How war in Ukraine turned Sri Lanka’s economic crisis into a calamity – Newstrends
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How war in Ukraine turned Sri Lanka’s economic crisis into a calamity

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hoppers buy groceries at Wellawatte Market in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on April 12, as the country warned of an unprecedented default and halted payments on its foreign debt

Life for Hasun Peiris began to unravel a year ago under the pull of powerful forces he didn’t understand.

Climbing food prices drained the 32-year-old woodcutter’s savings, and his family sold their truck. Hunger began to gnaw at their bellies, and they pawned off their gold.

Then, after war erupted thousands of miles away in Ukraine, diesel grew more and more scarce in Sri Lanka, leading to daily power cuts starting last month. Now, Peiris has been forced to scale back his lumber shipments — and his diet. What money he has goes to buying eggs for his pregnant wife.

“I can’t remember the last time I ate chicken or coconut milk,” Peiris said, sitting inside his half-finished house while his five employees idly sorted matchwood in the yard. It was another afternoon wasted, with no electricity or diesel to power his tools and make a living. “I’m afraid,” he said. “I don’t know how to continue.”

Sri Lanka is mired in an unprecedented economic crisis brought on by mostly domestic factors: Years of foreign-debt-fueled government spending, badly timed tax cuts, policies that hurt crop yields and a precipitous drop in tourism during the coronavirus pandemic have hollowed out its foreign reserves.

But Sri Lanka’s teetering finances were dealt another blow this year when war in Europe sent global fuel and food prices surging, turning the small country’s uphill economic struggle into something insurmountable.

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Sir Lanka said Tuesday it needed to suspend international debt payments to save its dwindling dollar reserves for importing fuel and food, both of which are in short supply here, contributing to a devastating inflationary spiral. Over the past six months, central bank data shows, market prices for rice and wheat have doubled.

Diesel prices have shot up 60 percent, leading to widespread shortages and blackouts that have fanned protests across the country demanding President Gotabaya Rajapaksa step down.

“Sri Lanka would be in crisis even if you didn’t have a war in Ukraine, but it’s compounding everything,” said Alan Keenan, an analyst at the International Crisis Group consultancy. “This is the Ukraine effect: a credit line for fuel you thought could last two months now lasts one. Even if you get a bailout, you’re buying less food, less fuel, less medicine.”

“Now,” Keenan added, “is a terrible time to be crashing your economy.”

Last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned that global food prices had risen to the highest level since it began tracking them in 1990, partly due to the war in Ukraine, a major wheat producer. Inflation, the agency’s chief said, will impose “extraordinary costs on global consumers, particularly the poorest.”

As Sri Lanka’s foreign currency reserves fell dangerously in February, the country negotiated a $500 million credit line with India to import oil, which not only powers transportation and industry across the island but also accounts for 40 percent of its electricity generation. That credit line will already be exhausted by this month, said finance minister Ali Sabry, who is seeking more emergency financing from India and other governments.

“Our import bill for essential fuel has almost doubled, particularly with the unfortunate situation in Ukraine,” Sabry said in an interview this week before his ministry announced it would default on nearly $50 billion in foreign loans to prioritize imports.

“Wheat prices have gone up. Freight prices have gone up. It’s all affecting our reserves in a big way,” he said. “Even the United States has high inflation. Everybody is suffering, more or less.”

Growing protests

So far, Sri Lanka’s protests have been mostly made up of young, middle-class professionals who grew up in a decade of relative prosperity, as the nation emerged from decades of civil war, expanded its manufacturing and white-collar jobs, and looked poised to become the next Asian success story.

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In the past year, these workers have seen their purchasing power and their middle-class futures evaporate. Families gather nightly in places such as the downtown waterfront of the capital, Colombo, to chant slogans against Rajapaska and honk their horns in protest. The atmosphere is festive, but frustration is mounting.

