Beijing: China’s ruling Communist Party on Sunday began a key meeting to carry out a major revamp of the party and the government ahead of next month’s annual session of the Parliament.
The meeting of the Communist Party of China (CPC) plenum started its three-day plenary session in Beijing on Sunday, with President Xi Jinping, who is also the general secretary of the party, presenting a work report, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The Central Committee plenary session is being held ahead of the annual session of China’s Parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), and the top advisory body — the China People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) — in the first week of March.
During the NPC’s annual session, China will unveil a new leadership, including a new premier to succeed the incumbent Li Keqiang who is retiring. Barring Xi, most of the officials at the top were expected to be replaced.
Earlier this week, the political bureau of the party discussed the draft plan for the reforms of the CPC as well as state institutions and finalised recommendations to be submitted to the Central Committee plenary for approval.
The Central Committee which was elected at the once in five-year Congress of the party held in October last year consisted of 203 members and 168 alternate members.
Xi, 69, was re-elected for an unprecedented third five-year term by the Congress.
Beijing: China’s ruling Communist Party as well as the state institutions will undergo a major revamp at a key meeting of the party to be held here next week, it was announced here on Wednesday.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) headed by President Xi Jinping will hold its second plenary session from February 26 to 28, an official press release after the political bureau meeting of the Party held here on Tuesday said.
The Political Bureau discussed the draft plan on the reforms of Party and state institutions, which will be submitted to the second plenary session of the Central Committee for review, it said without disclosing the details of the planned reforms.
The Central Committee which is the top policy of the party was elected at the once in five-year Congress of the party held in October last year and consisted of 203 members and 168 alternate members.
Xi, 69, was re-elected for an unprecedented third five-year term by the Congress. The Central Committee plenary session will be held ahead of the annual session of China’s Parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the top advisory body the China People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
The two bodies were scheduled to meet in the first week of next month.
After the NPC annual session, China will unveil a new leadership, including a new Premier to succeed the incumbent Li Keqiang who is retiring.
Barring Xi, almost all officials at the top are expected to be replaced.
It is slated to be the “western world’s museum of museums”, a showcase of Greece’s greatest repository of ancient art.
Once completed, the revamped National Archaeological Museum in Athens will, say officials, not only have been expanded but “reborn” at a time of record tourism to the country.
“Today I have been profoundly persuaded that a personal dream of mine has become reality,” the Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told an audience at the museum for the unveiling of the new design on Wednesday.
The emblematic work, overseen by the British architect Sir David Chipperfield, is expected to last five years. Presenting the plans, the Briton emphasised that the goal was not to compete with the museum’s main neoclassical building, which houses one of the finest collections of antiquities globally, but to complement the historic landmark by drawing on the original design. “Our architectural approach has been to create a plinth growing out of the existing building … [that] at the same time develops into a powerful piece of architecture,” he said.
“The challenge, of course, is to get those two things in balance.”
The proposed renovation was unanimously selected from a shortlist of 10 by an international evaluation committee last month. Chipperfield, renowned for his restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin, has calculated the construction will generate about 20,000 sq m of additional space, including two floors of subterranean galleries, a lush roof garden and street-level entrance.
But like most public works it is controversial.
Not since the Acropolis Museum was built back in 2009 at the foot of the fifth century BC site has a project of such scope stirred such debate or emotion. Before the proposed design had been chosen, the Association of Greek Architects had threatened to take the issue of the competition’s rules to the Council of State, the country’s supreme administrative court, after it became clear that only award-winning foreign firms with experience in museum work would be permitted to participate.
“It is unacceptable that Greek architects were not allowed to take part,” said Tassis Papaioannou, emeritus professor of architecture at the National University of Athens. “We are seriously thinking of taking it to court because the way they have proceeded so far is illegal.”
Greek renovation experts have also objected to the scale of the new entrance, saying photorealistic images released by the winning team are overly optimistic. “The new construction will virtually eclipse the original 19th building from public view at street level,” said Costas Zambas, who headed restoration works at the Acropolis for 25 years. “After yesterday’s presentation it is clear that what is one of the great neoclassical monuments in Athens will be hidden if this overly optimistic approach is allowed.”
Chipperfield, described as a master of works dealing “in dignity, in gravitas, in memory and in art”, told the Guardian his team had wrestled with similar concerns. “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,” he said after the presentation. “From certain angles, it is true, it will have an impact but the question is whether it amounts to significant harm or whether [the change in view] is just different. It’s a perfectly valid question. Our concerns are not dissimilar.”
