North Korea is growing impatient with the U.S. over stalled nuclear talks and what it says are contentious policies and one-sided disarmament demands, a senior Hermit Kingdom official said Sunday local time.
Kim Yong Chol said in a statement there has been no progress in U.S.-North Korea relations. He warned that the cordial relationship between dictator Kim Jong Un and President Trump wouldn't be enough to prevent nuclear diplomacy from failing, threatening that "there could be the exchange of fire at any moment."
North Korea set a year-end deadline to find common ground and mutual terms for the possible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Chol said Sunday the U.S. would be "seriously mistaken" to ignore the deadline.
Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters of the "Sokoly Rossii" (Falcons of Russia) aerobatic team fly in formation during a rehearsal for the airshow in Krasnoyarsk, Russia August 1, 2019. (REUTERS Photo)
Turkey is close to reaching a deal with Moscow over the purchase of Su-35 fighter jets as well as co-manufacturing some components of the Russian-made jets, Turkish sources said Friday.
Turkish and Russian officials are discussing the details of the sale of a total of 36 Su-35 fighter jets to Turkey, two months after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's visit to the International Aviation and Space Salon (MAKS) aviation show outside of Moscow.
Sources added that officials are also discussing Turkey's possible involvement in the production of some components of the fighter jets, including its precision weapons and ammunition.
At a visit to MAKS-2019 on Aug. 27, Erdoğan was shown the newest generation of Russian stealth aircraft, the Su-57 fighter jet, Su-35 fighter jets, the Ka-52 military helicopter and Mi-38 transport helicopter.
China's ruling Communist Party will hold a meeting of its senior leadership this week to set key policies.
The 4-day plenary session of the Central Committee starts on Monday in Beijing.
More than 300 party members, including President Xi Jinping, will attend the first plenum in about 20 months. The committee members were chosen at the 2017 National Congress.
The Communist Party says the main agenda item will be perfecting China's socialist system and improving governance.
WNU Editor: This plenary session is not a rubber stamp affair. Behind closed doors there is going to be debate on the trade war, Hong Kong, Taiwan, border disputes, the arms race in Asia, and on the economy.
More News On China's Ruling Communist Party Holding A Meeting Of Its Senior Leadership This Week
Accused of spying and jailed in the US, Russian student and gun rights activist Maria Butina has told RT about her ordeal, from staring down a dozen armed FBI agents at her door to how Hollywood cliches served as proof of guilt.
Arrested in July 2018, Butina spent eight months in custody, most of it in solitary confinement, before eventually pleading guilty in December. Meanwhile US media telling juicy stories about her that later proved false.
"They just took some Hollywood clichés and made me the scapegoat," she said. "The color of my hair and my features served as proof of guilt. That's the way it should be, because we see it this way in the movies."
WNU editor: I could be wrong, but it is hard to see her as a spy. As for her conviction. As I tell everyone who travels abroad, always be aware of the laws of the country that you are visiting. What may be nothing to you is a big thing in the country that you visiting. In the case of Maria Butina, she should have been aware of the laws before becoming politically active in the U.S..
Thousands of Spanish demonstrators march through Barcelona in protest against Catalan separatist movement that has sparked the country's worst political crisis in decades https://t.co/kJiOYXofB7
BOOM! This mission successfully hosted Air Force Research Laboratory experiments, among others, as well as providing a ride for small satellites. #RecordBreaking#AirForcehttps://t.co/kccOZqsqTQ
— Air Force Research Lab - AFRL (@AFResearchLab) October 27, 2019
A building completely reduced to rubble and burnt soil were captured in footage from the site of a claimed US attack on the compound of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria.
Earlier on Sunday, Donald Trump made a rare weekend address from the White House, saying that "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead" and thus confirming numerous media reports which had been circulating since morning. The terrorist leader died "whimpering and crying and screaming" as the US special forces, planes, helicopters and drones were sent after him "in a daring nighttime raid," the president said.
THE death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may trigger a wave of bloody revenge attacks in the US and Europe, experts warned.
Terror experts have told how security services will be braced for the type of revenge plots that were seen after Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.
Fears are mounting that Baghdadi's death during a US raid on his compound in Syria could trigger the resurgence of the terror group in what has been dubbed "ISIS 2.0".
It's believed that Abdullah Qardash, an ex-officer in Saddam Hussein's army who is nicknamed "The Destroyer" or "The Professor", has already assumed control of ISIS.
Qardash was reportedly appointed as Baghdadi's successor in August, after the terror chief was wounded in an airstrike.
The new leader, who is known for his brutality and intelligence, may order a wave of new attacks to assert his authority and avenge Baghdadi, experts fear.
A FORMER officer in Saddam Hussein's army has taken over as the leader of ISIS after the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it has been reported.
Abdullah Qardash – known as the Professor – is already believed to have assumed control of the day-to-day running of the jihadi group.
Baghdadi was killed when US forces swooped on his compound in northwestern Syria and he blew up self-up with a suicide vest after being cornered in a tunnel.
Donald Trump said the terror chief died "crying, whimpering and screaming and bringing three kids with him".
Qardash was reportedly appointed as Baghdadi's successor in August, after the terror chief was wounded in an airstrike and was also suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure.
Protesters across Lebanon joined hands on Sunday to form a human chain that connected the country's north and south, a symbolic display of national unity during a period of political turmoil.
Nearly 170,000 people joined the chain, which ran from Akkar to Sidon, said Dr. Sally Hammoud, an event organizer.
"It was a symbol to show the world that we all are united and nothing can break us, and most importantly, we are peaceful," she told CNN.
The chain spanned 105 miles (170 km), cutting through Beirut, Tripoli, Dbayeh and other cities along the Lebanese coast. Many participants draped themselves in the Lebanese flag and sang the national anthem.
Victory of Alberto Fernández's presidential campaign puts an end to the pro-business economic policies of Macri's administration
In a dramatic comeback, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, one of Argentina's most popular presidents during her two terms in 2007-2015, has been voted back into office as vice president.
A large crowd of supporters burst into a roar outside the Frente de Todos (Everybody's Front) party bunker in the Chacarita neighbourhood of the capital city of Buenos Aires at 9pm when preliminary official results gave the victory to presidential candidate Alberto Fernández and Fernández de Kirchner.
Firefighters extinguish the flames of a burning truck at the spot where Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, the Islamic State group's spokesman was reportedly killed in a raid in the northern Syrian village of Ayn al-Bayda near Jarablus on Sunday
* The Kurdish official said IS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir had been killed * The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the death of al-Muhajir * Earlier on Sunday, Trump said Baghdadi was killed, dying 'like a dog,' in a raid
The Islamic State group's spokesman was killed Sunday in northern Syria, a top Kurdish official said, hours after the jihadists' leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was announced dead.
The official with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces -- who asked not to be named because he is not authorised to speak on the issue -- said IS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir had been killed, after SDF chief Mazloum Abdi said he had been 'targeted' in a fresh raid.
'Al-Muhajir, the right-hand of Baghdadi and the spokesman for IS, was targeted in the village of Ain al-Baydah near Jarablus, in a coordinated operation between SDF intelligence and the US army,' Abdi said on Twitter.
WNU Editor: I doubt that this is a coincidence. The U.S. probably spotted him with al-Baghdadi before yesterday's raid, kept tabs on him after that, and then launched their raid right after the raid on al-Baghdadi.
Al-Baghdadi, the leader of the so-called Islamic caliphate, reportedly blew himself up during the targeted attack on his lair in Syria's Idlib province in the early hours of Sunday morning
* ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been reported killed several times since 2014 * Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson says Moscow is not aware of any assistance its military gave to the U.S. in northern Syria * President Trump on Sunday thanked a number of countries, including Turkey and Russia, for helping U.S. forces take down al-Baghdadi * Trump said that al-Baghdadi died 'whimpering and crying' during the raid, which he called a major victory over the jihadist group * Earlier this month, Trump ordered removal of U.S. forces from area near Syrian-Turkish border, allowing Turkey to send forces against Syrian Kurds
Russia mocked the United States and raised doubts on Sunday over its claims of the 'umpteenth death' of Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has been reported killed several times since 2014.
'The Defense Ministry does not have reliable information about the actions of the US army in the Idlib 'de-escalation' zone... concerning the umpteenth "death"' of Baghdadi, defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement made after President Trump thanked Russia for its assistance in the raid.
WNU Editor: These U.S. forces had to fly into an active war-zone where Russian forces are engaged. I am sure the Russian military were notified about this operation. As to the Kremlin's skepticism that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead, they have to be. We have been told more than once over the past few years that he was dead. But I think this is real. The U.S. military and the White House are very sure of themselves that al-Baghdadi is finally dead.
More News On The Russian Defense Ministry Voicing Skepticism That ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Is Dead
PM Abdul Mahdi orders special unit's deployment amid rising death toll in latest protests that started on Friday.
Hundreds of Iraqi protesters have remained in Baghdad's central Tahrir Square on Sunday, defying a bloody crackdown that killed at least 60 people over the weekend and an overnight raid by security forces seeking to disperse them.
Demonstrators continued to gather in the capital despite a rapidly rising death toll, with 63 killed according to a tally by the semi-official Iraq High Commission for Human Rights.
"We're here to bring down the whole government, to weed them all out!" one protester, with the Iraqi tricolour wrapped around his head, was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.
Police charge 10,000-strong crowd as pro-independence demonstration turns violent
Spanish police and militant elements in a thousands-strong crowd of protesters clashed in the streets of Barcelona close to police headquarters late on Saturday, as a pro-independence demonstration by a direct action group turned violent.
After a largely peaceful gathering of an estimated 350,000 pro-independence supporters jammed the centre of the city earlier in the day, a second crowd began to form around Barcelona's police headquarters about 7.30pm. As the crowd grew to around 10,000, according to police estimates, TV footage showed protesters throwing bottles, balls and rubber bullets at officers.
Voters in Uruguay are going to the polls Sunday to select a new president who will replace incumbent Tabare Vazquez.
Uruguayan presidents are not allowed to serve consecutive terms, but the ruling, left-leaning Broad Front party has been at the helm of the country since 2005.
