Rs.10,000 instalment would be credited to the accounts of 65,000 farmer families on the instalment compensation money would be credited to accounts of other farmer families too soon promised Minister of Agriculture Duminda Dissanayaka to farmers yesterday (9th). The National Organizer of All Ceylon Farmers’ Federation Namal Karunaratna says only Rs.10,000 has been paid from the compensation of Rs.40,000 promised to farmers whose cultivations were destroyed due to the drought and they would continue their struggle until the whole amount is paid to the farmers. He said this addressing the media after the discussion the Federation had with the Minister of Agriculture. Mr. Karunaratna said farmers from distance places such as Jaffna, Trincomalee, Hambanthota, Ampara came to Colombo yesterday to surround the Ministry as their requests for a discussion with the Minister were not granted. He said the Minister made the farmers who supply rice to the nation wait in the sun for 6 hours to meet him and said if that was how the government act regarding the farmer community no minister or Parliamentarian of the government would be allowed to come to the villages in the future. He said the farmer community would be organized to chase away government politicos if they come to villages.
A boy disabled by a cluster bomb pictured in August 2007 outside his house in Rashidiya Palestinian refugee camp, near Tyre. A year earlier Israel fired more than a million cluster munitions in Lebanon.Guillermo ValleSipa Press
The European Union is giving millions of dollars of “research” funding to a company that is helping Israel evade an international ban on cluster weapons.
Israel has specifically chosen the company, Elbit Systems, to supply new artillery cannons because a European manufacturer would restrict Israel from using cluster munitions.
Yet the European Commission, the EU’s executive bureaucracy, is shrugging its shoulders, insisting to The Electronic Intifada that the funding follows ethical guidelines.
The EU says it strongly supports international bans on cluster weapons and landmines. In response to a query from The Electronic Intifada, a European Commission spokesperson hailed the bans as “major diplomatic achievements” that the 28-member bloc wanted to see fully implemented.
But the EU is planning no action to hold Israel or Elbit accountable.
“Insane and monstrous”
Cluster munitions spread small bomblets over a wide area, posing an immediate, indiscriminate threat to civilians. Many of the bomblets do not explode on impact but continue to cause death and injury long after they are fired, becoming, in the words of Human Rights Watch, “de facto landmines.”
During its 2006 invasion of Lebanon, Israel fired more than a million cluster munitions into the country. “What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs,” an Israeli army officer told the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz.
Israeli leaders regularlythreaten to unleash even greater firepower targeting civilians in a future war on Lebanon.
American, British and Brazilian cluster bombs have also been used by Saudi Arabia, killing, injuring and endangering civilians in its ongoing war on Yemen.
The European Parliament has also given strong backing to the treaty with a resolution urging the European Commission “to include the ban on cluster munitions as a standard clause in agreements with third countries” and “to make the fight against cluster munitions an integral part of [EU] external assistance programs.”
Yet Israel has not signed the cluster munitions ban and far from moving in that direction, it is looking for ways to evade its restrictions.
“Complete independence”
Shopping for new artillery cannons, Israel was interested in guns made by the German firm KMW.
But according to a report in Haaretz this week, Israel is instead buying cannons from Elbit Systems because of concerns that the manufacturer in Germany, which is a signatory to the ban, “would restrict the cannons from firing cluster bombs.”
A retired Israeli military officer familiar with the matter told Haaretz that Israel was worried the Germans would not give Israel “complete independence” over the use of the weapons.
“We would have been more than happy to have opened bidding because that brings down prices,” the officer said, “but we wanted a cannon that would be operated without conditions.”
According to Haaretz, Israel continues to manufacture and stockpile cluster munitions, though supposedly ones which leave a very low rate of unexploded bombs.
Although Israel is not party to the cluster munitions convention, Human Rights Watch says it would be preferable for Elbit to stop manufacturing such systems.
“Companies in other countries that are not party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions have taken that step,” Mary Wareham, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch’s arms division, told The Electronic Intifada.