Mitsotakis, whose centre right government faces re-election this year, has made the renovation a cultural priority, saying it will not only put the institution on the map but help revive an entire district in downtown Athens.
“We display less than 10% of what we have in our warehouses,” he said of its vast collection. “It has always troubled me that just over 500,000 visitors come to the museum every year when it hosts such an incredible wealth of world cultural heritage.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
“I’m hopeful that we’re going to have a permanent lasting solution to the situation, not just at Roxham Road, but to modernize the ability for people to make asylum claims within the confines of Canadian and international law in the near future,” he told reporters Tuesday.
The Safe Third Country Agreement, which the United States and Canada signed in 2004, requires migrants to seek asylum in the first nation they enter. The accord, however, is only enforced at official crossings, which is why people coming from the U.S. have been able to apply for asylum after crossing via Roxham Road.
The Canadian government has been saying for several years that it is working with American counterparts to update the agreement, but no major changes have been announced. Fraser did not give a timeline for reaching an accord, but said negotiations are on track.
The Roxham Road crossing — two dead-ends that nearly meet at the border — has been a thorn in the side of Canada’s Liberal minority government for years after thousands of asylum seekers began using it to enter Quebec from New York in 2017.
The juncture has gained new prominence in the wake of a recent New York Post report detailing the flow of asylum seekers from New York City.
The National Guard, the Adams administration and several nonprofits have assisted migrants in obtaining bus tickets to Plattsburgh. From there, vans and taxis shuttle migrants to the unauthorized crossing point, which is then traversed by foot, according to the Post report.
Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette called the Post’s account “astonishing,” and argued it was proof of the urgent need to update the Safe Third Country Agreement, which she said should apply to the entire Canada-U.S. border.
That same day, Adams appeared to acknowledge in a television interview some migrants who arrived in New York wanted to leave the U.S. altogether.
“We are assisting in interviewing those who seek to go somewhere else,” he told local news station FOX 5. “Some want to go to Canada, some want to go to warmer states, and we are there for them as they continue to move on with their pursuit of this dream.”
But on Tuesday, the mayor was adamant his administration was staying out of the international travel business.
“We are not coordinating with anyone to go to Canada,” Adams said during an unrelated press briefing. “We are not doing that. There’s no role that the city is playing to tell migrants to go to Canada.”
A City Hall spokesperson declined to discuss whether New York City officials had contacted any of their Canadian counterparts, but the offices of Canada’s immigration, public safety and foreign affairs ministers said in a Wednesday statement the federal government is “continuing to engage with both U.S. federal and New York City officials” on the treatment of asylum seekers.
“Our current information shows that people are not being encouraged to go to Plattsburgh or being bussed directly to the border,” the statement said.
A spokesperson for President Joe Biden did not return requests for comment.
Some Quebec lawmakers have urged U.S. officials to accept responsibility for the situation and stop busing migrants to the threshold of the country.
“They are not merchandise, they’re humans,” Quebec interim opposition leader Marc Tanguay told Global News in what has become a common refrain between leaders of North American municipalities who have struggled to pay for migrant services.
At the beginning of the year, for example, busloads of asylum seekers began arriving in New York City from Denver, which prompted Adams to lace into Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a fellow Democrat, and to compare him to GOP leaders who had made a show of sending migrants to blue cities around the country in 2022.
“At one time we had to deal with Republican governors sending migrants to New York,” Adams said at a January press briefing. “Now we’re dealing with Democratic governors sending migrants to New York. This is just unfair.”
At the time, Polis said that his office and the City of Denver had chartered buses to the five boroughs to clear a backlog of travelers who had become stranded in the Mile High City after a colossal winter storm. No one forced anyone to make the trip, they noted, and teams there had simply been respecting the wishes of asylum seekers who did not want to be in Denver — an explanation Adams echoed Tuesday when asked about migrants traveling to Plattsburgh and then Canada.
“People who arrived here and already had other destinations in mind were basically compelled to come to New York,” he said. “And when they’re part of our intake process and we speak with people and they say their desire is to go somewhere else, there’s a host of partnerships from the Catholic Charities to others that have been coordinating with people to get to their final destination.”
Adams administration spokesperson Fabien Levy disputed any parallels to the Polis episode, insisting that New York City was not chartering entire buses and was not sending anyone directly into Canada.
