Colombo: Sri Lanka is set to increase duty-free allowances for migrant workers at the airport starting from May in order to encourage remittance, Minister of Labour and Foreign Employment, Manusha Nanayakkara said.
The increase will be based on the amount of money remitted by the workers, Nanayakkara added on Monday during a media briefing.
Under the new scheme, there will be five categories of concessions, Xinhua news agency reported.
For people having remitted $2,400-$4,799, $4,800-$7,199, $7,200-$11,999, $12,000-$23,999 and $24,000 or more, they will be eligible for an additional duty-free allowance of $600, $960, $1,440, $2,400, and $4,800, respectively, when shopping at the airport, according to the Minister.
The concessions will be available to anyone who has sent the mentioned amount of money through official channels to the country within a year, the Minister said.
He added that no tax will be charged on foreign worker remittances and money held in banks in the form of foreign exchange.
Migrant workers’ remittance is one of the main sources of foreign exchange for the South Asian country.
Aurangabad: Some Bharatiya Janata Party workers on Monday sprinkled cow urine at the venue of the Maha Vikas Aghadi rally held a day earlier in Aurangabad in Maharashtra.
Shiv Sena founder late Bal Thackeray used to speak about fighting the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, while Uddhav Thackeray held a rally here with the support of these two parties, BJP functionary Suhas Dashrathe said.
“Therefore, we decided to sprinkle gaumutra at the Marathwada Sanskrutik Mandal ground to purify it,” he claimed.
Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Ambadas Danve in a tweet said the BJP’s act was against the country and its Constitution.
Senior Congress leader and former chief minister Ashok Chavan condemned the BJP for this act.”It is a public ground and anyone can hold a rally there. The BJP should express their thoughts by holding a rally,” Chavan said.
Guntur: Telugu Desam Party (TDP) workers were detained on Saturday for conducting a rally without permission in the Tenali area here, police said.
As part of the Tenali Bandh programme, TDP held a rally in the Tenali area of Guntur District.
Tenali Circle Inspector Koteswarao said, “To control the law and order and to maintain the peace we detained them. Nobody was arrested.”
The rally was organised in a protest of a scuffle between the YSRCP and TDP councillors in a Municipal Council meeting in the Tenali area of the Guntur district on Friday.
TDP councillors had objected to the approval of a single tender for the door-to-door works, and over the matter, a scuffle broke out between TDP and YSRCP councillors at Tenali Municipal Office.
As a result of the scuffle, TDP members held a rally in the Guntur District, and YSR Congress Party members also held a massive protest at Tenali Municipal Office, on Saturday.
Members of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) at the rally were stopped because they did not have permission from the authorities for conducting the rally, police said.
TDP members protested against the police action.
The rally was diverted to the other side as it was prevented from entering the market and the protestors were detained.
Jagdalpur: Five Congress workers sustained burn injuries during the ‘Mashaal march’ campaign launched by the party against the Centre over Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification and “to save democracy” in Jagdalpur on Friday.
“Four of them have 10-15 per cent burns, while the other one has suffered more than 30 per cent burn injuries. The condition of all of them is stable and out of danger,” said Dr Sanjay Prasad, Civil Surgeon, at Maharani Hospital, Jagdalpur.
Earlier on March 28, Delhi Congress organised ‘Mashaal’ march to protest against Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from Lok Sabha during which several leaders were detained.
The Delhi police on Tuesday released all protesters, including Congress leaders and workers, who were detained from outside the Red Fort as part of its campaign against the government over Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification and “to save democracy”.
Party MPs and workers had gathered at the Red Fort at 7 pm to participate in the Congress’ ‘Loktantra Bachao Mashaal Shanti’ march. The detainees were brought to Kingsway Camp PS in North Delhi.
The party’s month-long campaign includes press conferences by national-level Leaders in 35 major cities and Jai Bharat Satyagraha at district and state levels and Jai Bharat Maha Satyagraha at the national level.
