$65 oil price 'vital' for investment - Gulf Times

WEDNESDAY Vol. XXXVII No. 10099

May 25, 2016Sha’baan 18, 1437 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals GULF TIMES

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INDEX

SPORT | QATAR | Page 28

Al-Attiyah Energy Awards fetes seven global industry leaders

Jaish aim to wrap up slot in AFC

Champions League quarters

In brief

QATAR | Employment

Electronic format for job contracts The Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Aff airs is working on a new electronic format of the employment contract for expatriate workers, local Arabic daily Al Watan reported yesterday. The electronic contracts will be unified and binding for all entities and companies in the country. “The expatriate worker would sign the new electronic contract in the home country before arriving in Qatar,” Al Watan added.

$65 oil price ‘vital’ for investmentOil markets are “rebalancing” but

crude is “not at a fair price” yet, HE the Minister of Energy Dr

Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada has said and noted a minimum price of $65 a barrel is “badly needed at the moment”.

“The oil market is recovering slowly but steadily. Luckily, the fundamentals show it is heading in the right direc-tion,” al-Sada, also the current Opec president, told the Associated Press.

“I don’t think we are yet at a fair price. We need to have a fairer price so that we can have the ability to invest more in order to secure the energy sup-ply to the world and avoid any price shock,” he said.

Benchmark Brent futures were trad-ing at around $48 a barrel yesterday.

The oil market has moved into a pro-duction defi cit earlier than expected following supply disruptions and an increase in demand, Bloomberg said

quoting Goldman Sachs Group. Other banks such as Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Bank of America Corporation have also noted that supply losses are lead-ing markets to rebalance.

“The disruptions are getting people thinking that supply may soon trail demand,” Again Capital’s Kilduff said. “This is especially true given the thesis that the market was going to come into balance later this year anyway.”

According to Bloomberg, investors have “some sad reasons to be optimis-tic” about oil prices.

Outbreaks of violence in Nigeria, export troubles in a divided Libya and wildfi res ripping across the Canadian oil sands are reviving wagers that crude markets will tighten.

Speculators’ net-long position in benchmark US crude, a measure of how bets on a price increase outnumber bearish ones, climbed by the most con-tracts since March, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

“The main bullish factor has been the outages,” said Michael Wittner, the New York-based head of oil-market research at Societe Generale SA.

“There are many outages, led by Ni-geria and Canada. We are missing a lot of crude.”

West Texas Intermediate futures are heading for a fourth-straight monthly gain, which would be the longest rally in fi ve years, as evidence mounts that demand may soon outpace supplies.

HE al-Sada: says crude is ‘not at a fair price’.

QNA Istanbul

HE the Minister of Foreign Af-fairs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani yes-

terday called for a common political action at all levels to resolve global crises, pointing out that humanitar-ian action could not be limited to just relief work.

Speaking at the World Humanitar-ian Summit in Istanbul, the minister noted that poverty, unemployment, discrimination, human rights viola-tions and corruption had provided a

fertile ground for extremist ideas.He said that governments’ help in

establishing independent and sus-tainable solutions to gain confi dence of their citizens would contribute to confl ict prevention and realisation of stability as they would strengthen the capacity of regional organisations in dealing with crises.

The minister said that confl ict pre-vention was a multi-dimensional ac-tion, aimed at addressing the struc-tural errors that led to slipping into the clutches of violent confl ict and extremism, adding that Qatar’s ef-forts in humanitarian work was not only restricted to the region but had

spread to more than 100 countries all over the world.

He stressed Qatar’s commitment to the continuity of humanitarian work in sustainable ways.

The minister said that in line with Qatar’s foreign policy in achieving international security and stability through humanitarian, developmen-tal and political initiatives, the state pledged to abide by the fi ve respon-sibilities that are based upon the vi-sion of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his report “Humanitarian one: A Shared Responsibility” which draws a roadmap for co-ordination of humanitarian eff orts. To Page 9

FM calls for joint action to resolve global crises

HE the Prime minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani yesterday attended the Community College of Qatar (CCQ) graduation ceremony of students of the fifth batch of Diplomas in Arts and Sciences and the first batch of Diploma in Public Administration students. The ceremony, held at Qatar National Convention Centre, was also attended by a number of ministers, academics, CCQ teaching staff and families of the graduates. Addressing the ceremony, HE the Minister of State for Defence Aff airs Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah underlined that one of the major challenges of the current century was to provide intellectual capital through the preparation of national cadres capable of acquiring knowledge and continue the development process by adopting science and technology.

PM attends CCQ graduation ceremony

QATAR

Gulf Times Wednesday, May 25, 20162

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, HH the Deputy Emir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani and HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani have sent cables of congratulations to Patsy Reddy on the occasion of her appointment as Governor-General of New Zealand.

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, HH the Deputy Emir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani and HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani have sent cables of congratulations to Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki on the anniversary of his country’s Independence Day.

Congratulatorycables sent

IndependenceDay greetings

Qatargas unveils programme to support national graduates

Qatargas has launched in-dividual development programme (IDP) in an

eff ort to support national gradu-ates through training and devel-opment as part of strengthening its Qatarisation programme.

This announcement came at the company’s 15th annual CEO forum where nationals who are part of Qatargas’ training and development programme met with the chief executive Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa al-Thani, and participated in discussions re-garding their individual devel-opment and the company’s Qa-tarisation programme.

The theme of this year’s fo-rum, ‘My Career My Responsi-bility’, was supported by Qatar-gas’ learning and development (L&D) department and facilitat-ed by the Focus Group.

“Qatargas is committed to maintaining its status as the world’s premier LNG (lique-fi ed natural gas) company. As national graduates, you are the

cornerstone of this incredible journey we are undertaking. At Qatargas, we value our national workforce and provide you with guidance as well as the neces-sary means and tools to grow in your professional life,” the chief executive said.

The new IDP platform is de-

veloped to increase eff ectiveness of IDP system user experience and reporting, said a Qatargas spokesman.

This year L&D launched National Graduate Develop-ment Programme (NGDP) e-learning training to assist division heads, coaches and

national graduates to under-stand the purpose and objec-tives of the NGDP. The aim of this learning module is to gain a better understanding of roles and responsibilities which will support executing the role of a coach and national graduate as a learner more eff ectively.

The announcement of the launch of “Coaching Commu-nity” with the aim to improve communication and network-ing among other fellow coach-es of national graduates. Also L&D would identify steps to further support coaches of national graduates to enhance

their coaching skills which as-sist them to resolve issues and concerns of national gradu-ates.

For trainees, a new Technical Preparation Programme (TPP) is under provision, which is more focused on vocational training and aligned to targeted positions

as technicians and rover opera-tors. It is based on standards set by Qatargas together with other oil and gas companies.

The programme content has been developed jointly by the companies and endorsed by Qatar Petroleum and the pro-gramme material is now under development and the fi rst batch is planned to start on September 2016.

The forum also included mo-tivational speeches by Qatari nationals who have excelled in their careers and progressed to key position in the company after completing their develop-ment programme.

Ali Mohamed al-Emadi, LNG Marketing Division manager shared his success stories with the national graduates; and Mones Khider al-Rwaili, Head of Shutdown Operations, Onshore Support Operation shared his success. There were also several group activities and presenta-tions.

Participants at the Qatargas’ CEO forum.

HE the Minister of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Aff airs Dr Issa Saad al-Jafali al-Nuaimi held separate meetings with the ambassadors of Jordan and Palestine, Zahi Mohamed al-Samadi and Munir Abdullah Ghannam, respectively. They discussed bilateral relations and ways of enhancing them.

Labour Minister meets envoys of Jordan, Palestine

Minister honours ExxonMobil Qatar

HE the Minister of Energy and Indus-try Dr Mohamed bin

Saleh al-Sada recently pre-sented ExxonMobil Qatar with the 2015 Qatarisation Certifi cate for the most im-proved organisation in the category of supporting stu-dent sponsorship.