Polls indicate that Broad Front's Daniel Martinez will be the frontrunner in Sunday's vote, but he will likely have to face a runoff.
Martinez's main rival is the conservative National Party's Luis Lacalle Pou, according to the polls.
Voters will also elect 99 deputies and 30 senators.
Leader promises response to demonstrators' demands for better pay and services after week of unrest
Chile's president Sebastian Pinera has asked all his cabinet members to resign and promised reforms as he attempts to restore control after a wave of mass protests.
The conservative leader has struggled to manage widespread unrest that has gripped his country this week amid anger over inequality.
At least 20 people have been killed since rioting broke out in response to a four per cent cent rise in subway fares earlier this month.
After 1.2 million people marched peacefully against the government in the capital Santiago yesterday, Mr Pinera said: "We have all heard the message. We have all changed."
Admiral James Winnefeld tells @margbrennan that he's worried about Trump's "piling on" by describing al-Baghdadi as a "dog." Says it sends a signal to followers "that could cause them to lash out possibly more harshly in the wake." pic.twitter.com/L6y7a17bm0
Update #2: I have mixed feelings on President Trump disclosing some of the details of the raid. I never feel comfortable listening to details on how an operation was conducted because I know the enemy is listening, watching, and learning. But I also know that in Washington leaks abound, and what President Trump disclosed this morning (using 8 helicopters, etc.) would have been leaked to the press within 24 hours anyway.
Update #3: I forgot to mention how I felt when I learned the news that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. I was elated. Like the death of Osama Bin Laden, there is now some closure for those who lost loved ones because of this fanatic, and for everyone else, a sense of forward progress in our war against radical Islamists.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump did not give House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or other key members of Congress advance notice of the Saturday night raid that ended in the death of terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Trump said he knew about plans for the top-secret mission for three days but kept most members of Congress in the dark because he feared the information would be leaked to the public and endanger the lives of American forces.
"Washington leaks like I've never seen before," Trump told reporters at the White House on Sunday. "There's no country in the world that leaks like we do. And Washington is a leaking machine."
WNU Editor: President Trump's explanation on why the Congressional leadership were not informed of this raid ....
.... "We notified some" congressional leaders, "others are being notified now as I speak. We were going to notify them last night but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like nothing I've ever seen before. There is no country in the world that leaks like we do. Washington is a leaking machine. ... I don't want to have them greeted with firepower like you wouldn't believe. We were able to get in, it was top secret. ... A very small group of people that knew about this. We had very few people. A leak could have caused the death of all of them."
What's my take on this decision to not inform Congress. The priority for Congress right now is to impeach the President. Everything is secondary. And while I doubt that Congressional leaders would have leaked information on this raid, President Trump clearly does not trust the Congressional leadership that they would have kept this information confidential. He definitely does not trust House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff who does have a long history of leaking info to the New York Times or Washington Post.
Update #4: There is going to be consequences from this decision to not inform the congressional leaders of both parties on this raid, and I predict it is something that is going to be reviewed and analyzed for a long time. But that is the state of Washington today.
* Major ISIS target, believed to be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, reportedly killed in Syria * Between 50 and 70 members of the US Army Delta Force and Rangers flew in on six helicopters and conducted Sunday's overnight raid in Syria's Idlib province * Al-Baghdadi is believed to have detonated a suicide vest as forces closed in * Unverified video showed the moment he was killed, along with his three children * President Donald Trump held a morning press conference on Sunday and confirmed al-Baghdadi 'died like a dog' in the extended firefight * Defense Secretary Mark Esper said there were two minor injuries to US soldiers after Trump indicated that a US K-9 was injured * Al-Baghdadi issued a chilling call to arms in 2014 declaring an Islamic 'caliphate' * Under his leadership, smaller-scale higher-frequency attacks became the norm * Trump said Al-Baghdadi was surveilled for a few weeks before the raid
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed when he detonated a suicide vest as US Army Special Ops forces closed in on his hideout in northwestern Syria.
Between 50 and 70 members of the US Army Delta Force and Rangers flew in on six helicopters and surrounded al-Baghdadi during the overnight raid in Syria's Idlib province, an official source told Fox News.
Details about the raid are still emerging as officials conduct biometric tests on evidence collected from the site.
An unverified video reportedly showed the moment al-Baghdadi was killed, along with his three children.
* Donald Trump announced Sunday morning that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead * U.S.-led forces descended on al-Baghdadi's lair in Idlib, Syria overnight * The president said al-Baghdadi 'died like a dog' after being run down a dead-end tunnel and cornered * Baghdadi detonated his suicide vest, killing himself and three of his children * Eleven children were cleared from the lair * Baghdadi's two wives were killed during the operation without their suicide vests being detonated * Trump teased Saturday night that he would be making a 'major statement' * Al-Baghdadi issued a chilling call to arms in 2014 declaring an Islamic 'caliphate' * Under his leadership, smaller-scale higher-frequency attacks became the norm * Trump says he does not regret pulling U.S. forces from northern Syria
Donald Trump announced Sunday morning that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi 'died like a dog' as the result of a U.S. Special Ops forces raid on his hideout in northwest Syria.
'Last night the United State brought the world's number one terrorist leader to justice. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead,' Trump said from the Diplomatic Reception Room, where just a week earlier he announced a ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurds.
'He was the founder and leader of ISIS, the most ruthless and violent terror organization anywhere in the world,' he continued as he described the events of the raid.
Al-Baghdadi, the president confirmed, detonated his suicide vest, killing himself and three children, during an overnight targeted attack in Syria's Idlib province.
WNU Editor: He was hiding deep in rebel controlled Idlib province, and he had been monitored for quite a long time. Considering the location of the attack, the U.S. had to notify Syria and Russia that they were going to launch this attack. Apparently the Kurds provided the intelligence on where he was.
More News On President President Trump Confirming Reports That Islamic State Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Is Dead
Meeting in the situation room Saturday night (from left to right): National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, Vice President Mike Pence, Trump, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Army General Mark Milley and Brig. General Marcus Evans
WNU Editor: The above official White House picture on the al-Baghdadi raid is quite different from the official White House Bin Laden raid (see below).
MICHELLE OBAMA'S "instinctive" hugging of Queen Elizabeth II during a 2009 visit to Buckingham Palace caused a royal protocol meltdown, and now an aide to Her Majesty has spoken out about it.
ANGELA MERKEL has suffered fresh humiliation after her Christian Democrats were beaten into third place in Sunday's regional election in the eastern state of Thuringia..
FEROCIOUS wildfires have been tearing across California for several weeks forcing many to flee in a bid to save their lives. But now the Governor of California has declared a statewide emergency as the turbulent flames continue to sweep across the region.
AN EGYPT archaeologist uncovered more than 60 new tombs in the desert of Saqqara during his quest to find a missing pyramid hiding the Pharaoh Userkare.
CALIFORNIAN WILDFIRES have duped crews attempting to tackle the blaze as 90mph winds threw flames across California's picturesque wine country and sent it into a state of emergency.
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — It’s not about a 4-cent hike in subway prices.
The decision to add 30 pesos to the cost of a ticket on Latin America’s most modern public transportation system this month drew little attention inside or outside Chile, at first. People quietly fumed. A week later, high-school students launched four days of turnstile-jumping protests. Crowds of angry youths built up inside metro stations.
With no warning, on the afternoon of Oct. 18, they set fire to stations, then trains. Then grocery, department stores and pharmacies went up in flames. Hundreds of thousands of people were left stranded at home or on the streets without public transport. But instead of blaming the young protesters, Chileans from almost all walks of life used social media to call for protests against years of government mismanagement.
Santiago exploded into a week of massive street protests that culminated Friday with more than a million people in the heart of the capital and other major cities — the largest demonstrations ever in the country, according to multiple historians.
With the world wondering how modern, prosperous Chile had erupted into chaos, a protest concert drew 15,000 on Sunday to green and shady O’Higgins Park in central Santiago. There, Chileans said the rise in the cost of a metro ticket had been merely the spark that set off years of frustration with the dark underbelly of their country’s long drive to be the most market-driven economy in Latin America.
“What we Chileans want is equal treatment for all, that the cake be divided up fairly,” said Mario Gonzalez, 34, who runs a t-shirt printing business. “We don’t want anything for free; we just want to pay a fair price.”
Young, old, poor and middle-class, protesters said they were united by frustration with the so-called neoliberal model that has left Chile with region-topping prosperity along with a widely criticized private pension system, and two-tiered health and education systems that blend the public and private, with better results for the minority who can afford to pay, protesters said.
Many Chileans talk of waiting a year for an appointment with a specialist, or families receiving calls to finally set up appointments for loved ones who died months earlier. Hundreds of thousands are hobbled by educational loans that can follow them into their 40s and even 50s.
“Countries with high levels of inequality such as Chile are like recovering alcoholics. They can be well for many years, but they shouldn’t forget they have a problem,” said Patricio Navia, an adjunct assistant professor at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. “Inequality is a threat to Chile’s stability.”
Alexis Moreira Arenas, 37, and his wife Stephanie Carrasco, 36, are comfortably in the middle class but he pays some 10 percent of his salary to a privately run pension system that generates steady profits for fund managers but an average pension around $300 a month, roughly a third of what a retired person needs to live. She is still paying off $110 a month in college loans, about 10 percent of their income. Another 30 percent goes to private preschool for their 2-year-old son.
“It’s a series of problems that all come together; public transport, education, health, because the health system here works really badly,” Moreria said. “Above all, it’s a question of inequality.”
Protesters in O’Higgins Park said President Sebastián Piñera’s firing of his Cabinet Saturday would do nothing to calm the streets. Almost uniformly, they said they would continue protesting until they saw fundamental changes in Chile, starting with the replacement of the 1980 constitution, written under military dictator Augusto Pinochet, that creates the legal basis of Chile’s market-driven system. Already, there were calls Sunday evening on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp for protests every day of the coming week.
“The whole constitution makes me angry,” said Alan Vicencio, a 25-year-old call-center worker. “The constitution allowed the privatization of every aspect of our lives and it’s being doing it for more than 30 years.”
