BRUSSELS: The EU said Friday it was concerned about the impact on competition of German airline Lufthansa’s plan to take over routes operated by failed rival Air Berlin.
“We have quite deep competition concerns because there is a risk that on some routes Lufthansa becomes de facto a monopoly,” EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said at a news conference.
The warning comes a week after Lufthansa offered concessions to encourage the European Commission to green-light its planned purchase of parts of Air Berlin.
The Frankfurt-based airline group hopes to pay €210 million ($250 million) for 81 aircraft from Air Berlin’s 140-strong fleet, plus takeoff and landing slots, as well as Austrian subsidiary Niki.
But Vestager said she now wanted input from customers and competitors in the European aviation market to dispel any anti-trust doubts concerning the purchase.
Vestager previously said that, given its dominant position in domestic air travel, Lufthansa might have to give up certain routes in exchange for approval.
Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr responded by saying that he would be “ready” to meet her demands.
Air Berlin triggered bankruptcy proceedings in August after losing a cash lifeline from its biggest shareholder Etihad Airways.
Its aircraft were kept aloft by a €150 million emergency loan from the German government while it negotiated the sale of its assets.
Since the October deal the EU has allowed Lufthansa to operate some of Air Berlin’s planes to make sure there was no short-term negative impact on travelers.
Vestager made clear she is now focusing on the longer term impact on customers.
In “the long term it is important for the passengers in Germany and in Austria to have choice and also have businesses competing in order to keep prices down because the risk of any monopoly of course is that prices go up,” she said.
— AFP
EU has ‘deep competition concerns’ over Lufthansa Air Berlin bid
EU has ‘deep competition concerns’ over Lufthansa Air Berlin bid
Israeli strikes across Lebanon kill more than 55 as US officials push for ceasefire
- At least 20 were killed and 66 wounded in a strike in the heart of Beirut
- Air strikes also killed 24 in eastern Lebanon and 14 in the south, health ministry says
BEIRUT: Lebanon said Israeli air strikes on Saturday killed more than 55 people, many of them in central Beirut, as Israel’s defense minister vowed decisive action against Hezbollah, in a call with his US counterpart.
It was one of the deadliest strikes in a day since Israel escalated air strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on September 23, after nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire, in which Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it was acting in support of Hamas.
One strike on Saturday in the heart of Beirut brought down a residential building and jolted residents across the city.
The strike on the working-class Basta neighborhood killed at least 20 people and wounded 66, Lebanon’s health ministry said in a revised toll.
A Lebanese security source told AFP that the central Beirut strike had “targeted a leading Hezbollah figure,” but a Hezbollah lawmaker, Amin Sherri, denied to Lebanese media that any official was present at the time of the attack.
Similar strikes carried out without warning outside of Hezbollah’s traditional bastions — which include southern Beirut but not the center — have tended to target senior figures.
The health ministry said Israeli air strikes also hit eastern Lebanon, killing 24 people including 13 in the town of Shmostar overlooking the Bekaa Valley, another Hezbollah stronghold.
In Lebanon’s south, at least 14 were killed including five in the coastal city of Tyre, the ministry said.
Rude awakening
Residents in Beirut's Basta neighborhood were asleep and had not been given prior warning to evacuate, according to a civil defense source.
Four bunker buster missiles hit the building in the densely populated Al-Ma’moun Street.
It resulted in the complete or partial destruction of adjacent structures, while the targeted building was reduced to rubble, leaving a deep crater.
The sheer number of residents who sustained various injuries overwhelmed local hospitals that issued urgent calls for blood donations.
“We saw two dead people on the ground... The children started crying and their mother cried even more,” said Samir, 60, who lives in a building facing the one destroyed.
The attack in the capital was followed by others in the city’s southern suburbs after calls by the Israeli military to evacuate.
Israel has not commented on the strike in central Beirut but said it had again hit Hezbollah targets in the city’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Iran-backed group.
A military statement said that over the past week, the air force “struck dozens of Hezbollah command centers, weapons storage facilities, and terrorist infrastructure in the Dahieh area.”
Survivors recounted the moments of terror they experienced during the airstrikes and how they narrowly escaped death as parts of their homes collapsed.
