Day: April 23, 2023

A 50-member Indian business delegation starts a four-day visit to Russia Monday as both countries seek to deepen economic ties that have grown in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

India and Russia are also in talks for a free trade deal, ministers from the two countries said earlier this week during a visit by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov to New Delhi.

In recent months, Moscow has become India’s largest supplier of crude oil as sanctions-hit Russia seeks more trade with Asian countries.

New Delhi has not joined U.S-led Western sanctions on Moscow or condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine outright but has been calling for a negotiated resolution of the conflict.

It is also continuing to step up its economic engagement with Russia despite Western calls to gradually distance itself from Moscow.

The Indian business delegation headed to Russia is expected to meet buyers in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

“We see opportunities in Russia and that is why we put together this delegation. It is going to explore markets in food and agricultural products,” Ajay Sahai, director general of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations told VOA.

He said that the aim is to double Indian exports to Russia to about $5 billion this year.

Trade analysts say India is trying to step up its exports to Russia to bridge a trade deficit that has become huge as New Delhi’s crude oil imports from Moscow rise exponentially.

While India’s imports from Russia have jumped fourfold to over $46 billion since 2021, its exports to Moscow add up to less than $3 billion.

But as Russia’s trade with the West dries up, it has been seeking products from India, including manufactured goods, electronics devices and automobile components.

“It is a windfall situation. We are getting discounted oil which is a huge advantage for India. Compared to virtually nothing prior to the Ukraine invasion, India’s crude oil imports have risen to over a million barrels of oil per day from Russia,” Manoj Joshi, distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation told VOA. “And now that they are under sanctions, India sees an opportunity in promoting exports also, so that will be a double advantage.”

Russia, India’s Cold War ally, was its largest defense supplier for decades. Even though New Delhi has strengthened strategic partnerships with the United States and other Western countries in the last two decades, it maintains close ties with Moscow.

Addressing a business forum with Manturov on April 17 in New Delhi, Indian External Affairs Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar called the India-Russia relationship among the “steadiest” in global relations, and said that the partnership is drawing attention not because it has changed but because it has not.

Jaishankar said Russia’s resources and technology can make a powerful contribution to India’s growth as Moscow is looking more toward Asia.

“We are looking forward to intensifying trade negotiations on a free trade agreement with India,” Manturov, who is also Russia’s industry and trade minister said.

Indian exporters however say that issues such as logistics, market access and payment difficulties pose a challenge. “The opportunity is there to grow trade, but only time will tell how far we can exploit it,” Sahai said.

While Western countries want India to decrease its reliance on Russian imports to isolate Moscow over the Ukraine war, New Delhi has remained firm in maintaining its economic engagement with Russia.

“India’s message to the West is clear. We will pursue a relationship in our self-interest and we will go wherever our interests take us,” Joshi said.

“Yes, the West would like India to pressure Russia by not buying oil from them, but they have reconciled to the position that New Delhi has taken,” he said.

Source: Voice of America

Nearly 800 people in Germany have signed up to join a series of climate actions next week in Berlin aimed at bringing the capital to a standstill.

Protesters started pouring in last Wednesday at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate from where Last Generation, a climate activist group, will launch mass action.

‘We are gathered here in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate to show the world that we are stopping the destruction of our environment and our future right now, we are not going to take it any longer that our government is doing so less to protect us and our children and our future,” said Lars, one of the organizers who only gave his first name due to fear of reprisals.

The climate activists have earned the nickname ‘climate stickers’ as they frequently glue themselves to roads to stop traffic and bring attention to the climate emergency.

The goal of the upcoming actions is to convince the government to enforce a speed limit of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) on the German motorway to reduce pollution, and issue a nationwide pound 9 ($10) ticket that can be used on all local and regional transport to encourage people to use public transport.

Some of the people in attendance expressed their fears about the climate emergency and emphasized the need for urgent action.