She noted that last August, US-based Textron Systems announced it was halting production of cluster munitions, while Singapore Technologies Engineering disclosed in November 2015 that it no longer manufactures anti-personnel landmines or cluster munitions.
Tested on Palestinians
“Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, boasts that its weapons are ‘combat-proven,’ meaning tried and tested in Israeli military attacks on Palestinians,” Ryvka Barnard, senior campaigns officer with the human rights group War on Want, told The Electronic Intifada.
“Elbit has produced white phosphorous, cannons that shoot cluster munitions and countless other weapons that cause devastating civilian casualties, some of which are banned by international treaties signed by EU countries.”
But the EU is defending the funding even after the revelation that Elbit is supplying the cluster munition cannons to Israel.
“EU research funding under Horizon 2020 specifically excludes research for military purposes,” the European Commission spokesperson told The Electronic Intifada in an email on Thursday.
The spokesperson added that “several mechanisms have been put in place to prevent EU funds from being used for activities that could be contrary to international law,” including elaborate review panels and “ethical evaluations.”
However, a group of prominent international legal experts recently criticized the Horizon 2020 evaluation process, noting that it ignores EU regulations barring funding to individuals or entities responsible for or complicit in grave misconduct, such as torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“Incentivizing” Israeli crimes
Campaigners do not buy the distinction the EU makes between the military and non-military activities of a company like Elbit, seeing all funding to Israel’s arms makers as bolstering Israeli impunity.
“The EU, and member countries like the UK, admit that Israel systematically violates international law through its military occupation and attacks on Palestinians,” War on Want’s Barnard stated.
“And yet, they continue to reward the Israeli government and arms companies with research money, contracts and trade deals that feed its war machine.”
Barnard added that the EU is “incentivizing Israel’s abuses of Palestinian rights and war crimes by continuing its arms trade with Israel.”
“It’s time for the EU and all of its member countries to take international law seriously, and implement an immediate two-way arms embargo on Israel,” Barnard said, noting that grassroots pressure would continue.
Elbit and its affiliates have been regularlyprotested by campaigners in Europe over their role in Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians.
“Where governments fail to implement their own policies, and hold Israel to account, ordinary people have taken up the Palestinian call to take up campaigns of boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel,” Barnard said.
In a column describing the horrors perpetrated with cluster weapons, Haaretz’s Gideon Levy writes that Israel’s determination to ignore the international ban indicates that it “wants to kill as many innocent people as possible.”
The European Union, it would appear, is just as determined to help.
Conflict monitor Airwars says shift in balance comes amid increase in US-led operations and end of siege of Aleppo
Syrian men carry babies through the rubble after an air strike on Salihin, Aleppo, on 11 September 2016 (Reuters)
Wednesday 8 March 2017
The US-led coalition is killing more civilians than Russia in its campaign in Syria for the first time since Moscow entered the country's civil war in 2015, according to data from a war monitor.
The Airwars website reported coalition attacks killed an estimated 254 non-combatants in January, whereas according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, 48 non-combatants were reported killed in Russian attacks.
Airwars said it identified 95 separate "civilian casualty events" in January across Iraq and Syria which allegedly involved US coalition air attacks. In the same period, there were 57 alleged Russian attacks in Syria.
Those figures contrasted to 14 times more casualties from Russian strikes (713) than US coalition strikes in January 2016.
The monitor said that the shift was in part due to the end of the siege in Aleppo, where Russian air attacks are believed to have killed thousands of people in months of bombing up to and including December, as Syrian government forces and their allies battled rebels in the city.
The US, conversely, has stepped up bombing in Syria - targeting the IS stronghold of Raqqa with 21 attacks in one 24-hour period in February, and also bombing members of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front, in western Syria.
It has also increased attacks in neighbouring Iraq, where allies are trying to eject the Islamic State group from Mosul.
January’s civilian toll in Syria is by far the highest in more than two and a half years of coalition air strikes, Airwars said.
Julien Barnes-Dacey, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Airwars that the trend could accelerate further if US President Donald Trump relaxes the rules of engagement in Syria and Iraq.
