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Japan’s Air Self-Defence Force confirmed early Wednesday that they had found what appear to be debris from the Lockheed Martin F-35A fighter jet that went missing on Tuesday during a routine training flight.
Leading US and international defense analysts are sweating bullets pondering the consequences of US strategic adversaries Russia and China getting their hands on components from the lost Japanese F-35 fighter.
Tyler Rogoway, a military aviation expert at The War Zone, speculated that the F-35 search may prove to be “one of the biggest underwater espionage and counter-espionage ops since the Cold War,” given that the crash was the first opportunity for America’s opponents to get their hands on a piece of the product of the US’ $1.5 trillion warplane programme.
Tom Moore, military commentator and former staff member at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, echoed Rogoway’s sentiment, warning that “there is no price too high in this world for China and Russia to pay to get Japan’s missing F-35, if they can.”
Speaking to Fox News, former Italian Air Force pilot David Cenciotti offered a more muted assessment, saying that the scope of the threat depends “on what is recovered, when it is recovered and, above all, in which conditions, after impacting the surface of the water.”
The expert noted that while Russia and China might have a hard time trying to reverse engineer the plane, “there are still lots of interesting parts that could be studied to get some interesting details: a particular onboard sensor or something that can’t be seen from the outside but could be gathered by putting your hands on chunks of the aircraft intakes or exhaust section, on the radar reflectors, etc.”
Justin Bronk, a military aviation expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based security think tank, agreed.
“The usefulness for Russia or China of recovering some or all of the wreckage would depend on how much damage the aircraft sustained upon hitting the water. The general shape of the jet is well-known, as are its performance characteristics, so not much to gain there, but parts of radar and other sensors would be prime targets for recovery and testing, [and] even attempts at reverse engineering,” Bronk said, speaking to Business Insider.
Others were more sceptical. Patrick W. Watson, a geopolitics and economic analyst at Mauldin Economics, tweeted that it was “only a matter of time” before an F-35 fell into Chinese or Russian hands. “Maybe would have been better not to bet so much on one system. Though, not nearly so profitable,” he bitterly wrote.
Ankit Panda, a defence analyst and senior editor at The Diplomat, tweeted that while “the ‘China and Russia will find the missing Japanese F-35 first’ angle is a good techno-thriller plot point,” the reality was that Japanese and US Navy anti-submarine warfare assets in the Sea of Japan were “much better positioned to locate the fighter first.”
Rogoway challenged Panda’s scepticism.
but not really. This requires specialized assets that can take time to deploy and it’s not in Japan’s territorial waters. It depends on many factors, and just grabbing a piece of it would be highly beneficial. Are we going to sink a Russian sub for being where they should be?
— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) April 10, 2019
The US and Japan have many advantages at face value. But others have a lot of capability nearby too. I can assure you this is a huge concern at this time.
— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) April 10, 2019
Other users joined in to add their two cents, with some commentators more serious than others.
Yeah, I’m sure the Chinese are desperate to steal our ridiculous boondoggle of a stealth fighter that can barely fly and is breaking down constantly.
— An idiot, babbling and strewing ️ (@AnAimlessJoy) April 10, 2019
Thank god she feel off some 250 kilometers EAST of Japan and not 250 kilometers WEST. Could have been a very diferrent situation.
— (@IntelCrab) April 10, 2019
Hmmm… single engine for maritime air ops? Bit late for a rethink on that..
— Paul (@VisitorPaul) April 9, 2019
Scubas has already left port for the Pacific pic.twitter.com/EIWKNJRKxd
— Rajkishor Pachani (@Raj_Pachani) April 9, 2019
A cynic would argue that China already has the data they need on the F-35 via espionage.
— Noochado (@Noose619) April 9, 2019
Famed memester Carpe Donktum joins Owen to discuss the insanity of Gillette’s social justice agenda.
Source: InfoWars
Men check fabric inside the Mzannar family’s textile shop, in Baabda, Lebanon February 12, 2019. REUTERS/Aziz Taher
April 10, 2019
By Ellen Francis
BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Mzannar family’s 300-year-old textile business survived Lebanon’s civil war by making uniforms for militiamen. But its business savvy was no match for years of economic malaise that followed and it has now shut its factory.
