US dollar credit to non-bank borrowers outside the United States grew by 6% in 2019, to reach $12.2 trillion at end-2019. The annual growth rate of euro-denominated credit outside the euro area slowed to 6%, while that of yen-denominated credit outside Japan turned negative (-1%). In 2019, euro-denominated credit overtook US dollar-denominated credit as the largest stock of foreign currency credit to emerging Europe. The debt securities share in US dollar credit outside the United States has risen considerably over the past decade across a number of major borrowing regions.

The term global liquidity is used by the BIS to mean the ease of financing in global financial markets. Credit is among the key indicators of global liquidity, and is the focus of the quarterly indicators estimated by the BIS.

"Park ambassadors" will soon be on patrol at some of Ottawa's busiest public green spaces to help confused residents navigate the newly loosened COVID-19 restrictions, Mayor Jim Watson announced Friday.

Distant notes |India Today Insight  India Today

1. Some White House staff to wear masks after valet tests positive: Trump  Times of India
2. U.S. President Trump says will be tested for coronavirus daily  The Hindu
3. US VP Mike Pence’s staffer, married to a Trump aide, tests positive for Covid-19  Livemint
4. Trump's U-turn on the coronavirus task force wasn't really a U-turn at all  The Independent
5. Aide to Vice President Pence tests positive for coronavirus  Times of India
6. View Full coverage on Google News

With ‘Four More Shots Please!,’ India Gets Its Own ‘Sex and the City’  The New York Times

Bengaluru's all-woman music collective Metronome to release a track for Mother's Day  Times of India

A fine and delicate balance in contemporary jazz  Telegraph India

A fresh look at classical dance forms  Telegraph India

Happy birthday Vijay Deverakonda: Tollywood's 'Dear Comrade' who auctioned his first Filmfare Award for charity  The New Indian Express

Have to learn to live with Covid-19: Govt  Times of IndiaHealth ministry says learn to live with coronavirus as India's COVID-19 count crosses 56,000  LivemintPeople must learn to live with the virus, follow prevention guidelines: G...

How Do American Indians Celebrate Mother's Day? | Smithsonian Voices | National Museum of the American Indian  Smithsonian.com

From stage to sofa: NAC brings local arts to homes in new livestream initiative  Connected to India

Netizens celebrate as Kamal Haasan crosses 6 million mark on Twitter  DNA India

To a sister, till we meet again  The Tribune India

Sound of hope  The New Indian Express

Young singers bring old Tamil gems to new gen  Times of India

Made in India: How Covid-19 is changing the luxe living room  The Hindu

India's lavish weddings go online in virus lockdown  South China Morning Post

Major League Soccer is easing its training restrictions, allowing clubs to use their practice fields but only for individual workouts and under strict rules.

"We don't have the big hospitals and specialized care. Should COVID-19 spread, we don't have the capacity or the resources to deal with it," said Cree Grand Chief Abel Bosum.

The number of cases of COVID-19 in First Nations reserves continues to rise this week, with 161 confirmed positive cases reported as of May 5.

Kiuna College hopes to play an active role in the emergence of the next generation of Indigenous filmmakers and creators.

Teenager Theland Kicknosway's annual run for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls is being turned into a virtual event this year, and he's calling on people from across North America to join him.

Last month, the National Arts Centre launched #CanadaPerforms, an initiative that pays musicians and writers to perform from their living rooms. Poet Zoey Roy gave an intimate performance from her living room in Kingston. 

On 22 August, 150 people climbed in the inaugural OM Boonah Freedom Climb to raise awareness and funding for the Jogini girls of India.

A train killed 14 migrant workers who had fallen asleep on the track in India on Friday while they were heading back to their home village after losing their jobs amid the coronavirus lockdown, police said.

Villagers placed the bodies of three victims of a deadly gas leak from an LG Polymers plant in southern India at the gates of the site on Saturday and demanded the factory be shut down immediately and its top management arrested.

Doron's experience on Logos Hope shows him God's faithfulness and uncovers leadership abilities he is using today in a new role.

Boston Bruins goaltender Jaroslav Halak signed a one-year contract worth $2.25 million US, the team announced Friday. He was playing in the final season of a two-year contract.

