The government on Friday slightly raised the price of petrol by Re1 per litre and that of high-speed diesel (HSD) by Rs7 for the next fortnight.
A press release from the Finance Division said the new prices were decided after Ogra reviewed and adjusted consumer prices for petroleum products given “recent fluctuations in the international oil market”.
The new petrol price is Rs257.13 and that of HSD is Rs267.95.
Any changes in the prices of light diesel oil and kerosene oil were not mentioned.
Informed sources had earlier said the ex-depot petrol price was estimated to go up by Rs2-3 per litre depending on the final calculation today. Kerosene and diesel prices were estimated to rise by about Rs6 per litre.
The estimates were based on the bullish trend in the international market. The Brent prices have risen by up to $2 per barrel last fortnight.
These sources said the average prices of HSD increased by more than $2.50 per barrel in the international market while that of petrol inched up by about 50 cents per barrel last fortnight. The ex-refinery cost of kerosene also went up. Import premium on petrol increased by around 40 cents to $8.84 per barrel while it remained unchanged on diesel. The exchange rate also generally remained stable.
As a result, the latest calculation as of Jan 29 showed an increase of around Rs5 to Rs6 per litre in both HSD and kerosene and about Rs2-2.50 per litre in petrol.
The ex-depot petrol price is Rs256.13 and HSD Rs260.95 per litre. Kerosene’s official rate is Rs169.25 per litre, but it is seldom available at this rate in the market.
Petrol is primarily used in private transport, small vehicles, rickshaws, and two-wheelers, and it directly affects the budget of the middle and lower middle classes.
Most of the transport sector runs on HSD. Its price is considered inflationary as it is mainly used in heavy transport vehicles, trains and agricultural engines like trucks, buses, tractors, tube wells and threshers and particularly adds to the prices of vegetables and other eatables.
Currently, the government is charging about Rs76 per litre tax on petrol and HSD. Although the general sales tax is zero on all petroleum products, the government charges Rs60 per litre PDL on both products, which usually impacts the masses.
The government also charges about Rs16 per litre of customs duty on petrol and HSD, regardless of their local production or imports. In addition, about Rs17 per litre distribution and sale margins are charged by oil companies and their dealers on both products.
US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would like to get rid of the main federal agency that responds to natural disasters during a visit to areas of North Carolina that were devastated by Hurricane Helene in September.
Trump, on his first trip since reclaiming the presidency on Monday, accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) of bungling emergency relief efforts in North Carolina. He vowed to sign an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally overhauling or eliminating the agency.
“Fema has turned out to be a disaster,” he said during a tour of a neighbourhood destroyed by Helene where trees were downed and homes had boarded-up windows. “I think we recommend that Fema go away.”
Fema brings in emergency personnel, supplies and equipment to help areas begin to recover from natural disasters, and funding for the agency has soared in recent years as extreme weather events increase the demand for its services.
The agency, which has 10 regional offices and employs more than 20,000 people across the country, was run for the last four years by Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration.
During a briefing about recovery efforts, the Republican Trump promised to speedily help North Carolina “get the help you need” to rebuild. He said he would prefer that states be given federal money to handle disasters themselves rather than rely on Fema to do the job.
Trump complained that Biden did not do enough to help western North Carolina recover from the hurricane, an accusation the Biden administration rejected as misinformation.
Trump also sharply criticised Democratic officials’ response to wildfires in Los Angeles that have caused widespread destruction this month. His Republican colleagues in Congress have threatened to withhold disaster aid for the region.
Trump was due to visit Los Angeles later in the day while three massive blazes still threaten that region.
In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Trump threatened to withhold aid to California and repeated a false claim that the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and other officials have refused to provide water from the northern part of the state to fight the fires.
“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water flow down,” Trump said. He has falsely claimed that Newsom, a Democrat, prioritised the preservation of endangered fish over public safety. Newsom has said there is no connection between the fish and the fire.
The governor told reporters on Thursday that he planned to be on hand at Los Angeles International Airport to greet Trump. “I look forward to being there on the tarmac to thank the president and welcome him,” Newsom said.
Trump has accused Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — who was out of the country when the fires broke out — of “gross incompetence,” pointing to what he called a lack of preparation and ineffective or harmful water management policies.
Water shortages caused some hydrants to run dry in affluent Pacific Palisades, hindering the early response. When the fires broke out, one of the reservoirs that could have supplied more water to the area was empty for a year. Officials have promised an investigation into why it was dry.