Toby, also giving only his first name, said: ‘The thing is it’s very necessary that we ring the alarm bell and make people really, really aware that the climate crisis is a much bigger thing than what a lot of people actually think.’

Jan, another protester who only gave his first name, said: ‘I want to show my solidarity with the activists that want change in our politics regarding climate because its known for years that we are heading into a climate crisis and there were plenty of different actions and scientists are calling for action for 15 years now and nothing changed.’

According to Last Generation’s website, at least five people are needed to block an 8-meter wide road with three lanes. For smaller roads with two lanes, they called on at least four people to fully stop all traffic.

Berlin’s police earlier announced seven days of detention over road-blocking protest actions.

The city’s fire brigade said it is already preparing for potential public safety hazards.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The German Defense Ministry said on Twitter that it started a military evacuation operation, in close coordination with the partners.

“Our goal is to fly out as many citizens as possible from Khartoum, during this dangerous situation in Sudan. Within the scope of our possibilities, we will also take EU citizens and other nationals with us,’ the ministry said.

The daily Bild reported that German troops will evacuate on Sunday around 300 German citizens, including diplomatic staff, employees of development organizations, and business people.

Clashes between rival Sudanese military factions continued on Sunday despite a 72-hour cease-fire declared for the Muslim holiday of Eid.

There have been reports of explosions and fighting, particularly around the military headquarters and presidential palace in Khartoum.

At least 413 people have died and more than 3,500 injured in Sudan since the fighting erupted on April 15 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The UK armed forces have completed a complex and rapid evacuation of British diplomats and their families from Sudan, amid a significant escalation in violence and threats to embassy staff, said the country’s premier on Sunday.

The move followed similar evacuations of US government personnel and Iraqi diplomats from the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

“I pay tribute to the commitment of our diplomats and bravery of the military personnel who carried out this difficult operation,” Rishi Sunak said on Twitter.

“We are continuing to pursue every avenue to end the bloodshed in Sudan and ensure the safety of British nationals remaining in the country.

“I urge the parties to lay down their arms and implement an immediate humanitarian cease-fire to ensure civilians can leave conflict zones.”

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also emphasized that the safety of British nationals is the “top priority” and that the UK is working to secure international support to end the violence in Sudan.

Ongoing clashes between rival military factions, the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces, have persisted despite a 72-hour cease-fire declared for the Muslim holiday of Eid.

There have been reports of explosions and fighting, particularly around the military headquarters and presidential palace in Khartoum on Sunday.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Erin Barclay will travel to Belgium on April 23-26, where she will lead the U.S. delegation to the 2023 U.S.-EU Human Rights Consultations. The European Union delegation will be led by EU Special Representative for Human Rights Eamon Gilmore. While in Brussels, Acting Assistant Secretary Barclay will also meet with other EU and Belgian officials, as well as civil society leaders.

Source: EMM

“Children and young people are increasingly looking for answers on the internet,” says Alberto Pellai, a child psychotherapist and researcher at the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Milan.

Since 1975, there have been multiple attempts to establish compulsory sex education in Italian schools. But today in 2023, it is still not part of the national curriculum. When it comes to funding and implementation in schools, sex education remains a regional decision.

Italy is not the only European Union country lagging in this area — young people in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia and Spain are also not consistently receiving sex education at school.

Educated by the internet

Pellai is concerned that the result is young people getting their information about sex online. In addition to false information and half-truths about sexual practices and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), certain types of pornography are dangerous, especially among boys, he says.

“The depictions of sex on the internet are very violent and often have a racist or pedophilic character. This creates a lot of confusion and uncertainty about sex education — and other problems that young people have to deal with,” Pellai explains.

In Italy, as in the rest of Europe, STDs like chlamydia and syphillis are on the rise again. For psychotherapist Maria Cristina Florini, president of the Italian Sexology Center (Cis), the focus is not only on providing information about sex and health, but engaging in dialogue about these topics.