Trump on 28 January ordered his military commanders to find a more aggressive plan to defeat IS, and placed a 30-day deadline on ideas.
It is reported that he has dumped plans to retake Raqqa drawn up by his predecessor, Barack Obama, as the US seeks a new policy.
North Korea has defied threats of “fire and fury” from Donald Trump, deriding his warning as a “load of nonsense” and announcing a detailed plan to launch missiles aimed at the waters off the coast of the US Pacific territory of Guam.
A statement attributed to General Kim Rak Gyom, the head of the country’s strategic forces, declared: “Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him”. The general outlined a plan to carry out a demonstration launch of four intermediate-range missiles that would fly over Japan and then land in the sea around Guam, “enveloping” the island.
“The Hwasong-12 rockets to be launched by the KPA [Korean People’s Army] will cross the sky above Shimani, Hiroshima and Koichi prefectures of Japan,” the statement said. “They will fly for 3,356.7 km for 1,065 seconds and hit the waters 30 to 40km away from Guam.”
The statement said the plan for this show of force would be ready by the middle of this month and then await orders from the commander-in-chief, Kim Jong-un.
The statement was clearly designed as a show of bravado, calling the Trump administration’s bluff after the president’s threat and a statement from the defence secretary, James Mattis, both stressing the overwhelming power of the US military. “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met by fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Trump said on Wednesday.
The response from Pyongyang was its most public and detailed threat to date, and evidently meant to goad the US president. Trump had “let out a load of nonsense about ‘fire and fury’ failing to grasp the ongoing grave situation. This is extremely getting on the nerves of the infuriated Hwasong artillerymen of the KPA.”
The US has a naval base in Guam and the island is home to Andersen air base, which has six B-1B heavy bombers. According to NBC news the non-nuclear bombers have made 11 practice sorties since May in readiness for a potential strike on North Korea. The remote island is home to 162,000 people.
South Korea’s military said on Thursday that North Korea’s statements were a challenge against Seoul and the US-South Korea alliance. Joint chiefs of staff spokesman Roh Jae-cheon told a media briefing that South Korea was prepared to act immediately against any North Korean provocation.
Japan’s chief government spokesman said the country could “never tolerate this”. “North Korea’s actions are obviously provocative to the region as well as to the security of the international community,” Yoshihide Sug said.
North Koreans stage mass rally to denounce UN sanctions – video
The announcement on the North Korean state news service KCNA came at the end of two days of brinksmanship which began with the leak of a US intelligence report that Pyongyang had developed a nuclear warhead small enough to put on a missile. This was followed by Trump’s warning of “fire and fury”. On Wednesday the US defence secretary, James Mattis, said a North Korean attack would risk the “end of its regime and the destruction of its people”.
On Thursday, Trump’s deputy assistant, Sebastian Gorka, declined to tone down the rhetoric, warning Pyongyang: “Do not challenge the United States because you will pay a cost if you do so”
Asked if the threat of a strike, rather than an actual attack, would be enough to provoke a response, Gorka told the BBC: “If you threaten a nation, then what should you expect; a stiffly worded letter to be sent by courier? Is that what the UK would do if a nation threatened a nuclear-tipped missile launched against any of the UK’s territories?”
Damian Green, the UK’s first secretary of state, urged the Trump administrationto use UN processes to resolve the crisis. “It’s obviously in all our interests to make sure that nothing escalates,” Green said on a visit to Edinburgh. “We are very strongly in support of the UN process, which has and continues to put pressure on North Korea to stop acting in an irresponsible way.”
In the event of a missile launch by North Korea, the US military faces the dilemma of trying to intercept the incoming missiles and risking humiliation if it fails. Trump would have to decide whether to try to carry out a pre-emptive strike on the Hwasong launchpads or a retaliation strike if the launch went ahead. The North Korean military has frequently tested missiles that land in the sea off the Japanese coast, without a military response from Tokyo.
