Author

Kozhikode Jilla Pravasi Association Qatar (Kpaq) hosted Onam celebrations for its members and their families. The event, titled ‘Kpaq Ponnonam 2024’, began with traditional floral carpet arrangements and welcoming the mythical King Mahabali. The grand Onam lunch was followed by a meeting. Secretary Ravi Puthukkudi welcomed the gathering and president Shameer K P presided. General secretary Gafoor Calicut, Samskrithi Qatar’s general secretary Shamsheer Areekkulam, Kpaq women’s wing chairperson Dr Reena, Kpaq former president and advisory board member Abdul Rahim Vengeri, former president and current vice-president and cultural wing co-ordinator Vasu Vanimel, and secretary Smrithi spoke. During the event, a poster release ceremony was held for two upcoming events: ‘Ente Kozhikode’, a literary competition celebrating Unesco’s designation of Kozhikode as a City of Literature, and a children’s painting competition to be held on November 8 in Doha. Treasurer Shoukkath J M proposed a vote of thanks.Thereafter, both adults and children participated in various games and cultural programmes. Prizes were distributed. Executive member Anju Nishin anchored the event.

Indo Arab Numis Phila Heritage Association (Inpha), the gathering of Indian members at the Qatar Philatelic and Numismatic Centre, celebrated Onam, the harvest festival of the southern state of Kerala. Instead of the traditional floral carpet, a floral design was created with coins from various countries around the world. The coins were from a collection owned by Ranjith Chemmad. Onam feast, magic show by president Jayan Orma, song by Saleem Ali and fun games were organised. Chief co-ordinator Dr Moideen Kutty inaugurated the function. Venugopal and Subair K S offered felicitations. Suresh Babu welcomed the gathering.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky voiced hope yesterday that the war with Russia will end next year, speaking during a visit to Berlin to ask for sustained military support.As Ukraine faces a gruelling third winter at war, Zelensky has been seeking support on a two-day whirlwind tour of European capitals that took him to London, Paris and Rome.Visiting Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Zelensky, dressed in his trademark military clothes, thanked Germany for its backing and said that “it is very important for us that this assistance does not decrease next year”.He said that he would present Scholz with his plan for winning the war, voicing hope that the conflict would end “no later than next year, 2025”.“Ukraine more than anyone else in the world wants a fair and speedy end to this war,” Zelensky said. “The war is destroying our country, taking the lives of our people.”Scholz pledged Germany and EU partners would send more defence equipment this year, and German aid worth €4bn in 2025, vowing that “we will not let up in our support for Ukraine”.Scholz said he and the Ukrainian leader agreed on the need for a peace conference that includes Russia, but that a peace “can only be brought about on the basis of international law”.“We will not accept a peace dictated by Russia,” Scholz said.Zelensky later wrapped up his tour by meeting German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.The Ukrainian leader has been seeking fresh military and financial aid from his European allies amid fears of dwindling support if Donald Trump wins the US presidency next month.A scheduled Ukraine defence meeting today at the Ramstein US air base in western Germany was postponed after US President Joe Biden called off a state visit to Germany because of Hurricane Milton.Germany has been Ukraine’s biggest military aid supplier after the United States.However, Scholz has rejected sending the German long-range Taurus missile system, fearing an escalation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato)’s tense standoff with nuclear-armed Russia.Zelensky had started the day at the Vatican for talks with the 87-year-old leader of the world’s almost 1.4bn Catholics – his second private audience with Pope Francis since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.Francis has repeatedly called for peace in Ukraine and regularly prays for its “martyred” people, but he sparked outrage in Kyiv earlier this year after giving an interview in which he urged Ukrainians to “raise the white flag and negotiate”.In a post on social media yesterday, Zelensky said his talks with the Pope had focused on the “incredibly painful” question of people captured and deported from Ukraine to Russia, saying he hoped the Holy See could help.The Vatican said Zelensky had discussed during the visit “the state of the war and the humanitarian situation in Ukraine” and ways to reach a “just and stable peace”.In Paris on Thursday, Zelensky held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, after which he denied media reports that he was discussing the terms of a ceasefire with Russia.“This is not the topic of our discussions,” he told the press. “It’s not right. Russia works a lot with media disinformation.”Zelensky has rejected any peace plan that involves ceding land to Russia, arguing Moscow must first withdraw all troops from Ukrainian territory.Russian forces have made advances across the eastern frontline and targeted the power grid as Ukraine faces its toughest winter since the full-scale Russian invasion started in February 2022.Russia said yesterday that its forces had captured the frontline villages of Zhelanne Druge and Ostrivske, the latest in a string of territorial gains.Russian strikes overnight on the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa killed four people, including a teenage girl, and wounded 10 more, according to the regional governor.Zelensky has pushed for clearance to use long-range weapons supplied by allies, including British Storm Shadow missiles, to strike military targets deep inside Russia.Washington and London have stalled on giving approval over fears it could draw Nato allies into direct conflict with Russia.In Germany, Scholz’s refusal to deliver Taurus missiles is controversial, even within his own three-party coalition with the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).“We must supply Ukraine with significantly more air defence, ammunition and long-range weapons,” the Greens’ European MP Anton Hofreiter told the Rheinische Post. “Restrictions on the range of weapons supplied do not contribute to de-escalation but rather enable further Russian attacks.”The FDP’s defence expert Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann told the same newspaper: “I very much hope that Zelensky will make it clear to the Chancellor once again that if Ukraine loses this war, this will not be the last war in Europe.”

