In brief

GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978

SUNDAY Vol. XXXIX No. 10908

August 12, 2018Dhul-Hijja 1, 1439 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

Long-time residentpromotes 2022World Cup in Russia

QATAR | Page 24 SPORT | Page 1

222 athletes to represent Qatar in Asian Games

QATAR | Offi cial

Amir congratulates Chad’s presidentHis Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani sent yesterday cables of congratulations to President of Chad Idriss Deby Itno on the anniversary of his country’s Independence Day. HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani also sent a similar cable to Chad Prime Minister Albert Pahimi Padacke.

QATAR | Reaction

Patrol vehicle blast inJordan condemnedQatar has strongly condemned the explosion that targeted a gendarmerie and public security joint patrol in Jordan’s Fuheis, killing one security personnel and injuring six others. In a statement yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs reiterated Qatar’s firm stance in rejecting violence and terrorism regardless of the motives and causes. The ministry aff irmed Qatar’s solidarity with the Jordanian government and its support for any measures it takes to maintain security. It also expressed Qatar’s condolences to the families of victims as well as the government and people of Jordan, wishing the injured a speedy recovery.

AMERICA | Accident

‘Suicidal’ worker steals,crashes empty planeA young, “suicidal” airport worker who stole an empty plane from Seattle-Tacoma Airport and took it on an hour-long flight before crashing did not commit any security violations, off icials said yesterday. Authorities also ruled out any link to terrorism in the incident, which took place late on Friday, and saw the man, who was killed in the crash, hold a conversation with an air traff ic controller in which he seemed to apologise for what he was doing. Page 12

EAST ASIA | Religion

China delays mosquedemolition aft er protestAuthorities in northern China delayed the demolition of a massive mosque yesterday after thousands of people demonstrated to stop its destruction, local residents said, amid a nationwide government drive to tighten restrictions on religious activities. Across China, off icials have sought to limit religious freedoms for Muslims as part of a widespread attempt to bring believers in line with the dictates of the ruling Communist Party.

SPACE | Mission

Launch of spaceship to Sun postponedNasa postponed until today the launch of the first ever spacecraft to fly directly toward the Sun on a mission to plunge into our star’s sizzling atmosphere and unlock its mysteries. The reason for the delay was not immediately clear, but was called for after a gaseous helium alarm was sounded in the last moments before liftoff , off icials said. Engineers are taking utmost caution with the $1.5bn Parker Solar Probe. Page 12

‘Mall of Qatar eyes expansion to attract more tourists’By Peter AlagosBusiness Reporter

Mall of Qatar is fi nalising plans for an expansion project as part of eff orts to serve Qa-

tar’s growing retail segment and to help boost tourist infl ow to the country, an executive offi cial has said.

According to Mall of Qatar CEO Stu-art Elder, the mall’s management has started pre-planning work, including the necessary approvals and other “be-hind the scenes” requirements, and is expected to break ground next year.

“We’ve already started planning

because pre-planning starts 12 to 18 months before…our intent is to break dirt in likely early Q1 or Q2 next year, so around April or May and with a completion before 2022…looking at the next stage, one of the reasons why we’re looking at 2022 is because we want to be the destination for people in Qatar,” Elder said.

He added: “We have a very exciting next stage of development, which we are planning to launch in Qatar and the region in September-October this year. We are doing a major expansion of the mall starting next year but we want to launch that properly to the media.

“Our expansion plans mean more

reasons to come to Mall of Qatar for en-tertainment, education, and for staying or living in Qatar. There’s an amazing opportunity for people to live in this region…we’re still fi nalising launch plans.”

According to Elder, the mall has witnessed growth in its customer base since operations started 18 months ago.

“Ninety plus per cent of our custom-ers are Qatar residents, either Qataris or expatriates. The proportion of in-ternational tourist visitors is very large. We have a fantastic, loyal, and strong customer base in this mall.

“What we want to continue is to grow that customer base, so we’re fi nd-

ing more reasons to bring more people here and to bring more tourists to come here. This is all about growing our cus-tomer base, which you’ve got to do as a retailer; as a mall, we’ve got to fi nd more ways to attract more people,” he pointed out.

Earlier, Elder told Gulf Times that Mall of Qatar is in talks with Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA), as well as other organisations like Hamad Inter-national Airport (HIA) and Qatar Air-ways to fi nd ways to increase tourist infl ow to the country. He said discus-sions with QTA involve tapping into the growing cruise ship industry. To Page 9Mall of Qatar CEO Stuart Elder.

Stamp of approval for HIA plan to cut carbon emissions

Level 3 of ACI’s Airport Carbon Accreditation renewed

Hamad International Airport (HIA) has successfully retained its Airport Carbon Accredita-

tion at Level 3 for another year. HIA’s renewal comes after success-

fully reaching Level 3 ‘Optimisation’ status last year and becoming the fi rst airport in the GCC and only the second in the Middle East and North Africa re-gion to reach Level 3 accreditation.

HIA’s airport-wide energy reduction programmes and collaborative approach with airport stakeholders to manage third-party emissions have resulted in measurable change.

HIA chief operating offi cer Badr Mo-hamed al-Meer, and Regional Board di-rector, Airports Council International (ACI) Asia-Pacifi c, said: “As Hamad In-ternational Airport continues to accom-modate rapid growth with an increasing number of passengers and cargo, we are committed more than ever on refl ect-ing global environmental standards and minimising environmental impact.

“We are proud to successfully work in line with ACI’s standards and will con-tinue to minimise our use of natural re-sources, control emissions and manage waste carefully as we move forward.”

Patti Chau, regional director, ACI Asia-Pacifi c said: “This achievement refl ects HIA’s commitment to sustaina-ble practices and reducing environmen-tal impact and emissions. ACI will con-tinue supporting HIA and other airport members as they face the challenges of climate change and strive for long-term development and success.”

This accreditation acknowledges HIA’s commitment to tackling climate

change and its target to improve car-bon effi ciency per passenger by 30% by 2030 against a 2015 baseline, for which it has already made signifi cant progress.

In addition to a fuel-saving programme aimed at reducing fuel consumption through operational practice and driver awareness, HIA’s Carbon Management Plan delivers energy reduction initiatives throughout the airport.

A cross-functional Energy Working Group identifi es and promotes energy saving initiatives, including the opti-misation of air-conditioning for pas-senger load bridges through integra-tion with fl ight schedules, replacing conventional lighting with LEDs, and optimising light usage at the airport’s boarding gates.

A key component to the HIA plan is encouraging the participation of the airport’s stakeholders including pas-sengers, Qatar Airways and its subsidi-aries, government stakeholders, private operators and retailers to engage in environmentally-conscious practices and reduce carbon emissions across the airport campus.

HIA also partnered with Kahramaa’s National Programme for Conservation and Energy Effi ciency, ‘Tarsheed’, to de-liver technical energy and water conser-vation training to employees.

The training focused on resource conservation and was aligned with His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani’s 2030 vision for sus-tainable development.

The ACI’s Airport Carbon Accredi-tation programme is the world’s only institutionally-endorsed, international carbon management programme for airports and off ers certifi cation at four levels, which refl ect incremental chal-lenges in measuring, managing and im-proving carbon emissions, HIA said.

‘Johnson’s burqa remarksfuelling Islamophobia’DPALondon

Britain’s leading Muslim organisa-tion warned yesterday that com-ments by former foreign secre-

tary Boris Johnson, mocking women wearing the niqab or burqa, have al-ready encouraged Islamophobia.

“Since Boris Johnson’s Islamopho-bic remarks comparing Muslim women who wear the niqab to robbers and let-terboxes, his words have had a negative and potentially dangerous eff ect on Muslim women and Muslims gener-ally,” the Muslim Council of Britain, which represents more than 1,000

mosques and Muslim institutions, said in a statement.

Johnson was criticised by many in-side and outside his Conservative party, including party leader and Prime Min-ister Theresa May, after he wrote in The Telegraph that women wearing burqas resembled bank robbers or letter boxes.

He now faces a disciplinary investiga-tion by the party, but a leading Conserv-ative right-winger yesterday claimed Johnson was being forced into a “show trial.” Writing in yesterday’s Telegraph, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who heads a group of Conservative eurosceptic lawmakers, said the investigation of Johnson was motivated by envy and fear of his lead-ership potential. Page 15

21% drop in traffi cviolations during1st half of this yearThe number of traffi c violations

recorded in the fi rst half of 2018 dropped by 21.1% compared to

the same period last year, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Interior (MoI) yesterday.

A total of 830,318 traffi c violations were detected and registered during the fi rst six months of the year, data showed.

Through posts on Twitter yesterday, the MoI also informed that the Gen-eral Directorate of Traffi c issued 39,345 new driving licences and registered 32,668 new vehicles between January and June this year.

Meanwhile, the number of transac-tions carried out by the MoI as part of the services it provides to the public in-creased by 4.5% in the fi rst half of this year compared to the same period in 2017.

In total, 49,084,450 service transac-tions were completed by the ministry between January and June. On an aver-age, this translated to 8,180,742 trans-actions a month, or 272,691 daily.

The statistics revealed that 1,441,767 transactions related to visa procedures were carried out in the fi rst half of

2018, an increase of 10.7% compared to the same period last year.

Also, a total of 3,468,101 transac-tions were completed at Expatriates Aff airs Department and Unifi ed Serv-ices Department centres in the fi rst six months of the year.

Further, the data showed that the Airport Passports Department suc-cessfully off ered its services and eased travel procedures at Hamad Interna-tional Airport for 6,956,731 travellers in the said period.

The General Directorate of Civil De-

fence (GDCD) succeeded in putting out 916 fi res, an increase of 14.5% com-pared to the fi rst half of 2017. The av-erage time taken by Civil Defence ve-hicles to arrive at an accident site was around seven minutes.

The GDCD was able to carry out 576 rescue and relief operations involv-ing car crashes, broken lifts and other types of cases during the fi rst half of 2018.

Meanwhile, the number of calls for helps and complaints dealt with by Al Fazaa amounted to 22,758. Al Fazaa also put up check points and carried out 725 search campaigns during this period to maintain security and stabil-ity around the country.

The statistics also revealed that 37,452 transactions related to Qatari passports were carried out during this period, including 3,949 transactions related to the issuance of new Qatari passports.

Pensioners and persons with spe-cial needs were exempted from paying MoI fees and charges. The total value of these exemptions was QR1,614,605, through 5,892 transactions.

His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Thani’s Marid, with jockey Olivier Peslier astride, is led into the winner’s enclosure after the victory in the Al Rayyan Cup - Prix Kesberoy (Gr1 PA), at Deauville in France, yesterday. Sport Page 8

Marid wins Al Rayyan Cup - Prix Kesberoy (Gr1 PA)

QATAR

Gulf Times Sunday, August 12, 20184

Researchers develop wearable technology for diabeticsA collaborative research

project bringing to-gether four separate

studies by researchers at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), in partnership with Qatar Foundation and several institutions in the US, has led to the development of inno-vative, wearable devices that could enhance the preven-tion, management and treat-ment of diabetic foot ulcers.

The studies, completed over a 10-year period, won the Best Research Project Award at Qatar Founda-tion’s Annual Research Conference earlier this year, HMC said in a statement yesterday.

HMC’s podiatry clinics treat thousands of patients with diabetes each year, with nearly 15,000 diabe-tes-related appointments in 2017 alone. The Interna-tional Diabetes Federation

estimates that around 23% of Qatar’s population has diabetes, with diabetic foot ulcers being the main rea-son for hospitalisation for people with diabetes.

“Between 10% and 20% of people with diabetes will de-velop a foot ulcer at some point in their life,” explained Dr Talal Khader Talal, head of Podiatric Services at HMC and a lead author of the studies.

“People with diabetes are especially vulnerable to foot ulcers as their blood sugar levels are often high and can fl uctuate. This can inhibit the skin’s ability to repair itself due to nerve damage. Due to a condition called peripheral diabetic neuropathy, many diabetics have reduced nerve function and sensation in their feet, meaning they may be un-aware of cuts, damage, and ul-cers on their feet until they be-come severe,” added Dr Talal.

One of the research stud-ies led to the development of a specialist ‘smart sock’, which enables clinical teams to monitor the tem-perature, pressure and joint angles of a patient’s feet via fi bre optic sensors. The in-formation is sent automati-cally to a specialised device and can be viewed by both the patient and their doctor.

“By monitoring this infor-mation via the ‘smart sock’, we are able to predict when a patient may be most vulner-

able to the development of a foot ulcer. We are then able to help the patient change their behaviour and minimise this risk,” said Dr Talal.

In another of the studies, the researchers designed a specialist shirt capable of monitoring patients’ activ-ity. Physical activity is an important component of managing diabetes but it can be challenging to get the right balance; high levels of activity can cause stress and pressure on the feet, while low activity levels may in-crease the risk of foot ulcers.

“Our research also fo-cused on enhancing the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers and one of the stud-ies led to the development of wearable units, which can be used to send electro im-pulses to the feet to stimu-late blood fl ow and increase healing. In addition to the

positive healing eff ect, the impulses are also able to increase sensation in the feet,’’ noted Dr Talal.

The fi nal study looked at the eff ect of sensor-based interactive balance training. Due to the loss of feeling in their feet, some patients with diabetes experience mobility issues and lose confi dence. The interactive balance training used sensors and a computer-based avatar, which navigated obstacles. This provided a safe way for these patients to gain confi -dence in their mobility.

“Though the devices de-veloped are still undergo-ing further investigation, our initial research fi ndings indicate that they could become very valuable tools in the future and boost our ability to prevent, manage and treat diabetic foot ul-cers,” added Dr Talal.

Dr Talal Khader Talal

MDPS and Nama Centre sign partnership pact

The Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) and the Social Development Centre - Nama have signed a collaboration protocol to organise a campaign to raise the awareness of the youth about Qatar National Vision (QNV) 2030.The campaign aims to make the youth aware of QNV’s four pillars.Assistant Undersecretary for Planning Aff airs at the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics, Hamad Rashid al-Athba, and Acting Executive Director of Nama Centre, Amal bint Abdullatif al-Mannai, stressed the need to involve the younger generation and strengthen their role in the sustainable development in all fields.The parties said they looked forward to successful and fruitful results through this partnership.MDPS is responsible for setting and developing the overall vision of the State in co-operation with the relevant authorities, preparing national development strategies and following up on their implementation in co-ordination with the authorities concerned.

HE the Minister of Education and Higher Education Dr Mohamed Abdul Wahed Ali al-Hammadi has ratified the results of the second round of high school final examinations for the 2017-2018 academic years.The success rate was 57.7 %. For adults, religious institute, and Qatar technical school the success rate was

44.04%, 50%, and 35.29%, respectively.Success rate for the Qatar Banking Studies and Business Administration was at 20%.Director of the Evaluation Institute at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education Khalid al-Harqan congratulated those who passed, wishing them further development in their academic lives and their careers afterwards.

Education minister ratifies high school exam results

QATAR

Gulf Times Sunday, August 12 ,20186

Souq Al Wakra Hotel Qatar by Tivoli set for Aug 15 launch

Souq Al Wakra Hotel Qatar by Tivoli will launch on August 15 in Al Wakrah,

nestled in the newly established souq on the shores of the Arabi-an Gulf, it has been announced.

Blending artful Qatari tradi-tion and contemporary leisure, the new hotel comprises two buildings with a total of 101 guest rooms. Both buildings are former heritage houses where original character has been pre-served with the architecture mirroring a Qatari house or for-tress, according to a press state-ment.

In keeping with the local herit-age, each of the guest rooms and suites features classic thatched roofs, refl ecting traditional bas-ket weaving elements. The guest rooms have been designed with colourful motifs refl ecting the jubilant blues of the sea and the sandy tones of the desert, in-spired by Al Wakrah’s history as a pearl diving and fi shing village.

Open walkways and maze-like paths lead to courtyards

where multiple guest rooms can be blocked off to create private areas for groups. Off ering “ulti-

mate privacy”, large parties will be able to stay together in guest rooms grouped around shaded

majlis, perfect for celebrations or family gatherings.

Souq Al Wakra Hotel Qa-

tar by Tivoli has created dining delights in fi ve restaurants and lounges. Jarnen off ers Mediter-ranean all-day dining with fresh seafood sourced daily from the local Al Wakrah market and BBQ grilled to order at live cooking stations. Markhan, an Arabic fusion lounge, off ers the ideal place to enjoy the sunset from the terrace overlooking the gulf.

Emshoot invites guests to

discover the culinary delights of Asia’s diverse fl avours with dishes ranging from sushi to tandoori kebabs. For those look-ing for something lighter, guests can dine upstairs and embrace the sights and sounds of the nearby Souq from Mahaadeg’s terrace, which serves a selection of international dishes. Whether needing to grab breakfast on the go or an afternoon snack, the

Lobby Lounge tempts palates with a range of quick bites.

In addition, the majlis - which are situated across the property - off er an authentic Bedouin-style evening or live BBQ. The colourful spaces are “perfect for groups to share quality time while enjoying a casual and con-vivial atmosphere”.

Tivoli Spa will off er separate treatment rooms for men and women as well as a hydro pool, steam room, Vichy Shower and jacuzzi. High-end spa products eff ectively target the physical signs of stress and fatigue. A mul-tifunctional gym in each building is also available for all guests.

The hotel, which is only a 15-minute drive to Hamad Inter-national Airport, is in an easily accessible location for business meetings, with both a multipur-pose boardroom and a business centre available in each building. The hotel also has direct access to the adjacent Al Wakrah public beach and promenade, suitable for exercising.

Views of the new Souq Al Wakra Hotel Qatar by Tivoli.

Sudanese minister lauds Qatar support for Darfur peace

Qatar has fulfi lled more than its com-mitment on the The

Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD) signed in 2011 and the donor confer-ence held in 2013, Minister of State at the Sudanese Presidency and head of the Darfur Peace Offi ce, Majdi Khalafallah, has said.

Speaking to Qatar News Agency (QNA) yesterday he said Qatar’s continued support has enabled Darfur to play a pivotal role in in-ternal peace eff orts and to contribute positively to the Sudanese role in support of African stability.

“The contributions of the State of Qatar to Sudan cannot be missed,” Majdi Khalafallah said. “Qatar has played a great role for rapid development with continu-ous support”, he added.

The Sudanese offi cial lauded the role played by

Qatar in achieving the peace in Darfur through the Doha Peace Document, especially in the areas of social life, the process of recovery and rehabilitation of the Darfur communities, reconciliation process, confl ict resolution, transformation of socie-ties and linking the states of Darfur with the rest of the states of Sudan and the surrounding regional com-munity, which enabled the partners of the international peace process to verify the progress of the peace proc-ess in the region.

He stressed that the Pres-idency of Sudan highly ap-preciates the Qatari eff orts in Darfur and looks forward to many additional roles for the Qatar Fund for Develop-ment and other Qatari or-ganisations.

He pointed out that the recommendations of the meetings of the International Committee for the Darfur Peace Strategy chaired by Qatar will be implemented on the ground in the near future.

QNAKhartoum

Strong winds, poor visibilitydue to dust forecast

Strong winds are ex-pected in the country today along with poor

visibility in some places dur-ing the daytime due to dust, the weather forecast shows.

Northwesterly winds will blow at speeds of 12-22 knots, going up to 26 knots in some inshore areas at times, the Qatar Met de-partment has said.

The detailed forecast also says it will be hot during the day and slight to blowing dust is likely in certain plac-es. Visibility, meanwhile, may drop to 3km or less oc-casionally.

While there is no specifi c warning for off shore areas,

the weather report says the wind speed (northwesterly) may reach a high of 21 knots and slightly dusty condi-tions are also expected along with some clouds.

The maximum tempera-ture is expected to be 45C today in Doha, Wakrah and Mesaieed, followed by 44C in Al Khor, 41C in Dukhan and Abu Samra, and 37C in Ruwais.

Yesterday, the maximum temperature was 44C in Ju-mayliyah and Turayna, 43C in Sheehaniya, Batna and Karana, 41C in Ghuwairi-yah, 40C in Abu Hamour and 38C in Doha, Abu Samra and Al Khor.

QATAR7Gulf Times

Sunday, August 12, 2018

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) in co-operation with the Ministry of Economy and Commerce has cleared the open display area, known as the ‘onion zone,’ opposite the central vegetable and fruit market, local Arabic daily Arrayah has reported. The vendors, who used to display sacks of onions, garlic and potatoes, besides watermelons, were ordered to evacuate the place and transfer their goods to the stores of the retail market nearby. Accordingly, the MME’s public cleaning department removed all the refuse material and made the area clean. However, consumers have urged the authorities concerned to provide an alternative area to avoid any potential hike in the prices of such items, Arrayah added.

‘Onion zone’ cleared

Ooredoo’s Nojoom Business

seeing ‘strong success’

Ooredoo has an-nounced that its Nojoom Business

Loyalty Programme is see-ing “strong success” rolling into its second year, signing up more than 3,000 mem-bers to enjoy exclusive cor-porate and individual off ers and benefi ts.

Nojoom Business has al-ready extended more than 100 corporate and employ-ee off ers to its programme members.

Now, Ooredoo is further expanding the Nojoom Busi-ness partner ecosystem to provide more “great value and engaging” off ers for its members from high-profi le

and rapidly digitising indus-try verticals such as bank-ing and fi nance, education, hospitality and tourism, lo-gistics, professional services, retail, and transportation and travel, the company has said in a statement.

Apart from access to ex-clusive deals and off ers, Nojoom Business members also have the opportunity to showcase their own portfo-lio and advertise their off ers in this business network.

Ooredoo Qatar COO Yousuf Abdulla al-Kubaisi said, “Nojoom Business saw strong success in its fi rst year, with 3,000 of Qatar’s most dynamic organisa-

tions enjoying a wide range of corporate benefi ts.

“In response to customer demands, Ooredoo is con-tinuing to grow the Nojoom Business programme to help our business customers meet their needs and reward their employees.”

Accelerating Nojoom Busi-ness enrolment, Ooredoo has said it is seeing “strong feed-back” on a recently launched integrated awareness cam-paign addressed to corporate employees.

Potential members can refer to banners, fl yers,

posters, digital marketing and direct marketing via SMS to learn about the pro-gramme within the venues of selected large companies in Qatar.

Business customers “can leverage the Ooredoo Ad-vantage’, making Ooredoo ‘Best for Business’, thanks to its breadth and depth of talent, best fi xed and mobile networks, broadest portfo-lio of ICT services and solu-tions, and for being trusted partner for 60 years”, the statement adds.

For more details on the Nojoom Business pro-gramme, one can visit www.ooredoo.qa/nb

QATAR

Gulf Times Sunday, August 12, 20188

Al Jazeera programme nominated for Emmy Award

Al Jazeera English’s interactive news hour, Newsgrid, has

been nominated for an In-ternational Emmy Award.

Newsgrid’s special in-depth analysis and re-porting on the blockade imposed on Qatar by some neighbouring countries has been nominated for this prestigious award un-der the News & Current Aff airs segment, Al Jazeera Media Network has said in a press statement.

One of the key demands

by the blockading countries was calling for the closure of Al Jazeera Media Net-work, the statement notes.

The programme focused on the diplomatic eff orts being taken to resolve the crisis, the economic and social impact on the peo-ple of the region, and how the international commu-nity came together to con-demn the demand for the closure of Al Jazeera by the blockading countries.

In addition, Al Jazeera English’s Fault Lines,

which covers US aff airs and the role played by America in the wider world, has been nominated for fi ve prestigious Emmy awards by the New York-based National Academy of Tel-evision Arts & Sciences - more nominations in 2018 than some of the leading industry competitors.

The winners will be an-nounced at a ceremony at the 39th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards in New York on November 19.

New Samsung Galaxy Note9 now available for pre-order in Qatar

Special off er for LuLu Doha Bank credit card users

The new “super power-ful” Galaxy Note9 is available for pre-order

until August 24 at major re-tailers, operators and Sam-sung brand stores, it has been announced.

Customers who pre-order the device will be the “fi rst to experience the powerful S-Pen, the enhanced battery and the most powerful cam-era available, among other innovative features”, accord-ing to a press statement.