Among the victims of the raid was a family of 10 from the southern town of Shaqra’s Hourani family. They had been displaced to the Al-Salam neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut but chose to move to Basta, “believing it offered greater security than the southern suburbs,” according to a relative.
The bunker buster munitions resembled those used in the assassinations of the former chief of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and another top official, Hashem Safieddine.
A building about 100 meters from the new target was attacked about a month ago.
Confusion over the targets
About 12 hours after the raid that shook Beirut and its suburbs, Hezbollah MP Amin Sherri, while inspecting the targeted site in Basta, said: “There was no Hezbollah member in the targeted building.”
Information circulating at the time of the airstrikes suggested that the target of the raid was a “prominent Hezbollah leader” taking part in a leadership meeting.
Israeli Channel 12 reported that the “target was Sheikh Naim Qassem, the secretary-general of Hezbollah.”
But the Israel Broadcasting Authority reported in the morning, citing a security source, that the target was Hezbollah official Mohammed Haidar.
However, the Israeli source did not confirm at the time whether he was killed or survived.
Haidar, a former member of Lebanese parliament, represented the Marjayoun-Hasbaya district from 2005 to 2009.
He served as a military aide to Nasrallah and was a member of the Jihad Council, regarded as Hezbollah’s highest executive leadership for military and security operations.
Haidar is one of the three prominent members of the council alongside Talal Hamieh and Khudar Yussuf Nader.
Additionally, Haidar serves as head of Hezbollah’s operations room.
Channel 12’s military reporter said that the official “was residing in a hidden apartment,” adding that the Basta attack “was an attempt to assassinate him.”
Israeli attacks against Beirut, especially against Hezbollah commanders, prompted internal backlash.
Independent MP Waddah Sadek said: “Hezbollah should take the moral and courageous decision of protecting Beirut’s residents and displaced people.
“Beirut is not an operation area, but a city that welcomed our displaced people only.”
Former Beirut MP Rola Al-Tabesh said: “The magnitude of the Israeli enemy’s criminality and blood-shedding is condemned and indescribable.”
Diplomatic solution
In a telephone call with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Saturday, Washington's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “reiterated US commitment to a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon that allows Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return safely to their homes on both sides of the border,” a Pentagon spokesperson said.
A spokesman for Katz said he commended the US efforts toward “de-escalation in Lebanon” and underscored that Israel would “continue to act decisively in response to Hezbollah’s attacks on civilian populations in Israel.”
United States envoy Amos Hochstein was in Lebanon and Israel this week, meeting with both countries’ senior officials, to try to negotiate an end to the war.
After talks in Beirut he said a deal was “within our grasp” but as he headed to Israel both sides put out statements that dented hopes of rapid progress.
Lebanon says more than 3,670 people have been killed in the country since October 2023. Most of the deaths have been since September this year.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,176 people, most of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.
In the pre-dawn darkness of Gaza on Saturday, one strike killed seven people including children at a house in the Zeitun area of Gaza City, civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
AFPTV footage showed victims being brought in to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital including a bloody and dust-covered man, as a boy on a bed beside him struggled to reach the man and called for his father.
“We were sleeping, I was lying here. What happened?” one survivor, Abu Shaker Shaldan, said, lost for words at the scene of the strike, with blood trickling down his head.
Tensions escalate
Meanwhile, confrontations between the Israeli army and Hezbollah have escalated, reaching the second line of villages across the southern Lebanese border.
The escalation included Baalbek, Brital and Chmistar, where three children and their mother were killed.
Israeli drones targeted several fishermen on the beach of Tyre, killing two.
Hezbollah said it was now using cruise missiles to target Israeli military outposts in northern Israel.
Beirut’s southern suburb has been subject to a series of Israeli raids since the early morning. The airstrikes targeted not only single houses and buildings, but also residential and commercial compounds.
The attacks were preceded by evacuation warnings issued by the Israeli army, along with a map showing the targeted locations.
Raids reached Burj Al-Barajneh, Hadath, Choueifat, Amrousieh near the Lebanese University and Haret Hreik.
The Israeli army claimed that it targeted “many Hezbollah headquarters, weapon depots and military infrastructure.”
