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5-year-old child hurt in Mall of America incident

Police in Minnesota say they're investigating an incident at the Mall of America in which a child was reportedly thrown from a third-floor balcony.

Police in Bloomington tweeted that a 5-year-old child suffered injuries and was being treated at a hospital Friday. Police didn't immediately respond to a message seeking details about the incident.

The Star Tribune reports that the child was being treated at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis.

Source: Fox News National

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Suspect accused of rape just days out of jail after alleged convenience store meltdown: reports

A California man who was being held on multiple charges related to a gas station attack last month is accused of committing sexual assault just six days after a judge ordered his release.

Richard Hernandez, 25, was arrested last month for allegedly attacking a San Jose gas station's convenience store. Video from the incident shows a visibly riled suspect appearing to throw sticks at a store employee. The suspect then storms out of the store and returns with a rock, which he throws at one of the windows.

Two employees are seen in the video chasing the suspect, then holding him until police arrive.

Hernandez was arrested on three counts of assault with a deadly weapon, San Jose's KNTV-TV reported. Prosecutors recommended that Hernandez be kept in jail pending further legal action, but a judge ordered his release on bail, the station reported.

WASHINGTON WOMAN RAPED AFTER GETTING INTO FAKE RIDE-SHARE, PERSON OF INTEREST SOUGHT, POLICE SAY

Six days later -- and less than five miles from the gas station -- Hernandez allegedly sexually assaulted a 28-year-old woman in her bedroom. He now faces felony charges of sexual battery, and sexual assault with intent to commit rape and burglary, police said.

“I didn’t know the judge would do that, with what we’ve seen with the video,” said Nilesh Bhadani, owner of the gas station. “It showed you he shouldn’t be roaming around in the streets.”

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Hernandez had allegedly caused another scene before the attack, and was arrested for refusing to leave, Bhadani said. Court records cited by KNTV indicate Hernandez has been in and out of mental health court over the past seven years.

“We deserve better than this,” Bhadani said.

The district attorney's office said it is reviewing Hernandez's multiple cases, San Francisco's KRON-TV reported.

Source: Fox News National

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California attorney allegedly uses shoe camera to look up girl’s dress at Apple store

A 66-year-old licensed Bay Area lawyer was arrested Sunday after he allegedly taped a camera to his shoe and then “moved his shoe so that the camera was under a female juvenile’s dress” at an Apple Store in Walnut Creek, Calif., police said.

WISCONSIN BROTHERS ACCUSED OF YEARS-LONG SEXUAL ABUSE OF SIBLINGS; FATHER BLAMED ‘RAGING HORMONES’

Jacques Bloxham, who is a personal injury attorney, was reportedly confronted by the girl’s father and fled the store. Officers said they found various cameras and recording devices in the suspect’s car in addition to the one attached to his shoe.

Bloxham was arrested around 3 p.m. and booked into Contra Costa County Jail on suspicion of using a camera to secretly record the undergarments of another person, along with annoying or molesting a child under 18, San Francisco Chronicle reported. He later posted bail.

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Police are investigating whether Bloxham recorded others and urge anyone with information to call the Walnut Creek Police Department.

Bloxham was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1986. He founded the Injury Law Center "in response to the public's need for a personal injury attorney with honesty, integrity and a new understanding of the needs of injured clients," according to his Yelp business profile.

Source: Fox News National

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Trump Campaign Warns TV Producers About 'Credibility of Certain Guests'

The Trump campaign on Monday warned TV producers about the “credibility of certain guests” following Attorney General William Barr’s summary that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found no evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign or his associates with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

The guests included Sen. Richard Blumental, Reps. Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, Eric Swalwell, DNC Chairman Tom Perez and former CIA Director John Brennan.

“Moving forward, we ask that you employ basic journalistic standards when booking such guests to appear anywhere in your universe of productions,” the memo said. “You should begin by asking the basic question: “Does this guest warrant further appearances in our programming, given the outrageous and unsupported claims made in the past?”

Trump campaign director of communications Tim Murtaugh issued the memo.

“At a minimum, if these guests do reappear, you should replay the prior statements and challenge them to provide the evidence which prompted them to make the wild claims in the first place,” Murtaugh added.

Swalwell fired back on Twitter.

“The only person who has been caught lying about Russia is Donald Trump,” Swalwell said. “If he thinks I’ve made a false statement, he can sue me. And I’ll beat him in court.”

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Valid or voodoo? Monetary theory may appeal in Europe’s ‘age of rage’

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey hold a news conference for their proposed
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey hold a news conference for their proposed "Green New Deal" to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., Feb. 7, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

March 18, 2019

By Julien Ponthus, Tommy Wilkes and Ritvik Carvalho

LONDON (Reuters) – Having spent three years and more than 2.6 trillion euros ($3 trillion) trying to boost economic growth across the euro zone, the European Central Bank’s mixed record may open the door for a high-spending, radical alternative.

With populist and anti-austerity parties looking to build support before European parliamentary elections in May just as growth withers, so-called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is challenging conventional thinking on debt, deficits and how economies should be run.

Popularized by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a rising star of the American left, MMT posits in essence that a country with the ability to print its own currency can create and spend money freely, so long as inflation is kept under control.

The country can’t be forced into defaulting on its debts since it can always print money to pay creditors, the theory runs.

It’s music to the ears of European populists demanding a ramp-up in public spending to fight unemployment and finance social programs. Years of central bank quantitative easing (QE), they say, have done little except inflate financial asset prices.

MMT is about financing government spending and the real economy, its advocates say, while QE is solely designed to stimulate financial markets through massive purchases of private and public bonds on the secondary market.