Alistair Routledge, presi-dent and general manager of ExxonMobil Qatar, accepted the award on behalf of the company.

“We are honoured to re-ceive this award that recog-nises our continuous eff orts to promote Qatarisation nationally and in our busi-ness,” said Routledge. “For more than 20 years, Exx-onMobil Qatar has proudly worked in partnership with the Qatari government to tailor local content to the specifi c needs in Qatar, and we remain dedicated to im-proving on these eff orts in the years to come.

“We want to help ensure that Qatari students and young professionals are equipped with the knowl-edge and skills to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Human potential is a cor-nerstone to building a pros-perous future for the coun-try, and these individuals hold the key to realising

such a future.” In a statement, the com-

pany stressed that the Qa-tarisation rate at Exxon-Mobil Qatar was among the highest in the energy sector, currently standing at 60%.

As part of its ongoing Qatarisation eff orts, the company launched a fully funded student sponsor-ship programme in 2006, the “fi rst of its kind” in the industry. The sponsor-ship opportunities are of-fered to qualifi ed Qatari students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree in engineering, geosciences,

fi nance, marketing, infor-mation technology, ac-counting, business admin-istration, environmental science, mass communica-tion, international aff airs and other related fi elds.

Sponsorships are off ered without the obligation of employment and provide students with an opportu-nity to gain hands-on ex-perience under professional supervision.

Additionally, ExxonMo-bil Qatar is involved in the recruiting, hiring, training and development of Qatari nationals for roles within

the company. Once recruit-ed, employees receive on-the-job training throughout ExxonMobil’s global opera-tions.

ExxonMobil Qatar sup-ports a range of sustain-able education and training initiatives for students and professionals to help build a stream of skilled indi-viduals who can tackle the challenges of tomorrow, the statement notes. These ef-forts are made in pursuit of developing Qatar’s knowl-edge-based economy, a vi-sion put forth by the Qatari leadership.

HE Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada and Qatar Petroleum president & CEO Saad Sherida al-Kaabi with Alistair Routledge.

MoI to open services centre at The Pearl

A new services centre of the Ministry of In-terior (MoI) will soon

be opened at The Pearl-Qatar, local Arabic daily Ar-rayah has reported.

It would begin operations at a complex in Medina Centrale.

“The new offi ce will pro-vide all MoI services which are currently rendered at other centres, located in 16 places across the country besides the four MoI immi-gration offi ces,” the Unifi ed Services Department direc-tor Brigadier Abdulla Ahmed al-Ansari has been quoted as saying. Visa and residence services, e-Gate services, vehicle insurance, company

establishment registration, security related complaints,

traffi c services and exit per-mits and some attestation

services can be obtained from the MoI Service centres.

The new MoI Services Centre to be opened in Medina Centrale of The Pearl-Qatar. PICTURE: Jayaram.

QATAR3Gulf Times

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

The total trading value in the real estate transactions contracts registered with the Land Registry Department of the Ministry of Justice from May 15 to 19 reached QR529,343,795.According to the weekly bulletin issued by the Department, the real estate sales included lands, houses, residential buildings, multi-purpose buildings, a tower, shops and a residential complex, located in the municipalities of Doha, Umm Salal, Al Khor, Al Thakhira, Al Rayyan, Al Daayen Al Wakrah, and Al Shamal.

HE the Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani yesterday met New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully on the sidelines of the World Humanitarian Summit, currently underway in Istanbul.The meeting reviewed bilateral relations between Qatar and New Zealand and means of developing them. The two sides also discussed ways of promoting commercial ties by motivating chambers of commerce in both countries and the private sector as well as exchanging visits so as to achieve the mutual interests of Qatar and New Zealand.The meeting also touched on the latest political developments on the regional and international fronts.

Real estate transactions

FM meets New Zealand counterpart

HE the Minister of Transport and Communications Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti met Indonesian ambassador to Qatar Mohamed Basri Sidehabi in Doha yesterday. Talks focused on issues of common interest in areas of transport, communications and information technology and means of enhancing them.

HE the Assistant Foreign Minister for Foreign Aff airs Sultan bin Saad al-Meraikhi met Frank Gillette, French special envoy in charge of the Syrian file, in Doha yesterday. They exchanged views on the situation in Syria in addition to matters of common concern.

Minister meets Indonesian envoy Syrian situation reviewed

Call to set up more farm products yards

More yards for the sale of Qatari agriculture products should be

introduced throughout the country, it was suggested yes-terday at the biweekly session of the Central Municipal Coun-cil (CMC).

While praising the extensive eff orts of the Department of Agriculture Aff airs at the Min-istry of Municipality and Envi-ronment (MME) in boosting the marketing of local agriculture products, the council saw the need for more of such yards.

Such yards should be well dis-tributed geographically taking into consideration the density of population to provide residents easy and hassle-free access to meet the daily needs of fresh products.

In particular, the CMC asked the department to study the possibility of introducing such yards at Al Rayyan, Muaither, Al Sayliyah, and outskirts of the country. Offi cials at the depart-ment had told the council ear-lier that these yards are aimed at both encouraging Qatari ag-riculture producers by market-ing their products and helping consumers get fresh products at reasonable prices. There are also plans to establish a sophisticated yard at the Doha Central Mar-ket for the purpose, in addition to studies for similar projects at

Madinat Al Shamal.The CMC also reiterated its

recommendations to the MME to expedite the process of develop-ing the Industrial Area at Umm Al Zubarah and take steps to in-crease the number of labourers’ accommodation units, provid-ing the area with the necessary services and infrastructure to ease the demand on labourers’ accommodations inside Doha.

The council was informed by

the Qatar Fuel Company (Wo-qod) that it is working hard to replace all metal LPG cylinders with the composite Shafaf cylin-der by mid-2017.

The council received a re-sponse from the Public Works Authority (Ashghal), regarding the maintenance and replace-ment of the damaged and unsafe covers of sewage holes. Ashghal said that work is well underway, according to a schedule to re-

place or repair the covers.The CMC also received a re-

sponse from the Ministry of Transport and Communications regarding pedestrian crossings and fl yovers, stressing that a comprehensive study on the is-sue is being conducted to know the real needs across various ar-eas of the country in this regard and is set to integrate it within the roads networks in the coun-try.

By Ayman AdlyStaff Reporter

Inoperative shops at

Al Furjan Markets

reallocated

Traffi c dept urged

to crack down on

‘noisy’ vehicles

The shops that remained inoperative at the Neigh-bourhood (Al Furjan)

Markets have been reallocated to other new contractors.

Issa al-Kuwari, director of support operations at Qatar Development Bank (QDB), told the Central Municipal Council (CMC) yesterday that the second phase of Al Furjan markets is in the stage of design and obtain-ing necessary approvals from the entities concerned.

“QDB received 30 plots of land from the Ministry of Municipal-ity and Environment (MME) at various areas in the country for the project,” he explained.

The offi cial pointed out that QDB is planning to open a to-tal of 200 markets of Al Furjan, while stressing that the bank un-

dertakes detailed studies about the real needs of the potential areas to avoid any surplus in the number of shops. Besides, an agreement has been maintained with all local banks to provide such markets with ATM ma-chines.

When the fi rst phase of the project was accomplished by the end of 2014, a total of 44 markets were built at various areas, in-cluding 645 diff erent shops.

The second phase is set to target Al Rayyan, Al Daayan, Al Khor and Al Zakhira and Al Shahaniya. It will take into con-sideration all the suggestions and shortcomings observed in the fi rst phase though a full as-sessment of the project will take much longer time up to fi ve years of operations.

The council hosted a number of QDB offi cials at its bi-weekly regular session yesterday to dis-cuss the issue.

The Traffi c Department should intensify patrols, especially late at night, to

apprehend those who create dis-turbances at residential neigh-bourhoods with ‘noisy’ bikes and cars, the Central Municipal Council (CMC) urged yesterday.

