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CHENNAI: At least 31 people were killed in floods and heavy rain in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu this week, a top federal minister said on Friday, as rescuers struggled to reach scores still stranded in high waters.
Heavy rains have paralyzed several districts of the state, inundating entire neighborhoods, roads and railway tracks, days after a cyclone hit India’s south-eastern coast, causing widespread damage.
“The (toll) number could change,” federal Finance Minister Nirmala Sithraman told reporters, adding that more than 40,000 people have been rescued so far and efforts are underway to reach those still stranded.
The state is one of the major electronics and manufacturing hubs in India. Some southern neighborhoods remained waterlogged on Friday.
“We’re struggling to get tractors and boats with food and essentials through water in the worst-affected areas,” said M. Balamurugan, who along with other volunteers have been distributing foods and essentials.
Tamil Nadu recorded over 64 mm of rainfall this week, more than triple the 20 mm that would be normal at this time of year, the weather department said, predicting more rainfall in parts of the state over the next five days.
For some the floods are reminiscent of rains eight years ago in state capital Chennai that killed 290 people and inundated large swathes of the city.
WASHINGTON/EAGLE PASS: US border patrol and several states have found themselves overwhelmed lately, lacking resources to manage the thousands of migrants arriving from Mexico every day — a crisis that has exposed President Joe Biden to intense attacks from his Republican opponents.
Border officials have in recent weeks counted some 10,000 daily crossings — an uptick from preceding months, which had already seen migrants arrive at an accelerating clip.
There were more than 2.4 million migrant interceptions via land in the year from October 2022 to September 2023.
On Tuesday, authorities closed railroads at Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas due to a “resurgence” of undocumented migrants entering the United States via freight trains.
Border crossings by car have been suspended at Eagle Pass since early December, as have entry points in California and Arizona, with border police saying they had to move personnel away from those checkpoints to focus on processing irregular entries.
Accusing Biden of “deliberate inaction” on the border issue, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott this week approved a controversial law criminalizing illegal entry into his state.
Abbott, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, hosted a signing ceremony in front of a section of border wall in the city of Brownsville, a nod to the former president’s flagship project and intense 2024 anti-immigration platform.
The law, set to go into effect in March, makes it a crime to illegally enter Texas from a foreign country, punishable by six months in prison — or up to 20 years, in the case of repeat offenders.
It gives Texas state law enforcement the ability to arrest migrants and deport them to Mexico — a power normally reserved for federal authorities.
In response, several human rights organizations, including the influential ACLU, immediately filed lawsuits challenging the Texas law’s constitutionality.
Even political allies in border states have taken Biden to task over migration, with Arizona’s Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs saying “the federal government is refusing to do its job to secure our border and keep our communities safe.”
Earlier this month, Hobbs announced she would send Arizona National Guard troops to the border to help pick up some of the slack.
The reasons for this recent uptick in migration are not totally clear. Customs and Border Protection have blamed “smugglers peddling disinformation to prey on vulnerable individuals.”
Several migrants in Texas told AFP there has been gossip swirling that a total closure of the US border was imminent, which could have fueled some recent crossings.
“There were rumors that from the 20th (of December), they wouldn’t let anyone else in,” said 32-year-old Yurianlis Alexmar Camacho, who had come from Venezuela with her husband and four children.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will travel to Mexico in the coming days to meet with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in an effort to stem this incessant flow, the White House announced Thursday.
“The president understands that we have to fix this immigration system. It has been broken for decades now,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said the same day.
Biden said earlier this month he was prepared to compromise with congressional Republicans on a border plan — they have demanded a concrete tightening of immigration policy in exchange for agreeing on a new aid package for Ukraine.
The situation is fraught for Biden as he begins his 2024 White House reelection campaign in earnest: in addition to criticism from the right, which says he is too soft on immigration, the president’s progressive supporters expect him to stay far away from his predecessor’s policies on migrants, who are mostly fleeing poverty and violence in Latin America.
But he will have to face the issue head-on one way or another, and soon, as there is no sign the steady flow of arrivals will let up.
Panama said earlier this month that since the start of 2023, half a million people — or double the number from last year — had crossed into its territory through the jungle at the perilous Darien Gap the separates the country from Colombia. The vast majority were headed for the United States.
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and military officials said the country’s forces shot down three Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber aircraft on Friday on the southern front, hailing it as a success in the 22-month-old war.