In addition, they will get JBL headphones with the 128GB version and JBL head-phones and JBL Bluetooth speakers with the 512GB ver-sion.

Stocks are limited and pre-orders are “fulfi lled on a fi rst-come, fi rst-served ba-sis”, the statement notes.

“We are thrilled to off er consumers a mobile device that is our most powerful yet, aimed for our multitasking lifestyles, with a longer bat-tery life. The Galaxy Note9 is designed to keep up with the most ambitious achievers for whom technology is second nature, and for whom the work place is evolving, with its improved S Pen that can do much more than ever be-fore in addition to its superi-or camera functionality that off ers the best image quality,” said Tarek Sabbagh, head of the IT and Mobile Division at Samsung Electronics Gulf.

The new Galaxy Note9 boasts of a 4,000mAh bat-tery, the largest ever on a fl agship Galaxy phone for long-lasting power and two internal storage options – 128GB or 512GB - with the ability to insert a microSD card. Galaxy Note9’s camera is Samsung’s smartest yet,

with advanced noise reduc-tion technology, and a Dual Aperture lens, which adjusts to light just like the human eye. It employs scene opti-miser and fl aw detection for “stunning, lifelike images”, the statement adds.

Now with Bluetooth Low-Energy support, the new S Pen delivers an entirely new way to use the Note. With just a click, it’s now possi-ble to take selfi es and group pictures, present slides, play music and videos, and more.

The Samsung Galaxy Note9 is available for pre-order across major retailers and Samsung brand stores in Qatar. The device is off ered in Midnight Black, Lavender Purple, with matching S Pen, and Ocean Blue with a Pearl Yellow S-Pen.

The prices of the device are QR3,599 for 128GB and QR4,549 for 512GB.

For more information about Galaxy Note9, one can visit http://www.sam-sungmobilepress.com, news.samsung.com/galaxy or www.samsung.com/galaxy

Doha Bank has an-nounced a special off er for LuLu Doha

Bank credit cardholders, in collaboration with LuLu Hy-permarket Qatar.

Running from August 15 until September 4, the off er will allow cardholders shop-ping at LuLu Hypermarket in Al Gharafa the opportunity to earn up to 10% of purchase value in the form of LuLu re-ward points, the bank has said in a press statement.

Customers with a LuLu Doha Bank credit card, is-sued based on salary trans-fer, are eligible to earn 10% worth of LuLu points on every purchase, whereas the co-branded cards issued based on a deposit are eligi-ble to earn 4% worth of LuLu points on every purchase.

LuLu Doha Bank credit

cardholders can earn a maxi-mum of 5,000 extra points, an equivalent to QR250 in value.

Doha Bank Group CEO Dr R Seetharaman said, “Our customer-centric approach is built around creating add-ed value opportunities for our customers through the various products and serv-ices that we off er and the valuable collaborations and partnerships we seek.

“We invite all LuLu Doha Bank credit cardholders to enjoy the offer at LuLu Hypermarket in Al Gharafa and benefit from the wide array of products offered at this popular shopping centre.”

LuLu Doha Bank credit cardholders can redeem re-ward points in the form of free groceries, electron-ics, cosmetics, clothing and many other categories across all LuLu Hypermarket loca-tions in Qatar.

For more information on the LuLu Doha Bank credit card, one can visit http://do-habank.qa/personal/cards/credit-card-products/lulu-doha-bank-shopping-cred-it-card/

The new Galaxy Note9.

“We invite all LuLu Doha Bank credit cardholders to enjoy the off er at LuLu Hypermarket in Al Gharafa and benefi t from the wide array of products off ered at this popular shopping centre”

QATAR9Gulf Times

Sunday, August 12, 2018

MME cleanup drive in full swing for EidThe Ministry of Municipality

and Environment (MME)’s General Cleanliness Depart-

ment has completed its prepara-tions for the upcoming Eid al-Adha, including the cleaning of all prayer yards and mosques desig-nated for Eid prayers. The depart-ment has put in place a number of plans and programmes to main-tain cleanliness around the coun-try, especially places where a large number of people gather, where

follow-up field teams will work round the clock.

Such operations will be carried out at various public facilities, areas of entertainment and com-mercial streets, the MME has said in a press statement. In particu-lar, Corniche Street, public parks and beaches in various parts of the country will see round-the-clock cleanup services.

Safar Mubarak al-Shafi , director of the General Cleanliness Depart-

ment, stressed that cleaning works during the Eid holidays would go on round the clock. Special fi eld teams will be available to take care of all key areas around the country and re-move garbage instantly. Besides, the normal daily cleaning schedules will continue as usual regardless of the special arrangements.

Muslim workers will be relieved of their duties during the Eid prayers to give them the opportunity to cel-ebrate the occasion and then resume

work, the statement notes. In addi-tion, a special emergency team will be ready to handle any undesig-nated disposal of rubbish and refuse materials, such as the remains of slaughtered animals or food waste. These will be removed immediately to prevent foul smell from spreading around such places.

Another team of inspectors will be deployed to detect other related violations and take the necessary action.

The Community Police Department, Juvenile Police Department and Al Fazaa have been taking part in the summer activities of sports clubs. Through this participation, they provided children of diff erent age groups (7 to 16 years) with information and knowledge that would benefit them in terms of security, the Ministry of Interior (MoI) said. In this connection, the Community Police Department and Al Fazaa started the first stage of an awareness programme at Al Ahli Sports Club on August 5. (Pictures courtesy of MoI website)

MoI departments take part in summer activities of sports clubs

Cleanup ahead of Eid al-Adha.

Cleanup ahead of Eid al-Adha.

Safar Mubarak al-Shafi Cleanup ahead of Eid al-Adha.

Al Shamal Municipality’s Services Aff airs Department, in co-operation with the Municipal Control Department, has removed structures that had encroached upon State property within the jurisdiction of the municipality. These included an unauthorised farm fence as well as a number of under-construction rooms inside a farm in the Abu Quraitah area of Al Shamal, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment said in a statement yesterday.

Removal of encroachments‘Mall of Qatar eyes expansion’

From Page 1

Elder also lauded the eff orts by the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC) to promote Qatar in Russia during the 2018 FIFA World Cup held recently, adding that tour-ists are expected to travel to Qatar in the run-up to the 2022 games.

Elder said the tourist in-fl ow to Qatar would be an opportunity to test vari-ous infrastructure around the country, especially those related to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, as well as how to handle the infl ux of many visitors.

“I think we will all fi nd, particularly now that the Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup is over, more people coming to Qatar because the SC did an amazing job of promoting the brand of Qatar in Russia.

“I think that you’ll fi nd lots of visits from sport-ing teams, you’ll have every World Cup potential qualifying team sending advanced parties to scout around for hotels and train-ing grounds. We’ll have a lot of events leading up to the World Cup because we need to test our infrastruc-ture. We also need to learn how to deal with thousands of people,” Elder added.

AFRICA

Gulf Times Sunday, August 12, 201810

Keita on track for second termBy Clement Sabourin, AFPBamako

Malians vote today in a presidential runoff ex-pected to return Ibrahim

Boubacar Keita to the helm of a country battling militants and ethnic attacks.

The second round — a rerun of the 2013 election between Keita and former finance minister Soumaila Cisse — is the climax of a campaign in which Mali’s security crisis has taken centre stage.

After a fi rst round marred by violence and accusations of fraud, Keita, 73, was credited with 41.7% of the vote while Cisse, 68, picked up 17.78%.

Despite trailing badly, Cisse insisted on Friday he could “turn things around” on polling day. “I am not worried about being be-hind, because I know the diff er-ence is due to fraud,” Cisse told French radio RFI.

The international community hopes the winner will revive a 2015 accord that Mali, a linchpin state in the troubled Sahel, sees as its cornerstone for peace.

Despite the deal, gathering the government, government-allied groups and former Tuareg rebels, a state of emergency remains in force and heads into its fourth year in November.

Militancy, meanwhile, has spread from northern Mali to the centre and south and spilled into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, often infl aming communal confl icts.

France still has 4,500 troops de-ployed alongside the UN’s 15,000 peacekeepers and a regional G5 Sahel force, aimed at rooting out extremists and restoring the au-thority of the state.

Keita is accused by his oppo-nents, including several former

ministers, of fl oundering in his re-sponse to the bloodshed.

Nearly 300 civilians have died in ethnic clashes this year alone.

But in a pre-election interview with AFP, the president described these attacks as “pockets of vio-lence and remnants of terrorism” and said the state was making a “colossal fi nancial eff ort” in fi ght-ing violence.

Another concern is falling living standards. The country became Africa’s fi rst cotton producer in

2017-2018, and the economy has been growing at over 5% annually for several years.

But income per capita has fallen since 2014, according to the World Bank, and nearly half of Mali’s 18mn citizens live in poverty.

Cisse failed to unite the oppo-sition behind him after the fi rst round on July 29.

Two losing candidates, busi-nessman Aliou Boubacar Diallo and former prime minister Cheick Modibo Diarra, who came in third

and fourth, said on Thursday they would not support anyone.

As a result, Keita, commonly named “IBK” after his initials, is clear favourite in the runoff .

“The main question is whether IBK will win by a landslide, as happened in 2013,” political ana-lyst Souleymane Drabo told AFP.

The election campaign and vote were marred by bouts of violence, mainly in the restive northern and central regions. Not a single bal-lot was cast in 871 polling stations due to violent attacks, represent-ing nearly a quarter of a million voters.

Accusations of fraud mounted in the days following the fi rst round, with three main opposition candidates petitioning the coun-try’s top court over alleged ballot-box stuffi ng and other grievances.

Their challenge was rejected by the court on Wednesday.

Teams from the European Un-ion, the African Union, the re-gional ECOWAS grouping and the Francophonie organisation sent observers to the poll.

EU observers repeatedly called on the government to publish a detailed list of the results of the fi rst round of voting, while calling for more transparency for today’s runoff .

The Malian government re-sponded bluntly, calling on the mission to avoid “jeopardising the electoral process.”

A supporter of Rally for Mali political party waves a party flag during the last political rally of Mali’s incumbent President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, in Bamako on Friday ahead of today’s runoff vote.

4 new Congo Ebola cases, medics prepare experimental treatment

Four new cases of Ebola virus have been confi rmed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the health ministry said, as authorities prepare to deploy an ex-

perimental treatment.The latest confi rmed cases near the town of Mangina in

Congo’s North Kivu province bring the total for the current outbreak to 21, the ministry said in a statement early yester-day. Two more people — one near Mangina and another in the city of Beni — died of Ebola, the ministry said.

In all, the haemorrhagic fever is believed to have killed 38 people, although several of these cases have not been confirmed. Authorities this week began vaccinating health workers and people who had contact with con-firmed cases.

The experimental vaccine, manufactured by Merck, proved eff ective against an outbreak in western Congo that ended late last month. Offi cials are also ready to use an ex-perimental treatment called mAB114 on Ebola patients for the fi rst time, Steve Ahuka, a virologist at the National In-stitute for Biomedical Research (INRB) in the capital Kin-shasa, told Reuters. The treatment was developed in the United States using the antibodies of the survivor of an Eb-ola outbreak in the western Congolese city of Kikwit in 1995 and was 100% eff ective when tested on monkeys.

“It’s experimental. So we are following the protocol. It has been submitted to the ethical committee and the ethi-cal committee gave its okay,” Ahuka said, adding it could be used within days. He said other experimental treatments, including ZMapp, a similar antibody drug made by Mapp Biopharmaceuticals in San Diego, could also be used.

Ebola, which causes fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, is spread through direct contact with body fl uids.

It killed more than 11,000 people during the largest-ever outbreak in West Africa from 2013-16.

Authorities in Congo, which has experienced 10 out-breaks since 1976, have been more successful in containing it. But the current fl are-up poses fresh challenges as it is in a part of Congo stalked by myriad militia groups that regu-larly battle one another and kill and kidnap civilians.

So far, however, the disease has not touched so-called “red zones” where security risks would severely limit access for health workers.

Fishermen of Lake Chad cursed by Boko Haram confl ictBy Celia Lebur, AFP Maiduguri

The fi shermen of Lake Chad must sail in secret, forced to evade both Boko Haram extremists and

Nigeria’s military in a desperate dance that has strangled livelihoods and caused scarcity of a once-staple food.

While in the past boats slid across the vast waters unhindered, sustain-ing a vibrant fi shing industry in north-eastern Nigeria, years of bloody Boko Haram militancy has deeply scarred the region.

And despite a brief return to stability earlier this year, the fi shermen have be-come ensnared in a fresh Nigerian army counterinsurgency operation against the militants in and around the lake launched in May.

For Aminu Mohamed, that means “no fi shing, no selling fi sh,” until the end of August, the date when “Opera-tion Last Hold” is set to end.

But he goes anyway, forced to disre-gard the rules — and risk encountering the militants — in order to survive and feed his six children.

The danger is immense.“Boko Haram lurks on the lake and

when they do not kill us they take

10,000 naira ($27) to allow us to fi sh,” the 45-year-old told AFP.

There is also a threat of arrest by the Nigerian army, who have detained fi sh-ermen in the region and accused them of fi nancing the extremists by paying them taxes.

The once-teeming fi sh market at Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state and major trading hub some 200km from Lake Chad, looks abandoned after nine years of bloody confl ict.

Most stalls are empty, their owners, Hausa and Kanuri traders who have made their fortune there for centuries, have left to buy fi sh at the Cameroon border.

Yakubu Dangombe is one of the few to remain, yet business has never been harder.

Dangombe said he had 2mn naira of fi sh stuck on the road in Baga, the main fi shing hub on the Nigerian side of the lake, blocked by soldiers.

“I have 35 children, I can’t feed them or pay school fees, it’s a disaster,” says the once rich trader.

To avoid the military, traders smug-gle the fi sh into Maiduguri by road in bundles of 10kg or 30kg stashed in cars and “under travellers’ suitcases”, said a salesman under condition of anonym-ity.

Still, not enough fi sh gets in to meet demand.

The shortage has caused a dramatic spike in fi sh prices: one pile (seven or eight fi sh) has surged in the past three months from 4,000 to 10,000 naira.

So customers have turned to other sources of protein.

In a large yard where men use jerry cans to smoke tilapia and perch, there are some new additions to the menu: monitor lizards and cats.

Prior to the confl ict, fi shing was one of the region’s largest sources of in-come and employment.

The industry produced up to 100,000 tonnes of fi sh annually and was valued at as much as $220mn at its peak, ac-cording to the Food and Agriculture Or-ganization of the United Nations.

More than 200 trucks would leave Baga to supply markets all over the country, reaching as far as Lagos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s southern megacities.

Not anymore.According to the fi shing union in

Borno, more than 200 fi shing towns have been razed by the extremists since 2009 in their ruthless quest to establish an Islamic state.

At the peak of the insurgency be-tween 2013 and 2014 when Boko Haram

reigned supreme over the lake — which is bordered by Nigeria, Chad and Niger — authorities from the three nations totally banned fi shing in an attempt to cut what was an important supply for the militants.

The army eventually regained con-trol of most territories, forcing the mil-itants to retreat further into the lake, a diffi cult terrain to access.

By 2016, thanks to the offi cial reo-pening of the Baga market and the resumption of traffi c along some key highways of Borno state, it appeared that some normalcy was returning to daily life.

But traders now complain that the army and local authorities are act-ing together to wring money from them.

Soldiers are accused of seizing fi sh stocks transported by road and working with local authorities to collect taxes, which have tripled, according to Assa Yuni, a trader in Maiduguri.

But officials say the cost is justified because of the added cost of security escorts. “People would like every-thing to be like before, but it’s not so simple, you have to pay armed escorts on the road, because the situation is volatile,” said the secretary of the Fish Producers and Marketers Association

of Borno state, Mallam Baba Musa.Not everyone agrees.“Whether it’s the military or Boko

Haram, we are stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Dangombe, the trader whose stock is stuck near Baga.

A man covers a wooden frame with fishing net to construct a fish trap in Baga fish market in Maiduguri.

REGION/ARAB WORLD11Gulf Times

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Khamenei callsfor action to face‘economic war’AgenciesTehran

Iranian Supreme Leader Aya-tollah Ali Khamenei called for “swift and just” legal ac-

tion after the head of the judi-ciary said the country faced an “economic war”, state television reported.

The comments followed a public outcry over the high cost of living and alleged fi nancial corruption.

“The current special econom-ic conditions are considered an economic war,” judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani said in a letter to Khamenei, call-ing for the setting up of special courts to deal quickly with fi nan-cial crimes, the television report said.

Khamenei agreed, saying: “The purpose (of the courts) should be to punish those guilty of corrupt economic practices quickly and fairly,” the TV added.

Meanwhile, Iran gave its most explicit rejection yet of talks with the United States yesterday, and accused Washington of an “addiction to sanctions” over its latest spat with Turkey.

The US reimposed harsh sanc-tions on Iran on Tuesday fol-lowing its May withdrawal from a landmark 2015 nuclear agree-ment, dealing a heavy blow to the already troubled economy.

US President Donald Trump has off ered talks on a “more comprehensive deal” but Iran has baulked at negotiating under the pressure of sanctions and is instead relying on its increasing-ly close ties with fellow US sanc-tions targets Turkey and Russia.

Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif was asked by the Tas-nim news agency whether there was any plan to meet with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“No, there will be no meeting,” was the blunt response from Zarif.

He said there were also no plans for a meeting with US of-fi cials on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next month, which both Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Trump are due to attend.

“On Trump’s recent proposal (of talks), our official stance was announced by the presi-dent and by us. Americans are not honest and their addiction to sanctions does not allow any negotiation to take place,” Zarif told Tasnim.

It was Iran’s most explicit rejection of talks to date, after much speculation that eco-nomic pressure would force its leaders back to the table with Washington or at least to en-gage in backroom discussions in New York.

Earlier yesterday, Zarif waded into the mounting row between Turkey and the United States.

“Trump’s jubilation in infl ict-ing economic hardship on its Nato ally Turkey is shameful,” he wrote on Twitter.

“The US has to rehabilitate its addiction to sanctions (and) bul-lying or entire world will unite - beyond verbal condemnations - to force it to,” he warned.

“We’ve stood with neighbours before, and will again now.”

Trump said on Friday he was doubling steel and aluminium tariff s on Turkey as part of an ongoing row over the deten-tion of American pastor Andrew Brunson and other issues.

The tensions have fuelled a run on the Turkish lira, which dropped 16% to a record low on Friday, with Trump tweeting that the currency was sliding “rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar!”

Iran too has suff ered a major decline in its currency this year - in part due to US abandonment of the nuclear deal - with the rial losing more than half its value against the dollar since April.

Ironically, the rial strength-ened in the two days leading up to the reimposition of US sanc-tions on Tuesday, after the gov-ernment announced new for-eign exchange measures giving greater freedom to trade dollars at market rates.

In another development, a top Iranian constitutional body has approved measures passed by parliament to bring the coun-try more into line with global money-laundering norms, state media said.

Yemeni students shout slogans during a protest against an air raid by coalition forces that hit a school bus killing dozens of children in the Saada province, in Sanaa yesterday.

Yemen talks to focus on transitional govt: UNAgenciesSanaa

Talks between Yemen’s warring parties next month will focus on a

transitional governance deal and disarmament, the UN spe-cial envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffi ths, said in remarks pub-lished yesterday.

Griffi ths is trying to negotiate an end to the three-year confl ict that has killed more than 10,000 people and pushed Yemen to the verge of starvation.

Air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition killed dozens of chil-dren travelling on a bus in the northern province of Saada on Thursday.

UN chief Antonia Guterres has called for an independent

investigation of the raid.Consultations are due to be-

gin in Geneva on September 6 on a framework for peace talks and confi dence-building meas-ures.

“Primarily, we are trying to reach an agreement between the Yemeni government and (the Houthis’) Ansarullah on the is-sues essential to ending the war and on a national unity govern-ment in which everyone partici-pates,” Griffi ths told the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.

“This will require a signed agreement that includes setting up a transitional political opera-tion under a national unity gov-ernment and putting in place security arrangements for the withdrawal of all armed groups in Yemen and disarming them.”

He said the consultations

would lead to direct negotia-tions.

The coalition of Arab states backed by Western powers including the United States and Britain intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 against the Houthi movement to restore the internationally recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Man-sour Hadi.

Griffi ths’ eff orts have suc-ceeded so far in averting a full assault by the military alli-ance on the Houthi-held main port city of Hodeidah in west-ern Yemen, but battles and at-tacks have continued in the impoverished Arab state where the Houthis control the most populated areas and the capital Sanaa.

Previous UN-sponsored

peace talks have failed to end the confl ict.

The last round of talks in 2016 ended with Hadi’s government walking out after the Houthis rejected a UN proposal calling on the group to quit three main cities, including Sanaa, ahead of talks to form a government.

Griffi ths said discussions on a new government should also in-clude representatives from the General People’s Congress, once headed by slain former presi-dent Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the southern separatist move-ment, a powerful force that has provided many of the coalition-backed fi ghters against the Houthis.

“The future of the South will not be discussed in these con-sultations, but will be part of the Yemeni dialogue in the tran-

sitional period,” Griffi ths said, adding that the United Nations supported a united Yemen.

Meanwhile, the Security Council called for a “credible” investigation into Thursday’s an air strike on the bus.

The appeal followed the coa-lition’s announcement that it had ordered a probe.

Britain’s Ambassador Karen Pierce, whose country holds the rotating Security Council presi-dency, said after a closed-door meeting on Yemen that “if any investigation that is held is not credible, the council will obvi-ously want to review that” and decide “if more is necessary.”

The bus was turned into a mass of twisted metal. The Sau-di-led coalition claimed the bus was carrying “Houthi combat-ants.”

Gaza protest toll rises to three, says ministryAFPGaza City

A 40-year-old Palestin-ian hit by Israeli fi re on the Gaza border died of

his wounds yesterday, taking the death toll from protests the pre-vious day to three, the territory’s health ministry said.

He was among at least 131 Palestinians wounded by Israeli bullets during Friday’s protests, even as an informal truce ending a deadly fl are-up between Gaza’s rulers Hamas and the Israeli army largely held.

In all 307 Palestinians were wounded on Friday, some by tear gas, including two journal-ists and five medics, the health ministry in the coastal enclave said.

It identifi ed the man who died yesterday as Ahmed Abu Lulu, saying he was shot in a section of the border east of the southern

city of Rafah, where the two oth-er Palestinians were also killed.

The ministry had earlier iden-tifi ed the other two as Ali al-Alul, 55, and volunteer medic Abdullah al-Qatati, 21.

Funerals for all three Pales-tinians took place yesterday and were attended by thousands of mourners.

Doctors and fi rst responders were among the mourners, in a show of solidarity for Qatati.

On Friday, a few thousand protesters gathered at various locations along the border, set-ting tyres ablaze and throwing stones, but in smaller numbers than in previous weeks, AFP cor-respondents said.

The Israeli army said a grenade was thrown at troops without causing any casualties, and that soldiers responded with tank fi re at two Hamas posts.

But the border was otherwise calm after a reported deal to end all rocket fi re into Israel and

air strikes on Gaza appeared to take eff ect around midnight on Thursday.

There was no offi cial confi r-mation of the truce from Israel or Hamas, but there were no fresh air strikes on Friday.

Thursday had seen extensive Israeli raids in retaliation for the launching of more than 180 rock-ets and mortar rounds by Ha-mas and its allies on Wednesday night.

It was one of the most serious escalations since the 2014 Gaza war and followed months of ris-ing tensions.

Three Palestinians were killed in the Israeli strikes, includ-ing a pregnant woman and her 18-month-old daughter.

Seven Israelis were wounded by Palestinian rocket fi re.

The European Union said Gaza and Israel were “danger-ously close” to a new confl ict and called for urgent eff orts to pro-tect civilians.

Relatives of 21-year-old Palestinian volunteer medic Abdullah al-Qatati mourn during his funeral in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday.

Former monk held on charges of killing bishop

ReutersCairo

Egypt’s public prosecutor has detained a disgraced monk on charges of killing

a bishop at a desert monastery, his lawyer said yesterday, in a case that has rocked the Coptic community, the Middle East’s biggest Christian minority.

