https://arab.news/pr9aj
NEW DELHI: A wall collapsed in a salt packaging factory in western India on Wednesday, killing at least 12 workers and injuring another 13, a government administrator said. The workers stocking salt in bags were found buried in the wall debris in the factory in Morbi district, 215 kilometers (135 miles) west of Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat state, said J.B. Patel, the district officer. The injuries of 13 workers, mostly fractured bones, were not life-threatening, Patel said. He also said that the rescue work was almost over. Other details were not immediately available. Authorities are investigating the cause of the wall collapse. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the deaths as heart-rending. “In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover soon,” he said. Building collapses are common in India as many of them are poorly constructed using sub-standard material. A building collapse in 2013 killed at least 72 people in Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment capital.
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s agriculture minister called on citizens on Friday to start growing food in their home gardens to help avert looming shortages, as the country’s debt crisis continues to worsen.
The island nation of 22 million people, which defaulted on international debts of more than $50 billion last month, has been facing a severe shortfall in imports of essential goods, which is also pushing inflation to new record highs.
While the Colombo Consumer Price Index rose to nearly 40 percent year-on-year in May, up from almost 30 percent in April, food inflation surged to 57.4 percent, up from 46.6 percent, leaving many in Sri Lanka already unable to afford three meals a day.
Officials have been looking for ways to boost domestic production since Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has warned of a food crisis by August.
“We are urging the people to grow their food at home: crops and cereals such as green gram; all types of yams, potatoes, cassava and sweet potatoes; cowpeas; condiments such as chilies, cardamom and curry leaves, and fruits,” Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera told Arab News.
He said that if there is an emergency, the government will get food “from any part of the world,” and has so far sought help from India, with which Sri Lanka has a credit line facility, to import over 30,000 metric tons of rice — the country’s staple.
Local rice production has dropped in Sri Lanka, after last year’s decision by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to ban all chemical fertilizer. Although the ban has been lifted, the country has been unable to secure fertilizer imports for the cultivation season.
“We have again reverted to carbonic fertilizer for cultivation, which will take some time to bring back the situation to normalcy,” Amaraweera said.
But urban gardening may not contribute much to surviving this period, according to Prof. Palitha Weerakkody from the Department of Crop Science of the University of Peradeniya.
“This is ideal for rural and semi-urban areas,” he told Arab News, adding that even there, constraints would be significant due to a lack of manpower, as Sri Lankan families are no longer big like they used to be in the past.
“With small families of three to four people, this type of cultivation has its own limitations,” Weerakkody said. “And they can’t grow paddy in home gardens.”
Hunger is looming as Sri Lanka is struggling with its worst economic crisis in memory and is now sliding from an upper-middle-income economy to one seeking international donations and emergency loans.
Sri Lanka needs at least $3 billion in emergency funds this year and its leaders have been trying to negotiate a deal with the International Monetary Fund.
In May, the IMF began technical discussions with Sri Lankan authorities, and a new round of talks is expected this month.
KARACHI: New hikes in the prices of fuel and electricity are expected to cause an inflationary storm in Pakistan, industrialists and experts said on Friday, as the government slashed subsidies for a second time in a week to secure International Monetary Fund bailout money.
Pakistan entered a three-year IMF deal in 2019 but is struggling to implement tough policy commitments to revive the $6 billion program desperately needed to stabilize its struggling economy.
A pending tranche of over $900 million is contingent on a successful IMF review, and would also unlock other multilateral and bilateral funding for Pakistan, whose foreign reserves currently cover just two months’ worth of imports.
After the IMF pushed Islamabad to roll back its subsidies for the oil and power sectors during talks in Doha last week, the Finance Ministry raised fuel prices by around 20 percent, and within a week by another 17 percent effective from Friday.
The new petrol price is PKR209.86 ($1.06) per liter and diesel is PKR204.15 per liter. The fuel hikes, which come along with an increase in the basic power tariff by 47 percent announced by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority a day earlier, have sent shockwaves among Pakistani industrialists who say many of them will be forced to close.
“The outcome of the tariff and fuel price hike would be determinantal for the industries as it would increase unemployment, drastically cut exports, and would increase inflation in the country,” Muhammad Idrees, president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Arab News.
“No one will think about setting up industries after the steps taken by the government, because it would render the business unviable, and industries will be eliminated in large numbers.”
The Pakistan Yarn Merchants Association called on the government to reverse its decisions to save the industry, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.
