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Flights suspended at India’s Kolkata, Odisha state as cyclone approaches

Flights suspended at India’s Kolkata, Odisha state as cyclone approaches
Above, a resident rescued from a flooded residential apartment due to heavy rains in Bengaluru, India on Oct. 22, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 24 October 2024
Reuters
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Flights suspended at India’s Kolkata, Odisha state as cyclone approaches

Flights suspended at India’s Kolkata, Odisha state as cyclone approaches
  • Cyclone Dana is expected to cross the coasts of the states between midnight and Friday morning with wind speeds of 100kph-110kph
  • Severe storms lash coastal cities in India and neighboring Bangladesh during the cyclone season from April to December each year
Updated 24 October 2024
Reuters
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BHUBANESWAR: Flights to and from the capital cities of India’s eastern states of Odisha and West Bengal, including Kolkata, will be suspended from Thursday evening to Friday morning as the region braces for a cyclone set to hit during that time, officials said.
Cyclone ‘Dana’, currently over the Bay of Bengal, is expected to cross the coasts of the states between midnight and Friday morning with wind speeds of 100-110kph, gusting up to 120kph, the weather department said.
Both states have closed schools in the areas that are expected to be bear the brunt of the storm and asked fishermen not to venture out to sea.
Television footage showed fishermen rushing to secure their straw homes and boats with ropes, and officials escorting residents in coastal areas to shelters as heavy winds and rains pounded parts of Odisha on Thursday.
The Adani group’s Dhamra port in the state’s Bhadrak region has also suspended operations.
“We have evacuated approximately 50,000 people so far, and a total of around 300,000 people are likely to be evacuated,” Special Relief Commissioner Deoranjan Kumar Singh said.
Neighboring West Bengal state has also issued a red alert for three districts located close to the area where the cyclone is expected to make landfall, officials said.
The state’s capital city of Kolkata remained overcast on Thursday with short spells of rain.
Severe storms lash coastal cities in India and neighboring Bangladesh during the cyclone season from April to December each year, causing extensive damage.
Odisha’s worst cyclone in recent years was in 1999, which raged for 30 hours and killed 10,000 people.
At least 16 people were killed when a cyclone lashed India and Bangladesh in May, packing speeds of up to 135kph.

Topics: weather India

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India’s top diplomat to visit Bangladesh as tensions fester

India’s top diplomat to visit Bangladesh as tensions fester
Updated 9 sec ago
AFP
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India’s top diplomat to visit Bangladesh as tensions fester

India’s top diplomat to visit Bangladesh as tensions fester
  • Sheikh Hasina’s iron-fisted rule was strongly backed by India
  • She remains in New Delhi where she took refuge after her ouster
Updated 9 sec ago
AFP
NEW DELHI: India’s top diplomat will head to Bangladesh Monday after the student-led revolution in August that toppled autocratic ex-premier Sheikh Hasina’s government in Dhaka soured ties between the two neighbors.
Hasina’s iron-fisted rule was strongly backed by India and the 77-year-old remains in New Delhi where she took refuge after her ouster, despite Bangladesh announcing it would seek her extradition.
Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is leading an interim government tasked with implementing democratic reforms, has condemned acts of “Indian aggression” that he alleged were intended to destabilize his administration.
Indian foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal confirmed late Friday that his department’s secretary Vikram Misri would visit Bangladesh on Monday.
Misri “will meet his counterpart and there will be several other meetings during the visit,” Jaiswal told journalists in New Delhi.
Yunus, 84, faced numerous criminal proceedings during Hasina’s regime that her critics say were concocted to sideline one of her potential rivals.
He has been a vocal critic of India for backing Hasina’s rule to the hilt despite the mounting rights abuses seen over her 15-year tenure.
India for its part has accused Muslim-majority Bangladesh of failing to adequately protect its minority Hindu community from reprisals.
The arrest of a prominent Hindu priest in Bangladesh on sedition charges last month further added to tensions, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing supporters urging his government to take a more hardline stance on Dhaka.
“We want to reiterate our position again that they have legal rights and we hope that these legal rights will be respected and that the trial will be fair,” Jaiswal said of the case.
Yunus’s administration has acknowledged and condemned attacks on Hindus, including during the chaotic hours after Hasina’s ouster, but said that in many cases they were motivated by politics rather than religion.
He has accused India of exaggerating the scale of the violence and running a “propaganda campaign.”
“They are undermining our efforts to build a new Bangladesh and are spreading fictitious stories,” Yunus said this week.
Numerous street demonstrations have been staged against India in Bangladesh since Hasina’s ouster.
Several rallies were held this week to protest an attempt by Hindu activists to storm a Bangladeshi consulate in an Indian city not far from the neighbors’ shared border.
India condemned the breach afterwards and arrested seven people over the incident.
Despite cratering diplomatic ties the two neighbors are key economic partners with an annual bilateral trade worth about $14 billion.