From afar, Chile has been a regional success story — under democratically elected presidents on the left and right, a free-market consensus has driven growth up, poverty down and won Chile the region’s highest score on the United Nations Human Development Index, a blend of life expectancy, education and national income per capita.
In 2010, Chile became the second Latin member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, after Mexico. Next month, Piñera will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, followed by the 25th United Nations Climate Change Conference in December.
Meanwhile, a 2017 UN report found that the richest 1% of the population earns 33 percent of the nation’s wealth. That helps make Chile the most unequal country in the OECD, slightly worse than Mexico. Piñera himself is a billionaire, one of the country’s richest men.
Roxana Pisarro, a 52-year-old kindergarten teacher, stood in O’Higgins Park holding a hand-letter sign reading, “I’m marching for my 76-year-old mother who works seven days a week because her miserable pension isn’t enough.”
Pisarro said her mother, a retired clothing-factory worker, bakes at home and sells empanadas and fried bread in their neighborhood on the outskirts of Santiago, often until 11 p.m., in order to support herself, her granddaughter and her great-grandson on a pension of $165 a month.
“Average people see this prosperous country, the star of Latin America, they see skyscrapers and four Maseratis sold every month, a luxury shopping district where they sell purses worth $4,000, and where are they compared to five years ago? They’re stuck,” said Marta Lagos, director of the Santiago-based polling firm Latinobarometro. “This 30 peso rise in metro fares was the straw that broke the camel’s back. They said ‘Not a step further. We’re tired of waiting.'”
For all the attention, invention and investment that the U.S. intelligence community devotes to spy satellites, communications intercepts, and new technologies such as artificial intelligence, the raid that killed ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was launched by the same old-fashioned tool that led to Osama bin Laden: human intelligence.
After years of trying in vain to get a real-time lock on al-Baghdadi’s location, the big break came not from space or from a strategically located eavesdropping post, but from the wife of an al-Baghdadi aide and one of the couriers he employed to avoid using mobile phones and computers that could have made him easier to track. U.S. officials said the two were captured in western Iraq.
Using names and locations that the wife and courier gave up, two U.S. officials said on Sunday, the CIA and Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence officers began recruiting agents along the routes that al-Baghdadi traveled in the desert astride the Syrian-Iraqi border. Officials began surveilling routes he used, places he stopped, and looking for patterns to his travel, including his brief stays in small villages such as the one where he died.
The U.S. Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Florida, had standing plans for targeting al-Baghdadi and his small inner circle, said a third official. Some called for the use of drones, which the CIA and the military have employed in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, this official said. Others relied more heavily on inserting Army Special Forces and Navy SEALs on the ground, as the U.S. did in targeting al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
The official described the plans as “basic blueprints” and said they were rehearsed and updated constantly as ISIS lost its grip on cities such as Mosul, where the group’s leaders hid among thousands of civilians.
“I don’t think we could have done this without the help we got from the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, which continued after we began the troop pullout,” one of the officials said, quickly adding that Iraq military and intelligence officers “kicked the whole thing off.”
President Donald Trump gave approval for the operation, codenamed Kayla Mueller after an American woman taken hostage, raped repeatedly and murdered, to begin on Friday (5 p.m. EDT), the first two officials said, and the raid began at roughly midnight local time at the airfield in Erbil, Iraq with a mix of eight Apache attack and CH-47 Chinook helicopters carrying Delta Force special operators and at least one dog.
The attackers flew low to avoid detection for about 70 miles from Erbil to Barisha, a village just north of Idlib where al-Baghdadi, his bodyguards, and some of his children were spending the night.
Gabriella Demczuk for TIMEPresident Donald Trump announces the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a raid by American special operations forces in Syria, in remarks at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 27, 2019.
As the attackers approached their landing zone outside the building that housed al-Baghdadi, which spies had described and which unmanned U.S. surveillance planes and satellites had photographed, the Apache helicopters and fixed-wing warplanes laid down a barrage of covering fire, the officials said, heavily damaging the compound.
Following standard procedure, the force first tried to persuade the inhabitants to leave the compound, but without success, then blew holes in the walls rather than using the doors or windows.
At some point, al-Baghdadi fled down a tunnel beneath the compound, with the U.S. forces in pursuit.
In announcing al-Baghdadi’s death, Trump has described him as “crying, whimpering, screaming” as he was trapped at the dead-end tunnel and detonated an explosive vest. None of the officials confirmed that account.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNN that soldiers tried to persuade al-Baghdadi to give himself up. “We tried to call him out and asked him to surrender himself. He refused,” Esper said.
Instead, al-Baghdadi blew himself up along with three children he’d taken into the tunnel, the officials said.
The officials’ descriptions came on the heels of Trump’s own gory and detailed account of not only the raid, but the intelligence efforts leading up to it. Among other details, Trump said “two or three efforts” to capture al-Baghdadi had been called off in recent weeks because the ISIS leader changed his travel plans; that the raiders had seized “highly sensitive” material and information from the targeted compound; that they’d had the technology to test al-Baghdadi’s DNA quickly; and that the forces had spent about two hours in the compound. Trump also gave an accounting of the number of aircraft involved in the mission, and the amount of time al-Baghdadi had been in intelligence officials’ sites before the raid.
Samantha Vinograd, a former security official in the Obama administration, said on CNN on Sunday, “It’s really unprecedented when you think about how much detail he actually went into.”
“Immediately after a special operation like this, there’s increased risks of retaliatory attacks and risks to human sources on the ground. The level of detail that President Trump went into in that press conference increases the risk to sources that may still be on the ground,” she said.
Michael Downing, the former head of the Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau for the Los Angeles Police Department who has studied ISIS’ organizational structure, says there’s already a heightened risk of blowback from ISIS as a result of al-Baghdadi’s death. “Now is one of the most dangerous times,” Downing says. “When you injure an animal, that is when it is most dangerous.”
At his news conference, Trump defended his use of gory details in describing what he said were al-Baghdadi’s final moments. “I think it’s something that should be brought out so that his followers and all of these young kids that want to leave various countries, including the United States, they should see how he died,” Trump said. “He didn’t die a hero. He died a coward.”
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the fugitive emir of ISIS, the man who transformed a breakaway al-Qaeda group into a transnational terrorist franchise that brutalized and killed civilians in more than a dozen countries and who threatened to rewrite the map of the Middle East by luring foreign recruits to wage jihad in Iraq and Syria, is dead.
So what happens to the terror organization that he painstakingly assembled?
In many ways, the group is already evolving. ISIS leadership ranks have proved resilient despite more than five years of war. The group has beenquick to adapt to new circumstances. No longer capable of seizing and holding territory, the surviving foot soldiers have instead gone back to their guerrilla roots, carrying out ambushes, bombings and assassinations. And despite the loss of its territorial caliphate in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has expanded its reach to include 14 separate affiliates in countries across Asia and Africa.
Al-Furqan media/AFP/Getty ImagesA video released by Al-Furqan media on April 29, 2019, purportedly shows ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi for the first time in five years.
In the long-term, analysts say, what may be most significant about Saturday’s Special Operations commando raid is not al-Baghdadi’s decapitation from ISIS’ shadowy hierarchy but the ease with which he will be replaced. The group, like its predecessor organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq, routinely taps new commanders to fill the vacuum left by those who are assassinated. The replacements occur with such regularity that the U.S. Special Operations community jokingly refers to removing leaders as “mowing the grass.”
“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death —welcome and important though it may be— is not a catastrophic blow to the quality of leadership in ISIS,” says Michael Nagata, who retired as Army Lieutenant General and strategy director from the National Counterterrorism Center in August.
Nagata, who served in the Middle East as a Special Operations commander in 2014 when the counter-ISIS campaign began, says ISIS now has a cadre of young battle-hardened leaders who are climbing toward the top echelons and establishing themselves in the terror group’s global network. “ISIS isn’t a crippled organization because Baghdadi’s gone,” he says. “The depth and breadth of ISIS leadership, in my judgment, is unprecedented for this type of terrorist group.”
Since the first days of U.S. involvement in the war against ISIS, Special Operations forces and intelligence agencies hunted and killed the group’s leaders one-by-one. But they’ve always regrouped.
“As we’ve seen over the last several years, the group also has a strategy to carry on operations into the next decade,” says Aki Peritz, a former CIA counterterrorism analyst and co-author of “Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda.” “It’s good to take out the leader, but it’s not just a terrorist group —it’s an ideology as well; stamping out the idea of the Islamic State will prove to be much more difficult than one successful military/intelligence operation.”
“It’s good to take out the leader, but it’s not just a terrorist group—it’s an ideology as well.” After all, al-Qaeda endured after founder Osama bin Laden was killed in a 2011 Navy SEAL raid. And Al Qaeda in Iraq lived on as ISIS after its founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a 2006 U.S. airstrike.
U.S. counterterrorism officials expect ISIS to name a successor in the coming days or weeks. A likely candidate is al-Baghdadi’s defense chief, Iyad al-Obaidi. But regardless of who leads the Sunni extremist group, it is now a shadow of the organization that launched a lightning offensive in Iraq and Syria that resulted in the seizure of territory the size of Britain and raked in millions of dollars a day.
The seeds for resurgence, however, are there. According to a recent Defense Department Inspector General’s report, ISIS has between 14,000 and 18,000 members who’ve pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi. In addition, there are more than 30 detention camps that hold about 11,000 ISIS fighters, sympathizers and other associated detainees across northern Syria. Another camp for internally displaced persons known as al-Hol, in northeastern Syria, holds nearly 70,000 people, including thousands of ISIS family members. The U.S. military reported in February that “absent sustained pressure,” the terrorist group would re-emerge in Syria within six to 12 months.
Moreover, ISIS remains a worldwide threat because the group has a constellation of affiliates in places as far-flung as Nigeria and Pakistan, according to a report from the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. “ISIS’ global presence provides footholds from which to further metastasize, launch attacks, and gain resources to fund its resurgence in Iraq and Syria,” the report said, documenting recent plans for attacks on the West that emanated from affiliates in Libya, Somalia and the Philippines.
