Tag: close

Nail-biter in Chicago: Mayor’s race too close to call

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Vallas and Johnson are vying to succeed incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who lost her reelection bid during the first round of the election Feb. 28.
In that contest, Vallas, the only white candidate among nine contenders, came in first with 33 percent of the vote, followed by Johnson at 22 percent and Lightfoot at 17 percent, propelling Vallas and Johnson to Tuesday’s runoff.
The outcome of the Chicago mayor’s race has been closely watched as Democrats across the country try to grapple with messaging over crime. Two years ago in New York, Eric Adams won his party’s nomination and, later, the general election running to the right of his fellow Democrats on criminal justice issues.
Vallas, 69, and Johnson, 47, played to their bases during the first round of the election, with Vallas on the right, courting moderates and Republicans in the nonpartisan race, and Johnson on the left securing support from Democratic Socialists.
They both steered their campaigns to the middle for Tuesday’s contest, trying to woo supporters of Lightfoot and Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who came in fourth during the first round.
Vallas and Johnson touted big-name endorsements in hopes of swaying voters. Johnson was backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Johnson also was endorsed by civil rights leader and Chicago resident Rev. Jesse Jackson.
For his part, Vallas was endorsed by Sen. Dick Durbin, popular former Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White and Tom Tunney, an alderman and chair of Chicago’s powerful Zoning Committee.
Both Vallas and Johnson also were embraced by powerful unions, which helped fuel their bases but also raised concerns among moderate Democrats about how they would lead.

Vallas is endorsed by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, and Johnson is backed by the Chicago Teachers Union, for which he also worked. The CTU also funded Johnson’s campaign, donating more than $2.5 million to the effort. While Vallas accepted the FOP support, he didn’t take money from the organization.
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#Nailbiter #Chicago #Mayors #race #close #call
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 5, 2023
Biden touts close ties to Canada, heralds modest successes during visit

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The gala dinner at the Ottawa Aviation Museum concluded a busy day of meetings, photo-ops, speeches and a joint press conference. Biden’s visit marked the first true bilateral meeting in Canada between the two leaders since the Obama years.
“And today, I say to you, and to all the people of Canada, that you will always, always be able to count on the United States of America,” Biden said during his speech to Parliament. “I guarantee it.”
While the two leaders took advantage of the opportunities to lean into the imagery of a productive relationship, they discussed an array of complex topics behind closed doors.
The trip was not expected to produce much in terms of deliverables, but Biden and Trudeau made modest announcements on the North American Aerospace Defense Command, semiconductors, Haiti and climate issues. A deal they struck on migration drew the most headlines from the trip.
The two countries announced plans to apply the terms of the Safe Third Country Agreement to migrants between points of entry along the Canada-United States border, in an aim to deter illegal migration. The new policy was to go into effect at midnight Friday. Canada will also welcome an additional 15,000 migrants from countries such as Haiti, Colombia and Ecuador over the course of the year.
The agreement will allow Canada to turn away migrants from unofficial crossing points like Roxham Road, a small, well-traveled road that straddles the Canada-U.S. border between Quebec and New York. Quebec Premier François Legault has hammered Trudeau, calling on the prime minister to raise the issue with Biden. Roughly 40,000 asylum seekers entered Canada through this path last year.
“We couldn’t simply shut down Roxham Road and hope that everything would resolve itself because we would have had problems. The border is very long and people would have looked for other places to cross,” Trudeau said during Friday’s press conference. “And so that’s why we chose to modernize the Safe Third Country Agreement so that someone who attempts to cross between official crossings will be subject to the principle.”
The two leaders also fielded questions on Russia and China, in which Biden questioned the close ties of the authoritarian regimes. He noted that China hasn’t provided Russia with weapons in its war in Ukraine.