Iran’s supreme leader vowed in a rare address yesterday that his allies around the region would keep fighting Israel, as he defended his country’s missile strike on its foe.Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s address in Tehran follows Iran’s second ever direct attack on Israel. It was also the first since exchanges of fire between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops escalated into full-blown war in Lebanon.Khamenei defended the Palestinian group Hamas’ “logical and legal” actions and hailed its “fierce defence” against Israeli forces.The Israeli military launched an intensified wave of strikes on Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon, killing more than 1,000 people since September 23, according to Lebanese authorities, and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in a country already mired in economic crisis.“The resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms, and will win,” Khamenei said, speaking in Arabic.The Iranian leader charged that Israel was a “malicious regime” which “will not last long”.Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi visited Beirut and said his government backs “the efforts for a ceasefire” that would be acceptable to Hezbollah and come “simultaneously with a ceasefire in Gaza”. (AFP)

An interest-rate cut that European Central Bank (ECB) officials deemed unlikely just three weeks ago now seems a near certainty when they next set borrowing costs on October 17.Markedly souring business surveys, the first below-2% inflation reading in more than three years and the reassurance offered by the Federal Reserve’s own shift to easing, have all brought policymakers toward the point where a quarter-point reduction appears to need little more than a formal sign-off.The clear-cut perception of this month’s decision is such that investors are now pricing a 90% chance of it transpiring. Economists who were previously united in predicting only a December move have changed their views en masse, with forecasters at Morgan Stanley and Barclays Plc among those doing so earlier this week. “We will discuss and decide when we meet next time, and will get more information until then, but recent data clearly point in the direction of a cut,” Latvian central-bank chief Martins Kazaks told Bloomberg in Riga. “The risks to the economy have become more pronounced and the risks of still sticky domestic, especially services, inflation and too-weak growth are increasingly balanced.”The turnaround is remarkable given how policymakers sought a far more elaborate tapestry of evidence to justify the two cuts they delivered since June, in tune with what they insist is a data-dependent approach. They also favoured sticking to a quarterly tempo of easing to match their forecasting schedule. In contrast to their September meeting, when two inflation readings and a gross domestic product report was available, this time the Governing Council would be content to act on just one consumer-price report, a selection of sentiment indexes and whatever patchy evidence on wages it can glean.“With inflation down and activity indicators heading south, we are confident the ECB will cut interest rates in October. A further rate reduction is very likely in December, with easing then set to continue through next year,” says Jamie Rush, chief European economist at Bloomberg. Even so — and even before data showed inflation of just 1.8% in the eurozone last month, noticeably lower than the 2% target — ECB President Christine Lagarde was ready on Monday to acknowledge the momentum gathering toward another easing move.“The latest developments strengthen our confidence that inflation will return to target in a timely manner,” she told European Union lawmakers. “We will take that into account in our next monetary-policy meeting.”On September 12, officials judged a rate cut this month to be a contingency option rather than anything likely to materialize. A smaller-than-usual gap of just five weeks between decisions provided another reason to wait.But it’s become apparent that the economy is struggling to grow. Business surveys last week by S&P Global revealed a much weaker-than-expected performance, which then stoked bets of an imminent cut in borrowing costs.“Literally every leading indicator for inflation has decreased since the last ECB meeting,” Morgan Stanley economists led by Jens Eisenschmidt wrote on Monday. “And the euro-area economy looks significantly weaker. In that environment the risk assessment for another cut looks straightforward.”Meanwhile how policymakers coalesce on the prospect of a rate cut is one question mark over the coming decision. Speaking on Wednesday, Isabel Schnabel — considered the ECB Executive Board’s most hawkish member — acknowledged the dismal state of the euro-area economy and warned that officials “cannot ignore the headwinds to growth.” ECB Vice-President Luis de Guindos echoed that sentiment, saying that “Europe is in a low growth situation, and risks are to the downside.” Still, he highlighted that September inflation data were “pretty good” and a “positive surprise.” “We have said very clearly that we are totally open, we want to keep the options open,” he told Latvian television.Other hawks including Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel, Klaas Knot of the Netherlands, Austria’s Robert Holzmann and Belgium’s Pierre Wunsch, have been largely silent in recent days. While that could be a tacit sign of approval, their acquiescence can’t be taken for granted. Slovenia’s Bostjan Vasle also spoke Wednesday, but refused to be drawn on whether a October move could happen, while Mario Centeno of Portugal backs further easing — “speed is of the essence.”What all officials know, however, is that the juggernaut toward a rate reduction looks ever harder to stop — even if they wanted to halt it in its tracks. And with only a week left until a pre-decision blackout period kicks in, the window to act is closing. Moreover, any argument they may make against a cut would need to counter the weight of evidence consistently offered by the economic reports of the past 10 days.