“For the [North Koreans] to telegraph a move like this is extraordinary. But it’s probably their way of trying not to trigger a war,” said Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He said that if the launch went ahead as laid out in the statement, it gave US the opportunity to concentrate its ballistic defences in that area, to give them a better chance to shoot down the incoming missiles.
“The reason you can’t shoot down a test is that it doesn’t enter a defended area. But that wouldn’t be the case with ‘bracketing fire’,” Pollack said in a thread of tweets. He argued that the exchange of threats and the missile plans underlined the need to open a military hotline between the US and North Korea to mitigate the dangers of catastrophic miscalculation by either side.
“If they do carry out that plan, both sides might discover that they need a crisis management mechanism sooner than not,” Pollack said.
Mattis’s reminder to Pyongyang that the allied militaries “possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth” capped an unprecedented 24 hours of sabre-rattling sparked by Donald Trump’s surprise threat to rain “fire and fury” down on the Pyongyang regime.
Despite the harsh rhetoric, there was no change in US military deployments or alert status. Mattis couched his remarks in the language of traditional deterrence, making clear that such overwhelming force would be used in the event of a North Korean attack.
Trump – without consulting his own security staff – had warned of a devastating onslaught “like the world has never seen” if Kim’s government persisted in threats against the US. But that line was crossed within hours when Pyongyang announced it was “carefully examining” a plan for a missile strike and “enveloping fire” around Guam.
The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, also spent much of Wednesday struggling to contain the fallout from Trump’s threats, assuring Americans they could “sleep well at night”, and reassuring shocked allies that there was “no imminent threat of war”.
• This article was amended on 10 August 2017 to correct a statement from Joshua Pollack.
President Trump made remarks on July 19 at the first meeting of his commission investigating his allegations of voter fraud during the 2016 election. (Reuters)
By Ariel Malka and Yphtach LelkesAugust 10 at 5:00 AM
Critics of President Trump haverepeatedlywarned of his potential to undermine American democracy. Among the concerns are his repeated assertions that he would have won the popular vote had 3 to 5 million “illegals” not voted in the 2016 election, a claim echoed by the head of a White House advisory committee on voter fraud.
Claims of large-scale voter fraud are nottrue, but that has not stopped a substantial number of Republicans from believing them. But how far would Republicans be willing to follow the president to stop what they perceive as rampant fraud? Our recent survey suggests that the answer is quite far: About half of Republicans say they would support postponing the 2020 presidential election until the country can fix this problem.
Here’s how we did our research:
The survey interviewed a sample of 1,325 Americans from June 5 through 20. Respondents were recruited from the Qualtrics online panel who had previously reported identifying with or leaning toward one of the two major parties. We focus on the 650 respondents who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. The sample has been weighted to match the population in terms of sex, age, race and education.
After a series of initial questions, respondents were asked whether Trump won the popular vote, whether millions of illegal immigrants voted, and how often voter fraud occurs. These questions evoke arguments frequently made by Trump and others about the integrity of the 2016 election.
Then the survey asked two questions about postponing the 2020 election.
If Donald Trump were to say that the 2020 presidential election should be postponed until the country can make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote, would you support or oppose postponing the election?
What if both Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress were to say that the 2020 presidential election should be postponed until the country can make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote? Would you support or oppose postponing the election?
An American flag is refracted in raindrops on a window on July 4, in Merriam, Kan. (Charlie Riedel/AP)
Roughly half of Republicans believe Trump won the popular vote — and would support postponing the 2020 election.
Nearly half of Republicans (47 percent) believe that Trump won the popular vote, which is similar to this finding. Larger fractions believe that millions of illegal immigrants voted (68 percent) and that voter fraud happens somewhat or very often (73 percent). Again, this is similar to previous polls.
Moreover, 52 percent said that they would support postponing the 2020 election, and 56 percent said they would do so if both Trump and Republicans in Congress were behind this.
Not surprisingly, beliefs about the 2016 election and voter fraud were correlated with support for postponement. People who believed that Trump won the popular vote, that there were millions of illegal votes in 2016, or that voter fraud is not rare were more likely to support postponing the election. This support was also more prevalent among Republicans who were younger, were less educated, had less factual knowledge of politics and strongly identified with the party.