Sophisticated technology should be used to detect whether the vehicles exceed the accept-able noise levels and thereby spot the violators, it was recom-mended.

At its regular biweekly ses-sion, the council also reviewed a number of other recommenda-tions aimed at curbing the phe-

nomenon of noisy vehicles used by some young people for ‘show rides.’

The issue was earlier raised by CMC member Sheikha al-Jufairi, who discussed the issue with some senior traffi c offi -cials alongside some other CMC members.

The council heard though the phenomenon was recently curbed at most areas, ‘noisy’ motorbikes still persist, espe-cially at some key tourist areas in the country. Some members pointed out that the noise pro-duced by motorbikes is more than that of cars.

By Ayman AdlyStaff Reporter

Three-week partial closure of street in Gharrafa area from tomorrow

A temporary three-week closure starting from tomorrow (Thursday)

will be in place in a stretch of Al Hazm Street that con-nects to the southbound traffic lanes on Al Gharrafa Street.

During the period, road users

travelling south on the Al Ghar-rafa Street can access the local area by taking an earlier exit onto Al Anhar Street (as shown on the attached map).

The closure is needed to alter the existing junction between Al Gharrafa Street and Al Hazm Street to a traffi c signalised in-

tersection, according to Ashghal communique.

Ashghal has requested the road users to abide by the speed limits, which will remain at 80 kph along Al Gharrafa Street and follow the road signs to ensure their safety.

CMC session in progress. PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil

HE the Attorney General Dr Ali bin Fetais al-Marri met Tunisia’s Minister of State Property and Land Aff airs Hatem el-Euchi, and his accompanying delegation, yesterday. They exchanged views on issues of common concern and discussed co-operation in areas of recovery of stolen funds and as well as anti-corruption eff orts.

Al-Marri meets Tunisian minister

MEC to supply

live sheep at

subsidised rate

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC) has launched its initiative for

supplying live sheep at subsi-dised prices during the upcom-ing holy month of Ramadan.

The initiative starts from June 2 until the end of the holy month. MEC has agreed with Widam Foods Company to im-port around 30,000 heads of live Arab origin sheep, which is highly demanded by Qataris, to be sold at subsidised prices.

Each Qatari is entitled to two sheep, which are sold directly at the slaughter house at the Doha Central Market and the other slaughter houses of Widam in other areas. The buyer should produce his ID.

The price of a Syrian sheep of 40kg and above is set at QR950, and the Jordanian sheep of 35kg and above is set at QR850. MEC is supplying 20,000 Syrian and 10,000 Jordanian sheep.

The extra costs and charges include QR16 for slaughtering and packing a sheep, and QR34 for the porter. Widam will sup-ply air-conditioned tents for customers to wait, with special places for the elderly and wom-en.

The initiative is meant to maintain balanced prices at the local market and ease the costs for the locals during the season.

Another spell

of strong winds

forecast

With another spell of strong winds expected in Qatar from today,

the weather offi ce has issued fresh warnings for both onshore and off shore areas.

In a post on its social media channels, the Qatar Met depart-ment said strong northwesterly winds were expected to aff ect Qatar today and this was likely to result in blowing dust and a drop in visibility. Off shore areas, too, were likely to see windy condi-tions and high seas today.

The wind speed may go up to 35 knots at times in both inshore and off shore areas, with the vis-ibility dropping to 2km or less in some places.

The Met department has ad-vised residents to remain cau-tious and avoid sea activities in view of the expected condi-tions.

The forecast for inshore areas today says it will be hot during the day with blowing dust at times. Dusty conditions are also expected in off shore areas, and the sea level may rise to 13ft in some places at times.

Hot weather was experienced across the country yesterday with the mercury level reaching 45C in Abu Hamour, Al Batna and Al Khor, the Met department said in a tweet.

Today, the maximum tem-perature is expected to be 39C in Doha, 38C in Messaied, Wakrah and Al Khor, 36C in Abu Samra, 35C in Dukhan and 32C in Ru-wais.

4 Gulf TimesWednesday, May 25, 2016

QATAR

Solar education initiative wins CSR Business AwardQatar Solar Technologies

(QSTec) has been awarded the Best CSR Integrated

Business Award for its Shams Gen-eration solar education initiative at the Ta’atheer Awards in Dubai.

Companies from across the re-gion competed for the annual awards, which honoured their con-tributions to the development of their respective societies.

To receive the awards, senior leaders of the shortlisted organisa-tions were invited to a presentation ceremony during the 13th Mena Social Impact and CSR Forum in Dubai.

Shams Generation is an ongo-ing interactive learning programme that combines science, technology, engineering, art and mathemat-ics and provides students with a hands-on approach to learning us-ing solar energy. In Arabic, Shams means sun and the programme em-phasises the importance of solar energy and sustainability.

This year, the programme will reach more than 7,000 students across schools and universities in Qatar. It is currently gearing up to begin its third campaign to educate the young generation on the sus-tainable technologies of the future, according to a statement.

Dr Khalid K al-Hajri, chair-man and CEO of QSTec, said upon receiving the award: “We are ex-tremely proud of QSTec’s Shams Generation initiative and I would

like to thank all the teachers and students who have worked with us and made this solar learning pro-gramme such a resounding suc-cess.”

The seven other companies that competed for the Best CSR Inte-grated Business award were AES Jordan, Sedco Holding Group,

Clyde & Co, Al Tamimi & Com-pany, Aster DM Healthcare, Micro-soft Gulf and Farabi Petrochemi-cals Company.

In addition to the Best CSR In-tegrated Business Award, QSTec’s Shams Generation was also nomi-nated in two other Ta’atheer Award categories for Best CSR Impact Ini-

tiative and Best Community Devel-opment Initiative.

QSTec is a joint venture with Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Develop-ment, SolarWorld AG and Qatar Development Bank. Education is a key mandate for the organisation, the statement adds.

Dr Khalid al-Hajri receiving the award.

GCC drug pricing panel meets in Doha

The 27th meeting of the GCC drug pricing com-mittee started in Doha on

Monday.The four-day meeting is be-

ing hosted by the Ministry

of Public Health (MPH).Addressing the opening ses-

sion, Dr Aisha Ibrahim al-An-sari, director of the Pharmacy and Drug Control Department, MPH, said that the committee

has considerably succeeded in unifying medicine prices in GCC countries.

This would benefi t consumers who would get drugs at reason-able and competitive prices.

The meeting will discuss various related issues includ-ing a mechanism to fi x prices for drugs that contain vitamins and minerals and other varieties of medicines. The off icials attending the meeting of the GCC drug pricing committee.

Latin honours forsix NU-Q studentsNorthwestern Uni-

versity in Qatar (NU-Q) has an-

nounced that six graduat-ing students from the Class of 2016 have received Latin Honours, which are award-ed to students who have achieved the highest aca-demic honours.

The class valedictorian and highest-ranked student, Layan Amin Abdul Shkoor, was accorded summa cum laude. Receiving magna cum laude recognition were Syed Owais Ali and Tamador

Mohamed al-Sulaiti. Three graduates, Alya Hilal Ahmed al-Harthy, James Thomas Copplestone Farmer and Malak Ahmed Monir were designated as cum laude.

“Each of these students compiled an enviable record of academic achievement in their designated major and in humanities and social sci-ence courses across the cur-riculum. They have achieved excellence in formal course work and by completing research projects and dem-onstrating profi ciency in

journalistic writing, strate-gic communication, and/or fi lm studies,” said Everette E Dennis, dean and CEO at NU-Q.

Northwestern graduated its largest class on May 1 with 41 students repre-senting 14 countries. In addition to Latin Honours, 10 students in the Class of 2016 achieved academic honours by being named to the Dean’s List between five and seven times during their time at NU-Q.

The honoured students

and their classmates heard famed journalist Lyse Doucet, chief international correspondent at the BBC, speak to the Class of 2016 where she told them to “dream big” and to tell their story well.