The killing last month of Bishop Epiphanius, a 64-year-old scholar who had led the Abu Makar Monastery in Wadi Natroun, an area some 110km northwest of Cairo, prompted the church to impose strict new measures on its clergy.

Lawyer Ameer Naseef told Re-uters that an Alexandria prosecu-tor on Friday charged Wael Saad, a monk who was known as Isaiah al-Makari before he was stripped of his religious title, with the July 29 killing.

Offi cials from the prosecu-tor’s offi ce were not immediately available, but judicial sources confi rmed the report.

“The prosecution’s decision came yesterday, on Friday, and it (the prosecution) asked that his remand be renewed on time,” Na-seef told Reuters, adding that this would be done today.

Naseef also said that he had decided to withdraw from the case, but he gave no reason.

Christians in Egypt make up an estimated 10% of its roughly 96mn population.

The church had earlier said that Saad had been investigated over alleged long-standing vio-lations of his duties as a monk, but denied that he had been sus-pected of involvement in Bishop Epiphanius’ killing.

The case has prompted the head of the Coptic church, Pope Tawadros II, to launch sweeping measures to combat what some Christian fi gures have described as violations of the principles of poverty and chastity.

The measures include a freeze on accepting new monks, a ban on monks leaving monasteries without offi cial permission and a ban on clergy using social media.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said yesterday they had killed ten militants overnight in a security operation conducted in the northwest of the country near the border with Iraq, the off icial news agency Irna reported. “A well-equipped terrorist group intending to infiltrate the country from the border area of Oshnavieh to foment insecurity and carry out acts of sabotage was ambushed and at least 10 terrorists were killed in a heavy clash,” the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement carried by Irna. There has been spo-radic fighting with Iranian Kurdish militant groups based in Iraq as well as Islamic State fighters near Iran’s porous border with Iraq. In July, there were at least two clashes in the mountainous border area, in which at least 10 Guards and three militants were killed.

A member of Jordan’s security forces died and six were wounded when a bomb exploded under a patrol car at a music festival near Amman, the interior ministry said yesterday. The blast hit a secu-rity patrol in Al-Fuhais, 12km west of the capital on Friday evening, it said. “It killed Sergeant Ali Adnan Qawqaza and wounded six other members of the patrol,” the ministry said, adding that an investiga-tion was underway into the cause of the blast. Security forces had been deployed to protect the town’s annual festival, which hosts prominent Arab music acts. Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz vowed that Jordan would “not be complacent in the hunt for terrorists”. “Jordan will always be at the forefront of the fight against terrorism and obscurantist ideas which target the lives of innocents and try to under-mine security and stability,” he said.

Islamic State group killed five members of a family at a checkpoint on the edge of their village north of Baghdad early yesterday, a police off icial said. The killings took place in Baiji district, around 200km north of the capital, the off icial said. “A group of Daesh (IS) fighters came from the Hamrin moun-tains, crossed the Tigris river after midnight and at-tacked the checkpoint at the entrance to the village of Albu Juwari, north of Baiji,” he said. Five members of the family were killed and a sixth was in a critical condition, he said. All were members of a tribal militia operating under the umbrella of the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary force that has fought the militants. IS has been pushed back by multiple off ensives and ousted from all of Iraq’s towns and cities, including the capital of its self-declared “caliphate”, Mosul.

A suicide attack against a church on the outskirts of Cairo was foiled yesterday when a bomber blew himself up before reaching the target, state media and security sources said. The alleged assailant was forced to detonate a suicide belt as a result of the heavy police presence around the Virgin Church in the Shobra el-Kheima district, state media reported. The man was hiding the explosives under a fluorescent vest, state-run newspaper Akhbar el-Youm said. The blast took place about 200m away from the church, secu-rity off icials said. Christian sites of worship across Egypt have been repeatedly targeted in attacks claimed by the Islamic State group. A string of bombings on Coptic churches in Cairo, Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta in 2016 and 2017 killed at least 80 people.

Iran Guards say they killed 10 militants near Iraq border

One dead in attack on Jordan security patrol

IS militants in Iraq kill five members of family

Attempted suicide attack on Egypt church foiled

INFILTRATION EXPLOSIONCONFLICT TERRORISM

Egypt’s security forces guard the road after they thwarted a suicide bomb attack outside a church a in Qalyubiyah, a governorate north of Cairo, yesterday.

AMERICAS

Gulf Times Sunday, August 12, 201812

Canada shooter charged with four counts of homicideAFPMontreal

The man behind a fatal shooting in an east-ern Canada city has been charged with four counts of fi rst degree murder, police

said yesterday.Authorities identifi ed the gunman as Matthew

Vincent Raymond, 48, who opened fi re in the sleepy city of Fredericton, New Brunswick early Friday, killing four including two offi cers.

Raymond, who was injured and hospitalised, was charged with four premeditated homicides, though police did not provide details of his mo-tives.

He will remain in custody as he awaits a court appearance slated for August 27, Fredericton po-lice said in a statement.

Law enforcement offi cials released the names of the two civilians slain in the shooting: Donald Adam Robichaud, 42, and Bobbie Lee Wright, 32.

On Friday authorities in the provincial capital — about 75km from the border between Canada and the US state of Maine — had identifi ed the two offi cers killed as Lawrence Robert Costello, 45, and Sara Mae Helen Burns, 43.

The incident sparked panic in the city as Can-ada grapples with rising gun violence, with some calling for a handgun ban.

The mass shooting is the second in the prov-ince in recent years, and comes only weeks after a man opened fi re on July 22 in a bustling Toronto district, killing an 18-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl while wounding 13 other people.

In 2014, three federal police offi cers were killed and two more were injured after responding to an emergency call about an armed man roaming a residential neighbourhood of nearby Moncton, New Brunswick.

A 28-hour manhunt ensued before police caught up to the suspect and arrested him, in what was described as the second-deadliest at-tack on Canadian police since four Royal Cana-dian Mounted Police offi cers were ambushed on a Mayerthorpe, Alberta farm in 2005.

Nasa postpones launch of historic spaceship to SunBy Kerry Sheridan, AFPTampa

Nasa has postponed until today the launch of the fi rst ever spacecraft to fl y

directly toward the Sun on a mis-sion to plunge into our star’s siz-zling atmosphere and unlock its mysteries.

The reason for the delay was not immediately clear, but was called for after a gaseous helium alarm was sounded in the last moments before liftoff , offi cials said.

Engineers are taking utmost caution with the $1.5bn Parker Solar Probe, which Thomas Zurbuchen, head of Nasa’s sci-ence mission directorate, de-scribed as one of the agency’s most “strategically important missions.”

The next launch window opens at 3.31am today, when weather conditions are 60% favourable for launch, Nasa said.

By coming closer to the Sun than any spacecraft in history, the unmanned probe’s main goal is to unveil the secrets of the co-rona, the unusual atmosphere around the Sun.

Not only is the corona about 300 times hotter than the Sun’s surface, but it also hurls powerful plasma and energetic particles that can unleash geomagnetic space storms, wreaking havoc on Earth by disrupting the power grid.

These solar outbursts are poorly understood, but pack the potential to wipe out power to millions of people.

The probe is protected by an ultra-powerful heat shield that is 11.5cm thick.

The shield should enable the spacecraft to survive its close shave with the fi ery star, coming within 6.16mn km of the Sun’s surface.

The heat shield is built to withstand radiation equivalent to up to about 500 times the Sun’s radiation on Earth.

Even in a region where tem-peratures can reach more than a million degrees Fahrenheit, the sunlight is expected to heat the shield to just around 1,371 de-grees Celsius.

If all works as planned, the in-side of the spacecraft should stay at just 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The sun is full of mysteries,” said Nicky Fox, project scientist

at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.

The tools on board will meas-ure the expanding corona and continually fl owing atmosphere known as the solar wind, which solar physicist Eugene Parker fi rst described in 1958.

Parker, now 91, recalled that at fi rst some people did not believe in his theory.

But then, the launch of Nasa’s Mariner 2 spacecraft in 1962 — be-coming the fi rst robotic spacecraft to make a successful planetary en-counter — proved them wrong.

“It was just a matter of sit-ting out the deniers for four years until the Venus Mariner 2 space-craft showed that, by golly, there was a solar wind,” Parker said earlier this week.

Parker said he was “im-pressed” by the Parker Solar Probe, calling it “a very complex machine.”

According to Zurbuchen, Parker is an “incredible hero of our scientifi c community.”

“Life is all about these big arcs. Sometimes you just see, like how over a lifetime, things just come together and create these amaz-ing stories, these leaps going for-ward.”

A Nasa handout photo of the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket with the Parker Solar Probe onboard shortly after the Mobile Service Tower was rolled back at Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Friday.

Deadly California blazes threaten populated areasAFPLos Angeles

Authorities battling massive wildfi res in large swathes of California issued mandatory

evacuation orders and health warn-ings Friday over the worsening air quality as the fl ames grew ever clos-er to populated areas.

After almost a month of wild-fi res, the National Weather Service warned that satellite images showed “widespread smoke” drifting from the fi res into western and central Canada before heading back south in the US Northern Plains.

The Kaibab National Forest serv-ice in neighbouring Arizona warned that “wildfi res across the West are creating regional haze.”

But it was northern California where most air quality alerts were being issued, with warnings of “un-healthy conditions” for vulnerable groups such as the very young and old.

The Mendocino Complex, made of two separate blazes, has been de-clared the most destructive fi re in the state’s history.

Its largest blaze, the Ranch Fire, was only 53% contained compared to 87% for its twin River Fire.

Further north, the Carr Fire was declared 51% under control, after scorching 180,000 acres of land and claiming the lives of three fi refi ght-ers and fi ve civilians, making it Cali-fornia’s third deadliest fi re ever.

More than 14,000 fi refi ghters, in-cluding reinforcements from as far away as Australia and New Zealand, have fanned out across the state to stop the multitude of infernos.

Some inmates even assisted in the eff ort. The Miramonte jail camp made a fi re line to stop the advancing Holy Fire from consuming homes in the area.

“Oh man, it’s hard, but we make it look easy,” said one of the inmates, Michael Henson. “Man, you know, we (are) just trying to get the job done. You know, us fi refi ghters help protect the community.”

The man accused of deliberately starting the latest fast-moving blaze faces life in prison if convicted of ar-son and other charges.

Forrest Gordon Clark, 51, stands accused of starting the Holy Fire, which in four days has burned more

than 18,000 acres of Cleveland Na-tional Forest 100km north of San Di-ego. It is still spreading.

Prosecutors say Clark started the fi re, which is only 5% contained, with the intention of causing dam-age to others and burning a forest. The blaze has razed a dozen proper-ties so far.

He has also been charged with threatening neighbours — one of whom lost his cabin in the fi re — and resisting arrest. He faces sentences ranging from 10 years to life impris-onment.

During his initial court appear-ance, Clark fl ipped his dark, waist-length hair, spat and paced back and forth behind the chain-link fence of the court cell.

“That’s a lie,” Clark interrupted

the judge while charges were read.His lawyers had to intervene re-

peatedly to ask him to keep quiet.At fi rst, Clark would not show his

face, his lawyers saying he feared re-prisals against his family.

His lawyers asked to postpone the preliminary hearings by a week so that they could study the govern-ment’s evidence.

“May I pay for that immediately? Can I post bail? I can handle a mil-lion (dollars) right now, easily,” Clark added, but the judge refused his re-quest. He had refused to leave his jail cell on Thursday.

Mike Milligan, the local volun-teer fi re chief who owns a cabin near Clark’s, told The Orange County Register that Clark had long-running feuds with neighbours in the area.

Milligan said that Clark had re-cently sent him an e-mail warning, “this place will burn.”

The head of the Orange County team fi ghting the Holy Fire said the blaze had started near Clark’s cabin in Jim Canyon.

Before his arrest, Clark told a re-porter he had nothing to with the fi re.

“I was asleep. I had two earplugs in,” he told the reporter.

“I woke up and my stuff was all on fi re,” he said.

He also claimed he had been threatened by the MS-13 gang.

The blaze has already forced the evacuation of 7,400 homes and more than 21,000 people.

Many schools have been forced to close, and more evacuation orders were being issued.

InciWeb, the interagency inci-dent information management sys-tem off ering updates on more than a dozen fi res in the tinder-dry west of the country, said that “steep in-accessible terrain will continue to allow the fi re to spread into new areas.”

High temperatures were expected to worsen conditions and “increase the likelihood of extreme fi re be-haviour as well as heat illness issues for the fi refi ghters and the public,” it said.

The forest service said: “We con-tinue to actively engage, but cannot get ahead of the fi re.”

California Governor Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency for Orange and Riverside counties, where the fi re is concentrated.

Fifteen-year-old Alex Schenck moves flaming pallets while fighting to save his home as the Ranch Fire tears down New Long Valley Rd near Clearlake Oaks, California.

Trump condemns ‘all types of racism’ a year after CharlottesvilleAFPWashington

US President Donald Trump, often accused of denigrating non-white people, said yes-

terday that he condemned racism as the nation marked the anniversary of deadly unrest triggered by a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

That protest left one person dead and highlighted the growing bold-ness of the far right under Trump.

Another far-right rally is sched-uled for today, right outside the White House.

Trump drew scorn after the Charlottesville violence for initially avoiding any condemnation of the torch-bearing white nationalists who took part in that rally.

Yesterday, as memorial ceremo-nies also got under way in Char-lottesville, Trump wrote on Twitter: “The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division.

“We must come together as a na-tion. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!”

Last year’s protests began August 11 and saw hundreds of neo-Nazi sym-pathisers, accompanied by rifl e-car-rying men, yelling white nationalist slogans and wielding fl aming torches in scenes eerily reminiscent of racist rallies held in America’s South before the Civil Rights movement.

They had gathered to protest ef-forts to remove statues of Confeder-

ate leaders, including one of the Con-federacy’s top general, Robert E Lee.

When the demonstrations con-tinued on August 12, fi ghting broke out between neo-Nazi supporters and anti-fascists from a black-clad group called Antifa.

The violence culminated with a man driving a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 people.

In the immediate aftermath, Trump drew broad criticism when he initially appeared to establish a

moral equivalence between the two groups of protesters and refused to criticise the far right-wingers.

He did eventually yield to im-mense political pressure and con-demn white nationalism.

But just a day later, Trump said there was “blame on both sides” for the violence in Virginia, con-demning the anti-fascists who came “with clubs in their hands.”

Trump is constantly fending off charges that he is misogynist and racist. He denies the allegations.

‘Suicidal’ mechanic steals, crashes empty plane from Seattle airport

A young mechanic described as suicidal stole an

empty passenger plane from Seattle-Tacoma Air-

port, took it on an hour-long flight that included

a hair-raising loop as F-15 fighter jets gave chase,

then crashed, killing himself.

Off icials ruled out any link to terrorism in the

incident, which took place late on Friday, and saw

the man holding a conservation with an air traff ic

controller in which he seemed to apologise for

what he was doing.

Video taken by a bystander showed the 76-

seat plane making a big, slow loop-the-loop, then

flying low over Puget Sound before crashing into

Ketron Island, a sparsely-populated area in the

northwestern US state of Washington.

The crash sparked a fire in the dense forest.

Flames lit up the night as they spread from the

burning wreckage to nearby trees.

Off icials said there were no victims on the

ground.

The stolen plane was a twin-engine turboprop

Q400 belonging to Horizon Air, its parent com-

pany Alaska Airlines said on Twitter.

The Pierce County Sheriff ’s off ice ruled out

terrorism.

“Most terrorists don’t do loops over the water,”

said Sheriff Paul Pastor. “This might have been a

joyride gone terribly wrong.”

But Ed Troyer, who also works at the sheriff ’s

off ice, described him as “suicidal.”

He was identified as a 29-year-old airline

mechanic called Rich or Richard, who lived locally

and had acted alone.

His full name was not given.

ASIA13Gulf Times

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Vehicles manoeuvre while people walk on a flooded street due to a heavy downpour brought about by tropical storm Yagi as it exits the Philippine’s area of responsibility, in Manila yesterday with commuters stranded as they wait for their ride back home.

Water woesUS Navy launches rescue eff ort for overboard marine

AFPManila

The US military said it had launched a search and rescue

operation after reports a marine may have fallen overboard from an Amer-ican warship as it sailed through Philippine wa-ters.

The US 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit said a member, who was not named, may have gone overboard Thursday morn-ing. Aircraft on board the USS Essex are searching waters off the Sulu Sea and the Surigao Strait while multiple searches are also being made inside the ship itself, the unit said.

The ship was conduct-ing “routine operations in the Sulu Sea” at the time,

the California-based unit said in the statement, which was posted on its social media sites.

“We remain commit-ted to searching for and fi nding our marine,” the statement quoted its com-mander, Colonel Chandler Nelms as saying.

“All of our sailors, ma-rines and available assets aboard the USS Essex have been and will continue to be involved in this incred-ibly important search and rescue operation,” added the search commander, US Navy Captain Gerald Olin.

In Manila, Philippine authorities said yester-day they authorised US ships and aircraft to enter Philippine territory to join in the search, while dis-patching their own mili-tary search aircraft.

“A US marine fell from a US ship while travers-ing Philippine waters. We allowed the entry of res-cue ships and aircraft,” Defence Secretary Delfi n Lorenzana told reporters.

“As of now there has been no update on wheth-er the marine has been recovered,” Lorenzana added.

The US Marines said an expanded search covering about 3,000 square nau-tical miles (10,290sq km) was underway. Sulu Sea sprawls over the central and southern sections of the Asian archipelago, a US military ally. Surigao Strait is at least 300km away, off the country’s eastern seaboard.

The US statement did not explain why the two separate locations were being searched.

Duterte fails to unite PDP-Laban factionsBy Catherine S ValenteManila Times

President Rodrigo Duterte failed to unite the ruling PDP-Laban during a meet-

ing Thursday night, with the party president, Sen Aquilino Pi-mentel 3rd, vehemently refusing any settlement with a rival bloc.

Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr admitted that PDP-La-ban members did not fi nd com-mon ground despite eff orts by the President to reconcile the two warring factions.

“The President said that the members should talk among themselves and then the Presi-dent will meet them again in September,” Roque said in an in-terview with dzRH radio. “Then if they really cannot settle all their issues, they can go their separate ways,” he added.

Duterte, the chairman of PDP-

Laban, met separately with the group of Pimentel and that of lawyer Rogelio Garcia, the Presi-dent’s classmate, at the Diamond Hotel in Manila on Thursday night. In a statement, Special Assistant to the President Chris-topher Lawrence “Bong” Go said Duterte asked his party mates to thresh out their diff erences and think of the good of the country.

The meeting came two weeks after the faction of PDP-Laban led by Garcia held an assembly and elected a new set of offi -cials to replace Pimentel as party president and Davao del Norte Rep Pantaleon Alvarez as sec-retary general. The group also elected Go as interim national auditor of the party.

But Pimentel dismissed the actions of the group, whose members, he said, had been ex-pelled from PDP-Laban. Pimen-tel on Friday said he would not enter into any settlement with

lawyer Garcia, who claims to be the new president of PDP-Laban. The senator said the July 27 as-sembly organised by Garcia was a “sham election.” “(There’s) no need for any settlement. No one recognises them except them-selves. And maybe some media practitioners,” Pimentel said in a text message.

Pimentel also said he would not allow anyone to enjoy the gains of PDP-Laban that he and his father, former Senate presi-dent Aquilino Pimentel Jr, had laboured to achieve through the years. The older Pimentel formed the PDP-Laban to fi ght the Mar-cos regime.

“I do not intend to cling to my position and title,” the younger Pimentel said.

“But why is it that he wants to eat what we have planted, har-vested, cooked, and prepared? Why him?,” the senator stressed.

“We have no problem if the one

who will eat our harvest also la-boured with us in expanding the party.” “They should not resort to shortcuts or try to hit the jack-pot. They must exert eff ort, too,” he said. Asked whether President Duterte scolded Garcia for or-ganising on July 27 the supposed “unauthorised” election of of-fi cers, Pimentel said: “I have no personal knowledge because he met us separately.”

The President, Pimentel said, considers PDP-Laban as “his party and that he is duty-bound to campaign for its candidates” in the 2019 midterm elections. “He requires only two qualifi cations of PDP Laban’s candidates: com-petence and honesty,” Pimen-tel said. ‘Hugpong won’t poach PDP-Laban members’

Also on Friday, the new region-al party formed by the President’s daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, clarifi ed that it had no plans of recruiting mem-

bers from PDP-Laban or other national parties.

Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP), which means Alliance for Change, issued the statement following re-ports that some PDP-Laban mem-bers were planning to jump ship amid party infi ghting. “Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP) is a regional political party whose members are from Region XI. While the party has supporters outside of Davao Region, we advise them to form their own local parties or join other national parties — the NUP (Na-tional Unity Party), NP (Nacion-alista Party), NPC (Nationalist People’s Coalition), or PDP-La-ban,” the regional party said.

“HNP does not intend to re-cruit members of PDP-Laban or other national political parties. HNP respects the history, expe-rience, and the wisdom of the PDP-Laban Party,” it added. The regional party, however, said it “fi nds it truly unfortunate that

PDP-Laban is embroiled in an internal problem and hopes that competing party members re-solve their diff erences.”

Roque, the Palace spokesman, said he had joined HNP because this was the party of President Duterte. The President ran under the PDP-Laban in 2016.

“I think it’s only right that I also join his party. This is without prejudice to alliances that Hug-

pong may enter into, including with PDP-Laban,” Roque said.

Roque, along with Special As-sistant to the President Chris-topher Lawrence “Bong” Go, joined the party, which Alvarez, who does not see eye to eye with the Davao mayor, had earlier de-rided as part of the opposition.

Roque and Go are said to be running for senator in next year’s elections.

Rodrigo Duterte

11-year-old Thai bride returns from Malaysia after uproar AFPBangkok

An 11-year-old child bride returned to Thailand this week following wide-

spread outcry over her marriage to a Malaysian man 30 years her senior, an offi cial told AFP yes-terday.

Malaysian Muslims below the age of 16 are allowed to wed with the permission of religious courts but news of the union between the girl and the 41-year-old trader went viral on social media, reigniting calls to end child mar-riage.

The ceremony took place in June over the border in Thai-land’s Muslim-majority south in Narathiwat province, where the girl returned to Wednesday in the wake of “immense pressure from Malaysian media”, provincial governor Suraporn Prommool said.

The 11-year-old, believed to be the trader’s third wife, is under-going mental-health counselling because of the intense level of at-tention, Suraporn said. He added that the marriage was not recog-nised under Buddhist-majority Thailand’s civil law but that it took place under the auspices of an Islamic council in Narathiwat

with the consent of the girl’s par-ents.

“We cannot do anything (to annul the marriage) because they married under the religious law,” he said.

The trader, however, could face six months in jail if it is found that he did not get per-mission in Malaysia. The girl was born in Thailand to parents who labour in Malaysia’s vast rubber plantations and Suraporn said she doesn’t speak Thai well.

Uproar in Malaysia prompt-ed the head of the Ministry of Women and Family Development to weigh in on Facebook last month saying the country “un-

equivocally” opposes child mar-riage and is taking steps to raise the minimum age to 18. Rights groups are hopeful that the case could shine a spotlight on the problem but some remain scep-tical given parallel religious and civil legal systems in Malaysia. “This has been an ongoing debate in Malaysia and there’s no con-crete solution to this thing,” chil-dren’s advocate James Nayagam said, adding that outcry over the 11-year-old’s marriage would be counterbalanced by support in conservative communities.

“We can reduce the incidences but I don’t think we can eliminate it,” he said.

200 drug users bust out of Vietnam rehab centreAFPHanoi

Around 200 drug users es-caped from a rehab cen-tre in Vietnam yesterday,

police said, the latest breakout attempt from the country’s con-troversial treatment facilities.

Some addicts are forced by law to spend up to two years in Viet-nam’s rehab centres, while others are admitted by family or check themselves in.

Most detainees undergo cold-turkey treatment in the notori-ously overcrowded centres or are subjected to solitary confi ne-ment for breaking rules.