“I don’t take China lightly. I don’t take Russia lightly. But I think we vastly exaggerated. I’ve been hearing now for the past three months: China is going to provide significant weapons to Russia and they’re going to go up and talk about that. They haven’t yet. Doesn’t mean they won’t, but they haven’t yet,” Biden said.
He also defended the state of the economy amid the banking crisis, noting his administration did a “pretty damn good job” in its response. The president opened his remarks by addressing the U.S. military’s airstrikes in Syria after a suspected Iran-made drone killed a U.S. worker and wounded other troops.
“I’m also grateful for the professionalism of our service members who so ably carried out this response,” Biden said. “And to make no mistake, the United States does not — does not, emphasize — seek conflict with Iran. But be prepared for us to act forcefully to protect our people. That’s exactly what happened last night.”
Even on the crisis in Haiti — one of the more challenging topics Biden and Trudeau had to broach — the two leaders presented a united front. The White House for months has suggested it wants Canada to take the lead in a multi-national military intervention to bring stability to the country, but standing next to Trudeau on Friday, Biden lowered the pressure.
The president told reporters he wasn’t disappointed in Trudeau’s reluctance to lead the effort, calling it “a very, very difficult circumstance.”
The prime minister nodded in agreement.
Kierra Frazer contributed to this report.
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#Biden #touts #close #ties #Canada #heralds #modest #successes #visit
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 25, 2023
Close aide of Amritpal detained from Delhi, say police sources

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New Delhi: The Special Cell of Delhi Police along with the Punjab Police has detained a close associate of fugitive radical preacher Amritpal Singh from West Delhi’s Tilak Vihar area, police sources said here on Thursday.
According to the sources, the man identified as Amit Singh was detained on Tuesday from Tilak Vihar after the police received specific inputs about his whereabouts. Delhi Police assisted the Punjab Police in this operation.
Singh works as an insurance agent.
In another development earlier in the day, the Haryana Police arrested a 28-year-old MBA degree holder unemployed woman for allegedly giving shelter to Amritpal Singh and his accomplice Pappal Preet Singh at her house in Shahabad town in Kurukshetra district. The woman has been handed over to the Punjab Police.
The accused, Baljeet Kaur, lives with her brother and father. Her brother works at the SDM office, while her father runs a milk business.
Kurukshetra Superintendent of Police Surinder Singh Bhoria said that Baljeet Kaur was in touch with Pappal Preet Singh.
“It is suspected that Pappal Preet and Amritpal stayed at Baljeet’s house on Sunday night. After some questioning, Punjab Police were intimated and the woman was handed over to them for further investigation,” Bhoria said.
Amritpal, against whom the National Security Act (NSA) has been invoked, has been on the run since March 18 despite a massive manhunt launched to nab him.

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#Close #aide #Amritpal #detained #Delhi #police #sources
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

March 24, 2023
Amritpal Singh maintaining close links with ISI, terror groups: Sources

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New Delhi: Radical preacher Amritpal Singh, who is on the run following a police crackdown, has been maintaining close links with Pakistani intelligence agency ISI and some terrorist groups based abroad, official sources said on Saturday.
Amritpal Singh, who had even issued a veiled threat to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, has been trying to destabilise the situation in Punjab by indoctrinating and attracting the Sikh youth into the fold of his outfit “Waris Punjab De”.
The radical preacher is believed to be a close associate of UK-based Khalistani terrorist Avtar Singh Khanda. Khanda is believed to behind Amritpal Singh’s meteoric rise, sources said.
Khanda is a trusted lieutenant of leader of the banned Babbar Khalsa International Paramjit Singh Pamma, who often holds theoretical training classes for the Sikh youth to radicalise them.
The trio have been aiming to destabilise Punjab by ideological indoctrination of the Sikh youth with extremist views, they said.
Khanda gives online demonstrations from Birmingham and Glasgow on how to make improvised explosive devices by using commonly available chemicals.
Amritpal Singh also has links with chief of the International Sikh Youth Federation Lakhbir Singh Rode, who is wanted in India in cases of smuggling of arms and explosives, including RDX, conspiracy to attack government leaders in New Delhi and spreading hatred in Punjab.
When Amritpal Singh was in Dubai, he was in close touch with Rode’s brother Jaswant.