Of course this is still hypothetical.
Of course, our survey is only measuring reactions to a hypothetical situation. Were Trump to seriously propose postponing the election, there would be a torrent of opposition, which would most likely include prominent Republicans. Financial markets would presumably react negatively to the potential for political instability. And this is to say nothing of the various legal and constitutional complications that would immediately become clear. Citizens would almost certainly form their opinions amid such tumult, which does not at all resemble the context in which our survey was conducted.
Nevertheless, we do not believe that these findings can be dismissed out of hand. At a minimum, they show that a substantial number of Republicans are amenable to violations of democratic norms that are more flagrant than what is typically proposed (or studied). And although the ensuing chaos could turn more Republicans against this kind of proposal, it is also conceivable that a high-stakes and polarized debate would do the exactopposite.
Postponing the 2020 presidential election is not something that Trump or anyone in his administration has even hinted at, but for many in his constituency floating such an idea may not be a step too far. Ariel Malka is an associate professor of psychology at Yeshiva University. Yphtach Lelkes is an assistant professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Preliminary results show incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta winning easily. But the opposition has rejected the results, raising the specter of post-election violence.
NAIROBI — Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga on Wednesday rejected preliminary election results that showed him losing to incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta by a significant margin, alleging that hackers had gained access to the electoral commission’s database and planted “errors.”
“It has always been common knowledge that Uhuru Kenyatta’s regime was a fraud…. But you can only cheat a people for so long,” Odinga said in a statement. “The 2017 General Election was a fraud.”
Preliminary results show Odinga trailing Kenyatta 44.8 percent to 54.3 percent with 97.1 percent of ballots counted. Tuesday’s vote was peaceful, but Odinga’s rejection of the results raises the specter of unrest in the days to come.
In 2007, Odinga alleged fraud after he lost to President Mwai Kibaki, touching off days of post-election violence in which at least 1,000 people were killed and around 600,000 were displaced. In 2013, he ran unsuccessfully again, this time losing to Kenyatta after the electronic voting system failed. Odinga challenged the results in country’s Supreme Court, alleging that the vote had been rigged, but the justices ruled against him.
This year, authorities had hoped to avoid a repeat of either electoral mishap, deploying a new electronic system that election officials claimed was rig-proof. The system was designed to produce two sets of results — an initial electronic count and a physical count based on hand-counted tallies of votes at the polling station level — that can be compared to ensure their veracity.
But just eight days before the election, a top official in charge of the electronic voting system was found dead, reportedly tortured to death. Odinga’s National Super Alliance (NASA) opposition coalition seized on the incident, claiming that it showed the “determination of the killers to send a chilling message that they will stop at nothing to ensure the [electoral] outcome they desire.”
On election day, millions of voters waited patiently in lines that in some cases stretched for hundreds of yards through slums and villages. But the memory of the 2007-2008 crisis loomed large; streets of the capital, Nairobi, were virtually empty on Tuesday and Wednesday. Grocery stores were left bare as residents stocked up on supplies in anticipation of unrest.
“Everybody is talking about the ongoing president, that he has to go,” said John Oscar, a 34-year-old Odinga supporter living in the Kibera slum, where some of the worst violence occurred in 2007.
“So, if Uhuru, the sitting president, is reelected, definitely we might have violence from my point of view.”
Some of Kenyatta’s supporters worried that disappointed Odinga supporters would purposely instigate unrest in response to unfavorable election results. “The people of NASA, they’re very violent,” said Emma, a resident of Mathare in Nairobi who claimed that supporters of the president threw stones at her earlier this week.
Reports of sporadic violence are already emerging in Odinga strongholds, including Kisumu in western Kenya and the Kangware and Mathare slums in Nairobi. Two demonstrators were reportedly shot and killed today in Mathare.
An estimated 180,000 police officers and security guards have been deployed across Kenya, according to election observers. In Kibera, police patrolled with water cannons, wearing riot gear and carrying assault rifles.