The Russian military made no modemention of the incident. But Russian bloggers acknowledged the loss, and analysts suggested US-supplied Patriot missiles had probably been used.
Reuters could not independently confirm the reports.dl
“Today at noon in the southern sector — minus three Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers!” Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Air Force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat described it on national television as a “brilliantly planned operation.”
“There haven’t been Su-34s for some time in our positive statistics,” he said, citing the model as one of Russia’s most modern aircraft for bombing and other assaults.
Zelensky in his nightly video address praised the Odesa region anti-aircraft unit for downing the planes in Kherson region.
The region was occupied in the first days of Moscow’s February 2022 invasion. Ukrainian forces have sought to regain territory and in November established positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson.
Eurasia Daily, a Russia-based journal, said the Ukrainian account was plausible. Kyiv could have launched Patriot missiles, which have a range of up to 160 km (100 miles) against high-altitude targets, from the western side of the Dnipro River, it said.
Ukrainian aviation expert Valeriy Romanenko told Ukrainian NV Radio he believed Patriot missiles most likely downed the Russian jets.
“This was a situation there the Russians were…dropping up to 100 bombs in the south. Three were flying together and got caught. They didn’t quite take into account that the Patriot has a range of 160 km for aerodynamic targets,” Romanenko said.
Ukrainian successes have become less frequent since its forces made lightning gains a year ago in retaking Russian-held territory in the northeast and in the south.
A counteroffensive launched in the east and south in June has had limited progress. Zelensky acknowledges that gains have been slower than hoped but has dismissed assertions by the military commander in chief, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, that the war has entered a phase of “attrition” requiring a change in tactics.
OTTAWA: If Republican frontrunner Donald Trump wins the 2024 US election it could harm the global effort to fight climate change, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in an interview aired on Friday.
Trump, who denies the science of climate change, said last week that if elected he would renege on a $3 billion US pledge to a global fund meant to help developing countries cut emissions. Trump has made attacking the Biden administration’s investments in renewable energy a core part of his campaign message.
“Yes, there’s a concern particularly around the environment at a time where it’s so important to move forward on protecting and building an economy of the future,” Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
“A Trump presidency that goes back on the fight against climate change would slow down the world’s progress in ways that are concerning to me,” he said, describing Trump’s approach to the climate during his presidency as “a menace not just to Canada but to the world.”
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which outlined massive investments to accelerate the green transition, prompted Canada to spend billions to attract major automakers seeking sites to manufacture electric vehicles and battery components.
Trudeau had a rocky relationship with Trump, who once called him “dishonest and weak,” and he was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Biden on his 2020 election victory.
WASHINGTON: The United States said Friday it will impose sanctions on foreign banks that support Russia’s war in Ukraine, in a new bid to exert pressure on Moscow as it diversifies from the West to China.
Under an executive order signed by President Joe Biden, the United States will slap so-called secondary sanctions against financial institutions that back companies already targeted for supporting Russia’s defense industry.
“We are sending an unmistakable message: anyone supporting Russia’s unlawful war effort is at risk of losing access to the US financial system,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said in a statement.
Sullivan said the new sanctions will “continue tightening the screws on Russia’s war machine and its enablers,” adding that earlier measures have “significantly degraded” Russia’s military, long seen as among the world’s most formidable and which in recent months has relied on imports from sanctioned North Korea and Iran.
But Russia since the start of the war has been rapidly working to reduce exposure to the West, shifting away from trade in dollars, euros, sterling and yen.
China’s largest banks meanwhile have extended billions of dollars worth of credit in renminbi to Russia since the war as Western institutions exit.
“Today we are taking steps to level new and powerful tools against Russia’s war machine. As a result of our restrictions, Russia has increasingly shifted certain trade and financial flows through third countries to evade sanctions and continue its procurement of critical items for their wartime production,” said a statement released by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Today, @POTUS issued a new Executive Order that further counters Russia’s sanctions evasion by making clear to foreign institutions that facilitate significant transactions relating to Russia’s military-industrial base may expose them to U.S. sanctions. https://t.co/Y3QmUnLN9g
Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said that major banks in countries such as China, Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates have largely made efforts to avoid running afoul of US sanctions, and that the new measures would target smaller institutions.
Russia has been setting up front companies to hide purchases through third countries, Adeyemo said in an interview with CNBC.
“They’re not going through big companies in these countries. They’re going through small firms to get things like micro-electronics and machine tools and engine parts,” he said.
