[Ming Pao News]Nearly 11:00 yesterday morning, the owner of a fishing supply shop in the Aldrich Bay market in Shau Kei Wan (Picture 1) lost a female parrot (Picture 2), worth regarding 3,000 to 4,000 yuan. The police arrived at the scene and checked the CCTV with the owner, and the case was listed as a “lost animal”. The owner of the store said that the parrot was fine yesterday morning, and he let it eat at the door as usual, while he was working in the store. When he looked back, he found that it had disappeared, and the closed-circuit TV might not capture whether it was taken away by someone or flew away by itself. He said the parrot is named Gigi, and it has been kept for 5 years. It has no wings or chains. Even if it flies to the adjacent store on weekdays, “it has returned following calling”, or it may make a sound to let the owner know. He guessed that the bird was no longer in the market, so he decided to take the time to temporarily close the door and look for it nearby.
Secret documents regarding US and NATO plans to support the Ukrainian military ahead of a planned offensive once morest Russia have surfaced online. The newspaper “New York Times” reported on Thursday (local time), citing US government employees. The US Department of Defense is therefore investigating who is behind the publication. The documents were distributed via the social media platforms Twitter and Telegram, it said.
However, according to analysts, the contents of the documents appear to have been altered in a way that might indicate a disinformation campaign from Russia, the report said. Attempts by the US government to have the documents deleted have so far been unsuccessful, the newspaper wrote.
The documents are five weeks old and contain no concrete battle plans, it said. However, military insiders might still glean valuable information from it, such as schedules for arms deliveries. The published documents are the first known breakthrough of Russian espionage since the beginning of the war.
The government on Thursday amended the domestic pricing model of natural gas in line with the recommendations of the Kirit Parikh committee on gas pricing.
Prices of domestic natural gas will now be announced every month, and be pegged at 10 per cent of the international price of the Indian crude basket. The move is expected to reduce by 10 per cent the prices of piped natural gas (PNG), supplied to households, and compressed natural gas (CNG), used as auto fuel and by various industries.
Accepting all the major recommendations of the Parikh panel, the government has approved a floor price of $4 per MMBtu (metric million British thermal units) for the next two years, to cover the cost of gas production by state-run firms Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd.
The ceiling price will be set at $6.5 per MMBtu.
Both the floor and ceiling prices will be increased yearly by regarding $0.5 per MMBtu, Petroleum Secretary Pankaj Jain said.
He said domestic gas producers would get up to a 20 per cent premium on higher production through reinvestment in nominated fields.
Meanwhile, the government has decided not to tinker with the existing pricing formula for difficult fields such as KG-D6 of Reliance Industries and BP PLC. About 83.3 per cent of India’s natural gas is produced by ONGC and Oil India Ltd, while the remaining 16.7 per cent is by private companies and joint-venture entities.
Aimed at expanding the domestic production of natural gas and encouraging technological innovation, the new regime is aimed at balancing the interests of producers and consumers, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Singh Thakur said. India currently imports 50 per cent of its natural gas requirements.
An amendment to the domestic gas pricing guidelines, 2014, will see the changes in rules through, he said.
Global price rise
Under the existing guidelines, the price of domestic supplies from fields given under the older nomination bloc regime and the New Exploration and Licensing Policy (NELP) is a weighted average of prices at international gas hubs. This administered price is revised every six months.
Thakur pointed to the massive rise in international gas prices as the trigger behind the government’s decision. Pegged to international benchmarks, domestic gas prices had risen from $1.79 per MMBtu on October 1, 2020, to $8.57 per MMBtu on October 1, 2022.
The committee had said India should have a free and market-determined pricing for natural gas extracted from legacy fields and remove all caps by January 1, 2027. The government has not given its decision on this recommendation.
Two vehicles were dragged by the Honda and Las Huacas ravines
A torrential rain activated the ravines of the Yonán – Tembladera district in Cajamarca, giving rise to two accidents with tragic balances.
According to the police report, the first accident occurred at around 7 in the morning, at kilometer 50 of the Ciudad de Dios – Cajamarca highway, in the place called Quebrada Honda. The damaged vehicle would be a car with a T6R-938 license plate, Toyota brand, which was driven by Víctor Ernesto Chugnas Blanco who traveled in the company of his brother Yeison Fernando Chugnas Blanco.
The aforementioned tried to cross the ravine, but the force of the flow dragged them away, only the driver managed to get out of the vehicle and save his life; However, his brother did not suffer the same fate, which is why he remains missing.
5 kilometers before, and half an hour later in the Las Huacas ravine, another vehicle was dragged towards the Gallito Ciego reservoir, causing a similar misfortune, two of the five occupants died, one of them.
The accident occurred around 7:30 in the morning, and was carried out by the vehicle with license plate M7J – 939, silver color, Mitsubishi brand, which was driven by Ronald Daniel Ruiz Vásquez who was traveling from Trujillo to Cajamarca together with His family: his wife and three children.
After being swept away by the current, Ruiz Vásquez managed to escape from the vehicle, which did not happen with his wife and minors; minutes later two of them were rescued alive by members of the national police and the fire company.
Those who did not suffer the same fate were Sharon Lisbeth Ramos Turco, wife of the driver and her 11-year-old son, whose bodies were found hours later.