SINGAPORE: Singaporean voters fretted over the risks of COVID-19 as they queued in masks to cast their ballots on Friday, amid an uptick in new infections and prospects of the city-state’s economy entering its worst-ever recession.
In power since independence in 1965, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) is widely expected by analysts to carry Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to another comfortable, and probably final victory.
Lee, the son of Singapore’s founding leader Lee Kuan Yew, has held the premiership since 2004. Aged 68, Lee has already flagged his intention to step aside in coming years, but he wanted a fresh mandate to steer the country out of the coronavirus crisis.
As the prime minister queued up to cast his vote, a video widely shared on social media showed his wife tapping him on the shoulder to remind him to socially distance when he strayed too close to the person in front.
At polling stations round the city, election officials clad in face shields enforced distancing rules and took voters’ temperatures as they entered polling booths.
“This is a very dangerous time to hold an election even though many precautions were taken,” said Mayank Goel, 21, a biomedical engineering student after voting.
Some Singaporeans had voiced doubt whether it was worth risking going to polling stations, though voting is mandatory in on the small Southeast Asian island that has become wealthy by being a banking, trade and transport hub for the region.
Since easing its lockdown last month, the number of new daily cases in Singapore has crept back into double figures, excluding the migrant workers living in dormitories where infection rates have been far higher.
And opposition parties had criticized Lee for calling the election, warning that it could hit public health and distract from government efforts to tackle the virus.
Social distancing rules constrained campaigning, and there were no party rallies allowed.
Singapore has one of the lowest COVID-19 fatality rates in the world and initially earned widespread praise for its efforts. But subsequent mass outbreaks in cramped migrant worker dormitories stained that early success, and persuaded the government to keep schools and businesses closed for longer.
Seen as a measure of approval for both the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis and the next generation of leaders, the poll results will be closely watched as even small shifts in the PAP’s popularity can lead to major policy changes.
When concerns around immigration and jobs flared in 2011, the PAP polled a record-low 60 percent of the vote and tightened international hiring rules to address voters’ sensitivities.
Those concern have come to the fore again as the country emerges from lockdown to face its deepest recession.
Singapore is not the first country in Asia to hold elections during the pandemic — South Korea held parliamentary elections in April.
But with just 2.65 million voters in Singapore, election organizers counted on a fast, hygienic vote to minimize risks.
Voters were given a recommended time slot to vote. Inside the polling stations, they had to self-scan identity cards and sanitized their hands before receiving a ballot paper.
While officials had hoped it would take voters no more than five minutes to cast their ballot, some people said they waited for up to an hour as lines formed initially outside some polling stations.
Delays persuaded the election authority to drop a requirement for voters to wear gloves, and by around mid-morning the lines had receded.
Sample counts are expected soon after polling closes at 8 p.m. (1200 GMT) with final results due in the early hours of Saturday. A record 11 parties are contesting.
Singaporeans vote in shadow of pandemic and recession
https://arab.news/6facb
Singaporeans vote in shadow of pandemic and recession
- Some had voiced doubt whether it was worth risking going to polling stations
- Voting is mandatory in on the small Southeast Asian island
Floods strike thousands of houses in northern Philippines
- Typhoon Man-yi drenched swaths of the Philippines over the weekend
- Man-yi was the sixth major storm in a month to strike the Philippines
Typhoon Man-yi drenched swaths of the Philippines over the weekend, swelling the Cagayan river and tributaries, and forcing the release of water from Magat Dam.
The Cagayan broke its banks, spilling water over already sodden farmland and communities, affecting tens of thousands of people.
Buildings, lamp posts and trees poked through a lake of brown water in Tuguegarao city in Cagayan province where provincial disaster official Ian Valdepenas said floodwaters reached more than four meters (14 feet) in some places.
“We experienced very heavy rains two days ago, but the flood just started to rise when Magat Dam started releasing huge volumes of water,” Valdepenas told AFP.