Claudia Sheinbaum (pictured) was sworn in as Mexico’s first woman president yesterday, taking the reins at a time the country is struggling with violence from organised crime and a hefty deficit in Latin America’s No 2 economy.Sheinbaum, the 62-year-old scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, was inaugurated in a ceremony in Mexico’s Congress for a six-year term lasting until 2030.Her supporters chanted “President! President!” and “Long live Mexico!” after Sheinbaum took the oath of office in front of lawmakers.She will later attend a celebration in Mexico City’s main square as leader of the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking country, home to 129mn people, which has had 65 male presidents since independence.Supporters began gathering from dawn on inauguration day, which authorities declared a national holiday.“We arrived at five in the morning,” said Marta Ramirez, a housewife who came by bus from the central city of Leon.A woman president “understands the people better”, she said.Sheinbaum has said on several occasions that “it’s time for women and transformation” in Mexico, a nation with a history of gender-based discrimination and violence, with around 10 women or girls murdered every day.Political watchers and analysts predict Sheinbaum will urgently look to calm investors following the passing of a controversial judicial reform pushed by her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.Markets will be looking to Sheinbaum for “a predictable and investment-friendly policy and regulatory framework”, said Alberto Ramos, head of Goldman Sachs Latin American economic research.“Disciplined management of the budget and of state-owned enterprises, progress on public security, and safe-guarding the integrity of key institutions will be key to preserving market sentiment and sovereign debt ratings,” Ramos said, emphasising the importance of state energy firm Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).The November presidential elections in the United States, Mexico’s largest trading partner, could add to market volatility, especially if former president Donald Trump, who has vowed to increase tariffs on Mexican goods, wins.Sheinbaum’s government will present its first budget before November 15, which is expected to be highly scrutinised for clues on whether Sheinbaum will make good on commitments to reduce the fiscal deficit to 3.5% of gross domestic product from 5.9%, where it is predicted to close the year.Lopez Obrador, whose six-year term began in 2018, managed to double Mexico’s minimum wage, reduce poverty and unemployment, broaden the base of social programmes and oversee a previous strengthening of the peso.Touting these successes boosted his popularity and helped usher Sheinbaum, his protégée, to a landslide victory in the June elections.Sheinbaum, however, who has promised “continuity with change”, will inherit the largest budget deficit since the 1980s and lagging economic growth.Experts have said Mexico’s economy will require a tax reform to increase revenues, though Sheinbaum has said publicly she does not plan a sweeping tax overhaul.Instead, she has said she will pursue other options, including improving the efficiency of tax collection at customs.

A devastating fire on a Thai school bus killed at least 23 people, police said yesterday after rescuers pulled children’s bodies from the charred wreckage of the vehicle.The inferno engulfed the coach on a highway in a northern Bangkok suburb as it carried 38 children – ranging from kindergarten age to young teenagers – and six teachers on a school trip.It is believed to be the deadliest road accident in a decade in Thailand, which has one of the world’s worst traffic safety records with around 20,000 fatalities a year.“We found 23 bodies inside the bus,” Trairong Phiwpan, head of the police forensic science office, told reporters.The victims’ bodies were so badly burned that Trairong said it was not yet possible to confirm how many were adults and how many children.DNA testing would be needed to identify the remains, police said.Rescue workers put up screens around the wreckage to shield firefighters and investigators as they recovered bodies from the blackened shell of the bus.“Some of the bodies we rescued were very, very small. They must have been very young in age,” Piyalak Thinkaew, who led the search, told reporters at the scene, adding that the fire started at the front of the bus.“The kids’ instinct was to escape to the back so the bodies were there,” he said.Police are hunting the coach driver after he fled the scene, acting national police chief Kitrat Phanphet told reporters.“We are investigating all individuals, including the bus company to see if this was a case of negligence,” he said. “The driver is on the run, we will not wait for him to turn himself in – we will send a team to find him.”Some of the children who survived suffered horrific burns to their faces, mouths and eyes, doctors treating them told local media.The bus was one of three carrying children from Wat Khao Phraya Sangkharam school in the northern province of Uthai Thani on a field trip to a science museum in northern Bangkok.A video posted on the school’s Facebook page just hours before the tragedy shows the group of youngsters in orange uniform shirts stopping off at the ancient Thai capital of Ayutthaya.The disaster is believed to have begun when one of the bus tyres burst on the highway around 12.30pm (0530 GMT), sending it crashing into a barrier and triggering the inferno, officials said.Video footage from the scene showed flames engulfing the bus as it burned under an overpass, huge clouds of dense black smoke billowing into the sky.The bus was a natural gas vehicle (NGV), according to Transport Minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit.Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra visited survivors in hospital and said that the government would pay for medical treatment and compensate the victims’ families.“As a mother, I would like to express my deepest condolences to the families of the injured and deceased,” she wrote on social media platform X.Meechai Sa-ard, a motorbike taxi driver, heard the noise of the incident from a kilometre away.“There was smoke everywhere. Poor children, I heard they were very little,” he told AFP. “I was hoping that god would be kind so that the rain could put the fire out and the kids would survive.”Thailand has one of the worst road safety records in the world, with unsafe vehicles and poor driving contributing to the high annual death toll.Around 20,000 people are killed every year on the kingdom’s roads, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) – more than 50 a day on average.A similar bus fire killed 20 Myanmar migrant workers in March 2018, while at least 30 people died when a bus careered off a mountain road into a ravine four years earlier.

