FILE PHOTO: A traditionally-dressed Ethiopian woman walks past a mural depicting Ethiopia's Emperor Tewodros II in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, June 1, 2007. REUTERS/Andrew Heavens/File Photo
March 21, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – A London museum has handed back locks of hair cut from the corpse of an Ethiopian emperor during a British invasion 150 years ago, after a campaign by activists seeking the return of hundreds of pieces of colonial plunder.
Ethiopians, many dressed in the national colors of red, gold and green, cheered as staff at the National Army Museum handed over the remains in a black leather box to Ethiopia’s minister of culture, tourism and sport on Wednesday.
Hirut Kassaw will take the hair back to Ethiopia at the weekend where it will eventually be buried at the grave of Emperor Tewodros II at monastery in northern Ethiopia, an embassy official said.
She thanked the museum for its “brave and principled” decision to hand over the hair, but called on it and other British institutions to return other items taken during the Victorian-era expedition.
“For Ethiopians, these are not simply artifacts or treasures but constitute a fundamental part of the existential fabric of Ethiopia and its people,” she said.
There was no immediate response to her request or statement on the return from the museum.
Successive emperors, governments and then activists have called for Britain to hand back crowns, religious regalia and illuminated manuscripts taken after the fight – in campaigns paralleled by Greece’s demands for its Parthenon sculptures, and Nigeria’s for the Benin Bronzes.
The emperor claimed a bloodline dating back to the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Britain invaded his territory of then Abyssinia in 1867 to rescue a group of European missionaries, adventurers and officials – including the British consul – imprisoned by Tewodros after a series of diplomatic gaffes.
They reached his mountain fortress of Magdala in April 1868, defeated his troops and freed the prisoners. The emperor shot himself as the invaders stormed his last stronghold.
Journalists on the campaign described how soldiers descended on the emperor’s body and tore off strips of his clothing as souvenirs. The museum’s records suggest the hair was taken from Magdala by an artist on the British force.
Institutions including the British Museum have resisted repatriation campaigns citing legislation preventing them from breaking up collections and arguing that they can preserve items and present them to an international audience.
Campaigners have argued that a special case should be made for human remains.
(Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea says some North Korean officials have returned to an inter-Korean liaison office three days after the North abruptly withdrew its entire staff citing unspecified instructions from "higher-level authorities."
Seoul's Unification Ministry says four to five North Korean officials showed up for work Monday at the liaison office in the North Korean border town of Kaesong.
It wasn't immediately clear why North Korea sent some workers back to the office or whether it will restore a full staff.
The North's decision to withdraw its staff came a week after its vice foreign minister threatened to pull out of nuclear negotiations with the United States following the collapse of a nuclear summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump.
The 21st century is in danger of becoming an era of statue smashing and historical erasure. Not since the iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire or the epidemic of statue destruction during the French Revolution has the world seen anything like the current war on the past.
In 2001, the primeval Taliban blew up two ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan on grounds that their very existence was sacrilegious to Islam.
In 2015, ISIS militants entered a museum in Mosul, Iraq, and destroyed ancient, pre-Islamic statues and idols. Their mute crime? These artifacts predated the prophet Muhammad.
The West prides itself in the idea that liberal societies would never descend into such nihilism. Think again.
In the last two years there has been a rash of statue toppling throughout the American South, aimed at wiping out memorialization of Confederate heroes. The pretense is that the Civil War can only be regarded as tragic in terms of the present oppression of the descendants of Southern slaves --154 years after the extinction of the Confederate states.
There is also a renewed crusade to erase the memory of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Los Angeles removed a Columbus statue in November based on the premise that his 1492 discovery of the Americas began a disastrous genocide in the Western Hemisphere.
Last month, the Northern California town of Arcata did away with a statue of former president William McKinley because he supposedly pushed policies detrimental to Native Americans.
There have been some unfortunate lessons from such vendettas against the images and names of the past.
One, such attacks usually revealed a lack of confidence. The general insecurity of the present could supposedly be remedied by destroying mute statutes or the legacies of the dead, who could offer no rebuttal.
The subtext of most current name changing and icon toppling is that particular victimized groups blame their current plight on the past. They assume that by destroying long-dead supposed enemies, they will be liberated -- or at least feel better in the present.
Yet knocking down images of Columbus will not change the fact that millions of indigenous people in Central America and Mexico are currently abandoning their ancestral homelands and emigrating northward to quite different landscapes that reflect European and American traditions and political, economic and cultural values.
Two, opportunism, not logic, always seems to determine the targets of destruction.
This remains true today. If mass slaughter in the past offered a reason to obliterate remembrance of the guilty, then certainly sports teams should drop brand names such as "Aztecs." Likewise, communities should topple statues honoring various Aztec gods, including the one in my own hometown: Selma, Calif.
