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China proffers ‘peaceful reunification’, Taiwan says respect our democracy

China proffers ‘peaceful reunification’, Taiwan says respect our democracy By Reuters

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World 5 hours ago (Mar 04, 2023 11:50PM ET)

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(C) Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Chinese and Taiwanese flags are seen in this illustration, August 6, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
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By Yew Lun Tian and Ben Blanchard

BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) -Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan on Sunday as well as resolute steps to oppose Taiwan independence, with Taipei responding that Beijing should respect the Taiwanese people’s commitment to democracy and freedom.

China, which claims democratic Taiwan as its own territory, has increased its military activity near the island over the past three years, responding to what it calls “collusion” between Taipei and Washington, Taiwan’s main international backer and arms supplier.

In August, China staged war games around Taiwan in response to a visit to Taipei by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Speaking at the opening of the annual meeting of China’s parliament, Li said Beijing stands by the “one China” principle, which states that Taiwan is part of China, though did not directly threaten military action.

The government should implement our party’s policy for “resolving the Taiwan question” and “take resolute steps to oppose Taiwan independence and promote reunification”, he told the roughly 3,000 delegates at Beijing’s enormous Great Hall of the People.

“We should promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and advance the process of China’s peaceful reunification.”

Most Taiwanese people have shown no interest in being ruled by autocratic China, which has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

Li, in separate comments on defence, said the armed forces should boost combat preparedness, though did not mention Taiwan within that context.

Taiwan’s China-policy making Mainland Affairs Council responded to what it called Li’s “reaffirmation” of China’s Taiwan policy by saying Beijing should face up to the reality that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are “not subordinate to each other”.

China should “respect the Taiwanese people’s commitment to the core concepts of holding fast to the sovereignty, democracy and freedom of the Republic of China”, it said, using Taiwan’s formal name.

China should deal with cross-strait affairs pragmatically in a rational, equal and mutually respectful manner, so as to create conditions for healthy interactions, it added.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has repeatedly offered talks with China, which have been rebuffed as Beijing believes her to be a separatist.

Taiwan’s government strongly disputes Beijing’s sovereignty claims, and says only the island’s 23 million people can decide their future.

Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary elections in early 2024 and tensions with China are likely to dominate campaigning.

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ECB facing high core inflation in the near term, Lagarde says

ECB facing high core inflation in the near term, Lagarde says By Reuters

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Economy 5 hours ago (Mar 05, 2023 12:05AM ET)

(C) Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Luxembourg’s Finance Minister Yuriko Backes and President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde talk during a Eurozone meeting in Brussels, Belgium, February 13, 2023. REUTERS/Johanna Geron

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Underlying inflation in the euro zone will stay high in the near term so a 50 basis point European Central Bank interest rate increase later this month is increasingly certain, ECB President Christine Lagarde told Spanish media group Vocento.

The ECB has already raised rates by 3 percentage points since July and essentially promised another half a percentage point increase on March 16 but investors have recently speculated on an even bigger move given poor inflation data.

Lagarde said the flagged increase is now “very very likely” but she also warned that underlying inflation, which filters out volatile food and fuel prices, could stay uncomfortably high even as the overall inflation rate drops in the coming months.

“In the short term, core inflation is going to be high,” Grupo Vocento quoted Lagarde as saying on Sunday.

Several policymakers have warned recently that ECB rate hikes need to continue until core inflation turns around and starts falling towards the ECB’s 2% target.

Underlying inflation rose to a record high 5.6% last month and some policymakers fear that the increase is now due to a surge in wages in the services sector, which makes price growth more durable and difficult to break.

“We must continue to take whatever measures are necessary to bring inflation back to 2%. And we will do so,” Lagarde said.

She added that the euro zone economy is holding up better than feared and output should accelerate from near stagnation in the closing quarter of 2022.