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky held high-stakes talks yesterday following a series of attacks by the White House hopeful on the Ukrainian president as the looming US election raises questions over long-term US support for its ally in its war with Russia.Foreign policy hawks have voiced fears that a second Trump term would spell disaster for Ukraine’s defence, as the Republican has repeatedly defended Russia’s President Vladimir Putin while voicing scepticism over US funding for Kyiv.Zelensky had met Trump’s election rival Kamala Harris, as well as President Joe Biden, on Thursday and both pledged their support to Zelensky.Trump – who this week accused the Ukrainian of refusing to “make a deal” to end the conflict – vowed to bring peace if he wins a second term in office as the two men addressed reporters after their tete-a-tete at Trump Tower in New York.“It’s a shame but this is a war that should have never happened and we’ll get it solved. It is a complicated puzzle...too many people dead. Too many beautiful cities,” he said.Before the meeting – which lasted less than an hour – Trump had hailed his alliance with Zelensky, but added: “I also have a very good relationship – as you know – with President Putin.”Zelensky responded that the pair shared a “common view that the war in Ukraine has to be stopped” and that it is imperative that Ukraine prevail.Later in a post on X, Zelensky described his meeting with Trump as “very productive”.“I presented him our Victory Plan, and we thoroughly reviewed the situation in Ukraine and the consequences of the war for our people,” Zelensky wrote. “Many details were discussed. I am grateful for this meeting. A just peace is needed.”The meeting initially looked like it would be scrapped after Zelensky told New Yorker magazine in an interview that Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war” and that his running mate J D Vance is “too radical”.The interview was published amid Republican outcry over the Ukrainian leader’s trip to Pennsylvania with Democratic politicians to thank US workers for manufacturing ammunition that is helping Ukraine’s war effort against Russia.Trump, who refused to say whether he wants Ukraine to defeat Russia during his debate with Harris earlier this month, hit back at Zelensky at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, berating him as “a man who refuses to make a deal” for peace.Zelensky is in New York this week for the UN General Assembly, and has been looking to shore up support for his country’s war effort as it struggles on the battlefield in the third year of Moscow’s invasion.The Ukrainian leader presented a so-called “victory” plan to Biden and Harris at the White House on Thursday, with Biden announcing a new military aid package worth nearly $8bn for Kyiv.Standing with Zelensky at her side, Harris did not mention Trump by name but said there were “some in my country who would instead force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory”.Zelensky’s row with the former president underscored how the US election in November could upend the support that Ukraine receives from its biggest backer.Trump has echoed many of Putin’s talking points, saying at a rally earlier this week that Ukraine could not beat Russia, highlighting its 1812 defeat of Napoleon but ignoring more recent military defeats.House Republicans have launched investigations into Zelensky’s Pennsylvania trip, suggesting it amounted to election interference, and calling for the Ukrainian ambassador in Washington to be fired.When Trump was president, he asked Zelensky for potentially damaging political material on Biden ahead of the 2020 election while withholding vital military aid that had already been approved by Congress – leading to the first of his two impeachments.However, the Republican had maintained good relations with Zelensky, pleased that the Ukrainian defended him over his conduct. Trump spent much of the impromptu news conference reminding reporters of Zelensky’s support.

Tropical Storm Helene brought life-threatening flooding to the Carolinas yesterday after leaving widespread destruction as a major hurricane in Florida and Georgia overnight that killed at least 33 people, swamped neighbourhoods and left more than 4mn homes and businesses without power.Helene hit Florida’s Big Bend region as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Thursday at 11.10pm ET (0310 GMT yesterday) and left a chaotic landscape of overturned boats in harbours, felled trees, submerged cars and flooded streets.Police and firefighters carried out thousands of water rescues throughout the affected states, including in Atlanta, where an apartment complex had to be evacuated due to flooding.Helene came ashore in Florida with 140mph (225kph) winds, weakening to a tropical storm as it moved into Georgia early yesterday.By early afternoon, the storm had been downgraded to a tropical depression and was packing maximum sustained winds of 35mph (55kph) as it slowed over Tennessee and Kentucky, the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said.Helene’s heavy rains were still producing catastrophic flooding in the southern Appalachians, the NHC said.More than 50 people were trapped on the roof of a hospital at midday yesterday in Unicoi County, Tennessee, about 120 miles northeast of Knoxville, local media reported, as floodwaters swamped the rural community.Rising waters from the Nolichucky River were preventing ambulances and emergency vehicles from evacuating patients and others there, the Unicoi County Emergency Management Agency said on social media, but emergency crews in boats were conducting rescues.In western North Carolina, Rutherford County emergency officials warned residents near the Lake Lure Dam just before noon to immediately evacuate to higher ground, saying” “Dam failure imminent.”In nearby Buncombe County, landslides forced interstates 40 and 26 to close, the county said on X.The extent of the damage in Florida began emerging after daybreak.In coastal Steinhatchee, a storm surge – the wall of seawater pushed ashore by winds – of 8-10’ (2.4-3m) moved mobile homes.In Treasure Island, a barrier island community in Pinellas County, boats were grounded in front yards.The city of Tampa posted on X that emergency personnel had completed 78 water rescues of residents and that many roads were impassable because of flooding. The Pasco County sheriff’s office rescued more than 65 people overnight.The US Coast Guard said it had saved nine people from storm waters.Video posted online showed a coastguard crew pulling a man and his dog wearing life vests from the ocean on Thursday after his sailboat became disabled off Sanibel Island.Kevin Guthrie, Florida’s emergency management director, urged residents in the affected areas to stay off the roads.“I beg you, do not go out,” he said at a morning press briefing. “We have 1,500 search and rescue personnel in the impacted areas. Please get out of the way so we can do our jobs.”Officials had pleaded with residents in Helene’s path to heed evacuation orders, describing the storm surge as “unsurvivable”, as NHC Director Michael Brennan warned.In Perry, near where Helene slammed into the coast as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, houses lost power and the gas station was flattened.“Once the eye (of the storm) got to us, that’s when everything started to intensify,” Larry Bailey, 32, who sheltered in his small wooden home all night with his two nephews and sister, told AFP. “I am Floridian, so I’m kind of used to it, but it was real scary at one point. It’s like, was my house gonna get blown away or not?”In Taylor County, the Sheriff’s Department wrote on social media that residents who decided not to evacuate should write their names and dates of birth on their arms in permanent ink “so that you can be identified and family notified”.Some residents had stubbornly stayed put.Ken Wood, 58, a state ferry boat operator in Pinellas County, said he should have heeded evacuation orders rather than riding out the storm at home with his 16-year-old cat, Andy.“I’ll never do that again, I swear,” he said. “It was a harrowing experience. It roared all night like a train. It was unnerving. The house shook.”Down the hill from his house, the storm flooded some homes with chest-deep salt water. One house caught fire and burned down, shooting 30-foot flames in the stormy sky, he said.“Old Andy seemed like he didn’t care,” Wood said. “He did fine. But next time we leave.”Some of Wood’s neighbours were not as fortunate.Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said first responders were unable to answer several emergency calls from residents overnight due to the conditions.Yesterday county authorities found at least five people dead.Two other people in Florida died, Governor Ron DeSantis confirmed.Georgia Governor Brian Kemp cited 11 storm-related fatalities in his state so far, while North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said there had been two deaths in his state.At least 13 people had died during the storm across South Carolina, the Charleston-based Post and Courier newspaper reported, citing local officials.Helene was unusually large for a Gulf hurricane, forecasters said, though a storm’s size is not the same as its strength, which is based on maximum sustained wind speeds.A few hours before landfall, Helene’s tropical-storm winds extended outward 310 miles (500km), according to the NHC.By comparison, Idalia, another major hurricane that struck Florida’s Big Bend region last year, had tropical-storm winds extending 160 miles (260km) about eight hours before it made landfall.Airports in Tampa, Tallahassee and St Petersburg suspended operations on Thursday but reopened yesterday, though extensive delays were expected.More than 4.6mn homes and businesses were without power midday yesterday in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and other states, according to the tracking website Poweroutage.usWith typhoon Yagi battering Asia, storm Boris drenching Europe, extreme flooding in the Sahel, September so far has been an unusually wet month around the world.Scientists link some extreme weather events to human-caused global warming.“Helene traveled over exceptionally warm ocean waters in the Gulf of Mexico,” Andra Garner, a climate scientist at Rowan University in New Jersey, told AFP. “It’s likely that those extra-warm ocean waters played a role in Helene’s rapid intensification.”“We also know that storm surges from hurricanes are getting worse because our sea levels are rising as we warm the planet,” she added.Curtis Drafton, a search and rescue volunteer, 48, in Steinhatchee, Florida raised similar concerns on the ground as he tackled the storm’s aftermath.“We have got to start wondering: is this the new normal? Is it going to happen every year?” he told AFP. “We have a lot of talk about once-in-a-lifetime storm, but we had one similar last year.”

