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Heavy fighting flares between Taliban, Islamic State in Afghanistan

Afghan villagers who fled from the fighting sides arrive at the Behsud district of Nangarhar province
Afghan villagers who fled from the fighting sides arrive at the Behsud district of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Parwiz

April 24, 2019

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan Taliban insurgents are battling fighters loyal to Islamic State over control of territory in eastern Afghanistan in some of the heaviest clashes over the past year between the rival militants, officials said on Wednesday.

The fighting erupted on Monday in two districts of the eastern Afghan border province of Nangarhar, when Islamic State fighters attacked villages under Taliban control.

“Islamic State fighters have captured six villages in Khogyani and Shirzad districts but the fighting has not stopped,” said Sohrab Qaderi, a member Nangarhar’s the provincial council.

About 500 families had fled from the fighting, he said.

Casualty figures were not available.

A spokesman for the Taliban, who control more territory than at any point since they were ousted from power nearly 18 years ago, was not available for comment.

Islamic State fighters first appeared in eastern Afghanistan in around 2014 and have battled the Taliban as well as government and foreign forces.

The Afghan affiliate of Islamic State, sometimes known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), after an old name for the region that includes Afghanistan, has made some inroads into other areas, in the north in particular.

It has also established a reputation for unusual cruelty, even by the standards of the Afghan conflict, and has been behind some of the deadliest attacks in urban centers.

While Nangarhar, on the border with Pakistan, has been an Islamic State stronghold, some villages in Khogyani and Shirzad districts have been controlled by the Taliban.

Fleeing villagers said they had to run for their lives.

“I could only rescue my family. We had to leave everything,” said Shawkat, 36, a resident of Markikhel village in Shirzad district who sought safety in a neighboring village.

Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial governor said, authorities would help the displaced villagers with food and medicine.

In August, more than 150 Islamic State fighters surrendered to the Afghan security forces after they were defeated by the Taliban in the northwestern province of Jawzjan.

The U.S. military estimates there are about 2,000 Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan.

Many are former Taliban. There is scant evidence of direct links with Islamic State in the Middle East, where the group has lost territory it once held in Syria and Iraq to Western-backed forces.

(Reporting by Abdul Qadir Sediqi in Kabul and Ahmad Sultan in Nangarhar; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Source: OANN

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‘Positive signs’ in Airbus-China talks, says French official

A logo of Airbus is seen on a flag at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac
FILE PHOTO: A logo of Airbus is seen on a flag at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac, near Toulouse, France, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

March 14, 2019

By John Irish

NAIROBI (Reuters) – There are encouraging signs that European planemaker Airbus is closing in on a long-negotiated deal with China for dozens of new narrow-body jets, an aide to French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday.

The official said there were hopes Airbus would nail down the multibillion-dollar order when President Xi Jinping visits Europe later this month, but acknowledged there would unlikely be confirmation until the eleventh hour.

“The talks are ongoing,” the official said. “It will be difficult to know for sure until the day before, but the signs are positive.”

China has become a key hunting ground for Airbus and its leading rival Boeing, thanks to surging travel demand, but the outlook has been complicated by Beijing’s desire to grow its own industrial champions and, more recently for Boeing, the U.S.-China trade war.

Macron unexpectedly failed to clinch the Airbus order during a trip to China in early 2018 and the French government and Airbus have been working since to salvage it.

Macron said at the time that China would buy 184 A320 narrow-body jets, an order worth $18 billion at list prices.

The Elysee Palace official also said Airbus was discussing a new order with Ethiopian Airlines. The official gave no details on the size of the potential new Ethiopian order but cited the long-range A350, a model which Ethiopian already operates, and the single-aisle A320 jet as aircraft of interest to the airline.

Macron and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed discussed the negotiations during Macron’s visit to Addis Ababa on Tuesday, two days after an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed after taking off, killing all 157 people on board.