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Britain says Ukraine forces defending Bakhmut under increasingly severe pressure

Britain says Ukraine forces defending Bakhmut under increasingly severe pressure By Reuters

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World 3 hours ago (Mar 05, 2023 02:10AM ET)

(C) Reuters. A Ukrainian serviceman fires an automatic grenade launcher, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in the front line city of Bakhmut, in Donetsk region, Ukraine March 3, 2023. REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut are facing increasingly strong pressure from Russian forces, British military intelligence said on Saturday, with intense fighting taking place in and around the eastern city.

Ukraine is reinforcing the area with elite units, while regular Russian army and forces of the private military Wagner group have made further advances into Bakhmut’s northern suburbs, the British Defence Ministry said in its daily intelligence bulletin.

The Ukraine armed forces’ general staff said in a Facebook (NASDAQ:META) post late on Saturday that Russian troops were trying but failing to surround Bakhmut, adding defenders had repelled numerous attacks in and around the city.

The battle has raged for seven months. A Russian victory in the city, which had a pre-war population of about 70,000 and has been blasted to ruins in the onslaught, would give Moscow the first major prize in a costly winter offensive.

Oleh Zhdanov, a prominent Ukrainian analyst of military affairs, said late on Saturday that he could not detect any immediate signs Kyiv was going to order a retreat from the city.

“At the moment the situation is more or less stabilized. In terms of the advancement of Russian troops, we practically stopped (it),” he said in a YouTube interview.

The British defence ministry said two key bridges in Bakhmut have been destroyed within the last 36 hours, adding that Ukrainian-held resupply routes out of the city are increasingly limited.

One of those bridges connected Bakhmut to the city’s last main supply route from the Ukrainian-held town of Chasiv Yar, about 13 km (eight miles) to the west, it said.

Russian artillery pounded the last routes out of Bakhmut on Friday, aiming to complete the encirclement of the besieged city and bring Moscow closer to its first major victory in the war in six months.

The Ukrainian general staff also said Russian attacks had been foiled in the villages of Vasyukivka, Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Dubovo-Vasylivka and Hryhorivka, all of which lie just to the north of Bakhmut’s city centre.

Russia says Bakhmut would be a stepping stone to completing the capture of the Donbas industrial region, one of Moscow’s most important objectives.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has described Bakhmut as a “fortress”, on Saturday thanked defenders in the city in a video message but gave no details of the fighting.

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Syria mission worth the risk, top U.S. general says after rare visit

Syria mission worth the risk, top U.S. general says after rare visit By Reuters

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World 46 minutes ago (Mar 05, 2023 03:41AM ET)

(C) Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley speaks during a news conference with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (not pictured), on the day of the NATO defence ministers’ meeting at the Alliance’s headquarters in B

By Phil Stewart

NORTHEAST SYRIA (Reuters) -The nearly eight-year-old U.S. deployment to Syria to combat Islamic State is still worth the risk, the top U.S. military officer said on Saturday, after a rare, unannounced visit to a dusty base in the country’s northeast to meet U.S. troops.

Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew to Syria to assess efforts to prevent a resurgence of the militant group and review safeguards for American forces against attacks, including from drones flown by Iran-backed militia.

While Islamic State is a shadow of the group that ruled over a third of Syria and Iraq in a Caliphate declared in 2014, hundreds of fighters are still camped in desolate areas where neither the U.S.-led coalition nor the Syrian army, with support from Russia and Iranian-backed militias, exert full control.

Thousands of other Islamic State fighters are in detention facilities guarded by Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, America’s key ally in the country.

American officials say that Islamic State could still regenerate into a major threat.

But the mission, which former President Donald Trump nearly ended in 2018 before softening his withdrawal plans, is remnant of the larger global war against terrorism that had included once the war in Afghanistan and a far larger U.S. military deployment to Iraq.

Asked by reporters traveling with him if he believed the Syria deployment of roughly 900 U.S. troops to Syria was worth the risk, Milley tied the mission to the security of the United States and its allies, saying: “If you think that that’s important, then the answer is ‘Yes.'”

“I happen to think that’s important,” Milley said.

“So I think that an enduring defeat of ISIS and continuing to support our friends and allies in the region … I think those are important tasks that can be done.”

The mission carries risk. Four U.S. troops were wounded during a helicopter raid last month when an Islamic State leader triggered an explosion.

