Latest news with #repatriation
Asharq Al-Awsat
2 hours ago
- Business
- Asharq Al-Awsat
IATA: $1.3 Billion in Airline Funds Blocked by Governments
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Sunday that $1.3 billion in airline funds are blocked from repatriation by governments as of end of April 2025. 'This is a significant amount, although it is an improvement of 25% compared with the $1.7 billion reported for October 2024,' it said in a statement. The announcement came during the 81st IATA Annual General Meeting (AGM) hosted in New Delhi by one of the largest airlines in India, IndiGo. At the meeting, airline executives will discuss challenges the sector is facing at the environmental level, in addition to the increased operational costs, driven by factors such as rising fuel prices earlier this year and ongoing disruptions in global supply chains, which have delayed aircraft deliveries and constrained maintenance schedules. In this regard, IATA urged governments to remove all barriers preventing airlines from the timely repatriation of their revenues from ticket sales and other activities in accordance with international agreements and treaty obligations. 'Ensuring the timely repatriation of revenues is vital for airlines to cover dollar-denominated expenses and maintain their operations,' said Willie Walsh, IATA's Director General. He said delays and denials violate bilateral agreements and increase exchange rate risks. 'Reliable access to revenues is critical for any business—particularly airlines which operate on very thin margins. Economies and jobs rely on international connectivity. Governments must realize that it is a challenge for airlines to maintain connectivity when revenue repatriation is denied or delayed,' Walsh added. Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) IATA said SAF production is expected to grow to two million tons in 2025, accounting for just 0.7% of airline fuel use. According to Walsh, while the production increase was encouraging, the relatively small amount will add $4.4 billion globally to aviation's fuel bill. 'The pace of progress in ramping up production and gaining efficiencies to reduce costs must accelerate,' Walsh said in a statement. IATA said SAF is now heading toward Europe, where the EU and UK mandates kicked in on 1 January 2025. Unacceptably, it added, the cost of SAF to airlines has now doubled in Europe because of compliance fees that SAF producers or suppliers are charging. For the expected one million tons of SAF that will be purchased to meet the European mandates in 2025, IATA said the expected cost at current market prices is $1.2 billion. Also, compliance fees are estimated to add an additional $1.7 billion on top of market prices, an amount that could have abated an additional 3.5 million tons of carbon emissions. 'This highlights the problem with the implementation of mandates before there are sufficient market conditions and before safeguards are in place against unreasonable market practices that raise the cost of decarbonization,' said Walsh. He noted that raising the cost of the energy transition that is already estimated to be a staggering $4.7 trillion should not be the aim or the result of decarbonization policies. 'Europe needs to realize that its approach is not working and find another way,' he said. New Agreement In light of the new challenges, IndiGo announced it has entered an agreement with Air France-KLM, Virgin Atlantic and Delta, to expand its long-haul services to North America, Europe and Britain, the airlines said on Sunday. IndiGo has an extensive domestic network in India, the world's third-largest air passenger market, and is expanding its international reach. Once the airline partnership is complete, IndiGo will be able to sell flights under its own name on those operated by its partners out of India, and onward travel from Amsterdam and Manchester, UK, on selected flights to Europe and North America. IndiGo will start flying to Amsterdam and Manchester from July. Separately IndiGo said it would convert 30 out of 70 options for Airbus A350 jets into firm orders for new planes. IndiGo is aiming to grow its fleet to 600 aircraft by 2030, from more than 400 currently, and has been leasing aircraft to tide it over aircraft delivery delays and expand internationally. It recently said it will lease six Boeing 787 wide-body jets from Norse Atlantic Airways by early next year. US carrier Delta has not flown to India since the pandemic. CEO Ed Bastian told media at an airline summit in New Delhi that Delta will restart direct services from the United States to India over the next couple of years. 'There's not a more important market in aviation at the present time than in India,' Bastian said. Delta is planning nonstop flights between Atlanta and Delhi, subject to government approval, a joint statement said. Aviation Safety At the annual meeting in New Delhi, aviation safety will also be in focus after a spate of air accidents in Kazakhstan, South Korea and North America over the past six months, and rising concerns about air traffic control systems in the United States. IATA said in February that accidents and incidents related to conflict zones are a top concern for aviation safety requiring urgent global coordination. In a related development, IATA said India has reached a major milestone in its aviation journey, rising to become the third-largest market for air travel globally. In return, heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, have significantly impacted air travel in the region, forcing Indian airlines to take longer, detour routes. Meanwhile, the aviation sector's recent rebound in passenger numbers has been encouraging, with strong demand emerging across Europe and Asia. However, US carriers have faced a more complicated picture, experiencing a downturn in travel demand. The uncertainty over how the Trump Administration's trade policies will evolve could hold back critical business decisions that drive economic activity, and with it the demand for air cargo and business travel.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Stolen artifacts returned to Egypt, Pakistan from Manhattan
Fifty priceless artifacts looted from Egypt and Pakistan — and trafficked through Manhattan by two notorious antiquities dealers — have been returned to their home countries, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has announced. The repatriation of the artifacts, some of which are as old as 3300 BCE, is the result of two separate investigations into criminal trafficking networks linked to the convicted traffickers Robin Symes and Subhash Kapoor, respectively. Symes, who died in 2023, was one of the most notorious antiquities smugglers in the last century. Kapoor, 76, was convicted of running a $100 million international smuggling racket, including stealing 19 ancient idols and illegally transferring them to his art gallery in Manhattan. In total, 11 artifacts were returned to Egypt and 39 to Pakistan. Among the artifacts returned were a 'mummy mask of a youth,' a funerary mask dating to the Roman rule of Egypt, around 100-300 CE, one of the 'Fayum Portraits' famous for their realism and modernity. A terracotta vessel with painted red, black and blue fish — dating to between 3300 and 1300 BCE — seized from a Manhattan dealer in 2025 has been returned to Pakistan. Since its creation in 2017, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit has convicted 17 individuals of cultural property-related crimes, recovered more than 6,000 antiquities valued at more than $470 million, and has returned more than 5,500 of them so far to 30 countries, according to the DA's office.