Trump returns to world stage at Notre-Dame reopening in Paris

Trump returns to world stage at Notre-Dame reopening in Paris
Updated 23 min 15 sec ago
Reuters
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Trump returns to world stage at Notre-Dame reopening in Paris

Trump returns to world stage at Notre-Dame reopening in Paris
  • Macron aims to mediate between Trump and Europe
  • Trump’s visit seen as symbolic return to global stage
Updated 23 min 15 sec ago
Reuters

WASHINGTON/PARIS: US President-elect Donald Trump returns to the world stage on Saturday to join leaders for the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, still a private citizen but already preparing to tackle a host of international crises.
It will be Trump’s first trip overseas since he won the presidential election a month ago and it could offer French President Emmanuel Macron an opportunity to play the role of mediator between Europe and the unpredictable US politician, a role the French leader has relished in the past.
The two are expected to meet on the sidelines of Saturday’s visit. While no agenda for their talks has been announced, European leaders are concerned that Trump could withdraw US military aid to Ukraine at a crucial juncture in its war to repel Russian invaders.
Macron is a strong supporter of the NATO alliance and Ukraine’s fight, while Trump feels European nations need to pay more for their common defense and that a negotiated settlement is needed to end the Ukraine war.
“Mr. Macron is repeating his personalized approach which had some limited success during Mr. Trump’s first term. Macron knows Mr. Trump greatly appreciates the pomp, circumstance and grandeur of state and he provides it to him in abundance,” said Heather Conley, senior adviser to the board of the German Marshall Fund, which promotes US-European ties.
Trump will join dozens of world leaders and foreign dignitaries for the ceremony reopening Notre-Dame Cathedral 5-1/2 years after it was ravaged by fire.
It was unclear whether Trump would meet other leaders besides Macron. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for details.
While Trump is due to be sworn in as US president only on Jan. 20, he has already held discussions with a number of world leaders, and members of his team are trying to get up to speed on a burgeoning number of world crises, including Ukraine and the Middle East.
Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, met on Wednesday in Washington with Ukraine envoy Andriy Yermak, leading to speculation that a meeting between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky might be in the offing in Paris.
Trump, a Republican, was in power when Notre-Dame burned in 2019. He lost his 2020 reelection bid to Democrat Joe Biden but on Nov. 5 defeated Kamala Harris, Biden’s vice president, to win back the presidency.
“Symbolically, both Mr. Trump’s presidency and Notre-Dame have been restored in approximately the same time period. His visit to Paris is also the opening salvo of his return to the world stage, further diminishing the final days of the Biden administration,” Conley said.
Biden’s wife, first lady Jill Biden, will represent the United States at the Notre-Dame reopening.

GLOBAL SPECTACLE
Trump will get plenty of worldwide buzz standing alongside other world leaders. He visited France four times while president from 2017-2021, including D-Day anniversary ceremonies in 2019.
“Trump will be seen throughout the world in potentially a statesman-like position,” said Republican strategist Doug Heye.
“It’s not images of him at Mar-a-Lago,” Heye said, referring to the Florida home where Trump has spent the bulk of his time since the election. “This is the biggest event of the world and he’ll be peer-to-peer with other leaders.”
Observers will be watching how Trump and Macron interact. The two men have endured ups and downs in their relationship over the years.
Macron invited Trump to the Bastille Day military parade in Paris in July 2017, a spectacle that inspired Trump to order up his own military parade in Washington to mark America’s Independence Day in 2019.
Trump hosted Macron at a White House state dinner in 2018 but a year later the two quarreled over comments Macron made about the state of NATO.
“Trump coming to Paris is a ‘good coup’ by Emmanuel Macron,” said Gerard Araud, France’s former ambassador to Washington. “It is indispensable to have a direct relationship with the only man who counts in the Trump administration, Trump himself.”
Macron, who has just over two years left as president, pursued a non-confrontational approach toward Trump during the latter’s first term, hoping that by engaging with him he could win concessions.
But as the years passed, policy decisions on climate, taxation and Iran in particular caused friction between the two leaders. By the end it was a more fractious relationship.
Clashes most likely lie ahead, fueled by Trump’s desire to impose sweeping tariffs on Europe and other US trade partners, and disagreement over how to handle the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)