Odinga’s claims of fraud hinge on the comparison of real-time electronic results and the official hard-copy results, which are being counted by hand. His campaign has rejected the early results being streamed online, and insists on reviewing the hard copies from each polling station.
The country’s independent election commission, known as the IEBC, has denied that the electoral system was hacked. “Our election management system is secure,” the IEBC tweeted Wednesday. “We confirm there were no interferences before, during and after the polling exercise.”
Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party responded to Odinga’s accusations with accusations of their own. “We did not expect NASA to accept the results of the elections because Raila Odinga has no record of accepting the results of the elections,” said Raphael Tuju, secretary-general of Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party. “Our first suspect if there was any hacking [is] that it was NASA who did it because they seem to know too much about the hacking in detail, which IEBC itself says it doesn’t even know.”
Reports of minor irregularities have trickled in from independent election observers. The Kura Yangu Sauti Coalition (KYSY), an observer mission spearheaded by the independent Kenya Human Rights Commission, released a statement Wednesday about the partial failure of the electronic voting system in some polling centers, saying they resulted in delays. The observers also reported that voters who were not listed on either the biometric or hard-copy registers were turned away from polling centers. Other “gross misconducts by IEBC officials” noted by KYSY observers included election officials in some areas “allegedly guiding people on [how] to vote.”
Other international observers, including from the United States and European Union, have yet to release statements about the conduct of the election. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was on the ground as part of the Carter Center’s observer mission, appealed for patience, according to a tweet from the official IEBC account.
Despite the opposition’s claims to the contrary, experts hold out hope that the new electronic system will withstand its first test. “The technology used in the election has worked better at every stage than in 2013, and if that continues to be the case it will increase confidence in the credibility of the result,” said Nic Cheeseman, a professor of democracy and international development at the University of Birmingham.
Odinga has called on his supporters to remain calm, at least for now, but left open the possibility of calling for “action” sometime in the future. For months, he has been sowing doubts about the integrity electoral process, hinting that the only way he could lose is if the vote was rigged. Just weeks before the election, his coalition claimed to have “concrete evidence” that Kenyatta planned to “overthrow the constitution and use the military to rig himself back in office.”
So, it comes as little surprise that many of Odinga’s supporters are primed to reject a Kenyatta victory. The worry now is that some hard-line opposition supporters may stir up chaos in an effort to cast doubt on the election results and undermine the Jubilee administration’s work over the next five years.
“I think a lot of NASA supporters will be disappointed and they’ll blame a little bit the party as well.
And then what will happen is we’ll see some nasty stuff with the hard-liners, so people in Kibera are going to be incredibly upset and unhappy and that’s going to have an expression,” said a political analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But that this might take the form localized rioting, looting — horrible but small-scale attacks on minorities living within those communities, but it is unlikely to be the kind of violence that spreads on the scale that we were worried about before.”
Maria Garcia sets the stove on fire at her house in San Cristobal, Venezuela August 5, 2017. Picture taken August 5, 2017.-People queue as they try to buy gas cylinders at a distribution point San Cristobal, Venezuela August 3, 2017. Picture taken August 3, 2017.
People queue as they try to buy gas cylinders in Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela August 8, 2017. Picture taken August 8, 2017.
PUERTO ORDAZ/CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan homemaker Carmen Rondon lives in the country with the world's largest oil reserves, but has spent weeks cooking with firewood due to a chronic shortage of home cooking gas - leaving her hoarse from breathing smoke.
Finding domestic gas cylinders has become increasingly difficult, a problem that oil industry analysts attribute to slumping oil output in the OPEC nation - which is struggling under an unraveling socialist economy.
State oil company PDVSA says the problem is due to difficulties in distributing tanks amid four months of anti-government protests in which its trucks have been attacked.
"I've spent three weeks cooking with wood and sometimes the food does not even soften properly, I can't stand it anymore," said Rondon, as she lined up to buy a cylinder under the scorching sun in the city of San Felix in southern Venezuela.