Jay Tissera, a 28-year old graphic designer, took a break from protesting outside the presidential office on a recent afternoon and smoked with his friends — a computer programmer and a journalist — in the shadow of a seaside tower that boasted $1.4 million apartments with sweeping views of the Indian Ocean and interiors designed by a French architect.

“They point to this as development,” Tissera said, pointing up. “But you see, for years the people haven’t developed.”

So far, these demonstrations have been largely peaceful, but officials in both the ruling party and the opposition are worried about where they will lead. They fear a deeper rage could erupt if the poor, who are working overtime just to survive and have not joined the protests en masse, are driven to the streets by hunger.

Eran Wickramaratne, an opposition politician and former state minister of finance, said the government needed to import more food immediately. Last week, India began shipping 40,000 tons of rice to Sri Lanka. But Wickramaratne said it wasn’t enough.

“Those protests are now calm and collected but they might quickly take a different direction,” he said. Wickramaratne shook his head, then waved away the thought. “I don’t even want to imagine it,” he said.

Anger and despair

For many across the capital and on its outskirts, desperation is already setting in.

Outside a busy hospital, Pasinda Fernando, a young pharmacist, confessed with shame and anger that he was beginning to hoard heart medication for his most loyal customers because of a nationwide shortage in imported medicines. “I’m trying my best to reduce prices but the customers are suffering,” he said. “Only when we have a change in government will things get better.”

In another neighborhood, at the front of a line for gasoline that stretched three blocks, K.P. Wimalavathrne, a 61-year old rickshaw driver, said he was eating nothing except five balls of rice noodles a day and sleeping in his back seat. With so much of his time spent waiting for gasoline, “how else can I make money?” he asked, drawing murmurs of sympathy from the crowd of sweaty rickshaw drivers, all of whom had stood for more than two hours to fill up a small jerry can or soda bottle.

Down a coastal road, a group of fishermen were fuming at their elected leader about government officials sneaking into their diesel depot at night to fill up their own vehicles.

Fuel was practically out of reach already, said one of the men, Joseph Anthony Silva. The smaller skiffs lining the pier sit unused, with kerosene unobtainable. Ten-day fishing trips in the bigger boats have been cut to three days because diesel is so expensive, he said. Three meals a day have been cut to two.

Silva fretted about how to feed his family of five and pay loan sharks who he, and other fishermen, are increasingly indebted to as the community has floundered over the past year. Silva owes about $750, or several months’ income, at 20 percent interest, he calculated.

“The loan sharks’ business is so good they’re now open 24 hours a day,” interjected Linton Fernando, another fisherman with growing debts. “They come to our doors and shame us by taking away furniture and gold.”

If fuel and food prices don’t fall, the two men agreed, they would be ruined. As they spoke, a train emerged from a dense palm grove and rumbled across the inlet. Silva nodded toward the barreling locomotive. His mood darkened, his anger folded into despair.

“Soon, there will be no way out of debt,” he said. “No way except death.”

THE WASHINGTON POST

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Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

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Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

Google says it has blocked over 5.5 billion adverts and suspended 12.7 million others for violating its policies.

The search engine giant also said in a statement on Wednesday that it had removed adverts from over 2.1 billion pages.

“Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem.

“Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet,” it said.

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In 2023, it said scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise.

It added, “Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.”

Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

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Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

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Sangita Yadav

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

Two minor girls lost their lives after their mother killed them and hanged herself to death on Tuesday, as her her in-laws tortured her mentally due to her inability to bear a son in Bhopal. Tragically, the woman and two of her daughters have succumbed to the ordeal, while her three-year-old daughter fights for her life in the hospital.

The woman, identified as Sangita Yadav, was 28 years old, her daughters Aradhya was 5 years old, and Shristi was 2. The incident occurred in Roadiya village, located 35 kilometers from Bhopal in the Gunaga police station area. The matter came to light on Tuesday afternoon. The bodies of the victims were taken to Hamidia Hospital. According to Gunaga police station in-charge Arun Sharma, initial investigations suggest that the woman committed suicide and murdered her three daughters. However, further investigation is underway to confirm the circumstances.