“Teachers should address sex education throughout the school year,” she says. “Since they know the students well, they have different access to them.”

A certain informality is helpful in addressing such topics openly, says Florini. The result would be students learning to take responsibility for themselves and others when it comes to sexual health.

A hostile political environment

Cis, among many other organizations, has tried inform the government on the importance of sexual education. Psychotherapist Pellai also believes that Italy urgently needs a pedagogical concept for sex that is adapted to the digital world. In 2021, Stefania Ascari of the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) made the sixteenth unsuccessful attempt since 1975 to compel schools to provide sex education nationwide. But these advocates are at odds with the country’s current leadership.

Now the issue is in the hands of the education minister, Giuseppe Valditara, a member of the right-wing populist Lega party who opposes what he calls “gender propaganda” and supports a strong role for parents in children’s education.

Lega is part of the current government, along with far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and conservative Forza Italia. Meloni, now in office for six months, wants to increase the country’s birth rate and the concept of a “natural family” in the Christian sense. By this, Meloni means exclusively heterosexual families.

“I don’t see a debate on sexual education at the national level that could give rise to a new concept for addressing this educational challenge,” researcher Pellai says.

A Rome initiative fights back

Still, there are politicians who continue to push for mandatory sex education, with three members of the Rome City Council launching a petition last year.

Councilwoman Eva Vittoria Cammerino also supports the initiative, which is to be expanded to the state level. “The presence of the church is undeniable and, in fact, brings back a patriarchal view in which women always play a subordinate role,” she told online feminist platform Freeda last week. Insufficient sexual education in Italy, she says, reinforces discrimination, sexism, homophobia and violence against women.

While studies provide only selective information on whether sex education in schools leads to a decrease in STDs and unwanted pregnancies, the science generally concludes that sex education not only promotes healthy sexual behavior among young people, but also increases knowledge about sex and health.

Source: Deutsche Welle

Three people were killed when a train and a car collided near the northern German city of Hannover, police said Sunday.

The accident happened at around 4:50 a.m. local time (0350 GMT) at a level crossing north of Neustadt am Rübenberg near the A6 autobahn, the Neue Presse reported.

A police spokeswoman said a regional train plowed into the car “at full speed” after it drove onto the rail track.

She said the barrier was down at the time of the accident but that it didn’t span the entire road.

Young driver and passengers killed

The dead were the three young occupants of the car — the 22-year-old driver and women of a similar age, police said.

Only one of the 42 passengers and rail workers on board the train was slightly injured.

A large contingent of emergency services personnel was at the scene.

The seats of the car lie several meters from the vehicle after the collision with a train never Hannover on April 23, 2023 Rail line closed, delays expected

Deutsche Bahn (DB) said the rail line between Hannover and Nienburg (Weser) would remain closed until lunchtime.

DB said all high-speed ICE trains between Oldenburg and Hannover were canceled and other services would be affected.

The national rail operator said intercity trains between Hannover and Emden were being diverted in both directions and delays could be expected.

Sunday’s collision came two days after a nationwide strike on Germany’s railway network led to the cancellation of thousands of train services.

Source: Deutsche Welle

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly says British diplomats have been evacuated from Sudan after specific threats and violence towards them.

He also said the embassy in Khartoum has been closed and staff have been re-located close to the region.

Source: BBC

In April 2021 comments by the US Treasury secretary prompted nervousness among Irish politicians and officials.

It was clear the US was preparing to reinvigorate international efforts to reform business taxation.

Janet Yellen wanted to end “the global race to the bottom” where large, mostly US firms organised operations to sharply reduce corporation tax bills.

A long-standing part of the Republic of Ireland’s economic strategy has been to attract tax-sensitive foreign investment.

Its headline corporation tax rate of 12.5% is among the lowest in the developed world.

Work on those global tax reforms has not been completed and Ireland may yet face a reckoning.

But for now the country is reaping an astonishing bounty.

That was made clear when Finance Minister Michael McGrath delivered his spring economic forecast last week.

