Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s move to effectively halve food rations to the poor ahead of state polls next year and a general election in 2024 is fiscally sound, but politically much depends on whether the charismatic leader can sell it to voters.

Subsidised food and other items are key to winning elections in India, where food aid is a legal right and more than 800 million people received an extra 5 kg of free rice or wheat a month in the last 28 months as COVID-19 ravaged their finances.

The free food programme, however, cost the government around $47 billion, worsened the fiscal deficit and reduced wheat stocks in government warehouses to multi-year lows.

From January India will end the additional 5 kg per person of food aid issued during the COVID-19 pandemic and for one year will issue 5 kg of free food each month, but reducing populist measures ahead of elections is risky.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a record-breaking victory in his home state Gujarat this month and is widely expected to win the next general election. Analysts say that reality gives him a freer hand to impose fiscal discipline.

“It’s actually, to my mind, quite clever politics, under the circumstances of fiscal constraints,” Yamini Aiyar, head of New Delhi think-tank Centre for Policy Research, said of the decision to reduce the food programme.

The government expects to save nearly $20 billion a year by ending the COVID free food scheme.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the budget for the next fiscal year on Feb. 1. One government source said the move to end the COVID-era free food programme would reduce the government’s subsidy burden by about 30% next fiscal year and help it rein in the fiscal deficit faster than anticipated.

The government’s subsidy bill on three major items including food and fertiliser is likely to fall to under 4 trillion rupees ($48 billion) the next fiscal year, the source said, from nearly 5.5 trillion rupees in the current fiscal year that ends on March 31.

The official added that the fiscal deficit target for 2023/24 would be lower by at least 50 basis points from 6.4% this fiscal.

Some economists had wanted the food programme gone months ago as COVID curbs eased. The government said last week that the programme would end in December, replaced by subsidised food under a pre-COVID law which will become free for one year.

India’s poor are guaranteed food under a decade-old law that enshrines it as a right.

“Reduction of effective food allocation per person from 10 kg to 5 kg is clearly non-populist,” said Subhash Chandra Garg, who retired as India’s finance secretary three years ago.

“But, this additional food allowance was clearly not required for meeting the calorific requirement. Therefore, if you can sell the idea that poor people will be getting what is required for meeting their true food needs, i.e. 5 kg per person free of cost, possibly the negative effect can be neutralised.”

Modi is known to be a master of communicating the message he wants to send voters and is helped by the fact that there is no obvious challenger to him in the country, said Yashwant Deshmukh, founder of polling agency CVoter Foundation.

Modi’s approval rating is about 60%, compared with about 20% for his nearest competitor, Rahul Gandhi of the main opposition Congress party, CVoter data shows.

“I think Modi has been carrying out the majority of his decisions thanks to his trustworthiness and popularity,” CVoter founder Yashwant Deshmukh said, referring to moves like banning high-value currencies in 2016 that caused widespread distress but he still won many elections easily after that.

“It’s because people do not doubt his intention. Had the trust not been there, and for any other leader, it would have been difficult to end such a food programme ahead of elections.”

But senior BJP leader and former minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the decision to reduce food aid should not be linked to elections or politics.

“This started when COVID was there. In Narendra Modi’s government, inclusion and empowerment of poor are important elements,” he said.

Elections are due in nine states in 2023 before the national poll a year later. In the last general election, a free housing and cooking gas for the poor programme helped the BJP trounce Congress.

Changes to the food handout will mean the government’s total subsidies on food, fertiliser and fuel will come down by 30% to under 4 trillion rupees ($48.27 billion) next fiscal year, two government sources said.

One of the sources expect the government to reduce the fiscal deficit by at least 50 basis points to 5.9% of GDP in the fiscal year starting April 1. The second one said the food subsidy could fall to around 2 trillion rupees next fiscal year from nearly 3.2 trillion in the current year.

Pronab Sen, formerly India’s chief statistician, said that had the COVID food programme been extended, government warehouses would have run out of grain closer to the general election.

“It would have been much more damaging to have to stop it in 2024,” Sen said.

(This story has been corrected to say that extra grain handouts were monthly in paragraph 2 and 4)

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In this handout photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., pose for a photo in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, May 14, 2022.

Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the US last week to shore up support for Ukraine.
• Zelenskyy called McConnell one day before the visit, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
• Zelenskyy urged McConnell to support a measure that ultimately passed Congress, the outlet reported.

Following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s historic visit to the US last week, Congress passed a provision to give Ukraine the assets that were seized from sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

The approval of the measure may have had something to do with a secret phone call between Zelenskyy and Sen. Mitch McConnell, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The outlet reported Thursday that the Ukrainian president called the Senate minority leader one day before his White House visit and address to Congress.

Three unnamed sources told the Post-Gazette about the call, in which Zelenskyy attempted to persuade McConnell that proceeds from the oligarchs’ seized assets, including superyachts and mansions, should be used to help Ukraine rebuild from the devastation of the war.

The provision ultimately passed as an amendment to the $1.7 trillion bipartisan spending bill that passed the Senate in a 68-29 vote on December 22, and passed the House the following day. The bill also included $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine.

President Joe Biden signed the bill into law Thursday evening. 

During Zelenskyy’s visit the US also announced an additional $1.85 billion in military assistance to Ukraine.

The US has frozen or seized billions of dollars worth of assets belonging to sanctioned Russian oligarchs since the invasion was launched in February. The US was limited in how it could use those assets, though President Joe Biden as early as April floated a plan to sell those assets to help Ukraine.

Representatives for McConnell and Zelenskyy did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

New York topped a list of places where prime residential rents have risen.

Alexander Spatari/Getty Images

• Luxury rents rose 10.2% across 10 cities in the third quarter of 2022 from a year ago.
• Rents in New York, Singapore, and London round up the top three cities where rents have risen the fastest.
• Rents were driven by interest rate hikes and strong demand following the easing of pandemic restrictions.

Kimberly Guilfoyle gives an address to the Republican National Convention on August 24, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Kimberly Guilfoyle compared two female GOP organizers to the teenage girls in “Mean Girls.”
• The exchange appeared in Guilfoyle’s January 6 witness testimony before the House panel.
• Guilfoyle added that one of the women, whom she called a friend, often got on her nerves. 

Kimberly Guilfoyle, fiancée to Donald Trump Jr. and a former Trump 2020 campaign advisor, compared two female GOP organizers, one of whom she said was her friend, to the catty teenage girls at the center of the 2004 satirical comedy “Mean Girls” in her January 6 testimony.

The House Select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack continues to release a trove of witness testimony transcripts following the publication of the panel’s final 845-page report. The committee’s Thursday document dump included Guilfoyle’s testimony, along with 18 others. 

Guilfoyle’s “Mean Girls” reference came about a third of the way through her testimony as lawmakers zeroed in on a series of text messages between Guilfoyle and Katrina Pierson, a GOP operative, according to ProPublica, who served as White House liaison for the January 6 rally that preceded the deadly insurrection. 

In the text messages, which were first reported on by ProPublica in November 2021, Guilfoyle was pushing to secure more right-wing speakers for the “Stop the Steal” rally, while boasting about raising $3 million for the event. The outlet at the time called the texts the most direct evidence yet that members of the Trump family circle were involved in financing and organizing the rally.

A lawyer for Guilfoyle denied his client’s involvement in a statement to the publication at the time, and Guilfoyle herself echoed that denial in her January 6 interview, saying she didn’t have “anything to do” with raising money for the event, explaining that the $3 million in question had actually been given by a major donor and characterizing her own texts as “embellishment.”

Guilfoyle flexed her supposed fundraising contributions in the original messages after she learned she might not be allowed to speak onstage at the event, according to ProPublica and the Jan. 6 witness transcript. Her objection came amid an apparent “turf war” between Pierson and Caroline Wren, a former deputy to Guilfoyle, per ProPublica, over the speaking list for the rally, which both women were working on, Guilfoyle told lawmakers.

“They were both complaining about each other,” Guilfoyle testified. “To everyone. Like, everyone knows they were fighting back and forth.”

Guilfoyle told the committee that Pierson and Wren’s arguing was generally unpleasant to be around.

“Think of it like, you know, turf wars and two girls arguing over who’s running this,” Guilfoyle explained. 

Neither Pierson nor Wren responded to Insider’s request for comment via personal website and Linkedin, respectively.

When someone in the room asked Guilfoyle to confirm whether people in the inner circle were “very gossipy,” she concurred.