With the 2016 class, NU-Q has graduated 181 students since its fi rst cere-mony in 2012. NU-Q alum-ni, new and old, have notably achieved successes region-ally and internationally in both media and communi-cations - and in academia.

QATAR5Gulf Times


Valedictorian Layan Amin Abdul Shkoor with NUQ off icials

QATAR


A delegation from the As-pire Zone Foundation (AZF) has visited the Sha-

fallah Centre for Persons with Disabilities, a member of the Qa-tar Foundation for Social Work, as part of a series of scheduled visits to social institutions before and during the holy month of Ra-madan.

With the spirit of compassion being central to Ramadan, the AZF organised the visit to dem-onstrate its commitment towards the local community by reach-ing out to social institutions to spread joy amongst children, families and the elderly.

The Shafallah Centre provides specialised services in accord-ance with global best practices to help individuals with disabilities achieve maximum independ-ence.

The AZF team’s visit is also aimed at helping to spread awareness of people living with disabilities.

The AZF team’s visit was ar-ranged before the start of Ram-adan as the Shafallah Centre’s academic year draws to a close soon.

Commenting on the visit, Sal-man al-Ali, a representative from the Public Relations and Com-munications Unit at Shafallah, said the visit by the representa-tives of the AZF, one of the lead-ing sports institutions in Qatar and the region, underscores the meaningful social role that the AZF plays in the local community and demonstrates their ongoing commitment to local initiatives.

“It goes to show why the peo-ple of Qatar are known for their compassion and care. We have seen our students interacting joyfully with the visitors and I am looking forward to more vis-its from the AZF in the future,” he said.

The offi cials of the Shafallah Centre took the visitors on a tour of several departments and units

that off er behaviour analysis services, evaluation and diagno-sis, social services, and counsel-ling to students and their parents in order to strengthen the learn-ing process for students as well as assist them and their families with psychosocial and social ad-justment.

Following the tour, the AZF delegates visited the classrooms where they interacted with the

supervisors and the children, with the latter receiving sports-themed tokens and gifts.

At the end of the visit, the AZF team reassured the Shafal-lah Centre that the Foundation’s doors are open to their students, who are always welcome to prac-tice physical activity and sports at its facilities.

The AZF’s social responsibil-ity policy focuses on promoting

a culture of sports amongst all members of the local community, and encouraging them to adopt healthy and active lifestyles.

The AZF continually engages with members of the local com-munity and makes available to them all of its services as part of its eff orts to contribute to the lo-cal society as part of the realisa-tion of the Qatar National Vision 2030.

AZF delegationvisits Shafallah

An AZF representative presenting gifts to children at Shafallah.

Shafallah’s al-Ali presenting a memento to an AZF off icial.

The College of the North Atlan-tic-Qatar (CNA-Q) and Qatar Petroleum (QP) have renewed

a research partnership to help identify which materials used in the industry and energy sector are most resistant to chloride stress corrosion cracking.

The Corrosion Atlas II Research Project is the fi rst of its kind in the Gulf region.

The project, which has been under

way for the past three years, is extend-ed to 2018.

The current international stand-ard for choosing materials for indus-trial equipment is based on research completed in the North Sea; however many diff erent factors, such as the temperature and humidity, eff ect ma-terials used in the Gulf Region.

“Qatar’s industry needs to know more about the eff ects that the ex-

treme Gulf climate has on material integrity. This important research will help QP mitigate production loss, safety concerns and the negative im-pacts on the environment,” said CNA-Q lead corrosion engineer and engi-neering technology instructor Hanan Farhat.

“As the State’s premier technical college, we are proud to spearhead this project with our partner, QP, and al-

low 27 of our students to assist in this ground-breaking applied research to gain fi eld experience’” he added.

The research involves placing 700 samples of seven alloys commonly used in Qatar’s industry, at fi ve sites in Qatar, including two off -shore.

The fi ndings will help QP select specifi c materials that are most re-sistant to chloride stress corrosion cracking.

CNA-Q and QP extend research project to 2018

CNA-Q and Qatar Petroleum off icials have agreed to extend the research project to help identify which materials used in the energy sector are most resistant to chloride stress corrosion cracking.

QATAR7Gulf Times


Winners of QU thesis and poster contests honouredQatar University (QU) has

honoured the winners of the three-minute thesis

and best poster competitions and research excellence awards during the Annual Research Forum recently.

In the thesis competition, Sadaf Riaz and Ayat Hammad from the College of Pharmacy won the fi rst and second places, respectively, while comput-

ing student Farah al-Qawasama bagged the third place.

The research excellence award was presented to College of En-gineering associate dean for research and graduate studies Prof Abdel Magid Hamouda. Civil engineering student Kha-led Hassan Rabie received the outstanding thesis award of QR10,000.

Materials science and engi-

neering student Anchu Ashok received the graduate research award, which is accompanied by funding to present her re-search poster at the 2016 In-ternational Conference on Advanced Energy Materials in London this fall. The gradu-ate assistant award of QR5,000 was presented to biological and environmental studies student Balsam Rizeq.

A total of 160 posters were submitted for the poster compe-tition in three categories - un-dergraduate, graduate, postdoc students, and faculty under the headings Science and Engineer-ing, Medical and Health Scienc-es, and Humanities and Social Sciences.

Vice president for research and graduate studies Prof Mar-iam al-Maadeed presented the

QU president with forum guests and participants.

best poster winners with certifi -cates in the presence of an audi-ence comprising QU president Dr Hassan Rashid al-Derham, vice presidents, deans, industry representatives, and guests from

institutions and universities in Qatar and the GCC region.

Qatar National Research Fund executive director Dr Abdul Sat-tar al-Taie, Sultan Qaboos Uni-versity deputy vice-chancellor

of postgraduate studies and re-search Dr Rahma al-Mahrooqi and Kuwait University vice president for research Dr Taher Ahmed al-Sahaf were among those present.

Library group calls for regional collaborationThe 2016 Arab Peninsula

Regional Group Meeting, hosted by Qatar National

Library (QNL) and the World Digital Library (WDL), has called for collaboration between regional practitioners while pro-moting networking in the in-formation services sector of the Mena region.

The two-day event was at-tended by library directors and executive leadership of current and prospective members of the WDL Arab Peninsula Regional Group.

The workshop also high-lighted the strategic goals for the future of the group and the importance of the Arab region’s contribution to the WDL.

Saadi al-Said, director, ad-

ministration and planning, QNL, said: “By hosting this an-nual workshop, we hope to fur-ther expand our support to the WDL initiative. WDL is an intel-lectual platform where members of the region can come together and discuss ways of managing content contribution and how to increase the availability of the digital resources on Arabic culture and Islamic history.”

Emphasising the importance of this annual meeting, Dr John Van Oudenaren, director, WDL, said: “The workshop has been a great opportunity for the World Digital Library and Qatar Na-tional Library to explore ways in which we can develop our part-nership while focusing on eff ec-tive ways to collectively build on

WDL’s presence in the Mena re-gion, especially now that QNL is expanding its digital outreach.”

QNL helps realise the WDL objectives to promote interna-tional and intercultural under-standing and expand the vari-ety of cultural content on the Internet by supporting the re-gional group’s meeting. This is done through the digitisation of thousands of pages from QNL’s heritage collection, making it accessible on the WDL website.

WDL is an initiative founded by the Library of Congress, with the support of the United Na-tions Educational, Scientifi c and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) and the International Federa-tion of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).Participants at the Arab Peninsula Regional Group meeting.

QATAR


Record entries for HMC’s poster competition

Hamad Medical Corpora-tion’s (HMC) quality im-provement conference for

healthcare professionals - the Middle East Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare, had re-ceived record submissions of qual-ity improvement posters for its competition.

The increasingly popular com-petition had nearly 400 submis-sions of posters outlining quality improvement projects from Qatar and the region. About 261 posters were assessed by an international panel of judges. The competition also invited conference delegates to

submit their own votes for the post-er they rated most highly, with the public choice award eliciting over 5,000 votes in one day.