He was in the happy position of being able to predict a budget surplus of €10bn (£8.85bn) this year or 3.5% of national income.

In other words the state will collect €10bn more in taxes than it spends.

That is not expected to be a one-off; the annual surplus is forecast to be more than €20bn (£17.7bn) by 2026.

Where has the money come from?

Ireland’s economy has recovered strongly from the Covid-19 pandemic so more taxes like VAT are being collected.

But something else is going on. That something is the corporation tax coming from multinational companies.

Last year Ireland raised €22.6bn (£20bn) in corporation tax, 182% more than the €8bn (£7.08bn) it took in just five years ago.

Of that €22.6bn Mr McGrath has designated about €12bn (£10.62bn) as a “windfall” from multinationals, meaning it has been derived from a particular set of circumstances that won’t last forever.

Ireland has long featured in the tax planning of multinational companies, often as a conduit for shifting money around.

But in the middle of the last decade some of the world’s biggest companies began to reorganise their affairs in a way which meant they would pay a lot more tax in Ireland.

Ironically this was partially a response to the pressure on big companies to clean up their act on tax.

The principle was that companies should declare profits in locations where they have substantial real operations or activities rather than just a low-tax location where they happen to have an office with few employees.

Ireland fitted the bill – it was a tax-friendly jurisdiction but companies like Apple had long had real operations in the country, employing thousands of people.

What came next was the legal relocation of intellectual property (IP) assets to Ireland – the most valuable profit-earning parts of these businesses.

Apple’s shift of IP assets in 2015 is widely believed to have been responsible for a wild swing in the country’s GDP that year.

Finance journalist Thomas Hubert has analysed company filings to work out how much tax Apple has paid in Ireland since that IP move.

In a recent piece for The Currency news site he estimated that the company paid Irish corporation tax “in the high €3bn (£2.65bn) to €4bn (£3.54bn) bracket” in 2022 alone.

There are probably other factors at play, including the expiration of certain tax breaks but commercial confidentiality means there is not really a full and easily understood explanation of precisely what is going on.

So what to spend it on?

Prof Alan Barrett from Dublin’s Economic and Social Research Institute said the difficulty in defining how much of this tax is a temporary windfall means there is caution about how the money should be spent.

“The government and all commentators recognise that because we can’t explain why so much extra revenue is coming in, that revenue could disappear very quickly,” he said.

“The discussion at the moment is all around the notion that we have to be really careful not to start making long term day-to-day spending commitments based on this revenue.”

He said there was an awareness of the danger of repeating the mistakes at the end of the Celtic Tiger period when spending plans were dependent on property-related tax revenues which collapsed along with the property market.

One obvious way in which the money could be spent is on a huge programme of social housing and related infrastructure.

Ireland is in the grip of a housing crisis which the governing coalition has struggled to get a hold of and is being punished in the polls as a result.

But Prof Barnett said that turning the windfall into houses was not straightforward.

“The difficulty is that the economy is essentially at full employment so there just aren’t the bodies available to do things like building housing or other forms of infrastructure,” he said.

For that reason thoughts are turning towards some form of sovereign wealth fund.

In the conclusion to his forecast, Mr McGrath said that “the costs of demographic change are now very clearly on the horizon” and that over the course of this decade it will cost up to €8bn a year more simply to deliver existing levels of public service.

For that reason he will soon be proposing a way to “pre-fund a portion of these costs via a longer-term public savings vehicle”.

But don’t expect the entire windfall to be squirrelled away.

Ireland’s next general election must be held by March 2025 and a couple of giveaway budgets may be the coalition’s best shot at retaining power.

Source: BBC

It is not easy to annoy Senator George Mitchell but he was irked by a question about the political stalemate in Northern Ireland 25 years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

During an interview in Belfast this week, he stared at me and shook his head as I suggested more political progress could and should have been made since 1998.

He took a breath, reached forward and then hit me… with numbers.

