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Sri Lanka averts rift spilling over to UN rights session

Sri Lanka's leader has abandoned plans to oppose his prime minister's support of a United Nations resolution that would give the island nation more time to address war crime allegations stemming from its long civil war.

On the U.N. human rights council agenda this week is a report by High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet criticizing Sri Lanka for failing to fulfill its pledge to investigate alleged atrocities by the military and now-defunct Tamil Tiger rebels. The co-resolution up for adoption on Thursday would extend Sri Lanka's deadline by two years.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena came into power in 2015 promising to help the war-torn country reconcile, including by investigating allegations during the rule of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. With an eye toward upcoming elections, Sirisena has changed his stance.

Source: Fox News World

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45 Battles UN Offensive, Plus Alex Jones’ Lawyer Tells All

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Persistence and Political Correctness at Amherst

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By Richard Bernstein, RealClearInvestigations
April 23, 2019
Sometimes in the culture wars, the identity-politics camp leans so far to a politically correct extreme that liberals and conservatives alike reject it. Or so it would seem. A recent episode at Amherst College is worth examining less as a defeat for political correctness than a tactical retreat illustrating that the cult of identity politics on campus shows little sign of weakening.

Withdrawn from circulation, but why?

What happened is this: Last month Amherst’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion sent all 1,850 or so students at the elite western Massachusetts school an attractively produced 36-page brochure called the Amherst Common Language Guide, with definitions of “key diversity and inclusion terms.” Its clear emphasis: “Marginalized groups” were being oppressed by what the document called the “cisheteropatriarchy” -- a system of domination by straight white men – through racism, sexism, oppression, hegemony, and exploitation.

Within hours of the guide’s release, a member of the Amherst College Republicans leaked the brochure to the conservative Daily Wire website, which pronounced it “something out of ‘1984.’ ” A crescendo of ridicule from conservative websites and blogs followed.

But it wasn't just the right piling on. Members of the predominantly liberal Amherst faculty, who were not consulted about the guide as it was being drafted, criticized it too.

At a post-release meeting of some 70 faculty members, “the people who departed most strenuously from the guide were on the left, including transgender faculty members,” said one of those present, Francis G. Couvares, the chairman of the Amherst History Department, speaking by phone.

Soon after, the language guide was withdrawn from circulation, erased from the college website, with college President Carolyn Martin proclaiming it “counter to the core academic values of freedom of thought and expression.” End of story.

Or was it? 

Conservative bloggers weren’t the only ones portraying the Amherst Common Language Guide not as an aberration quickly withdrawn but as part of a persistent effort that will continue.

The objection among Amherst faculty wasn't so much to the politics of the document but to what seemed an effort by a branch of the college administration to impose simple, one-sided views on topics that are very much open for discussion. In other words, it contravened the idea that the college is supposed to teach students how to think, not what to think.

Carolyn "Biddy" Martin, Amherst president: The language guide was “counter to the core academic values of freedom of thought and expression.”

Amherst College

Nevertheless, people at Amherst, including some who opposed the guide, mounted strong defenses of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, saying that its intentions were honorable and that it, and others like it across the country, perform a vital, necessary function. 

“You can't blame colleges and universities or their faculties for a culture that's becoming more and more concerned with race, class, and gender,” Michaela Brangan, visiting assistant professor of law, jurisprudence, and social thought, said in a phone interview.  Brangan did not approve of the guide, which she said was “ill-conceived and ill-executed,” and she wishes faculty had known about and been involved in its making.

But she supports the ODI and its general mission, and disputes the notion that it is attempting to impose an ideology. Rather, she said, it is responding to a genuine need of an institution whose young members are often associating with people of different races or sexualities for the first time, or are themselves minorities on campus.  She feels that other language guides published at other universities have been successful, giving as an example one at the Virginia Commonwealth University. 

“The diversity mission—and the offices tasked with handling it—didn’t come out of any left-wing echo chamber,” she said in an email, referring to the phrase often used by conservatives and others to depict diversity programs as promoting a uniform point of view. “ 'Diversity' is from the  Supreme Court case UC Regents v Bakke in 1978, and was justified under First Amendment doctrine by the arch-conservative justice, Lewis Powell Jr, as the only 'compelling interest' of the state that allowed colleges to use race-conscious assessments, as part of a holistic admissions process.”

“The ODI is there for those who feel that they need it,” she continued. “The staff that is there are those who want to be doing that work with students, who are figuring out how to navigate a hierarchical, assessment-heavy college system that wasn't really made with them in mind." Those who created the guide, she said, "believed that it was responding to a need for a specific resource.”

College Row at Amherst.

Wikipedia

It is hard to read the actual Amherst Common Language Guide without being struck by its saturation in the conventional assumptions of the identity-politics left.

There's the entry on the “Male Gaze,” which emerged from “feminist film theory,” whereby “the power of looking is centralized in the man who is the bearer of the look, and the patriarchal order is reified [while] women are objectified and consumed by men.”