Mayor Bass and fire officials have said the hydrants were not designed to deal with such a massive disaster and stressed the unprecedented nature of the fires.
Trump has focused some of his criticism on California’s complicated policies for sharing the plentiful water supply found in the northern part of the state with the parched south. The diversion results in the discharge of some water into the ocean, something Trump has depicted as a callous waste.
Newsom has dismissed those attacks as groundless, and experts have said that the diversions, in part designed to protect agricultural interests, have played little or no part in the difficulties encountered in fighting the fires.
Since the fires broke out on January 7, they have killed 28 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 16,000 structures, authorities say. Much of Southern California remains under a red-flag warning for extreme fire risk due to strong, dry winds.
A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday blocked US President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing an executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.
US District Judge John Coughenour at the urging of four Democratic-led states issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from enforcing the order, which the Republican president signed on Monday during his first day in office.
“This is [a] blatantly unconstitutional order,” the judge told a lawyer with the US Justice Department defending Trump’s order.
The order has already become the subject of five lawsuits by civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states, who call it a flagrant violation of the US Constitution.
“Under this order, babies being born today don’t count as US citizens,” Washington Assistant Attorney General Lane Polozola told Senior US District Judge John Coughenour at the start of a hearing in Seattle.
Polozola — on behalf of Democratic state attorneys general from Washington state, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — urged the judge to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the administration from carrying out this key element of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The challengers argue that Trump’s action violates the right enshrined in the citizenship clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment that provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
Trump in his executive order directed US agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither their mother nor father is a US citizen or legal permanent resident.
In a brief filed late on Wednesday, the US Justice Department called the order an “integral part” of the president’s efforts “to address this nation’s broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border”.
The lawsuit filed in Seattle has been progressing more quickly than the four other cases brought over the executive order. It has been assigned to Coughenour, an appointee of Republican former president Ronald Reagan.
The judge potentially could rule from the bench after hearing arguments, or he could wait to write a decision ahead of Trump’s order taking effect.
Under the order, any children born after February 19 whose mothers or fathers are not citizens or lawful permanent residents would be subject to deportation and would be prevented from obtaining Social Security numbers, various government benefits and the ability as they get older to work lawfully.
More than 150,000 newborn children would be denied citizenship annually if Trump’s order is allowed to stand, according to the Democratic-led states.
Democratic state attorneys general have said that the understanding of the Constitution’s citizenship clause was cemented 127 years ago when the US Supreme Court held that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to American citizenship.
The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 following the Civil War and overturned the Supreme Court’s notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision that had declared that the Constitution’s protections did not apply to enslaved Black people.
But the Justice Department in its brief argued that the 14th Amendment had never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born in the country and that the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in United States v Wong Kim Ark concerned only children of permanent residents.
The Justice Department said the case by the four states also “flunks multiple threshold hurdles”. The department said that only individuals, not states, can pursue claims under the citizenship clause and that the states lack the necessary legal standing to sue over Trump’s order.
Thirty-six of Trump’s Republican allies in the US House of Representatives on Tuesday separately introduced legislation to restrict automatic citizenship to only children born to citizens or lawful permanent residents.
A Syria war monitor said explosions on Sunday rocked an area near Damascus housing weapons depots used by the toppled government of Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said the blasts in the Kisweh area, south of the Syrian capital, may be the result of an Israeli air strike.
The Israeli military, which has struck many military sites in Syria since Assad’s fall, told AFP in Jerusalem it did not attack the site.
The Britain-based Observatory, which has a network of sources in Syria, said that “loud blasts resonated in the wider capital area”. The explosions occurred “at ammunition depots of the former regime forces… near the town of Kisweh”, sending a thick cloud of smoke billowing over the site, the Observatory said.
An AFP video journalist saw small fires burning in the blackened rubble of a flattened building on the outskirts of the town of Kisweh. Several other one-storey buildings stood undamaged nearby.
The explosions continued into Sunday evening, ringing out across surrounding areas, the journalist said.
Israel, which rarely comments on its actions in neighbouring Syria, has carried out hundreds of air strikes on military sites since rebel forces ousted Assad and seized Damascus last month.
Israel has said it was seeking to prevent weapons from falling into hostile hands. Most recently, the Observatory said Israeli warplanes hit sites of the now defunct Syrian army in the Aleppo area on Friday.
In late December, the Observatory said 11 people died in an explosion at an arms storage facility in the Adra area northeast of Damascus, adding that it was possibly the result of an Israeli strike. Israel denied any involvement.