“The sharp rise in prices of petroleum products, excessive power tariff, and severe energy crisis are catastrophic for business and industry,” Saqib Naseem, the association’s chairman said in a statement.
The country’s inflation rate is expected to soar to 19 percent this month — its highest in over a decade.
“The direct impact of the fuel and power tariff hike would be on the Consumer Price Index, which will add 1.5 percent and 2 percent to the prevailing inflation rate,” Tahir Abbas, head of research at Arif Habib Limited, told Arab News.
“The combined inflationary impact of the fuel and electricity tariff, if the determined tariff is implemented, would be around 19 percent in June. There would be a second-round impact when the price hike of goods and services after the cost of input is increased.”
Uzair Younus, director of the Pakistan Initiative at the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, said the “inflationary storm” expected to hit the country in the coming days would “destroy purchasing power of ordinary households.”
And more hardships may be on the cards as there are more IMF requirements to meet.
“There is still about a 9-rupee subsidy on petrol and about 23-rupee subsidy on diesel. In addition, the government has to place a 17 percent sales tax and a 30-rupee levy, as agreed to with the IMF months ago,” Younus told Arab News.
“Assuming oil price stays the same and rupee doesn’t weaken further, we are looking at petrol touching about 285 rupees a liter.”
Pakistan’s equity market has already reacted to the latest developments, with the benchmark KSE 100 index declining by 923 points, or 2.2 percent, to close at 41,314.88 points on Friday.
NEW DELHI: Members of a minority Hindu group in Kashmir Valley have started to leave the area, citing fear amid an intensifying string of killings targeting the community.
Indian-controlled Kashmir has been witnessing a wave of deadly attacks since August 2019, when the government abrogated the Muslim-majority region’s limited constitutional autonomy to bring it under the direct rule of New Delhi.
On Tuesday, gunmen killed a Hindu schoolteacher in Kulgam district. On Thursday, a Hindu bank employee was shot dead in the same area. The killings came less than a month after a government employee, another member of the community, was murdered in nearby Budgam.
Since May, members of the community have been holding protests against the local administration, demanding relocation to a safer place, but as no steps have been undertaken by the government, many have decided to leave on their own.
“The local and the central government has failed to secure the lives of religious minorities staying in Kashmir Valley,” Sanjay Tickoo, who heads the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti, the largest Kashmiri Pandit organisation in the region, told Arab News on Friday.
“Around 3,000 Kashmiri Pandit employees have left the valley during the last two days and the remaining will go in the next couple of days.”
Some 5,000 members of the Pandit community have been living in the valley since 2010 — two decades after about 200,000 of them fled Kashmir when an anti-India rebellion broke out. They returned under a government resettlement plan that provided jobs and housing.
Jagat Bhat, a Kashmiri Pandit and government employee who was working in Srinagar, the main city of Kashmir Valley, said the resettlement plan was “an invitation to death.”
He told Arab News that 10 families from his neighborhood alone moved out to nearby Jammu district on Thursday.
“The situation is very bad and those who can are leaving the valley for safer places,” he said.
“We left the valley with whatever stuff we could carry early in the morning on Friday,” Rubon Sapro, a schoolteacher, said. “The situation in the valley has worsened and there is a great sense of fear among Hindu minorities. They are leaving the valley in hordes.”
Sunit Bhat, who lives in a transit camp, one of the seven camps that the government built in 2010 to accommodate the Pandit community under the resettlement plan, said he is now only waiting to get his son’s school certificate before the family can move.
“Already many have left and those who are still in the valley will move out in a day or two after finishing local formalities,” he told Arab News. “I will leave the valley most probably tomorrow morning. I cannot think of returning to the valley again.”
While earlier this week a local spokesperson of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Dr. Hina Bhat, said relocation of Pandits would be against the government’s policy, another party official blamed the current instability on neighboring Pakistan.
The Indian government has been invested in projecting the majority-Muslim region as a stable, integrated part of India after revoking its autonomy 2019.
“The way the situation has been improving in the valley in the last four years, there has been an atmosphere of frustration in Pakistan, and they have been trying to vitiate the atmosphere in the valley,” Manzoor Bhat, BJP spokesperson in Srinagar, told Arab News. “Pakistan wants to sabotage the peace in Kashmir.”
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British colonial rule in 1947. Both countries claim the region in its entirety and have fought two of their three wars over control of Kashmir.
India has accused Pakistan of arming and training rebel groups, which Pakistan denies.