The Congress has announced a month-long protest programme over the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi after he was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison in a defamation case from 2019 on March 23 by the Surat Court.
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by Siasat staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Ahmedabad: Eight workers of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have been arrested for allegedly putting up posters saying “Modi Hatao Desh Bachao” in different parts of Ahmedabad city in Gujarat, police said on Friday.
The Gujarat unit of AAP condemned the arrests saying the action has proved their point that “democracy is in danger”.
In a release, the city crime branch said eight persons have been arrested on the charge of damaging public property by putting up posters with the text “Modi Hatao Desh Bachao” in areas like Isanpur, Maninagar, Vatva, Narol and Vadaj. The posters were put up by the AAP workers on Thursday, it said.
The arrests were made on Thursday night after the registration of first information reports (FIRs) in different police stations earlier in the day, said the release.
Police have identified the AAP workers as Natwar Thakor, Jatin Patel, Kuldeep Bhatt, Bipin Sharma, Ajay Chauhan, Arvind Chauhan, Jivan Maheshwari and Paresh Tulsiani.
AAP’s Gujarat vice president Sagar Rabari said though the party posted such posters in many other states on Thursday, only Gujarat police booked their workers.
“Ahmedabad is the only city where people are deprived of their Constitutional rights because police can arrest you anytime and book you as per their whims and fancies. This police action proves that our apprehension that democracy is in danger is not misplaced and we were not wrong in carrying out that poster drive,” said Rabari.
In last year’s Gujarat Assembly elections, AAP won five seats and secured 13 per cent of the popular vote, in a performance that belied its high-decibel campaign in the state. BJP registered a record 156 wins in the house of 182 seats.
23 farm workers fall ill after suspected contaminated water in Mulugu (Representative image)
Hyderabad: Nearly 23 farm workers fell ill after they drank water contaminated with suspected phosphorous-based pesticide, from a drip irrigation pipeline in Mulugu on Wednesday.
The workers were hired by a farmer and deployed to harvest red chillies at Gollagudem village in Venkatapuram mandal.
According to the police, the incident reportedly occurred when they were having lunch in the afternoon, consuming water unaware of the contamination in it.
They started vomiting soon after consuming the pesticide-laced water following which they were rushed to Eturunagram Community Health Center(CHC).
After treatment, 20 labourers were discharged while the condition of the remaining three deteriorated.
They were later shifted to the government hospital in Mulugu for advanced treatment.
Last year, more than 50 people, including eight children, fell severely ill after drinking the municipality water in Gadwal.
According to two Appropriations Committee aides involved in the talks, $500 million in funding was included in the draft in hopes Democrats and Republicans could reach a deal to extend the TAA program, but they failed to do so. In the rush to pass the final bill, the appropriations provision was not altered, and aides felt it was not necessary to do so because the program was not authorized. The aides were granted anonymity to discuss confidential policy negotiations.
While stressing that the senator supports TAA in principle, Murray’s office believes the program remains expired and the money cannot be spent without authorizing language. After the bill was signed and Murray became chair of the Appropriations Committee, she called DOL to relay that information and request the agency not restart processing applications for TAA aid.
“The appropriations bill that passed at the end of the year said the program ended, that’s the way it was written,” Murray said in a brief Capitol Hill interview on Monday. She declined to comment on the language from her own committee allocating nearly $500 million to the program, reiterating that the bill “specifically said that the program was ended” and that “is all I’m going to say.”
Wyden, one of Murray’s senior Democratic colleagues whose committee oversees the TAA program, is challenging that interpretation.
Wyden and House Democrats tried for months to get an agreement with Republicans to authorize the program for another year. Republicans insisted throughout negotiations that the Biden administration would need to commit to new trade talks overseas to get the TAA payments restarted — a demand the White House dismissed. Though they never reached a deal on that language, Wyden says that having money appropriated for the program is enough for DOL to reopen TAA again.
“I believe the omnibus extended TAA for a year,” Wyden said in a Capitol Hill interview on Monday, adding he was not aware of Murray’s guidance to DOL. “The text of the law is clear,” he added later. “The Biden administration should use that authority to deliver workers the benefits they are owed.”