“Plus, our land is already saturated because of the consecutive typhoons hitting the area.”
Man-yi was the sixth major storm in a month to strike the Philippines, which have left at least 171 people dead and thousands homeless, as well as wiped out crops and livestock.
About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the Southeast Asian nation or its surrounding waters each year, killing scores of people, but it is rare for multiple such weather events to take place in a small window.
Roofs of houses
In the neighboring province of Isabela, Jun Montereal of the Ilagan city disaster preparedness committee said 30,000 people were still affected by flooding.
But the situation was slowly improving.
“The flood is subsiding now little by little, it’s slower because the land is already saturated but we are way past the worst,” Montereal told AFP.
“We are really hoping that the weather will continue to be fair so the water can go down. I think the water will completely subside in three days,” he said.
“I can now see the roofs of houses that I wasn’t able to see before because of the floods.”
Carlo Ablan, who helps oversee operations at Magat Dam, said three gates were open as of Tuesday morning to release water from the dam.
“If the weather continues to be good, we are expecting that we will only have one gate open this afternoon,” Ablan said.
Ablan said flooding in Tuguegarao city was not only caused by water from Magat Dam — other tributaries of the Cagayan river were also likely to blame.
Valdepenas said authorities in Tuguegarao were waiting for floodwaters to subside more before sending people back to their homes.
“This might start subsiding within today,” he said.
More than a million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi, which struck the Philippines as a super typhoon before significantly weakening as it swept over the mountains of the main island of Luzon.
Man-yi dumped heavy rain, smashed flimsy buildings, knocked out power and claimed at least eight lives.
Climate change is increasing the intensity of storms, leading to heavier rains, flash floods and stronger gusts.
24 hours in Ukraine: A single day shows the reality of life as war hits 1,000 days
- The Associated Press fanned out across Ukraine to chronicle 24 hours of life just as the country prepared to mark a grim milestone Tuesday: 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 20
KYIV: The clock on her wall stopped almost as soon as the day began, its hands frozen by the Russian bomb that hit the dormitory serving as home for Ukrainians displaced by war.
It was 1:45 a.m. in an upstairs room in the eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, Natalia Panasenko’s home for just shy of a year after the town she thinks of as her real home came under Russian occupation. The explosion blasted a door on top of her, smashed her refrigerator and television and shredded the flowers she’d just received for her 63rd birthday.
“The house was full of people and flowers. People were congratulating me ... and then there was nothing. Everything was mixed in the rubble,” she said. “I come from a place where the war is going on every day. We only just left there, and it seemed to be quieter here. And the war caught up with us again.”
Nov. 11 was a typical day of violence and resilience in Ukraine. The Associated Press fanned out across Ukraine to chronicle 24 hours of life just as the country prepared to mark a grim milestone Tuesday: 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
The day opened with two Russian bombings — one that hit Panasenko’s apartment and another that killed six in Mykolaiv, including a woman and her three children. Before the day was even halfway done, a Russian ballistic missile shattered yet another apartment building, this time in the city of Kryvyi Rih.
Swimmers braved the Black Sea waters off Odesa, steelworkers kept the economy limping along, a baby was born. Soldiers died and were buried. The lucky ones found a measure of healing for their missing limbs and broken faces.
About a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory is now controlled by Russia. Those invisible geographical lines shift constantly, and the closer a person is to them the more dangerous life is.
In the no-man’s-land between Russian and Ukrainian forces, there’s hardly any life at all. It’s called the Gray Zone for good reason. Ashen homes, charred trees and blackened pits left by shells exploding over 1,000 days of war stretch as far as the eye can see.
Odesa, 6:50 a.m.
The waters of the Black Sea hover around 13 degrees Celsius (55 Fahrenheit) in late fall. The coastline is mined. Dmytro’s city is regularly targeted by drones and missiles.