Last month, the U.S. military shot down an Iranian-made drone in Syria that was attempting to conduct reconnaissance on a patrol base in northeastern Syria.

Three drones targeted a U.S. base in January in Syria’s Al-Tanf region. The U.S. military said two of the drones were shot down while the remaining drone hit the compound, injuring two members of the Syrian Free Army forces.

U.S. officials believe drone and rocket attacks are being directed by Iran-backed militia, a reminder of the complex geopolitics of Syria where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad counts on support from Iran and Russia and sees U.S. troops as occupiers.

America’s NATO ally Turkey has also threatened a broad offensive in Syria that would threaten the U.S. military’s Syrian Kurdish partners, who Ankara views as terrorists.

U.S. Army Major General Matthew McFarlane, who commands the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, described attacks against U.S. forces as a “distraction from our main mission.”

McFarlane cited progress against Islamic State, including through the reduction in the numbers of internally displaced people at refugee camps — a pool of vulnerable people who could be recruited by Islamic State.

The al-Hol camp houses around more than 50,000 people, including Syrians, Iraqis and other nationals who fled the conflict, and McFarlane estimated around 600 babies were born there every year.

Lieutenant Kamal Alsawafy from the Michigan National Guard is one of the U.S. soldiers in Syria helping provide security for Iraqis leaving al-Hol to be repatriated back to Iraq in protected convoys.

The son of Iraqi refugees who emigrated to the United States, Alsawafy said helping Iraqi refugees brings him joy and described watching people at al-Hol cheering as Iraqis departed the camps for better lives back in Iraq.

“It’s a good feeling,” Alsawafy said.

McFarlane said he believed there would come a time when U.S. partners in Syria could manage on their own. But there is no publicly known target date to complete that transition.

“Over time, I do envision us transitioning when the conditions are met, where our partners can independently have a sustainable capacity and capability to keep ISIS in check,” he said.

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Russia’s war on Ukraine latest: Putin casts war as battle for nation’s survival

Russia’s war on Ukraine latest: Putin casts war as battle for nation’s survival By Reuters

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World 54 minutes ago (Mar 05, 2023 04:55AM ET)

(C) Reuters. Ukrainian service members ride a self-propelled howitzer, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, near the frontline city of Bakhmut, Ukraine February 27, 2023. REUTERS/Yevhen Titov

(Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin cast the confrontation with the West over the Ukraine war as an existential battle for the survival of Russia and the Russian people – and said he was forced to take into account NATO’s nuclear capabilities.

The European Union vowed to increase pressure on Moscow “until Ukraine is liberated” as it adopted a 10th package of sanctions on Russia on Saturday, a day after the first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.

FIGHTING

* Ukraine’s military said on Sunday that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine.

The village is near Bakhmut, where only about 5,000 of 70,000 residents remain and which has seen some of the bloodiest attritional fighting of Russia’s year-old invasion.

* Ukraine’s armed forces said Russia keeps concentrating its main efforts on conducting offensive actions along the Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Shakhtar parts of the frontline.

* Reuters could not verify the battlefield accounts.

DIPLOMACY AND SANCTIONS

* Russia’s senior diplomat to the United Nations accused the West on Sunday of “cowboy” methods and “arm twisting” of some countries during last week’s United Nations General Assembly vote demanding Moscow withdraw its troops from Ukraine.

* Finance chiefs of the world’s largest economies strongly condemned Moscow on Saturday for its war on Ukraine, with only China and Russia itself declining to sign a joint statement.

* French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday he will visit China in early April, in part to seek Chinese help with ending Russia’s invasion.

* The United States marked the anniversary of the invasion with $2 billion in weaponry for Kyiv and new sanctions against Russia aimed at undermining Moscow’s ability to wage war.

* Belarus, a small Russian ally bordering Ukraine, has as many as 1.5 million potential military personnel outside its armed forces, a senior official was quoted as saying on Saturday.

OIL

* Russia has halted supplies of oil to Poland via the Druzhba pipeline, Daniel Obajtek, chief executive officer of Polish refiner PKN Orlen, said on Saturday.