The head of Lebanon’s chamber of commerce chief said last year nearly 2,200 businesses had closed, warning that more would collapse. And while there is dispute over those numbers, Lebanese mostly agree the economy is in dire shape.
For Naji Mzannar, who started working at the fabric factory in the 70s before running it, an array of challenges drove the decline of his business and its inability to compete with cheaper goods from abroad.
“It was a build-up. Everything became losses, losses,” he said. “How long are you supposed to keep suffering?”
Built in 1946 and spread over three storeys, the factory made textiles for clothing and household use such as curtains or towels. Mzannar fought to keep it afloat until production came to a halt in 2018.
In interviews with Reuters, business owners such as Mzannar, employees, and experts blamed the slowdown on problems including regional turmoil, lousy infrastructure, government waste or corruption, and high interest rates.
Whether the new government tries to improve conditions, as it vows urgently to do, the effects of years of political sclerosis and stalled reforms are already inescapable: more companies going out of business and workers losing jobs.
The government publishes few reliable economic statistics, and gives no regular unemployment numbers, but last year Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said it stood at about 30 percent.
With pillars such as tourism and real estate in the doldrums, economic growth has averaged 1-2 percent since the conflict erupted in neighboring Syria in 2011, after averaging 8-9 percent growth in the years before that.
“There is a deterioration. There is a rise in companies closing down and in unemployment. For sure, they come together,” said former economy minister Raed Khoury.
“There are small and medium companies suffering a lot.”
Daily state power and water cuts leave industrialists relying on private supplies that push up costs. Taxes have gone up, but neither infrastructure nor public services have improved.
For some firms, Syria’s war blocked access to neighboring markets and added security measures congesting the roads.
With a risky political climate and a currency pegged to the dollar, Lebanon has high interest rates that keep deposits flowing into its banks. But these rates also discourage borrowing – which producers such as Mzannar need to invest in new machinery.
The policies that have kept the Lebanese pound stable through turmoil at the same time failed to protect or boost local production, Mzannar and others said.
The number of his employees went from a peak of 75 to 40 in about 2010, and eventually only 10 people were left.
They still work for him, but at a shop near the factory selling bales of cloth it had produced, as well as imported textiles from Europe.
While his shop fares much better than the factory, he, like many others, fears people have less to spend. “We felt this the most in 2018.” Sales halved last year and traders he had worked with for many years went bankrupt.
The remaining, old machines, stopped spinning a few months ago. Mzannar remembers playing in the factory when he was a young boy, but his own three children have all gone to work abroad.
(Reporting by Ellen Francis, additional reporting by Alaa Kanaan and Yara Abi Nader; Writing by Angus McDowall and Ellen Francis; Editing by Alison Williams)
Source: OANN
Conservative activist Candace Owens derailed Jerry Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on “Hate Crimes and White Nationalism” by calling it out as a farce to scare minorities into supporting censorship and the Democratic Party.
CANDACE OWENS, TURNING POINT USA: Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Mr. Collins thank you for having me here today. I received word on my way in that many of the journalist were confused as to why I was invited and none of them knew that I am myself was a victim of a hate crime when I was in high school. That is something that very few people know about me because the media and the journalists on the left are not interested in telling the truth about me because I don’t fit the stereotype of what they like to see in black people. I am a Democrat. I support the President of the United States and I advocate for things that are actually affecting the black community.
I am honored to be here today in front of you all because the person sitting behind me is my 75-year-old grandfather. I have always considered myself to be my grandfather’s child and I mean to say that my sense of humor, my passion and my work ethic all comes from the man that is sitting behind me.
My grandfather grew up on a sharecropping farm in the segregated South. He grew up in an America where words like racism and white nationalism held real meaning under the Democratic Party’s Jim Crow laws. My grandfather’s first job was given to him at the age of five years old and his job was to lay tobacco out to dry in an addict in the South. My grandfather has picked cotton and he has also had experiences with the Democrat terrorist organization of that time, the Ku Klux Klan. They would regularly visit his home and they would shoot bullets into it. They had an issue with his father, my great-grandfather.
