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Human rights groups highlight rise in Greek minority attacks

A report by human rights groups says the number of violent attacks on minorities in Greece increased in 2018, and the authors are expressing concern that divisive campaign rhetoric ahead of European and national elections this year could lead to a further rise.

The Racist Violence Recording Network, made up of 46 organizations including the Greek branches of the Red Cross and Amnesty International, reported 117 serious incidents last year.

Most of the attacks were carried out against migrants and refugees but also included violence motivated by homophobia, religious hatred, and the skin color of Greek citizens. The report was published Thursday.

The group recorded 102 serious incidents in 2017 and 95 the year before. In the last year of national elections, in 2015, there were 273 attacks.

Source: Fox News World

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Thousands of Sudanese protesters converge on president’s compound: witnesses

Sudanese protesters chant slogans during a protest demanding Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir to step down in Khartoum
Sudanese protesters chant slogans during a protest demanding Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir to step down in Khartoum, Sudan April 6, 2019, in this still image taken from social media video obtained on April 6, 2019. Courtesy of WDMUSA24/via REUTERS

April 6, 2019

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Thousands of Sudanese demonstrators demanding President Omar al-Bashir step down converged on his residence on Saturday in what appeared to be the biggest rally since anti-government protests erupted in December, witnesses said.

Security forces fired teargas, beating and arresting some of the protesters as they tried to stop the crowds marching from at least three directions towards the presidential compound, which also houses the defense ministry and security services’ headquarters.

But thousands of demonstrators, waving Sudanese flags and placards demanding Bashir step down, managed to reach the compound’s gates where government troops stood guard without driving them back.

“There are crowds are as far as the eye can see,” said a Reuters witnesses at the scene, adding that it looked to be the largest single gathering since the protests began on Dec. 19.

Activists called Saturday’s protest to mark the anniversary of mass demonstrations in 1985 that drove the military to topple former strongman, President Jaafar Nimeiri.

Representing the most sustained challenge to Bashir since he took power in a 1989 coup, the wave of protests were triggered by price rises and cash shortages but evolved into demonstrations against his 30-year rule.

(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Mark Potter and Helen Popper)

Source: OANN

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Swiss financial watchdog finds $90 million initial coin offering illegal

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA is seen outside their headquarters in Bern
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA is seen outside their headquarters in Bern, Switzerland April 5, 2016. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich/File Photo

March 27, 2019

By Tom Wilson

LONDON (Reuters) – The Swiss financial watchdog said on Wednesday the firm behind a $90 million initial coin offering (ICO) took money illegally from investors, highlighting a readiness by regulators to apply traditional market rules to cryptocurrency-related fundraising.

Swiss firm Envion AG, which is now in liquidation, accepted more than 90 million Swiss francs ($91 million) from at least 37,000 investors in exchange for bond-like tokens issued without a license, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) said in a statement.

FINMA said the conditions under which the tokens were issued were not equal for all investors; that the prospectuses did not meet minimum requirements; and that Envion did not have an internal audit arm – a legal requirement.

Envion’s former chief executive Matthias Woestmann said in a statement that a FINMA report, which has not been made public, said investigators could not find any misappropriation of funds, and that it was evident there had been no intention to damage investors.

“There was no misappropriation of assets,” he said.

Policymakers around the world have wrestled with how to craft legal frameworks for ICOs and so-called security token offerings (STOs) – where tokens with features akin to traditional securities are sold.

The new forms of fundraising have allowed start-ups founded on cryptocurrency technologies such as blockchain to quickly raise capital by issuing virtual tokens or coins. But the risk of fraud and lack of transparency about who owns cryptocurrencies have made regulators wary.

Some states, like Switzerland, have moved to treat ICOs as securities, applying rules used for traditional capital markets. That means a step up in regulation for many projects, subjecting them to trading laws and detailed disclosure requirements, and offering protection to investors.

Other countries, like China and India, have banned ICOs altogether. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last year deemed that some ICOs could count as securities.

Switzerland has become a global leader in ICOs and STOs. Six of the biggest 15 ICOs and STOs since 2016 have taken place in the country, according to PwC.