DOL declined to weigh in on the legal debate between the senators, but has so far complied with requests from Murray and her staff that the agency keep the program frozen. An agency spokesperson confirmed that the program “remains in termination status” and that DOL “may not conduct new investigations or issue certifications of eligibility for new groups of workers.” A separate fact sheet put out by the agency says more than 24,000 workers have pending applications that DOL cannot investigate.
If lawmakers and DOL do not attempt to use the $500 million, the TAA program will phase out after the remaining workers in the program — roughly 7,000, according to the DOL fact sheet — finish receiving their benefits. Congress could renew the program, potentially in the year-end spending bill, but Republicans have shown no desire to drop their demand for new free trade talks and Biden’s team hasn’t budged either.
The situation is angering labor unions, like the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, who wrote to DOL earlier this month, saying that “tens of thousands of workers are currently awaiting determinations of their petition for TAA support.” Other labor groups, including the United Steelworkers and AFL-CIO, also sent similar letters.
The issue, say congressional aides involved in the omnibus negotiations, goes back to the year-end crunch to finalize the spending package. As Wyden and trade lawmakers negotiated on TAA, appropriations lawmakers wrote in the $500 million in case lawmakers arrived at a deal to reauthorize it. That deal never materialized, but the $500 million provision was not altered in the rush to finish the package before the winter holidays. The mixup was an “artifact of the timing,” as one Appropriations Committee aide put it, stressing that it was Republican opposition — and not Murray — that ultimately killed the program.
Wyden’s office and the unions say that DOL should push forward regardless and spend the $500 million appropriated to the program, pointing out that executive agencies often spend appropriated funds on expired programs without explicit reauthorization. In particular, they point to a footnote in the Government Accountability Office’s guidance on appropriations law that says Congress “appropriates huge sums each year to fund programs with expired authorizations.”
But the Appropriations Committee staff says that argument doesn’t apply to TAA.
“There’s longstanding case law and precedent on this issue about when appropriation is sufficient to extend authorization of the program,” said one committee aide involved in the spending negotiations last year. “Everybody understood ahead of the omnibus that was not the case here.”
Additionally, the aide said the committee would not push DOL to reopen the program because it could poison upcoming spending negotiations with Republicans that need to be completed by the end of this year.
“While not our preferred policy outcome, we will stand by those negotiations,” the committee aide said, “because they are very delicate and we want to have a good process in [fiscal year 2024] as well.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
San Francisco: Elon Musk has finally broken his silence on giving stock awards to employees, saying that they will get stock awards based on a roughly $20 billion valuation.
It is less than half of $44 billion for which Musk acquired the micro-blogging platform, reports The Wall Street Journal.
“I see a clear, but difficult, path to a >$250B valuation,” he told employees in an email.
He said that Twitter is being reshaped so that the company “can be thought of as an inverse startup.”
In a separate email, Twitter told employees it is offering new equity grants to staff that will start to vest after six months.
In about a year, the company will offer a liquidity event in which they can cash out some of that equity.
The new grants will vest over four years, according to the Journal.
Twitter spent nearly $630 million on stock-based compensation in 2021.
It had more than 7,500 employees and now, the company is down to about 2,000 workers after Musk laid off thousands in several rounds of layoffs.
Despite Elon Musk’s efforts to monetise Twitter, the micro-blogging platform reported a massive 40 per cent drop in revenue and adjusted earnings for December 2022.
Several advertisers “ditched the social-media platform following Elon Musk’s takeover”, the Wall Street Journal had earlier reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
In an update to investors, Twitter reported a 40 per cent decline (year-over-year) in both revenue and adjusted earnings for December 2022.
The company recently made a first interest payment to banks that lent $13 billion to help Musk buy Twitter.
Musk had predicted in November that Twitter may go bankrupt.
San Francisco: A woman in the US has tracked down her lost Apple AirPods to an airport worker’s home two weeks after she left them on a plane, a media report said.