The radical preacher was known for asking his comrades to stay armed and he formed a new group called Anandpur Khalsa Army (AKF). This group is always around him with dangerous weapons, they said.
Amritpal Singh, who was a transport operator in Dubai, came in contact with the ISI there, sources said.
The agents of the ISI believed to have told him to motivate the innocent young Sikhs in the name of religion.
After coming to Punjab, at the behest of the ISI, Amritpal Singh tried to spread the influence of his group ‘Waris Punjab De’.
Later, he launched a campaign called ‘Khalsa Waheer’ and strengthened his organisation by going to villages.
He stirred up the issues of Punjab and started inciting the Sikhs against the Government of India.
He has been successful in getting people to do what he wanted under the guise of religion and this helped the ISI to carry out its design in Punjab, they said.
Amritpal Singh was anointed the head of the ‘Waris Punjab De’ following the death of its founder – actor and activist Deep Sidhu – in a road accident in February last year. The event was held at Moga’s Rode, the native village of slain militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.
A major police crackdown was underway in Punjab against radical preacher Amritpal Singh and his supporters over charges of spreading communal tension in the state.
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#Amritpal #Singh #maintaining #close #links #ISI #terror #groups #Sources
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

March 18, 2023
Close aide of gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed held after encounter in UP

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Banda: A man wanted in many criminal cases and said to be a close aide of mafia-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed was arrested after an encounter with police in the Mataundh area here on Thursday, officials said.
The man, identified as Waheed Ahmed, sustained a bullet injury in the gunfight and was admitted to a hospital, they said.
Superintendent of Police Abhinandan told reporters here that a joint team of Mataundh police station and Special Operations Group tried to nab Waheed Ahmed near Bhuragarh but he opened fire at the police.
In retaliatory firing, he was injured and subsequently arrested, the police officer said.
Waheed Ahmed is the uncle of Arbaaz, who worked as a shooter for Atiq Ahmed and was killed in an encounter with the police in Prayagraj earlier. Arbaaz was one of the alleged shooters in the murder of Umesh Pal, according to police.
Police said they are looking if Waheed Ahmed had any role in the murder of Pal.
The SP said Waheed Ahmed is a resident of Mardan Naka locality of Banda district and is said to be close to Atiq Ahmed.
Several cases of murder and extortion are registered against him and he carried a reward of RS 50,000 on his arrest, Abhinandan said.

A few days ago, Waheed Ahmed threatened a local businessman and demanded extortion, police said.
Atiq Ahmed is currently lodged in a Gujarat prison. He is the main accused in the 2005 murder case of the then BSP legislator Raju Pal. Atiq was also recently booked in connection with the killing of Umesh Pal, a key witness in the Raju Pal murder case.
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#Close #aide #gangsterturnedpolitician #Atiq #Ahmed #held #encounter
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

March 16, 2023
In the mob’s eyeline: A senior Republican’s close brush revealed in new Jan. 6 footage

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The video, taken by a rioter who entered the Capitol moments after the breach and released in a case separate from Pezzola’s, shows the Proud Boy gazing past the police officer at the evacuating senator, though it’s unclear if he recognized Grassley. As the camera pans, Pezzola is shown speaking on his phone before turning away from the scene.
That first wave of the mob — which also included Jacob Chansley, known as the “QAnon Shaman” — would moments later follow Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman up a flight of stairs to come within feet of the Senate chamber in a now-famous confrontation.
The footage is the latest example of how close powerful government figures came to a direct brush with the mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters. Rioters came within 40 feet of then-Vice President Mike Pence during his own evacuation, according to evidence released by the Jan. 6 select committee. And then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, accompanied by his own security detail, came within sight of rioter Joshua Pruitt while waiting for an elevator.
“The security detail and Senator Schumer reversed course and ran away from the elevator, back down the ramp, away from Pruitt,” according to a “statement of facts” agreed to by prosecutors and Pruitt in connection with his plea deal.
Then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris had a different kind of close call on Jan. 6: She had been ensconced at Democratic National Committee headquarters near the Capitol when police discovered pipe bombs had been placed outside the DNC and RNC buildings.
Just moments before the timing of the video, Grassley had been presiding over the Senate — filling in for Pence, who was evacuated from the floor himself just minutes earlier by Secret Service agents. The Iowan was the Senate president pro tem at the time, putting him in the line of presidential succession.
C-SPAN footage showed Grassley being rapidly ushered off the Senate dais at about 2:15 p.m. and out a nearby door.
Grassley told POLITICO that he couldn’t remember many details about the rushed evacuation, noting that he was taken down a back staircase to the first floor of the Capitol — where the footage shows he unknowingly had that close brush with rioters — and then down another staircase to the basement. Grassley’s office declined to comment but did not dispute that the footage appeared to show the 89-year-old senator’s swift exit from the Senate.