“During the Troubles 3,500 were killed in sectarian violence and 50,000 were injured,” he said.

“In the 25 years since there have been, according to the Northern Ireland police service statistics’ agency, about 164 security-related deaths.

“Life has improved dramatically.”

He was making it clear the Good Friday Agreement was not all about good government.

It is just as well. The stop-start Stormont assembly is hardly a model for good governance.

However, for Senator Mitchell that was never the absolute priority.

When he started chairing multi-party talks on a sunny day at the beginning of June 1996, the main issue was life-and-death rather than bread-and-butter politics.

His aim was to find something, indeed anything, that the main parties in Belfast could agree on.

‘What human enterprise is perfect?’

A deal was eventually reached 22 months later on a snowy Friday in April 1998.

Looking back on the 30-page document, he said: “Could it have been better? Of course.

“What human activity or enterprise is perfect? None. And none will ever be.”

Senator Mitchell has been lauded locally, nationally and internationally for his role in the negotiations.

He was the glue that kept the politicians together amid arguments, walkouts and controversies.

It is no exaggeration to say there was a row every week. As one of the few journalists who covered every day of the talks I went through a year’s supply of notebooks in a month.

There was plenty of news but nothing was really happening. No movement. No progress. Until the final few weeks.

Much has been made about the 11th-hour involvement of three leaders – the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern and US President Bill Clinton.

Let me throw in three other names, two of which will be unfamiliar to most readers – Kelly Currie, David Pozorski and Martha Pope.

They were Senator Mitchell’s team behind the scenes. All Americans, they all gave up two years of their lives to live in Belfast and work with the talks’ chair.

They stayed at the Europa Hotel in the city at a time when it was still subject to bomb scares.

They eventually moved out into rented accommodation, not for security reasons but to try to lead a more normal life.

‘Listening is hard when it goes on for years’

Martha Pope, a former sergeant-at-arms at the US Senate, was the main adviser.

During the final session of the talks when the deal was done and TV cameras were allowed into the conference room, she could be seen at the right-hand shoulder of Senator Mitchell.

Where is she now? Back in America, enjoying life as a pastel artist.

She now inhabits a much more colourful world than the drab surroundings of Castle Buildings at Stormont where the negotiations took place.

In his keynote speech at the Agreement 25 conference at Queen’s University Belfast this week, Senator Mitchell paid tribute to all of his colleagues in the international team which oversaw the talks.

He said: “I shared the role with two extraordinary men – the late Harri Holkeri, the former prime minister of Finland, and General John de Chastelain, the former head of the Canadian Defence Forces.

“Each of us was well served by small but very able staffs. For me they included Martha Pope, David Pozorski, and Kelly Currie.”

Together they managed to overcome the language barriers at meetings with politicians from Northern Ireland.

Senator Mitchell reflected: “I listened to the same people saying the same things, over and over and over again.

“Many of them talked very fast, some in accents I wasn’t familiar with.

“To improve my understanding I held many, many informal meetings, in my office and theirs, where I said little and listened as much as possible.

“Listening, really listening to someone else is hard, especially when it goes on for years.

“But it’s also a sign of respect. And I respected them for what they were trying to do.”

The respect is mutual. The politicians who negotiated the agreement hold Senator Mitchell in the highest esteem.

A bust by the artist Colin Davidson outside Queen’s University shows the regard in which the 89-year-old politician-turned-diplomat is held generally.

“When you’re looking at a statue of yourself you know the end is near,” said Senator Mitchell with a smile as the tribute was unveiled.

For the past three years he has been suffering from acute leukaemia and has been in and out of hospital.

Until the very last moment it was doubtful whether he would make it to Northern Ireland for events marking the 25th anniversary of the agreement.

When it looked like he might not be able to travel to Belfast there was a TV studio near his home in Miami put on stand-by for him to be able to contribute remotely.

Against the odds, Senator Mitchell made it.

Just like in 1998.

Source: BBC