During my formative years I have the privilege of growing up in my grandfather’s home. It is going to shock the committee but not once, not in a single breath of a conversation did my grandfather and tell me that I could not do something because of my skin color. Not once did my grandfather hold a gripe against the white man. I was simply never taught to view myself as a victim because of my heritage. I–I learned about faith in God, family and hard work. Those were the only lessons of my childhood.
There isn’t a single adult today that in good conscience would make the argument that America is a more racist, more white nationalist society than it was when my grandfather was growing up and yet we are hearing these terms center around today because what they want to say is that brown people need to be scared which seems to be the narrative that we hear every four years right ahead of a presidential election.
Here are some things we never hear. 75 percent of the black boys in California don’t meet state reading standards. In inner cities like Baltimore within five high schools and one middle school not a single student was found to be proficient in math or reading in 2016. The singlehood–these single motherhood rate in the black community which is at 23 percent in the 1960s when my grandfather was coming out is at a staggering 74 percent today. I am guessing there will be no committee hearings about that. There are more black babies born–there are more black babies aborted than born alive in cities like New York and you have Democrat governor Andrew Cuomo lighting of buildings to celebrate late-term abortions. I could go on and on. My point is that white nationalist–white nationalism does not do any of those things that I just brought up. Democrat policies did. Let me be clear the hearing today is not about white nationalism or hate crimes, it is about fear mongering, power and control. It is a preview of a Democrat 20/20 election strategy the same as the Democrat 2016 election strategy. They blame Facebook. They blame Google. They blame Twitter. Really, they blame the birth of social media which has disrupted their monopoly on minds. They called this hearing because they believe that if it wasn’t for social media voices like mine would never exist, that my movement Blexit which is inspiring lack of Americans to lead–to leave the Democrat party would have never come about and they certainly believe that Donald Trump would not be in office today.
Looking on the next thing to focus on now that the Russian collusion hoax has fallen apart. What they won’t tell you about the statistics and the rise of white nationalism is that they have simply change the data set points by widening the definition of hate crimes and upping the number of reporting agencies that are able to report on them. What I mean to say is that they are manipulating statistics.
The goal here is to scare Blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims into helping them censor dissenting opinions ultimately to helping them regain control of our countries narrative which they feel that they lost. They feel that President Donald Trump should not have beat Hillary. If they actually were concerned about white nationalism, they would be holding hearings on Antifa, a far left, violent, white gang who determined one day in Philadelphia in August that I, a black woman, was not fit to sit in a restaurant. They chased me out, they yield race traitor to a group of black and Hispanic police officers who formed a line to protect me from their ongoing assaults. They threw water at me. They threw eggs at me and the leftist media remained silent on it.
If they were serious about the rise of hate crimes they may perhaps be examining themselves and the hate they have drummed up in this country. Bottom line is that white supremacy, racism, national–white nationalism, words that once held real meaning have now become nothing more than election strategies. Every four years the black communities offered handouts and fear, handouts and fear. Reparations and white nationalism. This is the Democrat preview. Of course society is not perfectible. We have heard testimony of that today. There are pockets of evil that exist in those things are horrible and they should be condemned. But I believe the legacy of the ancestry of black Americans is being insulted every single day. I will not pretend to be a victim in this country. I know that that makes many country on the left uncomfortable. I want to talk about real issues in black America theater want to talk about real issues in this country, real concerns.
The biggest scandal–this is my last sentence–in American politics is that Democrats have been conning minorities into the belief that we are perpetual victims all but ensuring our failure. Racial division and class warfare are central to the Democrat party platform. They need Blacks to hate whites, the rich to hate the poor. Soon enough it will be the tall hating the short.
The whole hearing was a farce but Owens managed to successfully flip the script and stole the show!
Source: InfoWars
A tear falls down the face of Maria Jofresse, 25, during an interview with Reuters at a camp for the displaced in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai, in John Segredo, near Beira, Mozambique, March 31, 2019. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
April 10, 2019
By Stephen Eisenhammer and Zohra Bensemra
CHEIA, Mozambique (Reuters) – Maria Jofresse cannot find her two young daughters’ graves, though she helped dig them herself.
A single teardrop swells beneath each of her dark eyes as she recalls the moment the girls were snatched away by the fast-flowing floodwaters.
It took four days to find their bodies, which were buried where Cyclone Idai had left them, far from where they lived.
