Linet Makwera (28) has a baby strapped on her back as she totters barefoot, picking tiny pieces of wood on both sides of a dusty and narrow road, peering fearfully at people passing by along the road in Chimanimani’s Mutambara area in Gonzoma village located in Zimbabwe’s Manicaland Province, east of the country. Her fears, […]

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Twenty-two people drowned, while one person was saved on Tuesday after a bus carrying them plunged into a river in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Diamer district on Tuesday, according to rescue officials.

“Sixteen dead bodies have been recovered from the river, while the search for the remaining persons continues,” Senior Superintendent of Police Diamer, Sher Khan, told Dawn.com.

He added that a woman, who was a bride, had sustained injuries and was receiving treatment at a hospital.

Sharing details of the accident earlier, Rescue 1122 spokesperson Shaukat Riaz told Dawn.com that a bus coming from Astore fell into the Indus River from Telchi bridge in the limits of Diamer district in Gilgit-Baltistan on Tuesday afternoon.

“The vehicle was part of a wedding procession heading towards Punjab’s Chakwal district,” he said.

He added the passengers who were onboard the bus had been identified and women were among the drowned.

“Nineteen of them belonged to Astore while four were from the Chakwal district of Punjab,” he said.

The district administration officials were also present on the spot and supervised the search operation in the river, Riaz added.

President Asif Ali Zardari expressed his grief and conveyed his condolences to the victims’ relatives.

Road accidents are frequent in KP and GB, exacerbated by harsh weather, rugged terrain, poorly maintained roads, overloaded vehicles, and minimal traffic regulations.

The narrow, winding routes and driver fatigue further elevate risk, making these regions especially accident-prone.

In October, two people were killed and 36 others were injured when a Rawalpindi-bound passenger bus fell into a ravine in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Upper Kohistan area.

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case has put off ruling on whether the president-elect’s conviction should be thrown out on immunity grounds, enabling prosecutors to weigh next steps following his November 5 election victory.

Justice Juan Merchan had been due to rule on Tuesday on Trump’s argument that the US Supreme Court’s decision in July that presidents are immune from prosecution involving their official acts meant the New York state case should be dismissed.

Instead, Merchan granted a request by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to have until Nov 19 to consider how to approach the case in light of Trump’s looming inauguration in January 2025, email correspondence made public on Tuesday showed.

Trump’s scheduled Nov 26 sentencing is now widely expected to be postponed.

Trump in May became the first US president — former or sitting — convicted of a crime when a jury in Manhattan found him guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a potential sex scandal shortly before his first election win in 2016. Trump, who pleaded not guilty, has vowed to appeal the verdict after sentencing.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wrote there were “competing interests” between ensuring a criminal case proceeds as usual and protecting the office of the president.

“The People agree that these are unprecedented circumstances,” Colangelo wrote.

Trump is set to be the first felon inaugurated as president after his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.

At issue in the six-week Manhattan trial was a $130,000 payment made by Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she said she had with him in 2006 but which he has denied.

Trump’s defense lawyer Emil Bove wrote that the case ultimately needed to be dismissed to avoid interfering with Trump’s presidential duties.

“The stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern,” Bove wrote.

Trump faced four criminal cases

Trump, 78, is hoping to enter office unencumbered by any of four criminal cases he has faced and which once were thought to have threatened to derail his 2024 candidacy to return to the White House after having served from 2017 to 2021.

The Republican Trump has portrayed the hush money case brought by Bragg, a Democrat, and the three other state and federal criminal indictments brought in 2023 as politically motivated attempts to harm his presidential campaign. He pleaded not guilty in all four cases.

“It is now abundantly clear that Americans want an immediate end to the weaponization of our justice system,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement on Tuesday.

Special Counsel Jack Smith brought two of the cases against Trump, one involving classified documents he kept after leaving office and the other involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. A Florida-based federal judge in July dismissed the documents case. The Justice Department is now evaluating how to wind down Smith’s election-related case.