More than 100 people were ahead of her in line.
Nine out of 10 Venezuelan homes rely on cylinders for home gas usage, with only 10 percent receiving it via pipelines, according to official figures. The government launched a plan 12 years ago to bring some 5 million households onto the natural gas network but was unable to follow through.
Venezuela's socialist economy has been in free-fall since the oil price collapse in 2014, creating shortages of everything from diapers to cancer medication and spurring inflation to triple-digit levels.
President Nicolas Maduro says he is the victim of an "economic war" by the opposition, and says violent street protests are part of an effort to overthrow him.
With oil output near 25-year lows, PDVSA has been forced to import liquid petroleum gas, or LPG, which is used to fill natural gas cylinders. Venezuela imported 26,370 barrels per day of LPG in the first half of 2017, according to data seen by Reuters.
PDVSA did not respond to a request for comment.
Long lines to buy cylinders have spurred protests. Demonstrators in May burned 22 PDVSA trucks in a single day in response to the shortages.
The company says it is now distributing gas cylinders at night and before daybreak due to such protests, which also include roadblocks that prevent free movement of vehicles.
"It's not fair that a country with so much oil is going through this," complained Maria Echeverria, a 44-year-old homemaker, who started waiting at dawn to buy a gas cylinder in San Cristobal, near the border with neighboring Colombia.
Additional reporting by Anggy Polanco in San Cristobal, Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo, Francisco Aguilar in Barinas, Isaac Urrutia in Maracaibo and Marianna Parraga in Houston; Editing by Chris Reese
Toronto: the city of 140 languages
Toronto’s Chinatown is the largest outside San Francisco (Credit: Robertharding / Alamy)-Toronto is growing by more than 100,000 new residents a year (Credit: Roberto Machado Noa/Getty Images)
Niagara Falls, 128km south of Toronto, is an easy getaway destination (Credit: Wolfgang Kaehler/Getty Images)-Toronto’s beaches are just 10km east of downtown (Credit: CharlineXia Ontario Canada Collection / Alamy)
By Lindsey Galloway-
31 July 2017
Growing at a clip of more than 100,000 new residents a year, Canada’s largest city keeps getting larger. But the continued population boom hasn’t changed Toronto’s character. Long known for welcoming multiculturalism and diversity (more than 140 languages are spoken here), the city has also made substantial investments in public transportation and technology, making the city even more attractive to newcomers and Silicon Valley talent.
However, it can take time to fully appreciate all that Toronto has to offer, say residents. “The city doesn’t give up its secrets easily,” said Alyssa James, Toronto native and travel blogger at Alyssa Writes. “I love Toronto because you really have to know it to love it.”
Among those secrets are beaches right in the city’s backyard. “People don’t think of Toronto for waterfront or beaches because we aren’t near an ocean, but we do have great lakes,” said Bruce Poon Tip, who has lived in the city for 27 years and founded G Adventures. “The water is clean and the waterfront has been developed in a way that maximizes quality of living.” The beaches, just 10km east of downtown, also host an internationally renowned jazz festival every July. You may also like:
The city is also known for its wealth of parks and trails; one recent study by MIT found that the city ranks fourth in the world when measured for its tree canopy.
It’s a hub of innovation and idealism and it’s beautiful
“Toronto gives me big city benefits with small-town living,” Poon Tip said. “It’s clean, it’s safe, it’s secure, it’s a hub of innovation and idealism and it’s beautiful. But it’s also extremely diverse in culture, people and ideas.”
Where should you live?
A big part of Toronto’s character comes through its many cultural neighbourhoods, which include Little India (6km east of the city centre), Little Italy (3km west), Portugal Village (3km south-west), Greektown (8km north-east), and Chinatown (2km east), the largest outside San Francisco.
“Diversity is huge in the city, especially when it comes to food. You can find every imaginable culture represented in some way in this city,” said Matt Chong, originally from Vancouver and founder of Chong Tea Co. “In the same day, I can get a world-class Vietnamese banh mi or a delicious platter of Ethiopian injera covered with kitfo.”