Several breakouts have oc-curred in recent years and the most recent started yesterday morning in the southern prov-ince of Tien Giang, a police of-fi cer told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that about half the escapees had already been captured.

“There are around 100 addicts still on the run and the police are still looking for them,” the offi cer said. A disagreement with staff escalated into an assault, with patients wielding knives and bricks and encouraging others to break down the door, state-controlled website VnExpress reported.

Images circulating on social

media showed dozens of men, many shirtless, wandering on a highway near the rehab centre. “They passed my area holding canes and shouted like protest-ers. When we saw them, me and people around were scared and worried,” local resident Le Hai Trieu told AFP.

Residents pitched in to help local authorities capture the men. Another state media outlet said that more than 650 people are registered at the Tien Giang facility, but it did not provide fi g-ures on the number of voluntary admissions.

There are more than 220,000 registered drug addicts in Viet-nam, according to offi cial sta-

tistics released last year, with heroin and methamphetamine the most popular narcotics.

While Vietnam is experiment-ing with more community-based treatment options in response to criticism over the centres, they remain the most-used form of recovery.

The centres are widely sup-ported as a viable treatment option although addiction spe-cialists say they don’t work and relapse rates are high. Early last year 100 people escaped from a centre in southern Long An province because they were up-set about spending the annual Tet new year holiday away from their homes.

Bangladesh, Myanmar launch hotline for Rohingya return

Bangladesh and Myanmar have launched a hotline at the Foreign Ministerial level to facilitate “ease of discussions” for the early repatriation of Rohingya refugees.A meeting was held between Myanmar Minister for the Off ice of the State Counsellor Kyaw Tint Swe and Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw on Friday.Ali was visiting Myanmar to see the preparations for taking back the Rohingyas. In the meeting, the ministers discussed the implementation of the bilateral agreement – “Arrangement on

Return of Displaced Persons from Rakhine State” – signed in November 2017.According to the Myanmar side, both parties agreed that there should be early repatriation of displaced persons from Rakhine who recently fled to Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar. “Repatriation will be in a voluntary, safe and dignified manner and in this regard, a hotline was established between the ministers to facilitate ease of discussions,” an off icial statement said.Bangladesh and Myanmar also agreed to intensify co-operation on counter-terrorism

and the fight against drug traff icking through exchange of intelligence and enhanced co-ordinated border patrols.As agreed in the arrangement, Myanmar has built two reception centres and one transit camp for Rohingyas. Bangladesh has confirmed progress on the five transit camps. One was complete, another under construction and the remaining three to be built.It was also agreed that any humanitarian aid given to those inhabiting the area on Myanmar’s territory should be given by the aid agencies from Myanmar side.

A Rohingya refugee woman covers her water pot with her burqa at Kutupalong camp in Ukhia near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

Nepal, Bangladesh sign MoU for energy sectorNepal and Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding to work together in the development of the energy sector for the first time.Nepali Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Barsha Man Pun and Minister of State for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources of Bangladesh, Nasrul

Hamid, signed the agreement.Bangladesh had been showing interest in joint investment in the energy sector in Nepal since long. As per the MoU, a joint executive committee at the Energy Secretary level and the joint technical group at the Joint Secretary level would be formed for bilateral collaboration.

The two bodies would convene their meetings within the coming two months to determine the future course of action. According to statement issued by Nepal’s Ministry of Energy, Bangladesh will purchase 500 megawatts power from the Himalayan country.

14 Gulf TimesSunday, August 12, 2018

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA

Indonesia quake:Thousands stillshort of food

A man receives food supplies on Gili Air island, west Nusa Tenggara, yesterday.

AFPMataram, Indonesia

An earthquake on the Indo-nesian island of Lombok has killed 387 people, au-

thorities said yesterday, adding hundreds of thousands of dis-placed people were still short of clean water, food and medicine nearly a week on.

The shallow 6.9-magnitude quake last Sunday levelled tens of thousands of homes, mosques and businesses across Lom-bok, just one week after another tremor surged through the island and killed 17.

“It’s predicted the death toll will continue to grow because there are still victims who are suspected of being buried by landslides and under rubble, and there are victims that have not been recorded and report-ed to posts,” national disaster agency spokesman

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said. The number forced from their

homes in the disaster has soared to 387,000, Nugroho said, with around 13,000 injured. The hardest hit region of Lombok has been in the north, where 334 people have died and nearly

200,000 have been forced from their homes, according to latest offi cial tolls.

Two people were also killed by the quake on the neighbouring tourist island of Bali. Nugroho said the emergency response pe-riod has been extended another

14 days, which would allow au-thorities to deal with the “many problems” that still existed in the fi eld.

Most of the displaced are sleeping under tents or tarpau-lins near their ruined homes or in evacuation shelters, while make-shift medical facilities have been set up to treat the injured.

Six days after the quake hit some evacuees have still not re-ceived assistance, particularly in the mountainous north of the island.

“The main problem is the dis-tribution of supplies to thou-sands of refugee points,” Nu-groho said. “Most of the roads in North Lombok were damaged by the earthquake.”

Survivors of the quake have been shaken by hundreds of af-tershocks, including a shallow 5.9-magnitude quake on Thurs-day which caused people to fl ee evacuation shelters crying and screaming.

Indonesian military vessel and a search and rescue ship are anchored at the Bangsal port in Pemenang, west Nusa Tenggara yesterday.

N Korea restricts Chinese tour groups ahead of anniversaryAFPSeoul

Pyongyang will suspend Chinese tour group visits to North Korea ahead of

a high profi le anniversary next month, according to news re-ports yesterday. The North’s Ko-rea International Youth Travel Agency told a Chinese tourist agency that hotels in Pyongyang would be closed for renovations for 20 days starting yesterday, according to South Korean media reports.

Another North Korean travel agency informed their Chinese partner that an unspecifi ed “state decision” meant they had to stop receiving Chinese tour

group package travellers until September 5, the reports said.

North Korea has in the past re-stricted entry to foreigner tour-ists as the country prepares for signifi cant events, giving a varie-ty of reasons for the moves, Yon-hap reported. The latest meas-ures come as the North prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the govern-ment.

In his New Year speech in January, leader Kim Jong-un said North Korean people would “greet the 70th founding an-niversary of their Republic as a great, auspicious event”.

In part thanks to a recent dip-lomatic thaw, the number of Chi-nese tourists visiting the North has rapidly increased. Between

1,000 and 2,000 tourists are cur-rently visiting popular sites such as the North’s side of the demili-tarised zone in a single day, NK News, an online news provider, said. The surge in Chinese tour-ism may have been seen by North Korean authorities as straining Pyongyang’s limited hotel infra-structure ahead of the anniver-sary, it added.

The North has been prepar-ing for the arrival of foreign del-egations and thousands of North Korean citizens have reportedly been practising choreographed movements in Pyongyang for the offi cial celebration of the anniversary. YTN TV quoted a military offi cial as saying that soldiers and weapons were con-verging on Mirim military air-

port near Pyongyang to practice a military parade.

A satellite picture showed massive camoufl age hangars have been put up, sparking spec-ulation that the North might be hiding long-range missile trans-port and launch vehicles. Similar camoufl age hangars were seen in January when the North was preparing for a military parade to mark a military anniversary the following month.

The North at that time show-cased what appeared to be its two newest intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15.

“The hangars look large enough to conceal ICBMs” Shin Jong-woo, a defence analyst, told YTN. The 70th anniversary

comes during a rare diplomatic detente on the Korean peninsula. At a historic summit with Presi-dent Trump in June in Singapore, Kim made a vague commitment to denuclearisation — although it was far from the longstanding US demand for the complete, verifi -able and irreversible dismantling of Pyongyang’s atomic arsenal.

Although Trump touted his summit with Kim as a historic breakthrough, the nuclear-armed North has since criticised Washington for its “gangster-like” demands of complete, veri-fi able and irreversible disarma-ment.

The US has urged the inter-national community to maintain tough sanctions on the isolated regime.

North Korea slams UN chief over call for nuclear disarmingAFPUnited Nations

North Korea accused UN Secretary-General An-tonio Guterres of making

“reckless remarks” and toeing the US line when he called for verifi able and irreversible denu-clearisation of the Korean penin-sula.

Guterres made the statement following talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Wednesday to discuss the US-led eff ort to rid North Korea of its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

The UN chief “should do what is benefi cial to the current situ-ation on Korean peninsula for peace and stability, not just by singing (the) chorus for sanc-tions to please (a) certain coun-

try,” said a statement from the North Korean mission to the United Nations.

The mission described as “reckless” a remark from Gu-terres who said that North Korea “can be a normal member of the international community in this region through total denucleari-sation that is verifi able, irrevers-ible.”

The statement said North Korea was “astonished” to hear Guterres’ remarks “at a time when the world supports and welcomes the historic DPRK-US summit and the joint statement in Singapore.”

At the first-ever meeting between sitting leaders of the US and North Korea in June, President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un pledged in a joint statement to work toward the “complete denuclearisation

of the Korean Peninsula.” The statement however was short on details and a UN panel of experts reported last week that North Korea is pressing ahead with its nuclear and missile programmes.

The United States, backed by Japan, is urging UN member-states to maintain pressure on North Korea to give up its mili-tary programmes by fully adher-ing to a raft of sanctions.

Trump’s administration has argued that sanctions must re-main fully in place until North Korea has scrapped its nuclear and missile programmes and that the dismantling is verified.

The Security Council last year adopted three rounds of tough economic sanctions on North Korea, banning most of its ex-ports of raw commodities and severely restricting oil supplies.

Japanese man detained in North KoreaA Japanese man has recently been detained in North Korea, a potential diplomatic dilemma as Tokyo pushes to hold a summit with Pyongyang, local media reported yesterday. It was not immediately clear when or why the unidentified man was held but he may be charged with spying, the Asahi Shimbun reported, quoting government sources. “Securing the man’s safety is the top priority but it is possible the North Korean side might make use of the case as a bargaining chip for its negotiations with Japan,” a source close the Japanese government told the paper. Further details, such as the purpose of the man’s visit to North Korea, were not immediately available. A foreign ministry off icial declined to confirm the news reports “due to the nature of such a case”. “But the government is taking action and gathering information,” the off icial told AFP. Tokyo has advised Japanese citizens against travel to North Korea as part of its economic sanctions on the country. North Korea has a long history of

arresting foreigners on spying charges and then using them as diplomatic pawns. In 1999, a Japanese newspaper reporter in North Korea was detained for about two years on spying charges, Kyodo News reported. Japan has largely maintained a hard line on Pyongyang – which fired multiple test missiles towards Japanese territory – and has long pushed for movement on citizens who were abducted decades ago by North Korean agents. But reports suggest Tokyo is considering a summit soon between Kim and Abe in the wake of South Korea and Washington’s recent diplomatic detente with Pyongyang. Japanese media have floated a possible meeting on the sidelines of an international forum in Russia’s Vladivostok next month. “Ultimately, I myself will have to directly face chairman Kim Jong-un and engage in dialogue and resolve the nuclear, missile and, above all, the all-important abduction issue, and then build new Japan-North Korea relations,” Abe said Monday.

New Zealand to ban single-use plastic bagsAFPWellington

New Zealand became the latest country to outlaw single-use plastic shop-

ping bags, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying they will be phased out over the next year as a “meaningful step” towards reducing pollution.

New Zealand uses “hundreds of millions” of single-use plastic bags each year, many of which end up harming marine life, Ar-dern said.

“We need to be far smarter in the way we manage waste and this is a good start,” she said. “We’re phasing-out single-use plastic bags so we can bet-ter look after our environment and safeguard New Zealand’s

clean, green reputation.” Ardern said her coalition government, which includes the Green Party, was facing up to environmental challenges and “just like climate change, we’re taking meaningful steps to reduce plastics pollution so we don’t pass this problem to future generations.”

Single-use plastic bags are among the most common items found in coastal litter in New

Zealand and the environmental group Greenpeace welcomed the decision to outlaw them.

“This could be a major leap forward in turning the tide on ocean plastic pollution and an important fi rst step in protect-ing marine life such as sea turtles and whales, from the growing plastic waste epidemic,” Green-peace Oceans Campaigner Emily Hunter said.

A United Nations report in June said up to 5tn grocery bags are used globally each year, which is nearly 10mn plastic bags per minute.

“If tied together, all these plas-tic bags could be wrapped around the world seven times every hour” and like most plastic gar-bage barely any is recycled, said Erik Solheim, head of UN Envi-ronment.

A partial eclipse of the sun is seen from Shanghai, China.

Celestial spectacle

All nine people aboard crashed Japan helicopter confirmed dead

All nine people aboard a rescue helicopter which crashed in a mountainous area in central Japan during a training flight have been confirmed dead, off icials said yesterday. Police and troops organised a search and rescue operation after the helicopter plunged into a forest Friday in Gunma prefecture, northwest of Tokyo. “All the nine people were confirmed dead by noon today,” a local off icial told AFP. The victims were disaster management off icials and firefighters as well as the pilot and an aviation mechanic, the off icial said. Aerial footage broadcast on Japanese television showed the wreckage of the crashed helicopter

surrounded by trees, as the government dispatched aircraft accident investigators to the site. The Bell 412 helicopter left its base Friday morning on a two-hour flight to observe climbing routes from the air but did not return and lost contact with air traff ic control. In February, two pilots were killed in a military helicopter crash in southern Japan. The helicopter went down seven minutes after takeoff , slamming into and setting fire to a house, which was completely destroyed in the accident. Last year, nine people aboard a helicopter were killed after it crashed during a mountain rescue drill.

BRITAIN15Gulf Times

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Theresa May is facing calls to imbue a new generation with a sense of civic duty

with a programme that would see the young pitch in to help struggling students, care homes, charities and hospitals.

Almost 60 years since nation-al service was brought to an end, a group of 18 charities, busi-nesses and youth organisations has proposed a new programme of voluntary “full-time social action” for those under 30 as a way of preparing them for work and helping public services.

In a letter to the prime minis-ter, the group – which includes the Scout Association – calls for the government to test the idea to see if it would boost the employment chances of young people and help knit together an increasingly divided society.

The group says that govern-ments in Germany, France, and the US have already created such programmes, with some attract-ing more than 100,000 partici-pants each year.

The French president, Em-manuel Macron, has unveiled a plan to bring back national serv-ice for 16-year-olds.

It will see teenagers choose to spend time teaching or work-

ing with charities, as well as the more traditional option of mili-tary preparation.

Among the organisations supporting the call for a UK programme are the Association of Colleges, the charity Dep-aul UK, vInspired, the Wildlife Trusts, and City Year UK, which co-ordinates opportunities for full-time volunteering within English schools.

The group says that a pilot programme could show that such a scheme would have a major impact on “social mobil-ity, integration, mental health, employability and public service provision”.

“Full-time volunteers aged 18-30 already devote up to 35 hours a week for between three to 12 months to improve the lives of the most vulnerable in our so-ciety,” it writes.

“Volunteering for charities, they support children to get bet-ter grades at school, help people sleeping rough, speed up the re-covery of hospital patients and support environmental action.

“Equally, youth full-time so-cial action is about preparing a young person to enter the labour market. The frontline work ex-perience and careers advice they receive give them the skills and confi dence to launch a success-ful career.”

Former prime minister David Cameron had championed the “big society”; however, some of his initiatives that were de-signed to encourage volunteer-

ing have run into diffi culties.Last year, a Commons com-

mittee warned that the National Citizen Service, which backs shorter programmes designed to encourage personal and so-cial development, may no longer justify the money spent on it un-less costs are brought down.

Only 12% of eligible teenagers took part in it in 2016, according to the Local Government Asso-ciation.

“[Piloting a government-

backed scheme] would test our fi rm belief that a national programme of youth full-time social action would create a much-needed pool of work-ready young talent demanded by employers and educational institutions, as well as benefi t the life chances of participants, benefi ciaries and, ultimately, the economy.

“This initiative would also better recognise, support and champion the eff orts of young

adults leading the way in tack-ling the great social challenges our country faces.”

The idea of a full-time social action programme for the young was examined earlier this year.

However, a report by Steve Holliday, the former chief ex-ecutive of National Grid, found that “more evidence” was need-ed before such a government-backed programme could be ap-proved.

Supporters of the idea of a na-

tional programme believe that government funding could allow groups to house volunteers and provide more generous support.

However, there are unan-swered questions about how to fund the scheme suffi ciently to ensure that everyone has an op-portunity to take part.

Kevin Munday, chief execu-tive of City Year UK, said: “We need 21st-century answers to 21st-century challenges. That’s why we are calling for a new type of national service, fi t for the fu-ture.

“We know from evidence at home and abroad that full-time social action can play a sig-nifi cant role in tackling issues such as educational inequality, homelessness, loneliness, the social care crisis and climate change.

“It also provides a platform to give our young people the skills and experience they need to shape and launch their careers.”

Schemes for mandatory com-munity service have been sug-gested in the past.

In the wake of the 2011 ri-ots, David Blunkett, the former home secretary, said that such a service should become an “inte-gral part of growing up in Britain, a rite of passage into adulthood, just as national service used to be for the 1950s generation”.

A Department for Dig-ital, Culture, Media and Sport spokeswoman said: “We have received the letter and will re-spond in due course.”

Youth groups want social action ‘national service’Prime minister urged to launch full-time civic duty scheme for those under 30

By Michael SavageGuardian News & Media

Young volunteers working for Cancer Research UK charity.

Passing time

People on boats and pedalos pass The Mastaba, an art piece by Bulgarian artist Christo Vladimirov Javacheff , better known as ‘Christo’, on the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park, west London.

Tory grandees have de-manded that the party halt disciplinary proceedings

against Boris Johnson over his burqa comments, amid claims that he could be sent for diversity training.

Lord Tebbit, a former Tory chairman, accused party chiefs of infl aming the row and allow-ing Jeremy Corbyn to escape scrutiny over allegations of anti-Semitism.

His intervention came as al-lies of the former foreign sec-retary expressed fresh concerns last night about how the matter has been handled so far by party chairman Brandon Lewis.

They accused Lewis of dis-cussing the case with Tory MPs, which they said breaches a re-quirement for complaints to be handled confi dentially.

The Tory party launched an investigation into Johnson on Thursday after it received a number of complaints about a newspaper article in which he compared Muslim women who wear the burqa to letter boxes and bank robbers.

There are suggestions that he could be sent for diversity train-

ing as punishment.Lord Tebbitt said last night:

“It is completely absurd. If they investigate him, they will fi nd that he said nothing racist. He defended the right of women to wear a burqa should they wish to do so, but said that they look like a letter box.

“I suggest the party should not be assisting Corbyn to escape the charge of anti-Semitism which hangs over him.”

Leading Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “There is nothing to investigate. It is mak-ing the Conservative Party look foolish.”

Former Tory leader Iain Dun-can Smith said the party should end its investigation, noting that Johnson made the remarks while setting out why he was opposed to a ban on the burqa.

Duncan Smith told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I don’t agree that there was anything particularly wrong with what he said. You may not agree with the tone or jokes, but we have a thing called freedom of speech in this country.”

He added: “I don’t think an internal party system should be there to shut down MPs when they speak.

“You don’t always have to agree with what people say, but

we do defend the right of people saying it.”

Former party vice-chairman and Tory MP Andrew Rosindell said: “What is happening to Boris Johnson is a direct attack on our freedom of speech. I fear an erup-tion of anger amongst our party’s core voters and grass-roots ac-tivists if this obsessive political correctness doesn’t stop.”

Former Tory minister James Duddridge added: “The Con-servative Party has lost the plot if it thinks launching an investi-gation into Boris’s comments is helpful. Some people just need to take a cold shower, calm down and have a holiday.”

Supporters of Johnson last

night condemned Lewis after Tory MPs wrote in a WhatsApp group that he had held discus-sions with them about the case.

A former Cabinet minister said: “The party’s code is a legal process that must be conducted fairly and confi dentially in ac-cordance with natural justice.

“With his briefi ng, leaking and off -the-record chats with other MPs, Brandon Lewis has made a mockery of the whole system. His reckless behaviour means the process cannot now be inde-pendent or fair.

“This attack on Boris must be abandoned before more harm is done to our party by the party chairman, and Lewis needs to

consider his own position given his disastrous role in this fi asco.”

Commons leader Andrea Leadsom has praised one of Johnson’s former deputy Lon-don mayors after she branded his critics as “disingenuous”.

In a WhatsApp group for Tory MPs, Leadsom joined in praise for an article in which Munira Mirza wrote: “Mockery of reli-gious practices is not everyone’s choice of tactic, but to act like it is beyond the pale is disingenu-ous and hypocritical.”

Leadsom wrote: “Agree on the Munira article – she’s a smart lady.”

However, Tory MP Nadine Dorries wrote in the WhatsApp group: “The party has (exple-tive) up big time and one of the worst (expletive) ups has been the Prime Minister appearing on national TV calling for Boris to apologise. That went down re-ally, really badly.”

Johnson, who is thought to be on holiday in Italy, has not com-mented since his column was published on Monday.

A source close to Lewis last night rejected the accusation that he had breached confi den-tiality rules, saying: “He has not discussed the investigation with anybody. He explained the code of conduct process to two MPs.”

Johnson may be sent for diversity training over burqa commentsBy John StevensDaily Mail

Johnson: has not commented on the controversy.

Almost 5,000 courses at elite universities still have places up for

grabs in what will be the easi-est year ever for students going through clearing.

A total of 18 of the 24 lead-ing universities were this week listed as having spaces to fi ll on the offi cial clearing website.

It means anyone narrowly missing out on A-level grades will have plenty of alternatives.

Admissions tutors are say-ing even medicine courses will be available this year, despite usually being the most com-petitive and requiring a string of A* grades.

At this time last year only 15 of the top universities, repre-sented by the umbrella organi-sation the Russell Group, had spaces to fi ll.

Ahead of A-level results day next Thursday, a Daily Mail audit found places are still available on many of the tradi-tionally popular courses.

A drop in the 18-year-old population is coinciding with an over-supply of places caused by the removal of the Government cap several years ago.

The total number of UK ap-plications is down by 3.4% on last year to 478,800, and the number eventually placed is expected to be down by 2.5% – around 9,000.

Experts said it will mean students can aff ord to shop around “collecting off ers” on clearing day before making their fi nal decision because there will be a glut of places.

Across all universities, 132 out of 148 are advertising at least one course.

In total, there are a stagger-ing 26,587 courses that poten-tially have availability.

Universities that are strug-gling to recruit students are likely to lower their entry re-quirements in a bid to fi ll their places.

As of last night, 4,707 cours-es had spaces at Russell Group universities.

For example, Warwick, which is ranked ninth in the Complete University Guide, had 153 courses available, including in English literature, physics, physics combined with maths, and chemistry.

Warwick is seventh in the country for both physics and chemistry in individual sub-ject league tables, and fi fth for maths, making it even more remarkable these courses still have places.

Meanwhile, Exeter, which is ranked 12th in the country, had 209 courses that are not yet full, including history and maths.

Exeter is ranked fi fth for his-tory in individual league tables.

The Russell Group universi-ties which had the most cours-es available were Liverpool with 591, and Leeds with 524.

Our research found spots available on the following numbers of top courses: 23 law, 73 English, 190 history, 75 maths, 38 physics, 21 chemis-try, and 16 biology.

The fi gures included com-bined honours courses.

On results day, students who miss out on their univer-sity place because they did not make the required grades will be able to look for alternatives on the website of Ucas, the of-fi cial admissions body.

Those who do better than expected will be able to ‘up-grade’ through a process called adjustment.

Richard Harvey, academic director of admissions at the University of East Anglia, said of this year: “Student behav-iour has changed and they’re happy to take their time and ‘shop around’, collecting off ers before they make their fi nal decision.”

Mike Nicholson, admissions chief at the University of Bath, said: “Students are increas-ingly in control when it comes to clearing.”

5,000 spaces at top universities still up for grabsThree-quarters of top universities still haven’t filled this year’s courses

By Eleanor Harding and Harry HowardDaily Mail

The total number of UK applications is down 3.4% compared with last year, at 478,000

Chess prodigy can stayDaily MailLondon

A chess prodigy aged nine and his family have been allowed to stay in the UK

because of his “world class tal-ent”.