Industry analysts played down a possible link between any current negotiations and Sunday’s crash. Ethiopian has been undertaking a major fleet expansion and regularly talks to the market, they said, adding that order talks take time.

(Reporting by John Irish; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Mark Potter)

Source: OANN

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BMW warns of significant profit fall in 2019 seeks 12 billion euros in cuts

FILE PHOTO: The BMW logo is seen on the wheel of a vehicle presented at the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing
FILE PHOTO: The BMW logo is seen on the wheel of a vehicle presented at the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing, China, April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo

March 20, 2019

MUNICH (Reuters) – BMW <BMWG.DE> on Wednesday said it expected group pretax profit to fall by more than 10 percent in 2019 and announced a sweeping 12 billion euros ($13.6 bln) cost savings and efficiency plan to help offset higher technology investment and currency costs.

Last week BMW said it would step up cost cutting in anticipation of a difficult year, as it reported a 7.9 percent fall in 2018 operating profit.

BMW said it would expand group-wide efforts to increase efficiency and lower costs. “By the end of 2022, it expects to leverage potential efficiencies totaling more than 12 billion euros,” BMW said in a statement.

(Reporting by Edward Taylor; Editing by Tassilo Hummel)

Source: OANN

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Top GOP Judiciary Committee member: Trump 'proved right' on Mueller probe, as Nadler warns of 'cover-up'

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., speaking to "Fox News Sunday," vowed that congressional investigators will press on and continue to investigate President Trump while warning of a possibly unfolding Justice Department "cover-up," even as he acknowledged that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has apparently closed his investigation without indicting a single American for illegally colluding with Russia.

Nadler also asserted that it's "way too early to talk about impeachment," as Washington awaits Attorney General William Barr's highly expected release of Mueller's primary conclusions, which Trump's personal lawyers tell Fox News is expected Sunday afternoon.

"All we know is that the special counsel -- what we think we know -- is that the special counsel is not bringing criminal indictments for collusion," Nadler told host Chris Wallace. "There are other investigations going on which he’s farmed out, the Southern District of New York, Eastern District of Virginia, and they may or may not. We do know, remember, in plain sight, of a lot of collusion.

"We know for example that the president’s son and his campaign manager were present in the meeting with the Russians, to receive information which they were told in the invitation was part of the Russian government's attempt to help them in the election," Nadler said. "We know that the campaign manager gave political targeting data to an agent of the Russian government. So we know a lot of things and maybe it’s not indictable, but we know there was collusion. The question is the degree."

DEMS CIRCLE THE WAGONS DURING FUNEREAL CONFERENCE CALL, AS SENIOR SENATOR ADMITS TRUMP SUPPORTERS MAY HAVE BEEN RIGHT ABOUT MUELLER PROBE

Nadler added: "The job of Congress is much broader than the job of the special counsel. The special counsel is looking and can only look for crimes. We have to protect the rule of law, we have to look for abuses of power, we have to look for obstructions of justice, we have to look for corruption in the exercise of power which may not be crimes."

A former senior law enforcement official told Fox News on Saturday, however, that Democrats lack key investigative powers that Mueller had, including the ability to convene grand juries -- and that Nadler's path amounted to trying to criminalize meetings with foreign actors that the special counsel apparently determined were simply not criminal.

“With all the talk of the Democrats intensifying their House investigations," the former official said, it was important to note that "unlike Special Counsel Mueller, Congress and the [DOJ Inspector General] cannot convene grand juries and initiate prosecutions. If Mueller couldn't find collusion or conspiracy with every investigative tool, what do the Democrats expect to accomplish?"

House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., echoed that point in his own interview with "Fox News Sunday."