“I cannot recognize it anymore,” the 25-year-old mother said, drying her eyes with a patch of patterned skirt at a makeshift camp of blue tarpaulin, near the riverside village of Cheia. “I cannot find them.”
On the night of the storm, Jofresse took shelter at her mother-in-law’s house with her husband and children, a 6-month-old baby and 4-year-old girl.
The next day, the river beside the village broke its banks and water rushed in. The family fled, trying to reach the main road, which lies on higher ground.
But the water was too quick. Afraid they’d drown, the family climbed into a single cashew tree.
For 11 hours they clung to its branches, Jofresse cradling the baby while her husband held their eldest girl.
At 10 pm, in total darkness, the flood ripped the tree’s roots from the soaked earth, throwing the family into the fast-flowing water and separating them.
Jofresse survived by grabbing onto another tree. The next day, wading through the now largely stagnant water, she found her husband. Together they searched for the girls.
On the morning of the fourth day, they found the body of their eldest, and in the afternoon, their lifeless baby.
The children were among more than 800 people killed in the storm and the heavy rains before it struck Mozambique and two other southern African countries, Zimbabwe and Malawi.
After digging two small graves, the couple joined other families at the camp set up just a few kilometers (miles) from their destroyed home.
“We will stay here, because there’s nothing to go back to,” Jofresse said, sitting in a small square of shade at the camp.
“You can come and live with me,” her father, Joao Jofresse Ngira, interjected, distraught at his daughter’s pain.
Jofresse does not answer.
It is not the first time she has lost a home. In 2000, when she was just 5, devastating floods destroyed her nearby village of Mashongo.
The government moved the family to a new community, built for those with nowhere to go after that disaster.
Ngira showed Reuters around the village, located by the River Muda. It became known as Cheia, or “Flood” in Portuguese – “because we were brought here from the water,” he explained.
The spot was chosen because it was on higher ground and less prone to flooding.
“It was meant to be safe,” he said, standing outside the ruins of the four-room house the government helped him build. Five young children played in the pile of broken bricks and cracked cement.
Cheia’s fate shows how climate change is threatening places that just under two decades ago were considered safe.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the catastrophe in Mozambique rings “yet another alarm bell” about the dangers of global warming, which scientists say will make devastating storms like Cyclone Idai more frequent.
“Since this disaster, we haven’t seen anyone from the government, even though they’re the ones that put us here,” Ngira said.
Asked if he would like to move somewhere else, he looks down at his muddy yellow trainers, before replying: “I don’t have any money. It’s best not to dream.”
On the Sunday Reuters visited, the camp bustled with rumors that food would be delivered that afternoon.
It had been a week since the last bit of aid arrived and people were hungry. Jofresse canceled a memorial service for her daughters because she feared the food might arrive while she was gone.
When the aid finally comes, Jofresse unpacks the parcel in her blue tent. There is a set of nappies.
She puts them to one side.
Click on https://reut.rs/2UHekC4 for a related photo essay.
(Writing by Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Alexandra Zavis and Alexandra Hudson)
Source: OANN
U.S. President Donald Trump waits to welcome Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to the White House in Washington, U.S., April 9, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
April 10, 2019
By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump will issue two executive orders in the heart of the Texas energy hub on Wednesday seeking to speed gas, coal and oil projects delayed by coastal states as he looks to build support ahead of next year’s election.
Trump’s orders will direct his Environmental Protection Agency to change a part of the U.S. clean water law that has allowed states, on the basis of environmental reasons, to delay projects such as pipelines to carry natural gas to New England and coal export terminals on the West Coast.
Trump will issue the orders at a training center for union members in the petroleum industry in Houston, an event sandwiched between fundraising events in Texas for the 2020 campaign.
“Outdated federal guidance and regulations issued by the EPA have caused confusion and uncertainty leading to project delays, lost jobs and reduced economic performance,” a senior administration official told reporters in a conference call. “We are not trying to take away power from the states, but we are trying to make sure that state actions comply with the statutory intent of the law.”
An environmentalist decried the planned orders. “Trump can try to rewrite regulations in favor of Big Oil, but he can’t stop people power and our movement,” said May Boeve, the head of 350.org.