Malay Mail
9 hours ago
- Health
- Malay Mail
Selangor man dies during dive trip off Indonesia's Pulau Weh
JAKARTA, June 2 — The body of a Malaysian man who died during a diving trip off Indonesia's Aceh province has been repatriated, officials said yesterday. Malaysia's Consul General in Medan, Shahril Nizam Abdul Malek, confirmed that the remains of Haikal Rafie Halim, 33, from Selangor, were flown to Kuala Lumpur yesterday evening. 'The flight departed Sultan Iskandar Muda International Airport in Aceh at 4.55 pm local time for Kuala Lumpur International Airport,' he told Bernama. Haikal was part of a group of three Malaysian divers accompanied by a local dive guide when they encountered strong undercurrents near the Canyon dive site off Pulau Weh, near Sabang on Saturday. 'Haikal is believed to have panicked and was instructed to surface. Upon reaching the surface, he was found unconscious and reportedly foaming at the mouth,' Sabang police chief Sukoco stated in a statement. He was taken by speedboat to Iboih Beach and rushed to the health centre, where he was pronounced dead at 10.50 am, before being sent to Sabang Hospital for a post-mortem, he added. The incident occurred near the Zero Kilometer Monument, a popular dive site frequented by domestic and international tourists. — Bernama
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Remains of 19 Black Americans returned to New Orleans nearly 150 years later
The remains of 19 Black Americans whose skulls were taken to Leipzig, Germany, in the 1880s to perform "racial pseudoscience" experiments, were brought to New Orleans to be properly memorialized, a repatriation committee said Thursday. Dillard University, the City of New Orleans and University Medical Center will hold a New Orleans-style jazz funeral on Saturday morning for the 13 men, four women and two unidentified people, according to Dr. Monique Guillory, the president of the historically Black Louisiana university. "They were people with names," Guillory said at a press conference on Thursday. "They were people with stories and histories. Some of them had families -- mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, human beings -- not specimens, not numbers." MORE: Pope Leo XIV's family tree shows Black roots in New Orleans Dr. Eva Baham, chair of Dillard University's Cultural Repatriation Committee, said during the press conference that the University of Leipzig reached out to the City of New Orleans in 2023 and offered to repatriate the remains. The Cultural Repatriation Committee formed in 2024 and looked through public records to identify exactly who the people were and establish a genealogy, according to Baham. The group has not been able to identify any descendants at this point, she noted. Baham's team located the people's death records in the archives of Charity Hospital. The medical institution served people of all races from 1736 until it was shuttered due to severe damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, according to a statement from Dillard University. University Medical Center New Orleans opened in its place in 2015 and was the major funder of the project, Baham said. MORE: Twin sisters buy former plantation to preserve and protect Black history Of the 19 people, 17 of them died in December 1871 and two died in January 1872, their ages ranging from 15 to 70 years old, according Baham. Many of them were not born in Louisiana but came from states like Kentucky and Tennessee. The committee discovered that 10 of the 19 people were in New Orleans for less than six years, Baham noted. "We have people who were here in New Orleans from one hour in 1871, one day, a week, two months," Baham said at the news conference. "I just want to remind you that the Civil War had ended in 1865, so we have 10 of these individuals who had arrived here after the American Civil War." MORE: $9.4 billion plastics facility to be built on slave burial grounds, report says The names of the 17 people that the committee was able to identify include Adam Grant, 50; Isaak Bell, 70; Hiram Smith, 23; William Pierson, 43; Henry Williams, 55; John Brown, 48; Hiram Malone, 21; William Roberts, 23; Alice Brown, 15; Prescilla Hatchet, 19; Marie Louise, 55; Mahala [no listed last name], 70; Samuel Prince, 40; John Tolman, 23; Henry Allen, 17; Moses Willis, 23; and Henry Anderson, 23. "We can't rewrite history," Charlotte Parent, vice president of business development at University Medical Center, said at the press conference. "The times were what the times were at the time, but we can always look back and figure out ways that we can embrace and make things as right as we can, and this is one of those opportunities for us to do that." Remains of 19 Black Americans returned to New Orleans nearly 150 years later originally appeared on
New York Times
2 days ago
- General
- New York Times
Skulls of 19 Black Americans Return to New Orleans After 150 Years in Germany
Sometime before Jan. 10, 1872, a young Black laborer named William Roberts checked himself into Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Just 23 years old, he was from Georgia and had a strong build, according to hospital records. His only recorded sickness was diarrhea. He was one of 19 Black patients who died at the hospital in December 1871 and January 1872, and whose skulls were sent to Germany to be studied by a doctor researching a now wholly discredited science that purported a correlation between the shape and size of a skull and a person's intellect and character. The skulls languished in Germany for about 150 years until Leipzig University contacted the city of New Orleans two years ago to repatriate them. They were returned to New Orleans this month, and the 19 people are being honored on Saturday morning with a jazz funeral before the skulls are interred. While the return of human remains from museum collections has become more common, the repatriation of these 19 Black cranial remains to New Orleans is believed to be the first major international restitution of the remains of Black Americans from Europe, according to Paul Wolff Mitchell, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam who studies the 19th century history of race and science in the United States and Europe. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