Shreyas Royal – the No 2 chess player in the world for his age – and his Indian parents had been told they would have to leave when their visa expires next month.

But now Home Secretary Sajid Javid has stepped in.

“After carefully reviewing the evidence, I have taken the per-sonal decision to allow Shreyas and his family to stay in the UK.

“The UK is a country that fosters world class talent and Shreyas is one of the most gifted chess players in his generation.”

The boy’s father Jitendra Singh, an IT project manager, spoke of his relief.

He said: “Yesterday we were packing to leave – we thought we had to go.”

“We have been waiting for a very long time, it’s such a relief for us. We are very happy that my son can continue,” he added. “Shreyas became very happy and jumped on the sofa and started dancing.”

He stressed: “Defi nitely Shre-yas will carry on and keep rep-resenting the country. When we came here he was only three years old – England is his fi rst country.”

A spokesman for the English Chess Federation said it was “delighted” by the decision.

The Home Offi ce said Singh, of Woolwich, southeast Lon-don, had been given permission to apply for another fi ve-year work visa without leaving the UK due to the “exceptional cir-cumstances” of Shreyas’s talent.

Javid said: “We have always been clear we want a world class immigration system that wel-comes highly-talented individu-als from across the globe.”

Blast at military hardware factory

An explosion at a military hardware factory near Salisbury, Wiltshire has left one person dead on Friday, British defence equipment maker Chemring Group Plc said.The explosion at the Chemring Countermeasures factory of the British contractor also injured another person who was taken to a hospital, the company said in a tweet.The explosion site was evacuated and the incident has been brought under control, the company said.

EUROPE

Gulf Times Sunday, August 12, 201816

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rebuked the US yesterday, saying

that Washington had prioritised the case of a detained pastor over its ties with a Nato ally.

US pastor Andrew Brunson is currently under house arrest in Turkey on espionage and terror-ism-related charges.

His arrest has further strained ties between Washington and Ankara.

“I call on those in America once again here. Shame, shame! You prefer a pastor over a stra-tegic partner of yours in Nato,” Erdogan told supporters in the Black Sea province of Ordu.

The defi ant tone came a day after US President Donald Trump announced a doubling of steel and aluminium tariff s on Turkish imports.

“They are threatening us. You cannot tame this nation with the language of threats,” Erdogan continued as the jubilant crowd booed.

Brunson was detained in Oc-tober 2016 and arrested in De-cember that year in the after-math of a failed coup.

Turkey accuses Brunson of having links to US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Ankara blames Gulen for the

abortive July 2016 putsch.The dispute led to Washington

and Ankara recently announcing tit-for-tat sanctions on several

of each other’s cabinet mem-bers.

The impasse has hit Turkey’s lira, bonds and stock markets.

The White House said on Fri-day that the new tariff s on Tur-key will go into eff ect tomorrow (August 13).

Erdogan said that the Turkish economy is not in a crisis.

“This is not an economy that is going bankrupt, sinking or go-ing through a crisis,” the presi-dent later told a meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party in the Black Sea province of Rize. “Turkey will get out of the foreign exchange and inter-est rate spiral as soon as possi-ble.”

“We know very well that the dollar, euro or gold is the point. These are the bullets, shells, missiles of an economic war waged against our country,” Er-dogan said, vowing to “break the hands fi ring these guns” with further measures.

Turkey is dealing with sev-eral structural weaknesses in its economy, including a widening current-account defi cit, high corporate foreign exchange debt

and stubbornly high unemploy-ment rates.

The remedy to current eco-nomic problems is to cut interest rates and produce more, Erdog-an said.

He also suggested that Ankara would soon switch to trade in local currency with such coun-tries as China, Russia, Iran, and Ukraine.

“We are ready to establish a similar system with the Euro-pean countries,” Erdogan said, calling on these countries to avoid trading in dollars.

In an opinion piece published on Friday in the New York Times newspaper, Erdogan questioned ties between the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) al-lies.

“Before it is too late, Washing-ton must give up the misguided notion that our relationship can be asymmetrical and come to terms with the fact that Turkey has alternatives,” Erdogan said.

“Failure to reverse this trend of unilateralism and disrespect will require us to start looking for new friends and allies,” he added.

US prefers pastor over Nato partner: ErdoganDPAIstanbul

This handout picture released by the Turkish Presidential Press Service shows Erdogan speaking with journalists during his visit to the Black Sea province of Ordu.

Tens of thousands gath-ered yesterday in the Ro-manian capital Bucharest

for a second straight day after more than 450 people were hurt and around 30 arrested in a huge anti-corruption protest.

Police came in for criticism after they used water cannon and tear gas on Friday to dis-perse protesters calling on the leftwing government to resign.

Many demonstrators needed treatment after inhaling pepper spray and tear gas, while others suff ered blows, hospital sources said.

Around 30 police were also in-jured, 11 of whom were taken to hospital.

Massive crowds gathered in downtown Bucharest last night, watched by security forces as they chanted: “Down with the government” and “Justice, not corruption”.

“I came after seeing what happened on Friday on televi-sion – the brutality of the police against peaceful people,” said Floarea Toader, 64, the national yellow, blue and red fl ag draped across her shoulders. “My chil-dren work in Spain and they would like to come back. But for now that’s not possible as the politicians are only interested in themselves and do nothing for anyone else.”

Around 4mn people have left the country – one of the Euro-pean Union’s poorest – in the last 15 years, seeking a better life than that off ered by Romania’s average monthly wage of just €520 ($590).

Police rejected criticism from the centre-right opposition that

its offi cers had used excessive force on Friday, saying that its response to violence by dozens of protesters had been “gradual and proportionate”.

Austrian Chancellor Sebas-tian Kurz, whose country cur-rently holds the EU rotating presidency, criticised the vio-lence, in which a cameraman for Austria’s public broadcaster was also hurt.

“We strongly condemn the violent clashes in Bucharest where numerous demonstrators and journalists were injured. We expect full explanations,” he said on Twitter.

Local media said that up to 80,000 people had taken to the streets, among them many Romanian expatriates who re-turned home to show their anger at the graft in one of the EU’s most corruption-plagued mem-ber states.

About 1,000 offi cers in riot gear intervened to clear the crowds assembled in a central square outside the main govern-ment building after some pro-

testers tried to break through the police cordon.

Eugene, a 62-year-old con-struction worker, travelled spe-cially to Bucharest on Friday to protest at what he said was “en-demic corruption”.

“But things quickly turned bad: they fi red tear gas at us, it was unbearable.”

Another demonstrator, Ma-dalina, 22, said of Friday’s clash-es: “We couldn’t breathe and we had to seek shelter in the sur-rounding streets.”

Romania’s centre-right Presi-dent Klaus Iohannis, a critic of the government, said he “strongly condemned the brutal intervention of the police, which was disproportionate to the at-titude of most demonstrators” but added that “any form of vio-lence is unacceptable”.

Prime Minister Viorica Dan-cila, in turn, accused Iohannis of “inciting the population against the authorities”.

In a controversial move last month, Romania sacked top an-ti-graft prosecutor Laura Cod-

ruta Kovesi – considered a sym-bol of the country’s fi ght against corruption.

With Kovesi at the helm, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Offi ce (DNA) had led a crack-down on corruption among lo-cal and national elected offi cials, earning the enmity of many in Romania’s political class and prompting critics to accuse it of abuse of power.

Before Kovesi’s sacking, thou-sands of protesters took to the streets in support of her.

There have also been long-running waves of protests against judicial reforms – at their peak drawing an estimated half a million people nationwide in February 2017.

Bucharest sees second night of protestAFPBucharest

This picture taken on Friday night shows a man confronting anti-riot police during an anti-government protest in Bucharest.

This picture taken on Friday night shows a female anti-riot police off icer being pushed after appearing to be struck by a protester, while others try to protect her, during clashes at an anti-government demonstration in Bucharest.

This picture taken on Friday night shows a man taking cover during clashes with police at an anti-government protest in Bucharest.

Three years ago, the Greek island of Lesbos found itself at the heart of Europe’s greatest mi-

gration crisis since World War II.At the height of the infl ux, some

5,000 refugees and migrants, mostly from war-torn Syria, were landing on the island’s beaches on a daily basis.

Hundreds never survived the jour-ney across the Aegean Sea.

More than 800 people died in 2015 in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The situation quickly reached emergency proportions for belea-guered Lesbos authorities trying to regulate the fl ow, register the ex-hausted survivors, and fi nd shelter for them.

Local residents hastened to lend support, providing blankets, clothes and food until the arrival of refugee agencies and volunteer groups.

Three years on, the situation has changed drastically.

An agreement brokered between the European Union and Turkey in March 2016, in which Turkish authorities promised to stop people-smugglers in return for EU aid, has limited the fl ow.

EU border agency Frontex vessels patrol the waters between Greece and Turkey, as do North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) ships.

Some 35-80 people currently ar-rive on a daily basis, but even this is enough to keep the island’s holding camps near breaking point.

There are more than 9,500 refugees and migrants currently on the island, with the main camp of Moria fi lled to

more than double its capacity.Very few are allowed off the island

– mainly the ill and vulnerable – and there are frequent outbreaks of vio-lence.

Authorities are at pains to keep new arrivals out of the path of tourists.

They are allowed to land at secluded beaches and directly transported to camps.

The beaches are then quickly cleaned of life jackets, infl atable boats and other debris.

As they lounge in the sun, many visitors may not have an inkling that in the same spot where they have planted their towels and beach um-brellas, thousands of desperate people began a new chapter in their search for safety.

And some never made it to safety at all.

Three years on, Greece’s Lesbos island looks back at European migrant crisisBy Aris Messinis, AFPLesbos, Greece

This picture taken on August 5 shows refugees and migrants clean themselves and wash their clothes at a camp outside the Moria refugee camp in the island of Lesbos.

Albanian police catch killer of eight relativesAlbanian police have arrested a man who killed eight of his relatives, following a 12-hour hunt during which the fugitive challenged Prime Minister Edi Rama on Facebook to find him.Police said Ridvan Zykaj, 24, had confessed to shooting cousins and other family members with a Kalashnikov gun after they had accused him of being a thief.He appeared unrepentant and even told police that they were late in arresting him, according to news reports.As a shepherd, Zykaj knew the area of Selenice in southern Albania well, complicating his capture.The killing spree appears to have been triggered by a family lunch, where one of the victims accused Zykaj of stealing their turkeys, according to local media.Those murdered included his great uncle, as well as the great uncle’s two sons and their wives.

Fugitive takesrefuge at spy HQ

Fleeing the police after a car crash in Paris, a man who had been driving without a licence took the ultimate wrong turn – and ended up taking refuge inside the headquarters of France’s spy agency.According to a police source, the hapless driver fled after being involved in a crash on Paris’s Peripherique ring road on Friday, scaling a fence several metres high to get off the busy artery.What he didn’t realise was that he had unwittingly climbed into the grounds of the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE), according to the Parisien newspaper, which first reported the story.He was immediately arrested.

Kazakh leader touts port onChina’s ‘Silk Road’Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev has hailed a newly-modernised Caspian Sea port which the ex-Soviet country hopes will link up to China’s massive “Belt and Road” infrastructure project.Speaking at the Caspian port of Kuryk, 78-year-old Nazarbayev said that Kazakhstan is investing in such transport hubs to benefit from the trillion-dollar project championed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping that aims to be a modern version of the ancient Silk Road trading routes.“Investing in transport infrastructure makes our economy more competitive in multiple ways,” Nazarbayev said.“We are providing a stimulus to the trade routes of the revived Silk Road,” he told businessmen and delegate from nearby countries.Kazakhstan has tied its economic future to neighbouring China by investing heavily in road, rail and port infrastructure that will facilitate trade going west from China.The Kuryk port is one of two Kazakh ports positioned as hubs for trade between Asia and Europe.The other larger port is Aktau, some 100km (62 miles) to the north.Nazarbayev was speaking ahead of a landmark summit today on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, following more than two decades of diplomatic wrangling between the bordering countries: Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan.

EUROPE17Gulf Times

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Monsanto’s German owners insisted yester-day that the weed killer

Roundup was “safe”, reject-ing a California jury’s decision to order the chemical giant to pay $289mn for failing to warn a dying groundskeeper that the product might cause cancer.

While observers predicted thousands of potential future claims against the company in the wake of Monsanto’s defeat, Bayer – which recently acquired the US giant – said that the Cali-fornia ruling went against scien-tifi c evidence.

“On the basis of scientifi c conclusions, the views of world-wide regulatory authorities and the decades-long practical ex-perience with glyphosate use, Bayer is convinced that glypho-sate is safe and does not cause cancer,” the company said in a statement.

It said that other court pro-ceedings with other juries might “arrive at diff erent conclusions” than the jury which ruled in the California lawsuit, the fi rst to accuse glyphosate of causing cancer.

Jurors unanimously found that Monsanto – which vowed

to appeal – acted with “malice” and that its weed killers Round-up and the professional grade version RangerPro contributed “substantially” to Dewayne Johnson’s terminal illness.

Jurors awarded $39mn in compensatory and $250mn in punitive damages.

Johnson, diagnosed in 2014 with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – a cancer that aff ects white blood cells – says that he repeat-edly used a professional form of Roundup while working at a school in Benicia, California.

“The cause is way bigger than me. Hopefully this thing will get the attention it needs,” Johnson, 46, said after the verdict.

Johnson wept openly, as did some jurors, when he met with the panel later.

The lawsuit built on 2015 fi nd-ings by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the UN World Health Organi-sation (WHO), which classi-fi ed Roundup’s main ingredient glyphosate as a probable carcin-ogen, causing the state of Cali-fornia to follow suit.

“We are sympathetic to Mr Johnson and his family,” Mon-santo said in a statement, but promised to “continue to vigor-ously defend this product”.

“The jury got it wrong,” Mon-santo vice-president Scott Par-tridge told reporters.

However, Johnson’s attorney Brent Wisner said the verdict “shows the evidence is over-

whelming” that the product poses danger.

“When you are right, it is re-ally easy to win,” he said.

Wisner called the ruling the “tip of the spear” of litigation likely to come.

“The jury sent a message to the Monsanto boardroom that they have to change the way they do business,” said Robert F Kennedy Jr – an environmental lawyer, son of the late US sena-tor and a member of Johnson’s legal team.

“You not only see many peo-ple injured, you see the cor-ruption of public offi cials, the capture of agencies that are sup-posed to protect us from pollu-tion and the falsifi cation of sci-ence,” he said.

Partridge, meanwhile, an-nounced that Monsanto had no intention of settling the slew of similar cases in the legal queue.

“It is the most widely used and most widely studied herbicide in the world,” Partridge said.

Roundup is Monsanto’s lead-ing product.

Johnson’s doctors said he is unlikely to live past 2020.

A former pest control manag-er for a California county school system, Johnson, 46, applied the weed killer up to 30 times per year.

Wisner in a statement said jurors for the fi rst time had seen internal company documents “proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glypho-

sate and specifi cally Roundup could cause cancer”.

He urged Monsanto to “put consumer safety fi rst over prof-its”.

During the four-week trial, jurors heard testimony by stat-isticians, doctors, public health researchers and epidemiolo-gists who disagreed on whether glyphosate can cause cancer.

The US Environmental Pro-tection Agency in September 2017 concluded a decades-long assessment of glyphosate risks and found the chemical not like-ly carcinogenic to humans.

“The Johnson vs Monsanto verdict is a win for all of human-ity and all life on earth,” said Zen Honeycutt, founding executive director of non-profi t group Mums Across America.

In France, a leading anti-Monsanto campaigner told AFP that the California ruling would strengthen the resolve of those doing battle with the agrochem-icals giant across the world.

“I was thinking of them and I said to myself that this ruling will help them and give them lots of hope,” said Paul Francois, author of A farmer against Mon-santo (Un paysan contre Mon-santo).

France’s minister for ecologi-cal transition, Brune Poirson, hailed the “decision”, tweeting that it validated President Em-manuel Macron’s push to ban

glyphosate use in three years.Records unsealed by a federal

court lent credence to Johnson’s claims – company e-mails with regulators suggested that Mon-santo had ghostwritten research later attributed to academics.

Founded in 1901 in St Louis, Missouri, Monsanto began pro-ducing agrochemicals in the 1940s.

It was acquired by Bayer for more than $62bn in June.

Monsanto launched Round-up in 1976 and soon thereafter began genetically modifying plants, making some resistant to Roundup.

Bayer’s Monsanto ordered to pay $289mn in damagesMonsanto owners call weed killer ‘safe’ after jury orders big payout

AFP/ReutersBerlin/San Francisco

Johnson reacts after the verdict was read in the case against Monsanto at the Superior Court Of California in San Francisco.

In this photo taken on May 28, 2015, French farmer Francois Paul (centre) waits in Lyon’s courthouse, prior to the opening of his appeal trial against US biotech giant Monsanto.

A row is erupting over vaccines in Italy as the country’s new populist

government fi ghts to roll back a law that bans children from at-tending school if they haven’t received a series of jabs.

The law, adopted last year by the centre-left government that was booted out of power in March, made it compulsory for children in pre-school education to be vaccinated against 10 dis-eases, including measles, tetanus and poliomyelitis.

Parents who have not vacci-nated their children by the time they reach school age (six years old in Italy) face a fi ne of up to €500.

The new administration – formed of the anti-establish-ment 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the nationalist League – is leading the charge against the law.

Last week, the upper house Senate approved an amendment proposed by M5S and the League pushing back enforcement of compulsory vaccination for pre-schoolers to the 2019-20 school year, pending a complete revi-sion of the law after the summer recess.

New health minister Giulia Grillo, from M5S, has drafted a new bill introducing what she calls a “fl exible obligation”, giv-ing priority to education on the benefi ts of vaccines, encourages use of compulsory vaccination only over short periods and in-stances when the coverage rate is too low.

Grillo, a doctor, claims that there will be guarantees that children who haven’t be immu-nised could be enrolled in classes where the World Health Organi-sation (WHO) recommended coverage is assured.

However, she also caused out-rage when, in an interview with major daily Corriere Della Sera on Wednesday, she said that it wasn’t realistic to “make people believe that no one will die” of measles.

Parents currently have to present pre-school institutions with booklets that list the vac-cines, updated by the doctors who administer them.

For the 2019-20 school year plans were in place for educa-

tors to get vaccine information on each child directly from lo-cal health authorities, a measure designed to bypass the possibil-ity of anti-vax parents falsifying documentation.

That measure was adopted in order to fi ght back against a drop in the number of people being vaccinated that had taken cover-age below the 95% limit recom-mended by the WHO.

That coverage ratio is the minimum required to create the communal immunity that staves off diseases and protects people with compromised immune sys-tems who can’t be vaccinated.

Coverage rates increased in It-aly following the inaction of the previous government’s law, but many regions remain well below the WHO threshold for a number of illnesses.

Data from Italy’s National Health Institute released in July showed that four people – in-cluding a 10-month-old – had died from measles between Jan-uary and May, the same number that died in the whole of 2017.

In total over 1,700 people had contracted the disease, while last year 5,400 cases were recorded.

The WHO says that Italy ac-counted for nearly one-quarter of the 21,315 measles cases re-corded across Europe last year, when cases of the disease soared across the continent.

The number of cases in Italy alone last year was close to the entire European total for 2016, a record low of 5,273, according to the WHO.

While both M5S head Luigi Di Maio and League leader Mat-teo Salvini say they are in favour of vaccines and have vaccinated their own children, they consider the current law “coercive” and criticise it for blocking children’s access to education.

Some people are fi ghting back against the government, with a petition created by concerned parents against the amendment attracting around 100,000 sig-natures in just a few days.

Several regional presidents have announced that they in-tend to enforce the vaccine ob-ligation even if it is withdrawn, while the national association of headteachers has also said that the current law would remain in force and that parents would have to present a medical certifi -cate proving their children have been vaccinated.

Vaccine row erupts in Italy as populist govt seeks to ease rulesBy Fanny Carrier, AFPRome

Army games

A woman fires a Kalashnikov automatic rifle at the International Army Games 2018 in Alabino, outside Moscow.

Right: Spectators take a ‘wefie’ during the Tank Biathlon competition at the International Army Games 2018.

Below: A T-72 B3 tank operated by a crew from Kazakhstan fires during the Tank Biathlon competition at the International Army Games 2018.

Russian aerobatic team Strizhi (The Swifts) members perform using MiG-29 jet fighters at the International Army Games 2018.

The abrupt deterioration in relations between Greece and Russia has intensifi ed

after Athens publicly accused Moscow of attempting to bribe state offi cials and meddle in the country’s internal aff airs.

Dispensing with diplomatic niceties, the foreign ministry angrily rebuked Russia for ex-pelling two Greek envoys on Monday, calling the action “ar-bitrary and vengeful”.

Moscow announced the move weeks after Athens banned four Russian diplomats after accus-ing them of fomenting opposi-tion to a landmark deal between

Greece and Macedonia, opening up the possibility of eventual North Atlantic Treaty Organi-sation (Nato) membership for Skopje.

Athens hit back on Friday, saying that the reasoning be-hind the expulsions could not be compared.”

The decision by the Russian foreign ministry was not based on evidence, as was that of the Greek side, “[which cited] spe-cifi c evidence of illegal and ir-regular activity by Russian of-fi cials and citizens, the ministry declared in an unusually long and caustic statement.

“We want to remind our Rus-sian friends that no country in the world would tolerate at-tempts to a) bribe state offi cials

b) undermine its foreign policy and c) interfere in its internal af-fairs.”

Athens also rejected requests for entry visas from Russian Orthodox clerics heading for northern Greece’s all-male mo-nastic republic of Mount Athos.

The community is alleged to be a “den of spies”, with reports that Moscow has turned the Holy Mount – widely seen as the spiritual centre of Orthodoxy – into an intelligence-gathering operation.

Earlier this week, Moscow’s foreign ministry said it had de-manded explanations as to why the visas had been turned down.

Russia, which has long viewed the Balkans as being in its sphere of infl uence, has openly voiced

opposition to Macedonia join-ing Nato.

But the extent to which it has tried to whip up dissent against the deal – by which Greece would lift its veto over Mac-edonian membership once the state adopts a new name – has alarmed Athens.

Reports have abounded of Russian agents allegedly at-tempting to bribe senior Greek intelligence and military offi ces in an attempt to foster opposi-tion to the agreement.

Russian diplomats have simi-larly been accused by Greece of attempting to fund far-right na-tionalist groups through cultural associations that are established under the guise of promoting the two countries’ shared Or-

thodox religious heritage.Greek-Russian émigrés, who

settled in areas close to the strategic Aegean port of Alex-androupolis following the col-lapse of the Soviet Union, have reputedly also received funds to help foment protests against the accord.

The deal will be put to a pub-lic referendum in Macedonia in September and has yet to be ratifi ed by both states.

Greece’s leftist-led coalition, which views the deal – pains-takingly put together after years of talks – as a major foreign policy victory, vowed to respond to what it described as “the ar-bitrary measures taken by the leadership of the Russian foreign ministry”.

Greece accuses Russia of bribery, meddlingBy Helena SmithGuardian News & Media

Greek fi re death toll at 94, say offi cialsAFPAthens

The death toll from Greece’s deadliest fi re disaster rose to 94 yesterday after one

more victim died in hospital, the fi re brigade said.

Reports said the latest casu-alty was a 57-year-old woman.

More than 30 people are still hospitalised after the July 23 wildfi re in the coastal resort of Mati near Athens.

Four senior offi cials includ-ing the minister responsible for the police and the heads of the police and fi re brigade have been removed from their posts.

The government had insist-ed that with winds blowing at speeds of up to 120kph (75mph), there was little time to mount an eff ective evacuation.

It later emerged that the police had failed to properly seal off the area because the fi re brigade had not alerted them to the location and size of the blaze.

As a result, many drivers were inadvertently diverted into Ma-ti’s narrow streets and trapped.

Residents fl eeing the fl ames with just the clothes on their backs were also left unaided on the beaches for hours.

A judicial investigation into possible faults by state offi cials is under way.