The orders will direct the EPA to review and update guidance issued during the administration of President Barack Obama on the so-called 401 provision of the Clean Water Act. The measure required companies to get certifications from states before building interstate pipelines approved by the federal government.
New York state used it to block pipelines that would send natural gas to New England, forcing the region at times to import liquefied natural gas from countries including Russia.
In 2017, Washington state Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat and 2020 candidate for president, denied a water permit for the Millennium Bulk Terminal, a coal export facility that would have expanded the ability of companies to send western coal to Asian markets.
‘ENERGY DOMINANCE’
The executive orders are part of the Trump administration’s policy of “energy dominance” to increase oil, gas and coal production, but forcing the EPA changes will take time. The official said the agency would have to follow normal procedures, including a comment period, and that projects already tied up in litigation “are obviously a much longer-term issue.”
One of the orders will direct the transportation secretary to propose allowing liquefied natural gas, a liquid form of the fuel, to be shipped in approved rail cars, a change that could increase its flow between terminals and markets.
The executive orders could also speed projects in Texas. Energy investors vying for permits to build oil export terminals along the Gulf Coast say they have worked closely with Trump officials in a bid to speed regulatory reviews of facilities capable of loading supertankers.
U.S. and state agencies overseeing permit applications have taken too long to approve projects, the investors said, adding they were worried their projects would miss the most profitable years of the U.S. crude export boom.
Four energy groups led by Trafigura AG, Carlyle Group, Enterprise Products Partners LP and Enbridge Inc have applied to build terminals in Texas.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Collin Eaton in Houston; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Source: OANN
Democrats are holding up a major disaster relief bill to seek revenge for GOP opposition to a $51 billion aid package for New York in 2013 after it was hit by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, The Hill reports.
Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., referenced a conversation with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., as proof.
“The senator from Vermont called me last Friday and said, ‘I want to show you something,’ so he sent over this two-page spread on that vote. Of the 37 ‘no’ votes, I was one of them,” Isakson said when he was asked whether Democrats were stalling disaster relief to exact revenge.
“We had a few words,” Isakson added.
Isakson voted against the 2013 measure.
“It’s Sandy payback,” another GOP Senator told The Hill.
Senate Democrats on Monday stonewalled a bill from getting to a final floor vote over what they said was a lack of funds for Puerto Rico.
The proposal, which failed in a 44-49 vote, would have provided $600 million in nutrition assistance to Puerto Rico, but no additional funds to bolster flood protection and repair the electrical grid.
The Caribbean island is still reeling from back-to-back hurricanes in 2017 that uprooted trees, destroyed homes and knocked out power to the entire island.
The House passed a $14.2 billion disaster recovery bill earlier this year that included funds that could be used by Puerto Rico to rebuild its water systems.
Source: NewsMax America
FILE PHOTO: A car waits to enter the financial district security zone near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., March 23, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
April 9, 2019
By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street is bracing for large U.S. companies to report a decline in quarterly profits even after raking in higher revenues, something that has not happened in more than a decade.
S&P 500 companies due to report in the coming weeks face tough comparisons with last year, when the U.S. tax code overhaul helped boost profits by more than 20%.
But with rising costs, some resulting from tariffs, analysts see profit margins shrinking by 1.1 percentage point, the first year-over-year decline in at least two years, IBES data from Refinitiv showed.
“Companies are experiencing rising input costs as well as increases in labor costs from modestly rising wages,” said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco in New York.
First-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are expected to fall 2.5% from a year earlier, which would mark the first quarterly U.S. decline since 2016. Revenue is meanwhile seen up 4.8%.
Costs for certain raw materials like aluminum have increased as the United States slapped tariffs on imports from China and other countries.
First-quarter earnings could be crucial to the bull market’s continued success, with some investors seeing them as the catalyst to either lift stocks to all-time highs or pour cold water on the rally.
Stocks have bounced back from a late-2018 selloff on optimism that the United State could seal a trade deal with China and expectations the Federal Reserve would not raise interest rates again any time soon.
Delta Air Lines Inc is due to report on Wednesday, while JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo & Co report on Friday. Results from Netflix Inc and some big industrial names like Honeywell International Inc are expected next week.
DIVIDED OUTLOOK
The last time profits fell while revenue grew was the third quarter of 2008, in the depths of the financial crisis. Still, strategists appear divided on what the rest of the year holds for earnings.