MMT is unlikely to be put into practice in the euro zone any time soon. Rules of the currency area make it impossible for member states to print money unilaterally, and mainstream policymakers have derided the economics behind it.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has called MMT “voodoo” thinking.

But the ideas underpinning the theory are helping shape an ideological push against European fiscal orthodoxy and policymakers’ reluctance to consider big public debt-funded investment schemes.

“Post-European elections, there will be much more talk at a European level of (fiscal) spending and stimulus,” John Roe, a fund manager at Legal & General Investment Management, Britain’s biggest asset manager, told Reuters.

NEW DEAL

Roe noted calls for a vast publicly funded “Green New Deal”, as touted by some left-wing U.S. Democrats, are yet to materialize in Europe. But demands for such a policy remain a possibility which investors should take seriously.

The ECB’s admission this month that QE had failed to lift inflation and economic growth, and that it would leave interest rates at rock-bottom until at least 2020, leaves it vulnerable to calls for a drastic rethink.

“Real-world Modern Monetary Theory, defined as the monetization of large public deficits by the central bank, would be most advisable in the eurozone,” even if close to impossible to implement in the bloc, said Vincent Deluard, an analyst at financial advisory firm INTL FCStone.

(GRAPHIC: Euro zone growth and inflation – https://tmsnrt.rs/2UwLSzu)

POPULIST ROUTE

With talk of Europe slipping into a spiral of “Japanification”, a combination of weak growth and low inflation, pressure is building for fresh policy approaches, although advocates of MMT are yet to appear in European discourse as frequently as they have in the United States.

That could be about to change.

“People are assuming that if there’s a continued European economic slowdown after the European elections, European politicians will say Europe needs more infrastructure and they think they can print money at no extra cost”, said Saxo Bank’s chief investment officer Steen Jakobsen.

There have already been some moves towards an MMT-type approach.

British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 proposed “people’s QE”, a government-directed central bank-financed scheme to fund infrastructure.

More recently, Italy’s ruling parties have been in a standoff with Brussels over their desire to end an EU-imposed fiscal straightjacket and spend more to revive a struggling economy.

French President Emmanuel Macron has beefed up public spending to defuse violent “yellow vest” street protests.

In a research note titled “The age of rage, what populism means for markets”, Rabobank market strategist Michael Every said investors should expect populist parties to use MMT to bolster their calls for higher public spending.

Markets should “to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead”, Every warned.

ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Little of this means much unless politicians ready to rip up the macroeconomic rulebook can make it into office. And the financial establishment is unsurprisingly near universal in its condemnation.

They argue that governments let loose to print money can set off a spiral into hyperinflation and economic collapse.

“The general idea that government debt can be financed by central banks is a dangerous proposition”, ECB chief economist Peter Praet said in a recent online Q&A.

“In the past, this has resulted in hyperinflation and economic turmoil”, Praet said, adding: “That’s why central banks are independent”.

A poll http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/modern-monetary-theory conducted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business found that 88 percent of economic experts disagreed with the idea that countries able to borrow in their own currencies need not worry about government deficits because they can always print money to finance their debts.

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, a fiscal hawk, has also slammed MMT, calling it an “extreme argument that won’t be accepted widely.”

(GRAPHIC: MMT poll – https://tmsnrt.rs/2UAFmHZ)

UNLIKELY EVENTS

The debates around MMT might seem unlikely to rouse the average European, but interest is growing – “MMT” is a more searched term on Google than “ECB”.

For an interactive version of the below chart, click here https://tmsnrt.rs/2O4KOAd.

In a newsletter, East West Investment Management analyst Kevin Muir noted widespread anger among electorates in leading economies, arguing: “Monetary stimulus with fiscal austerity doesn’t do anything except make the rich richer.”

And while MMT might sound like a political and economic fantasy, some economists warn against discounting the momentum of populist waves: Britain’s vote to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump had both been viewed as improbable.

Societe Generale analyst Albert Edwards believes that the next recession is likely to see the normalization of ideas such as the “People’s QE” proposed by Britain’s Corbyn, where money “just doesn’t get thrown (like) … confetti in the financial markets but is actually channeled into tax cuts or into public investment projects”.

(Additional reporting by Josephine Mason, Karin Strohecker, Helen Reid and Abhinav Ramnarayan; Editing by David Holmes)

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Egyptian voters urged to allow el-Sissi rule until 2030

Egyptian pro-government media are urging a "Yes" vote on the second day of a nationwide referendum that would allow President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to stay in power until 2030.

Polls reopened at 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) Sunday. Voting will continue through Monday to allow maximum turnout, which the government hopes will lend the referendum legitimacy.

Election officials say results are expected within a week.

Opposition parties have called on voters to reject the changes, blasted by critics as a major step back to authoritarianism.

Voting comes amid an unprecedented crackdown on dissent since the 2013 military ouster of an elected but divisive president.

El-Sissi came to power in 2014 and was re-elected for a second four-year term last year.

Trucks with loudspeakers drove around central Cairo Sunday morning urging high turnout.

Source: Fox News World

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2 middle school girls charged with plotting to kill 9

Two Florida middle school girls are facing charges that they planned to kill nine people.

Court documents reported by WTSP-TV say a teacher at Avon Park Middle School spotted the 14-year-olds acting "hysterically" Wednesday while seeking a folder and overheard them say they would be arrested if anyone found it. She heard one say to tell police it was a prank.

The teacher found the folder and saw a mention of guns. She alerted school officials and its police officer.

Officials say the folder included plans for getting guns, killing the victims, and disposing of their bodies.

They are charged with conspiring to commit homicide and commit kidnapping.

Prosecutors in the central Florida county didn't say whether they will be tried as adults. They are now in a juvenile jail.

Source: Fox News National

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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)

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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)

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