The relatives of two people who perished in the fi res have also sued the authorities for negligence and exposure to dan-ger.

More lawsuits are expected.

Rains ease inKerala, but 8districts stillon high alertAgenciesKochi

More than half of the 14 districts in Kerala have been put on high alert,

offi cials said yesterday, as the death toll from one of the worst fl oods in the state reached 34.

Torrential rains and landslides during India’s June-September monsoon season have ravaged farmlands and prompted massive evacuation eff orts in Kerala.

Crops on 1,031 hectares have been damaged and 31,000 people have been forced to take shelter in rescue camps, according to the Kerala State Disaster Man-agement Authority’s (KSDMA) control room in Thiruvanan-thapuram,.

A senior offi cial there said eight districts had been put on varying levels of high alert.

Another government offi cial earlier said crop worth Rs3.42bn, across 26,824 hectares had been destroyed by rains since their on-set on May 29.

P H Kurian, KSDMA’s chief and a top state bureaucrat, said rains had eased.

“There was no rain in the catchment areas of major reser-voirs today,” Kurian said.

“However, we will continue our alert and preparedness till August 15.”

Federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh was expected to travel to the state today to take a stock of the relief and rescue operations, Kurian added.

Authorities have taken the un-precedented step of opening the gates of 25 dams to prevent poten-tially disastrous breaches.

“The rains have slowed down in and around the Idukki dam since last night and hence the water level in the dam has also come down,” state Power Minister M M

Mani said.“So far things are fi ne and eve-

rything is going as planned. The water that came down the fi ve fl oodgates, barring at Cherutho-ni, has not caused any major cri-sis,” added Mani.

Cheruthoni is the nearest town to the Idamalayar dam and with water gushing down the spillway for the fi rst time in 26 years, there was heavy fl ooding in the area.

The Cheruthoni bridge contin-ued to be submerged. It had come under severe stress with huge trees that have been uprooted coming and hitting the bridge.

The water level at the Idukki dam was now at 2,401ft after it came down on Friday night as the intensity of the rains decreased.

Yesterday, the infl ow into the dam stood at 600,000 litres per second, while the outfl ow through the fl oodgates is 750,000 litres per second.

Authorities on Friday had feared that parts of Ernakulam and Thrissur districts would be submerged following the opening of all fi ve gates of the dam.

However, this did not hap-pen as the dam water entered the tributaries of the Periyar river in a systematic manner.

Yesterday morning a team led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vi-jayan accompanied by Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala, state Forest Minister P

Raju, Chief Secretary Tom Jose and Kerala police chief Loknath Behra undertgook an aerial survey of the worst aff ected districts.

Vijayan announced a compen-sation of Rs400,000 each to the families of those who lost their lives.

The deaths were reported from Idukki, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Ernakulam and Thiruvanan-thapuram districts.

Congress president Rahul Gan-dhi meanwhile wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking suffi cient funds for the state to re-store normalcy.

Gandhi said said the torrential rains, fl oods and wide scale land-slides had left behind an “unprec-edented trail of destruction across Kerala”.

Describing the fl oods as the most severe disaster to strike the state in the last fi ve decades, Gandhi said: “At this juncture, it is critical to acknowledge the looming humanitarian crisis fac-ing Kerala.

“I am hopeful that the govern-ment would co-operate with the state government in the massive relief and rehabilitation eff orts underway.

“I request you to release suf-fi cient funds immediately to the state government, to enable the state to respond eff ectively, and work towards restoring critical infrastructure.”

He said the widespread de-struction of critical public infra-structure like power supply lines and roads would only prolong the recovery process.

Kerala, which has 44 rivers, witnessed its worst fl oods in 1924 following torrential rains.

The weather department fore-cast heavy rains until August 15, India’s Independence Day, also warning of fl ooding in low-lying coastal areas.

Suspect involved in attackon Punjabi singer arrestedIANSChandigarh

Police yesterday arrested a suspect allegedly in-volved in the attack on

well-known Punjabi singer Parmish Verma in April.

This is the second big arrest by the Punjab police in just over a month. Dilpreet Singh Dahal, who had threatened the singer on Facebook, was arrested on July 9.

Wanted by the police of three states, Akash, a 21-year-old sharp shooter of the Dil-preet-Rinda gang, was ar-rested after a 9km chase that ended in an exchange of fi re in Singhpura area of Rupnagar district, around 40km from Chandigarh.

A foreign-made pistol and bullets were recovered from him, a police offi cer said.

A resident of Nanded Sa-hib in Maharashtra, Akash was wanted in fi ve cases of murder

and 13 cases of banditry, rob-bery and the Arms Act, by the police of Maharashtra, Haryana and Punjab.

“Akash entered the world of organised crime at the age of 17,” the offi cer said, adding he had been in Punjab for the past few months.

Rupnagar Senior Super-intendent of Police Swapan Sharma said no policeman was injured in the cross-fi re, that took place when the gangster’s car got stuck near a drain in Singhpura.

“The gangster sustained a bullet injury on his left shoul-der,” Sharma said.

“Reports suggest that Akash was a constant companion to Dahal and was his accomplice in the daring attack on the Punjabi singer in Mohali on April 13. He was also involved in many other cases, including broad daylight murders in diff erent parts of the country,” the offi cer said.

Akash, who had been ral-lying the gang members to

get Dahal freed from police custody during court hear-ings, had snatched a Toyota Fortuner car from Anandpur Sahib at gun point on Friday, Sharma said.

The police team gave a chase to Akash following a tip-off about his movements.

Dahal was arrested on July 9 following a shootout in Chan-digarh’s Sector 43 with a team of Chandigarh and Punjab po-lice.

Dahal was also an accused in the killing of a village headman in Chandigarh’s Sector 38 in April 2017.

Singer Verma was shot and injured when he was heading home from Chandigarh’s Elante Mall on April 13.

His friend too was injured in the attack.

Dahal later claimed respon-sibility for the attack through a Facebook post.

Verma’s hit song Gaal Ni Kadni had over 118mn views on YouTube.

Kerala police meetnuns in JalandharIANSJalandhar

A Kerala police team inves-tigating a bishop accused of sexually abusing a nun,

yesterday met some nuns in Punjab’s Jalandhar district.

The team, which was given protection by the Punjab police, arrived at the congregation of Missionaries of Jesus, the head-quarters of Christian centres in the region, for investigation.

The team met some former nuns of the Jalandhar diocese on Friday and yesterday.

Police sources said the Kerala team is expected to meet and question Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Roman Catholic Diocese in Ja-landhar today.

The team arrived in Jalandhar city, around 155km from Chan-digarh, on Friday, but failed to meet the controversial bishop, who is accused of sexually abus-ing a nun.

The Punjab police, fearing law and order trouble, provided pro-

tection to the Kerala team.Several followers of the dio-

cese gathered on its campus in Jalandhar on Friday after hear-ing about the arrival of the six-member Kerala team, led by Deputy Superintendent of Police A T Subhash.

A nun had alleged in June that Mulakkal sexually abused her several times at a convent in Ku-ruvalangadu near Kottayam be-tween 2014 and 2016. A case was registered against the bishop and a 114-page detailed statement was taken from the nun and oth-er inmates of the convent.

Mulakkal has denied any wrongdoing. A spokesman for the diocese told reporters that no wrong had been done by the bishop and that the allegations were being made by the nun at the instigation of vested inter-ests.

Earlier, statements were taken from the head of the Syro-Mala-bar Church Cardinal Mar George Alencherry and also a few other former nuns who were residents at the convent.

In a bid to make people aware of the rich heritage of Indian Railways, the Railway Ministry has decided to launch “digital museums” at 22 big stations on Independence Day, off icials said. A senior ministry off icial said the project is being tried on a pilot basis, where it will show the heritage of the railways through movie clips of one-two minutes on LED screens at the station entrance. “Through the short films, the railways will show the heritage buildings, heritage locomotives and many more which would make the people aware of the rich heritage that the Indian Railways carries with it,” he said. “In the current set-up, there has been no new expense on the project as we have utilised the existing infrastructure like the LED screens,” the off icial said.

A music and dance festival featuring classical artists from all over India, including the renowned Kuchipudi dancing couple Radha and Raja Reddy, concludes in New Delhi today. The three-day ‘Parampara Series 2018’ festival features performances by Padma Shri awardees and dancers Vannadil Pudiyaveettil Dhananjayan and Shanta Dhananjayan, and musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. It will also feature Carnatic vocalist Abhishek Raghuram, Kathak dancer Uma Dogra, and Indian classical duo Pandit Rajan and Pandit Sajan Misra, along with Radha and Raja Reddy. The 22nd edition of Natya Tarangini Performing Arts Centre’s ‘Parampara’, a festival that aims to bridge the gap between artists and audience, is ongoing till today at Kamani Auditorium in New Delhi.

The Indian Railways will not provide free travel insurance to passengers starting September 1, an off icial said yesterday. He said travellers while booking tickets through the website of the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corp (IRCTC) or mobile app will have to choose from two options: to opt-in or opt-out of travel insurance. He said that in a bid to promote digital transaction, the IRCTC has been giving free travel insurance to passengers since December 2017. The railways had earlier also waived off ticket booking charge for users who make payments by debit cards. The off icial however did not say how much it will cost if the traveller opts for insurance.

A Central Bureau of Investigation team along with off icials from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) yesterday conducted a search at a shelter home in Bihar’s Muzaff arpur district where 34 minor girls were allegedly raped, police said. The CFSL team has collected scientific evidence to speed up the probe. The team opened sealed rooms and conducted searches for the first time, a district police off icial said. The shelter home was sealed by the district administration after Brajesh Thakur, the main suspect, was arrested along with nine others. Additional security forces have been deployed in and outside the shelter home as the teams were likely to conduct their operations for hours. The Patna High Court is monitoring the investigation.

A car with newspapers caught fire killing its driver yesterday, police said. The victim, Sumit, belonged to Sirsa in Haryana, and was on his way to Gurugram, when his car hit a truck and the newspapers kept in it caught fire at Sheikh Sarai, near Ambedkar Nagar. Sumit was coming from a printing press in Noida and was carrying newspapers to be delivered in Gurugram, Deputy Commissioner of Police Romil Baaniya said, adding that this was his routine job. According to fire off icials, the policed received a call about the incident at 1.48am. “Three fire tenders were rushed to douse the fire. His completely burnt body was recovered and sent to hospital for postmortem,” Baaniya said.

Railways to launchdigital museums

Music, dance festivalends in Delhi today

No free travel insuranceon trains from Sept 1

CBI conducts search atBihar shelter home

Car with newspaperscatches fire, driver dies

HERITAGEART POLICY INVESTIGATIONACCIDENT

18 Gulf TimesSunday, August 12, 2018

INDIA

Army exhibition

Army personnel explain the use of a T-72 M1 tank to school children during an army exhibition at Panther Stadium in Amritsar yesterday. School children are given a description of instruments and weapons used by the army ahead of Independence Day celebrations.

Innovations, enterprise keyto India’s development: PMIANSMumbai

Innovation is the “buzz-word” of the 21st century and any society which does

not innovate will stagnate, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said yesterday.

He said innovations, along with enterprise, will be the foundation for making India a developed economy and pave the way for a long-term sustain-able, technology-led economic growth of the country.

Modi was addressing the 56th annual convocation of the In-dian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) during its Dia-mond Jubilee celebrations.

The prime minister said India is now looked upon as a nurs-ery of unicorn start-ups (worth more than a billion dollars), and one of the biggest sources of tal-ent in this revolution are the IITs in the country.

“That India is emerging as

the hub for start-ups shows the thirst for innovations... India is now the world’s second larg-est start-up ecosystem, with 10,000 start-ups being nurtured along with funding.

“We are steadily climbing up on the innovations rankings in the world. We must build fur-ther on this to make India as the most attractive destination for innovations and enterprise,” Modi said.

Stressing on new technolo-gies to build a new India, he said IIT-B is one of the institutions working in this direction and the shape of the future world would be decided by technological in-novations.

Terming IITs as “India’s In-struments of Transformation”, Modi said their role becomes signifi cant in the context of new technologies, like Artifi cial In-telligence, block chain, machine learning, and others, which would ensure “smart manufac-turing” and shape the world of the future.

“It will not happen only through government eff orts but by the youngsters here... The best ideas come in their minds and not in government buildings or fancy offi ces but in campus-es,” said Modi.

He appealed to the young IIT graduates to innovate in India.

“Innovate for humanity - mitigating climate change to ensure better agricultural pro-ductivity, water conservation, clean energy, combat malnutri-tion, eff ective waste manage-ment and other areas. Let the best ideas come from Indian labs and minds.”

The prime minister paid rich tributes to the role of IITs in In-dia’s development and progress, inspiring many top-class engi-neering colleges in the country, laying the foundation for the IT sector which was built “click-by-click”, and contribution to other developed nations, in-cluding the US.

He exhorted the IIT-B to be-come Mumbai’s centre of excel-

lence by outreach programmes to engage with city schools and colleges and help inspire the spirit of innovation and enter-prise among the next generation of students.

Earlier, the IIT-B conferred an honorary Doctor of Science on former alumnus, Romesh T Wadhvani, the founder-chair-man of Symphony Technology Group in California.

Modi gave away gold medals to three top students of IIT-B and silver medals to 43 others in various categories.

Later, Modi inaugurated the new building of the Depart-ment of Energy Science and Engineering and the Centre for Environmental Science and En-gineering, at the IIT-B, that was selected as one of the Institu-tions of Eminence by the gov-ernment.

Modi and other dignitaries went around an exhibition of unique technological innova-tions developed by the IIT-B students.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits an exhibition at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, yesterday.

Shah calls for uprootingMamata govt in W Bengal

Rahul kicks off Rajasthan poll campaign with attack on PM

Maratha groups plan chain hunger strike across Maharashtra

IANSKolkata

Bharatiya Janata Party pres-ident Amit Shah said yes-terday that his party alone

can bring progress in West Ben-gal as he urged people to uproot the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in the state.

Addressing a huge rally in cen-tral Kolkata’s Mayo Road, Shah came down heavily on West Bengal’s ruling party, accusing it of being involved in a series of corruption cases, besides de-stroying the law and order situ-ation in the state.

Shah said the BJP is the only alternative.

“Ever since the Trinamool

Congress government came to power in Bengal – seven years ago, there has been a series of corruption (cases) starting from the Narada scandal, Saradha and Rose Valley ponzi scams ... syndicates and the unlawful ac-tivities of cattle mafi as and coal mafi as,” Shah said.

“In order to free Bengal from the grasp of this corruption, it is necessary to bring the Narendra Modi-led BJP to power here. It is not just a question of ‘Paribar-tan’ (change) this time. I ask all of you to uproot this Trinamool Congress government and throw it away.”

He said the Congress, Left Front and Trinamool were all given a chance to run the state, and urged people of West Bengal

to now give a chance to the BJP as he promised to bring back the state’s glorious past.

“Trinamool Congress, Com-munists and Congress cannot bring prosperity in Bengal. They were given opportunities by the people but they failed. Give one chance to Narendra Modi, he will bring development in Bengal,” Shah said.

“Even if the Congress and the Trinamool come together in the state, it would be of no use”.

He said the BJP is in power in 19 states, and claimed his party’s journey would not be complete unless it won West Bengal – the land of Jana Sangh founder Sya-ma Prasad Mookerjee.

He also claimed there has been a total collapse of the law and or-

der in the state under the current regime.

“Bengal is fi lled with the sound of bombs and bullets. Every day we get to hear about the unearthing of illegal bomb factories and gun factories,” Shah said.

“The number of illegal arms factories is increasing day-by-day under this Trinamool Con-gress government. Bengal has broken all records in terms of crime and corruption,” he said.

On the issue of graft, Shah made a veiled attack on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Ab-hishek Banerjee – Trianmool MP and widely regarded as her pro-spective successor.

“During the 14th Finance Commission, the Narendra Modi

government allotted Rs359,000 crore to Bengal as compared to Rs132,000 crore given by the UPA government during the previous Finance Commission. Where did all the money go? Did it disappear in the pockets of syndicates and the nephew?” Shah asked.

Referring to Banerjee’s meet-ings with the UPA leaders, Shah alleged she has a nexus with them.

“Mamata goes to meet the UPA leaders many times. She diff ers from them at times but also supports them on many is-sues. They are actually together,” he claimed.

He also urged the people of West Bengal to ensure the BJP wins 22-plus Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019.

IANSRajkot

Patidar leader Hardik Pa-tel and his associate La-lit Vasoya were detained

by police yesterday before they could carry out threat to plunge into the Bhadar river in protest against river pollution from textile units.

Vasoya, a Congress legisla-tor from Dhoraji-Upleta in Ra-jkot district, had threatened to take ‘jal samadhi’ in the river in Saurashtra region’s Rajkot dis-trict stating that textile dyeing and printing units in nearby Jetpur town were polluting the river with untreated effl uents.

He said this aff ected the wa-ter in Bhadar 2 dam, which is a source of drinking water for more than 400 villages in the region.

“I know that threatening self-immolation or suicide is wrong, but I have been peti-tioning the state government for long, besides the pollution control board and even the governor on the issue, but to no avail. It is a serious issue of the people. What do you want me to do?” Vasoya said.

The police detained Vasoya and Patel after they addressed a rally at the site and were proceeding towards the Bha-dar 2 dam. They were later released.

“Several industrialists tried to bribe us not to press the issue. It is a serious is-sue; over 5 lakh people have been affected by polluted wa-ter. For instance, in a village Bhookhi, over 70 people have contracted cancer. When will the government wake up,” Patel asked.

Hardik, Congress legislator detained

IANSJaipur

Congress president Rahul Gandhi yesterday at-tacked Prime Minister

Narendra Modi on a number of issues, including the Rafale deal with France, and asked why the 70-year-old defence public sec-tor unit Hindustan Aeronautics Limited was ignored for manu-facturing the fi ghter jet.

Gandhi also questioned how the cost of one aircraft, which was Rs540 crore when the Congress government had signed the deal, rose to thrice its value to Rs1,600 crore under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government.

“Now, when this question is asked to a man, who claims he has a 56-inch chest, and who says I am a ‘chowkidaar’ of the country, he prefers to remain tight-lipped

in parliament,” Gandhi said.He was speaking at a Congress

rally in Jaipur. He kicked off the party’s poll campaign for the Rajasthan Assembly elections later this year by holding a mega roadshow in the city.

He also questioned the prime minister on his promise of gen-erating 2 crore employment op-portunities annually.

“While China generates 50,000 jobs every 24 hours, In-dia employs only 450 youths in the same period. Isn’t this pro-portion inappropriate?” he said, adding that India has better tal-ent, better numbers and better quality of hardworking people.

Recalling the promise made by the prime minister of Rs15 lakh coming to every citizen’s ac-count, Gandhi said Modi failed to fulfi l all the promises he made.

On farmer suicides, he asked if industrialists’ loans can be waived

off , why can’t those of farmers.“Loans worth 2,30,000 crore

of 15 top industrialists were waived off by the PM, but the farmers loans were not,” he said.

“If industrialists are unable to repay loans, those are called NPAs (non-performing assets), but if farmers fail to pay back, they are called defaulters and are sent behind the bars. Why this discrimination?” he asked.

Gandhi also had a piece of ad-vice for the prime minister: “If you are hugging industrialists, you should also hug a farmer.”

He pointed out that even the demonetisation was implement-ed to help top industrialists.

The Congress president an-nounced that if his party comes to power, it will bring one GST slab for all goods and will also bring petrol and diesel within the ambit of the GST to ensure that infl ation comes down.

AgenciesMumbai

After parts of Maharashtra burned during a state-wide shutdown called by

Maratha groups on August 9, the community’s spokespeople have claimed incidents of violence were attempts to defame them.

The protesters have threat-ened to go on a chain hunger strike from August 15.

Vinod Patil, state co-ordina-tor of Maratha Kranti Morcha, said: “We demand a probe into

the attack at MIDC Walunj. We strongly believe that the at-tackers were not Marathas and this was done by some miscre-ants. The police can check CCTV footage and arrest all those found involved in the attack.”

Sanjiv Bhor Patil, another state co-ordinator, said that in addition to the demand for res-ervation in jobs and education, the community also wanted the government to withdraw cases fi led against the protesters.

“We also want the government to withdraw serious charges im-posed on community members

for protest held last month. If the government doesn’t with-draw the cases, then we may again have to come on the roads,” Patil said.

On August 9, protesters in Pune, Aurangabad, Latur, Nag-pur and Hingoli were seen dam-aging vehicles, blocking roads and throwing stones. Pune po-lice arrested 194 people, includ-ing juveniles. At MIDC Walunj, which is approximately 12km from Aurangabad, offi ces were attacked by mobs and fi ve vehi-cles were set on fi re.

To show they have taken note

of the violence being done in their name, the Maratha groups have decided to start a chain hunger strike from August 15. Diff erent groups of protesters will take turns to sit on hunger strike outside the offi ces of dis-trict collectors and village heads across Maharashtra.

“We have decided not to hold any agitations on road giving no chance to anyone to create vio-lence in the name of Marathas. The community is known for its disciplined silent marches, which is being defamed for the violence done by some miscre-

ants. We have also decided to hold a chain hunger strike out-side the divisional commissioner from August 15 in case our de-mands are not met,” said Shan-taram Kunjir, a co-ordinator from Pune.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to gauge the impact of the protest on its support base, the Con-gress has planned to appoint two more secretaries in Maharashtra, taking the total to fi ve. The party has also decided to appoint each of the fi ve secretaries as the in-charge of the fi ve regions in the state.

This move comes as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has been trying to appease the Marathas and to reach out to other communities.

Three secretaries of the state Congress unit – Sonal Pa-tel, Ashish Dua and Sampath Kumar – have already visited Marathwada and western Ma-harashtra when the protests were at the peak. The district-level office bearers from these two regions also briefed the secretaries about the unrest among various other commu-nities for reservation.

“I told the panel that amid the Maratha protest, the Other Backward Class (OBC) is mov-ing closer to the BJP, as is evi-dent from the recent elections to the municipal corporation elections, district councils and gram panchayats. The OBCs have been our traditionally support base. We need to con-centrate on retaining their sup-port. We also insisted on alli-ance with like-minded parties like the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to ensure a strong coalition,” said Rajkishor Modi, district president of Beed.

Spell out standon NRC, BJPtells CongressIANSKolkata

The Bharatiya Janata Party yesterday accused the Congress of shying away

from taking a clear stand on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam for the sake of vote bank politics.

BJP president Amit Shah said his party, on the other hand, was committed to completing the registration process to identify infi ltrators despite opposition from Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.

“Mamata Di, NRC will not stop just because of your oppo-sition. You are free to oppose. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is free to oppose. But it is our com-mitment that we will complete NRC in Assam, by following the due process of law, and identify all infi ltrators one by one,” Shah said at a rally here.

West Bengal Chief Minister Banerjee has been strident in her criticism of the NRC, after 4mn people did not fi nd a place in the document’s fi rst complete draft published on July 30.

Asking Gandhi to spell out his stand on NRC, Shah said the work on the document was be-ing done as per the Assam Ac-cord which was signed in 1985 by then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul’s father, headed the Congress govern-ment from 1984 to 1989.

“Now for vote bank politics, Rahul Gandhi is not taking a clear stand,” Shah said at the rally.

Virtually throwing a challenge to Gandhi and Banerjee, Shah said they should clarify their priority between country’s se-curity and vote bank politics.

Reminding Banerjee that in 2005, she had thrown papers at then Lok Sabha speaker Som-nath Chatterjee and stalled the House demanding the remov-al of Bangladeshi infi ltrators, Shah said the chief minister has changed her stance as the infi l-trators now vote for her Trina-mool.

The crowd responded with a roaring “yes” when Shah asked them whether the infi ltrators

posed a threat to the country’s security, and if they should be driven out.

Shah said West Bengal would not be in a healthy state if infi l-tration – rampant during Baner-jee’s rule – is not stopped.

“And the best way to stop in-fi ltration is NRC. So, the NRC process in Assam has to be com-pleted.”

Shah also charged Banerjee with spreading “misinforma-tion” that along with infi ltrators, refugees will also be driven out of India because of the NRC, and affi rmed that it is the responsi-bility of the BJP national govern-ment to ensure that refugees stay back in India.