The death of militant leaders, however, frequently leads to fractures within terror organizations and new directions in strategy, says Norman T. Roule, a former senior CIA officer with experience in Middle East issues. “In the wake of Baghdadi’s death, ISIS groups abroad could go in a number of directions,” he says. “Some may decide to reconcile with al-Qaeda, some may decide to undertake revenge operations to demonstrate that ISIS remains potent. Some planned operations could be accelerated if the ISIS planners believe the intelligence found with Baghdadi might identify them.”
Omar Haj Kadour—AFP/Getty ImagesA Syrian man inspects the site of helicopter gunfire near the northwestern Syrian village of Barisha on Oct. 27, 2019.
Colin P. Clarke, a fellow at the Soufan Center and author of “After the Caliphate: The Islamic State and the Future of the Terrorist Diaspora,” says there have already been signs of an “ISIS 2.0” emerging. “It’s unclear what Baghdadi’s death could do to exacerbate the changes underway,” he says. “Baghdadi was the face of the ISIS brand. He had a cult of personality.”
Born into a religiously devout lower-middle-class Sunni Muslim family in Iraq in 1971, Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri, who years later adopted the nom de guerre al-Baghdadi, was an unexceptional, shy child, according to recent biographies based on interviews with those who knew him. He never excelled at religious scholarship but was talented at the recitation of Quranic verse. In college and graduate school, he studied the style and technique of reciting the Quran, and he wrote a master’s thesis on a medieval commentary on the subject.
Al-Baghdadi’sfinishing school in radicalism was unwittingly provided by the U.S. In February 2004, after the invasion of Iraq, he was visiting a friend in Fallujah when U.S. Army intelligence officers burst in and arrested them both. Al-Baghdadi was taken to the notorious prison at Camp Bucca, which inadvertently came to serve as an incubator for Sunni jihadism, according to former camp officials. There he was a skilled networker, courting radical factions and building a reputation as a religious leader based on his Islamic studies.
These talents didn’t register on his captors, though, who judged al-Baghdadi to be a low-risk prisoner. Released at the end of 2004, he returned to the Iraqi capital, where he pursued a doctorate and joined a series of jihadi groups invigorated by the fall of Saddam Hussein and the U.S. occupation. In early 2006, he found his ultimate home in the Iraqi al-Qaeda offshoot led by Zarqawi, a former violent criminal from Jordan whom U.S. forces killed that June. Al-Baghdadi’s nominal religious qualifications and rigid dogmatism carried him quickly through the ranks, and in May 2010, after the U.S. killed the only two men above him, he emerged as the emir.
Along with his ambitious territorial goals in the Middle East, al-Baghdadi elaborated an apocalyptic vision of a final battle between the forces of radical Islam and the West. In a Ramadan sermon in mid-2014, he declared slavery the universal human condition: Muslim believers are indentured to Allah, while nonbelievers are the rightful property of Muslims. He also said the time of death for each man and woman is preordained, implying that all killings must be the will of Allah. This teaching paved the way for his chief spokesman to deliver the following message to ISIS supporters everywhere a few months later: “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European,” the spokesman said, “kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military.”
Gabriella Demczuk for TIMEPresident Donald Trump announces the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a raid by American special operations forces in Syria, at the White House on Oct. 27, 2019.
The bloodthirsty rhetoric, often relayed on slickly produced videos that pin-balled around social media, proved an innovative tactic that resonated with disaffected youth. ISIS recruited around 43,000 fighters from 120 countries to the caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Some acted in al-Baghdadi’s name at home, killing hundreds of innocents at hotels, mosques and concert halls from Paris to the Sinai, Beirut to San Bernardino, Calif.
The widespread violence earned al-Baghdadi a $25-million U.S. bounty on his head and enemies across the world. He went underground. For years there were erroneous reports that he was seriously wounded or killed. After the collapse of his self-proclaimed caliphate, al-Baghdadi had been shuttling back-and-forth in the desert between western Iraq and eastern Syria, traveling mostly in cars and Toyota pickup trucks with a small entourage that included heavily armed bodyguards, according to a U.S. intelligence official. He rarely stayed more than one night in the same place, and like bin Laden, communicated by courier rather than using phones or computers, the official said. Al-Baghdadi was located when Iraqi forces picked up two members of his entourage in an unrelated operation and passed the intelligence they collected to the CIA.
After a five-year absence from public view, al-Baghdadi had appeared April 29 in an 18-minute propaganda video. In a black tunic with a Kalashnikov rifle at his side, he stated that ISIS’s fight against the West was far from over. “Our battle today is a war of attrition to harm the enemy, and they should know that jihad will continue until doomsday,” he told a roomful of followers seated cross-legged on the floor.
A U.S. counterterrorism official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on al-Baghdadi’s death, told TIME that danger still looms from al-Baghdadi’s call for followers to shift from larger attacks to more small actions outside Iraq and Syria. Even so, the official said that al-Baghdadi’s death, while partly symbolic, would “silence maybe the most inspirational terrorist voice that remained.”
—with reporting by John Walcott and Kimberly Dozier from Washington
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was “was scared out of his mind,” “a coward,” and he “died like a dog,” President Donald Trump told the country from the White House on Sunday. “He died after running into a dead-end tunnel whimpering and crying and screaming all the way,” Trump said, adding that the Islamic State leader took three children into the tunnel with him, and killed himself and the children by detonating an explosive vest and collapsing the walls around them. The American commandos confirmed his identity and left with some of al-Baghdadi’s body parts, he said, adding: “There wasn’t much left.”
Trump spun shocking details and insults to describe al-Baghdadi’s final moments, deploying signature bombastic flourishes and drawing a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s just-the-facts telling of the killing of Osama bin Laden during a nighttime raid into Pakistan in 2011. His remarks, given from a formal and familiar lectern in the White House Diplomatic Room, broke with the traditional somber mood Presidents have put on for decades when addressing the nation after a deadly military operation.
Trump was doing more than running down an adversary; he was actively trying to break the spell al-Baghdadi holds over his followers, says a White House official. “He felt it was important to mock this guy,” the official says, adding that Trump wanted to “rub in everybody’s face that this guy was killing and ordering rape of thousands of people and at the end of the day blew himself up with his three kids rather than fight.”
Roger Cressey, a former senior White House counterterrorism official in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, tells TIME that the 48 minutes of Trump speaking and answering reporters’ questions was “uniquely Trump” and “unlike any other president announcement.” And even though Trump was clearly drawing on his “flair for the theatrical,” Cressey saw a deeper method: “He was trying to do something we’ve done in the past, which is demonstrate that the leaders of Al Qaeda and ISIS are not courageous and they are not people who should be followed.”
These terrorist leaders try to cultivate an image of themselves as courageous and pious. U.S. intelligence officials have tried historically to “debunk that myth with some factual elements,” Cressey says, as in when the Obama administration released information about pornographic materials found in Bin Laden’s compound.
But by denigrating al-Baghdadi after his death, Trump was going a step farther, breaking with a strain of thought among long-time counterterrorism leaders that the U.S. should stand for human dignity and not degrade its enemies, no matter how gruesome and heartless their acts are.
“What I don’t understand is why we need to get down in the gutter and use this kind of language.”“These people are criminal, they are wrong at what they do, they don’t have respect for human life, they should be brought to justice. What I don’t understand is why we need to get down in the gutter and use this kind of language. I don’t think it is American,” says Daniel Benjamin, the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department from 2009 to 2012 and currently the director of the Dickey Center at Dartmouth. “I think it is beneath us all.”
American officials involved in planning and overseeing the raid that killed Bin Laden tried to have Bin Laden’s remains handled according to Muslim traditions, says Nicholas Rasmussen, a long-time counterterrorism official who was director of the National Counterterrorism Center from December 2014 to December 2017. Instead of returning Bin Laden’s body to his family for burial, however, Bin Laden’s remains were slid off an American warship into the Arabian Sea, so there would be no grave site that could galvanize his followers. There was also a concerted effort not to use inflammatory language in how officials described the raid. “I remember at the time of the Bin Laden raid, we talked about what we should do to not inflame passions among the population we seek to make inroads with,” Rasmussen says.
But Trump has decided not to hold back. “The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him,” Trump said, describing those drawn to follow al-Baghdadi as “losers” and “savage monsters” who will not escape “the final judgment” of God.
David Gomez, a former senior FBI agent who ran counterterrorism for the FBI’s office in Washington State until retiring in 2012, wondered if Trump was exaggerating for effect about what he knew of al-Baghdadi’s last moments. “I think the statement about his crying was Trump playing to his own ego,” Gomez says. “As someone who has been in a lot of those fast-moving situations, it’s highly unlikely anyone would have seen that if it had occurred,” he says.
When Trump was asked by a reporter if he heard al-Baghdadi whimpering through a live video stream, he said, “I don’t want to talk about it, but he was screaming, crying, and whimpering. And he was scared out of his mind.”
In Trump’s mind, al-Baghdadi is perhaps “the biggest” terrorist the U.S. has ever caught, overshadowing the raid that killed Bin Laden. The world is a “much safer” place with al-Baghdadi dead, Trump said. “This is the biggest one, perhaps, that we’ve ever captured, because this is the one that built ISIS, and beyond, and was looking to rebuild it again,” he said.
But Michael Downing, former head of the Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau for the Los Angeles Police Department, who has studied the organizational structure of the Islamic State for years, says it likely has a replacement already. “They are going to remain strong and they are going to continue attacking the West,” Downing says. “Now is one of the most dangerous times. When you injure an animal, that is when it is most dangerous.”
On Sunday morning, President Donald Trump announced the death of a man he described as the “world’s number-one terrorist leader:” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State.
Here’s what to know about the reportedly deceased leader of the infamous terrorist group:
Early life and radicalization
Al-Baghdadi’s was born in 1971 in the city of Samarra, Iraq, northwest of Baghdad as Ibrahim bin ‘Awad bin Ibrahim al-Badri ar-Radawi al-Husseini as-Samara’i. His family were Sunni Muslim members of tribe that claims to be descended from the Prophet Muhammad. Al-Baghdadi is thought to have shown signs of radicalization years ago, joining an extreme branch of the Sunni dissident group the Muslim Brotherhood as a youth.
His formation into the future leader of ISIS is believed to have taken place after he was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq while visiting a friend in Fallujah. While imprisoned Camp Bucca, a notorious facility known for generating Sunni jihadists, he developed connections with future ISIS fighters, including Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, who later became ISIS’s spy chief.