Diriyah, one of Saudi Arabia’s so-called giga-projects, has agreed deals worth nearly $1bn with European firms and is in talks to attract more foreign capital, its CEO said.The $63bn project is one of the Public Investment Fund’s giant construction efforts aimed at boosting economic growth and diversifying the oil-reliant kingdom’s economy.Diriyah, located at a Unesco World Heritage site outside the capital Riyadh, has been backed by PIF investments worth a total of around 20bn riyals ($5.33bn) in 2023 and 2024, and should get 12bn riyals more next year, its CEO said.It has recently agreed deals worth nearly $1bn in total with an Italian developer and a French company and is in talks with several foreign investors looking to buy equity stakes in hotels and other real estate developments, Jerry Inzerillo told Reuters in New York this week.He declined to disclose the names of the European firms.“There’s a lot of interest from America, a lot of interest from every country,” he said. “We’ll work with any country that can deliver quality and stay on time.” Driving such projects, including a futuristic desert city called Neom, is the $925bn PIF sovereign wealth fund.This is the vehicle of choice for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 to end Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil. Foreign investment is also crucial to turn the plan of a future beyond oil into reality.Foreign investors have already bought stakes in several projects in Diriyah, said Inzerillo, with more to come.“A lot of people can see that it’s built, it’s doable; it’s no longer renderings, no longer ‘you wait and see’... So now we’re seeing a big spike in interest in foreign investment”.Saudi Arabia’s ambitious economic transformation plans, unveiled in 2016, have been met at times with some scepticism.Reuters reported earlier this year that the PIF aims to focus on investments with a higher chance of success after scaling back some projects, including Neom’s The Line — a zero-carbon city with robots and 170 kilometre-long mirrored facades.Inzerillo said investment priorities have changed because of upcoming events such as the Expo 2030 world fair, which Riyadh last year won the right to host. But the pace and scope of the Saudi giga-projects have not been scaled back, he said.“It’s a realignment, a re-prioritisation...not a reduction,” he added.