Kensington Market just north of Chinatown is a favourite among locals as one of the city’s most multicultural and eclectic pockets, with lots of local businesses and a strong independent art scene.
Queen West and West Queen West (both 3km west of the city centre) also offer lots for creative types “with tons of shops, galleries, cafes, restaurants and bars,” said Chong, and was named one of ‘the coolest neighbourhood in the world’ by Vogue for its art hotels, independent fashion labels and contemporary art museum.
The city’s east side is emerging quickly, with still-affordable neighbourhoods that are a mix of old homes and urban condos. The historic Distillery District (2.5km east of the city centre), the health-oriented Canary District (2.7km east), and up-and-coming Riverdale (4km north-east) are all favourite eastern neighbourhoods for young families.
The Distillery District is a still-affordable neighbourhood with old homes and urban condos (Credit: Roberto Machado Noa/Getty Images)
Where can you travel?
City Island, just a 20-minute ferry ride from the city, is a favourite among locals for easy summer day trips with its boat rentals, bike trails and beaches.“There is even a section where full-time residents live in cottages that were built as summer vacation homes at the turn of the century,” said John Phillips, a local real-estate agent who shares local tips on his website. “This is an amazing area to explore.”
Niagara Falls is just 128km south of Toronto, but outside of the touristy Falls themselves, and residents love exploring its nearby wineries. “One of my favourites is Redstone Winery, which has an incredible restaurant and wine list,” Chong said.
Prince Edward County (200km east of the city) is one of Ontario’s best wine growing regions. The county is home to the area known as 1,000 Islands (an archipelago of closer to 1,800 islands) within the St Lawrence River between the US and Canada. “A fashionable retreat for the elite in the late 19th-Century, today the area is a hub for outdoor activities,” Phillips said. “It’s home to elaborate island mansions such as the German-style Boldt Castle on Heart Island and Singer Castle on Dark Island, with its Gothic windows and secret passageways.”
The Blue Mountain ski resort (160km north of Toronto) is also a favourite year-round destination for its skiing, Scandinavian Spa and summer activities like boating and bike riding.
Is it affordable?
While residents agree that the city is expensive compared to the rest of Canada, they also say it’s still much more affordable than other big global cities. The 2017 Cost of Living Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Toronto at 86 of 133 cities, well behind New York, London and even Mexico City.
“When you take into account global currencies, like the British pound, you get tremendous value for your money – almost two for one,” said Poon Tip. “I have friends from Europe, from the United States, from the UK, who fly in just to shop.”
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By 2021, the economy of India’s second-largest city Delhi is expected to be almost 50 percent larger than it was at the end of 2016. Source: Shutterstock
OXFORD ECONOMICS research has shown a number Indian cities will grow most rapidly in Asia over the next five years, with Delhi and Vietnamese capital Ho Chi Minh City topping the charts.
By 2021, the economy of India’s second-largest city Delhi is expected to be almost 50 percent larger than it was at the end of 2016.
Oxford Economics’ research, released in conjunction with BloombergQuint, ranked Asia’s 30 largest cities, with six of the top 10 being located in India – Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bangalore.
“Limits on foreign ownership of Indian companies are gradually being reduced or eliminated,” wrote Mark Britton, lead economist on the report as quoted by Bloomberg.
“In the short term, this is conducive to strong growth in Delhi’s professional services sector, as overseas investors seek advice on possible deals, while long term, it should mean steady income streams for such businesses.”
After Saigon and the six Indian cities, China’s Tianjin was ranked in at No 8, the Philippines’ capital Manila at No 9 and Beijing at No 10.
Chinese metropolises of Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen came next, followed by Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. Australian and New Zealand cities were middle of the pack, with Brisbane ranked 16th ahead of Singapore and Bangkok.
The Distillery District is a still-affordable neighbourhood with old homes and urban condos (Credit: Roberto Machado Noa/Getty Images)
By 2021, the economy of India’s second-largest city Delhi is expected to be almost 50 percent larger than it was at the end of 2016. Source: Shutterstock