Clashes intensified in the southern town of Khiam between Hezbollah and the Israeli army amid fierce militant resistance.
The Israeli army carried out detonations, described as “very violent,” in the heart of the town, and homes were destroyed in Shamaa and Tayr Harfa, which the Israeli army entered a few days earlier.
Reports suggested that the Israeli army took control of large areas of the coastal town of Al-Bayada.
Media reports spoke of Israeli soldiers entering between the border towns of Al-Taybeh and Rab Al-Thalathin.
The Israeli army fired heavy munitions toward the outskirts of the town of Naqoura.
Several people were killed in Israeli airstrikes targeting motorcycles on the roads in the Tyre and Bint Jbeil districts.
Airstrikes targeted frontline and second-line towns, and in the city of Bint Jbeil, about 50 shells hit residential neighborhoods within a two-hour period.
Israeli jets struck Chehabiyeh and Zefta, killing three people, and the vicinity of Al-Bazourieh, Chaaitiyeh and Roumine, where five people were killed, as well as Khirbet Selm and Mayfadoun.
Airstrikes hit the town of Roum in the Jezzine district, resulting in three deaths and two injuries.
- With Agencies
Mounting economic costs of India’s killer smog
- India’s capital New Delhi frequently ranks among the world’s most polluted cities
- One study estimate India’s economic losses due to worsening air pollution at $95 billion yearly
NEW DELHI: Noxious smog smothering the plains of north India is not only choking the lungs of residents and killing millions, but also slowing the country’s economic growth.
India’s capital New Delhi frequently ranks among the world’s most polluted cities. Each winter, vehicle and factory emissions couple with farm fires from surrounding states to blanket the city in a dystopian haze.
Acrid smog this month contains more than 50 times the World Health Organization recommended limit of fine particulate matter — dangerous cancer-causing microparticles known as PM2.5 pollutants, that enter the bloodstream through the lungs.
Experts say India’s worsening air pollution is having a ruinous impact on its economy — with one study estimating losses to the tune of $95 billion annually, or roughly three percent of the country’s GDP.
The true extent of the economic price India is paying could be even greater.
“The externality costs are huge and you can’t assign a value to it,” said Vibhuti Garg, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Bhargav Krishna of the Delhi-based research collective Sustainable Futures Collaborative said “costs add up in every phase.”
“From missing a day at work to developing chronic illness, the health costs associated with that, to premature death and the impact that has on the family of the person,” Krishna told AFP.
Still, several studies have tried to quantify the damage.
One by the global consultancy firm Dalberg concluded that in 2019, air pollution cost Indian businesses $95 billion due to “reduced productivity, work absences and premature death.”
The amount is nearly three percent of India’s budget, and roughly twice its annual public health expenditure.
“India lost 3.8 billion working days in 2019, costing $44 billion to air pollution caused by deaths,” according to the study which calculated that toxic air “contributes to 18 percent of all deaths in India.”
Pollution has also had a debilitating impact on the consumer economy because of direct health-related eventualities, the study said, reducing footfall and causing annual losses of $22 billion.
The numbers are even more staggering for Delhi, the epicenter of the crisis, with the capital province losing as much as six percent of its GDP annually to air pollution.
Restaurateur Sandeep Anand Goyle called the smog a “health and wealth hazard.”
“People who are health conscious avoid stepping out so we suffer,” said Goyle, who heads the Delhi chapter of the National Restaurant Association of India.
Tourism has also been impacted, as the smog season coincides with the period when foreigners traditionally visit northern India — too hot for many during the blisteringly hot summers.
“The smog is giving a bad name to India’s image,” said Rajiv Mehra of the Indian Association of Tour Operators.
Delhi faces an average 275 days of unhealthy air a year, according to monitors.
Piecemeal initiatives by the government — that critics call half-hearted — have failed to adequately address the problem.
Academic research indicates that its detrimental impact on the Indian economy is adding up.
A 2023 World Bank paper said that air pollution’s “micro-level” impacts on the economy translate to “macro-level effects that can be observed in year-to-year changes in GDP.”
The paper estimates that India’s GDP would have been 4.5 percent higher at the end of 2023, had the country managed to curb pollution by half in the previous 25 years.