But Dmytro — who insisted on being identified only by his first name because he was worried for the safety of his family — was undaunted as he plunged into the waves with a handful of friends for their regular swim.
Before the war, the group numbered a couple of dozen. Many fled the country. Men were mobilized to fight. Some returned with disabilities that keep them out of the water. His 33-year-old stepson is missing in action after a battle in the Donetsk region.
For Dmytro and fellow swimmers, the ritual grounds them and makes the grimness of war more bearable. He said the risks of his hobby are well worth the reward: “If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go into the forest.”
Zaporizhzhia, noon
Managing the Zaporizhstal steel mill during wartime means days filled with calculations for Serhii Saphonov.
The staff of 420 is less than half its pre-war levels. Power cuts from Russian attacks on electricity infrastructure require an “algorithm of actions” to maintain operations. Russian forces are closing in on the coke mine in Pokrovsk that supplies the plant with coal. And the city is under increasing attack by Russia’s unstoppable glide bombs.
Right outside his office, a bulletin board displays the names of 92 former steelworkers who have joined the army. Below are photos of the dead. Staff hold fundraisers for supplies for colleagues on the front, including two bulletproof vests sitting in the corner near his desk.
“The old workers, they carry everything on their shoulders. They are hardened. They know their job,” Saphonov said. “Everyone knows that we have to endure, hold out, hoping that things will get better ahead.”
Chernihiv, 1 p.m.
Dr. Vladyslava Friz has performed more reconstructive surgeries in the past 1,000 days than she did in the previous decade of her career. And the injuries are like nothing she had ever seen before.
Her days start early and end late. In the first months of the war, she said, the hospital was admitting 60 people per hour, and eight surgeons worked nonstop. They’re still catching up, because so many of the injured need multiple surgeries.
On Nov. 11, she was rebuilding the cheek and jaw of a patient injured in a mine explosion.
“Appearance is a person’s visual identity,” she said. “There is work to be done; we are doing it. We have no other options. There are medicines, equipment and personnel, but there are no metal structures for reconstruction. There is no state funding for implants.”
She said she will not abandon her patients but worries that the world will abandon Ukraine as the war approaches its fourth year.
“The global community continues to lose interest in the events in Ukraine while we lose people every day,” she said. “The world seems to have forgotten about us.”
Odesa, 6 p.m.
Yulia Ponomarenko has brought two babies into the world in the past 1,000 days, including Mariana on Nov. 11. Her husband, Denys, is fighting at the front.
Their hometown, Oleshky, was submerged by flooding after the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam. But by then, she’d long since fled the occupying Russian forces, who target the families of Ukrainian soldiers.
Mariana, born healthy at 3.8 kilograms and 55 centimeters (8 pounds, 6 ounces and 21 inches), will grow up with an older brother and sister and a menagerie of two cats and two dogs.
“This child is very expected, very wanted. We now have another princess,” Ponomarenko said.
Kyiv, 9 p.m.
The actors can’t perform in their home theater in Kharkiv — too many bombs, too few people willing to gather in one place. So they’ve moved to the Ukrainian capital, where they played to a nearly full house on Nov. 11 as guests of the Franko Theater.
“Because of the war, the Kharkiv theater cannot play on its stage. We play underground. It is literally underground art. There are only two to three places in Kharkiv where we can play, and that’s it,” said Mykhailo Tereshchenko, one of the principal actors of the Taras Shevchenko Academic Ukrainian Drama Theatre, named for Ukraine’s most famous writer.
Yevhen Nyshchuk, director of the Franko, said the theater paused production for a few months after the war started. Now, it’s packed nearly every night there is a play, and the lengthy applause when curtains close is deafening.
The reason goes beyond the quality of a performance at this point, he believes, and expresses “this inner realization that in spite of everything, we will create, we will live, we will come, we will meet, we will applaud each other.”