“I wasn’t aware of any of it,” Grassley said of his apparent near-encounter. “They just said: ‘We’ve got to get you out of here.’”
The footage also underscores the possibility of more significant revelations about Jan. 6 sitting in the thousands of hours of security camera video that Speaker Kevin McCarthy has indicated he intends to release publicly, after providing early access to Carlson.
And Grassley’s evacuation isn’t the only snapshot laid bare by recently released footage in Jan. 6 criminal cases. Other film shows the moment the Senate parliamentarian’s door was breached, leading to rioters ransacking her office. NBC recently revealed that Sen. Jim Risch’s (R-Idaho) hideaway was among those trashed by rioters.
In addition, court papers connected to a newly filed criminal case indicate that rioters breached the House Appropriations Committee’s third-floor space in the building, before Capitol Police officers with their guns drawn subdued them.
“There, the officers held rioters under supervision while Members of the House of Representatives were evacuated from the House Gallery,” according to the charging documents.
Those new details are in addition to well-known breaches of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office suite, Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D-Ore.) hideaway and the Senate chamber itself.
The video of Grassley’s apparent close encounter was released in connection with Chansley’s criminal case, after a request by media outlets for videos the government used in his sentencing. Chansley is one of the most widely recognized members of the Jan. 6 mob due to his appearance during the attack — he wore a horned Viking helmet and face paint, striding shirtless through the Capitol.
He returned to the spotlight after Carlson aired security footage showing Chansley walking alongside police officers calmly, footage the Justice Department said misleadingly cast his hour-long trip through the Capitol as authorized by police.
The footage of Chansley’s entry into the Capitol, just moments after Pezzola set off the breach by smashing the window, appears to have been taken by Jan. 6 defendant Daniel Adams, who closely followed Chansley inside. Adams can be seen on security footage holding up his camera and recording the moment.
Pezzola is currently on trial for seditious conspiracy, along with other Proud Boys leaders.
The video also shows a moment that Chansley himself had highlighted in his own defense: his chastising another member of the mob for attempting to steal items from the Senate refectory. Other recently released footage shows members of the Proud Boys snatching snacks and drinks from the convenience store after they entered the building.
The Justice Department indicated that Carlson’s footage showed only a four-minute window of the hour Chansley spent inside the Capitol. That time also included Chansley breaching police lines outside the complex, a standoff with police outside of the Senate chamber and his decision to leave an ominous note for Pence on the Senate dais.

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#mobs #eyeline #senior #Republicans #close #brush #revealed #Jan #footage
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 16, 2023
Buttigieg ‘concerned’ about increase in airline close calls