Or there's the one on “Intersectionality,” a fashionable term now well established at practically every institution of higher learning:  “Intersectionality,” according to the CLG, is “a term...to name the intersections of multiple, mutually reinforcing systems of oppression [showing] how the individual experience is impacted by multiple axes of oppression and privilege.” (That's correct: “Mutually reinforcing system of oppression,” and “multiple axes of oppression” in a single sentence.)

Or “Mysogynoir”: A term “coined by black queer feminist scholar Moya Bailey to describe the particular racialist sexism that black women face.”

Pretty much nobody white is spared some sort of complicity in the oppression of others.  “White Feminism,” for example, is feminism that “is predicated on the erasure of women of color.” It is “feminism absent intersectionality.” You might think that “fragile masculinity” is a condition of nervous boys calling up girls for a date, but no.  It's “a state of requiring affirmation of one's masculinity and manhood in order to feel power and dominance.”   

The term that aroused perhaps the most pungently negative comment was the one on “Capitalism,” which, according to the CLG, is “an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by state.” So far so good. But the definition continues, as if stating a universally accepted truth: This system leads to “exploitative labor practices, which affect marginalized groups disproportionately.”

The diversity bureaucracy's own publication.

Journal of Diversity in Higher Education

According to some faculty members, these definitions were written over a two-year period by the members of the Amherst ODI, which is precisely why some dissenters from multiculturalist trends didn't find the college's withdrawal of the document a clear victory for free inquiry.  The Amherst ODI's definitions, after all, didn't come from nowhere.  They arose from what critics of it call the “diversity industry,” the burgeoning number of college ODIs that are now as commonly accepted, and taken for granted, on campus as the admissions office or the football team.

The conservative City Journal in a study last year found, for example, that the University of Michigan has 100 full-time diversity officers; UC-Berkeley, 175. 

Moreover, as some studies have shown, university administrators tend to be more ideologically uniform (that is to say, more “liberal” or “progressive”) even than faculties—by a ratio of roughly 12-to-1, liberals over conservatives.  There do not appear to be any surveys of ODIs alone, but they would seem to fit the pattern, and that's probably almost inevitable, given that people with conservative ideas, or evangelical Christians, or anti-abortion feminists, seem unlikely to want be college diversity officers 

The diversity bureaucracy has its own publication, The Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, which, its website says, “offers insights into theory and research that can help guide the efforts of institutions of higher education in the pursuit of inclusive excellence,” a term that critics say sounds unobjectionable, but actually means giving preference to women and minorities over white men in hiring, rather than simply hiring the best person for the job. 

There's also a professional association, The National Association of Diversity Officers, whose annual conference in March this year was devoted to the topic “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Imperatives of the 21st Century.”  Workshops were on subjects like “The Neuroscience of Social Justice” and “So You Want to be a Chief Diversity Officer?”

The website of Amherst's ODI lists 20 staff members, including Norm J. Jones, the chief diversity and inclusion officer, a “director of inclusive leadership” two “faculty diversity and inclusion members,” an “associate dean for diversity and inclusion,” the director of the Women's and Gender Center, the director of the Queer Resource Center, the director of the Multiculturalism Resource Center, a specialist for “race education and programs,” a “dialogue coordinator,” and a “dialogue facilitator,” this last person teaching a course called “Learning and Teaching With Feminism in Mind.”

The office is the main response of Amherst to the increased presence of non-traditional students and the demand of some of them to create tolerant and supportive environments.  The college, according to available statistics, says that its student body is now 38 percent people of color, presumably including a significant number of ethnic Asians. Nearly 30 percent of students receive Pell Grants, federal subsidies given to low-income students. There are, of course, gay, lesbian, and transgender students, who in the past might have kept their sexual identities secret, but who are no longer willing to do so and feel that they are subject to discrimination and prejudice.

The irony is that the Amherst ODI, in pressing its agenda to the point of what many called self-parody, may have harmed its ability to help these students.  “Part of the problem was that they didn't get out of the bubble of the diversity community,” Couvares said, referring to the authors of the language guide.  “Even my colleagues of transgender history said, 'This is ridiculous.'” 

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One feared dead in Dutch tram shooting, terrorist motive possible: police

The site of a shooting is pictured in Utrecht
The site of a shooting is pictured in Utrecht, Netherlands, March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw

March 18, 2019

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Several people were shot, one possibly fatally, on Monday in a tram in the central Dutch city of Utrecht, in an incident police said may have had a “terrorist motive”.

Police said the suspected gunman was at large and authorities raised the terrorism threat to its highest level in Utrecht province. Schools were told to shut their doors and paramilitary police increased security at airports and other vital infrastructure. Security was stepped up at mosques.

“Several shots were fired in a tram and several people were injured. Helicopters are at the scene and no arrests have been made,” said police spokesman Joost Lanshage. He was not immediately able to provide further details.

Local broadcaster RTV Utrecht quoted a witness as saying he had seen a woman lying on the ground amid some kind of confrontation and several men ran away from the scene.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he was deeply concerned about the incident and convened crisis talks.

The incident comes after a lone gunman killed 50 people in mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, last Friday.