Al-Baghdadi’s rise, both in prison and later, is thought to have been driven by his ideological and religious leadership. He earned a PhD in Islamic Studies, and was known for his dogmatic approach to Islam.
al-Qaeda in Iraq to ISIS
After leaving prison, al-Baghdadi rose in the ranks of the Iraqi group affiliated with al-Qaeda, known as al-Qaeda in Iraq. The group had been founded by a Jordanian national, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2005. Over time, the group gained a violent reputation, carrying out suicide bombings; fighting U.S. and Iraqi government troops; and enforcing a strict interpretation of Sharia law, which included beheadings.
When al-Zarqawi was killed by U.S. force in 2006, several leaders took turns at al-Qaeda in Iraq helm. But the organization began to shift more rapidly after al-Baghdadi took over in 2010. In 2011, he cut the organization’s connection to al-Qaeda and renamed the group Islamic State in Iraq. The group also introduced a new ambition: creating single Sunni regime that ruled over the entire Arab world. Two years later, the organization was renamed again to reflect the greater scale of its ambitions – Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or ISIS.
Al-Baghdadi also promoted the idea that while Muslims must follow Allah, non-Muslims are the slaves of Muslims. After al-Baghdadi’s wife was captured, she informed her interrogators that women and girls had had been used as sex slaves for ISIS militants, and that Kayla Mueller, an American aid worker, was raped and tortured by al-Baghdadi himself before her death.
Terrorists who claimed to be affiliated with the Islamic State — or who ISIS claimed as their affiliates— took responsibility for terrorist attacks abroad. These include the downing of a Russian jet in 2015 and a series of terrorist attacks in France.
Today, a military coalition led by the United States has wrested control of cities and territory formerly controlled by ISIS, and thousands of ISIS fighters are being held in Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces detention centers. However, there are concerns that the withdrawal will give these fighters an opportunity to escape — and give ISIS a chance to rebuild.
What does his death mean?
Al-Baghdadi’s death is a crucial symbolic victory in the battle against the embattled terrorist group, because ISIS held that he was the head of a worldwide caliphate, a single Sunni regime which intended to rule over the entire Arab world. This ideology led the group to take over significant swaths of territory, at one point controlling territory in Iraq and Syria that was equivalent to the size of Great Britain. It also built an international terrorist brand that drew recruits from the Middle East, Europe and North America, inspiring terrorist attacks as far away as San Bernardino, Calif.
The death of al-Baghdadi is also a victory for the Trump administration, which has faced criticism from both sides of the political field over the last month for the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Critics say that while the Islamic State is weak, the withdrawal of American troops may give Islamic State militants an opportunity to recover. President Trump has repeatedly asserted that the Islamic State has been defeated, and that the military presence of other countries, including Turkey, will be enough to keep the terrorist group at bay.
Trump declared that the capture or killing of al-Baghdadi had been the “top national security priority of his Administration.” U.S forces had searched for al-Baghdadi for more than five years. Al-Baghdadi developed a reputation for maintaining elaborate efforts to keep secrecy, avoiding cellphones and keeping face concealed from all but a chosen few. Trump said that plans to capture al-Baghdadi had been delayed because the terrorist leader frequently changed his travel plans.
(PARIS) — A masterpiece attributed to the 13th-century Italian painter Cimabue that was discovered earlier this year in an elderly French woman’s kitchen sold for 24 million euros ($26.6 million) Sunday.
Dominique Le Coent of Acteon Auction House, who sold the work to an anonymous buyer near Chantilly, north of Paris, said the sale represented a “world record for a primitive, or a pre-1500 work.”
“It’s a painting that was unique, splendid and monumental. Cimabue was the father of the Renaissance. But this sale goes beyond all our dreams,” Le Coent told The Associated Press.
The expected sale price was 4 million to 6 million euros ($4.4 million to $6.6 million).
Le Coent said experts were off the mark because it was the first time a Cimabue had ever gone under the hammer.
“There’s never been a Cimabue painting on sale so there was no reference previously on how much it could make,” he explained.
An auctioneer spotted the painting while inspecting the woman’s house in Compiegne in northern France and suggested she bring it to experts for an evaluation. It hung on a wall between the kitchen and dining room and its owner had considered it an icon of little importance.
Titled “Christ Mocked,” the painting measures about 10 inches by 8 inches (24 by 20 centimeters).
Art experts say it is likely part of a larger diptych that Cimabue painted around 1280, of which two other panels are displayed at the Frick Collection in New York and the National Gallery in London.
The painting’s discovery has sent ripples of excitement through the art world.
Cimabue, who taught Italian master Giotto, is widely considered the forefather of the Italian Renaissance. He broke from the Byzantine style popular in the Middle Ages and began to incorporate elements of movement and perspective that came to characterize Western painting.
Specialists at the Turquin gallery in Paris initially examined the painting and concluded with “certitude” that it bore the hallmarks of Cimabue.
Stephane Pinta, an art specialist with the Turquin, pointed to likenesses in facial expressions and buildings, as well as the painter’s techniques for conveying light and distance.
(BARCELONA, Spain) — Tens of thousands of people marched in Barcelona on Sunday to protest the separatist movement in the northeastern Catalonia region that has created Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.
Barcelona’s police said 80,000 people rallied, with many carrying Spanish and Catalan flags. One poster read in English: “We are Catalonians too, stop this madness!!”
The rally in favor of Spanish unity comes after several days of protests — some of which spiraled into violent clashes with police — by Catalan separatists. They are angered by a Supreme Court ruling that gave nine separatist leaders lengthy prison sentences for an illegal and unsuccessful 2017 secession attempt.
While separatists have organized huge marches in recent years as their drive gained steam, Catalans in favor of maintaining century-old ties with the rest of Spain have largely remained quiet except for an enormous rally two years ago during the tensest moments of the separatists’ secession bid.
“We feel the need to shout that Catalonia is a part of Spain,” said 52-year-old truck driver Francisco Astorga Vasco. “They are trying to make it look like Catalonia is not Spain, and that is not true. Not in the past, not in the present, and not in the plans we have for our future.”
Polls and election results in recent years say the 7.5 million residents of the wealthy Catalonia region are roughly evenly divided on the secession question.
Unionists say the separatist cause has monopolized local politics and caused friction between families and friends.
On Saturday, a rally of 350,000 separatists in Barcelona was followed by a clash between police and radical protesters that left 44 people injured, according to regional health authorities. Over 500 people have been hurt, nearly half of them police officers, in clashes since the Oct. 14 Supreme Court verdict.
The Catalan crisis is set to be a key issue in Spain’s Nov. 10 national election, where Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will try to stay in power.
(YEN THANH, Vietnam) — Police in central Vietnam said Sunday that they have taken forensic samples from residents who believe their family members may be among the 39 victims found dead last week in the back of a truck in England.
Police in Nghe An province took samples including hair and nails from the family members to try to help identify the victims, the VNExpress news website reported.
Up to 24 Vietnamese families had reported their missing family members to local authorities as of Sunday afternoon, the website said.
Thirteen people in Nghe An’s Yen Thanh district have been reported missing, with relatives fearing they could be among the victims found early Wednesday in an industrial park in southeastern England.
At their home in the district’s Tho Thanh village, the mother and a brother of Vo Ngoc Nam were awaiting news from the U.K. after not hearing from him for a week.
“We suspect that he was in the container in which people died. We don’t know what’s going on, but we think it’s true,” Nam’s older brother Vo Ngoc Chuyen said.
In Do Thanh, another village in the district, people attended a Sunday Mass to pray for the missing family members. Three families in Do Thanh have reported to local authorities that their missing family members could be among the victims.
During the Mass, the priest, the Rev. Nguyen Duc Vinh, encouraged people to keep up their hopes until officials confirm the identities of the victims.
U.K. police said Saturday that all 39 victims were out of the truck and in a mortuary awaiting autopsies. But they said the victims have not been identified and very few documents were found with the bodies.
Meanwhile, British police released three people on bail Sunday after questioning them in the deaths.
A 38-year-old man, a 38-year-old woman — both from the northern English town of Warrington — and a 46-year-old man from Northern Ireland were questioned on suspicion of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people.
Essex Police on Saturday charged the driver of the truck, 25-year-old Maurice Robinson of Northern Ireland, with 39 counts of manslaughter, conspiracy to traffic people, conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and money laundering. He is to appear in court Monday.
Irish police said another man was arrested Saturday in connection with the case.
British police said their investigation includes over 500 exhibits, including cellphones that have to be downloaded to help identify the victims.
“We are working hard to understand how the 39 victims of this tragic incident have died and to identify all those involved,” said Detective Chief Inspector Martin Pasmore. “We remain open-minded as to nationalities of those who have died. We are asking anyone who may have information that may assist us in identification to come forward to us.”
___
Dinh reported from Hanoi, Vietnam. Associated Press writer Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Two British opposition parties on Sunday proposed an even earlier election date than Prime Minister Boris Johnson has offered, trying to force his government to delay a final decision on its European Union divorce deal.
The chess move by the Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party reflects the volatile political landscape now in Britain.
The ruling Conservatives desperately want a new election to bolster their numbers in Parliament, but they face resistance from the main opposition Labour Party, which fears the country will be unwittingly tricked into crashing out of the European Union without a deal.
The latest election proposal is an effort to force Johnson to delay debate in Parliament on his Brexit withdrawal bill until after any election, depriving him of a possible victory on his trademark issue going into the campaign. It makes Johnson’s government choose between holding an election to improve its position in Parliament and its goal of securing Brexit before that election takes place.
“The challenge is absolutely on (the prime minister), because if he is serious about wanting an election and if he’s genuine about having an election before Christmas, then he can back this bill,” Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson told the BBC on Sunday.
Looming over the political maneuvering is what Johnson and Parliament are going to do about his Brexit deal and how long an extension EU leaders will give Britain to the current Brexit deadline, which is Thursday. The EU in principle has backed extending the Brexit deadline but officials were meeting again this week to figure out how long it should be.