Trump also faces state criminal charges in Georgia over his bid to reverse his 2020 loss in that state, but the case remains in limbo.

The Supreme Court, in a decision arising from one of Smith’s two cases against Trump, decided that presidents are immune from prosecution involving their official acts and that juries cannot be presented evidence of official acts in trials over personal conduct. It marked the first time that the court recognized any degree of presidential immunity from prosecution.

In making the case for immunity, Trump’s lawyers said the jury that convicted Trump in the hush money case was shown evidence by prosecutors of his social media posts as president and heard testimony from his former aides about conversations that occurred in the White House during his 2017-2021 term.

Bragg’s office countered that the Supreme Court’s ruling has no bearing on the case, which they said concerned “wholly unofficial conduct.” The Supreme Court in its ruling found no immunity for a president’s unofficial acts.

BERLIN: Germany is headed for snap elections on February 23, the main parties agreed on Tuesday, aiming to form a stable government after Chan­cellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed last week.

The country’s two biggest parties agreed on the early timetable, which will see centre-left leader Scholz seek a vote of confidence on December 16, said the parliamentary leader of Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), Rolf Muetzenich.

This would pave the way for the February vote in a compromise hammered out with the conservative opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian allies CSU.

The agreement seeks to quickly restore political stability at a time when Europe’s biggest economy is set to shrink for a second year in a row and amid heightened geopolitical volatility, with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.

As per agreement between two biggest parties, Chancellor Scholz will seek trust vote on Dec 16

The election date would mean Germany will be ruled by a lame-duck chancellor and stuck in the middle of its campaign period when Donald Trump is inaugurated as US president on January 20.

Embattled Scholz, who wants to run again despite poor poll ratings, initially suggested an election in late March but came under heavy pressure from all other parties to speed up the process.

The CDU is riding high in the polls and its leader Friedrich Merz had pushed strongly for an election as early as possible — a demand backed by two thirds of voters, according to a recent survey.

“We don’t have unlimited time to elect a new government in Germany, regardless of who leads it… because the world around us is not waiting,” Merz said on Tuesday.

“It’s not as if everyone is holding their breath and watching Germany in fascination, as decisions are taken in Europe, Asia and the United States.

“The world expects a Germany that is capable of taking action.”

Winter election campaign

The February 23 date would force politicians to run their campaigns in the dark and cold of winter, when voters will be less enthusiastic to flock to outdoor events than during the usual summer campaign seasons.

Scholz is expected to lose the confidence vote in the lower house of parliament, after which President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will have 21 days to dissolve the Bundestag.

Elections have to be held within 60 days of the dissolution.

Scholz took office in late 2021, taking over from the CDU’s Angela Merkel, in a three-way coalition with the left-leaning Greens and the liberal and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).

But mounting differences over economic and fiscal policy came to a head last week when Scholz fired the rebellious FDP finance minister Christian Linder, prompting the small party to leave the government.

Since then, Scholz’s SPD and the Greens have carried on in a minority government that would need opposition support to pass any laws — something the CDU/CSU had rejected in the absence of clarity on an election date.

Future scenarios

Scholz’s coalition marked the first time a tripartite alliance has ruled at the federal level, and it may not be the last, given Germany’s increasingly fragmented political party landscape.

Fears about immigration have driven the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. It is now polling at close to 20 per cent, but other parties have pledged to shun it as a coalition partner.

The latest polls put the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance firmly in the lead at 32pc.

To win a majority, however, the conservatives would likely need the future backing of the SPD, which is currently polling at 15.5pc, in a so-called grand coalition, plus a third party.

Contenders for that spot, according to current polling, would be either the FDP, with five percent support, or possibly the Greens, who are polling at 11pc.

Lindner, who has said he wants to be finance minister again, on Tuesday welcomed the date for new elections, saying:“Happily we now have clarity on this question.” He earlier said that he thought Merz “will almost certainly be the next chancellor of Ger­many. The only question is: Who will chancellor Merz govern with?”