After all, the Aztec Empire annually butchered thousands of innocent women and children captives on the altars of their hungry gods. The Aztecs were certainly far crueler conquerors, imperialists and colonialists than was former President McKinley. Yet apparently the Aztecs, as indigenous peoples, earn a pass on the systematic mass murder of their enslaved indigenous subjects.
Stanford University has changed the name of two buildings and a mall that had been named for Father Junipero Serra, the heroic 18th century Spanish founder of the California missions. Serra was reputed to be unkind to the indigenous people whom he sought to convert to Christianity.
Stanford students and faculty could have found a much easier target in their war against the dead: the eponymous founder of their university, Leland Stanford himself. Stanford was a 19th century railroad robber baron who brutally imported and exploited Asian labor and was explicit in his low regard for non-white peoples.
Yet it is one thing to virtue-signal by renaming a building and quite another for progressive students to rebrand their university -- and thereby lose the prestigious Stanford trademark that is seen as their gateway to career advancement.
Third, in the past there usually has been a cowardly element to historical erasure. Destruction was often done at night by roving vandals, or was sanctioned by extremist groups who bullied objectors.
So too in the present. Many Confederate statues were torn down or defaced at night. City councils voted to change names or remove icons after being bullied by small pressure groups and media hysteria. They rarely referred the issue to referenda.
Four, ignorance both accompanies and explains the arrogance of historical erasure, past and present.
Recently, vandals in North Carolina set fire to a statue of General Lee. But they got the wrong Lee. Their target was not a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, but a statue of World War II Maj. Gen. William C. Lee, who campaigned for the creation of a U.S. Army airborne division and helped plan the invasion of Normandy.
The past is not a melodrama but more often a tragedy. Destroying history will not make you feel good about the present. Studying and learning from it might.
(C) 2019 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book is The Savior Generals from BloomsburyBooks. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
FILE PHOTO: A combine harvester cuts sugar cane in a field at the Sao Martinho sugar mill in Pradopolis, Brazil September 13, 2018. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker
March 26, 2019
By Marcelo Teixeira
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A likely delay in the start of Brazil’s center-south cane harvest may catch some New York sugar futures players on the wrong foot, forcing those operators to cover positions, according to analysts and commodity traders.
Although Brazil’s 2019/20 center-south cane crop officially starts in April, many mills begin crushing earlier if their cane is ready. However, fields this year are developing late, after a dry spell in December and January, followed by ample March rain.
The late rainfall may lead some mills to hold off crushing to let the cane turn that moisture into better agricultural yields.
“If that happens, we will see traders running to deal with that lack of available sugar,” said Arnaldo Corrêa, a sugar industry analyst at Archer Consulting.
Last Friday, U.S. government data showed speculators had reduced their net short position in raw sugar on the ICE futures exchange, surprising many in the market.
Brazil is a big swing factor in the global sugar market due to the flexibility of its mills, which manage to go quicker or slower on processing, or direct more cane to ethanol versus sugar production, depending on prices.
“If there is a delay in crushing, then the supply of raw sugar that can be tendered against the May futures may be severely restricted,” an analyst at a large European trading house told Reuters.
“There will be a lot of debate about specifically how much cane will be crushed in the second half of March and in April,” said the analyst, requesting anonymity to speak openly.
The start to Brazil’s cane harvest has varied dramatically in recent years. In 2016, Brazilian mills crushed 80 million tonnes from mid-March to the end of April, but the crush in the same period of 2017 fell below 50 million tonnes.
Last year Brazil’s center-south crushed 67.7 million tonnes in that six-week stretch, producing 2.41 million tonnes of sugar. Analysts are forecasting less this year.
Datagro, a leading sugar and ethanol consultancy in Brazil, sees most mills pushing their first crush back by two weeks due to high ethanol inventories and slow cane development.
Brazilian cane industry group Unica said on Tuesday that just 27 center-south mills were operating in the first half of March, down from 50 at the same time last year.
If processing continues to lag, mills and traders that have already sold sugar in New York might roll their positions to July instead of delivering the sugar. That could leave buyers scrambling to find new supplies.
To be sure, a sunny forecast for early April in center-south Brazil could help to jumpstart crushing season, bringing sugar to the market as expected.
Dib Nunes, a Brazilian cane expert, said major cane areas near Presidente Prudente and Araçatuba are likely to see delays, but other parts of Sao Paulo state may not.
Not all of Brazil’s cash-strapped mills can afford to wait.
“A potential delay would be 15 or 20 days maximum, not more, because many mills also need to make cash,” he said.
(Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Brad Haynes and Susan Thomas)
Swedish Left Party MP Linda Snecker asserted that women “assume all men are rapists” and demanded that all men take collective responsibility during a parliamentary debate.