It is also not unusual for S&P 500 companies to top analyst expectations.
Since 1994, S&P 500 earnings have beaten estimates by an average of 3.2%, based on Refinitiv data, and some strategists think the S&P 500 will end up posting growth for the first quarter.
And nearly 83% of earnings are beating analysts’ expectations so far this quarter, based on the 23 S&P 500 companies that have already reported.
“Earnings bars for the first quarter are so low companies are going to trip over them,” said Nick Raich, chief executive of The Earnings Scout, an independent research firm.
Projected sales growth through the rest of the year may also help investors look through any first-quarter margin dips.
“Revenue growth has been extremely stable throughout 2018 and is expected to remain so in the year ahead,” Jonathan Golub, chief U.S. equity strategist at Credit Suisse Securities in New York, wrote in a note on Monday.
“We believe that investors will focus on the breadth and consistency of top-line results, versus 1Q margin pressures,” wrote Golub.
WARNING SIGNS
Other strategists are more cautious. First-quarter results are likely to mark the start of an S&P 500 profit recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of earnings declines, according to Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s equity strategist.
“Our earnings growth leading indicator suggests (the first quarter) won’t be the trough for this year,” Wilson wrote in a note.
Warning signs are coming from technology companies, with semiconductors, which have a large revenue exposure to China, seen among the most sensitive to the trade conflict.
Tech stocks have outperformed the broader market so far this year, but Wilson said the sector had the biggest percentage of companies missing fourth-quarter margin estimates even as the number of management comments on margin expansion reached new highs.
Year-over-year first-quarter earnings for S&P 500 tech companies are expected to fall 6.1%, according to Refinitiv.
Wilson said margin results will be important to watch, and that wage pressures appear to be rising. He noted that the number of mentions of labor costs during earnings calls in the last reporting period was the highest since 2005.
But first-quarter performance is expected to be uneven across sectors.
Profit margins are eroding for several heavily weighted companies including Apple Inc and Exxon Mobil Corp, but not across the board for S&P 500 companies, Golub said.
Despite a first-quarter surge, oil prices were still down from last year, and earnings from the S&P 500 energy sector are expected to drop 21.2%.
The rallying dollar will likely be a negative for U.S. multinational companies, whose foreign currency earnings are worth less when the dollar is stronger.
The dollar rose 6.2% on a trade-weighted basis in the quarter, its strongest performance on a year-over-year basis since the fourth quarter of 2015.
The dollar gains could mean a 2.4 percentage point drag on earnings in the quarter, said Binky Chadha, chief U.S. equity and global strategist and head of asset allocation at Deutsche Bank in New York. But, he said, that drag is likely to lessen from here.
(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; additional reporting by Lewis Krauskopf in New York; Editing by Alden Bentley and Meredith Mazzilli)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A man gestures next to his car after it was swept into debris left by Cyclone Idai in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe, March 23, 2019. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo/File Photo
April 9, 2019
HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe appealed on Tuesday for $613 million in aid from local and foreign donors to cover food imports and help with a humanitarian crisis after a severe drought and a cyclone that battered the east of the country.
An El Nino-induced drought has wilted crops across Zimbabwe and left about a third of its 15 million people in need of food assistance, according to a U.N. agency.
The situation was worsened when Zimbabwe, along with Mozambique and Malawi, were last month battered by Cyclone Idai, leaving hundreds of thousands needing food, water and shelter.
An appeal document given to reporters by the ministry of information showed the government is seeking about $300 million in aid for food while the rest would fund emergency shelters, logistics and telecommunications among other needs.
Hundreds of people have died in Mozambique and Malawi and the death toll in Zimbabwe was now 344.
Meanwhile, Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said the cabinet had hiked the maize price paid to farmers by 86 percent to $232 a tonne and maintained a subsidy for millers in a bid to keep the price of the staple maize meal down.
In February, Zimbabwe scrapped a 1:1 peg between the U.S. dollar and the bond notes and electronic dollars it introduced to compensate for its hard currency shortage, merging the surrogate currencies into the RTGS dollar.
Mutsvangwa said farmers would be paid 726 RTGS dollars ($232), up from 390 RTGS dollars.