The Liberal Democrats and the SNP plan to introduce legislation on Tuesday that calls for an early national election on Dec. 9, three days earlier than Johnson proposed and years earlier than Britain’s next scheduled vote in 2022.
Because U.K. law requires Parliament to be dissolved 25 working days before an election, the date of any poll will dictate how much time is available to debate Johnson’s Brexit withdrawal deal.
The Liberal Democrats expect a vote on their proposal Thursday, just days before Parliament would be suspended. That would effectively leave no time for lawmakers to consider Johnson’s Brexit deal.
In contrast, Johnson announced last week he will ask lawmakers on Monday to authorize a Dec. 12 election, then use the rest of the legislative term to push through his Brexit deal. Under this plan, Parliament would be dissolved on Nov. 7, giving lawmakers about seven days to debate the withdrawal agreement that Johnson and EU leaders agreed upon.
The two sides have effectively been debating Britain’s departure from the 28-nation bloc — which has never seen a member leave — since British voters in June 2016 chose to leave the EU. But Johnson’s deal was cemented only 10 days ago — and British lawmakers fear rushing through a document that has enormous economic and political consequences for the country.
The problem for Johnson is that his proposal requires a two-thirds vote of the House of Commons and it is opposed by opposition parties who fear it could lead to an economically damaging no-deal Brexit.
In contrast, the Liberal Democrat plan only needs a simple majority in the 650-seat House of Commons due to laws governing elections.
The Liberal Democrat plan would be conditional upon the EU agreeing to extend the Brexit deadline until to the end of January. Johnson has sought a shorter Brexit extension to keep alive the possibility of a no-deal departure, which in turn keeps the pressure on British lawmakers to approve his deal.
Economists say a no-deal departure would be very damaging to both the British and EU economies.
Conservative Party chair James Cleverly dismissed the new election proposal as “clearly a gimmick” designed to delay Brexit because it only moves the election date ahead three days. If the Liberal Democrats and SNP really want an election, they should vote for the Dec. 12 date proposed by Johnson, Cleverly said.
“We’re not going to listen to two parties who explicitly said they want to stop Brexit from happening,” he told the BBC. “We’re not going to be complicit in them stopping Brexit.”
The move by the Liberal Democrats and the SNP is also a challenge to the Labour Party, which has repeatedly vacillated on whether to call an early election in which they could lose seats.
Diane Abbott, a senior Labour spokeswoman, said Sunday that Labour will wait to see what kind of Brexit extension the EU offers before deciding whether to support the latest domestic election proposal. She also repeated the party’s position that it will back an early election only after Johnson explicitly says there won’t be a no-deal Brexit.
“He could come to Parliament and categorically give Parliament an undertaking that he’s not going to come out without a deal, but he won’t do that, because coming out without a deal is something that people around him … would want,” she said.
ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. special forces in a “daring nighttime raid” in northwest Syria, President Donald Trump announced Sunday morning.
“He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way,” Trump said. He added that al-Baghdadi had “dragged” three young children with him as he reached the end of a tunnel in the compound he was in. They died, along with al-Baghdadi, when the terrorist leader detonated a suicide vest, Trump said. Two wives of al-Baghdadi also died, he noted. He said they were both wearing suicide vests that had not detonated.
Al-Baghdadi’s body was mutilated by the blast but an on-site DNA test confirmed his identity, Trump said.
The President said no American personnel were lost or injured in the operation with the exception of one dog. Eleven young children had been moved out of the compound and were uninjured.
The operation began two weeks ago and, once complete, the special forces landed safely in a “friendly port in a friendly country,” Trump said, declining to provide more details.
He had tweeted Saturday night that “Something very big has just happened!” and said during his announcement that he did so only after the military personnel were secure and had landed.
Al-Baghdadi has led ISIS for the last five years, according to the Associated Press.
The President’s announcement comes after many previous reports that al-Baghdadi had died.
Trump said on Sunday that Al-Baghdadi spent “his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread” and “terrified of the American forces bearing down on him.”
As a result of the raid, Trump said, the special forces were also able to retrieve “highly sensitive information” about ISIS as it relates to their origins and future plans.
Trump also referenced the murder of innocent Americans by ISIS, including journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley.
Trump also expressly thanked Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iraq for their cooperation and noted that the military had to fly low and crossed over territory with “tremendous firepower.” They flew over areas with Russian, Turkish and Syrian presence, he said. The U.S. had told Russia they were “coming in,” Trump said, but did not reveal details about why — beyond indicating that “it would be a mission they would like.”
Trump closed his official remarks by saying that al-Baghdadi “will never again harm another innocent man, woman or child.” The President said: “He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place. God bless America.”
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If it hasn't happened yet, it will one day. The markets will take a dive, and your retirement savings will drop with them. Here is a four-step plan to beat the bear.
Find out how market risk directly affects the total cost of capital, including how to use the capital asset pricing model to estimate the cost of equity.
By David FicklingThe world's most important gold market isn't what it used to be.Just a decade ago, India's hunger for gold jewellry and bullion meant it accounted for about a quarter of global demand. Consumption has since fallen by about 24 per cent. Ahead of Sunday's Diwali festival, when purchases traditionally peak, imports in September fell to their lowest level in three years.Part of this is a reaction to short-term pricing factors. Buyers tend to stay away when the bullion price in Mumbai rises above about 30,000 rupees ($422.97) for 10 grams. Thanks to the rupee's slump and the metal breaking through its long-standing $1,350-a-troy-ounce ceiling, it's been in that territory now for the best part of two years, and is currently trading at 38,200 rupees.There are longer-term issues to worry about, though. About two-thirds of the country's gold is bought in rural areas, where its traditional roles as investment and adornment are oddly intertwined. Rural Indians are far more inclined to buy gold jewelry than their urban counterparts, and tend to favor plain pieces that can easily be valued and traded in if money gets tight. 71783076 That makes demographic changes a risk to the entire market. Rural population growth is grinding to a halt as people migrate to the cities and birth rates fall, shifting the focus of consumption spending. "Millennials in urban India are increasingly tempted by goods other than gold, particularly luxury fashion and smartphones," according to a report by the World Gold Council, an industry group.There are also a growing number of alternatives to gold jewelry for those who want to save up for a rainy day. (In the case of rural India, the better term might be 'a dry day,' as weak monsoons tend to tighten farmers' cash flows and force them to pawn or sell.) Gold was originally popular as a store of value because banks weren't available, but the share of rural adults with an account has soared to 79 per cent in 2017 from 33 per cent in 2011, according to the World Bank. A larger proportion of the adult population now has a bank account than in Hungary or Turkey. 71783077 Considering the State Bank of India's current 6.4 per cent benchmark one-year deposit rate and inflation at 3.99 per cent, a savings account is a far better way to protect your wealth against rising prices than a bangle. Even in deprived urban areas, alternative stores and sources of capital are opening up. About four million people in Delhi's shantytowns will be granted ownership rights, the government said this week, a move that would help them take out loans to build houses.To be sure, the allure of gold can't be wiped out by banking. Another reason that buying tends to be so vigorous in late October is that it's peak wedding season. About half of India's gold-jewelry demand is for the heavy pieces worn as part of a bridal outfit, according to the World Gold Council. Consumer spending, the other main leg of gold demand alongside investment (industrial uses are a distant third) will tend to rise with income, benefiting from the same urbanization that's depressing purchases in rural areas.This year, however, consumers are a tough market to bet on. Motor-vehicle purchases, usually a good proxy for the public's appetite for big-ticket items, are collapsing. Sales of cars, trucks and buses fell by more than a third in September from a year earlier, and two-wheelers were down 22.1 per cent. 71783079 The same pattern is borne out in broader data. The share of consumers who think their current economic situation has worsened and is set to deteriorate over the coming year was its highest since 2013 in September, according to the Reserve Bank of India. Perceptions of the job market are the worst in seven years of records. For the first time in four years of data, consumers think they're spending less on discretionary purchases.India's outsize role in the world gold market isn't going to disappear overnight. Its consumers still account for more than one in six ounces bought globally.Still, this change in gold demand should be a warning to the investors. For many years its role as a rural investment made India a downside buffer for the yellow metal, with farmers rushing in to make physical purchases whenever the price fell to levels that tempted investors to liquidate their positions.As the country changes, that dynamic is disappearing. While high gold prices still appear to put off purchases, consumption-focused urban jewelry buyers aren't necessarily going to be around to prop up the market when it's weak.Gold's attraction for investors has long been its counter-cyclical tendencies. As this crucial part of the market grows more pro-cyclical, they'd do well to pay attention.(This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of economictimes.com, Bloomberg LP and its owners)