Attorney General William Barr leaves his home in McLean, Va., on Sunday morning, March 24, 2019. Barr is preparing a summary of the findings of the special counsel investigating Russian election interference. The release of Barr's summary of the report's main conclusions is expected sometime Sunday.(AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz)

Attorney General William Barr leaves his home in McLean, Va., on Sunday morning, March 24, 2019. Barr is preparing a summary of the findings of the special counsel investigating Russian election interference. The release of Barr's summary of the report's main conclusions is expected sometime Sunday.(AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz)

WAS MADDOW CRYING? WATCH THE MEDIA MELTDOWN AS MUELLER REPORT DROPS

"As we’ve seen in the first two months of this Congress, [Democrats] really don’t have a policy agenda," Collins said. "They have an agenda against the President. They have an agenda to try and win 2020. And so what we’re seeing is they think that they can go into the Judiciary Committee or any other committee and have a limited budget, limited subpoena power, limited staff and go up against and investigation that lasted 22 months, had unlimited power, unlimited subpoena power, had plenty of investigators -- and they think they can find something more than what they did, then I think they’re sadly mistaken."

Collins added: "At this point, the president has been proved right. I think he was obviously frustrated during this time and rightfully so, as this report seems to show."

His remarks echoed that of Senate Judiciary Committee member Chris Coons, a Democrat, on Saturday during a conference call: "I think it's entirely possible," Coons said, that the day the report is released "will be a good day for the president and his core supporters."

"At this point, the president has been proved right."

— House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins, R-Ga.

Nadler, however, implied that Mueller may have found important evidence against Trump -- and said that normal DOJ rules preventing the disclosure of such information after an investigation should not apply.

"The Justice Department believes -- normally that’s a very good rule. If you don’t have enough evidence to judge someone on a crime, you shouldn’t sully their name. However, the Justice Department believes that as a matter of law, the president no matter what the evidence, can never be indicted on anything because he is the president. ... Once you say that a president cannot be held indictable no matter what the evidence, as a matter of law, to then follow the principle that you can’t then comment on the evidence or publicize it is to convert that into a cover-up."

WATCH: TRUMP HITS THE LINKS WITH KID ROCKS AFTER MUELLER REPORT DROPS

People with signs supporting President Donald Trump are seen from the media van in the motorcade accompanying the president in West Palm Beach, Fla., Friday, March 22, 2019, en route to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

People with signs supporting President Donald Trump are seen from the media van in the motorcade accompanying the president in West Palm Beach, Fla., Friday, March 22, 2019, en route to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

He added: "If president cannot be indicted because as a matter of law -- then the only way a president can be held accountable is for Congress to consider it an act if warranted, and Congress can only do that if it has the information. For the department to take the position that, we’re not going to give information because he’s not indicted, like a normal person, he’s not indicted because a lack of evidence, is equivalent to a cover-up."

But Collins later criticized Nadler's push for a total release of the report, saying some reasonable limits need to be accomodated.

CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"It’s amazing to hear my chairman say that he wants everything out there," Collins said. "Well, I would ask my chairman does he include classified information, which has never been released to the American public? Would he include 6C, which is grand jury information, things that are normally never released to the public outside – really, outside of a special order from the court? Would he want to do the things that would actually get into ongoing investigations? I think the problem is that Democrats and my chairman have a problem. They thought that this report was going to show something they could impeach the president on. That is not seemingly going to happen."

Nadler separately took a shot at Trump for his criticisms of the intelligence community as hopelessly biased. Senior members of the FBI investigative team who probed Trump's campaign have since been fired or resigned following the revelations that they exchanged numerous anti-Trump text messages during the campaign (even as thousands of other texts were deleted by what the agency called a "glitch"), surveiled a Trump campaign aide using a warrant that relied heavily on a politically biased source working for a firm hired by the Clinton campaign, and illegally leaked information to the media without authorization.