* Ukraine plans no more outages to ration electricity if there are no new Russian strikes and has been able to amass some power reserves, the energy minister said on Saturday, after months of interruptions caused by bombings.

ANNIVERSARY

* TIMELINE- Major developments since Russia’s invasion

* Ukraine’s Zelenskiy has defied Putin against the odds

* Putin, secure in power, has set the stage for long war

* A year on, Ukraine and its government have not just survived. They’ve fought back

* Toughened by war’s scars, Kyiv presses on

* Graphics of a year of war in the markets: How the dollar, energy and food prices swirled

* Russian economy holds up but the road back to prosperity may be long

* Moscow’s decades-old gas ties with Europe lie in ruins

* Top brands pull out of Russia, but goods easy to find

* Can U.S. support for Ukraine last?

* External backers pour billions into Ukraine

* How has China stood by ‘no limits’ partner Russia?

* A year into war, older refugees running out of hope

* Life and death in Mariupol – a survivor’s tale of war

* Family mourns Bucha victim who became symbol of war

PODCAST

Learn more about the Ukraine war. Listen to a special episode of the Reuters World News Podcast.

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Turkey’s opposition bloc renews commitment to principles after split

Turkey’s opposition bloc renews commitment to principles after split By Reuters

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World 1 hour ago (Mar 04, 2023 03:10PM ET)

(C) Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu addresses his supporters during a rally to oppose the conviction and political ban of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a popular rival to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, th

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -The five remaining leaders of Turkey’s opposition alliance renewed their commitment to its original principles on Saturday after one of the group’s main members quit in disagreement over the candidate for presidential elections in May.

“The alliance is determined to continue its work in the same direction, in line with its foundation principles and objectives,” the five said in a statement after holding a five-hour meeting.

The public split on Friday in the alliance of opposition parties followed months of simmering discord in the group, and was seen by analysts as a blow to opposition hopes of unseating President Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in power for two decades.

Meral Aksener, leader of the centre-right nationalist IYI Party, the second-biggest in the alliance, announced on Friday the party was leaving the bloc.

She said that at a presidential candidate selection meeting this week, five parties in the alliance proposed Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), as their candidate.

Aksener accused members of the alliance of pressuring her party and defying the people’s will, adding that she proposed Mansur Yavas and Ekrem Imamoglu, CHP mayors of capital Ankara and Istanbul respectively, as candidates.

The CHP has the largest voter base in the alliance.

Kilicdaroglu has said there is no room for political games in the alliance and signalled that more parties could join the bloc.

Erdogan said his ruling AK Party and its nationalist ally MHP will continue on their planned course and dismissed the opposition split, according to state-owned TRT Haber.

Opposition leaders said they will announce their joint candidate to challenge Erdogan on March 6.

Erdogan’s popularity had been dipping amid a cost of living crisis even before last month’s earthquakes that killed more than 45,000 people. However, analysts have said the opposition disagreement benefited the ruling alliance.

“The best hope for the crisis-struck opposition now is to keep Erdogan under 50% in the first round (of voting) and show unity in the second round,” said Erdem Aydin, founder of London-based RDM Advisory.

“As things stand both IYI and CHP showed poor leadership and communications which culminated in a crisis … Nobody wins in this scenario, except for Erdogan,” Aydin added.

Separately, Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a key actor in the bid to defeat Erdogan on May 14, called on the opposition to unite around democracy, justice and freedom.

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Natural gas closes above $3 first time since late January

Natural gas closes above $3 first time since late January By Investing.com

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Commodities 23 hours ago (Mar 03, 2023 03:44PM ET)

By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com — In markets’ antithesis to Newton’s Law, what goes down must come up. Natural gas futures are doing just that, rising 23% on the week to return to the critical $3 pricing after a 2- 1/2 -month long selloff that took the market to $1 territory.

The most-active April gas contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Henry Hub settled at $3.0090 per mmBtu, or metric million British thermal units, up 24.4 cents, or 9% on the day. For the week, it rose 55.8 cents.