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Ghanaians go to the polls with the backdrop of the worst economic crisis in a generation

Ghanaians go to the polls with the backdrop of the worst economic crisis in a generation
Updated 29 min 41 sec ago
AP
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Ghanaians go to the polls with the backdrop of the worst economic crisis in a generation

Ghanaians go to the polls with the backdrop of the worst economic crisis in a generation
  • Ghana used to be a poster child for democracy in the region but in recent years has struggled with a profound economic crisis, including surging inflation and a lack of jobs
Updated 29 min 41 sec ago
AP

ACCRA: Voters in the west African nation of Ghana will cast their ballots Saturday in a general election poised to be a litmus test for democracy in a region shaken by extremist violence and coups.
Some 18.7 million people are registered to vote in presidential and legislative elections but the two main candidates offer little hope for change for the nation. Ghana used to be a poster child for democracy in the region, but in recent years has struggled with a profound economic crisis, including surging inflation and a lack of jobs.
At a time when democracy in western Africa is threatened by coups, Ghana has emerged as a beacon of democratic stability with a history of peaceful elections. It had also been an economic powerhouse, priding itself on its economic development.
But recently that has been changing: Eighty-two percent of Ghanaians feel their country is headed in the wrong direction, according to an opinion poll released by Afrobarometer, a research group, earlier this year.
Although 12 candidates are running to become Ghana’s next president, Saturday’s election — like previous ones since the return of multiparty politics in 1992 — has emerged as a two-horse race.
Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia is the candidate of the New Patriotic Party, or NPP, government that has struggled to resolve the economic crisis. He faces off against former President John Dramani Mahama, the leader of the main opposition party National Democratic Congress, or NDC. He was voted out in 2016 after failing to deliver on promises for the economy.
The NDC prides itself as a social democratic party, while the ruling NPP tags itself as leaning to the right. But in fact, analysts and voters said, the programs of their presidential candidates do not differ in a significant way.
Two hundred seventy-six members of parliament will also be elected Saturday. The ruling NPP party and the main opposition NDC each have 137 members in the 275 member legislature, with one independent member who has been voting mostly along with the ruling party. One more constituency will be allowed to vote in this election, bringing the number of deputies to 276.
In their final campaign rallies Thursday, both candidates made a last push to pitch their political parties as the answer to Ghana’s economic woes.
Bawumia, 61, an Oxford-educated economist and former deputy governor of the country’s central bank, promised to build on the outgoing administration’s efforts and stabilize the economy.
Mahama, 65, on the other hand, restated his promise to “reset” the country on various fronts. “We need to reset our democracy, governance, economy, finances, agriculture, infrastructure, environment, health sector, and all that we hold dear as a people,” the former president said.
Across the the capital of Accra, the mood for the election has been upbeat in posters and billboards with bikers displaying stunts, political rallies on the streets, election jingles and songs blasting from public speakers.
But the concern for many is also palpable for the key thing at stake: The country’s ailing economy, which has been challenged on various fronts in recent years.
The country defaulted on most of its foreign debt last year as it faced a worsening economic crisis that spiked the price of fuel, food and other essential items. The inflation rate had hit 54 percent by the end of last year and though it’s been coming down since then, not many Ghanaians can still tell the difference when they go to the market.
The chronic challenge of illegal gold mining — known locally as galamsey — has also been a major issue in the campaign and a source of concern for voters, triggering protests and criticism against the outgoing government.
Ghana is Africa’s top gold producer and the world’s sixth largest, but the commodity has been increasingly mined illegally as people become more desperate to find jobs in an economy that has been crumbling. The mining has polluted rivers and other parts of the environment despite government actions to clamp down on the practice.

Topics: Ghana

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Bangladesh court bans publication of speeches by ousted PM Hasina

Bangladesh court bans publication of speeches by ousted PM Hasina
Updated 07 December 2024
AP
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Bangladesh court bans publication of speeches by ousted PM Hasina

Bangladesh court bans publication of speeches by ousted PM Hasina
  • Decision comes after Hasina made her first public speech in virtual address to supporters 
  • Hasina fled to India after mass uprising in July and August in which hundreds were killed
Updated 07 December 2024
AP