"It is part of a sustained attack by the administration and its allies on the integrity of law enforcement agencies, the FBI, the special prosecutor, for the last two years to try to undermine the integrity and the credibility of our law enforcement institutions, and that’s something that’s very damaging to the country," Nadler said, referring to Trump.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Google blocks Chinese app TikTok in India after court order

FILE PHOTO: The logo of TikTok application is seen on a mobile phone screen in this picture illustration taken
FILE PHOTO: The logo of TikTok application is seen on a mobile phone screen in this picture illustration taken February 21, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/Illustration/File Photo

April 16, 2019

By Aditya Kalra and Sudarshan Varadhan

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Google has blocked access to the hugely popular video app TikTok in India to comply with a state court’s directive to prohibit its downloads, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

The move comes hours after a court in southern Tamil Nadu state refused a request by China’s Bytedance Technology to suspend a ban on its TikTok app, putting its future in one of its key markets in doubt.

The state court had on April 3 asked the federal government to ban TikTok, saying it encouraged pornography and made child users vulnerable to sexual predators. Its ruling came after an individual launched a public interest litigation calling for a ban.

The federal government had sent a letter to Apple and Google to abide by the state court’s order, according to an IT ministry official.

The app was still available on Apple’s platforms late on Tuesday, but was no longer available on Google’s Play store in India.

Google said in a statement it does not comment on individual apps but adheres to local laws. Apple did not respond to requests for comment, while TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Google’s move.

TikTok, which allows users to create and share short videos with special effects, has become hugely popular in India but has been criticized by some politicians who say its content is inappropriate.

It had been downloaded more than 240 million times in India, app analytics firm Sensor Tower said in February. More than 30 million users in India installed it in January 2019, 12 times more than in the same month last year.

Jokes, clips and footage related to India’s thriving movie industry dominate the app’s platform, along with memes and videos in which youngsters, some scantily clad, lip-sync and dance to popular music.

Bytedance challenged the state court’s ban order in India’s Supreme Court last week, saying it went against freedom of speech rights in India.

The top court had referred the case back to the state court, where a judge on Tuesday rejected Bytedance’s request to put the ban order on hold, K. Neelamegam, a lawyer arguing against Bytedance in the case, said.

TikTok earlier said in a statement that it had faith in the Indian judicial system and was “optimistic about an outcome that would be well received by millions” of its users. It did not comment further on the judge’s decision.

The company however welcomed the decision to appoint a senior lawyer to assist the court in upcoming proceedings.

The state court has requested written submissions from Bytedance in the case and has scheduled its next hearing for April 24.

Salman Waris, a technology lawyer at TechLegis Advocates & Solicitors, said the legal action against Bytedance could set a precedent of Indian courts intervening to regulate content on social media and other digital platforms.

In its Supreme Court filing, Bytedance argued that a “very minuscule” proportion of TikTok content was considered inappropriate or obscene.

The company employs more than 250 people in India and had plans for more investment as it expands the business, it said.

(Additional reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal in Mumbai; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Susan Fenton and Jan Harvey)

Source: OANN

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Perilous times for Mozambican children impacted by cyclone

Her name is Chuva, which in Portuguese means rain. For four days that was all she saw as she clung to her rooftop in the cyclone's aftermath and prayed to be saved.

Maria Chuva clasped her 5-year-old daughter, Amiel, to her tightly as she recounted the panic of opening her front door to water that came up to her neck, and scrambling with her family to the roof.

Now, after elbowing her way onto a rescue boat for a bewildering journey with her two girls to the inundated port city of Beira, she paused in the din of a displacement camp to reflect on losing everything but her children — and the splintered families now around her. The orphans are especially hard for her to bear.

"It hurts me so bad," she said.

An estimated 900,000 children have been orphaned or separated from their families, made homeless or otherwise affected by Cyclone Idai, half of the 1.8 million people impacted overall, according to Mozambican government figures.

The children crowd displacement camps, sleeping rough on plastic tarps on bare brick floors, or on the wooden benches of crowded schools.