“It is wonderful to see over 3,700 people, mainly doctors, nurses and allied health professionals, coming together at the Middle East Forum to celebrate best practice, share ideas and learn from each other,” said Dr Abdullatif al-Khal, deputy chief medical offi cer and co-chair, Middle East Forum.

Winners and runners-up were awarded certifi cates in a ceremony on the fi nal day of the conference. Improvement initiatives were peer-

reviewed by over 30 judges who were looking for innovative and practical initiatives.

“This quality improvement post-er competition represents a perfect opportunity for healthcare profes-sionals to showcase their superb eff orts and achievement. There was an amazing energy and excitement among the nearly 1,000 poster au-thors from around the world,” Dr al-Khal added.

In the Transforming Clinical Sys-tems of Care, Ambulatory Health-care Services category of posters, SEHA, United Arab Emirates, King Abdulaziz Hospital, Ministry of Na-

tional Guard Health Aff airs, Al Ahsa, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were joint winners.

Women’s Hospital poster won both in the Patient Engagement and Leadership for Improvement categories.

Enaya Specialised Care Centre won the Transforming Clinical In-terventions category while Hamad General Hospital won in the Science of Improvement category.

Posters from Rumailah Hospital, Hamad General Hospital, Women’s Hospital, Al Wakra Hospital and Enaya Specialised Care Centre were the People’s Choice Winners.

Katara launches book on traditional shipsKatara-the Cultural Village has

launched a new book, Qatar Traditional Ships, which has

been compiled by its Studies and Research Committee team.

The launch took place at a press conference held in the presence of Dr Nadia al-Madahka, director of the research department.

Dr al-Madahka said: “It’s my pleas-ure to welcome you as we mark the launch of another Katara milestone publication, titled Qatar Traditional Ships. The book, a documentation of words, images and paintings, captures all recorded literature related to old Arabian ships, their tradition, manu-facture, design, types, names, famous owners and captains, literature, poetry and paintings, which tackled the issue and themes of dhows.

“This outstanding book, through information and photographs, also depicts the unique relation-ship between Qataris and sail-ing ships, a major tool used for

Dr Nadia al-Madahka at the book launch.

Qatar Airways to begin fl ights to Chiang Mai from Dec 16Qatar Airways has

announced that it will expand its

network by fl ying to Chi-ang Mai, Thailand, from December 16.

The Doha-based car-rier will operate services to Chiang Mai fi ve times a week via Yangon, the former capital of Myan-mar, with an A330-200.

The largest and most culturally signifi cant city in northern Thailand, Chiang Mai will be the fourth city in the Asian country to be served by Qatar Airways, which currently fl ies to Bangkok and Phuket and will com-mence fl ights to Krabi on December 6.

With the addition of Krabi and Chiang Mai to its network, Qatar Airways will increase its fl ights to Thailand from 39 to 48 per

week by the end of 2016, the airline has said in a statement.

Marwan Koleilat, Qa-tar Airways senior vice-president (East Asia and South West Pacifi c), said: “As we are constantly ex-panding our network in Southeast Asia, the popu-lar tourist destination of Thailand is an obvious target for growth. We have seen increased travel de-mand for our services to Thailand and now, with the introduction of our award-winning product to popular secondary cit-ies such as Chiang Mai and Krabi, we provide overseas visitors and tour opera-tors with greater fl exibil-ity and ease of travel when designing their Thailand holiday itineraries.”

The fl ight schedule is as follows: QR918 depart-

ing Doha at 2.30am and arriving in Chiang Mai at 2.55pm, and QR919 de-parting Chiang Mai at 4.45pm and arriving in Doha at 10.15pm.

The launch of fl ights to Chiang Mai comes at a time when Qatar Airways is “rapidly expanding its network and will inaugu-rate 14 new destinations on its route map through-out 2016 and into early 2017”, the statement notes.

New destination launches include Marra-kech (July 1), Pisa (August 2), Windhoek (Septem-ber 28), Helsinki (October 10) Sarajevo (November 2), Seychelles (December 12), Auckland (February 6, 2017), Skopje (2017), Libreville (2017), Douala (2017), Lusaka (summer 2017) and Nice (summer 2017).

Chiang Mai will be the fourth city in Thailand on Qatar Airways’ global network.

Domasco delivers a fl eet of Volvo tractors to Tokyo Freight

Doha Marketing Services Compa-ny (Domasco) has

delivered a large number of Volvo FM 400 4X2 tractor heads to freight forwarding and shipping company Tokyo Freight Services.

“Volvo Trucks is wit-nessing solid growth while retaining a lead-ing position in the Qatari market. Safeguarding the investment of our clients with superior equipment and after-sales support is our prime goal,” said Faisal Sharif, managing director of Domasco.

Muthanikatt Abdulla, managing director at Tokyo Freight Services, said: “It was quite an ag-gressive decision for us to buy 58 trucks with trail-ers during the current global recession. We’ve chosen the Volvo FM400 tractor head due to its high quality and, when it’s coupled with value-added services provided by Domasco, we expect an increase in our fl eet uptime.”

Mohamed Majeed, sales and marketing manager (commercial vehicles) at Domasco, added: “Volvo trucks are brawny steel titans that can take on any ex-treme road condition or climate variances in Qa-tar. Volvo FM 400 4X2 tractor heads guarantee maximum productivity in extreme surface con-ditions by transporting large loads quickly and effi ciently.”

Domasco and Tokyo Freight Services off icials mark the occasion.

fi shing as well as for coastal trade”. Dr al-Madahka commented on

Katara’s role, saying: “Once again, we at Katara are pleased to stress that

the publication of this important new documentary book is in line with our mission to revive Qatar’s marine heritage, boost national identity in

our community and document the relationship between our new generations and their past, tradi-tions and history.”

She extended gratitude to re-nowned Qatari researcher Ali bin Shabeeb al-Mana’ie, Katara’s Studies and Research Commit-tee and all those who contribut-ed to the publication of the book.

Katara has published a number of documentary books in the past, all focusing on Qatar’s heritage. These include Diving for Pearls, Castles and Forts, The Good Say About the Great Founder, The Traditional Dance (Al-A’rdha) of Qataris, The Carrier-Pigeon, Qatar in Qatari Journalism, The Book of Classical Poets in Qatar and others.

Arab dhows are an integral part of the culture and heritage of Qatar, blending the past with the modern and telling the stories of Qatari

ancestors to children and youth.

QATAR/REGION9Gulf Times


Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, stands in front of the world’s first functional 3D printed off ices during the off icial opening in Dubai on Monday.

Universitybomb kills2 in SanaaAFP/QNASanaa/Kuwait

A bomb hit a university cam-pus in the rebel-held Yem-eni capital Sanaa yester-

day killing two people at an event commemorating the country’s 1990 unifi cation, a security offi -cial said.

Several people were also seri-ously wounded, the offi cial said, adding that death toll was likely to rise.

The event was organised by the Houthi Shia rebels who have con-trolled the capital since Septem-ber 2014 despite a 14-month-old Saudi-led military intervention in support of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The Houthis were commemo-rating the May 22, 1990 unifi ca-tion of Yemen after centuries of separation between the north and the south, where British colo-nial rule was followed by a Soviet-

backed communist regime.There was no immediate claim

for yesterday’s bombing but both Al Qaeda and its militant rival the Islamic State group have carried out past bombings against the Houthis.

Meanwhile, the Special En-voy of the UN Secretary General for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed has called on all the Yeme-ni parties to make progress, in or-der to alleviate the burden placed on the Yemeni people.

“Peace talks are always compli-cated and require time, however I urge the Yemeni parties to exert all possible eff ort to reach a sustain-able peace agreement in the near future,” he said in a press state-ment late Monday, reported by Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).

“Any delay, wastes time and causes the tragic loss of more in-nocent lives.

The situation in Yemen requires urgent attention and any delay only serves the interests of those

who do not believe in peace,” he stressed.