“But all of these companies still have to use the financial system.”
Russia’s economy has taken a hit from the pressure but is still on a growth trajectory, with the International Monetary Fund in October forecasting that its economy would expand 1.1 percent in 2024.
A key target has been Russia’s oil exports, with Western powers agreeing to a cap of no more than $60 a barrel.
The US Treasury Department said Thursday that the cap brought down Russia’s tax revenue from oil and petroleum goods exports by 32 percent between January and November, compared to a year ago.
But other assessments have been less rosy on the impact. A recent study by the Kyiv School of Economics found that compliance with the price cap has been virtually non-existent due to widespread fraud.
The new effort at secondary sanctions comes as the G7 group of industrialized democracies balks at seizing Russian government assets to support Ukraine, a potentially major means of pressure backed by the United States.
Direct US assistance to Ukraine could also soon dry up, with Congress yet to approve a request by the Biden administration due to an unrelated dispute on immigration policy.
The White House fears an end to aid would give new momentum to Russia against Ukraine, which has received $43 billion in military assistance from the United States since the invasion.
In parallel actions on Friday, the United States said it will step up sanctions against Russian diamonds and seafood — banning their import if they originated in Russia, even if they were then processed elsewhere.
The action comes days after a European Union ban on Russian diamonds. The United States has already banned imports of Caspian Sea caviar since 2005 for conservation reasons.
The United States has been stepping up the use of secondary sanctions, despite concerns among some policymakers and experts that it will encourage other countries to move away from the dollar.
The United States has used its clout most visibly on Iran by threatening countries that buy oil from the clerical state.
ABUJA, Nigeria: France on Friday completed the withdrawal of its troops after they were asked to leave Niger by the country’s new junta, ending years of on-the-ground military support and raising concerns from analysts about a gap in the fight against jihadi violence across the Sahel region of Africa.
The last French military aircraft and troops departed Niger by the Dec. 22 deadline set by the junta which severed ties with Paris after the coup in July, the French Army General Staff told The Associated Press by email. France already announced this week that it would close its diplomatic mission in Niger for “an indefinite period.”
However, the country would continue to be involved in the Sahel — the vast expanse south of the Sahara Desert which has been a hot spot for violent extremism — although differently, President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday during a visit to a base in Jordan.
“I decided on some important reconfigurations,” Macron said. “We will continue to protect our interests over there but our armies won’t be as present permanently, will be less stationary and also less exposed,” he said.
Niger’s junta described the end of the military cooperation with France as the start of “a new era” for Nigeriens.
“Niger stands tall, and the security of our homeland will no longer depend on a foreign presence,” it said via X, formerly known as Twitter. “We are determined to meet the challenges before us, by consolidating our national military and strategic capabilities.”
But analysts say a vacuum will be created by the troops’ departure. It will “leave Niger and the entire Sahel worse off” in terms of overall counterterrorism efforts as Niger was seen as the last remaining Western partner in the decade-long fight against jihadi groups in the region, said Ryan Cummings, director of Africa-focused security consulting company Signal Risk.
Some 1,500 French troops were training and supporting the local military in Niger, which had been envisioned as the base for counterterrorism operations in the region after anti-French sentiment grew in Mali and Burkina Faso, both run by juntas that have also forced French troops out.
But after deposing Niger’s democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, the nation’s junta led by Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani severed military relations with France and other European countries. Instead, he sought defense cooperation with Russia, whose private mercenary Wagner Group is already active in parts of Africa but faces an uncertain future there following the death of its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
The withdrawal of foreign military missions is already affecting security in Niger, where the number of attacks has surged, according to Oluwole Ojewale with the Dakar-based Institute for Security Studies.
“The country has not demonstrated sufficient military capabilities to fill the vacuum created by the withdrawal. Strategic attacks are being launched by the various armed groups who now roam freely in the ungoverned spaces in the country and incidents have remained on the rise,” said Ojewale.
The junta in Niger has formed a security alliance with the military governments in Mali and Burkina Faso to coordinate counterterrorism operations across the Sahel.
However, much of the immediate impact of the departure of French troops would be felt in western Niger’s Tillabéri region which has been the hot spot for extremism in the country, said Ryan with Signal Risk consulting.
“Violent extremist organizations may utilize the vacuum created to exploit and expand their operations” in the Sahel, he said.