DHAKA, Bangladesh: A special tribunal in Bangladesh on Thursday banned the publication of any speeches by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is in exile in India after being ousted in August following mass protests.
The decision came a day after Hasina made her first public speech in a virtual address to supporters of her Awami League party in New York. In the speech, she accused Bangladesh’s interim leader, Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, of perpetrating genocide and failing to protect minorities, especially Hindus, since her ouster.
The Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal made the decision in response to a request by government prosecutors for a ban on any speeches by Hasina on mainstream or social media, prosecutor Golam Monawar Hossain Tamim said.
Hasina fled to India after being ousted in a mass uprising in July and August in which hundreds of protesters were killed and thousands were injured. She faces many court cases over the deaths, including some on charges of crimes against humanity. The tribunal has already issued arrest warrants for Hasina and her close aides, and the government has sought help from the international police organization Interpol for her arrest.
Prosecutors said in their request to the tribunal that some speeches and phone calls by Hasina had been disseminated on electronic media and could interfere in the investigation of the charges against her by influencing or frightening witnesses.
“If speeches like these are published and broadcast, we won’t be able to bring witnesses to the tribunal during trials,” Tamim said.
He said the tribunal also ordered authorities to remove leaked speeches and phone conversations from media platforms.
Hasina established the tribunal during her 15-year rule. It was used to try people accused of war crimes during Bangladesh’s war of independence with Pakistan in 1971. Politicians belonging mainly to the Jamaat-e-Islami party were executed after being found guilty by the tribunal.
On Wednesday, Hasina told her supporters in New York that there had been plans to assassinate her and her sister Sheikh Rehana just like their father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, an independence leader who was assassinated in 1975 along with most of his family. Only Hasina and her younger sister survived because they were visiting Germany at that time.
She said armed protesters had been instructed to head to her residence in Dhaka and she was forced to flee to India so that security guards would not have to fire at the approaching crowd.
“If the security guards opened fire, many lives would have been lost,” she said. “I was forced to leave. I told them not to open fire, no matter what happened.”
Media reports said more such public speeches are planned by Hasina to address her supporters in the coming weeks.
Hasina has good relations with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Tensions between India and Muslim-majority Bangladesh have grown since her departure over incidents such as the jailing of a prominent Hindu leader in Bangladesh and attacks on a diplomatic office in India by Hindus.
Yunus has been meeting with political and religious leaders urging them to stay united. On Wednesday, he held a dialogue with most political parties except Hasina’s Awami League party and the Jatiya Party which are facing severe challenges under the Yunus-led administration.
On Thursday, Yunus met with religious leaders and said there was no division among Bangladeshis when it comes to national issues.
Bangladesh has been facing crucial challenges since Hasina’s ouster in August amid mob justice, rising commodity prices, errant street protests and an unstable economy. The security situation remains a major concern. About 700 inmates including many criminals and radical extremists still remain at large after jailbreaks during the political chaos in August.
 

Topics: Sheikh Hasina Bangladesh Arab News Pakistan

Australia defends action on antisemitism after Netanyahu criticism

Australia defends action on antisemitism after Netanyahu criticism
Updated 57 min 32 sec ago
Reuters
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Australia defends action on antisemitism after Netanyahu criticism

Australia defends action on antisemitism after Netanyahu criticism
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor government of encouraging crimes
  • Australia has experienced a rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023
Updated 57 min 32 sec ago
Reuters

SYDNEY: Australia’s government defended its record on curbing antisemitism on Saturday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused it of anti-Israel policies, following an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue.
Netanyahu accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor government of encouraging crimes such as Friday’s attack on the Adass Israel synagogue through policies including support of a recent UN motion backing a Palestinian state.
“Unfortunately, this criminal act cannot be separated from the anti-Israel spirit blowing from the Labor government in Australia,” Netanyahu posted on X.
Murray Watt, Australia’s minister for employment and workplace relations, responded that “the Albanese Government has taken a range of strong actions to stand against antisemitism and to stamp it out from our community.”
Since taking office in May 2022, the government had provided $25 million to Jewish organizations to upgrade security and safety at Jewish sites, including schools, banned the Nazi salute and was taking action against hate speech, Watt said.
“I respectfully disagree with Prime Minister Netanyahu on this matter,” Watt said in Brisbane, according to a transcript.
Albanese condemned the attack on Friday, saying there was no place for antisemitism in Australia.
Police said on Saturday they were still looking for two people suspected of deliberately starting the synagogue fire that injured one and caused widespread damage in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria state.
Australia has experienced a rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023. Laws passed last year banned public displays of terror group symbols.
Some Jewish groups, however, say Albanese’s government has not done enough to tackle the rise of antisemitism.
Dozens of pro-Palestine protests over the past year have been largely peaceful, although the government raised concerns that protests could inflame community tensions and disrupt social harmony.

Topics: Australia Israel Anthony Albanese Benjamin Netanyahu

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