CHICAGO: Candidates in four recently redrawn Michigan congressional districts covering areas traditionally sympathetic to Palestinian interests are expected to face tough challenges in upcoming primaries, which could prevent the Arab American community from augmenting its political voice, two veteran political analysts said on Wednesday.
The candidates include Palestinian American lawyer and activist Huwaida Arraf, who is running in the 10th Congressional District; Jewish Representative Andy Levin, who currently represents the 9th District but will take on another incumbent in the 11th District; and two-term Palestinian Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who is the representative for the 13th District but is standing in the redrawn 12th District. Meanwhile there is an open field in the 13th District once represented by long-time pro-Arab senior representative John Conyers Jr.
Arraf, a strong campaigner for Palestinian rights, has been targeted by a vicious campaign focusing on her Arab heritage. Analysts said that despite her best efforts, she faces an uphill battle to enter Congress for the first time.
Meanwhile Levin, the son of former Michigan Senator Carl Levin, has chosen to run against a popular incumbent, Haley Stevens, jeopardizing what might have been an easier re-election win in another district.
“(Arraf) has just got too many people in the Democratic primary who are more likely to be the nominee in that 10th District,” said Bill Ballenger, the founder of Inside Michigan Politics, a biweekly newsletter launched in 1987, and publisher of The Ballenger Report.
“That 10th Congressional District is the only one where the Republicans have got a chance. They have got a probable nominee, John James, who has run twice for the US Senate. They could win that; it’s about a 50-50 district. It’s a brand new district just created by an independent commission. No incumbent is running in it.”
Levin, meanwhile, faces a different challenge, according to Ballenger.
“Andy Levin represented much of (the redrawn 10th District) under the old district lines but he has chosen to move next door (to the 11th District) and run against a fellow incumbent, Haley Stevens, in the Democratic primary.
“In the 11th, 12th and 13th districts the Democrats are going to win in November. It doesn’t make any difference who the Republicans nominate, the Republicans are going to lose. The only real mystery is who is going to win, either Levin or Stevens, in (their) district.
“Is Rashida Tlaib, an incumbent (standing) in another district, the 12th, going to survive her primary? I think she will. And then the 13th district is wide open: There is no incumbent and there are half a dozen big Democrat names in that, any one of whom might be able to win.”
Despite more than $1 million in campaign funds committed against Tlaib by her political enemies and political action committees affiliated with Israel’s political pit bull lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, she is expected not only to win the Aug. 2 Democratic primary but also the election on Nov. 8 against whichever candidate is selected by the Republican party.
However, Ballenger believes that Levin might have miscalculated by choosing to run against Stevens in the redrawn 11th District rather than contesting the new 10th District, where Arraf is standing. He said Levin, a strong advocate of the two-state solution and Palestinian and Israeli rights, could lose to Stevens, who represented the old 11th District.
Nine contenders have thrown their hats into the ring in the redrawn 13th District, which includes parts of Detroit and areas formerly represented by Tlaib. They include John Conyers III, son of the former congressman of the same name.
Ballenger said that although Conyers has a highly recognizable political name, there are other challengers in the 13th District Democratic primary who might have just enough name recognition of their own to make gains given the large number of contenders.
“In and of himself, John Conyers III is no rock star,” Ballenger said. “The only reason he is a factor is … the name Conyers is a golden name in that area because John Conyers, the father, served a record number of years (52) in Congress … so everybody knows that name. But some of the other names are fairly well known, they are just not as well-known as John Conyers.”
Dennis Denno, the president of Denno Research, which for 30 years has provided political consulting and polling services for candidates and elected officials, said Tlaib leads the field in her district despite strong challenges from fellow Democrats Shanelle Jackson and Janice Winfrey, a multi-term Detroit City Clerk.
Despite Winfrey’s long record of public service in Detroit, she “doesn’t have a strong enough base” to overcome Tlaib’s popularity, even if the latter is targeted by the AIPAC, said Denno.
“The problem for Janice Winfrey (is that) she has two other opponents besides Rashida Tlaib: She has Shanelle Jackson and (Kelly Garrett) the mayor of Lathrop Village, a small town in Oakland County. So, if you are anti-Rashida Tlaib you are going to split that vote three ways,” he explained.
“And ... a million dollars in a metro-Detroit media market doesn't go very far. ... Rashida Tlaib, whatever you think of her, is very tenacious. She can raise $1.5 million easily and I think that is going to be hard for someone like Janice to overcome.”