The RTGS dollar was trading at 3.12 to the U.S. dollar on Tuesday on the bank market and at 4.4 on the black market.
The government is the sole buyer and seller of maize in Zimbabwe through the state-owned Grain Marketing Board.
(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro touches a gold bar as he speaks during a meeting with the ministers responsible for the economic sector at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo
April 9, 2019
By Mayela Armas
CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela removed eight tonnes of gold from the central bank’s vaults last week, and the cash-strapped socialist state is expected to sell the bullion abroad as it seeks to raise hard currency in the face of U.S. sanctions, a lawmaker and one government source said.
With sanctions imposed by Washington choking off revenues from exports by state oil company PDVSA, President Nicolas Maduro’s increasingly isolated administration has turned to sales of Venezuela’s substantial gold reserves as one of the only sources of foreign currency.
The government source said the Central Bank’s reserves had fallen by 30 tonnes since the start of the year before U.S. President Donald Trump tightened sanctions, leaving the bank with around 100 tonnes in its vaults, worth more than $4 billion.
At that rate of decline, the central bank’s reserves would nearly disappear by the end of the year, leaving Maduro’s government struggling to pay for imports of basic goods.
Neither Venezuela’s central bank nor its information ministry responded to requests for comment.
Trump’s administration has declared Venezuela part of a “troika of tyranny” in Latin America, including left-leaning governments in Cuba and Nicaragua. It is seeking to cut off cash flow to Maduro’s government, foster dissent in the armed forces and oust him from power in the OPEC nation.
The United States and 50 other Western nations have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate president.
Guaido invoked the Constitution in January to assume an interim presidency, saying Maduro’s May 2018 re-election vote was a sham. Maduro has branded Guaido a U.S. puppet and accused him of collaborating with Washington to sabotage the economy.
Opposition lawmakers have blasted companies buying Venezuelan gold or holding it as collateral for loans, saying they are giving Maduro a financial lifeline during an economic and humanitarian crisis.
Aside from the reserves held by the Central Bank in Caracas, Guaido is attempting to freeze bank accounts and gold owned by Venezuela abroad. This includes 31 tonnes in the Bank of England worth an estimated $1.3 billion.
BLACKOUTS AND WATER SHORTAGES
Venezuela’s economy is in a sixth year of recession, suffering hyperinflation and shortages of basic goods like food and medicine. Maduro eased restrictions on foreign exchange this year, but the economy remains desperately short of hard currency needed to import goods.
Last week’s operation took place while only high-level officials were present at the central bank’s offices, given that most rank-and-file employees stayed home due to blackouts and water shortages that have plagued Venezuela in the past month, the government source said.
“They moved gold out while the central bank was in contingency mode,” opposition lawmaker Angel Alvarado said, adding that the bars would be sold abroad, though he did not know the destination.
A similar quantity of gold was removed from the central bank’s vaults in February.
Washington in January asked foreign gold buyers to stop doing business with the Venezuelan government. This prompted Venezuela to cancel a planned sale of 29 tonnes of gold to the United Arab Emirates.
But in February and March the central bank continued to authorize the movement of gold, the government source said, adding that it was aiming to sell small quantities.
Earlier this year, Abu Dhabi investment firm Noor Capital said it bought 3 tonnes of gold from Venezuela on Jan. 21, but would not buy more until the situation in the country stabilized.
And in March, Ugandan authorities said they were investigating the country’s biggest gold refinery over imports of an estimated 7.4 tonnes of gold – valued at around $300 million – after state-run media reported it could have originated from Venezuela.
(Reporting by Mayela Armas; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Daniel Flynn and David Gregorio)
Source: OANN
A police officer leads an Iraqi suspect who was arrested for drug-related crimes at a police station in Basra, Iraq February 25, 2019. Picture taken February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Essam al-Sudani
April 9, 2019
By Ahmed Aboulenein
BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) – The southern Iraqi city of Basra is struggling to cope with a growing drug problem that has overcrowded prisons and strained police resources, only months after violent protests over poor municipal services.
Basra’s prison system is clogged up and creaking. On a recent day in one police station, Reuters reporters saw about 150 men, their heads shaved, squatting in two small, cramped holding cells.
