United Nations: There is a “crucial need” for additional money to close the funding gap to salvage the decaying Safer oil tanker off Yemen’s Red Sea coast, a UN spokesman said.
A pledging event hosted by the UK and the Netherlands for the UN-led Safer project raised $5.6 million in new funding, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters.
The UN calls on the international community to help close the funding gap, which still stands at $23.8 million for the emergency phase, he said.
The Safer tanker, a 47-year-old vessel that has moored off Yemen and has not been maintained since 2015 because of the conflict, has decayed to the point where there is an imminent risk it could explode or break apart, which would have disastrous environmental effects on the region, reports Xinhua news agency.
As part of an emergency operation, the UN Development Programme purchased from Belgian shipping company Euronav in March the vessel “Nautica” to remove over a million barrels of oil from the decaying Safer tanker.
The vessel is expected to arrive in Yemen in early May.
According to Haq, an additional $19 million is also required for the critical second phase of the UN-coordinated operation to avert a catastrophic oil spill in the Red Sea.
“It is urgent that this gap is closed to successfully implement the operation,” Haq said.
“While we appreciate the contributions received so far, there is a crucial need for the funds to allow us to complete the task that we have begun,” he added.
There’s an almost obsessive preoccupation with Biden’s age. And in his video, Biden sought to portray himself as an ageless champion who will “battle for the soul of America” by taking on conservatives who are banning books, making it more difficult to vote and meddling in women’s health care decisions.
This campaign, though, will be far different than the socially distanced one he successfully navigated in 2020 with few public appearances during the height of the pandemic.
There’s a perceived dearth of enthusiasm for his campaign, with many Democratic activists resigned to the fact Biden is their best chance to stop Republicans from reclaiming the presidency. And the reality for Biden is many activists — natural surrogates to bolster his message — are growing weary. Many see themselves as loyal foot soldiers in the fight against culture war battles being waged in conservative legislatures which are pushing for stricter laws targeting abortion and voting.
Many don’t view Biden himself as a galvanizing force in 2024.
“It’s not going to be him energizing the base,” Cliff Albright, executive director of Black Voters Matter Fund, told The Recast newsletter with a hint of a chuckle.
“It’s obviously going to have to be surrogates to do the energizing part, but he’s got some achievements, including some that influence Black folks directly that he can craft a message around.”
Albright says the relaunch video was strong and that he was glad to see Biden lean so heavily into voting rights, an issue he says he is key for Black voters — even though Democrats were unsuccessful in enacting federal protections when the party held a governing trifecta.
“Sometimes all Black folks want to see is, ‘We want to see you fight,’” Albright says. “We’re not naive. We’re used to being in fights we know we can’t win because we don’t have the votes … but we want people to fight for us.”
Many Democratic strategists and activists give the Biden administration high marks for stabilizing the economy following the pandemic shutdowns, passing bipartisan infrastructure legislation and nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.
Those, they say, are achievements Biden should be touting.
They also hope the Biden administration can craft a coherent campaign message, one that showcases his achievements but also serves as a clarion call for the battles ahead that still require a united front of elected officials and activists to achieve. Keeping the activist class engaged and energized is key, but there’s also a hard truth being spoken amongst grassroots organizers.
“I think what you’re seeing is that we’re burnt out,” says longtime Democratic political strategist and activist Nina Smith, who worked on Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign last cycle.
“There are a lot of folks right now that are just tired and they’ve stepped away. Folks that I worked alongside with in 2020 have stepped away and they are not as engaged anymore.”
“That’s the real danger here,” she adds.
Activists note that if the Biden campaign invests in and engages community organizers early on, this early fatigue can be overcome.
Many also say that Biden should rely on a new class of elected officials, including freshman Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Tennessee state Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, to help elevate his campaign to a weary progressive base.
The “two Justins” as they are sometimes referred to, are both young Black men who were each expelled from the GOP-led Tennessee Legislature, before being reinstated the following week.
Together with state Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is white and survived an expulsion vote, they form the “Tennessee Three.” On Monday, they met with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House to push the administration to declare gun violence a public health emergency.
Still, activists on the left may be looking past Biden, who will be 82 years old should he be sworn in for another term. Instead, they say, they are inspired by the woman who is leading his campaign: Julie Chávez Rodríguez. She’s a senior White House adviser and the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez, famed labor leader and Chicano icon.
Not everyone agrees it’s enough.
“That alone is not going to be something that is going to [bring] Latino voters out for President Biden,” says Mayra López-Zuniga, a political strategist with the progressive group Mijente. “I think we need a little bit more substance.”
As she sees it, many Latino voters don’t feel their lives have changed for the better during the Biden administration. Huge wage gaps persist between Latinas and non-Hispanic men. By one measure from the Justice for Women report, Latinas make 54 cents for every dollar a white man makes.
Then there’s immigration, which was not mentioned in the president’s campaign video relaunch and is seen as a potential liability for Biden heading into 2024.
“The president hasn’t been able to deliver on immigration, no asylum reform, DACA is still up in the air,” López-Zuniga tells The Recast. “So I don’t know, at this point, that there’s a huge energy for what 2024 is going to look like.”
While Biden and his advisors seek to project the image of a spry commander in chief, questions about his vitality will hover over his reelection prospects — as are concerns that voters just aren’t that into him. The latest datapoint underscoring that came in an NBC News poll released Sunday.
It found a whopping 70 percent of Americans say Biden should not run — including 51 percent of Democrats. That is compared to just 26 percent who said he should run. Of those who said he shouldn’t run, a combined 69 percent cited his age as a reason.