Earlier this month, Alisabeth Hayden, who lives in Washington state, was on her way back from a trip to Tokyo to visit her husband in Seattle was separated from her AirPods during the layover from a plane in San Francisco, reports CNN.
At San Francisco International Airport, she realised she had left her jacket behind, with the AirPods in its pocket.
Hayden inquired about retrieving it, but a flight attendant informed her that only a crew member could do so.
The attendant did indeed bring the jacket to her — and she boarded her next flight to Seattle, according to the report.
“A child was screaming next to me, and I thought at least I have my AirPods,’” Hayden was quoted as saying.
She then reached for her jacket pocket and found that the pocket was open and the Airpods were not there.
Hayden utilised in-flight Wi-Fi to monitor the earphones using the “Find My” app, which tracks Apple devices, after the plane had already taken off to Seattle.
She then realised that the AirPods were moving.
“I’m a diligent person, and I tracked the whole way from San Francisco to Seattle, taking screenshots the entire time. I live an hour from Seattle, and once I got home, I was still taking screenshots,” Hayden said.
The headphones ultimately stopped moving at an address in the Bay Area in the US.
Hayden marked her headphones as “lost” on her app, pinging an alert and her number to the person who had them.
Moreover, the report said that she enlisted the help of a detective at the San Mateo police force who was working at San Francisco Airport.
The detective traced the address from where the AirPods were pinging to an airport contractor who was loading food onto planes.
When questioned by authorities, the airport worker stated that the headphones were given to him by a cleaner, who denied knowing anything about the scenario, the report mentioned.
When the AirPods were returned to Hayden 12 days later, she remarked they looked trodden on.
She stated that after complaining about the condition of the headphones, United Airlines (which she was flying) handed her $271 and 5,000 air miles.
United Airlines verified that the employee was hired by a vendor rather than the airline.
Bhopal: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday appealed BJP workers to step up their efforts and ensure that the party would win all seven Assembly seats of Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara district in the upcoming elections.
Addressing a public gathering in Chhindwara, Shah said that in 2019, BJP had lost Chhindwara Lok Sabha seat from narrow margin, “thus the party workers need to step up their efforts and ensure that the party would win the seat in 2024 general elections and all seven seats in upcoming Assembly elections”.
Chhindwara is considered as the bastion of Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath.
Shah urged the people to vote “overwhelmingly” for the BJP in the Assembly polls to be held later this year.
Meanwhile, hitting at Nath, the Union Home Minister said the former did nothing for the people of the state when he was Chief Minister between December 2018 and March 2020. “Previous Congress governments did not care for the tribals, the poor and those from the Backward Classes. Only the BJP can provide security, prosperity and ensure welfare of the poor. Prime Minister Narendra Modi cares for the respect of tribals, whom the Congress has neglected for years.”
He reminded that it was the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi “who decided to make a tribal woman – Droupadi Murmu – the President of India”. He also reiterated that the Narendra Modi-led BJP government has announced nationwide celebration of legendary tribal leader Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary on November 15 as ‘Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas’.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan levelled several allegations on Kamal Nath, such as “stopping” various public-centric schemes during his 15 months government in the state.
Chouhan said the BJP government sent a lot of money for development of Chhindwara, but Kamal Nath was taking credit out of it.
“Since the day Congress leaders came to know that Amit Shah is coming to Chhindwara, all their leaders went on panic mode. Kamal Nath has started making big announcements to counter BJP’s promises. But, let me tell you all that Chhindwara will no more remain Kamal Nath’s bastion now. BJP will win all seven Assembly seats and Lok Sabha election this time. We have taken a pledge for it,” Chouhan added.
Kamal Nath was first elected to the Lok Sabha from Chhindwara in 1980 and repeated the feat several times, with his only loss coming in a bypoll in 1997. Even when the BJP won 28 out of 29 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, his son Nakul Nath won the election from the seat. The Congress has won all assembly seats in the district in 2018 polls.