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2024

GILGIT: Twenty-six pe­o­ple, part of a wedding party, drowned after their bus plunged into the Indus River in Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan on Tues­day.

Diamer SSP Sher Khan said that the bus, coming from Astore district of GB, was part of a wedding procession heading towards Punjab’s Chakwal district.

It plunged into the river at Telchi bridge at 1pm after the driver reportedly lost control due to speeding.

According to officials, 27 people were on the bus at the time of the accident. Rescuers recovered 13 bodies from the river while the bride was rescued in injured condition and moved to the RHQ Hospital in Gilgit, where she succumbed to her injuries.

The remaining 12 missing persons have been presumed dead. However, the search for them was ongoing despite the freezing temperature, officials said.

Victims were part of wedding party going from Astore to Chakwal

Among the victims, 19 belonged to Astore, while four, including the groom, were from Chakwal.

The Diamer deputy commissioner and superintendent supervised the rescue operation in which five local divers and two boats took part. The bus’ wreckage was pulled out of the river with the help of a crane.

The search for missing persons will be expanded to other areas along the river today (Wednesday), according to officials.

Police have appealed to the population along the river to keep searching for the dead bodies.

According to GB government spokesperson Faizullah Faraq, the contractors working on the Diamer Bhasha Dam, which is being built near the region, have also been mobilised to aid in search activities near their camps.

Authorities have also requested the navy to send its divers to help in the search operation, APP reported while quoting Mr Faraq.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2024

KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) decision to fix the minimum retail price (MRP) of tea at Rs1,200 per kg for levying sales tax would make the commodity more expensive, warned traders on Tuesday.

Pakistan Tea Association (PTA) Chairman Mohammad Altaf said the MRP at the import stage would have an adverse impact of Rs150-300 per kg on imported tea prices.

The flat MRP also ignores global tea prices hovering between 0.50 cents to over $3 per kg. Tea is imported in different packaging, with bulk shipments typically weighing more than 5kgs and around/approximately 80kgs. An 18 per cent general sales tax is already charged based on the imported tea.

He said before fixing the MRP for sales tax purposes, it is crucial to consider that the definition of “manufacturer” in Section 2(16) of the Sales Tax Act 1990, includes activities such as blending, mixing, processing, and packaging, as clarified in Circular No. 3(11) ST-L&P/2013-94433-R dated July 17, 2019. Based on this, tea imported for these processes qualifies as “raw material”.

Tea sellers warn FBR move will incentivise arrival of low-quality product via illegal channels

“According to judicial interpretations (e.g., CTO v. Rajasthan Taxchem Ltd., 2007) and definitions in Advanced Law Lexicon, “raw material” includes ingredients necessary for manufacturing. Tea used in blending and packaging clearly falls under this category, he added.

Accordingly, sales tax should be based on the import value, as per Subsection 46(f) of Section 2 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990, rather than the minimum retail price, Altaf said.

Tea retail prices vary significantly due to numerous factors, including the company, method of sale (open or packaged), product quality, and regional differences. The PTA chief said that the flat MRP rate per kg also does not reflect the prices charged by most traders, manufacturers, and sellers.

The imposition of a flat rate per kg would have severe negative consequences for a large portion of the tea trade, which may result in reduced business activity and ultimately lead to a loss of revenue for the national exchequer via misusing several exemptions.

Two-thirds of Pakista­nis purchase tea at Rs700-950 per kg, reflecting socio-economic and regional price variations.

He said that MRP cannot be applied at the import stage as the tea has to follow various value-addition procedures before it is made shelf-ready. “This MRP disrupts the supply chain and eradicates the role of wholesalers and distributors who play a vital role in the business, while MRP at the import stage also eradicates the basic right of commercial imports,” the PTA chief observed.

Tea is a part of our daily diet, a staple food item, not a drink.

Most people in rural and urban areas consume tea as per their earnings. Further fixing of MRP will incentivise unscrupulous elements to exploit the situation, and thus, import of low-priced teas will find its way through illegal channels, Altaf feared.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2024

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