted and misinterpreted the man's intentions. Zayan doesn't speak English and police say he may have simply been patting the girl on the head.
"Unfortunately, as false accusations are becoming more prevalent in today's social media driven society, we are losing our grasp on 'presumed innocent until proven guilty,' and Mr. Zayan has been tried around the world by the court of public opinion," Zayan's public defender attorney, Michelle Protzman, said in a statement Thursday to The Associated Press.
Adams couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Jeanine Cammarata, 37, was last seen about 9 p.m. Saturday at her boyfriend's house, police said. (NYPD)
A New York City teacher helped set up her estranged husband with his new girlfriend about two years before the duo allegedly turned on the mother of three, murdering her and setting her body ablaze before dumping the charred remains at a storage facility, friends said.
The remains of Jeanine Cammarata were discovered at a facility in Staten Island’s Arden Heights neighborhood on Thursday -- five days after the 37-year-old was last seen alive. Cammarata’s husband, Michael Cammarata, 42, and his girlfriend, Kangi-Ayisha Egea, 41, were charged Friday with murder, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence.
Michael Cammarata, far right, and his girlfriend Ayisha Egea, center, were charged with second-degree murder, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence according to police. (AP)
About two years before her death, Jeanine Cammarata introduced her husband to Egea, a mother of one of her students, in hopes of removing herself from her abusive marriage, the teacher’s longtime friend Jessica Pobega told the New York Daily News.
“Jeanine actually set up Mike and Ayisha because she wanted Mike to be occupied and leave her alone,” Pobega told the newspaper. “She [Jeanine Cammarata] actually introduced them in the hopes that Mike would stop stalking her.”
Michael Cammarata and Egea hit it off and, eventually, the new girlfriend moved into the couple’s home, Pobega said. Jose Perez, Jeanine Cammarata’s landlord, said he offered the mother of three a vacant apartment in his Staten Island building to help her out of the situation.
“She told me that Ayisha was babysitting their kids and then she found out that they were having a relationship," Perez told the New York Daily News. “She was trying to get rid of Mike. She thought if he kept busy with her [Egea], he wouldn’t be stalking her. But he continued stalking her.”
Michael Cammarata, far right, and his girlfriend Ayisha Egea, center, were arraigned together in Staten Island Criminal Court in St. George on Friday. (AP)
Perez said Cammarata suspected “something was up” about a week before her death, prompting her to update her will so her three children would be safe.
“She wanted her sister to keep the kids and she wanted to make sure her kids got everything,” Perez said. “...[Michael Cammarata] took her life, he took those kids’ mother away. [The children] deserve everything.”
Family and friends became worried about Cammarata after she failed to show up to work on Tuesday at Public School 29 and at her second job at a Dollar Store, police said. Cammarata was last seen at work on Friday and was scheduled to be off Monday for a custody hearing in court with her estranged husband.
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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