Yemeni negotiators resumed meetings in Kuwait Monday to reach a compromise deal to end Yemeni people suff ering, in a last-ditch attempt to save the UN-me-diated peace talks.

After fi ve days of suspension, the Yemeni negotiating teams held two sessions to discuss key issues such as the restoration of the state’s institutions, resump-tion of political dialogue and se-curity arrangements, mainly the withdrawal of armed forces and handover of weapons.

Cheikh Ahmed pointed out that the Government of Yemen (GoY) delegation together with the del-egations of the General People’s Congress (GPC) and Ansarallah movement met in a plenary ses-sion. He has also convened sepa-rate bilateral meetings with the GoY delegation, as well as with the GPC and Ansarallah delega-tion, KUNA reported.

FM calls for joint action to resolve global crises

Tehran sends new team to Saudi for Haj talks

From Page 1“We pledge to contribute to human-

itarian and development goals with an amount of $10bn over the next 10 years,” he said.

He pointed to the existence of more than 60mn people, including refu-gees and displaced people worldwide, “which makes it imperative for every-one to use all capacities to cope with this humanitarian disaster and to put an end to their suff ering”.

Sheikh Mohamed noted that eve-ryone agreed that the focus on educa-tion was vitally important in order to protect children and prevent the loss of generations. “Neglecting education means that a whole generation would become more vulnerable to human traffi cking or falling prey to terrorism”.

The minister said Qatar decided to allocate almost half of its humanitarian assistance to the education sector as it

was aware of consequences of neglect-ing it as a key element to the spread of extremism, violence and loss of hope.

An Iranian delegation was travelling to Saudi Arabia yesterday for talks on the annual Haj pilgrimage despite a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, the off icial IRNA news agency reported.“A delegation of six people will leave this afternoon for Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the Saudi Minister of Haj for negotiations,” it quoted Said Ohadi, head of Iran’s Haj Organisation, as saying.“The talks will be held on Wednesday in Jeddah.”On May 12, Culture Minister Ali Jannati, who oversees the Haj Organisation, said “arrangements have not been put together” for Iranians to make this year’s pilgrimage to Makkah at the end of the summer.Saudi Arabia has denied Tehran’s accusation that it was blocking Iranian pilgrims.The two countries held an unsuccessful first round of

talks last month in Saudi Arabia on organising this year’s pilgrimage for Iranians.It was the first dialogue between the two countries since diplomatic relations were severed in January.Riyadh cut ties with Tehran after demonstrators burned its embassy and a consulate there following the Saudi execution of a prominent Shia cleric.Tehran says Riyadh insists that visas for Iranians be issued in a third country and does not allow pilgrims to be flown in aboard Iranian aircraft, which Iran has rejected.Iran and Saudi Arabia are at odds over a raft of regional issues, notably the conflicts in Syria and Yemen in which they support opposing sides.On Friday, a senior Saudi religious leader warned against those who would “wreak havoc” under the guise of pilgrimage.

Dubai opens the world’s fi rstfunctioning 3D-printed offi ceReutersDubai

Dubai has opened what it said was the world’s fi rst functioning 3D-printed

offi ce building, part of a drive by the Gulf’s main tourism and

business hub to develop tech-nology that cuts costs and saves time.

The printers – used industri-ally and also on a smaller scale to make digitally designed, three-dimensional objects from plas-tic – have not been used much for building.

This one used a special mix-ture of cement, a Dubai govern-ment statement said, and reli-ability tests were done in Britain and China.

The one-storey prototype building, with fl oorspace of about 2,700 sq ft (250 sq m), used a 20-ft by 120-ft by 40-ft

printer, the government said.“This is the fi rst 3D-printed

building in the world, and it’s not just a building, it has fully functional offi ces and staff ,” the UAE Minister of Cabinet Aff airs, Mohamed al-Gergawi, said.

“We believe this is just the be-ginning. The world will change,” he said.

The arc-shaped offi ce, built in 17 days and costing about $140,000, will be the tempo-rary headquarters of Dubai Fu-ture Foundation – the company behind the project – is in the centre of the city, near the Dubai International Financial Centre.

Gergawi said studies esti-mated the technique could cut building time by 50-70% and labour costs by 50-80%. Du-bai’s strategy was to have 25% of the buildings in the emirate printed by 2030, he said.

Dubai presents ambitious Expo 2020 plans

Dubai presented ambitious plans yesterday for its hosting of the 2020 World Expo, the first in the Middle East, with organisers hoping to attract 25mn visitors.Representatives of more than 100 countries gathered in the Emirati city for talks on the event, which Dubai won the right to host in 2013.“For the first time in the

history of World Expos, each country will have an individual pavilion, enhancing the ability of nations to showcase themselves,” organisers said in a statement.The Expo site will cover 438 hectares (1,080 acres) next to Dubai’s smaller second airport, Al-Maktoum International, which opened in 2013.Panel discussions and

workshops were held during the two-day planning meeting aimed at providing potential participants with details on the Expo 2020 plan and highlighting “business opportunities in the UAE for innovation, trade and investment, and knowledge transfer,” the statement said.The fair will take place from October 2020 to April 2021.

Saudi soldier dies in landmine blast on Yemen border

One Saudi soldier was killed and three were wounded when a landmine exploded on the border with Yemen where Riyadh has led a 14-month military intervention, the interior ministry said late Monday.The blast hit a border patrol in the

southwestern province of Jazan, the ministry said in a statement.The border area has been largely calm since March, when local tribes brokered a truce between Riyadh and Tehran-backed Houthi Shia rebels, who control most of it.

Saudi Arabia intervened in its impoverished southern neighbour in March last year in support of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who had fled into exile as the rebels threatened to overrun the country.

HE Sheikh Mohamed addressing the summit yesterday.

Hardliner elected as head of Iran’s top clerical bodyReutersDubai

A powerful anti-Western cleric was chosen yesterday as the head of Iran’s new Assembly

of Experts, in a sign that hardliners

are still in fi rm control of the body in charge of choosing the next supreme leader.

Ahmad Jannati, 90, is a an outspoken critic of President Hassan Rouhani and his attempts to end Iran’s global isola-tion by normalising ties with the West.

The 88-member assembly, consist-ing mostly of elderly clerics, is expect-ed to choose the successor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is 77 and rumoured to be in frail health.

The supreme leader has the fi nal say on all state matters, including foreign policy.


REGION/ARAB WORLD10

Gulf states and Canada to co-operate in anti-IS fi ghtAFPJeddah

Gulf Arab foreign minis-ters agreed with their Canadian counterpart

on Monday to strengthen “co-operation” in the fi ght against the Islamic State group and other militant organisations, they said in a statement.

Ministers from the six-na-

tion Gulf Co-operation Council agreed with Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion on the need to “dry up” sources of fi -nance for militants.

“The campaign against Daesh (an Arabic acronym for IS) and other terrorist organisations is not religious or linked to a reli-gion or sect but rather a war on terror,” they added in a state-ment.

They agreed to “strengthen

joint co-operation...to eradicate terrorism”, including by “dou-bling eff orts to stop the fl ow of foreign terrorist fi ghters” to Syria and Iraq, where the militant group has seized territory.

The joint Arabic-language statement was released following a “strategic dialogue” between Dion and GCC ministers in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah.

The statement, which came after deadly IS attacks on Mon-

day in Syria and Yemen, con-demned the “barbarian crimes committed by Daesh and other terrorist groups”.

It also comes after Dion on Saturday announced the start of a Canadian security pact with Tunisia, initially for three years, to support the North African country in its fi ght against “ter-rorism”.

The ministers also voiced sup-port for the Iraqi government’s

“eff orts to preserve security and stability”, urging the creation of a “comprehensive” government there to “strengthen the capa-bilities of Iraqi security forces in their war on Daesh”.

Iraq has been hit by a months-long political crisis that has para-lysed the legislature, as the coun-try’s forces battle to regain more ground from IS while also facing a major fi nancial crisis.

