COLOMBO: Long queues snaked around gas stations in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital and its outskirts on Monday even though the island nation’s government was scrambling to deliver fuel supplies and douse any unrest as it battles a devastating economic crisis.
Kanchana Wijesekera, Sri Lanka’s minister for power and energy, said supplies of 95-octane gasoline, mostly used in cars, had been received and were being distributed across the country of 22 million people that has been struggling with fuel shortages for months.
“With the 2 cargo vessels unloaded, petrol stocks will be available for the next 6 weeks comfortably,” Wijesekera said in a tweet.
Another 40,000 metric tons of petrol supplied by India had also reached Sri Lanka on Monday, the Indian High Commission (Embassy) said, two days after New Delhi delivered 40,000 tons of diesel to its southern neighbor.
Sri Lanka is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since independence, as a dire shortage of foreign exchange has stalled imports and left the country short of fuel, medicines and hit by rolling power cuts.
The financial trouble has come from the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic battering the tourism-reliant economy, rising oil prices and populist tax cuts by the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, Mahinda, who resigned as prime minister this month.
M. Sudeera, an auto-rickshaw driver, was waiting in a two-kilometer (1.5-mile) -long queue at Kumbuke, on the outskirts of Colombo, to fill his vehicle, a popular form of public transport in the city and its suburbs.
“Last time, I spent two days in line for 3,000 rupees ($8.46) worth of fuel. With that I did a few hires but it’s barely enough to cover costs,” Sudeera said, standing beside parallel queues of auto-rickshaws, cars and motorcycles.
“Usually we run during the day and spent the night in line for fuel,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Veteran politician Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took over as prime minister earlier this month, has warned of hardship worsening over the coming months, including food shortages.
Protests against the government’s handling of the crisis have continued for weeks, and erupted into violence earlier this month in which nine people were killed and over 300 injured. But the protests have been peaceful since then, although anger against the government is high.
Inflation in the island nation rose to 33.8 percent in April, compared to 21.5 percent in March, according to government data released on Monday.
Wickremesinghe’s cabinet was expanded on Monday, with eight new ministers sworn in for portfolios including agriculture, fisheries, industries, transport and highways, water supply and irrigation.
Long fuel queues persist in Sri Lanka despite scramble to deliver supplies
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Long fuel queues persist in Sri Lanka despite scramble to deliver supplies
- Another 40,000 metric tons of petrol supplied by India reached Sri Lanka on Monday
- New Delhi delivered 40,000 tons of diesel to its southern neighbor two days earlier
Pakistan ex-PM Khan, wife appeal graft convictions: lawyer
- Imran Khan was sentenced to 14 years and his wife to seven earlier this month
- A special graft court found the pair guilty of ‘corruption and corrupt practices’
Khan was sentenced to 14 years and his wife to seven earlier this month in the latest case to be brought against them.
“We have filed appeals today and in the next few days it will go through clerical processes and then it will be fixed for a hearing,” Khan’s lawyer Khalid Yousaf Chaudhry said.
The papers were filed at the Islamabad High Court.
A special graft court found the pair guilty of “corruption and corrupt practices” over a welfare foundation they established together called the Al-Qadir Trust.
Khan, 72, has been held in custody since August 2023 charged in around 200 cases which he claims are politically motivated.
Kremlin says it has yet to hear from US about a possible Putin-Trump meeting
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it appeared a “certain amount of time” was needed before a meeting between the two leaders could take place. He said Russia understood that Washington was still interested in organizing such a meeting.
Putin said on Friday that he and Trump should meet to talk about the Ukraine war and energy prices, issues that the US president has highlighted in the first days of his new administration.
India minister pledges to evict ‘illegal’ immigrants from capital
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closest political ally has pledged to rid the capital of “illegal’ immigrants if his party wins looming elections, in a forceful appeal to his party’s Hindu constituency.
Interior minister Amit Shah said every unlawful migrant from neighboring Bangladesh would be expelled from New Delhi “within two years” if his party succeeded in next month’s provincial polls.
“The current state government is giving space to illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingyas,” Shah told an audience of several thousand at Sunday’s rally.
“Change the government and we will rid Delhi of all illegals.”
India shares a porous border stretching thousands of kilometers with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, and illegal migration from its eastern neighbor has been a hot-button political issue for decades.
There are no reliable estimates of the number of Bangladeshis living illegally in Delhi, a city to which millions have flocked in search of employment from elsewhere in India over recent decades.
Critics of Modi and Shah’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accuse the party of using the issue as a dog whistle against Muslims to galvanize its Hindu-nationalist support base during elections.
Delhi, a sprawling megacity home to more than 30 million people, has been governed for most of the past decade by charismatic chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Kejriwal rode to power as an anti-corruption crusader a decade ago and his profile has bestowed upon him the mantle of one of the chief rivals to Modi and Shah’s party.
His popularity has been burnished by extensive water and electricity subsidies for the capital’s millions of poorer residents.
But he spent several months behind bars last year on accusations his party took kickbacks in exchange for liquor licenses, along with several fellow party leaders.
Kejriwal denies wrongdoing and characterised the charges as a political witch-hunt by Modi’s government, and despite resigning as chief minister last year vowed to return to the office if his party won re-election.
The BJP has led a spirited campaign in its efforts to dislodge Kejriwal’s party ahead of the February 5 vote.
Modi is expected to make a pilgrimage to the ongoing Kumbh Mela, the biggest festival on the Hindu calendar, to bathe in the sacred Ganges river on the day of the Delhi assembly vote.
Results of the election will be published on February 8.
Ukraine’s Zelensky urges action against ‘evil’ on Auschwitz anniversary
- The Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022
- Zelensky warned that the memory of the Holocaust is growing weaker
KYIV : Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday said the world must unite against evil, in comments marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death.
The Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 claiming that the government in Kyiv contained neo-Nazi elements and saying the country must be demilitarized.
Zelensky warned that the memory of the Holocaust is growing weaker and said some countries are still trying to destroy entire nations.
“We must overcome the hatred that gives rise to abuse and murder. We must prevent forgetfulness,” he said, according to a statement from the presidency.
“And it is everyone’s mission to do everything possible to prevent evil from winning,” he added.
The foreign ministry said in a statement that Russia’s invasion “brought back to Ukrainian soil horrors that Europe has not seen since World War II.”
“Jewish communities of Ukraine are also suffering from constant Russian terror, in particular in the cities of Dnipro and Odesa, which have a population of over a million, and other localities,” it added.
The Holocaust decimated the Jewish community in Ukraine, which during World War II was part of the Soviet Union.
It was not the first massacre of Jewish people in Ukraine’s history, which had seen previous anti-Semitic pogroms.
Russia drone barrage sparks fire in western Ukraine
KYIV: A barrage of more than 100 Russian drones sparked a fire at an industrial facility in western Ukraine and damaged residential buildings in other regions, Ukrainian officials said Monday.
The Ukrainian airforce said Moscow had dispatched 104 drones, including attack drones, and that 57 of the unmanned aerial vehicles had been shot down.
Emergency services in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region said the strikes had resulted in two fires at an industrial facility, and that firefighters were working to extinguish one.
They did not specify the type of facility hit but said there were no casualties.
The airforce said there was damage in four Ukrainian regions including Kyiv, where AFP journalists heard drones flying overhead and air defense systems countering the attack.