Authorities in Taiwan and Bulgaria yesterday denied involvement in the supply chain of thousands of pagers that detonated on Tuesday in Lebanon in a deadly blow to Hezbollah.Tuesday’s attack, and another on Wednesday involving exploding hand-held radios used by Hezbollah, together killed 37 people and wounded about 3,000 in Lebanon.How or when the pagers were weaponised and remotely detonated remains a public mystery and the hunt for answers has involved Taiwan, Bulgaria, Norway and Romania.Security sources said Israel was responsible for the pager explosions that raised the stakes in a growing conflict between the two sides. Israel has not directly commented on the attacks.Taiwan-based Gold Apollo said this week it did not manufacture the devices used in the attack, and that Hungary-based company BAC to which the pagers were traced had a licence to use its brand.“The components are (mainly) low-end IC (integrated circuits) and batteries,” Taiwan’s Economy Minister Kuo Jyh-huei told reporters.When pressed on whether the parts in the pagers that exploded were made in Taiwan, he said, “I can say with certainty they were not made in Taiwan,” adding the case is being investigated by judicial authorities.Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung, also speaking to reporters at parliament, answered “no” when asked if he had met with the de facto Israeli ambassador to express concern about the case.“We are asking our missions abroad to raise their security awareness and will exchange relevant information with other countries.”Bulgaria also became a focal point for investigations on Thursday after local media reported that Sofia-based Norta Global Ltd was involved in selling the pagers.But Bulgaria’s state security agency DANS said yesterday it had “indisputably established” that no pagers used in the Lebanon attack were imported to, exported from, or made in Bulgaria.It said neither Norta nor its Norwegian owner had traded, sold or bought the pagers within Bulgaria’s jurisdiction.As Taiwanese authorities look into any potential link between its sprawling global tech supply chains and the devices used in the attacks in Lebanon, Gold Apollo’s president and founder, Hsu Ching-kuang, was questioned by prosecutors late into the night on Thursday, then released.Another person also at the prosecutors’ office was Teresa Wu, the sole employee of a company called Apollo System, who did not speak to reporters as she left late on Thursday.Hsu said this week a person called Teresa had been one of his contacts for the deal with BAC.Photos posted to Gold Apollo’s official Facebook page showed Teresa Wu at a Singapore trade show in 2016 wearing a Gold Apollo lanyard. Reuters was unable to contact Wu for comment.A spokesperson for the Shilin District Prosecutors Office in Taipei told Reuters that it had questioned two people as witnesses and was given consent to conduct searches of their firms’ four locations in Taiwan as part of its investigation.

UN peacekeepers in Lebanon urged immediate de-escalation as hostilities rumbled on at the Lebanese-Israeli border yesterday, following Israel’s most intense airstrikes in nearly a year of conflict with the Hezbollah.Israel’s military said on Thursday it had struck hundreds of Hezbollah rocket launchers that had been set to fire towards Israel, in what security sources in Lebanon said was the heaviest such attack since hostilities began last October.Ignited by the Gaza war, the conflict has intensified significantly this week, with Hezbollah suffering an unprecedented attack in which pagers and walkie talkies used by its members exploded, killing 37 people and wounding thousands.The UNIFIL peacekeeping force in south Lebanon said yesterday morning that the previous 12 hours had seen “a heavy intensification of the hostilities” across the Lebanese-Israeli border and in its area of operations.“We are concerned at the increased escalation across the Blue Line and urge all actors to immediately de-escalate”, UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Reuters, referring to the line that delineates the border between Lebanon and Israel.Israeli airstrikes yesterday hit at least three villages in south Lebanon, according to security sources in Lebanon and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television, which broadcast footage of a cloud of smoke rising from one of the attacks.There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.Hezbollah said its fighters had fired a guided missile at an Israeli troop position in Metula, an Israeli town on the border targeted frequently by the Lebanese group over the last year.The Israeli military yesterday lifted orders restricting movement and large gatherings that it had issued on Thursday night for a number of communities in northern Israel and the Golan Heights. The restrictions were ordered following the start of the Israeli strikes.Security sources in Lebanon said four people were wounded in Israel’s intensive bombardment on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if they were Hezbollah members.The year-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is the worst since they fought a war in 2006. Tens of thousands have had to leave homes on both sides of the border.While the conflict has largely played out in areas at or near the frontier, this week’s escalation has heightened concerns that it could widen and further intensify.

The carcass of a baby dolphin lay on the sand bank left exposed by the receding waters in an Amazon lake that has been drying up in the worst drought on record.Researchers recovered the dead animal on Wednesday and measured water temperatures that have been rising as the lake’s level drops.In last year’s drought, more than 200 of the endangered freshwater dolphins died in Lake Tefe from excessive water temperatures.“We’ve found several dead animals. Last week, we found one a day on average,” said Miriam Marmontel, head of the dolphin project at the Mamiraua Institute for Sustainable Development.“We’re not yet associating the deaths with changes in water temperatures, but with the exacerbation of the proximity between human populations, mainly fishermen, and the animals,” the expert said.With branches of major rivers in the Amazon basin drying up in this year’s critical drought, the lake connected to the Solimoes River has shrunk, leaving less room for the dolphins in their favourite habitat.The lake’s main channel is 2m (6.5’) deep and roughly 100m wide, and it is used by all the boat traffic, from canoes to heavy ferries, Marmontel said.Two dolphins were killed recently when boats ran into them in the shallow water.“Nobody thought this drought would come so quickly or imagine that it would surpass last year’s drought,” fisherman Clodomar Lima said.While the dolphin deaths are nowhere close to last year’s toll, the dry season has more than a month to go and water levels will continue to decline, the researcher said.And it is not just the rare dolphin species that are suffering. Riverine communities across the Amazon are stranded by the lack of transport on waters too shallow for boats, and their floating houses are now on solid ground.Even houses built on stilts over water are now high and dry a distance from the river shore.Lake Tefe resident Francisco Alvaro Santos said it was the first time ever that his floating house was out of the water.“Water is everything to us. It is part of our daily lives, the means of transportation for everyone who live here. Without water we are nobody!” Santos said.