Arrests of drug users and dealers have shot up in the past year, further stretching prison services and police in a sign that the problems with municipal resources that prompted protests in Basra last summer have not gone away.
“Drugs spread because the youth are lost, they have no money, they are sick of life. It’s escapism,” Major Shaker Aziz, a senior member of Basra police narcotics unit, told Reuters.
“Prison authorities tell us: ‘Ninety percent of inmates are convicted on drug charges, stop sending them.’ So we keep them here,” Aziz said of the holding cells.
The situation in prisons, worsened by a lack of treatment centers for recovering addicts, highlights the contrast between the wealth Basra province produces – its oil contributes over 90 percent of state revenues – and its poor living conditions.
Once known as the Venice of the East, Basra city, which has a population of 4 million, lacks clean water and does not have enough electricity to power air conditioners in the scorching summer heat. Unemployment is widespread, especially among youth.
Thousands protested against the conditions, unemployment and corruption last summer, when searing heat made matters worse and hundreds were treated in hospital after drinking unclean water. Protesters set ablaze government buildings and political groups’ headquarters, and clashed with police.
Officials fear a repeat of the violence this year, and while the drug problem is a concern in several areas of Iraq, Basra suffers from it the most.
STEADY RISE
Basra is struggling even though Iraq declared victory in the four-year war against Islamic State in 2017, and the city never fell to the militant Sunni Islamist group.
The number of drug arrests has risen year-on-year since 2015, Aziz said. By March, police had picked up 15 kilograms (33 lb) of illegal drugs this year, half of 2018’s entire haul. Some 50 to 60 people are arrested each week on drugs-related offences, compared to more than 1,000 all last year, he said.
Methamphetamine, known popularly as crystal meth, is the most widespread drug, said a police spokesman, Colonel Bassem Ghanem. Opium, cannabis and pill abuse are also common.
Basra’s police department says 97 percent of drug users arrested in 2018 were unemployed, and more than two thirds were 25 or younger.
All the drugs come from abroad, said Colonel Ismail al-Maliki, who heads the Basra police narcotics unit.
Basra Police Chief Rashid Fleih said in November that 80 percent of drugs entering the city come from Iran. Tehran denied this but officials still point the finger indirectly at Iran, using euphemisms such as “neighboring countries”.
Preventing drug trafficking is a serious challenge for Iran which borders Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, and Pakistan, a major transit country for drugs.
Iraq once had the death penalty for users and dealers but passed new legislation in 2017 under which judges can order rehabilitation for users or sentence them to jail for up to three years. In the absence of rehab centers, they are jailed. Under the new law, the health ministry was given two years to provide rehab centers.
Local health officials pledged to reopen and upgrade a 44-bed rehabilitation center this month but the police say 44 beds is not enough.
“All of Basra’s oil and we can’t afford rehab?” said Aziz.
Asked about the situation, the state-owned Basra Oil Company said it has pledged $5 million for a rehab center.
‘SMOKING FOR FREE’
Inside a training complex on the edge of Basra province, police have re-purposed a building as a makeshift rehab center for users nearing release.
About 40 men live in comparatively comfortable conditions, sleeping six per room with access to television, a gym and books. Clerics, officers and teachers lecture on the sinfulness and dangers of drug use.
Experts say recovering users need treatment and rehabilitation when they first stop using, not towards the end of sentences. Prisoners say they suffer the worst withdrawal symptoms during the first 20 days, unable to eat or sleep.
“This is just a model, to get the health ministry to build real centers,” said Ghanem, the spokesman.
Prisoners interviewed by Reuters were chosen by police, who sat in on interviews. Some were handcuffed.
One user-turned-dealer said he was recruited a year after he started buying, wooed by the idea of free crystal meth.
“I paid 50,000 dinars ($40) per gram as a user. I only paid 20,000 ($16) as a dealer. I would sell some and smoke some. I was smoking for free,” he said.
He described a network of dealers that went up to a “big boss” whom he would not identify to police out of fear for his life. He faces a minimum of five years in jail.
Some said they were falsely arrested. Asked if the police offered suspects lighter sentences if the provided them with information, one police officer said they rarely needed to.
“They always cooperate,” he said, asking not to be named as he was not authorized to discuss the matter.
(Additional reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Source: OANN
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