“Yeah,” she said. “Like ‘Mean Girls.'”

Minutes later, Guilfoyle told the committee she considered Wren a friend, though she couched her explanation of their relationship.

“I would say we’re friends, yes,” she said. “I’d say that, you know, she knows she frustrates me on a regular often occasion.”

“She gets on my nerves, she knows it,” Guilfoyle added.

The Royal Caribbean International’s Explorer of the Seas is docked at Charlotte Amalie Harbor in St. Thomas, U. S. Virgin Islands, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2014.

Thomas Layer/Associated Press

• The teachers from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, were among thousands to have Southwest flights canceled.
• Marcus and Andrea Grasenick said they missed their honeymoon cruise after a canceled flight.
• Southwest canceled more flights than any other airline after storms hit the US over Christmas.

Two teachers from Wisconsin were all set to take off for their dream honeymoon cruise the day after Christmas, but after Southwest Airlines canceled thousands of flights, the couple found themselves back at home the following day and out $4,000.

Marcus and Andrea Grasenick of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, told local outlet TMJ4 that they flew to Nashville on Monday where they waited for word on their connecting Southwest flight. After hours passed without knowing whether or not the flight would depart, they were told it was canceled and their luggage could not immediately be retrieved and returned to them.

They made it home to Wisconsin a day later, without their luggage, after flying home on a different airline.

“This is the only break we have in common, so we can’t even go a different time and make it up, because this is the only one. This is the one shot we had,” Andrea Grasenick told TMJ4.

“It’s time, and you can’t give that time back,” she said, adding it would be great if they could get back the $4,000 spent on the cruise.

“If you could do that, great. But, the memories that we were going to make with each other and with our friends, that’s not something that you can put a price tag on,” she said.

The couple also told the outlet they had been met with “radio silence” from Southwest and that they would hesitate before choosing the airline in the future.

The Grasenicks were among thousands of Americans who experienced flight cancellations after Southwest had an operational meltdown this week. Thousands of flights across airlines were canceled after severe winter storms struck over Christmas weekend, but Southwest passengers saw the worst of it.

Southwest canceled more than 2,900 flights on Monday, accounting for around half of all canceled flights throughout the world that day. The cancellations accounted for 70% of Southwest’s total trips planned for that day, according to FlightAware. The disruptions rippled throughout the travel industry, causing rental car shortages and higher flight prices.

When reached for comment, a Southwest spokesperson directed Insider to their latest updates page and noted that the company plans to return to normal operations on Friday. The spokesperson also said Southwest customers can rebook travel, request a refund, and report missing luggage through a travel disruptions portal on their site.

Other travelers also reported missing their cruise ship departures after canceled flights. One cruise ship, the Carnival Celebration, even delayed its departure slightly on Tuesday to give some passengers more time to make it, according to the blog Cruise Hive. Hundreds of guests still missed the boat.

Have a news tip or a travel story to share? Contact this reporter at kvlamis@insider.com.

It is quickly approaching the end of the year.

People are making New Year’s resolutions. Many are figuring out their new years eve plans. And some are hosting contests.

That’s right. All over, I see contests.They are everywhere.

So in the spirit of light stories here is a contest — for the worst republican (or person who pretends to be in the middle but is not) of all in 2022.

The catch is that Donald Trump is not among the nominees because we all know he’d win — hands down.

So as the year comes to a close, let us take a look at the bad, the worse, and the most awful of republican sleaze. And please remember to vote for your pick. Here are the nominees.

1.) Matt Gaetz. From (allegedly) sleeping with prostitutes to endlessly defending Trump to using the lamest hair gel I’ve ever seen, there can be no doubt that Gaetz most certainly deserves a place on our list of nominees.

2.) George Santos. The guy got elected, and he hasn’t even been seated yet! Gotta hand it to Santos, for truly being among the worst.

3.) Ginni Thomas — a suspected insurrectionist with a smirk that could freeze icebergs, never let it be said we’ve forgotten about you, Ginny.

4.) Tucker Carlson. From taking Putin’s side against Ukraine to griping about — well — everything — Tucker is one big shiny bad seed infant in an adult body, and why not reward him by voting him the worst of all?