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FSI Briefs No 5, April 2020. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have launched guarantee programmes to support bank lending to companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. This is essential to avoid a sharp contraction in bank credit that would exacerbate the pandemic's adverse impact. The design of such programmes needs to strike a difficult balance between responding promptly to the pandemic and maintaining a sufficient level of prudence. Key features of a sample of programmes (eg target beneficiaries, coverage of the guarantee, loan terms, length of the programme) reflect this tension. Incentives were created for the banks to join these programmes by exploiting flexibility in existing prudential requirements, while central banks have often provided liquidity support. Programmes are, however, subject to operational challenges and, ultimately, fiscal capacity limits.

The semiannual OTC derivatives statistics provide data on notional amounts outstanding and gross market values for all types of over-the-counter derivatives contracts. They are reported by large dealers in 12 countries on a worldwide consolidated basis.

Daily data on effective exchange rate in nominal terms have been updated. Broad indices cover 60 economies, with data from 1996. Narrow indices cover 26 economies with data from 1983.

Bank of Italy Working Papers by Eleonora Porreca and Alfonso Rosolia

Bank of England Working Papers by Aydan Dogan and Ida Hjortsoe

Bank of England Working Papers by Nicola Garbarino and Benjamin Guin

Netherlands Bank DNB Occasional Studies by Peter Wierts and Harro Boven

The 2020 "Expanding Empathy" lecture series has moved online and added a lecture on "The Altruistic Brain," as well as a panel discussion on empathy in the time of COVID-19, both to be held on April 29 via Zoom.

While Apple has not revealed any viewing figures for Apple TV+, industry sources say the new "Defending Jacob" drama is a hit with higher viewing figures, and audience engagement, than most shows on the service.

While Apple has yet to make substantial inroads into India's mainstream smartphone market, the tech giant's latest flagship iPhones continue to dominate top-tier category sales.

When OM Montenegro began in 2007 with a team of three, holding a full Sunday meeting seemed a long way off—but not anymore.

To me, one of the handiest SOLIDWORKS ease-of-use functions hides in plain view: The Command Search. Found at the top of the application, the SOLIDWORKS Search box can be set to several different types of search, but the one I

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CNA Staff, Apr 17, 2020 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- Reports of an Indian hospital's segregated wards for Hindu and Muslim coronavirus patients drew concern from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, though Indian authorities strongly disputed the allegation.

"USCIRF is concerned with reports of Hindu and Muslim patients separated into separate hospital wards in Gujarat,” the commission said on Twitter and Facebook April 15. “Such actions only help to further increase ongoing stigmatization of Muslims in India and exacerbate false rumors of Muslims spreading COVID-19.”

The bipartisan U.S. federal government commission linked to a story in the Indian Express newspaper that cites a hospital official and a patient in the city of Ahmedabad in the western coastal Indian state of Gujarat.

India's Ministry for External Affairs opposed the commission, saying it was spreading “misguided reports” and “adding religious color” that distracts from India's efforts to combat the novel coronavirus.

“No segregation is being done in civil hospitals on the basis of religion, as clarified by the Gujarat government,” the ministry said April 15.

The reports concern Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, where there are some 1,200 beds prepared for patients suffering from the novel coronavirus.

Medical Superintendent Dr. Gunvant. H. Rathod described the hospital division to the Indian Express, saying “generally, there are separate wards for male and female patients. But here, we have made separate wards for Hindu and Muslim patients.”

“It is a decision of the government and you can ask them,” he said.

Deputy Chief Minister and Health Minister Nitin Patel said he was not aware of the situation and would make inquiries. Ahmedabad's district magistrate, K.K. Nirala, also was not aware of any decision, the Indian Express reports.

However, the Indian Express cited a hospital patient who said the names of 28 men in a ward were called out, and they were moved to another ward.

“While we were not told why we were being shifted, all the names that were called out belonged to one community. We spoke to one staff member in our ward today and he said this had been done for ‘the comfort of both communities’,” the patient said.

The Gujarat Health and Family Welfare Department said the reports were “absolutely baseless.” Rather, it said, patients are treated based on symptoms and severity and “according to treating doctors' recommendations.