It was also the first time since Jan. 24 that a front-month contract on the Henry Hub settled above the $3 mark, after gas futures lost the $2 perch amid intense selling sparked by an abnormally warm winter.

The rebound in gas prices comes on the back of late winter chills expected across the United States, which has less than three weeks left before the official start of spring.

“Weather forecasts shifted cooler from yesterday with the middle of March forecast expected to be around 10 degrees cooler than the 10-year normal,” Houston-based energy markets advisory Gelber & Associates said in a note on natural gas issued Friday.

“The week ending March 17th is expected to be the coolest since early February,” the note added.

Technically, April gas’ next major upside target would be $3.55, said Sunil Kumar Dixit, chief technical strategist at SKCharting.com.

“If the current momentum gains enough trigger, we can expect further upside towards $3.18, followed by $3.31 and $3.55, over an extended period of time,” said Dixit.

Some have warned, however, that the market should brace itself for volatility as there was still too much gas supply in storage to warrant any concerns of squeeze from demand to sustain a long-running price outbreak.

Storage of natural gas stood at a total 2.114 tcf, or trillion cubic feet, as of Feb. 24 — up 27% from the year-ago level of 1.66 tcf and 19% higher than the five-year average of 1.77 tcf, the EIA, or Energy Information Administration, reported.

An unusually warm winter has led to considerably less heating demand in the United States this year, leaving more gas in storage than initially thought.

Responding to the warmth and lackluster storage draws, gas prices plunged from a 14-year high of $10 per mmBtu in August, reaching $7 in December before hitting a 2- 1/2 year bottom of $1.967 last week.

Since then, the market has rebounded on an anticipated rise in U.S. heating demand over the next two weeks from colder-than-normal weather conditions.

Daily production of gas has also fallen to 97.5 bcf, or billion cubic feet per, from highs of over 100 bcf per day.

Another upside for gas bulls has been the improving feed demand for liquefied natural gas with a steady pickup in volumes going into the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas, which has been slowly getting back to normal operations after a fire in June. Freeport had been a rock-solid base of 2 bcf of gas demand a day until it was knocked out.

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Before fatal collapse, Turkish building had skirted code thanks to Erdogan policy

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(C) Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A general view of Malatya, Turkey February 23, 2023, in this screen grab taken from a video. REUTERS/Natalie Thomas
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By David Gauthier-Villars and Natalie Thomas

MALATYA, Turkey (Reuters) – The Trend Garden Residence, an upscale serviced apartment building in the Turkish city of Malatya, boasted a gym, freshly-furnished rooms and a roof-top cafeteria.

But when a powerful earthquake jolted the city in the early hours of Feb. 6, the seven-floored building disintegrated, killing 29 people, according to two government officials. It was as if the structure had “liquefied,” one survivor said.

Beneath its colourful facade, the building had been extensively remodelled a few years ago without the necessary permits, but was later registered thanks to a 2018 zoning amnesty promulgated by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to a Reuters review of municipal and amnesty documents, architects drawings and interviews with six people familiar with the Trend Garden’s history.

Erdogan at the time said the amnesty, which was first granted to building owners ahead of his 2018 re-election, was aimed at resolving conflicts between citizens and the state over millions of buildings “constructed in violation of urban planning.”

Now, the wrecked Trend Garden is the subject of a criminal investigation to determine responsibility for its collapse. Local prosecutors have arrested at least three people connected to the building on preliminary charges of causing death by negligence, according to the two government officials who asked not to be named. The officials said the investigation would consider all aspects of the building’s life.

As focus in Turkey intensifies on how poor construction may have contributed to the devastation caused by the earthquake, the deadliest natural disaster in the country’s modern history, authorities have pledged to identify culprits. More than 230 people have been arrested, including building contractors and developers, the government said.

The earthquake has left more than 50,000 people dead in Turkey and Syria, and aftershocks continue to rock the region. The Trend Garden was one of the more than 200,000 buildings that Turkish authorities say collapsed or are in urgent need of demolition in the regions shredded by the earthquake. A further earthquake on Monday caused more buildings in Malatya to collapse.