5.) The Extreme Court. That’s right. All the sick six as I call them. They overturned Roe. That deserves a spot on our worst list.

6.) Greg Abbott. He is my pick. There is nothing absolutely nothing crueler than what the sociopath did on Christmas Eve.

7.) Samuel Alito. He is the only supreme court justice to earn his own spot. But what does a man who quotes ancient witch judges expect?

8) Kari Lake. A walking, (sometimes) talking human caricature, Lake should quit politics and become an actress. Perhaps starring in a few stalker movies could be her next gig. Anyway, she has earned a spot. But is she the worst of the worst?

9) Josh Hawley. Hawley’s run-like-hell video cannot be forgotten and certainly places him high on the list of contemptible people.

10) Elon Musk. Oh yes, he must be included. Not many people are awful enough to drive thousands off Twitter, lose their place as the wealthiest person in the world and somehow still think they’re doing a good job. Perhaps he should have his own place on a list of the most delusional people.

So there you are! Choose and choose wisely, people. And above all, have fun with it.

The post The very worst political figure of 2022 appeared first on Palmer Report.

Chinese state-media said COVID testing requirements imposed by several places around the world in response to a surging wave of infections were “discriminatory”, in the clearest pushback yet against restrictions that are slowing down its re-opening.

Having kept its borders all but shut for three years, imposing a strict regime of lockdowns and relentless testing, China abruptly reversed course toward living with the virus on Dec. 7, and a wave of infections erupted across the country.

Some places have been taken aback by the scale of China’s outbreak and expressed scepticism over Beijing’s COVID statistics, with the United States, South Korea, India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan imposing COVID tests for travellers from China.

“The real intention is to sabotage China’s three years of COVID-19 control efforts and attack the country’s system,” state-run tabloid Global Times said in an article late on Thursday, calling the restrictions “unfounded” and “discriminatory.”

China will stop requiring inbound travellers to go into quarantine from Jan. 8. But it will still demand a negative PCR test result within 48 hours before departure.

Italy on Thursday urged the rest of the European Union to follow its lead, but France, Germany and Portugal have said they saw no need for new travel restrictions, while Austria has stressed the economic benefits of Chinese tourists’ return to Europe.

Global spending by Chinese visitors was worth more than $250 billion a year before the pandemic.

The United States have raised concerns about potential mutations of the virus as it sweeps through the world’s most populous country, as well as over China’s data transparency.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention is considering sampling wastewater from international aircraft to track any emerging new variants, the agency told Reuters.

China, a country of 1.4 billion people, reported one new COVID death for Thursday, same as the day before – numbers which do not match the experience of other countries after they re-opened.

China’s official death toll of 5,247 since the pandemic began compares with more than 1 million deaths in the United States. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million, has reported more than 11,000 deaths.

UK-based health data firm Airfinity said on Thursday around 9,000 people in China are probably dying each day from COVID. Cumulative deaths in China since Dec. 1 have likely reached 100,000, with infections totalling 18.6 million, it said.

Airfinity expects China’s COVID infections to reach their first peak on Jan. 13, with 3.7 million cases a day.

China’s chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou said on Thursday that a team at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention plans to assess fatalities differently.

The team will measure the difference between the number of deaths in the current wave of infections and the number of deaths expected had the epidemic never happened. By calculating the “excess mortality”, China will be able to work out what could have been potentially underestimated, Wu said.

China has said it only counts deaths of COVID patients caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure as COVID-related.

The relatively low death count is also inconsistent with the surging demand reported by funeral parlours in several Chinese cities.

The lifting of restrictions, after widespread protests against them in November, has overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes across the country, with scenes of people on intravenous drips by the roadside and lines of hearses outside crematoria fuelling public concern.

Health experts say China has been caught ill-prepared by the abrupt U-turn in policies long championed by President Xi Jinping. In December, tenders put out by hospitals for key medical equipment such as ventilators and patient monitors were two to three times higher than in previous months, according to a Reuters review，suggesting hospitals across the country were scrambling to plug shortages.

Places around the world are imposing or considering curbs on travellers from China amid a COVID-19 surge there after authorities relaxed “zero-COVID” rules.

They cite a lack of information from China on variants and are concerned about a wave of infections. China has rejected criticism of its COVID data and said it expects future mutations to be potentially more transmissible but less severe.