Last year, the worldwide number of successful ICOs and STOs more than doubled to over 1,130 from a year earlier, PwC said.

As FINMA investigated Envion, a court in the Zug canton – known as “Crypto Valley” for its concentration of virtual coin-related firms, opened bankruptcy proceedings against the firm over “organizational shortcomings”.

As a result, FINMA said, further measures against the firm were not necessary.

(Reporting by Tom Wilson; Additional reporting by John Revill; Editing by Mark Potter)

Source: OANN

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Brazil’s political heavy hitters weigh in behind pension reform

FILE PHOTO: Brazil's Economy Minister Paulo Guedes gestures during a meeting of the committees of the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship (CCJ) in Brasilia
FILE PHOTO: Brazil's Economy Minister Paulo Guedes gestures during a meeting of the committees of the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship (CCJ) in Brasilia, Brazil April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano Machado/Filer Photo

April 5, 2019

By Eduardo Simões and Jamie McGeever

CAMPOS DO JORDAO, Brazil (Reuters) – The challenge facing Brazilian lawmakers of reforming the country’s social security system to put public finances back on track is huge, but one they are meeting head on, finance minister Paulo Guedes said on Friday.

Presenting an image of unity with some of the key congressional figures whose support he needs to help build the political consensus required to secure approval, Guedes said commitment to pension reform across the spectrum is solid.

Separately, Guedes also said the government aims to raise 80 billion reais ($20.7 bln) from privatizations this year and receive another 120 billion reais in transfers from the state development bank BNDES.

Guedes has cut a divisive figure on the government’s signature economic reform proposal, which aims to save over 1 trillion reais over the next decade, and was embroiled in an acrimonious congressional committee hearing with opposition lawmakers this week.

But alongside Senate President Davi Alcolumbre, lower house speaker Rodrigo Maia and the government’s chief congressional whip, Joice Hasselmann, he insisted that he has the full support of President Jair Bolsonaro and other political leaders.

“My experience with the political class has been the best possible, super-constructive,” Guedes said at an event in Campos do Jordao in the state of Sao Paulo.

Alcolumbre said it is vital that the president lead the push for pension reform, but said he must listen to party leaders’ concerns. Bolsonaro met with five party leaders this week and will have more meetings next week, Joice said.

Increasingly public political back-biting over pension reform sparked a steep fall in Brazilian markets in late March, but they have settled this week on signs that political leaders are trying to come together.

Reaching out to lawmakers, negotiating and looking for consensus suggests Bolsonaro is being forced to resort to the traditional political methods he had condemned during the election campaign.

Guedes on Friday reiterated his view that pension reform will be approved by the lower house before the end of June, while Maia said delay of a few weeks will be immaterial because the economic impact will be felt next year.

A split between Bolsonaro and Guedes over private retirement accounts appeared to emerge, however, after the president told journalists that he could drop the plan if it runs into opposition in Congress, the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported.

Guedes has been a vigorous defender of the idea.

(Reporting by Eduardo Simoes; Writing by Jamie McGeever; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)

Source: OANN

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A Fed pivot, born of volatility, missteps, and new economic reality

FILE PHOTO: A screen displays the headlines that the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates as a trader works at a post on the floor of the NYSE in New York
FILE PHOTO: A screen displays the headlines that the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates as a trader works at a post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., December 19, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

February 22, 2019

By Howard Schneider and Jonathan Spicer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve’s promise in January to be “patient” about further interest rate hikes, putting a three-year-old process of policy tightening on hold, calmed markets after weeks of turmoil that wiped out trillions of dollars of household wealth.

But interviews with more than half a dozen policymakers and others close to the process suggest it also marked a more fundamental shift that could define Chairman Jerome Powell’s tenure as the point where the Fed first fully embraced a world of stubbornly weak inflation, perennially slower growth and permanently lower interest rates.

Along with Powell’s public comments, Fed minutes, and other documents, the picture emerges of a central bank edging towards a period of potentially difficult change as it reviews how to do business in light of that new reality. One question, for example, is whether to make crisis-fighting policies a part of the routine toolkit. Another is whether to try to prepare the public to accept higher inflation from time to time.