By Mervyn KingA decade ago, we thought the banking crisis was over and the expansion already visible in emerging economies would spread to the industrialized world. There's been a recovery, but a frustratingly slow one. The International Monetary Fund just lowered its estimate of world growth both this year and next. Every data release seems to bring gloomy news. If the problem before the crisis was too much borrowing and too much spending, then the problem today is too much borrowing and too little spending.The world economy is stuck in a low-growth trap. The question is why.The Great Depression was followed by political upheaval and, in economics, an intellectual revolution. This time around, we've got the political turmoil but no comparable questioning of the ideas underpinning economic policy. That needs to change.Modern policy makers operate in a world of radical uncertainty. They simply do not know what might happen next — and under these conditions, economic models need to be seen in a new light. The question isn't whether the models are right or wrong, but whether they're helpful or unhelpful. Today, the key features of standard models lead us astray in judging how to get the world economy out of its low-growth trap, and how to prepare for the next financial crisis.Six years ago, Larry Summers reintroduced the concept of "secular stagnation" to economic debate. Conventional wisdom attributes this persistent slow growth - call it the Great Stagnation - largely to supply factors. This seems to fit because the underlying growth of productivity appears to have fallen. But the supply-side story is also suspiciously convenient, because the alternative - demand-led secular stagnation - sits uncomfortably with our prevailing model of monetary policy. This model finds it hard to accept that the investment required to stimulate production might be held back by extreme uncertainty. As a result, it accepts too readily that market economies are self-stabilizing.Escaping from a low-growth trap sprung by radical uncertainty isn't like climbing out of a Keynesian downturn, with temporary monetary or fiscal stimulus restoring demand to its trend path. It requires instead a reallocation of resources from one component of demand to another, from one economic sector to another, and from one company to another.In some cases, the world has invested too much. China and Germany, for instance, have over invested in manufacturing for export. Elsewhere, investment has been insufficient - in the infrastructure of many advanced economies, for example. Also, asset values in many places will need to be written down to more realistic levels, and some financial intermediaries will have to be recapitalized. These are structural weaknesses. Unless they're attended to, there's a risk of another financial crisis. The remedy isn't monetary policy, but measures to support the needed reallocation of resources. Exchange rates, supply-side reforms and policies to correct unsustainable national saving rates need to be part of the mix.Consider Europe. Further monetary easing and a weaker euro might help recovery in the south but would further distort the structure of economies in the north. Until France and Germany can resolve their differences over structural reforms to the monetary union, monetary stimulus on an even larger scale is not just papering over the cracks but also widening them. I am tempted to say that the best advice to the new president of the European Central Bank is to stay in Washington.New thinking is also needed when it comes to dealing with financial crisis. The last one led to the Great Stagnation and was obviously costly in terms of lost output, but it was also expensive in financial terms. A recent IMF study found that the cost of interventions, including guarantees, to support financial institutions between 2007 and 2017 in 37 countries amounted to $3.5 trillion. Unprecedented injections of liquidity - the financial equivalent of overwhelming force - became a guiding principle of crisis management.If potentially all debt issued by the financial sector must be guaranteed by the government in a crisis, the issue is not whether the Fed or other central banks would be able to provide such guarantees; it's to devise a political settlement under which limits to private-sector maturity transformation are accepted in return. In effect, I am arguing for a tax on maturity transformation.My book "The End of Alchemy" argued for a system of pre-positioned collateral related to the maturity transformation of the individual financial institution. Whatever the details, the imperative is to establish an ex ante framework for the provision of central bank liquidity. This is because it's impossible to know when a small fire that should be allowed to burn and destroy one or more institutions might turn into a conflagration that threatens the entire system. Once a crisis has struck, it's too late to create political legitimacy for the necessary emergency response.Congress has curbed the ability of the Treasury and the Fed to fight the next crisis. This shouldn't be surprising, because the actions taken during the crisis were not part of a system Congress agreed to beforehand. As former Fed and other officials have said, these restrictions are undesirable - but they'll be removed only in the context of a clear ex ante framework that makes banks, and other maturity-transforming institutions, part of an insurance system that is accepted as fair. The political economy of "bailing out" banks would be much improved if it were clear that banks had subscribed in good times to an insurance system that entitled them to borrow in bad times.In addition, radical uncertainty means that the liquidity of particular assets in some future crisis is unknown. This too argues for an insurance system - one that ensures that all runnable liabilities are covered - rather than on regulation to assure that liquidity is adequate. The response to the crisis combined excessively detailed regulation with a plea for greater freedoms for firefighters. This is ill-advised. Complex regulation imposes unnecessary costs of compliance and gives a false sense of security. And the absence of an agreed upon ex ante framework demands almost unlimited resources without the appropriate political authority.The Fed and other central banks need to help legislators to see just how vulnerable financial systems will be in the event of a future crisis. Next time, Congress will be confronted with a choice between financial Armageddon and suspending the rules it introduced after the last crisis to limit the Fed's ability to lend. Avoiding that choice demands radical new thinking about the lender of last resort - preferably before the last resort becomes a reality.
MUMBAI: India's car makers have reason to cheer, having got a festive season bump after six months of plummeting sales. Sales rose 5-7% this Navratri, Dussehra and Dhanteras from the year-earlier numbers for the same festive period. To be sure, the uptick comes after sales have dropped by double digits every month from April to September. Two-wheeler sales haven't seen as much of a festive surge, though the performance has improved over previous months.Top two car makers Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai registered 7% and 10% growth, respectively, in the Navratri to Dussehra period. Deliveries on Dhanteras, October 25, exceeded double-digit growth from the previous year for the two carmakers, which account for 65-70% of the market. Third-largest firm Mahindra registered a 100% spike in the sale of utility vehicles on Dhanteras.Maruti Suzuki delivered more than 60,000 cars in the 10 days of Navratri to Dussehra (October 8), whereas Hyundai Motor delivered over 25,000 cars. On Dhanteras, Maruti Suzuki delivered over 45,000 cars whereas Hyundai delivered about 14,000 cars.Maruti Suzuki sales and marketing executive director Shashank Srivastava declined to give specific numbers but told ET there was higher off take during the festive season. "The absolute retails in Navratri and Dussehra were higher than 10-day festivities in the previous year and the momentum has continued for Dhanteras," Srivastava said. "There is definitely a much better sentiment in the market place, but one can also say that market has revived only after seeing the momentum in the next few months."71788187 The month-long period between the start of Navratri and Diwali typically accounts for about double the monthly average of the year for two and four-wheeler sales. A large part of this demand is in the North and East, which together account for 50-55% of total sales of two-wheeler and passenger cars. At its height though the festive season would often see 3.5-4 times monthly sales.Hyundai Motor India national sales head Vikas Jain confirmed 10% growth during the Navratri and said that growth was even better during Dhanteras."Compared to last year, the retail is up by 30% approximately on Dhanteras," Jain said. "While in October things have looked up compared to last month (September), compared to October 2018, industry will still be negative by 7 to 8%. But this is recovery compared to degrowth of 30% or 20%. Also, this time all segments have moved up. And other positive is both urban and rural markets have grown."The numbers above are retail numbers and not despatches. To be sure, wholesale despatches have declined for 13 straight months for car makers and so far this financial year, they are down by a significant 24% to 1.33 million units.Demand has also picked up at the luxury end of the market. Mercedes Benz, after delivering more than 200 cars during the Navratri and Dussehra (in Gujarat and Mumbai alone), sold another 600 on Dhanteras across the country. The company said its top-of-the-line SUV, the GLE, is sold out for three months. BMW India said its top SUV, the X7, is also sold out.New entrants Kia and MG Motors delivered about 3,000 vehicles between them on Dhanteras.On the two-wheeler front, both Hero MotoCorp and Bajaj Auto said that the market decline had been arrested over the past month or so and retail sales have moved into positive territory.Hero MotoCorp, country's largest motorcycle manufacturer, has seen low single-digit growth in the festive season and current momentum has continued even after Dussehra, head of sales Sanjay Bhan said in a post-earnings conference call.Hero MotoCorp and Maruti Suzuki maintained that it would be too early to take a call on the sustainability of the rise beyond the festive season. Maruti Suzuki has not given any guidance for this financial year. Hero MotoCorp said it will be closely looking at the extent of rabi sowing in the third week of November in order to gauge future trends.
MUMBAI: More than two years after organised players like Kinetic, Hero Electric and Mahindra & Mahindra forayed into the growing e-rickshaw market they are yet to gain a toehold in this space. An electric-vehicle revolution is gaining ground in India, home to about 1.5 million battery-powered, three wheeled rickshaws — a fleet bigger than the number of electric passenger cars sold in China since 2011.Since 2015, battery-powered rickshaw sales have been growing at 20% annually, replacing cycle rickshaws. However, most of these sales have come from the unorganised sector, sending the larger players back to the drawing board, experts said. As per the Vaahan portal data, unorganised players sell 10,000 e-rickshaws a month against about 1,500 to 2,000 a month for organised players.The unorganised sector has been peddling e-rickshaws of poor quality, with lead acid batteries that need to be changed every 6-8 months with no proper warranty. They are a safety hazard and almost like moving coffins, said Sulajja Firodia Motwani, CEO of Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions.E-rickshaws are sold predominantly in North India, across Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi and Bihar as one of the most effective means of last mile connectivity and a cheaper mode of transportation. What is giving a fillip to the unorganised sector is clearly the cost which starts from as low as Rs 40,000 for an e-rickshaw compared to more than a lakh for one from the organised players.Mahesh Babu, CEO of Mahindra Electric, whose company launched the Treo range last year, said "affordability, convenience to the user and more earning potential to the driver were the reasons for the segment to boom. The unorganised segment was dominated by leadacid based e-rickshaws till the e-rickshaw regulation was notified in 2018." Mahindra sold only 1,500 units of lithium-ion based Treo in FY20, which analysts say, constitute a small numbers.71788224 Though company has sold more than 15,000 units of their lead-based eAlfa, the cause for worry is that lithium-powered batteries will take some time to gain acceptability, among users, Babu said. With the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India 2 or FAME 2 subsidy, the price gap between e-autos and e-rickshaws, which are mostly imported from China, is hardly 15%. The government's phased manufacturing program under scheme will help made-in-India EVs, says Motwani.Experts said the unorganised sector had a headstart before erickshaw guidelines were notified. And it may not be easy to break their stronghold in this sector, especially as they command a premium of 15-20%. "Many of the unorganised players are getting registered, which will get them into the mainstream market, thereby preventing any unfair advantages. If they ply, they will eventually get caught which will force them to drive on the organised route," said Sohinder Gill, CEO, Hero Electric and director general of the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles India.All of this has not deterred players like Exide jumping onto the erickshaw bandwagon with its recently announced Neo. Companies like M&M are bullish on this sector having invested Rs 1,000 crore in its e-vehicle capacity.