UK farmers plan to protest at Parliament over a tax hike they say will ruin family farms
- The Labour Party government says only a small number of farms each year will be affected
- Some farmers have welcomed those moves, but many feel goodwill was squandered through missteps by successive governments
LONDON: With banners, bullhorns, toy tractors and an angry message, British farmers are descending on Parliament on Tuesday to protest a hike in inheritance tax that they say will deal a “hammer blow” to struggling family farms.
UK farmers are rarely as militant as their European neighbors, and Britain has not seen large-scale protests like those that have snarled cities in France and other European countries. Now, though, farmers say they will step up their action if the government doesn’t listen.
“Everyone’s mad,” said Olly Harrison, co-organizer of a protest that aims to flood the street outside Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office with farmers. He said many famers “want to take to the streets and block roads and go full French.”
Organizers have urged protesters not to bring farm machinery into central London on Tuesday. Instead, children on toy tractors will lead a march around Parliament Square after a rally addressed by speakers including former “Top Gear” TV host and celebrity farmer Jeremy Clarkson. Another 1,800 farmers plan to hold a “mass lobby” of lawmakers nearby, organized by the National Farmers’ Union.
Volatile weather exacerbated by climate change, global instability and the upheaval caused by Britain’s 2020 departure from the European Union have all added to the burden on UK farmers. Many feel the Labour Party government’s tax change, part of an effort to raise billions of pounds to fund public services, is the last straw.
“Four out of the last five years, we’ve lost money,” said Harrison, who grows cereal crops on his family farm near Liverpool in northwest England. “The only thing that’s kept me going is doing it for my kids. And maybe a little bit of appreciation on the land allows you to keep borrowing, to keep going. But now that’s just disappeared overnight.”
The flashpoint is the government’s decision in its budget last month to scrap a tax break dating from the 1990s that exempts agricultural property from inheritance tax. From April 2026, farms worth more than 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) face a 20 percent tax when the owner dies and they are passed on to the next generation. That is half the 40 percent inheritance tax rate levied on other land and property in the UK
Starmer’s center-left government says the “vast majority” of farms – about 75 percent — will not be affected, and various loopholes mean that a farming couple can pass on an estate worth up to 3 million pounds ($3.9 million) to their children free of tax.
Supporters of the tax say it will recoup money from wealthy people who have bought up agricultural land as an investment, driving up the cost of farmland in the process.
“It’s become the most effective way for the super-rich to avoid paying their inheritance tax,” Environment Secretary Steve Reed wrote in the Daily Telegraph, adding that high land prices were “robbing young farmers of the dream of owning their own farm.”
But the famers’ union says more than 60 percent of working farms could face a tax hit. And while farms may be worth a lot on paper, profits are often small. Government figures show that income for most types of farms fell in the year to the end of February 2024, in some cases by more than 70 percent. Average farm income ranged from about 17,000 pounds ($21,000) for grazing livestock farms to 143,000 pounds ($180,000) for specialist poultry farms.
The last decade has been turbulent for British farmers. Many farmers backed Brexit as a chance to get out of the EU’s complex and much-criticized Common Agricultural Policy. Since then, the UK has brought in changes such as paying farmers to restore nature and promote biodiversity, as well as for producing food.
Some farmers have welcomed those moves, but many feel goodwill was squandered through missteps by successive governments, a failure of subsidies to keep up with inflation and new trade deals with countries including Australia and New Zealand that have opened the door to cheap imports.
National Farmers’ Union Deputy President David Exwood said the tax hike was “the final straw in a succession of tough choices and difficult situations that farmers have had to deal with.”
The government has “completely blown their trust with the industry,” he said.
The government insists it will not reconsider the inheritance tax, and its political opponents see an opportunity. The main opposition Conservative Party – which was in government for 14 years until July — and the hard-right populist party Reform UK are both championing the farmers. Some far-right groups also have backed Tuesday’s protest, though the organizers are not affiliated with them.
Harrison says the demonstration is intended as “a show of unity to the government” and an attempt to inform the public “that farmers are food producers, not tax-dodging millionaires.”