Yet asylum seekers bound for Plattsburgh do not appear keen on staying there.
Plattsburgh Mayor Christopher Rosenquest told POLITICO Wednesday his office has been made aware of the issue, but that migrants seem to be bypassing his town to head directly north.
“At this point, this has had no impact on the City of Plattsburgh, as migrants arriving via bus seem to be passing through to the Canadian border,” Rosenquest wrote in a statement.
Quebec has strained under the costs of service provision. While the flow of would-be refugees largely halted during the pandemic, when the federal government shut down the entire border to all but essential traffic, Roxham Road reopened in November 2021. And asylum seekers are now crossing again in record numbers: More than 39,000 people entered Canada at Roxham Road in 2022, up from 16,000 in 2019.
The Quebec government has long been calling on the federal government to shut down the unofficial crossing, arguing the province doesn’t have the capacity to deal with the new arrivals. Recent reporting in the Globe and Mail newspaper found Ottawa has spent C$94 million since the 2021 election booking entire hotels for months to house the asylum seekers.
New York City has spent far more. Nearly 45,000 asylum seekers have arrived there since the spring, and the mayor announced Tuesday a sixth Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center — special facilities with services tailored to migrants — would open at a Manhattan Holiday Inn to help deal with the influx. The city has also opened more than 80 emergency homeless shelters as its system is stretched to the breaking point.
Mona Zhang contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Mumbai: As the Adani Group battles its current crisis on multiple fronts, the Maharashtra Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and residents of Dharavi on Thursday raised questions over the fate of the ambitious redevelopment project for Asia’s biggest slum.
In end-November 2022, the state government had finalised Adani Properties Ltd.’s bid to invest Rs 5,069 crore in the Dharavi redevelopment mega project.
At that time, the Metropolitan Commissioner of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), S.V.R. Srinivas, had said that the proposal would be sent for the state government’s approval, a special purpose vehicle would be formed, and if all goes well, “the project shall kick-start by February 2023”.
When his reactions were sought again on Thursday, Srinivas said that he would not like to comment on the matter right now, “maybe after 2-3 days”.
However, state Congress General Secretary Sachin Sawant feels that all is not well considering the nosediving of Adani Group shares and its probable cascading effect on the Indian economy.
“The Maharashtra government must clarify its stand on the Dharavi redevelopment project. Will it allow the fate of lakhs of people to be connected to a company whose fate itself seems to be in jeopardy,” Sawant asked.
Shiv Sena (UBT) national spokesperson Kishore Tiwari claimed that the erstwhile Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was ‘deliberately toppled’ (in June 2022) so that the Adani Group could be given various big projects.
“Why just Dharavi? What about the future of the Navi Mumbai International Airport and other major projects which have been given to the Adani Group? The Centre and the Maharashtra government must immediately clarify and cancel the allotments,” Tiwari demanded.
The Dharavi Rehabilitation Committee (DRC) representing the local residents is virtually panicking over the fast-paced developments in the financial sector which are grabbing gloomy headlines daily.
“The Adani Group’s reliability and credibility is now in serious doubt… We feel that they may not be able to take up and complete this project on time. So, we are asking the Maharashtra government to re-tender it and give it to another party,” DRC President Raju Korde told IANS.
A meeting of the DRC shall be held later on Thursday night to finalise the strategy, besides writing to the state government to call for re-bids and award the project to a financially sound investor or consortium, he added.
In fact, in mid-January, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had brought the Dharavi revamp proposal to the global centre-stage in Davos, where he extolled it as “the largest public-private-partnership (PPP) real estate programme for slum redevelopment”.
Terming it as an “environment-friendly project”, Shinde had said that around 56,000 families would be rehabilitated there with free homes of 300 sq ft to each slum-dweller there”, wowing an influential audience at the World Economic Forum held in the ski-resort in Switzerland.
With an estimated timeline of around 15 years, the project – bedeviled by many problems and failed attempts for a makeover for over 15 years – will see construction of over 10 million sq ft, giving a total face-lift to the 520-acre locality.
Dharavi – literally meaning ‘quicksand’ – is notorious as the dirty underbelly of Mumbai, housing over 10 lakh people crammed into a 2.1 sq km corner. But it is supposed to transform itself from an ugly duckling to a glittering district with swank buildings, wide roads, residential and commercial areas, schools, hospitals, gardens, playgrounds etc. planned there.
