A gunman killed 10 people and wounded 10 others at a Los Angeles-area ballroom dance club following a Lunar New Year celebration, setting off a manhunt for the suspect in the latest mass shooting tragedy in an American community.
Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said on January 22 that the wounded were taken to hospitals and their conditions range from stable to critical. He said the 10 people died at the scene in the city of Monterey Park. He said people were “pouring out of the location screaming” when officers arrived on the scene at around 10:30 p.m. He said officers then went into the dance ballroom as firefighters treated the wounded.
The Lunar New Year celebration had attracted thousands. Monterey Park is a city of about 60,000 people with a large Asian population about 16 km from downtown Los Angeles.
It marked the fifth mass shooting in the U.S. this month and the deadliest since 21 people were killed in a school in Uvalde, Texas, according to The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S.
Seung Won Choi, who owns the Clam House seafood barbecue restaurant across the street from where the shooting happened, told the Los Angeles Times that three people rushed into his business and told him to lock the door.
Videos posted on social media showed people being loaded onto stretchers and placed into ambulances. Other photos showed bloodied and bandaged victims being treated by Monterey Park firefighters in a parking lot.
Kiren Rijiju shares video of ex-judge saying Supreme Court ‘hijacked’ Constitution on judicial appointments
In a sign of escalating tension between the Executive and the Judiciary, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju claimed that the majority of people had “sane views”, similar to the one expressed by a retired High Court judge, who said the Supreme Court has “hijacked” the Constitution by deciding to appoint judges itself.
Rijiju, on Twitter, shared a video interview of former judge of the Delhi High Court, Justice R.S. Sodhi, and called it the “voice of a judge”.
In the interview, Justice Sodhi also said the top court cannot frame laws as it does not have the right to do so.
“...Only Parliament will amend Constitution. But here I feel the Supreme Court for the first time ‘hijacked’ the Constitution. After ‘hijacking’ they [the SC] said that we will appoint [judges] ourselves and the government will have no role in it,” Justice Sodhi said in Hindi.
Endorsing the view, Rijiju tweeted: “Actually majority of the people have similar sane views. It’s only those people who disregard the provisions of the Constitution and mandate of the people think that they are above the Constitution of India.”
In another tweet, the Minister said: “Voice of a Judge….Real beauty of Indian Democracy is- its success. People rule themselves through their representatives. Elected representatives represent the interests of the People & make laws. Our Judiciary is independent and our Constitution is Supreme.”
Rijiju’s comments are the latest in an ongoing tussle between the government and the Supreme Court over judicial appointments.
Implement law on compensation to accident victims: Delhi High Court tells Centre
The Delhi High Court has asked the Centre to ensure within six months the enforcement of legal provisions pertaining to the grant of compensation to victims of road accidents caused by an uninsured vehicle as well as in cases of hit and run.
The Central government told the court that it has amended the law pertaining to motor vehicles to grant compensation in case of accidents caused by uninsured vehicles, but guidelines were yet to be framed.
It said now a scheme is in place for granting compensation to road accident victims even if the accident-causing vehicle is uninsured and urged the court to give it a breathing time of six months to implement the change throughout the country.
“Resultantly, as the statute provides for a remedy for grant of compensation to the road accident victims even if the accident causing vehicle is uninsured as well as in the accidents caused by hit and run cases, Union of India is granted six months’ time to enforce the provisions which are now in the statute books,” said a Bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad in a recent order.
The court’s order was passed on a petition by the legal heirs of a deceased accident victim, who sought compensation for themselves as well as other victims of road accidents for the loss suffered by them due to non-implementation of the provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act and its rules.
The victim died in the road accident in August 2011, caused by an uninsured tractor, and the petition raised serious concerns in respect of accidents caused by uninsured vehicles and in hit and run cases.
The petitioners sought implementation of the Motor Vehicles Act as well as directions to the authorities to give the data of accidents caused by uninsured vehicles or by a person driving the offending vehicle without driving licence and the steps taken thereof to eradicate such menace and for prosecution of such offenders.
Indian financial institutions at risk from transition to clean-energy economy, study warns
India’s financial sector is highly exposed to the risks of the economy transitioning from being largely dependent on fossil fuel to clean energy, says a study in the Global Environmental Change journal, published online last week.