Utrecht, the Netherlands’ fourth largest city, is known for its picturesque canals and large student population. Gun killings are rare in Utrecht, as elsewhere in the Netherlands.

The Utrecht police said The October 21st square, a tram station stop outside the city center, had been cordoned off as emergency services were at the scene.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling and Anthony Deutsch; Writing by Gareth Jones; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Source: OANN

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Rwanda honors those killed in genocide that began 25 years ago

Flowers are seen on a grave site for victims of the Rwandan genocide at the Genocide Memorial in Gisozi in Kigali
FILE PHOTO: Flowers are seen on a grave site for victims of the Rwandan genocide at the Genocide Memorial in Gisozi in Kigali, Rwanda April 6, 2019.REUTERS/Baz Ratner

April 7, 2019

By Clement Uwiringiyimana

KIGALI (Reuters) – Rwandans will gather on Sunday to begin a solemn commemoration of the lives of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus murdered during the Rwandan genocide, a three-month-killing spree that began 25 years ago.

The ceremony marks the beginning of a week of events to honor the dead. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is scheduled to lay a wreath at Gisozi genocide memorial site, where over a quarter a million of people are buried.

In the afternoon, officials will join around 2,000 people in a “walk to remember” from parliament to the national soccer stadium, where candles will be lit in a night vigil.

At least 10 heads of state were expected to attend, Stephanie Nyombayire, head of communication at the president’s office, told journalists on Saturday. Canadian Governor General Julie Payette and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker were also expected.

The 100 days of slaughter began on April 6, 1994, after President Juvenal Habyarimana and his counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi – both Hutus – were killed when their plane was shot down over the Rwandan capital. The attackers have never been identified.

The attack mobilized Hutu government soldiers and allied extremist militia, who orchestrated the genocide to exterminate the Tutsi minority.

In villages across the densely populated country, neighbor turned on neighbor as men, women and children were hacked to death, burned alive, clubbed and shot.

As many as 10,000 people were killed daily. Seventy percent of the minority Tutsi population was wiped out, and over 10 percent of the total Rwandan population.

The fighting ended in July 1994 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi-led rebel movement led by Kagame, swept in from Uganda and seized control of the country.

Official policy is to strongly discourage any talk of ethnicity, but the opposition says the tight control of the media and political sphere is also used to stifle dissent, something the government denies.   

(Editing by Katharine Houreld and Keith Weir)

Source: OANN

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The Latest: DA to seek death penalty in 1999 slayings

The Latest on an arrest in the 1999 killings of two Alabama teenagers (all times local):

10:35 a.m.

A prosecutor says he'll seek the death penalty against a man charged in the slayings of two Alabama teenagers nearly 20 years ago.

District Attorney Kirke Adams says 45-year-old Coley McCraney can be prosecuted for capital murder in the killings of 17-year-olds Tracie Hawlett and J.B. Beasley.

Adams told a news conference Monday that one of the multiple capital counts against the man includes a charge that one of the victims was sexually assaulted during her slaying in 1999.

Authorities say they used DNA matching to confirm that evidence from the killings was tied to McCraney.

The prosecutor says he decided years ago to pursue the slayings as a death-penalty case.

McCraney was arrested Saturday. A defense lawyer says the man is cooperating with authorities.

___

9:35 a.m.

The lawyer for a suspect in the 1999 deaths of two Alabama teenagers says he's an outstanding member of the community and is cooperating with law enforcement.

Investigators in Alabama say a DNA match found through a genealogy website led them to arrest 45-year-old Coley McCraney.

McCraney faces rape and capital murder charges in the slayings of 17-year-olds Tracie Hawlett and J.B. Beasley. The girls had left Dothan, Alabama, to attend a party but never arrived. They were later found in the trunk of a car, each with a gunshot wound to the head.

Attorney David Harrison tells The Associated Press it's going to be difficult to find a jury that's not already aware of the case and that he might have to ask for another venue to get a fair trial.

___

1:30 a.m.

Authorities in Alabama say a DNA match found through a genealogy website has led to an arrest in decades-old slaying and rape case.

Al.com reports 45-year-old Coley McCraney, of Dothan, was arrested Saturday and charged with rape and capital murder in the 1999 deaths of 17-year-olds Tracie Hawlett and J.B. Beasley. Ozark police and Dale County sheriff's officials are scheduled to hold a press conference about the case on Monday.

The girls left Dothan the night of July 3, 1999, to attend a party, but they never arrived. The pair was found the next day in the trunk of Beasley's car alongside a road in Ozark, each with a gunshot wound to the head.

A different suspect was cleared after his DNA didn't match that from semen found on Beasley.

Source: Fox News National

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Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif resigns

Munich Security Conference
FILE PHOTO: Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks during the annual Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany February 17, 2019. REUTERS/Andreas Gebert

February 25, 2019

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stepped down on Monday, announcing his resignation on Instagram.

“I am apologising you for all the shortcomings … in the past years during my time as foreign minister … I thank the Iranian nation and officials,” he wrote on his Instagram page jzarif_ir.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Peter Graff)

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)

Source: OANN

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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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