Policymakers have debated for years how well traditional central banking fits a world transformed by the global financial crisis a decade ago. But it was a brief Oct. 3 remark by Powell that set off the chain of events which helped settle the matter.

“We’re a long way from neutral now, probably,” Powell said at a Washington think-tank event, referring to a level of interest rates that neither cool or boost the economy.

Though Powell was effectively summarizing what the Fed had just concluded at its Sept. 25-26 policy meeting, when it raised rates amid stronger than expected U.S. growth, his characterization touched a nerve.

Investors dumped stocks and bonds, fearing the Fed aimed to drive rates higher than they felt the economy could withstand.

It was the beginning of weeks of volatility that led the Fed to recalibrate its message, with more than one misstep along the way.

In doing so, the central bank went beyond fine-tuning its language or adjusting to changing conditions. Interviews with officials as well as analysis of Fed minutes and policymakers’ public statements suggest the emergence of a long-elusive consensus that interest rates would likely never return to pre-crisis levels, and that once established relationships, such as inflation rising when unemployment fell, no longer worked.

Concern that years of solid economic growth and falling unemployment would inevitably rekindle inflation or threaten financial stability have been a staple of Fed debates, but had largely disappeared by the Fed’s Dec. 18-19 meeting, according to a review of Fed meeting minutes and officials’ public statements.

GRAPHIC – How the Fed’s meeting minutes reflected changing views on interest rates: https://tmsnrt.rs/2TX9fC0

It was a conclusion hiding in plain sight. After a year when the Trump administration pumped around $1.5 trillion of tax cuts and public spending into a full employment economy, the Fed in 2018 would miss its 2 percent inflation target yet again.

“I hate to say we were right,” Dallas Federal Reserve president Robert Kaplan told reporters on Jan. 15 in Dallas. “But we have been warning for quite some time that…the structure of the economy has changed dramatically.”

Technological innovation, globalization, and the Fed’s commitment to its inflation target all held down prices, and “those forces are powerful and they are accelerating,” he said.

His arguments echoed those made by St. Louis Fed president James Bullard and Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari. New Fed vice chairman Richard Clarida and Governor Lael Brainard have flagged similar issues.

Later in January, the Fed’s policy meeting jettisoned mention of any further rate increases and cited “muted inflation” among the reasons, largely aligning the Fed with the prevailing sentiment among investors who saw conditions weakening.

At first, it was investors who appeared to have overreacted to Powell’s “long way from neutral” remark in early October.

Global markets had absorbed nearly two years of quarterly Fed rate increases in stride, but yields on U.S. 10 year Treasury bonds spiked a tenth of a percentage point that day and stocks started a slide that wiped out 10 percent of the S&P 500’s value by late November.

If sustained, It was the type of environment, with asset values falling and borrowing conditions tightening, that could hurt the Main Street economy and not just the investor class.

The initial response from Powell and others at the Fed was that the U.S. economy remained strong, and that it was not the central bank’s job to coddle Wall Street.

“We watch markets very carefully,” Powell said at a mid-November event in Dallas. “But it is one of many, many factors that go into a very large economy.”

But investors were not just reacting to the Fed and the prospect of higher rates. Weakening business and consumer confidence, slowing global growth, and potential disruptions from President Donald Trump’s trade war with China also factored in.

Over the next few weeks the Fed tried to build those concerns into its policy stance, but it became clear the situation was more fragile than they had divined.

In early December a portion of the bond yield curve “inverted,” with short term rates rising above long term ones in what can be seen as a loss of faith in economic growth.

For months, Fed officials had debated whether to discount such developments as the clash and clang of daily trading or to treat them as a significant warning. Some, including Bullard, warned against ignoring what markets seemed to be saying, and both he and Kashkari said the Fed should stop raising rates or risk trouble.

When the Fed met in December, policymakers thought they could square the circle.

Officials proceeded with another quarter-point rate increase, as expected at the time, and released updated projections showing two more rate hikes for 2019 – one less than in September, but still heading higher.