The Turkish presidency’s communications directorate and the urbanisation ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment, including on the amnesty and whether the policy contributed to the devastation triggered by the earthquake. Erdogan, who has led Turkey since 2003, said following the disaster that building standards have improved under his watch.

Among those arrested as part of the Trend Garden probe is Engin Aslan, according to the government officials. Corporate records show he is the majority owner of a Turkish company that, according to land registration documents, owns the building. Contacted by Reuters via an employee of the apartment building’s management prior to being arrested, Aslan said he wouldn’t speak to the news agency because he was mourning the loss of his brother who was killed in the Trend Garden’s collapse.

A lawyer for Aslan, Muhammet Karadogan, declined to comment.

Architects and civil engineers said it was too early to determine whether the building’s remodelling, which involved dividing 12 apartments into 42 smaller units and transforming the attic into a full-fledged seventh floor, contributed to the collapse.

But they said the amnesty law raises fundamental problems because it has fostered a reckless culture in the construction business in a country that sits on major fault lines and faces well-identified earthquake risks.

Under the amnesty, owners could legalise unregistered buildings by filing an electronic application and paying a tax. Detailed guidance issued by the urbanisation ministry, which oversaw the process, makes no mention of a requirement for independent assessment. However, the law stipulates that the owner is responsible for ensuring the building is earthquake resistant.

“That law is nonsensical,” said Erol Erdal, a member of the Malatya branch of Turkey’s Chamber of Civil Engineers. “The government and the laws are meant to protect people, not put them in harm’s way.”

Malatya Mayor Selahattin Gurkan declined to comment on the Trend Garden’s collapse, citing the ongoing probe, but told Reuters that authorities needed to learn lessons from the earthquake. Asked if regularising illegal buildings might have caused safety hazards, the mayor – a member of Erdogan’s ruling AK Party (AKP) – said “the zoning amnesty wasn’t the correct approach.”

FAMILY TRAGEDY

Among those killed in the Trend Garden’s collapse were four members of Fatma Zehra Gorgulu’s family – her three children and one of her sisters.

Sitting by a fire near the wrecked building amid freezing temperature for a sixth day after the earthquake, Gorgulu remained silent and appeared transfixed, as rescue teams combed the rubble and she waited for news.

Feyza Yilmaz, a third sister, had come to Malatya to help her sibling following the disaster. Yilmaz explained the family had rented a room at the Trend Garden because it was close to a hospital where one of Gorgulu’s children needed to undergo treatment for a rare condition and she also had scheduled surgery. When the earthquake struck, Gorgulu was at the hospital while her daughter and two sons were being looked after by the other sister at the residence.

Yilmaz, a 32-year old lawyer, said she wanted to understand how a modern, sturdy-looking building could crumble like a house of cards.

“I want to know who is responsible for this,” she said.

The following day, the four bodies were recovered, according to rescuers.

‘PROBLEMATIC BUILDINGS’

The Trend Garden building – and the 2018 zoning amnesty law – are emblematic of what some architects and civil engineers say is Turkey’s failure to impose stringent antiseismic regulations under Erdogan, as the country’s population of 85 million continued shifting to urban centres.

Ahead of 2018 presidential elections and municipal ones in 2019, Erdogan hailed the zoning amnesty as “a gesture of compassion” towards Turkish citizens confronted with a finicky administration. Addressing an AKP rally in Malatya in March 2019, the president told supporters that thanks to the policy “the problems of 88,507 Malatya citizens have been resolved,” according to a video of his speech.

Turkish authorities extended the amnesty several times. The move has generated billions of dollars for state coffers, according to the government. More than 3 million households and companies obtained their deeds as a result, the government said in October last year.

That same month, an Erdogan ally, the Great Unity Party’s leader Mustafa Destici, proposed reviving the measure ahead of this year’s presidential elections in order to help others. Destici didn’t respond to a request for comment relayed via a spokesperson on whether he continued to support the proposal.