MUMBAI: India's car makers have reason to cheer, having got a festive season bump after six months of plummeting sales. Sales rose 5-7% this Navratri, Dussehra and Dhanteras from the year-earlier numbers for the same festive period. To be sure, the uptick comes after sales have dropped by double digits every month from April to September. Two-wheeler sales haven't seen as much of a festive surge, though the performance has improved over previous months.Top two car makers Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai registered 7% and 10% growth, respectively, in the Navratri to Dussehra period. Deliveries on Dhanteras, October 25, exceeded double-digit growth from the previous year for the two carmakers, which account for 65-70% of the market. Third-largest firm Mahindra registered a 100% spike in the sale of utility vehicles on Dhanteras.Maruti Suzuki delivered more than 60,000 cars in the 10 days of Navratri to Dussehra (October 8), whereas Hyundai Motor delivered over 25,000 cars. On Dhanteras, Maruti Suzuki delivered over 45,000 cars whereas Hyundai delivered about 14,000 cars.Maruti Suzuki sales and marketing executive director Shashank Srivastava declined to give specific numbers but told ET there was higher off take during the festive season. "The absolute retails in Navratri and Dussehra were higher than 10-day festivities in the previous year and the momentum has continued for Dhanteras," Srivastava said. "There is definitely a much better sentiment in the market place, but one can also say that market has revived only after seeing the momentum in the next few months."71788187 The month-long period between the start of Navratri and Diwali typically accounts for about double the monthly average of the year for two and four-wheeler sales. A large part of this demand is in the North and East, which together account for 50-55% of total sales of two-wheeler and passenger cars. At its height though the festive season would often see 3.5-4 times monthly sales.Hyundai Motor India national sales head Vikas Jain confirmed 10% growth during the Navratri and said that growth was even better during Dhanteras."Compared to last year, the retail is up by 30% approximately on Dhanteras," Jain said. "While in October things have looked up compared to last month (September), compared to October 2018, industry will still be negative by 7 to 8%. But this is recovery compared to degrowth of 30% or 20%. Also, this time all segments have moved up. And other positive is both urban and rural markets have grown."The numbers above are retail numbers and not despatches. To be sure, wholesale despatches have declined for 13 straight months for car makers and so far this financial year, they are down by a significant 24% to 1.33 million units.Demand has also picked up at the luxury end of the market. Mercedes Benz, after delivering more than 200 cars during the Navratri and Dussehra (in Gujarat and Mumbai alone), sold another 600 on Dhanteras across the country. The company said its top-of-the-line SUV, the GLE, is sold out for three months. BMW India said its top SUV, the X7, is also sold out.New entrants Kia and MG Motors delivered about 3,000 vehicles between them on Dhanteras.On the two-wheeler front, both Hero MotoCorp and Bajaj Auto said that the market decline had been arrested over the past month or so and retail sales have moved into positive territory.Hero MotoCorp, country's largest motorcycle manufacturer, has seen low single-digit growth in the festive season and current momentum has continued even after Dussehra, head of sales Sanjay Bhan said in a post-earnings conference call.Hero MotoCorp and Maruti Suzuki maintained that it would be too early to take a call on the sustainability of the rise beyond the festive season. Maruti Suzuki has not given any guidance for this financial year. Hero MotoCorp said it will be closely looking at the extent of rabi sowing in the third week of November in order to gauge future trends.
The week ahead on Dalal Street could be a volatile one, as a number of major events are lined up along with some important September quarter earnings.Fear of a no-deal Brexit has grown as the UK Parliament faces tough choices on exiting the European Union. Across the Atlantic, the US Federal Reserve will review its money policy on Wednesday. Back home, auto companies will release their October sales data, which are likely to offer cues on any demand revival in the festive season. Meanwhile, a number of top companies will release their September quarter earnings through the week.The domestic stock exchanges will remain closed on Monday for Bali Pratipada.Here are key factors that could guide the market this week:US Fed policy review: The US monetary authority will release its policy rates decision on October 30, Wednesday, after a two-day FOMC meeting. The Fed has cut policy rate twice this year, in July and September. Most economists expect the regulator to go in for another 25 basis points rate cut at this review to support the economy. The policy rate now stands at 2%.October auto sales numbersThere could be some volatility in auto stocks, as companies will release their October sales numbers during the week. Automakers had expected a rise in sales in the festive season as both Dussehra and Diwali fell in October this year. The numbers will also give an indication on any bottoming out of the economic slowdown.Q2 earningsMarketmen will track key earnings scheduled for the week. In last 20 days, some of the major companies have reported better-than-expected numbers for the quarter, thanks mainly to the corporate tax cut. On Tuesday, Bharti Airtel will report its Q2 numbers, to be followed by Concor, Sonata Softwares, Tata Chemicals and Tata Global on Wednesday. IndianOil will release its number on Thursday, and Dr Reddy's and YES Bank on Friday.Brexit uncertainty loomsThe UK is staggering towards another Brexit cliff edge. A deal has been agreed between Boris Johnson's government and the European Union, but there's very little chance that this will be ratified in London before the October 31 deadline. While the EU has agreed to give a third extension beyond October 31, without giving any new date, the British PM has proposed snap polls, which will be put to vote in Parliament on Monday. A spokesman for Johnson said he would push ahead with plans to leave the EU if lawmakers reject a pre-Christmas election.
By David FicklingThe world's most important gold market isn't what it used to be.Just a decade ago, India's hunger for gold jewellry and bullion meant it accounted for about a quarter of global demand. Consumption has since fallen by about 24 per cent. Ahead of Sunday's Diwali festival, when purchases traditionally peak, imports in September fell to their lowest level in three years.Part of this is a reaction to short-term pricing factors. Buyers tend to stay away when the bullion price in Mumbai rises above about 30,000 rupees ($422.97) for 10 grams. Thanks to the rupee's slump and the metal breaking through its long-standing $1,350-a-troy-ounce ceiling, it's been in that territory now for the best part of two years, and is currently trading at 38,200 rupees.There are longer-term issues to worry about, though. About two-thirds of the country's gold is bought in rural areas, where its traditional roles as investment and adornment are oddly intertwined. Rural Indians are far more inclined to buy gold jewelry than their urban counterparts, and tend to favor plain pieces that can easily be valued and traded in if money gets tight. 71783076 That makes demographic changes a risk to the entire market. Rural population growth is grinding to a halt as people migrate to the cities and birth rates fall, shifting the focus of consumption spending. "Millennials in urban India are increasingly tempted by goods other than gold, particularly luxury fashion and smartphones," according to a report by the World Gold Council, an industry group.There are also a growing number of alternatives to gold jewelry for those who want to save up for a rainy day. (In the case of rural India, the better term might be 'a dry day,' as weak monsoons tend to tighten farmers' cash flows and force them to pawn or sell.) Gold was originally popular as a store of value because banks weren't available, but the share of rural adults with an account has soared to 79 per cent in 2017 from 33 per cent in 2011, according to the World Bank. A larger proportion of the adult population now has a bank account than in Hungary or Turkey. 71783077 Considering the State Bank of India's current 6.4 per cent benchmark one-year deposit rate and inflation at 3.99 per cent, a savings account is a far better way to protect your wealth against rising prices than a bangle. Even in deprived urban areas, alternative stores and sources of capital are opening up. About four million people in Delhi's shantytowns will be granted ownership rights, the government said this week, a move that would help them take out loans to build houses.To be sure, the allure of gold can't be wiped out by banking. Another reason that buying tends to be so vigorous in late October is that it's peak wedding season. About half of India's gold-jewelry demand is for the heavy pieces worn as part of a bridal outfit, according to the World Gold Council. Consumer spending, the other main leg of gold demand alongside investment (industrial uses are a distant third) will tend to rise with income, benefiting from the same urbanization that's depressing purchases in rural areas.This year, however, consumers are a tough market to bet on. Motor-vehicle purchases, usually a good proxy for the public's appetite for big-ticket items, are collapsing. Sales of cars, trucks and buses fell by more than a third in September from a year earlier, and two-wheelers were down 22.1 per cent. 71783079 The same pattern is borne out in broader data. The share of consumers who think their current economic situation has worsened and is set to deteriorate over the coming year was its highest since 2013 in September, according to the Reserve Bank of India. Perceptions of the job market are the worst in seven years of records. For the first time in four years of data, consumers think they're spending less on discretionary purchases.India's outsize role in the world gold market isn't going to disappear overnight. Its consumers still account for more than one in six ounces bought globally.Still, this change in gold demand should be a warning to the investors. For many years its role as a rural investment made India a downside buffer for the yellow metal, with farmers rushing in to make physical purchases whenever the price fell to levels that tempted investors to liquidate their positions.As the country changes, that dynamic is disappearing. While high gold prices still appear to put off purchases, consumption-focused urban jewelry buyers aren't necessarily going to be around to prop up the market when it's weak.Gold's attraction for investors has long been its counter-cyclical tendencies. As this crucial part of the market grows more pro-cyclical, they'd do well to pay attention.(This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of economictimes.com, Bloomberg LP and its owners)
KOLKATA: Apple India's revenue and net profit fell for the first time in FY19 on the back of slowing iPhone sales last fiscal due to a weakening rupee warranting a price hike and higher import duties because of small local assembling operations here, analysts said.The company's revenue from operation fell 19% to Rs 10,538.3 crore while profit plunged more than 70% to Rs 262.3 crore, latest regulatory filings made to the Registrar of Companies (RoC) showed."Following the global trend, Apple India's revenue has declined by 19% last fiscal in contrast to its gain of 19% in FY18," said Mohit Yadav, founder of business intelligence platform Veratech Intelligence. "Understandably, the company is taking a conservative approach.The same has had an impact on employee benefits expense, too, which increased by 48% in FY19 as contrast to 66% in FY18."71788116 An email sent to Apple India seeking comment on the financials did not elicit any response till Sunday press time.Apple's iPhone sales in India last year were one of the worst with shipments declining for the first time, said market trackers.While Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Technology Market Research estimated Apple's India iPhone shipments at about 1.6-1.7 million in 2018, CyberMedia Research pegged figure at about 2 million compared to as many as 3.2 million units sold in 2017.Analysts, however, expect both revenue and profit to revive in the current fiscal with the company growing sales of iPhones led by price cuts and lower pricing for the new models, unlike last year.Also, Apple is ploughing back savings from 20% import duties by expanding local assembly this fiscal to latest models such as iPhone XR.Counterpoint Research associate director Tarun Pathak said Apple India's financials will turn around in FY20 due to attractive pricing of iPhone 11, adding more premium phones to local assembling enabling 20% savings in taxes and buoyant demand for older yet pricier models like iPhone XR. "Apple has got all the ingredients right for a turnaround in India this fiscal," Pathak said.At its April-June quarter earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts that India bounced back during this period and the company returned to growth. The company had said growth was in strong double digits in India. Apple will announce its July-September global results this week.As per Counterpoint Research numbers, Apple made an entry into the top ten smartphone brands in India during the July-September quarter due to price cuts on iPhone XR model along with good channel demand for of its newly launched iPhone 11.