An analysis of individual loans and bonds found that 60% of lending to the mining sector was for oil and gas extraction, while one-fifth of manufacturing sector debt is for petroleum refining and related industries. Electricity production – by far the largest source of carbon emissions – accounted for 5.2% of outstanding credit, but only 17.5% of this lending is to pure-play renewables. Moreover, there was a shortage of experts in India’s financial institutions who had the expertise to appropriately advise the institutions on such a transition, the authors noted.
“Fewer than half of the 154 finance professionals surveyed were familiar with environmental issues, including climate change mitigation and adaption, greenhouse gas emissions or transition risks. Only four of the ten major financial institutions surveyed collect information on environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks, and these firms do not systematically incorporate that data into financial planning,” the authors noted. “Our findings suggest that financiers, regulators and policymakers in emerging and developing economies should be acting swiftly to ensure an orderly transition to net-zero,” they said.
In 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed India to reach net-zero emissions by 2070. India has also announced plans to source half of its electricity needs from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. However, it has also maintained that it needs financing to the order of at least a trillion dollars to meet these commitments.
Mapping India’s policy commitments against these lending and investment patterns reveals that India’s financial sector is heavily exposed to potential transition risks.
“Financial institutions will need to ramp up their capacities relatively quickly as the RBI-led momentum further picks up. The other side of risks is the tremendous opportunity to move finance towards sustainable assets and activities,” said a statement from Neha Kumar, one of the co-authors, and the head of South Asia programmes at the Climate Bonds Initiative.
India is expected to launch its first-ever sovereign green bonds auction later this week, with the Reserve Bank of India expected to launch 5-year and 10-year green bonds worth ₹40 billion. India’s presidency of the G-20 also means a focus on the energy transition and mobilising sustainable finance.
High-carbon industries -- power generation, chemicals, iron and steel, and aviation -- account for 10% of outstanding debt to Indian financial institutions. However, these industries are also heavily indebted, and therefore have less financial capacity to respond to shocks and stresses.
Coal currently accounts for 44% of India’s primary energy sources and 70% of its power generation. The country’s coal-fired power plants have an average age of 13 years and India has 91,000 MW of new proposed coal capacity in the works, second only to China. According to the Draft National Electricity Plan 2022, coal’s share in the electricity generation mix will decrease to 50% by 2030, compared to the current contribution of 70%.
“The financial decisions of Indian banks and institutional investors are locking the country into a more polluting, more expensive energy supply. For example, we find that only 17.5% of bank lending to the power sector has been to pure-play renewables. Consequently, India has much higher electricity from carbon-sources than the world average, despite its vast potential for cheap solar, wind and small hydropower. Shifting resources towards these renewables would deliver huge benefits: cheaper electricity, cleaner air and fewer emissions, ” said Sarah Colenbrander, director of climate and sustainability at the Overseas Development Institute and a co-author of the study.
China logs nearly 13,000 COVID deaths in a week
China reported nearly 13,000 COVID-related deaths in hospitals between January 13 and 19, after a top health official said the vast majority of the population had already been infected.
The death toll came a week after China said nearly 60,000 people had died with Covid in hospitals in just over a month -- but there has been widespread scepticism over official data since Beijing abruptly axed anti-virus controls last month.
China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement on Saturday that 681 hospitalised patients had died of respiratory failure caused by coronavirus infection, and 11,977 had died of other diseases combined with an infection over the period. The figures do not include anyone who died at home.
Airfinity, an independent forecasting firm, has estimated daily Covid deaths in China will peak at about 36,000 over the Lunar New Year holiday.
The firm also estimated that more than 600,000 people have died from the disease since China abandoned the zero-COVID policy in December.
China has passed the peak period of COVID patients in fever clinics, emergency rooms and with critical conditions, Guo Yanhong, an official from the National Health Commission told a news conference on Thursday.
In Brief:
A close ally of President Vladimir Putin said that deliveries of offensive weapons to Kyiv that threaten Russia’s territories will lead to a global catastrophe and make arguments against using weapons of mass destruction untenable. Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Duma — Russia’s lower house of parliament — warned that the United States and NATO’s support of Ukraine is leading the world to a “terrible war”. “If Washington and NATO countries supply weapons that will be used to strike civilian cities and attempt to seize our territories, as they threaten, this will lead to retaliatory measures using more powerful weapons,” Volodin said on the Telegram messaging app.
Evening Wrap will return tomorrow.