In 2019, after a building in Istanbul that had benefited from the zoning amnesty collapsed, causing 21 deaths, the government vowed to accelerate a plan to demolish and replace Turkey’s most dangerous buildings. At the time, the government said about a third of the country’s 20 million properties raised safety concerns and required action.

But Turkish authorities neglected the issue, according to Eyup Muhcu, head of Turkey’s Chamber of Architects. Instead, the government focused on construction in new areas, “abandoning problematic buildings to their fate,” he said.

The urbanisation ministry also didn’t respond to questions about how it dealt with problematic buildings and how many of the recently collapsed buildings had benefited from the amnesty.

DEVELOPMENT PACT

The Trend Garden’s building was constructed more than two decades ago, in the late 1990s, following a typical Turkish real-estate pact where one party contributes the land and another takes charge of construction, while the two divvy up the units.

Bahattin Dogan, a building contractor from Malatya who is in his 70s, told Reuters that he did the construction. Bulent Yeroglu said his family brought the land. A 59-year-old civil engineer, Yeroglu said he also took responsibility for designing the building’s structure with steel reinforced concrete for the frame, and bricks for the infills.

Both men said they had followed all applicable rules and took no shortcuts. Reuters wasn’t able to independently corroborate that.

Architects drawings of the original structure and building permits dated 1996 and later seen by Reuters, as well as a satellite image from 2010, show the building had initially consisted of a ground floor with commercial space, and 12 apartments on six stories above plus an attic.

Presented with the drawings, one forensic engineering specialist, Eduardo Fierro of California-based BFP Engineers, said the building appeared to have “a reasonably well-engineered frame.” Fierro said, however, that it had a so-called “soft story” or inherent weakness on the ground level, with a higher ceiling and fewer walls or partitions to accommodate the commercial area. He, and several other specialists consulted by Reuters, agreed that determining whether remodelling played a role in the building’s collapse wasn’t possible without more information. Reuters had no evidence that the remodelling was a factor in the catastrophe.

Yeroglu said he got the commercial area and that he had split it into two spaces over a decade ago, selling them to two pharmacists. Both pharmacists told Reuters they acquired the commercial space after it was divided and didn’t make any changes to the building.

Building contractor Dogan, who got the 12 apartments, said he sold them in mid 2018 to Aslan, one of the individuals the government officials said had been arrested.

Reuters couldn’t determine if Aslan or someone else took responsibility for the remodelling into 42 units because the building’s ownership kept evolving around the time it happened.

A municipal official said the remodelling was done without applying for permission, which he and other local buildings specialists said should have been sought for such a transformation. “There is no trace of an application,” the official said after consulting building records in Malatya’s Yesilyurt district.

If an application had been made, the official added, it would likely have been rejected because the municipality is generally opposed to allowing remodelling of older buildings that have “tired” structures.

A spokesperson for the Yesilyurt district municipality, where Trend Garden was located, declined to comment about the building’s registration history.

What is clear is that the urbanisation ministry issued amnesty decisions in December 2019 “on the basis of information provided by the applicant” for 42 apartments at the address of the Trend Garden, according to 42 amnesty documents seen by Reuters.

Land registry documents reviewed by Reuters show that a Malatya-based company called Trend Yurt used the amnesty decisions to obtain the building’s deed in November 2020.

Aslan has been Trend Yurt’s majority owner and manager since March 2020, according to corporate records.

The two government officials said those arrested also included Sefa Gulfirat, who founded Trend Yurt in 2018, corporate records show, and Yeroglu, the civil engineer who designed the building’s structure.

Speaking to Reuters before his arrest, Yeroglu said he believed the building collapsed because its structure was damaged during the remodelling.

A lawyer who represented him when he was arrested, Ozgur Akkas, said Yeroglu would contest that he caused death by negligence on the grounds that his responsibility as a civil engineer had elapsed. Contacted by Reuters, one of Yeroglu’s relatives rejected the notion that the building had an inherent weakness, saying the civil engineer had designed the structure carefully, including the commercial area.

Aslan’s lawyer Karadogan is also representing Gulfirat. The lawyer also declined to comment on Gulfirat’s behalf.