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The summit is intended to convene various pieces of the aviation industry, including airlines, airports and associated unions, along with safety regulators, to try to identify and address any potential red flags that may be hiding in the data each airline must report.
Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating all of the recent near-misses, said each one is complicated by the lack of cockpit voice recordings. Typically, these devices record on a two-hour loop.
“The six from this year all have one thing in common: The cockpit voice recorders were all overwritten,” Homendy said. She also noted that her agency has since 2018 recommended that planes be equipped with a cockpit voice recorder capable of storing at least 25 hours worth of audio — a standard that she said European regulators have had in place for more than a year.
Homendy said the Austin incident and a second incident in Burbank, Calif. were especially alarming instances of planes coming dangerously close to each other. In Burbank, where a Mesa Airlines flight was forced to go around a SkyWest flight as it was taking off, Homendy said the two planes came within 300 feet of each other.
“Too often we’ve seen the federal government and industry act after an incident, after lives are lost, once headlines are made,” Homendy said. “Our entire mission at the NTSB is to prevent that next accident.”
A POLITICO review of Federal Aviation Administration data shows that the first two months of 2023 showed a rise of near-collisions involving commercial planes across the country. During January and February, commercial jets experienced close calls at a higher rate than the previous five years combined.
Homendy said the NTSB is investigating six close calls at runways across the country since the start of the year. Additionally, the NTSB is investigating two wrong-way landings last year and two separate severe turbulence incidents on the same day in Hawaii last December, one incident where 36 people were hurt and another where a flight came within 800 feet of hitting the Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff.
While all of those incidents remain under NTSB investigation, Homendy said that high turnover in the aviation industry since the pandemic, an increasingly congested airspace and the lack of adopting seven NTSB recommendations related to airport runways are all contributing factors to the troubling pattern of near collisions that contributed to the need for Wednesday’s summit.

“Today is not an academic exercise,” Nolen said. “We have to take these six near misses and treat them as if they have happened and that’s why we’re here today.”
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#Buttigieg #concerned #increase #airline #close #calls
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 15, 2023
Biden mourns with families of California shooting victims and moves to close gun loophole

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His remarks framed what the White House portrayed as a significant advance in gun safety, an executive order intended to move the U.S. as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation.
The executive action directs Attorney General Merrick Garland to close a gray area in existing gun sales laws that have allowed some vendors to operate without conducting background checks. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which Biden signed into law last summer, requires anyone who sells firearms for profit to run background checks. Garland will be tasked with defining who qualifies as a gun dealer.
“It’s just common sense to check whether someone is a felon, a domestic abuser before they buy a gun,” Biden said.
Among other directives, the executive order asked Biden’s Cabinet to focus on public awareness campaigns around red flag laws and safe gun storage and encouraged the Federal Trade Commission to publish a report on how manufacturers market firearms to adults and minors. The action also calls for his administration to speed up the implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
The president’s move comes as state leaders renewed calls for federal action amid a violent start to 2023, which has already witnessed 164 victims in 110 mass shootings — incidents where at least four people are shot.
“I know what it’s like to get that call,” Biden told the crowd on Tuesday. “… I know what it’s like to lose a loved one so suddenly. It’s like losing a piece of your soul.”
While the White House has made historic strides on gun policy, the flurry of mass shootings this year has spurred a renewed pressure campaign from gun safety advocates. Now with a split Congress, gun safety groups have said Biden has a responsibility to roll out further reform. Advocates have pushed administration officials on Tuesday’s executive order for months.
Biden used his speech to re-up his calls for lawmakers to take further action on gun violence.

“Let’s be clear: None of this absolves Congress from the responsibility of acting,” he said. “Pass universal background checks. Eliminate gun manufacturer immunity and liability. And I’m determined, once again, to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines.”
Two of the three deadliest mass shootings this year have taken place in California, according to the Gun Violence Archive, despite the state having some of the country’s strictest firearm policies and a gun death rate 37 percent below the national average. Just days after the Monterey Park shooting, a disgruntled worker killed seven people at a mushroom farm in rural Half Moon Bay.
In the case of the Monterey Park shooting, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna has said the semi-automatic handgun used by the 72-year-old gunman was most likely acquired illegally.
State leaders nationally have also said more needs to be done at the federal level in light of a Supreme Court ruling in June that struck down New York’s concealed carry law. That has given rise to subsequent challenges to state gun laws, including California’s longstanding ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and a provision barring 18-to-20-year-olds from buying semi automatic weapons.
After Tuesday’s speech, Biden was scheduled to meet with first responders and victims’ families as he has done so many times before in the wake of a mass tragedy. He’ll once again be surrounded by immense grief, just as he was in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, N.Y., less than a year ago.
But he ended Tuesday’s remarks with a line of hope. It’s a piece of advice he’s shared with other survivors and family members along the way — something he draws from his own experiences with grief.
“It takes time, but I promise you,” Biden said. “I promise you, the day will come when the memory of your loved one will bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye.”
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#Biden #mourns #families #California #shooting #victims #moves #close #gun #loophole
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 15, 2023
India is ‘dangerously close’ to Hindu rate of growth: Raghuram Rajan