Turkiye’s central bank left its main interest rate unchanged for a sixth straight month, but removed an explicit reference that it would tighten its stance further.The Monetary Policy Committee, led by Governor Fatih Karahan, kept the one-week repo rate at 50% on Thursday, a decision that was in line with the forecasts of all economists surveyed by Bloomberg.“Monetary policy tools will be used effectively in case a significant and persistent deterioration in inflation is foreseen,” the MPC said in a statement accompanying the decision. The previous guidance had explicitly pledged further tightening if needed.Central bank officials said domestic demand, the key contributor of hot prices in the past, was slowing down with a “diminishing inflationary impact” based on third quarter indicators. They also cited expectations of an improvement in services inflation, which has been sticky, to occur in the last quarter. The emphasis on the final quarter likely shifts interest-rate cut expectations closer to year-end.“We believe today’s statement supports our view of rate cuts starting in November,” said Okan Ertem, senior economist at Turk Ekonomi Bankasi AS. Like Ertem, economists from Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Barclays Plc were forecasting the first cut in November.The Turkish lira briefly extended gains to as much as 0.2% before trading 0.1% higher at 34.0285 per US dollar as of 2.11pm on Thursday In Istanbul. Turkish stocks extended gains, with benchmark Borsa Istanbul 100 Index rising as much as 2% to session high.Annual inflation fell by almost 10 percentage points in August, but remains some way above the central bank’s year-end projection of 38%.While major global central banks like the US Federal Reserve have started lowering their borrowing costs as they approach their inflation targets, Turkiye is on a different cycle. It started raising borrowing costs much later than many other monetary authorities after a transformation of economic management following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reelection last year. Annual inflation remains more than 10 times its ultimate target of 5%.Turkish officials will want to see monthly inflation below 2% before it starts cutting, Goldman economists Clemens Grafe and Basak Edizgil said in a note following a trip to Turkiye last week. “From the bank’s perspective, easing monetary policy prematurely is more costly in Turkiye than falling behind the curve, especially in the current environment,” they said before the decision, while forecasting a 100 basis-point reduction in November.

Cases of the mpox virus are rising in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as the central African country awaits vaccines from the US and Japan, the health minister said yesterday.“We are talking about a continental emergency,” Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba told a press briefing as the World Health Organisation (WHO) called on affected countries to step up vaccination programmes to counter a more deadly strain of mpox.DRC has registered 16,700 mpox cases and “a little more than 570” deaths since the start of the year, Kamba said.The WHO on Wednesday declared the mpox surge in Africa a global public health emergency. Cases have been reported in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda since July.The US has promised 50,000 vaccine doses for DRC, while Japan agreed yesterday to send 3.5mn doses, “only for children,” a medical source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.The source said that DRC “plans to vaccinate 4mn people including 3.5mn children”.“I hope by the next week we will already be able to see the vaccines arriving,” Kamba said. “The vaccine is a solution to our problems,” he added, urging people to get jabbed.Cases have now surfaced in all 26 provinces in the country of around 100mn people.The WHO yesterday released updated guidelines on countering the surge, led by increased vaccinations.It also called on countries to “scale up efforts to thoroughly investigate cases and outbreaks of mpox disease” to understand its transmission and prevent the spread “to household members and communities”.It said countries had to be ready to provide food and other support for mpox patients “including, as warranted and possible, isolation in care centres and guidance for home-based care”.The WHO said there has to be greater “cross-border collaboration” to monitor and handle suspected mpox cases “without resorting to general travel and trade restrictions unnecessarily impacting local, regional or national economies”.While mpox has been known for decades, a new more deadly and more transmissible strain — clade 1b — causes death in about 3.6% of cases, with children more at risk, according to the WHO.Kamba said that mpox is reaching “more and more young people” in DRC and there are a lot of children under 15 who have been affected.A total of 18,737 suspected or confirmed cases of mpox were reported in Africa since the beginning of the year, including 1,200 cases in one week, the African Union health agency said on Saturday.The virus has also been detected in Sweden, Pakistan and the Philippines.Formerly called monkeypox, the virus was discovered in 1958 in Denmark, in monkeys kept for research.It was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the DRC.Mpox is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.The disease causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.Democratic Republic of Congo Health minister Samuel-Roger Kamba addresses a press conference in Kinshasa yesterday as cases of the mpox virus are rising in in the central African country.

Egyptian officials and the US ambassador inaugurated renovations of several monuments and buildings in Historic Cairo, including the Bimaristan Al-Muayyad Sheikh, a hospital complex built in 1420 CE.The building is notable for its giant crenulated facade and inlaid kufic Arabic inscriptions.“It is a new policy the government is following, which is to merge civil society to help preserve the antiquities,” Mohamed Ismael, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said.The building will be used for cultural functions with the involvement of the neighbourhood’s people, he added.Other monuments restored with US Agency for International Development (USAID) help and inaugurated on Sunday included the 18th century Sabil Kuttab of Ruqayya Dudu and the 14th century Gate of Manjak Al-Silahdar.