LOST NUANCE

The Fed hoped, though, that between a small change in its policy statement and Powell’s follow-up news conference, things would stay calm, a strategy Fed officials spelled out after the fact in interviews and in minutes of the December meeting.

By replacing the phrase that the Fed “expected” further rate hikes with one saying it “judged” them likely, the central bank tried to show it was now less committed to tighter policy.

But that nuance was lost on markets, and Powell’s assurance at the news conference of a newly “patient” Fed got lost as well when he described the Fed’s monthly rundown of as much as $50 billion in assets as on “automatic pilot.”

To investors, that undermined the intended message, since the regular decline in the Fed’s asset holdings effectively worked to tighten financial conditions.

The S&P 500 fell another 7.5 percent in the days that followed.

Investors felt the Fed was “not fully appreciating” how market turbulence and “softening global data” put the U.S. itself at risk, the Fed’s January minutes concluded in reviewing how the December statement was perceived.

“It was a delicate time,” New York Fed President John Williams told Reuters on Tuesday. The tweak in the December statement “was a pretty subtle message. That’s one of the challenges of trying to communicate a very complicated and complex situation in just one page.”

Over the next few weeks, the Fed eschewed subtlety for a more public acknowledgement that its view of economic reality had changed.

For a Jan. 4 question-and-answer session at the American Economic Association Powell came armed with written notes and a core message that the Fed was “always prepared to shift the stance of policy and to shift it significantly” if conditions weakened.

After the January meeting that message became official. References to the new “patient” approach and “muted inflation,” words cited in minutes of the December meeting, became part of the Fed’s policy statement. A longstanding mention of the need for higher rates was deleted.

The changes drew no dissent, with even those who have worried most about inflation and financial risk falling silent.

It was a significant moment of unanimity at a central bank that has spent the last decade wondering when, rather than whether, inflation or financial risks would re-emerge. Throughout that era some group of officials – including Powell early in his central banking career – has consistently warned that the combination of falling unemployment, cheap money, and trillions of dollars injected by the Fed’s crisis era policies would inevitably cause problems.

As the Fed’s January meeting minutes showed, not all officials have sworn off further rate increases and some noted that a possible turn for the better – a resolution of trade tensions for example – could lead them to raise rates again.

But to veteran Fed watchers, the bar is now higher. The January statement, JP Morgan analyst Michael Feroli wrote recently, showed the Fed “subtly but profoundly evolving” to a new view of the world where a variety of forces have changed the way inflation and interest rates work, and have now changed how the central bank responds.

GRAPHIC – The Fed’s new normal: https://tmsnrt.rs/2VccqWm

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Additional reporting by Ann Saphir and Jason Lange; Editing by Dan Burns and Tomasz Janowski)

Source: OANN

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Fire in old part of Bangladesh's capital kills at least 45

A devastating fire has raced through at least five buildings in an old part of Bangladesh's capital and killed at least 45 people.

About 50 other people have been injured and the fire in Dhaka is not yet under control.

The fire department's Director General Brig. Gen. Ali Ahmed said early Thursday the blaze broke out in the Chawkbazar area Wednesday night in one building but quickly spread.

Ali said by early Thursday rescuers recovered at least 45 bodies as they were trying to get the blaze under control.

Some floors of the destroyed buildings had chemicals and plastic in storage.

Source: Fox News World

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$15 Minimum Wage: Good Politics, Bad Economics

Raising the minimum wage might be good politics, but it’s bad economics – despite what some economists say.

Last week, the Maryland legislature overrode the governor’s veto and adopted a $15 per hour minimum wage. It was a major victory for the “Fight for $15” crowd, but it almost certainly won’t be for low-skilled workers — at least not the ones who whose maximum wage will be $0 per hour because they cannot find jobs.

The minimum wage debate takes place within a swirl of emotion that tends to blind us to basic facts. Wages are nothing but prices. And when the price for something goes up, demand for that thing drops. This is one of the most fundamental laws of economics. But for some reason, huge swaths of the population think this economic law ceases to operate just because you apply it to labor.