As of Wednesday, new known cases of coronavirus in Gujarat rose by 127 to 766, with 88 cases in Ahmedabad. The death toll there totals 33, the Times of India reports.

The Indian newspaper The Week reported that the commission had previously criticized India's Citizenship Amendment Act, which became effective in January 2020.

In December 2019 the commission expressed concern about the legislation, which enshrined a pathway to citizenship for immigrants but specifically excluded Muslims. The commission recommended U.S. sanctions on India as a possible response.

The U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom reviews alleged religious freedom violations and makes policy recommendations to the U.S. president, Secretary of State, and Congress.

The commission’s 2019 report said that religious freedom conditions in India “continued a downward trend” in 2018. It said India’s “history of religious freedom has come under attack in recent years with the growth of exclusionary extremist narratives—including, at times, the government’s allowance and encouragement of mob violence against religious minorities—that have facilitated an egregious and ongoing campaign of violence, intimidation, and harassment against non-Hindu and lower-caste Hindu minorities. Both public and private actors have engaged in this campaign.”

Mob violence against Christians by Hindus has been particularly acute.

In August 2019, six suspected members of a radical Hindu group were arrested after dozens of Catholics were attacked on a Marian pilgrimage from Karnataka to the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health in Velankanni, a coastal town in south east India.

In September, around 500 armed Hindu extremists attacked a Jesuit mission in the Archdiocese of Ranchi. Armed with sticks, chains, iron bars, knives, and pistols, the mob beat tribal students including two who were seriously injured, and also seriously damaged the school’s facilities.

Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal has said numerous mob lynchings of Christians have occurred in which the victims are accused of eating beef or otherwise harming cattle, which are considered sacred in Hinduism.

Karnataka state suffered a wave of anti-Christian violence in 2008, when Hindu extremist groups led attacks on churches, schools and homes of Christians and physically beat hundreds of people. A 2011 independent report on the violence, known as the Saldhana Report, charged that attacks were pre-planned and backed by the state’s highest government authorities.

 

CNA Staff, Apr 21, 2020 / 02:19 pm (CNA).- Indigenous rights groups are warning that many families in Bangladesh who have lost jobs and income because of the coronavirus pandemic are not yet receiving aid, and many are facing starvation.

A joint statement from three Bangladeshi indigenous rights groups warns that the vast majority of those living in rural areas are day laborers, and are now out of work.

Bangladesh, a low lying county situated just east of India, has 3,400 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and has recorded 110 deaths. Officials say actual numbers are likely higher due to a lack of testing kits.

Romen Kisku, a Catholic father of five and member of the Santal ethnic group, told UCA News that his family has received a small amount of food aid from a charity, but he worries it will not be enough to feed his 10-member family. He and his family live in the northern region of Dinajpur, and he said he hopes to find work in a neighboring region as a paddy farmer.

“Three men of our family are day laborers and our income pays for everything. Now we cannot go to work and government aid has not reached us. The minimal aid was too little for our family, so we have to go on starving if things don’t improve,” Kisku told UCA News.

Ethnic-minority Santal people live mostly in northwestern Bangladesh as well as parts of India and Nepal. About eight percent are Christian.

Bangladesh has a low percentage of Catholics— as low as 0.3% in some areas— and the Catholic aid group Caritas is struggling to raise funds for the poor.

“We have made an appeal to people in our parishes and areas, so they come up with whatever they can to assist those having hard times during this crisis. The suffering of people will intensify if the crisis lingers, so we need to help people any way possible,” Bishop Sebastian Tudu of Dinajpur told UCA News.

Though the government and charitable organizations are mobilizing to provide relief, the remoteness of the areas where many indigenous people live mean that in some areas, very few families have yet received government assistance.

Though Catholic Relief Services is active in providing aid in refugee camps in Bangladesh, a CRS spokesperson confirmed to CNA that CRS is not currently active in the Dinajpur region.

The branch of Caritas in the southeastern port city of Chittagong has taken two emergency cash handouts of 2,250 taka (US$27) and 1,547 taka to support 950 families on the hills, UCA News reported.

Bangladesh’s government started food relief and subsidized food sales at the end of March, aiming to support about 50 million poor and needy people across the country, UCA News reports.