Following further refurbishment, the attic became a seventh floor with a cafeteria and the serviced apartments opened in late 2021, according to Anil Ozhan, whose family owns a pharmacy in one of the commercial spaces on the ground floor, and other locals. A photo posted online by the Trend Garden Residence in late 2021 shows the building following these refurbishments, including blue and ochre trims, emblazoned with the company’s name and a full-height, glass-fronted seventh floor.

Ozhan said he was aware the building had benefited from the zoning amnesty but the pharmacist believed the remodelling had been thoroughly assessed before the amnesty was granted. “I’d be mad if I heard it wasn’t,” he said.

‘I THOUGHT I WAS DEAD’

At 4.17am on Feb. 6, the snow-covered ground around the Trend Garden began shaking violently, according to footage captured by closed circuit television.

Onur Gencler, a manager at a construction company, was sleeping on the sixth floor. When he understood what was happening, he pulled two beds close together and laid between them wrapped in comforters after grabbing his cellphone.

The building shook for a long minute, he said, and then collapsed in a matter of seconds, plunging him in darkness.

“I thought I was dead,” Gencler said. “It’s only when I turned on my phone and saw the picture of my wife and son, that I understood I was alive.”

About 90 minutes later, his boss Mehmet Kaya and colleagues who had rushed to the site pulled Gencler from under a slab of concrete with minor injuries.

After six hours of searching under heavy snow fall, Kaya said they found his 34-year-old cousin Fatma, who was also staying at the serviced apartment building.

She was dead.

Main News

Fed’s Daly: tighter policy, for a longer time, ‘likely’ needed

Fed’s Daly: tighter policy, for a longer time, ‘likely’ needed By Reuters

Breaking News

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Economy 4 hours ago (Mar 04, 2023 01:15PM ET)

(C) Reuters. FILE PHOTO: San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly poses at the bank’s headquarters in San Francisco, California, U.S., July 16, 2019. REUTERS/Ann Saphir/File Photo

(Reuters) – San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly on Saturday sounded a clear warning on the inflationary threat, and signaled that the U.S. central bank may raise interest rates further, and keep them there longer, than has been expected.

Though inflation by the Fed’s preferred measure has fallen from its mid-2022 highs of around 7% to 5.4% in January, the latest monthly reading showed price pressures gaining at their fastest pace in seven months.

That’s despite what last year was the Fed’s most aggressive set of interest rate hikes in 40 years as it took its benchmark rate from near zero in March to what is now 4.5%-4.75%.

The acceleration of inflation in January “suggests that the disinflation momentum we need is far from certain,” Daly said in remarks prepared for delivery to the Princeton Economic Policy Symposium. “In order to put this episode of high inflation behind us, further policy tightening, maintained for a longer time, will likely be necessary.”

Coming from Daly, whose views are typically in line with Fed leadership, the remarks may add to expectations that Fed policymakers will lift rates higher in coming months than the 5.1% that most of them had penciled in December.

Fed policymakers will publish fresh projections for policy and the economy at the close of their upcoming March 21-22 meeting.

Some traders are even betting the Fed will deliver a half-point hike in March, rather than the quarter-of-a-percentage point rate hike seen as most likely – a reversion of sorts to the super-aggressive stance the U.S. central bank pursued much of last year.

Daly did not use her prepared remarks to offer a view on how big March’s rate hike ought to be, or exactly how high rates should go.

Still, she painted a challenging picture for the Fed, not only of stubbornly high inflation now, but of the range of new pressures that could feed into high inflation for some time to come, including corporate efforts to relocate factory production back to the U.S. from abroad, and the ongoing labor shortage at home.

She also called out the potential for additional price pressures as firms pass on to consumers the cost of transitioning to lower-carbon energy sources in the fight against climate change.

And she said that she was particularly focused on the possibility – so far not in evidence – that an inflationary psychology could take hold in the American mind and make the Fed’s inflation fight even harder.

“Achieving our mandated goals takes time and a broader view,” she said. “As policymakers, we have to respond to an economy that is evolving in real time and prepare for what the economy will look like in the future.”

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