“I assure all refugees in Ben-gal that the BJP government is bringing the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016. This bill has the provision to give citizen-ship to Christians, Buddhists and Hindu refugees who have come from Afghanistan, Paki-stan and Bangladesh. There are no plans to send any refugees back.”

Shah asked the Congress and the Trinamool to speak out be-fore next year’s general election whether they would back the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016, when it is placed in parlia-ment.

Ridiculing the critics of NRC who have expressed concerns about the human rights of infi l-trators, Shah wondered whether the Congress and the Trinamool were “not bothered” about the “human rights of the Hindus and Muslims of West Bengal”.

“Are you or are you not both-ered that Bangladeshi infi ltrators are eating into their livelihood, income, security, education,” he asked.

Referring to the Trinamool putting up posters from the air-port to the rally site which read “Anti-Bengal BJP and Amit Shah go back”, he said: “How can the BJP be anti-Bengal? Our party (the BJP’s precursor Bharatiya Jana Sangh) was founded by a son of Bengal, Syama Prasad Mookerjee.

“Mamata Di, our deep love and respect for Bengal is not for votes... We are not anti-Bengal, but defi nitely anti-Mamata,” he said.

BJP chief Amit Shah gestures as he speaks at a rally in Kolkata yesterday.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi meets supporters during his road show in Jaipur yesterday.

INDIA19Gulf Times

Sunday, August 12, 2018

LATIN AMERICA

Gulf Times Sunday, August 12, 201820

Venezuelans endure the painful journey to EcuadorBy Paola Lopez, AFPQuito

Jose Carrizales sits on a wood-en chair with his feet in the air, waiting for the blisters to heel.

Having travelled to Colombia af-ter fl eeing his home town of Va-lencia in Venezuela a month and a half ago, Carrizales realised he hadn’t reached the promised land.

The 60-year-old quit Vene-zuela with his three children and a son-in-law because “there was nothing left.”

Carrizales was fl eeing abject poverty in his homeland where a collapsing economy and hyper-infl ation have destroyed salaries and left shortages of food and medicine, as well as failing public services.

But after travelling hundreds of kilometres, he found Colom-bia was saturated by more than a million Venezuelan immigrants, according to estimates, and Car-rizales knew his journey was only beginning.

“Colombia is overwhelmed with Venezuelans,” he said.

So he and his family kept go-ing, but this time on foot, walk-ing for 15 days and 1,200km un-

til they crossed another border, with Ecuador, and reached the capital Quito.

Occasionally a kind-hearted motorist would ease their burden for a while, but most of the trip was on foot.

Eventually, Carrizales and his family reached an improvised refuge on the outskirts of a bus terminal in the north of Quito.

Alongside more than 100 other Venezuelans, he spends day and night sheltering under black plastic sheets tied to a tree.

It’s dusty and cold, and chil-dren huddle together to keep warm.

It’s a tough existence, sleeping out in the open, but Carrizales still feels reborn.

In Venezuela, where some towns can rarely count on run-ning water, “we were stinking,” he recalls.

“Everything was turned up-side down. I still can’t believe it,” he said, with unconsolable sad-ness tinging his voice.

The wave of migrants giving up on oil-rich Venezuela is putting a huge strain on the rest of the continent.

Colombia has already given tem-porary residence to 820,000 Ven-

ezuelans, but others have decided to keep heading south, on to places like Chile and even Uruguay.

Ecuador has declared an emer-gency after seeing some 4,200 migrants a day enter the country.

The United Nations Refugee Agency says almost 550,000 Venezuelans have entered Ec-uador since the beginning of the year, most on foot and in precari-ous conditions.

Only 20% of those stay in Ec-uador, the rest continue on to Peru and Chile, the UN says.

The problem for many mi-grants is that neighbouring Co-lombia can be an inhospitable destination.

“In Colombia, Venezuelans are looked down upon,” Nazareth Viloria told AFP, saying she felt prejudice.

But even in Quito she met peo-ple who “cursed us.”

She sleeps with her three chil-dren aged fi ve, four and one in a tent next to a pile of donated clothes.

Others write signs saying: “Venezuelan looking for work,” to display on street corners.

Jhony Mora got lucky for seven months in Colombia, but then “the pay wasn’t enough” — so the

23-year-old stuff ed his backpack with his belongings and decided to head south towards Peru.

But he got “lucky” again and found work as a mason in Quito, earning dollars for good measure.

Ecuador has been dollarised since 2000 making its market tempting to Venezuelans, for whom the minimum monthly salary of 5.9mn bolivars back home fetches just $1.6 on the black market.

Still, most hope to scrape to-gether enough money to leave their makeshift shelter and con-tinue on their journey.

In the meantime, they help each other by sharing food and cleaning implements, collecting clothes and tending to the sick.

Paramedic Miguel Ochoa ar-rived in Ecuador only six days ago.

He sits at a plastic table with some scattered medicine packs listening to patients recount their woes, mostly problems caused by the cold and a lack of hygiene.

“Here, if you don’t have a dol-lar to wash, you don’t wash. If you don’t have 10 cents, you can’t use the toilet,” Ochoa told AFP.

“It’s not easy to get money,” one of his patients adds.

Venezuelans walk towards the border with Ecuador at the Rumichaca international bridge in Ipiales, Colombia.

Duque warns ELN rebels over hostagesAFPBogota

Colombia President Ivan Duque warned ELN guerrillas on Friday they must release nine hostages

taken over the previous 10 days if they want to continue peace talks initiated by his predecessor Juan Manuel Santos.

Three policemen and four soldiers are amongst the hostages captured by the Marxist rebels in two separate incidents, one last week and the other on Wednesday.

“The message is singular and very clear: if the ELN really has the desire to demo-bilise, disarm and rejoin (civil society), it must liberate the hostages quickly and without conditions,” said Duque, who only assumed power on Tuesday after winning elections in June.

Duque, speaking from a border town close to Ecuador known for drug-traf-fi cking violence and insecurity, said he wouldn’t accept the ELN using kidnapping as a tactic to “intimidate and blackmail” his government in peace talks.

Last week, the ELN had off ered to release the six hostages it had taken but demanded fi rst an end to military operations in the northwestern Choco department.

However, three off -duty soldiers were kidnapped on Wednesday near the border with Venezuela, and the army immediately pointed the fi nger at the ELN.

The ELN, or National Liberation Army, has around 1,500 guerrillas and is the last recognised armed group fi ghting govern-ment forces in Colombia, following the 2016 peace accord signed with left-wing Farc rebels.

The group released a statement in Ha-vana on Friday saying it was in contact with the International Red Cross to arrange the “prompt liberation of the armed forces and civilians.”

However, it demanded various guaran-tees, including an “agreement of protocols in accordance with a humanitarian com-mission with the United Nations.”

People protest in solidarity for the recent murder of foreign tourists Maria Trinidad Matus of Mexico and Arantxa Gutierrez of Spain on Costa Rican beaches, at the La Democracia square in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Solidarity for victims

Nicaragua repression spurs involuntary immigrationBy Marco Sibaja, AFP Rio San Juan, Nicaragua

On a rainy morning in Nicara-gua’s south, two men step out of the jungle and into a boat

that will transport them a short dis-tance over the border with Costa Rica, slipping past border guards and police to safety.

Both were among those spearhead-ing roadblocks protesting the govern-ment of President Daniel Ortega in the city of Masaya, which in July was the target of an operation by police and loyalist paramilitaries to quash three months of dissent.

One of the men, a 28-year-old who used the pseudonym Guardabar-ranco, or “ravine-guard,” was one of the co-ordinators of Masaya’s protest movement.

The other, a 31-year-old calling himself PSJ, had led those manning one of the barricades.

With only a backpack each, the men have left behind wives and chil-dren to join a fl ow of other Nicara-

guans escaping what they see as a na-tional “prison” for the relative safety of Costa Rica.

“We are fl eeing the Ortega regime because to protest in Nicaragua is con-sidered a crime. We’ve been threat-ened with death,” Guardabarranco said before getting into the small, fl at-bottomed boat, known as a “panga.”

The United Nations says nearly 23,000 Nicaraguans have sought asylum in Costa Rica since the anti-Ortega protests started in mid-April, overwhelming the country’s process-ing system.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR said it was bolstering its operations.

The Costa Rican government says 100 to 150 people are daily crossing through main border station with Nicaragua — a number that doesn’t include many clandestine crossings.

The Nicaraguans are seeking ref-uge from unrest that shows no sign of ending, despite a recent decline in violence.

More than 300 people have been killed and 2,000 wounded in the past four months, according to rights

groups, although the government puts the death toll at 197.

A crackdown by authorities has seen 480 people arrested, 180 of whom have been put on trial on charges of terrorism and other seri-ous crimes.

“Costa Rica has opened its arms to Nicaraguans. We want to work, to spend some time there while things in Nicaragua calm down, while the international pressure keeps up on what’s left of the Ortega regime,” Guardabarranco said.

His companion said “this genocidal government is pursuing us, it wants to kills us. They know me very well and I’m afraid they will follow me and know where I am.”

AFP accompanied the two men this week as the crossed the border to a Costa Rican beach where a car awaited them on condition they not be identifi ed and no details be given about the people helping them.

Costa Rica is the main destination for Nicaraguans.

But many are also going to Hondu-ras, Panama and the United States.

The two men used to be active in the Sandinista movement that backs Ortega before turning against the president.

Guardabarranco left a senior post with a company to join the protests.

PSJ left his job in a family business.“I saw the injustices done against

the fi rst protesters. I joined their fi ght and rapidly became one of the lead-ers” in the Masaya district of Mon-imbo, a bastion of anti-Ortega senti-ment, Guardabarranco said.

“That was my crime: to protest, to rise up against the killers and the cor-ruption in this government,” he said.

PSJ’s story was similar.He became enraged seeing Ortega’s

security forces brutally putting down the initial protests on April 18, when they were against cutbacks to social security. A day after that fi rst crack-down Masaya erupted with youths taking to the streets to decry the gov-ernment’s violence. They were at-tacked by police.

“I took the initiative to make a bar-ricade at Masaya’s entrance. My wife helped me. And then a group of young

people helped. We were there for three months,” PSJ said.

Clashes were constant for those three months, up until mid-July when riot police and masked paramilitaries carrying assault rifl es sealed off Ma-saya and went in to forcibly clear the barricades and corner the protesters, some of whom resisted with stones and home-made mortars.

Guardabarranco and PSJ said they planned to meet up with other exiled Nicaraguans in Costa Rica to discuss how to bring about change in their home country.

For both, it was diffi cult to leave family and country behind.

“It hurts me deeply to leave my country, to leave my children,” PSJ said.

“I didn’t want to leave. But I am go-ing to Costa Rica with the hope of one day seeing my country become free,” he said, his eyes wet.

Guardabarranco concurred.“I want to leave my children a new

Nicaragua, where nobody is mur-dered for not thinking the same as the government,” he said.

Cuba charges dissident with attempted murder

The leader of one of Cuba’s largest and most active opposition organi-sations was charged Friday with at-

tempted murder after being held incom-municado for a week in eastern Cuba.

Jose Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), was charged with deliberately trying to run over an of-fi cial from the ministry of the interior on August 3, a spokesman for the group told Reuters by telephone.

According to Carlos Amel Oliva, a mem-ber of the UNPACU leadership, the inci-dent was an accident and the offi cial was only slightly injured.

Oliva said Ferrer, who does not have a driver’s license, was on his way to visit his daughter with UNPACU member Ebert Hidalgo Cruz and had taken the wheel to practice driving when the offi cial, in civil-ian clothing, stepped out in front of the car.

“He stepped out onto the road and he (Ferrer) braked and swerved and lightly hit the person who got up and mounted his motorcycle,” Oliva said.

Ferrer is being held in preventive deten-tion. “The accusation is completely false. There are witnesses who say it was the offi -cial who stepped onto the road,” Oliva said.

Hidalgo is also in custody, but has not yet been charged.

The Cuban government was not imme-diately available for comment.

PAKISTAN21Gulf Times

Sunday, August 12, 2018

US military institutions are struggling to fi ll the 66 slots they had allocated

for offi cers from Pakistan for the next academic year, as the Trump administration has refused to provide funding for their train-ing, offi cial sources said.

Funding for training Pakistani offi cers came from the US gov-ernment’s International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme, but no money has been made available for Pakistan

for the next academic year.Outgoing Pakistani offi cers at

the US National Defence Univer-sity (NDU) in Washington, which has reserved seats for Pakistani offi cers for more than a decade, have been told that the university has been instructed to fi ll the po-sitions for the next year with of-fi cers from other nations.

The NDU is one of several US military institutions training of-fi cers from Pakistan.

The Trump administration announced early this year that it was suspending security as-sistance to Pakistan due to dif-ferences on Afghanistan, but

had indicated that training pro-grammes for military offi cers will continue.

The cancellation of slots kept aside for Pakistani offi cers, how-ever, shows that the suspension also applies to training pro-grammes.

The United States severed se-curity ties with Pakistan in the early 1990s over the country’s nuclear programme, but US of-fi cials later acknowledged that it was a mistake.

They argued that the cutting of ties created a situation which al-lowed the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other extremist groups to form

and develop in Pakistan.Pakistani offi cers have been

receiving military training and education in the United States since early 1960s, which were suspended in the 1990s but re-stored after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US.

The decision to suspend mili-tary training for Pakistani offi c-ers was also reported by an in-ternational news agency, which observed that both US and Paki-stani offi cials have criticised the move in private.

“US offi cials said they are worried that the decision could undermine a key trust-building

measure,” the report said. “Pa-kistani offi cials warned that it could push their military to fur-ther look to China or Russia for leadership training.”

Dan Feldman, a former US special representative for Af-ghanistan and Pakistan, called the move “very short-sighted and myopic”.

“This will have lasting nega-tive impacts, limiting the bilat-eral relationship well into the future,” he said.

A US State Department spokesperson told journalists in Washington that the IMET pro-gramme cancellations were val-

ued at $2.41mn so far.At least two other programmes

have also been aff ected, the spokesperson said.

“This is an unfortunate and ultimately counter-productive decision. There are certainly ways to send a strong message to Pakistan, but this isn’t the way to do it,” said Michael Kugelman, an expert of Pakistan aff airs at a Washington think tank, the Wil-son Centre.

“This move could squander what little goodwill and trust remains in the military-to-mil-itary relationship, and it reduces the likelihood that Pakistan will

act in the ways that Washington would like it to act,” he added.

Kugelman noted that there is a long history of educational and training co-operation between the US and Pakistani militaries, and this co-operation had with-stood the pressures and tensions of the relationship.

“The fact that these educa-tional exchanges have suff ered this blow now suggests that the relationship could be entering into a new phase, where even the supposedly safe and protected dimensions of the relationship can become casualties of wider tensions and ill-will,” he said.

US cuts military training for Pakistan’s offi cersInternewsIslamabad

At least six people, includ-ing three Chinese na-tionals, were injured in a

suicide attack on a bus in south-western Pakistan yesterday, of-fi cials said.

An attacker struck the vehicle in the Dalbandin region of Balu-chistan province, as it transport-ed Chinese engineers working on

a mining project in the area.Local administration and po-

lice offi cials told AFP that three Chinese nationals, two paramili-tary soldiers from their security detail, and the bus driver were wounded in the attack.

“The attacker, waiting in a small truck along the route ... (detonated) the vehicle when the bus carrying Chinese engineers came close to him,” said Dostain Dashti, a senior police offi cer in the region, around 340km (210

miles) southwest of the provin-cial capital Quetta.

Saifullah Khaitran, a senior lo-cal administration offi cial, con-fi rmed the attack, adding that all the injured were in stable condi-tion.

Baluchistan is home to a long-running ethnic insurgency aimed at seeking greater control over the province’s abundant mineral resources.

The engineers were working on the Saindak project, Khaitran said, a joint venture between Pa-kistan and China to extract gold, copper and silver from an area close to the Iranian border.

Muhammad Ibrahim, the driv-er of the targeted bus, told AFP from his hospital bed that he had averted major loss by slamming on the brakes before the bus hit the attacker’s vehicle.

“The whole bus would have burnt if I had not applied the brakes,” he said.

The blast shattered the glass windows in the bus and damaged the front of the vehicle, accord-ing to images from the scene seen by Reuters.

Eighteen Chinese workers were on the bus when the attack happened.

Ethnic Baloch insurgents later

claimed responsibility for the at-tack.

“We targeted this bus which was carrying Chinese engineers,” Jihand Baloch, a spokesperson for the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), told AFP by phone. “We attacked them because they are extracting gold from our re-gion, we won’t allow it.”

The BLA released a video of the attack, including a message from the alleged suicide bomber who carried out the bombing.

Bordering Iran and Afghani-stan, Baluchistan is the largest of Pakistan’s four provinces, and many of its residents have long complained that it does not re-ceive a fair share of its mineral wealth.

Pakistan regularly accuses its eastern neighbour India of fund-ing and arming Baloch separa-tists, and of targeting develop-ment projects in the province.

Beijing has ramped up invest-ment in its South Asian neigh-bour’s infrastructure as part of an ambitious plan to link its far-western Xinjiang region to the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar in Baluchistan.

Tens of thousands of Chinese workers live in Pakistan, most of them working on infrastructure projects that fall under the Bei-

jing-funded $57bn China-Paki-stan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key leg of China’s vast Belt and Road initiative to build transport

and economic links across Asia.The Saindak project is Paki-

stan’s biggest functioning mine, but not part of the CPEC.

Attack on bus ferryingChineseengineersAFP/ReutersQuetta

Security personnel are seen on the site of the attack on the bus transporting Chinese engineers.

Eid art

A man creates a pattern design on a camel at a market in Karachi, ahead of Eid al-Adha.

Four killed in attack on police post

A militant attack on a police post in northern Pakistan left four people

dead, off icials said yesterday, the second violent incident this month in the

relatively-peaceful region of Gilgit-Baltistan.

The mountainous area, whose peaks attract climbers and tourists from

around the world, has been comparatively free of the deadly militancy

that has plagued other parts of Pakistan for years.

On August 3, unknown militants torched 12 schools in one night in the

region, but no loss of life was reported.

Around seven militants launched the latest assault in the early hours of

yesterday, sparking an exchange of fire in which three police off icers and

one attacker were killed, a local administration off icial told AFP.

“The latest attack came in Kargah area where militants attacked a police

installation engaging 12 policemen present there,” said Dildar Hussain

Malik. “We have arrested four suspected militants including two wounded

in the encounter.”

Local police confirmed the incident and said that operations were under-

way to track down the attackers who fled the scene.

Gilgit-Baltistan is home to the world’s second-highest mountain, K2.

President Mamnoon Hus-sain has shelved his three-day visit to Ireland, appar-

ently to be available on August 18 to administer the oath to Pa-kistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan as the 21st prime minister.

Sources in President House said yesterday that Hussain had earlier decided to proceed with his visit to Ireland on August 16 to attend the award-distribution ceremony of Royal College of

Physicians, where he was sched-uled to receive an honorary de-gree.

However, he cancelled the visit on the request of caretaker Prime Minister Nasirul Mulk.

The sources said that caretaker Information and Law Minister Ali Zafar met the president late on Thursday night and conveyed the message of the prime minis-ter.

The president, on the recom-mendation of the interim prime minister, has already summoned a session of the National Assem-bly for tomorrow (August 13) so that the process of formation of

the new government can begin.The PTI secured 115 seats in the

National Assembly in the July 25 general elections, and with the support of its allies and inde-pendent candidates, the party has claimed a simple majority in the lower house of parliament, with around 180 seats.

Earlier, it was revealed that Khan had wanted to take the oath as prime minister on Inde-pendence Day on August 14, but this was shelved due to legal and practical reasons.

The demand for the cancella-tion of Hussain’s foreign visit also came from the PTI on Thursday,

when Khan’s close aide Naeemul Haq urged the president to can-cel his three-day offi cial visit to Ireland, which would have con-cluded on August 19.

PTI spokesman Fawad Chaud-hry has said that Hussain’s ab-sence did not matter as Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani, as act-ing president, could administer the oath to the new prime min-ister.

It has been learnt that soon af-ter Khan takes the oath as prime minister, the governors of three provinces – Punjab, Khyber Pa-khtunkhwa, and Baluchistan – are likely to step down.

President cancels travel for PM’s oath-takingInternewsIslamabad

The inaugural session of the 15th Provincial As-sembly of Sindh province,

which came into being following the July 25 general elections, is scheduled to begin at 10am to-morrow.

According to an order issued by acting Governor Agha Siraj Durrani, as notifi ed yesterday by

the assembly’s secretariat, the session of the new legislature will be convened on Monday (August 13) at the Sindh Assembly build-ing.

Durrani, the speaker of the former assembly, assumed the governor’s offi ce after Muham-mad Zubair’s resignation as gov-ernor of Sindh.

Durrani himself or any indi-vidual nominated by him could preside over the session.

“He could himself preside over

the session and take the oath of new members or a nominee in his place could do the same, which is clearly mentioned in the assem-bly’s rules of procedure,” said G M Umar Farooq, secretary of the Sindh Assembly.

In case Durrani presides over the session himself, he would take the oath of the membership himself before administering the same to the rest of the house.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has issued a noti-

fi cation of the results of 125 seats barring fi ve – the results of four of which have been stayed by the Sindh High Court under pend-ing petitions while the election on PS-87 (Malir-I) was not held because of the death of a contest-ant.

Needing 66 general seats to form a government, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has already won 72 with results of four are pending and by-election on an-other is to be held.

Sindh Assembly members to take oath tomorrow

InternewsKarachi

Gulf Times Sunday, August 12, 2018

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Why is there so much shooting and killing in Chicago?

During last weekend in Chicago (August 3-5), between Friday at 6pm and Sunday at 11:59pm, 66 people were shot, 12 of them fatally.

And on Monday, August 6, at least 10 people were shot in eight incidents in the city.

Gun violence in Chicago is random the way destructive wind gusts are random. You can brace yourself but still not anticipate the location or severity of a blast. Monday August 6 easily could have been the quiet after the storm. One knows of no connection between a man killed at bus stop on Monday and a 17-year-old girl killed at block party the previous day, except that both were homicide victims in a city awash in illegal guns, and tormented by gang activity and the drug trade.

But why Chicago? Back in the early 1990s, the homicide rate in Chicago was as ugly as it was in New York and Los Angeles. Then began a steady national decline, Chicago included - until the abrupt recent upswing in violence.

In 2015, there were 485 homicides in Chicago. A year later, the number of victims skyrocketed to 764. That was 58% more homicides and 43% more nonfatal shootings in 2016. Since then, the pace of gun violence has dropped, but it remains elevated from what used to be considered normal, and is far worse than in

America’s two biggest cities.

There can’t be a rational explanation because Chicago’s plague of urban warfare isn’t

logical; it’s horrifi cally cruel and self-destructive. A 2017 University of Chicago Crime Lab study was able to quantify how much of the city’s gunfi re victimises residents of struggling neighbourhoods: Five South and West side communities with 9% of Chicago’s population (Austin, Englewood, New City, West Englewood and Greater Grand Crossing) accounted for nearly half the city’s increase in 2016 homicides. African-American men ages 15-34 made up more than half of the city’s homicide victims in 2015 and 2016 while accounting for just 4% of the city’s population. Almost 40% of victims had prior violent crime arrests.

“One of the ways Chicago is diff erent is that our social conditions are not anything like those now in New York City and Los Angeles,” Jens Ludwig, director of the Crime Lab, told a City Club audience early this year. “The level of concentrated poverty we have in our neighbourhoods is unlike anything in Los Angeles or New York.”

The dynamics at play, the ones Chicagoans want to understand to end the bloodshed, are complex. Gang life is a substitute for hope in isolated neighbourhoods. Every shooting invites a retaliatory attack. In a city of 2.7 million people, a relatively small number of criminals - perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 thugs and drug dealers - are driving a large share of the violence.