According to Dainik Bhaskar, the deceased woman’s brother, Neeraj Yadav, has accused the in-laws of harassing his sister. Neeraj revealed that Sangita had sent distressing messages to him at night. In one of the messages, she stated that she was feeling unwell. She mentioned that she was taking poison as nobody would survive, and everyone would die.

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“Neeraj said, “After that, I tried calling her on her mobile phone, but I didn’t get any response. I also called Sangita’s brother-in-law, but he didn’t pick up the phone twice. When he finally answered the third time, I asked him if everything was fine at home. He said yes, everything was fine. I didn’t trust him.” Then, he asked his relatives, who stayed nearby, to go and check once. Thet reached and confirmed, that the bodies of all three kept inside.

Neeraj revealed that his sister was troubled by her in-laws. Whenever she visited her maternal home, Sangita’s husband, Rajat Yadav, would threaten her, saying, ‘If you don’t come back, I will die in an accident. I will electrocute myself.’ On March 4th, there was a wedding in the family, where they drank alcohol and created a ruckus. They took his sister back with them that night. After the wedding, everyone collectively harassed her, which left her distraught, leading her to hang herself along with her daughters.

The authenticity of the suicide note is questionable. Relatives alleged that when Sangita was found hanging, there was a letter stuck to her back, presumed to be a suicide note. In it, she purportedly wrote about a lump in her stomach preventing her from bearing more children and not being able to give birth to a son for her family. However, some family members directly denied the existence of any such letter. Nevertheless, according to the present police officers, a letter has been recovered from the scene.”

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

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‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

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Orlando Coleman

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

A fake pastor who had at least 10 wives has been thrown in jail after marrying two women.

Orlando Coleman trawled black churches across the US under the guise of a travelling bishop, collecting spouses as he went. The 51-year-old would introduce himself to new congregations as a member of the clergy, and was able to dupe at least 10 different women into exchanging vows with him.

Coleman from Houston had presented himself as the founder of several churches as well as a Pentecostal preacher on social media. Despite pleading guilty to bigamy in July 2023 and being placed on probation for marrying two women simultaneously, he wedded another woman two months later.

Now, he has been put behind bars for three years for marrying multiple women since 2019.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said: “At the heart of this repeat offender’s schemes was a plan to defraud women and take advantage of them for financial gain.

“This man used the church to camouflage his scams and hide from any accountability or responsibility.”

Coleman’s web of deceit started to unravel in 2021 when he married a woman in Houston, but his new wife saw he was receiving money from another woman in Virginia.

When his then current wife contacted the woman from Virginia it was revealed that she too was married to Coleman.

Coleman’s Houston wife then contacted the Harris County Sheriff’s Office with the revelation, who in turn launched an investigation and filed bigamy charges.

In July 2023, Coleman pleaded guilty to bigamy in exchange for three years of deferred adjudication probation.

However, just two months later, while still married to the woman in Virginia, Coleman tied the knot again with another woman in Kentucky, committing another offense of bigamy.

Upon learning about Coleman’s new marriage, prosecutors from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office moved to revoke his probation. In a hearing on March 11, a judge sentenced Coleman to three years in prison.

Prosecutors say Coleman married the women for housing and financial security.

After introducing himself as a Protestant pastor or bishop, Coleman would propose marriage.

If a woman accepted, he would move in with her and allow her to foot the cost of his housing and food.

“That’s the only thing he had to offer and to validate his word – the proposal to marry – that was something big,” Assistant District Attorney Vanessa Goussen told The New York Times.

“Getting proposed to was a big gesture for these women, and that corroborated his guise that he’s a godly person.”

Some of the women filed for divorce after Coleman fled to another state.

Coleman is currently being held at the Harris County Jail.

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

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