Below is a list of new regulations for travellers from China.

UNITED STATES

The United States will impose mandatory COVID-19 tests on travellers from China beginning on Jan. 5. All air passengers 2 and older will require a negative result from a test no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macau. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said Americans should also reconsider travel to China, Hong Kong and Macau.

The country has mandated a COVID-19 negative test report for travellers arriving from China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand, the health minister said. Passengers from those countries will be quarantined if they show symptoms or test positive.

Japan will require a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival for travellers from mainland China. Those who test positive will be required to quarantine for seven days. New border measures for China will go into effect at midnight on Dec. 30. The government will also limit requests from airlines to increase flights to China.

Italy has ordered COVID-19 antigen swabs and virus sequencing for all travellers coming from China. Milan’s main airport, Malpensa, had already started testing passengers arriving from Beijing and Shanghai. “The measure is essential to ensure surveillance and detection of possible variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population”, Health Minister Orazio Schillaci said.

Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Centre said all passengers on direct flights from China, as well as by boat at two offshore islands, will have to take PCR tests upon arrival, starting on Jan. 1.

South Korea will require travellers from China to provide negative COVID test results before departure, South Korea’s News1 news agency reported on Friday, after Beijing’s decision to lift stringent zero-COVID policies.

AUSTRALIA

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia was continuing to monitor the situation in respect of China “as we continue to monitor the impact of COVID here in Australia as well as around the world.”

The Southeast Asian country is being “very cautious” and could impose measures such as testing requirements on visitors from China, but not an outright ban, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said.

Britain is reviewing whether to impose restrictions on people arriving from China after a surge in COVID infections there, but has no plans to do so, officials said.

Defence minister Ben Wallace said an update was possible in the coming days, but another minister said that a review of evidence so far did not suggest any concerning new variant that would lead the government to impose restrictions.

(NewsNation) — A group of Black farmers reportedly filed a class-action lawsuit for $5 billion, claiming the federal government illegally broke a promise to pay off their debts, PBS reported. 

The suit comes after congressional aid for disadvantaged farmers authorized as part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package — which was going to give Black farmers $5 billion — was challenged in the courts by white farmers

While some of these white farmers have claimed racial injustice, Black farmers have lost upwards of $326 billion in farmland over the decades, according to a 2022 study. 

“We’re quietly, one by one, losing our farms. Many Black farmers were even deterred from applying for assistance at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I personally had my loan torn up and tossed in the trash can, right in front of me. I’ve been spat on by the person who’s supposed to be lending me money and I’ve been called racial epithets. It was commonplace from the lending officer at USDA,” John Boyd Jr., president of the Black Farmers Association, told NewsNation’s “Rush Hour” on Thursday.  

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is one of the white farmers who spoke out against Black farmers receiving a $5 billion cut from Biden’s American Rescue Plan. According to Miller, it violated their rights and he called it reverse discrimination.  

“It was racist. It was based on skin color — not on need or being economically disadvantaged. Look, I’m for minority farmers getting help, but this gave help whether they needed it or not, and it excluded all the other races, which is just plain racist,” Miller said. 

“Look at the history of the USDA debt relief offered to white farmers. Look at what the Trump administration offered (in) subsidies and direct debt relief and administration of money to white farmers in the last four years … less than 1% went to Black farmers. Now, is that not racism? Why is it only when Black people are going to get benefits from the government do we call it racism?” civil rights attorney Ben Crump, told “Rush Hour” onThursday.  

Crump is fighting back on behalf of Boyd and three other plaintiffs, saying the government broke a binding contract to pay 16,000 farmers of color $4 billion in debt relief — money allocated to wipe out 100% of debt with the USDA and an additional 20% to pay off the taxes owed.

That money that was never paid, and “we hope to bind the federal government to their promise that was made contractually with the Black farmers. We hope to make up for 40 acres and a mule that were denied to Black farmers and Black soldiers and Black people over 150 years ago,” Crump said.

The lawsuit is pending in the U.S. Court of federal claims. Meanwhile, the USDA says litigation likely would have continued for years if they had not changed the laws, leading Congress to amend the bill to include all farmers in distress.

The proposal allocates more than $3 billion to USDA-backed loans and $2 billion to farmers who the agency allegedly discriminated against.