Some Indian junior doctors remained off the job yesterday as they demanded swift justice for a colleague who was raped and murdered, despite the end of a strike called by a big doctors’ association, while some other people held protests.Doctors across the country have held protests, candlelight marches and refused to see non-emergency patients in the past week after the killing of the 31-year-old postgraduate student of chest medicine in the early hours of August 9 in the eastern city of Kolkata.In solidarity with the doctors, thousands of people marched in the streets of Kolkata yesterday evening chanting “we want justice”, as authorities in West Bengal state struggle to contain demonstrations against the horrific crime.Women activists say the incident at the British colonial-era RG Kar Medical College and Hospital has highlighted how women in India continue to suffer despite tougher laws following the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012.“My daughter is gone but millions of sons and daughters are now with me,” the father of the victim, who cannot be identified under Indian law, told reporters late on Saturday, referring to the protesting doctors. “This has given me a lot of strength and I feel we will gain something out of it.”India introduced sweeping changes to the criminal justice system, including tougher sentences, after the 2012 attack, but campaigners say that little has changed and not enough has been done to deter violence against women.A police volunteer, designated to help police personnel and their families with hospital admissions when needed, has been arrested and charged with the crime.His mother told Reuters that she is in remorse but would extend whatever support her son needs.“I should not have given birth to my son...it’s a huge mistake,” she said at her home.The Indian Medical Association, whose 24-hour strike ended at 6am (0030 GMT) yesterday, told Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a letter that, as 60% of India’s doctors are women, he needed to intervene to ensure hospital staff were protected by security protocols akin to those at airports.The RG Kar hospital has been rocked by agitation and rallies for more than a week.Police banned the assembly of five or more people around the hospital for a week beginning yesterday, which was defied by the protesters late in the day before they dispersed.The government has urged doctors to return to duty to treat rising cases of dengue and malaria while it sets up a committee to suggest measures to improve protection for healthcare professionals.Most doctors had resumed their usual activities, IMA officials said.“The doctors are back to their routine,” said Madan Mohan Paliwal, the IMA head in the most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. “The next course of action will be decided if the government does not take any strict steps to protect doctors...and this time we could stop emergency services too.”However, the All India Residents and Junior Doctors’ Joint Action Forum said on Saturday that it would continue a “nationwide cease-work” with a 72-hour deadline for authorities to conduct a thorough inquiry and make arrests.In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, more than 6,000 trainee doctors in government hospitals continued to stay away from non-emergency medical services on Sunday for a third day, although private institutes resumed regular operations.Dr Prabhas Ranjan Tripathy, additional medical superintendent of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in the eastern city of Bhubaneswar, said that junior doctors and interns had not resumed duty.“There is a lot of pressure on others because manpower is reduced,” he said.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra was endorsed as prime minister by Thailand’s king yesterday, two days after parliament elected her, paving the way for her to form a cabinet in the coming weeks.Paetongtarn, 37, becomes Thailand’s youngest prime minister just days after ally Srettha Thavisin was dismissed as premier by the Constitutional Court, a judiciary central to Thailand’s two decades of intermittent political turmoil.Daughter of divisive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Paetongtarn won by nearly two-thirds in a house vote on Friday to become Thailand’s second female prime minister and the third Shinawatra to take the office, following Thaksin and her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra.The approval by King Maha Vajiralongkorn, a formality, was read out by House of Representatives Secretary Apat Sukhanand at a ceremony in Bangkok yesterday.Dressed in official uniform, Paetongtarn knelt in homage to a portrait of the king before giving a short speech thanking the king and the people’s representatives for endorsing her as prime minister.“As head of the executive branch, I will do my duty together with the legislators with an open heart,” she said. “I will listen to all opinions so together we can take the country forward with stability.”Thaksin, 75, was a prominent attendee at the ceremony, standing alongside Paetongtarn’s husband in the front row.“She has to work hard. Her strong point is that she is young, she can ask anyone for help – she is humble,” Thaksin told reporters after the ceremony. “Twenty-three years ago she was standing behind my back but today I was standing behind her.”Paetongtarn, who has not served in government previously, faces challenges on multiple fronts, with the economy floundering and the popularity of her Pheu Thai party dwindling, having yet to deliver on its flagship digital wallet cash handout programme worth 500bn baht ($15bn).After accepting the royal endorsement, Paetongtarn hugged her father Thaksin and other family members.In her first press conference, Paetongtarn said she will continue with all policies of her predecessor Srettha, including “major” economic stimulus and reform, tackling illegal drugs, improving the country’s universal healthcare system and promoting gender diversity.She said the government will not abandon its flagship digital wallet policy but will seek to “study and listen to additional options” to make sure the scheme is fiscally responsible.“The goal is to stimulate the economy so this intention remains,” Paetongtarn said.The prime minister said she has no plans to appoint her father Thaksin to any government position but will seek his advice.Paetongtarn said details of her government policies will be presented to parliament next month.The fall of her predecessor Srettha after less than a year in office is a reminder of the risk for Paetongtarn with Thailand trapped in a tumultuous cycle of coups and court rulings that have disbanded political parties and toppled multiple governments and prime ministers.Also at stake is the legacy and political future of the billionaire Shinawatra family, whose once unstoppable populist juggernaut suffered its first election defeat in over two decades last year and had to make a deal with its bitter enemies in the military to form a government.The upheaval of recent days indicates a breakdown in a fragile truce struck between Thaksin and his rivals in the royalist establishment, which had enabled the tycoon’s dramatic return from 15 years of self-exile in 2023 and ally Srettha to become premier the same day.More than a week ago, the court that dismissed Srettha over a cabinet appointment dissolved the anti-establishment Move Forward Party – the 2023 election winner – over a campaign to amend a royal insult law that the court said risked undermining the constitutional monarchy.The hugely popular opposition, Pheu Thai’s biggest challenger, has since regrouped under a new vehicle, the People’s Party.