The ministers also reaffi rmed

their “rejection of Iran’s support for terrorism and its actions that undermine stability in the re-gion, including acts by Hezbol-lah”, the Lebanese militia whose supporters are fi ghting along-side the Tehran-backed regime in Syria and which is listed as a “terrorist group” by GCC coun-tries.

The ministers vowed to work together “to confront (Iran’s) in-terferences in the region”.

In addition to Saudi Arabia, the GCC includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Riyadh severed diplomatic relations with Tehran in Janu-ary after Iranian demonstrators burned Saudi Arabia’s embassy and a consulate following the Saudi execution of a prominent Shia cleric. Several other GCC members followed suit in cutting ties.

PalestinianPM dismissesNetanyahu’s talks proposalAFPRamallah

Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah yester-day dismissed an Israeli

proposal for direct negotiations instead of a French multilateral peace initiative, calling it an at-tempt to “buy time”.

Hamdallah made the com-ments as he met French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who held talks in Israel and the Palestin-ian territories this week to push Paris’s peace initiative.

“Time is short,” Hamdallah said. “(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu is trying to buy time... but this time he will not escape the international com-munity.”

Referring to the 1990s Oslo ac-cords and their aftermath, he said “there have been negotiations for 22 years and they’ve led nowhere.”

Netanyahu has rejected the plan and called for direct negotia-tions.

Valls told Netanyahu when he met him on Monday that he would discuss his proposal with French President Francois Hollande, but he has insisted that Paris plans to stick with its approach.

The French initiative involves holding a meeting of foreign min-isters from a range of countries, including US Secretary of State

John Kerry, on June 3, but with-out the Israelis and Palestinians present.

An international conference would then be held in the autumn, with the Israelis and Palestinians in attendance.

The goal is to eventually re-launch negotiations that would lead to a Palestinian state.

Negotiations between the Is-raelis and Palestinians have been at a standstill since a US-led ini-tiative collapsed in April 2014.

Palestinian President Mah-moud Abbas has welcomed the French plan, but Netanyahu has repeatedly expressed his opposi-tion while saying he is willing to meet Abbas at any time.

On Monday, he told Valls that France should host a summit be-tween the pair in Paris.

Palestinian leaders say years of negotiations with Israel have not ended its occupation, and they have pursued a strategy of diplo-macy at international bodies.

Valls departed yesterday with little having changed - Palestin-ian support and Israeli opposi-tion were known before his visit - though Netanyahu could face pressure to soften his stance if the initiative gains momentum.

“The simple fact that the June 3 meeting will occur creates hope,” Valls said, adding that the two-state solution must be kept alive despite “immense diffi culty.”

Valls has sought to address Is-raeli concerns over the French initiative, saying it would not try to impose a solution and that ne-gotiations between the two sides would ultimately resolve the con-fl ict.

He has called himself a “friend of Israel” during his trip, and said Israeli security must be guaran-teed.

But he has also criticised Israeli settlement building in the occu-pied West Bank, considered to be a major stumbling block to peace.

Jewish settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law and are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.

Some 600,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem in constant ten-sion with 2.8mn Palestinians.

More than 60% of the West Bank is under complete Israeli control.

Those arguing for a new peace eff ort say the lack of any initiative leaves a vacuum that can be fi lled by hardliners on either side.

There has also been talk of the potential for a Cairo-led plan that could result in a summit between Abbas and Netanyahu, with ties between Israel and Egypt having improved in recent months.

An upsurge in violence since October has killed 205 Palestin-ians and 28 Israelis.

AFPAbu Dhabi

The Middle East’s poetry equivalent of “Pop Idol” is helping to keep alive an

age-old tradition using bedouin dialect, which is barely under-stood outside the Arabian Gulf.

Apart from the glory, a Ku-waiti student took home 5mn dirhams ($1.36mn), the top prize in a television show followed by millions of poetry lovers across the region.

With his Nabati poem, Rajih al-Hamidani was crowned 2016 champion of Million’s Poet, staged in Abu Dhabi for a sev-enth year.

“This is the biggest achieve-ment of my life,” said Hamidani after winning the May 17 fi nal.

Fans who had travelled from Kuwait chanted and danced around him as he carried the winner’s red banner.

Hamidani, who studies law in Cairo, keeps the fl ag for a year, after which he can defend the title or pass it on.

He spoke to AFP of his pas-sion for poetry.

“Poetry is a gift I received from God. I did not inherit it from my family. I work on it with passion and I give it all that I can,” he said.

The winning poem describing his passion for writing put him ahead of fi ve other fi nalists.

Audiences cheered after eve-ry quartet of his Nabati poetry, which uses bedouin dialect and is favoured in the Gulf but often incomprehensible for other Ar-abs.

Some Arab royals are known for their passion for Nabati po-etry, including Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who has a dedicated page on his website.

The competition takes its cue from the pre-Islamic Okaz

poetry festival near Makkah, where poets from across the peninsula recited their fi nest works of classical verse.

The winning poems used to be penned in gold and pinned to the walls of the Ka’aba.

Many of those poems are still taught in schools across the Arab world.

“I hope that we will surpass Okaz” in importance, said Issa al-Mazreoui, a member of the organising committee. “We have created a new generation of poets.”

The idea is said to have origi-nated from Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and the prizes are funded by the emirate’s cul-tural authority.

Abu Dhabi has been spend-ing lavishly on cultural projects, most notably the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is also being built.

The Million’s Poet is aired live on Abu Dhabi and Baynouna satellite channels.

Scores of hopefuls apply.Over 15 weeks, 48 fi nalists

from nine countries competed in front of a jury of three while millions watched at home.

Eliminations were based on the votes of the jury and the tel-evision audience.

The six fi nalists included an Emirati woman.

Poems with political messag-es drew reactions from studio audiences, with cheers for poets who criticised Yemeni rebels or the Arab Spring revolts.

Hamidani won 72% of the votes, followed by compatriot Saad Battal and Mohamed al-Tamimi from Saudi Arabia.

All six fi nalists won hand-some prizes.

The runner-up took home 4mn dirhams ($1.09mn), the third placed won 3mn dirhams, and sixth got 600,000.

Keeping bedouin poetry alive

Kuwait’s Rajih al-Hamidani (centre) receives the “flag of poetry” after winning the final of the televised programme Million’s Poet on May 17, at Abu Dhabi’s Al-Raha Theatre. Apart from the glory, the Kuwaiti student took home 5mn dirhams ($1.36mn), the top prize in a television show followed by millions of poetry lovers across the region.

Man sentencedto death for 2004Yanbu attackReutersRiyadh

A man has been sen-tenced to death in Saudi Arabia for kill-

ing six Westerners and a Saudi soldier in an Al Qaeda attack in the city of Yanbu in 2004, local media reported yesterday.

The shooting at Swiss en-gineering fi rm ABB Lummus Global and a subsequent po-lice chase killed two Ameri-cans, two Britons, one Cana-dian, one Australian and one Saudi.

Three of the four attackers also died.

Reports in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat and other media did not name the man but said he had assisted in the assault in Yanbu, an oil and petrochemicals hub on the Red Sea.

At the time, the only sur-viving attacker was named as Saudi national Mustafa al-Ansari.

The other three were all members of the same family.

Reuters could not immedi-ately contact the kingdom’s Justice Ministry spokesman for comment on the case.

Al Qaeda carried out a campaign of shootings and bombings against Western and state targets in the king-dom from 2003-2006, killing hundreds of people.

Saudi Arabia subsequently stamped out the insurgency and has since sentenced hun-dreds of convicted militants to prison terms or death.

It executed dozens of them on January 2.

Since 2014, Al Qaeda’s ideological rival Islamic State has been staging attacks in the kingdom, killing dozens, re-sulting in hundreds of arrests.

Saudi executed for murderSaudi Arabia put to death a citizen convicted of murder yesterday.Imad al-Assimi was found guilty of shooting dead a compatriot in a dispute, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.Murder and drug traff icking

cases account for the majority of Saudi executions, although 47 people were put to death for terrorism on a single day in January.The interior ministry has said it is “determined to fight drugs of all kinds due to the serious damage they do to individuals and society”.