Snecker said that “men’s violence against women governs the entire world structure” and that “the struggle of feminism” was to put a stop to “the violence of men.”
“We women adapt our lives and our behavior to men’s potential threats of violence. Because we cannot see whether you are a rapist or not, we assume that all men are rapists. That is the brutal truth. That’s how a structural problem looks. That is why men must take their collective responsibility. All men,” she said.
Sweden Democrat’s Katja Nyberg hit back, claiming that Snecker was ignoring the true source of the problem – mass immigration.
“The Left Party claims that they stand up for women’s equal value. But why then insist on hiding the main causes of today’s problems with threats and violence against women? They desperately deny the consequences of their own mass immigration policy and instead blame all men, only to hide the facts of rape”, Nyberg said, adding, “If I were to stand in parliament and say that all Muslims are terrorists, I would be charged directly.”
Sweden does have a massive rape problem, which just by coincidence has become notably worse since the country began importing migrant men from countries where respect for women’s rights is somewhat different than in the west.
A study by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet found that 88 per cent of gang rapists in the Scandinavian country over the last six years have had a migrant background.
Other figures show that migrants from Muslim-majority nations commit 84 per cent of “very violent” rapes in Sweden.
A private study of 4,142 rulings regarding sex-related crimes passed by 40 Swedish courts between 2012 and 2014 found that 95.6% of rapes were committed by men of foreign descent.
A New York man reportedly received a Con Edison monthly bill of $38 million on Monday. (Con Edison via Twitter)
Now that's a lot of electricity.
A New York man reportedly received a Con Edison monthly bill of $38 million on Monday for his 600 square foot apartment.
The man identified as Tommy Straub tweeted at Con Edison to fix his "insane" energy bill for his place in Queens.
“Hey @ConEdison: I own a 600 square foot apartment in Astoria, Qns. I do NOT own the entirety of Manhattan Island. THIS IS INSANE. FIX IT,” he tweeted on Monday, with a screenshot of the $37,974,401.35 bill.
“Our customer ops team is looking into it and we’ll definitely work on it and fix it,” a ConEd spokesperson told the New York Daily News, saying that it was most likely a computer error.
This undated file photo provided by Cambria County Prison shows Dr. Johnnie Barto. The former Pennsylvania pediatrician is scheduled for sentencing Monday, March 18, 2019, in the sexual assault of 31 children, most of them patients. (Cambria County Prison via AP, File)
EBENSBURG, Pa. – A former Pennsylvania pediatrician was sentenced to at least 79 years in prison on Monday for the sexual assault of 31 children, most of them patients, in a case that state medical regulators failed to act on nearly two decades ago.
Dr. Johnnie Barto of Johnstown was sentenced on dozens of counts, including aggravated indecent assault and child endangerment. Prosecutors say he spent decades abusing boys and girls in the exam room at his pediatric practice in western Pennsylvania and at local hospitals, with his victims typically ranging in age from 8 to 12. One was an infant.
Nineteen people gave victim impact statements, both in person and through a prosecutor, describing how Barto caused them to feel hopelessness and despair, caused depression and anxiety and instilled a fear of doctors.
Barto's wife, Linda Barto, was among them.
"He has been lying to me about everything for all of the 52 years I have known him. ... He spent his whole sinister life lying and sneaking around, so he could carry on his abuse uninterrupted," she said. She said her heart was heavy for the victims.
The attorney general's office had asked for 31 to 62 years in prison.
Barto declined to make a statement.
He pleaded guilty in December to some counts and no contest to others. He's been jailed pending sentencing. His lawyer, David Weaver, has said Barto opted to enter pleas, so "the healing could begin for his family, his victims and for himself."
Authorities had a chance to stop Barto in 2000, when he appeared before the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine on administrative charges that he molested two young girls in the 1990s. But regulators threw out the case and allowed him to keep practicing medicine, saying the allegations were "incongruous to his reputation." At the time, the prominent pediatrician had a lot of support in the community.
Barto, now 71, went on to molest at least a dozen more young patients before his arrest in January 2018, according to the state attorney general's office.
The medical board's 7-2 decision to let him off the hook in 2000 sparked outrage from victims and at least one former board member. Vivian Lowenstein, who had voted to strip Barto of his license, told The Associated Press last year that she was "sick about it" and that the case was as an example of how Pennsylvania's physician-regulators typically looked out for their own.
The Pennsylvania Department of State, which provides legal and administrative support to the board and prosecutes administrative cases of doctor misconduct, said last year that "the Board of Medicine takes allegations of sexual misconduct by professional licensees very seriously."
Regulators have not commented on the board's 2000 decision.
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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