It doesn’t.

From this simple economic truth, we can safely say that employment levels for low-skilled workers will be lower with a higher minimum wage than it otherwise would have been.


People impacted by highly-taxed industries voice their stories and how it destroyed jobs and opportunities.

As recently as the 1980s, this was almost universally accepted by economists — even those on the left. But things changed in 1994 with the release of the Card-Krueger study that purported to show raising the minimum wage did not have a substantial impact on employment. Economist Robert Murphy explained what happened in a 2014 article.

“Once the researchers controlled for other trends, it appeared that in practice, modest increases in the minimum wage had a negligible impact on employment in the low-skilled and teen populations. Indeed, this revisionist literature has grown so influential that, recently, 75 economists—including seven Nobel laureates—publicly signed a letter to prominent federal politicians, urging them to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016.”

So, what gives?

This is a prime, real-world example of a truth economist Frank Shostak explained in a recent article: without a firm grasp of basic economic principles, it becomes impossible to properly evaluate any observations you make and to properly interpret economic data.

(Photo by haydenweal / Pixabay)

Murphy and Tom Woods discussed these minimum wage studies during episode 182 of the Contra Krugman podcast. A Murphy pointed out, there has been a raging debate over these studies in the economic literature for years. Using different assumptions and variables in their equations, researchers can “prove” completely opposite conclusions using the exact same data-set. As Murphy put it, you can manipulate the math to “prove” just about anything.

This reveals an underlying problem with economic data-driven research. You can’t put the economy in a laboratory and isolate a single factor. There are hundreds of variables impacting employment in an economy at any given time. It’s virtually impossible to isolate the minimum wage and definitively say, “X caused Y.” Murphy summed it up this way during the podcast.

“This stuff is tricky and a lot of times when you get into the weeds of it’s just ‘Aw, well they have their specifications and we find these statistically significant results,’ and these guys tweak it and you end up with something else. The data is messy and it’s noisy. That’s the problem with this stuff too. There are a lot of things going on besides just hiking the minimum wage that changes employment, and so, if you want to, you can keep changing your specifications until you get the result you want. You haven’t lied. You did the regression correctly given the data and the specification you looked at.”

Again – you have to have solid economic theory. And the logic of supply and demand is irrefutable. If you raise the price of labor, there will be less labor used. If a person produces $10 per hour of output, you aren’t going to pay him $15 per hour.

Opponents of the minimum wage are often caricatured as unconcerned with the plight of poor, low-skilled workers. And yet it’s the policies pushed by “Fight for $15” crowd that actually hurts the employment prospects of many of these workers. Of course, the workers who manage to keep their jobs will benefit from the higher pay. But lost in the analysis are those workers who lose their jobs or never get hired to begin with. They make nothing. And sadly, the remain virtually invisible in the political calculations.

Economist Frederic Bastiat implores us to look not only at the seen but also the unseen. This is the mark of a good economist. But politics only pays attention to what is seen. What is unseen can be swept under the rug for political expediency.

Minimum wage advocates seek to solve a legitimate problem facing American workers: their dollars buy less and less every year. But simply mandating employers fork over more dollars is a little like putting a band-aid on an amputation. It doesn’t do anything to address the underlying problem. We don’t have a wage problem. We have a money problem.


Infowars Chief Council, Robert Barnes sits down with Alex Jones to talk about the cannibal zombie-fest that is the Democratic primary.

Source: InfoWars

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Members of The Cranberries, bassist Mike Hogan, drummer Fergal Lawler and guitarist Noel Hogan speak to Reuters during an interview in London
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)

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2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren participates in the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston
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.

(Editing by Ronnie Greene)

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FILE PHOTO: Offices of Deloitte are seen in London
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)

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Children walk past a damaged building in the aftermath of the Cyclone Kenneth in Pemba
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)

Source: OANN

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A worker holds a nozzle to pump petrol into a vehicle at a fuel station in Mumbai
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.

(GRAPHIC: India Polls: Fuel price hike lags crude surge – https://tmsnrt.rs/2XLlxik)

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)

Source: OANN

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