Still: A lot can happen in a campaign over the course of 18 months. If anyone knows this, it’s Biden himself.
This article first appeared in an edition of The Recast newsletter.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar made a significant comment about the Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir. He observed: “There is vacuum that needs to be filled,” and it immediately got translated into the widening duration between the elections held last in J&K, and now. Technically, this vacuum is about time. There, however, are larger issues involved, which this vacuum phrase invokes.
The last assembly polls in J&K, when it was special status state under Article 370, were held in November-December 2014. By that count, it is almost nine years between then and now. In practical terms, it’s since June 19, 2018, there has been no Assembly, first, it was kept in suspended animation, and then dissolved on November 21, 2018, in the most mysterious circumstances when a supposedly dysfunctional fax machine at Raj Bhawan, Jammu became the cause of not entertaining a plea by three parties- PDP, National Conference, and Congress, and few independents to form the government. Even if that controversial act of the then Governor Satya Pal Malik is to be condoned, the elections to the Assembly should have been held within the stipulated period of six months from the date of dissolution- that is by May 2019. Ironically, the parliamentary polls were held in April-May, 2019. It, in itself, dismissed the thesis that the elections were not possible because of the poor security situation. This logic remains beyond comprehension.
Again even if the argument is entertained that there are different sets of security covers needed for the parliamentary and Assembly polls, as the election of MLAs invokes intense electioneering and campaigning in wider areas than the Lok Sabha polls, even then some sort of date should have been announced. Prior to the abrogation of Article 370 and the split of the state into two union territories, the Election Commission of India had declared that it would take the call after the conclusion of the Amarnath Yatra. The pilgrimage to the cave shrine in the Himalayas in Kashmir, devoted to Lord Shiva at the height of 13,500 feet above sea level, however, was canceled on August 2, 2019, apparently, because it was under immediate threat of terror attacks. So that schedule got canceled with that only. As the whole landscape of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir changed on August 5, 2019, along with its political history and future outlook, the elections were not possible owing to security reasons, and also that there were apprehensions of noisy and violent street protests – holding of the polls that time would have been hara-kiri. Moreover, all the political leaders of the regional parties were put behind bars,- some under house arrest, others in detention elsewhere, and hundreds of others, stone throwers, and miscreants were also sent to jails. The issues got changed overnight from elections to Article 370 and the dismantling of the state into two union territories. In a place where the internet remained shut for almost one year, the elections were unthinkable.
There was rhetoric to show that doing away with Article 370 has brought changes that marginalized sections in society. There also was simmering against the move. There were several parties and sections of society who did not see the move as just a constitutional measure, depriving J&K of its special status and constitutional guarantees, but as something aimed at marginalizing their identity, culture, and demography.
In the hindsight, it’s clear now that the constitution of the Delimitation Commission in March 2020, was a move to gain time to test the ground for the political outcome. It was not without a reason that the Jammu region, perceived to be BJP bastion, got an increase of six seats from 37 to 43, while Kashmir, having more population, got just one more seat – 46 to 47. The Delimitation Commission report came out in May 2022- a delay of 14 months due to the Covid pandemic. After the Commission’s report, a summary revision of electoral rolls was ordered and it was completed in November 2022. That should have brought the elections into sight, but, in reality nowhere to be seen.
This vacuum runs against the spirit of democracy. The elected representatives in the Assembly form core of the democracy. If the people feel unrepresented, then the vacuum assumes greater and serious dimensions than merely the gap between the last elections and now.
At least 39 migrants have been killed in a gruesome bus accident in Panama after trekking for days through the Central American country’s southern jungles on their way to a new life in the US.
The accident took place in the early hours of Wednesday as a convoy of buses traveled from Panama’s border with Colombia towards a migrant reception centre near the town of Gualaca.
“We are in a disaster situation,” Dr Katherine Guerra, the emergency department chief at a hospital in the city of David, told reporters as survivors were rushed there with exposed fractures and severe abdominal injuries.
“There were families, children, newborn babies, elderly women,” one Venezuelan migrant who was at the scene told the newspaper La Estrella de Panamá.
Panama’s president, Nito Cortizo, said government teams were working “arduously” to help survivors and tweeted: “This is deplorable news for Panama and the region.”
Map of the Darién gap
The names and nationalities of those killed were not immediately clear but Gualaca’s mayor, Luis Manuel Etribí Miranda, told reporters he believed most were from Haiti.
Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, said citizens of his country were also involved and sent his condolences to victims of the “terrible accident”.
Tens of thousands of Haitians have poured through the perilous rainforests of the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama in recent years as their Caribbean homeland has fallen deeper into humanitarian and political crisis.
Many thousands of Cubans have made the same journey hoping to outrun growing political persecution and economic strife back home.
Nearly 70,000 Venezuelans also travelled through the Darién last year as their country continued to reel from one of the most severe economic collapses outside of a war zone in recent world history. A total of nearly 250,000 people made the journey last year compared with about 133,000 in 2021, according to official statistics.
Panama’s migration chief, Samira Gozaine, told reporters that authorities believed the accident had happened after the bus missed a turn into the migrant centre where it was supposed to leave its 66 passengers. Local reports said the driver lost control of the vehicle after turning back and the bus plunged off an escarpment, leaving dozens of passengers dead.
The Human Rights Watch activist Juan Pappier called the accident a disaster foretold. “When I visited this region, we saw that these buses carried more people than permitted and made long journeys without breaks. There have been similar accidents in the past, with numerous injured,” Pappier tweeted.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