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New Delhi; Sounding a note of caution, former Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan has said that India is “dangerously close” to the Hindu rate of growth in view of subdued private sector investment, high interest rates and slowing global growth.
Rajan said that sequential slowdown in the quarterly growth, as revealed by the latest estimate of national income released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) last month, was worrying.
Hindu rate of growth is a term describing low Indian economic growth rates from the 1950s to the 1980s, which averaged around 4 per cent. The term was coined by Raj Krishna, an Indian economist, in 1978 to describe the slow growth.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the third quarter (October-December) of the current fiscal slowed to 4.4 per cent from 6.3 per cent in the second quarter (July-September) and 13.2 per cent in the first quarter (April-June).
The growth in the third quarter of the previous financial year was 5.2 per cent.
“Of course, the optimists will point to the upward revisions in past GDP numbers, but I am worried about the sequential slowdown. With the private sector unwilling to invest, the RBI still hiking rates, and global growth likely to slow later in the year, I am not sure where we find additional growth momentum,” Rajan said in an email interview to PTI.
Recently, Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran had attributed the subdued quarterly growth to the upward revision of estimates of national income for the past years.
The key question is what Indian growth will be in fiscal 2023-24, Rajan said, adding “I am worried that earlier we would be lucky if we hit 5 per cent growth. The latest October-December Indian GDP numbers (4.4 per cent on year ago and 1 per cent relative to the previous quarter) suggest slowing growth from the heady numbers in the first half of the year.

“My fears were not misplaced. The RBI projects an even lower 4.2 per cent for the last quarter of this fiscal. At this point, the average annual growth of the October-December quarter relative to the similar pre-pandemic quarter 3 years ago is 3.7 per cent.
“This is dangerously close to our old Hindu rate of growth! We must do better.”
The government, he said, was doing its bit on infrastructure investment but its manufacturing thrust is yet to pay dividends.
The bright spot is services, he said, adding “it seems less central to government efforts.”
On a query regarding the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, Rajan said any scheme in which the government pours money will create jobs and any scheme which elevates tariffs on output while offering bonuses for final units produced in India will create production in India, and exports.
“A sensible evaluation would ask how many jobs are being created and at what price per job. By the government’s own statistics, 15 per cent of the proposed investment has come in but only 3 per cent of the predicted jobs have been created. This does not sound like success, at least not yet,” Rajan said.
Furthermore, even if the scheme fully meets the government’s expectations over the next few years, it will create only 0.6 crore jobs, a small dent in the jobs India needs over the same period, the former RBI Governor said.
“Similarly, government spokespersons point to the rise in cell phone exports as evidence that the scheme is working. But if we are subsidising every cell phone that is exported, this is an obvious outcome. The key question is how much value added is done in India. It turns (out to be) very little so far,” he said.
Rajan said cell phone parts imports have also gone up, so net exports in the cell phone sector, the relevant measure that no one in government talks about, is pretty much where it was when the scheme started.
“Except, we have also spent money on subsidies. Foxconn just announced a big factory to produce parts but they have been saying they will invest for a long time. I think we need a lot more evidence before celebrating the success of the PLI scheme,” he said.
Currently, Rajan is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
He further said the most developed economies of the world are largely service economies, so you can be a large economy without a large presence in manufacturing.
“Services do not just account for the majority of our unicorns, services can also provide a lot of semi-skilled jobs in construction, transport, tourism, retail, and hospitality.
“So let us not deride service jobs indeed while the fraction of manufacturing jobs has stagnated in India, services have absorbed the exodus from agriculture.
“We need to work on both manufacturing and services to create the jobs we need, and fortunately, many of the inputs both (services and manufacturing) need schooling, skilling…,” he said.
On what measures the government should take to improve oversight of private family companies to address worries after the Hindenburg allegations on Adani Group, Rajan said: “I don’t think the issue is of more oversight over private companies”.
The issue is of reducing non-transparent links between government and business, and of letting, indeed encouraging, regulators do their job, he said.
“Why has SEBI not yet got to the bottom of the ownership of those Mauritius funds which have been holding and trading Adani stock? Does it need help from the investigative agencies?,” Rajan wondered.
Adani group has been under severe pressure since the US short-seller Hindenburg Research on January 24, accused it of accounting fraud and stock manipulation, allegations that the conglomerate has denied as “malicious”, “baseless” and a “calculated attack on India”.
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#India #dangerously #close #Hindu #rate #growth #Raghuram #Rajan
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