They slide down wooden bannisters, teeter on rain-slickened tile stairs near open cooking fires on the concrete floor. They play checkers with bottle caps. They squat around a metal pot as big as themselves, scraping its sides with their bare hands for the last remaining kernels of rice.

No one yet knows how many are orphaned, just as no one knows how many people in the cyclone-hit countries of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi are dead or missing.

Families were separated in the chaos. Many children lost a mother or father, or both.

"We are concerned about children who were orphaned by the cyclone or became separated from their parents in the chaos that followed," said Henrietta Fore, executive director of the U.N. organization for children, UNICEF.

Initial assessments in Beira indicate that more than 2,600 classrooms have been destroyed and 39 health centers impacted. At least 11,000 houses have been totally destroyed. "This will have serious consequences on children's education, access to health services, and mental well-being," Fore said.

"The situation will get worse before it gets better," Fore added, warning of diseases like cholera, malaria and diarrhea "which can turn this disaster into a major catastrophe."

In a bare gymnasium in the Samora Machel secondary school in Beira, at least 12 children are orphans, said Juta Joao Sithole, who represents the nearly 350 people from the town of Buzi who shelter there.

He said the orphans are very young: 4, 5, 7-years old.

He feels for them keenly. His own two children, ages 9 and 7, are still at home in Buzi after he was plucked from a rooftop after three days without water and food and flown to Beira. With communications completely down, he has no way of reaching them, of knowing how they are.

When the orphaned children approach with questions, Sithole uses tough love and deflection: Eat this. Sleep here. Go play.

"When they ask about their parents, I tell them, 'Please keep quiet,'" he said. He tells them stories and jokes instead.

It is too difficult to talk about death. "Children are children," he said. "They don't know anything. I treat them like my own."

For more than a week after the cyclone, a 7-year-old girl waited with her older sister at the school, injured and bewildered by her mother's absence. Finally her mother appeared at the school. By then the small girl was so traumatized she couldn't say her name.

She sat alone on the concrete floor the next morning, crying, snot running down her lip, even though her mother had only stepped away. Sithole hoisted her up by one arm and tried to question her. She balances on one leg and only sniffled, her eyes swollen.

"Her health is not good," Sithole said, and helped her sit again.

Many other Mozambican children now know hunger and homelessness, and the growing risk of disease.

In the Agostinho Neto primary school in Beira, 270 children displaced by the cyclone now live in classrooms, all of them thought to have at least one guardian. They play beneath the remains of a collapsed roof, its beams now hung with drying clothes.

"It's sad. It hurts me to see families sleeping 10 people together, separated by desks," said Saoundina Tempe, a manager there with Mozambique's disaster management agency. "Newborns, pregnant women. Their lives are in jeopardy because of disease, being together in the same place."

For some children who survived the storm, a patch of sidewalk in downtown Beira is now home.

Marta Ben is surrounded by them. The 30-year-old mother of five clutched a baby to her hip, barefoot, a cooking pot bubbling nearby.

When the cyclone hit their neighborhood of shacks near the sea and peeled their roofs away, she and other young mothers gathered what children they could and fled.

"We lost some of them," she said.

On Friday she and the children marked a week on the sidewalk. They now beg to get by.

"If people give," she said simply, "we receive."

Source: Fox News World

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Soccer: Solskjaer named permanent Man United manager

FA Cup Quarter Final - Wolverhampton Wanderers v Manchester United
Soccer Football - FA Cup Quarter Final - Wolverhampton Wanderers v Manchester United - Molineux Stadium, Wolverhampton, Britain - March 16, 2019 Manchester United interim manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer before the match REUTERS/Andrew Yates

March 28, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Manchester United have appointed Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as their permanent manager on a three-year contract, the Premier League club said in a statement on Thursday.

The 46-year-old Norwegian has guided United to 14 wins in 19 matches in all competitions as caretaker boss since replacing the sacked Jose Mourinho in December.

(Reporting by Hardik Vyas in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

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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)

Source: OANN

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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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