Tlaib introduced the first-ever resolution in the US House of Representatives seeking formal recognition of the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. So farm, however, it has the support of fewer than a dozen progressives within the 435-member body.
Denno and Ballenger agreed that there will also be a big focus is on the race for governor in Michigan, a position currently held by first-term incumbent Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. They predict she will hold on to her seat because of divisions within the state’s Republican opposition “who are tearing away at each other, making a spectacle of themselves and damaging the Republican brand,” Ballenger said.
Although an endorsement from former US President Donald Trump might help to focus Republicans, it will not be enough to change the state leadership, Denno and Ballenger agreed.
“It’s a pretty competitive state and I would be surprised if Gov. Whitmer wins by more than 4 points,” said Denno. “There are so many unknowns out there: inflation, the Trump factor — who knows what is going to happen in the next five months.”
Ballenger added: “If Trump came in on behalf of one candidate, particularly if there are only five (candidates) on the ballot — or particularly, I guess more so, if there are 10 on the ballot, we don’t know at this point — it will help a Republican, whoever (Trump) endorses, in a primary.
“But the real question is if he comes in in a big way between the primary and the general election on behalf of the Republican nominee against Whitmer, I think that probably is going to hurt the Republicans.”
Midterm elections generally push voters away from the party in control of the White House, which could give the Republicans a nationwide edge in their battle to take control of the House, Senate and several gubernatorial seats.
But Michigan is split fairly evenly between Democrats, Republicans and independents, Denno and Ballenger said, which will make it difficult for any one party to guarantee an election sweep in the state.
Denno and Ballenger were appearing on June 1, 2022, on the Ray Hanania Radio Show, which is broadcast on the US Arab Radio Network and sponsored by Arab News. It airs live every Wednesday at 5 p.m. EST in Detroit on WNZK AM 690 and in Washington D.C. on WDMV AM 700. It is rebroadcast on Thursdays at 7 a.m. EST in Detroit on WNZK AM 690 radio and in Chicago at 12 noon on WNWI AM 1080.
You can listen to the radio show podcast here. (www.arabnews.com/RayRadioShow - hyperlinked)
KYIV: Ukraine’s embattled eastern region of Donetsk will not fall quickly to Russia’s assault, but it needs the world to supply more weapons to keep the offensive at bay, its governor told Reuters on Friday. Russian troops are poised just 15 km (nine miles) north of Sloviansk, the second biggest Ukrainian-controlled city in Donetsk region, said Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko. Seizing the regions of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk is a key Russian military objective. While Russia is close to capturing full control of Luhansk region, just under 50 percent of Donetsk region still remains in Ukrainian hands, Kyrylenko said, a sign of how far Russia is from achieving its aim of controlling all the lands known as the Donbas. “I am sure that they will not advance quickly. In the longer term, it all depends on the concentration of our forces,” the regional governor said in an online interview. Kyrylenko said he hoped the new supply of US weapons announced on Wednesday, which includes multiple rocket launch systems, would allow Ukraine to conduct effective counter-offensives, but he emphasized that the support should not stop there. “The world must do even more. I am sorry for this word, but it must. To give us weapons and everything we need that was announced,” said the 36-year-old Donbas native, briefly growing emotional. He offered a bleak outlook for the region’s towns that have fallen under Russian control. By far the most prominent is the once-thriving port city of Mariupol that Russia captured after a long siege. Mariupol and the town of Volnovakha are 90 percent destroyed, he said. “(The Russians) don’t care that nobody will be able to live in these places, nobody will be able to develop them, and rebuilding them will be very difficult,” he said. The 100,000 remaining residents in Mariupol, 70 percent of whom are pensioners, do not have working gas, water, electricity or sewage systems, he said. Of the city’s 2,600 apartment blocks, he estimated that 1,300 had been levelled. Russia denies targeting civilians. It calls its actions in Ukraine a “special military operation.” The Donbas has been at war since 2014 when Russia backed a pro-Moscow insurgency that carved out a swathe of territory in a conflict that killed thousands. Kyrylenko’s own personal story shows the complexity of the war for many Ukrainians in the area. He said his parents and elder brother chose in 2014 to stay in the part of Donetsk region that was captured by Russia-backed separatists who are now fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine. While he said this family circumstance does not affect his work, he called the situation a “serious tribulation” on a personal level. “Our views are completely different, I do not speak to them, but I say this frankly: I have nothing to say to (them).”