“It’s every single sector, whether you’re a landowner or a tenant, whether you’re beef, dairy, milk, cereals, veg, lettuce — you name it, everyone has had a hammer blow from this,” he said.
“Every farmer is losing.”
Seven policemen abducted by armed gunmen in northwest Pakistan amid militancy surge
- Police data shows 75 police officials have been killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province this year
- Pakistan blames surge in militancy on neighboring Afghanistan whose Taliban rulers deny the accusations
PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen abducted seven policemen from a check post on Monday in Pakistan’s northwestern district of Bannu, police said, as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province battles a rise in militant attacks on cops and other government officials.
Pakistan’s northwest has seen a rise in militant attacks in recent months, which Islamabad says are mostly carried out by Afghan nationals and their facilitators and by Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other militant groups who cross over into Pakistan using safe haven in Afghanistan.
The Taliban government in Kabul says Pakistan’s security challenges are a domestic issue and cannot be blamed on the neighbor.
Police data shows 75 policemen have been killed and 113 injured in militant attacks and targeted assassinations in 2024 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.
“Armed men abducted seven police personnel from the Rocha checkpoint in the jurisdiction of Utmanzai Police Station in Bannu district,” District Police Officer (DPO) Zia Uddin told Arab News, saying up to 40 gunmen first surrounded the checkpoint in the mountainous area of Sub-Division Wazir on Monday evening.
“The armed men abducted seven police personnel from the Rocha checkpoint in the jurisdiction of Utmanzai Police Station in Bannu district.”
The militants also took away all weapons and equipment at the checkpoint.
“Four police personnel escaped as they were not present at the location at the time,” the DPO added.
The Pakistani government and security officials have said repeatedly that such attacks have risen in recent months, many of them claimed by the TTP and launched from Afghan soil.
The TTP is separate from the Afghan Taliban movement, but pledges loyalty to the Islamist group that now rules Afghanistan after US-led international forces withdrew in 2021.
Islamabad says TTP uses Afghanistan as a base and says the ruling Taliban administration has provided safe havens to the group close to the border. The Taliban deny this.
- This article is also available on Arab News Pakistan
Toxic smog persists over India’s north; Delhi pollution remains severe
NEW DELHI: Residents in India’s northern states woke up to another day of poor air quality on Tuesday, as a layer of dense fog shrouded most of the region, and pollution in the capital Delhi remained severe.
India battles air pollution every winter as cold, heavy air traps dust, emissions, and smoke from farm fires started illegally in the adjoining, farming states of Punjab and Haryana.
The air quality index (AQI) touched a peak of 491 in Delhi on Monday, forcing the government to introduce restrictions on vehicle movement and construction activities, and schools to conduct classes online.
On Tuesday, Delhi’s 24-hour air quality index (AQI) reading was at 488 on a scale of 500, India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) said, and at least five stations in the capital reported an AQI of 500.
CPCB defines an AQI reading of 0-50 as “good” and above 401 as “severe,” which it says is a risk to healthy people and “seriously impacts” those with existing diseases.
Swiss group IQAir ranked New Delhi as the world’s most polluted city with air quality at a “hazardous” 489, although that was a significant improvement from Monday’s 1,081 reading.
Experts say the scores vary because of a difference in the scale countries adopt to convert pollutant concentrations into AQI, and so the same quantity of a specific pollutant may be translated as different AQI scores in different countries.
India’s weather department said a shift in the fog layer toward the northern state of Uttar Pradesh had helped improve visibility over Delhi.
Visibility dropped to zero meters in Uttar Pradesh’s capital Agra, which lies southeast of Delhi. The Taj Mahal, India’s famed monument of love, has been obscured by toxic smog for nearly a week.
The strict measures to mitigate the impact of high pollution have hurt production at more than 3.4 million micro, small and medium enterprises in the nearby states of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, local media reported.