March 5, 2023
Jill Biden sees East Africa drought up close

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“They talked about how their livestock are dying. Obviously, you can see the drought here, how bad it is,” the first lady told reporters afterward. “The one source of water here feeds 12 villages and each village has approximately a thousand to 1,200 people.”
“So they are coming here, the people are coming to get water, they’re bringing their livestock to get water. But unfortunately, for many of them, the way they make their living is from their livestock and for most of them, the livestock are dying, so they’re having a hard time,” she said.
Biden noted that the United States has provided 70% of the money sent to the region to help alleviate the suffering, “but we cannot be the only ones.”
“We need to have other countries join us in this global effort to help these people of the region,” she said, adding that the drought was competing with humanitarian efforts tied to Russian’s war in Ukraine and an earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people in Turkey and Syria.
“I mean, there are a lot of competing interests but, obviously here, people are actually, livestock, people are starving,” she said.
Meg Whitman, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, who accompanied Biden, said people know intellectually what’s going on in the region but “it’s different when you just see it.”
Underscoring Biden, Whitman said that “everyone needs to help as best we can here because this is going to continue for the foreseeable future.”
Members of the Maasai community, who are predominantly herders, live in Kajiado county where Biden visited.

Nearly 23 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya are thought to be highly food insecure, which means they do not know where they will find their next meal, according to a food security working group chaired by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development.
A Maasai elder, Mingati Samanya, 69, said he lost 10 cows during the recent prolonged dry season and struggled to find hay for the rest of his herd.
“The short rains last year were insufficient and right now we are back to struggling for pasture. We hope the long rains will be enough,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Biden sought to use her stature to help focus the world’s attention on the worsening humanitarian crisis in East Africa by touring the drought-stricken area near Kenya’s border with Tanzania.
On the nearly three-hour drive south of Nairobi, the capital, Biden’s lengthy motorcade passed over dry river and creek beds. Numerous cows were walking alongside the highway — many so thin that their ribs were showing.
Throngs of people lined both sides of the motorcade route at various points, waving or using their cellphones to record the event.
Some 4.4 million people in Kenya are facing high levels of food insecurity, with the number projected to rise to 5.4 million in March, according to an analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.
Already, 11 million livestock that are essential to many families’ health and livelihood have died. Many of the people affected are farmers who have watched their crops wither and die, and their water sources run dry.
Northern Kenya, which is arid and semi-arid and is where pastoralist communities live, is most affected.
The country’s agriculture sector heavily relies on rainfall, and the meteorological department is predicting delayed rains in the upcoming short rainy season that should begin in March.
President William Ruto announced last October that his cabinet had lifted a decade-old ban on openly cultivating and importing genetically modified crops. The decision came amid pressure from the U.S. government, which had argued that the ban affected U.S. agricultural exports and food aid.
Last week, Ruto led the country in praying for rain.
The first lady has been highlighting the drought along with women and youth empowerment since arriving in Namibia last Wednesday.
Biden had visited Kenya in 2011, when her husband, Joe Biden, was serving as vice president, to help raise awareness about what then was considered a severe famine. U.S. officials and aid organizations say the current drought is far worse.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 27, 2023