One positive development is this year’s 20% decline in the number of homicides and shooting incidents. But so much more has to be done to stop the shooting, punish off enders and save neighbourhoods. – Tribune News Service

Chicago’s plague of urban warfare is horrifi cally cruel and self-destructive

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

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By Barry Eichengreen Berkeley

US President Donald Trump’s erratic unilateralism represents nothing less than abdication of global

economic and political leadership.Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris

climate agreement, his rejection of the Iran nuclear deal, his tariff war, and his frequent attacks on allies and embrace of adversaries have rapidly turned the United States into an unreliable partner in upholding the international order.

But the administration’s “America First” policies have done more than disqualify the US from global leadership.

They have also created space for other countries to re-shape the international system to their liking.

The infl uence of China, in particular, is likely to be enhanced.

Consider, for example, that if the European Union perceives the US as an unreliable trade partner, it will have a correspondingly stronger incentive to negotiate a trade deal with China on terms acceptable to President Xi Jinping’s government.

More generally, if the US turns its back on the global order, China will be well positioned to take the lead on reforming the rules of international trade and investment.

So the key question facing the world is this: what does China want? What kind of international economic order do its leaders have in mind?

To start, China is likely to remain a proponent of export-led growth.

As Xi put it at Davos in 2017, China is committed “to growing an open global

economy.” Xi and his circle obviously will not want to dismantle the global trading system.

But in other respects, globalisation with Chinese characteristics will diff er from globalisation as we know it.

Compared to standard post-World War II practice, China relies more on bilateral and regional trade agreements and less on multilateral negotiating rounds.

In 2002, China signed the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Co-operation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

It has subsequently negotiated bilateral free-trade agreements with 12 additional countries.

Insofar as China continues to emphasise bilateral agreements over multilateral negotiations, its approach implies a diminished role for the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The Chinese State Council has called for a trade strategy that is “based in China’s periphery, radiates along the Belt and Road, and faces the world.” This suggests that Chinese leaders have in mind a hub-and-spoke system, with China the hub and countries on its periphery the spokes.

Others foresee the emergence of hub-and-spoke trading systems centred on China and also possibly on Europe and the United States – a scenario that becomes more likely as China begins to re-shape the global trading system.

The government may then elaborate other China-centred institutional arrangements to complement its trade strategy.

That process has already begun.The authorities have established

the Asian Infrastructure Investment

Bank, headed by Jin Liqun, as a regional alternative to the World Bank.

The People’s Bank of China has made $500bn of swap lines available to more than 30 central banks, challenging the role of the International Monetary Fund.

Illustrating China’s leverage, in 2016 the state-run China Development Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China provided $900mn of emergency assistance to Pakistan, helping its government avoid, or at least delay, recourse to the IMF.

A China-shaped international system will also attach less weight to intellectual property rights.

While one can imagine the Chinese government’s attitude changing as the country becomes a developer of new technology, the sanctity of private property has always been limited in China’s state socialist system.

Hence intellectual property protections are likely to be weaker than in a US-led international regime.

China’s government seeks to shape its economy through subsidies and directives to state-owned enterprises and others.

Its Made in China 2025 plan to promote the country’s high-tech capabilities is only the latest incarnation of this approach.

The WTO has rules intended to limit subsidies.

A China-shaped trading system would, at a minimum, loosen such constraints.

A China-led international regime would also be less open to infl ows of foreign direct investment.

In 2017, China ranked behind only the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia among the 60-plus countries

rated by the OECD according to the restrictiveness of their inward FDI regimes.

These restrictions are yet another device designed to give Chinese companies space to develop their technological capabilities.

The government would presumably favour a system that authorises other countries to use such policies.

In this world, US multinationals seeking to operate abroad would face new hurdles.

Finally, China continues to exercise tight control over its fi nancial system, as well as maintaining restrictions on capital infl ows and outfl ows.

While the IMF has recently evinced more sympathy for such controls, a China-led international regime would be even more accommodating of their use.

The result would be additional barriers to US fi nancial institutions seeking to do business internationally.

In sum, while a China-led global economy will remain open to trade, it will be less respectful of US intellectual property, less receptive to US foreign investment, and less accommodating of US exporters and multinationals seeking a level playing fi eld.

This is the opposite of what the Trump administration says it wants.

But it is the system that the administration’s own policies are likely to beget. - Project Syndicate

Barry Eichengreen is professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former senior policy adviser at the International Monetary Fund. His latest book is The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era.

Globalisation with Chinese characteristics

Chinese President Xi Jinping.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Sunday, August 12, 2018 23

Another look at the ketogenic diet

Germany’s dangerous nuclear fl irtation

Live issues

By Barbara QuinnThe Monterey County Herald

In a recent column, I stated, “Even if we entirely avoided all carbohydrates, our bodies would use protein in an alternate recipe

to make glucose (sugar) to fuel our cells.”

A reader in Ontario, Canada, responded: “According to Dr Jason Fung, author of The Obesity Code, if one eats a diet of 65% healthy fat, 35% protein, and 5% carbohydrate, the body will be in ketosis and will burn fat, not protein, to make glucose to fuel our cells. Only when the body reaches the level of 4% fat will protein be used to make glucose.”

This reader then goes on to describe his success with this diet under his doctor’s supervision. “I have lost a pound a week for 15 weeks and feel very good after the initial few days of sugar withdrawal. My regime of full fat yoghurt and milk, unsweetened whipped cream in my coff ee, olive and avocado oils, limited fruit, no

root vegetables, no fl our, beans or pulses satisfi es my hunger as no other diet has. Have you looked into the ketogenic diet? I believe it is revolutionary.”

Dear reader,I applaud your progress. And yes,

I have looked into the research on ketogenic diets. Here are my thoughts:

Glucose – the primary fuel for our brain, muscle and other body functions – is easily provided by carbohydrates (sugars and starches in most plant-based foods). In the absence of carbohydrates, our amazing bodies can make glucose from fat and protein. Ketogenic diets severely restrict carbohydrates to force the body to manufacture glucose from these alternate sources. This causes acids (ketones) to build up in the blood – a condition called ketosis. In times of starvation or low carb dieting, take your pick, our brains and muscles can survive on ketone bodies.

The ketogenic diet is extremely popular and controversial. Like you, many of its followers report less hunger and more weight loss

compared to other diets. Yet experts argue its long term eff ectiveness and safety.

These diets eliminate or severely restrict any type of sugar or starch including grains, fruit (natural fruit sugar, fructose), potatoes and other starchy vegetables, beans, legumes and milk (natural milk sugar, lactose).

On the plus side, ketogenic diets have been used successfully to treat epileptic seizures in children. And many people who adopt this eating plan eat more vegetables and less added sugar.

Studies over the past 15 years show that animals and humans tend to lose weight faster on ketogenic diets than with other types of diets. Their eff ectiveness over the long term does not seem to be any better than other weight loss plans, however.

On the down side, ketosis means that our bodies must deal with the production of acids, including acetone, that build up in our blood. This, say biochemists, disturbs the body’s natural acid-base balance.

People with diabetes are at risk

of ketoacidosis – an extreme form of ketosis that is life threatening. While promoters of the keto diet say this is not a risk for healthy people, I personally do not prefer to chronically feed my brain and muscles this way.

My opinion also is that carbohydrates are not evil monsters. They are quite literally the energy from the sun transformed by plants into fuel (sugars and starches). This energy is transferred to me when I eat plant-based foods. If I severely restrict these foods, I also eliminate some pretty important nutrients and substances that reduce infl ammation – a major trigger for obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

A recent study by the Agricultural Research Service, for example, found that participants who ate whole grains (instead of refi ned grains) lost weight while boosting benefi cial bacteria in their guts that fi ght off infl ammation and harmful gut microbes.

Any strategy that helps us avoid empty calories from excess sugars is a good step. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater, however. – Tribune News Service

By Wolfgang Ischinger Berlin

As in a game of chess, there are geopolitical moves through which a country can – unwittingly – checkmate

itself.Opening a debate on German nuclear

weapons would be such a move.Yet this is exactly what some

Germans have recently proposed.Supporters of a nuclear-armed

Germany contend that Nato’s nuclear umbrella has lost all credibility because of statements made by US President Donald Trump.

There are at least three good reasons why considering a nuclear option would be foolhardy for Germany.

For starters, Germany has repeatedly renounced it, fi rst in 1969 by signing (and later ratifying) the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and then in 1990 by signing the so-called Two Plus Four Treaty, which paved the way for German reunifi cation.

Casting doubt on these commitments would severely damage Germany’s reputation and reliability worldwide.

Germany would call into question the credibility of Nato’s nuclear deterrence, and thus the alliance itself, along with the entire nuclear non-proliferation regime.

It is worth noting that since its creation in 1949, Nato has been one of the world’s most successful instruments of proliferation prevention.

Not a single Nato member state – apart from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France – has found it necessary to acquire nuclear weapons of its own.

If Germany were now to break out of its non-nuclear power status, what would keep Turkey or Poland, for instance, from following suit? Germany as a gravedigger of the international non-proliferation regime – who could want that?

Second, a German nuclear bomb would damage the strategic environment in Europe – to Germany’s disadvantage.

Russia would interpret German steps toward a nuclear arsenal as a direct threat to its own national security and would likely adopt military countermeasures.

That, in turn, would make it even harder to pursue the vision of a pan-European order of peace and security, a core foreign-policy goal of all German governments since that of Konrad Adenauer.

Moreover, a German nuclear ambition might jeopardise the delicate balance of power in Europe – including between Germany and France, for example – with incalculable consequences for the

long-term cohesion of the European Union.

Finally, it is not hard to predict that the pursuit of nuclear weapons would draw signifi cant public opposition, especially given that such a move would be a complete about-face for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, which, just a few years ago, moved to phase out nuclear energy altogether.

It is diffi cult to imagine a greater fi asco for German foreign and security policy than proposing a nuclear strategy and then failing to obtain parliamentary approval.

There are smarter long-term ways to bolster Europe’s nuclear defence than introducing a German bomb.

For example, France might be willing to consider playing an extended nuclear-deterrence role, along with the roles of the US and the United Kingdom within Nato.

While this would require a fundamental reorientation and Europeanisation of France’s nuclear strategy, Germany and other European partners could off er fi nancial contributions to such an initiative, in the context of a future European defence union with a nuclear component.

But these are, at best, long-term options.

In short, no matter what Trump says, Germany will remain dependent

on the US nuclear umbrella for the foreseeable future.

The best way to maintain Nato’s credibility and be taken seriously by the US is to work seriously toward the alliance’s 2%-of-GDP target for defence spending and to invest more heavily in conventional military capabilities not to satisfy US demands, but to protect our own security and defence interests.

But this is not simply about spending more; it is about spending more intelligently, particularly by pooling and sharing capabilities, and by systematic joint procurement with France and other European partners, including through the recently established EU Defence Fund.

None of this will work if Germany will not start defi ning military strategy, security, and defence as top political priorities.

Only then will the Bundestag be able to give the Bundeswehr – often referred to as a “parliamentary army” – what it needs to do its job.

The alternative – considering the development of nuclear weapons – would be a game-losing move. – Project Syndicate

Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador to the United States, is Chairman of the Munich Security Conference and Professor for Security Policy and Diplomatic Practice at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Skin bleaching: An ‘addiction’ with risksAFPLagos

Dr Isima Sobande was in medical school when she fi rst heard of mothers who bleached the skin of their

babies.She dismissed it as an urban myth.But it wasn’t long before she saw it

with her own eyes.At a health centre in Lagos, a mother

brought in a two-month-old infant who was crying in pain.

“He had very large boils all over his body,” the soft-spoken 27-year-old Nigerian told AFP. “It seemed like they weren’t normal.”

The baby’s mother explained that she had mixed a steroid cream with shea butter and slathered his skin with it in order to make it whiter.

“I was very appalled. It was distressing,” said Sobande.

Shocked, the young doctor now takes a diff erent view on skin bleaching, also called lightening or whitening.

For many Nigerians, it is a “standard procedure,” a gateway to beauty and success, she said.

“It’s a mindset that has eaten into society. For a lot of people, it’s the path to getting a good job, having a relationship.”

Skin lightening is popular in many parts of the world, including South Asia and the Middle East.

But medical experts say that in Africa — a continent where regulations are often lax or scorned — the widening phenomenon is laden with health risks.

Cultural watchdogs, for their part, see it as the toxic legacy of colonialism.

Africa is experiencing a “massive trend of increased use (of skin bleaching), particularly in teenagers and young adults,” said Lester Davids, a physiology professor at the University

of Pretoria in South Africa.“The older generation used creams

— the new generation uses pills and injectables. The horror is that we do not know what these things do in high concentrations over time in the body.”

Where statistics about Africa’s skin-bleaching industry exist, they are often old or unreliable.

But evidence from the range of products, suppliers and services points to a continent-wide market that may number tens of millions of people and possibly more.

In Nigeria alone, 77% of women — by extrapolation, more than 60mn people — are using lightening products on a “regular basis”, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in 2011.

Experts say the African market is rapidly expanding as companies seek to cash in on the continent’s booming youth population.

“More clients want insight on the lightening market,” said Rubab Abdoolla, a beauty analyst at market researchers Euromonitor International.

The rich tend to opt for pricier registered products which are available in standard doses.

Others are likely to buy creams, often bootleg concoctions mixed in the back streets, that may be dangerous and are blatantly sold in defi ance of offi cial bans or constraints.

Ingredients may include hydroquinone, steroids, mercury and lead — the same element that, at high doses, poisoned Elizabethan courtiers who powdered their faces ivory white.

“These chemicals damage respiratory, kidney and reproductive systems,” an offi cial from the Nigerian drug control agency warned. “They cause cancer, aff ect the nervous system, deform unborn babies.”

In spite of the risks, authorities are struggling to control the bleaching innovations, which include a compound called glutathione, taken as injections or pills.

Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya have all banned skin bleaching products with high amounts of hydroquinone and mercury, with the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa urging people to “reject all colonial notions of beauty”. In July, Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority issued a statement telling pregnant women not to take glutathione pills to bleach their unborn babies saying that there may be “serious toxic side eff ects” such as “asthma, renal failure and chest pains.”

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stresses that it has not given approval for any of the injections on the market today.

“These products are potentially unsafe and ineff ective, and might contain unknown harmful ingredients or contaminants.”

Those who start using skin lightening say they invariably stay with the practice.

“Before you know it, it has become some sort of an addiction where you want to maintain that look,” said Dabota Lawson, a Lagos socialite and cosmetics entrepreneur.

“Just like with plastic surgery, it begins to feel like it’s never enough.”

In Lagos, the creams are assembled by a legion of cosmetologists and sold at a price anywhere from 5,000 naira to 20,000 naira ($14-55, 12-47 euros), a prohibitive amount in a country where the minimum wage is just 18,000 naira ($50, 42 euros). Instagram skincare star Pela Okiemute’s “Russian White” body cream claims to give “fi rmness, intense beauty and a mixed race complexion”. His “Cleopatra Royal” cream, whose label features Elizabeth Taylor in her famous role as the Egyptian queen, promises to “lighten and radiate”. Customers should start seeing results in two weeks, says Okiemute, explaining that his creams, which

include collagen, kojic acid and “anti-ageing” snail slime are safe, though he declined to divulge his formula.

“We have a lot of customers who have used a lot of wrong products, they come to us and we give solutions,” he says.

He fl icked through his phone to show before-and-after photos of a client who had a problem with dark knuckles, a telltale sign of a skin bleacher.

Intravenous injections and pills of glutathione — an antioxidant naturally found in the body that has a lightening side eff ect — are the new frontiers of skin bleaching.

At his clinic on the outskirts of Lagos, beside an abandoned Chinese restaurant, plastic surgeon Aranmolate Ayobami charges clients 150,000 naira ($415, 350 euros) for a fi ve-week course of glutathione injections.

Known as the “Buttmaster” for

helping patients seeking an hourglass figure, Ayobami buys the injections from companies he trusts in the United Arab Emirates or the United States.

He only gives certain dosages for a limited amount of time, he said.

But sometimes clients will bring in their own cheaper product that they bought online and urge him to inject them. “We try to discourage that,” he said.

If many millions of Africans lighten their skin without regret, others are dismayed.

“Skin bleaching is one manifestation of folks trying to get power and privilege aligned with whiteness,” said Yaba Blay, a researcher at North Carolina Central University.

“We’re seeing folks attempt to be perceived as having more value because of their complexion.”

Recent black movements are trying to challenge that perception.

#Melaninpoppin, a hashtag celebrating black skin, and the smash-hit movie Black Panther, which featured an almost all-black cast wearing African-inspired outfi ts and natural hair, are held up as testaments to a shift away from longstanding Eurocentric standards of beauty.

But whether the tide of opinion is turning in Africa itself is another question.

“The truth for me was that my beauty was more accepted abroad than at home,” said Ajuma Nasenyana, a model from northern Kenya, who has walked for Victoria’s Secret and Vivienne Westwood.

“In the African industry the lighter your skin tone the more beautiful you are. Hopefully the industry is changing and starting to appreciate darker skin.”

Sobande, the doctor, said, “We’re living in a more positive environment than a few years before.

“But it’s going to take a lot of eff ort to change the mindset.”

Aranmolate Ayobami, plastic surgeon at the Grandville Medical and Laser clinic in Lagos, explains glutathione injections used for skin lightening on July 17, 2018 in Lagos. Right: Aasif Khalifa applies a mask on Himesh Dhulab as part of a facial which used skin lightening products at the Pari Hair Salon in the Fordsburg suburb of Johannesburg on July 3, 2018.

WARNINGInshore : Strong wind expected

and poor horizontal vis-ibility at place daytime

Offshore : NilWEATHERInshore : Hot daytime with slight

dust to blowing dust at places at times.

Offshore : Slight dust at times with some clouds.

WINDInshore : Northwesterly 12-22/26

KT

Offshrore : Northwesterly 05-15/21 KT

Visibility : 4-8/3 KM

Offshore : 2-4/6 FT at places attimes

TODAY

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BaghdadKuwait CityManamaMuscat Tehran

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24 Gulf TimesSunday, August 12, 2018

QATAR

Qatari artist Ahmed Nooh to step into Paris art sceneQatar Museums’ (QM)

Fire Station: Artist in Residence, an initiative

designed to grow the next gen-eration of artistic talent in Qa-tar, has announced that a sixth Qatari artist will be joining its prestigious Paris Residency Pro-gramme.

As of August 15, Ahmed Nooh will be spending three months at the Cite Internationale Des Arts – one of the world’s most impor-tant art residencies, QM has said in a statement. Ahmed recently completed QM’s nine-month residency programme at the Fire Station, after which he joined 17 other artists in the recently opened ‘Dual Inspirations’ exhi-bition. His installation, ‘Traces of Life’, “stunned visitors with its thought-provoking com-mentary” on the abandonment of books. The exhibition is set to end on the October 1.

Prior to that, Ahmed was a member of the Visual Arts Cen-tre, where he experimented with various materials to create an abstract representation of his artistic vision. Completely de-voted to his passion, he is also a member of the Souq Waqif Centre for Fine Arts as well as a member of the Katara Fine Arts Association.

Commenting on the an-nouncement, Fire Station di-rector Khalifa al-Obaidly said: “Ahmed Nooh is a perfect ex-ample of an artist who is com-pletely devoted to his craft. After completing the Fire Sta-tion’s rigorous nine-month programme, he now sets sail on a new adventure that I am certain will further nurture his skills and knowledge. He is the sixth artist to join the Paris Residency Programme since its launch, a testament to our country’s growing artistic and cultural sector. I look forward to

welcoming him back and seeing how this experience will shape his contributions to Qatar’s art scene.”

Ahmed joins Ebtisam al-Saf-far, Nasser al-Attiya, Abdullah al-Kuwari, Ghada al-Khater and Ahmed al-Jufairi, all of whom are alumni of the Paris Resi-dency Programme. Under the patronage of its Chairperson, HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, QM has been instigating Qatar’s future generation of artists, the statement notes. Just recently, it launched Studio 209 NY, an

extension of its Paris Residency Programme. Qatari artists will now have the opportunity to ap-ply for a residency at the pres-tigious International Studio & Curatorial Programme in New York, US. Application for the programme is open until Octo-ber 1.

By providing its talents with international platforms of self-expression, QM stressed that it is helping Qatar fi nd its own distinctive voice in today’s glo-bal cultural debates, all the while fostering a spirit of national par-ticipation.

Ahmed Nooh’s ‘Traces of Life’.

Ahmed Nooh in studio.

Dr Mohan Thomas at the stadium holding a ‘Welcome to Qatar’ banner during the final of Russia 2018.

With the welcome placard at the Qatar Airways pavilion in Russia.

Qatar 2022 gets Qatar 2022 gets the forward pushthe forward pushat Russia 2018at Russia 2018By Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

A prominent Indian ex-patriate and a longtime Qatar resident has ac-

tively participated in the ac-tivities for promoting the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup during his visit to Russia to watch the football World Cup 2018. “We had a very good oppor-tunity to interact with a large number of people from various countries. We were also able to clear certain misgivings among the Western people about the weather conditions of Qatar and the labour situation in the country,” said Dr Mohan Tho-mas, who watched the fi nal and third-place playoff at the tour-nament in Russia, along with fellow compatriot and technol-ogy consultant Sujit Raphel.

“We could clear some of the propaganda campaign against Qatar on labour-related issues. We gave a clear picture of the facilities for workers provided by the government of Qatar. We told them that Qatar has reli-gious freedom and the country

looks after foreign workers very well. There are good labour laws in the country like compulsory salary transfer to banks, nice accommodation as well as good working conditions,” explained Dr Thomas, who is also found-er-chairman of Birla Public School.

“Most Europeans are very friendly and they have a very cordial approach to Qatar. However, many of them had a feeling that the Arabian region

is very hot and the tempera-ture is above 40 degrees Celsius throughout the year. I clarifi ed to them that the temperature is high only during summer and in November to December it is between 17 and 27 degrees Cel-sius, which was news to most of them.”

According to Dr Thomas, who is an ardent football fan, Qatar promoted FIFA 2022 in a big way in Russia. “Qatar had set up a Majlis in Gorky Park,

Moscow, in the very Arabian tradition. It was a great experi-ence with falcons, Ghawa being served, seating arrangements in the traditional Arabian style, traditional sword dancing, Oryx statues as well as some repli-cas of the shops in Souq Wa-qif, among others. There were hoardings on the streets with the message ‘Welcome to the Arabian Experience’ and mes-sages at the airport, ‘See you in 2022’,” he noted.

“During our stay, His High-ness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani visited the Majlis and interacted with eve-ryone. There was also a pavilion by Ooredoo, which showcased models of all the World Cup stadiums in Qatar. After receiv-ing the 2022 FIFA World Cup host’s mantle at a ceremony in Russia, His Highness the Amir had said the “World Cup Qatar 2022 is a championship for all Arabs”.

Dr Thomas said putting on the offi cial jersey of 2022, “we had carried a placard with the message ‘Welcome to Doha-Qatar 2022’ in several lan-guages”. He continued, “People from other countries were very much interested in our mes-sage and wanted to have pic-tures with the placard. We had a chance to interact with the premium fans of several coun-tries at the fan zone. From our interactions, we could under-

stand that many of them want to have an Arabian experience in Qatar and we could convey a positive message about Qatar to the football fans from across the world,” he said.

Dr Thomas said FIFA 2022 will be a real World Cup in its true sense as citizens of almost all countries are residents of Qatar. “Almost the whole world is represented in Qatar. Qatar is a very modern and multicul-tural country. We felt it was our duty and privilege to convey the message that here is a country that is free and fair to everyone. Come and enjoy the game,” he highlighted.

Dr Thomas said he has prom-ised all co-operation to the 2022 World Cup offi cials towards the conduct of the game. “On be-half of the Indian Sport Centre, we have off ered our services to the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy. We have also off ered the medical services of doctors and nurses for the conduct of the game. In addi-tion, we are planning to create a Guinness record for the longest painting in the world on FIFA,” he added.

Qatar 2022 promoted in a big way at Russia 2018; Football fans promised authentic Arabian experience Holding the banner in front of a Russia World Cup stadium.

Welcome to Qatar 2022- near the Majlis. With a group of fans in Moscow.