Bangladesh imposed a nationwide lockdown March 26, with a restriction of no more than five people allowed to congregate in prayer in a mosque, the New York Post reported. Despite this, on April 18 a crowd of some 100,000 people gathered for a funeral in Brahmanbaria, in the eastern part of the country.

CNA Staff, May 7, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell has expressed his “surprise” at newly released findings of an Australian investigation, which concluded that the cardinal was aware of sexual abuse by clerics in the 1970s and 80s, and failed to act.

In 2017, Australia’s Royal Commission released a report on sexual abuse of minors in the country, the result of a five-year enquiry into the behavior and responsibility of institutions including the Church. Sections of the report relating to Cardinal Pell were redacted until the conclusion of criminal legal proceedings against the cardinal. 

The redacted portions were released May 6.

In the newly available material, the commission found that Pell knew about the abusive activities of two priests during his own years as a priest, and that he failed to act to stop them. 

On Thursday, Pell said through a spokesperson that the commission’s conclusions about him were “not supported by evidence.”

Pell gave evidence to the commission in 2016 via video link from Rome. During his testimony, he denied failing to act against known sexual abusers in the clergy. Pell specifically denied that while he was a priest in Ballarat in the 1970s and 80s, he had any awareness of the actions of then-Father Gerald Ridsdale, a serial abuser from the same diocese.

The Royal Commission concluded that, as a member of Bishop Ronald Mulkearns’ college of priest consulters in the diocese, Pell would have been made aware of allegations of abuse against Ridsdale during discussions about the priest’s transfers between assignments in 1977 and 1982.

But Pell told the commission that he and the other consulters had been deceived by Mulkearns and were unaware of Ridsdale’s crimes until years later.

“The Consultors who gave evidence on the meetings in 1977 and 1982 either said they did not learn of Ridsdale’s offending against children until much later or they had no recollection of what was discussed. None said they were made aware of Ridsdale’s offending at these meetings,” Pell said in a statement released through a spokesperson late Wednesday evening.

In a 2017 statement, Pell said “I would never have condoned or participated in a decision to transfer Ridsdale in the knowledge that he had abused children, and I did not do so.” 

The commission rejected Pell’s testimony, and found that it “ought to have been obvious” why Ridsdale was being transferred from one assignment to another.

“We are satisfied Bishop Mulkearns gave reasons for it being necessary to move Ridsdale. We are satisfied that he referred to homosexuality at the meeting, in the context of giving reasons for Ridsdale’s move,” the report found. “However, we are not satisfied that Bishop Mulkearns left the explanation there, as Cardinal Pell said there would have been a discussion."

“We do not accept that Bishop Mulkearns lied to his consultors.”

The commission did not delineate specific proofs for its conclusion.

The commission also said that Pell would have known about allegations of abuse made against Fr. Peter Searson, who was active as a Melbourne priest during Pell’s time as an auxiliary bishop in the Melbourne archdiocese.

In 1989, Pell held a meeting with representatives from the parish and school in Doveton, where Searson was assigned. During that meeting a number of complaints were made against Searson but, according to Pell, sexual misconduct with children was not raised, and Searson’s removal was not requested.

Following Pell’s installation as Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996, Pell placed Searson on administrative leave and removed him from parish ministry in 1997. Searson died in 2009 and was never charged by police.

A spokesman for Victoria Police, which brought charges against Pell leading to his imprisonment for more than a year before the High Court freed him last month, told the Guardian that the newly released sections of the report would be studied and police would “undertake an assessment of those findings.”

“At this time it would not be appropriate to comment further about any possible action,” The spokesman said.

Current Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli released his own statement in response to the new material from the commission, in which he repeated his previous apologies “for the failure of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne to responsibly care for and protect our young people and vulnerable adults.”

“Child safety and care is not a project with an end date”, Comensoli said, but a project that “requires life-long vigilance.”

In December 2018, Pell was convicted of five counts of sexual abuse, but was acquitted by the Australian High Court last monthl. Following that decision, the redacted portions of the commission’s findings were released.

In a university Discovery Bible Study run by OM Madagascar, a student finds the answers he is looking for in the Bible.

OMers help Hungarian children uncover their gifts through drama camp.