Another study published in the Lancet health journal on the direct health impacts of air pollution in 2019 estimated an annual GDP deceleration of 1.36 percent due to “lost output from premature deaths and morbidity.”
Desperate emergency curbs — such as shuttering schools to reduce traffic emissions as well as banning construction — come with their own economic costs.
“Stopping work for weeks on end every winter makes our schedules go awry, and we end up overshooting budgets,” said Sanjeev Bansal, the chairman of the Delhi unit of the Builders Association of India.
Pollution’s impact on the Indian economy is likely to get worse if action is not taken.
With India’s median age expected to rise to 32 by 2030, the Dalberg study predicts that “susceptibility to air pollution will increase, as will the impact on mortality.”
Biden praises COP29 deal, vows US action despite Trump
- Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate
- As agreed, developed nations will pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden praised the COP29 deal Saturday as a “significant step” to fighting global warming, and pledged continued action by America despite his incoming successor Donald Trump’s climate skepticism.
“While there is still substantial work ahead of us to achieve our climate goals, today’s outcome puts us one significant step closer,” Biden said in a statement.
After two exhausting weeks of negotiations in Azerbaijan, the pact hammered out commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters.
Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate.
The Baku meeting kicked off shortly after Trump won a new term in the White House, potentially setting the stage for him to undo actions by Biden’s administration.
Biden, who leaves office on January 20, said he was “confident” the United States “will continue this work: through our states and cities, our businesses, and our citizens, supported by durable legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act.”
“While some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that’s underway in America and around the world, nobody can reverse it — nobody.”
UAE foreign ministry says monitoring case of missing Moldovan citizen
- Zvi Kogan, a Moldovan citizen, was reported missing since Thursday
- Ministry says it is “in close contact with his (Kogan’s) family to provide them with all means of necessary support.”
RIYADH: The United Arab Emirate’s foreign ministry on Sunday said it is closely monitoring the case of Zvi Kogan, a Moldovan citizen who was reported missing since Thursday.
In a press statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it is “in close contact with his (Kogan’s) family to provide them with all means of necessary support.”
Majed Al Mansoori, MOFA director of foreign nationals affairs, was quoted in the statement as saying that the ministry was also in contact with the Embassy of Moldova in Abu Dhabi about the case.
Mansoori further said the Ministry of Interior “is implementing extensive measures in its search for the missing person, affirming that the relevant authorities in the UAE have initiated the search operations and investigations immediately following the receipt of the report.”
Wire agencies reported that the missing person was a rabbi who also held Israeli citizenship and that the Israeli prime minister’s office on Saturday night acknowledged Kogan’s disappearance, without elaborating.
The UAE has a burgeoning Jewish community, with synagogues and businesses catering to kosher diners.
However, Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza and increasing aggression against Lebanon have sparked deep anger among Emiratis, Arab nationals from other states and others living in the UAE.
Gunman shot dead, 3 police injured in shooting near Israeli embassy in Jordan
- Many of Jordan’s 12 million citizens are of Palestinian origin, they or their parents having been expelled or fled to Jordan in the fighting that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948
AMMAN: A gunman was dead and three policemen injured after a shooting near the Israeli embassy in neighboring Jordan, a security source and state media said on Sunday.
Police shot a gunman who had fired at a police patrol in the Rabiah neighborhood of Amman, state news agency Petra reported, citing public security, adding investigations were ongoing.
Jordanian police had earlier cordoned off an area near the heavily policed embassy after gunshots were heard, witnesses said. Two witnesses said police and ambulances rushed to the Rabiah neighborhood, where the embassy is located.
The area is a flashpoint for frequent demonstrations against Israel. The kingdom has witnessed some of the biggest peaceful rallies across the region as anti-Israel sentiment runs high over the war in Gaza.
Police had called on residents to stay in their homes as security personnel searched for the culprits, a security source said.
Many of Jordan’s 12 million citizens are of Palestinian origin, they or their parents having been expelled or fled to Jordan in the fighting that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. Many have family ties on the Israeli side of the Jordan River.
Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel is unpopular among many citizens who see normalization of relations as betraying the rights of their Palestinian compatriots.