11Gulf TimesWednesday, May 25, 2016

ARAB WORLD

DNA samples taken as searchers hunt for Egypt planeAFPCairo

Egyptian forensics offi cials collected DNA from rela-tives of EgyptAir MS804

victims yesterday to help identi-fy body parts retrieved from the Mediterranean, as investigators hunt for clues into the mysteri-ous crash.

Investigators are still search-ing for the Airbus A320’s two

black boxes on the seabed as they seek answers as to why the air-craft came down early on Thurs-day, with 66 people on board.

French and Egyptian aviation offi cials have said it is too soon to determine what caused the disaster.

France’s aviation safety agen-cy has said the aircraft transmit-ted automated messages indi-cating smoke in the cabin and a fault in the Flight Control Unit before contact was lost.

Greece’s lead air accident in-vestigator, Athanasios Binis, said his country would send to Egypt within days all the available data from the fl ight, including voice recordings.

Finding the victims’ remains and the black boxes remain the priorities as families and friends hold funeral services in Cairo to mourn their loved ones, but without the closure of being able to bury their bodies.

“Body parts arrived at the

morgue yesterday and other body parts arrived the day be-fore yesterday,” EgyptAir Hold-ing Company chairman Safwat Musallam said.

“DNA samples have been col-lected from the victims’ fami-lies to help identify body parts,” the airline said separately in an emailed statement.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had said a submersible that can operate at 3,000m (9,800ft) be-low sea level was deployed from

the oil ministry on Sunday in the hunt for the black boxes.

Specialised French equipment will also be used in the search.

A French patrol boat arrived in the search area on Monday morning, where it will concen-trate mainly on the surface.

According to a French Navy spokesman, the priority is to fi nd as much debris and remains as possible.

“For the moment, the priority is searching for any trace of the

aircraft, for debris and victims,” the spokesman said.

The French boat also carries hy-drophones, specialised underwa-ter microphones that may be able to locate black boxes by listening to the “pings” they emit for a month or more after being activated.

“Weather conditions have been terrible for the past few days, but that is beginning to improve,” the French spokesman added.

A source in Paris close to the search said that once more spe-

cialised gear arrives at the area, “it will take several more days” before the black boxes can be lo-cated and raised to the surface.

A French maritime surveil-lance plane overfl ying the area has already located fl oating ob-jects, according to a French Navy spokesman.

However, experts have warned that specialised equipment could be useless if the black box-es have sunk to a depth of more than 2,000m (6,500ft).

135 are rescued by oiltanker off Libya coastAFPTripoli

Workers on a Lib-yan oil tanker helped to rescue

135 people from boats in the Mediterranean yester-day, an AFP journalist said, hours after coastguards detained 550 would-be mi-grants headed for Europe.

Coastguards were alert-ed to people aboard make-shift vessels around 17 nau-tical miles (30km) from the western city of Sabratha, the journalist said.

The migrants were trans-ported to a safe zone nearer to the capital Tripoli.

Libyan coastguards ear-lier yesterday that they had detained 550 people trying to reach Europe illegally by boat. It was the second time in three days they

have intercepted migrants in the same area.

“Coastguards in the west who were patrolling off the Zawiya refi nery yesterday intercepted four large in-fl atables carrying around 550 illegal migrants,” navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem said.

Those detained were from “several African countries” and includ-ed three children and 30 women, eight of whom are pregnant, he said.

“The migrants have been handed over to the relevant authorities to be taken to detention centres,” Qassem said.

On Sunday, Qassem said coastguards had intercept-ed seven vessels carrying around 850 migrants, again off Zawiya which is some 45km west of the capital Tripoli.

The chaos in the North African country since Muammar Gaddafi ’s over-throw in 2011 has been exploited by people traf-fi ckers, with thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe from Libya just 300km from Italy.

The onset of better weather conditions has raised fears of huge num-bers of people attempting the still perilous sea cross-ing.

On Monday, Italy’s coastguard said two Ital-ian naval vessels and two operated by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) rescued around 2,000 migrants from unseawor-thy boats in 15 separate operations.

An Irish navy ship res-cued hundreds more, as did a passing cargo ship, the Italian coastguard said.

Illegal African migrants arrive by boat at the Zawiyah port, a Libyan naval base some 45km west of Tripoli, after they were rescued off the western city of Sabratha yesterday as they were trying to reach Europe by boat.

Assaults in Syria, Iraqpiling pressure on ISAFPBeirut

Kurdish-Arab forces launched a major assault against the Islamic State group in Syria’s

Raqa province yesterday and Iraqi forces advanced on it in Fallujah, piling pressure on the militants in two strongholds.

The twin off ensives marked some of the most serious ground eff orts against IS since the group declared its self-styled “caliphate” strad-dling the Syrian-Iraqi border in 2014.

Territory under IS control has been steadily shrinking for months but it has carried out a wave of at-tacks including bombings in the Syrian regime’s coastal heartland on Monday that killed 177 people.

It was the “deadliest bomb at-tack” on any regime-held area in Syria’s fi ve-year war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

The Syrian Democratic Forces yesterday announced its largest of-fensive to date against IS territory north of the IS stronghold of Raqa city.

The off ensive was aimed at push-ing IS from the province’s north and securing other areas, the alliance said in statement on Twitter.

Baghdad-based US military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren confi rmed the assault, saying it was “putting pressure on Raqa”.

US air strikes would support thousands of SDF fi ghters, some of whom had been trained and equipped by American forces, he said.

If Raqa falls, “it’s the beginning of the end of their caliphate,” War-ren said.

SDF spokesman Talal Sello said an assault on Raqa city “is not in our plan now”.

A source within the Kurdish People’s Protection Units said US ground forces would take part in the attack, but Sello denied this.

Just before the SDF announce-ment, Russia said it would be ready to co-ordinate with both Washing-ton and the SDF in an off ensive for Raqa.

The US rejected a Russian pro-posal last week for joint air op-erations against militant groups in Syria.

The anti-IS coalition headed by Washington has set its sights on Raqa in Syria, as well as Fallujah - and eventually IS’s main bastion of Mosul - in Iraq.

“It’s clear that if the US wants to eliminate IS, it has to attack it on multiple fronts at the same time,” said Washington-based Syria ana-lyst Fabrice Balanche.

“Cutting the route between Raqa and Mosul isn’t diffi cult today.

It will put an end to the myth of a transnational IS,” he said.

Yesterday, Iraqi forces closed in on Fallujah after capturing the near-by town of Garma and cutting IS off from one of its last support areas.

“Federal forces advanced towards

the east of Fallujah early today from three directions,” said police Lieu-tenant General Raed Shakir Jawdat.

The off ensives came as Wash-ington and Moscow scrambled to salvage a shaky ceasefi re between the regime and non-militant rebels intended to pave the way for peace talks.

The US envoy for Syria has urged rebels to respect the February 27 ceasefi re after they gave its brokers - Washington and Moscow - until yesterday afternoon to stop an ad-vance on rebel strongholds outside Damascus.

“We recognise that the CoH (Cessation of Hostilities) is under severe stress, but believe that to abandon it now would be strategic error,” Michael Ratney tweeted.

Staunch regime ally Russia also called for a 72-hour truce in Eastern Ghouta and Daraya near Damascus from yesterday.

And the two areas were relatively calm, with clashes subsiding since dawn, said the Observatory.

Civilianstrapped inFallujah

AFPNear Fallujah

Iraqi forces cleared areas around Fallu-jah yesterday after

launching an assault to retake the city, tighten-ing their siege on Islamic State group fi ghters but also raising fears for civil-ians trapped inside.

With the militants surrounded and out-numbered, the recapture of their iconic bastion looked ultimately inevi-table, especially after IS suff ered a string of losses in recent months.

But illustrating that even a diminished IS is still dangerous, the group has struck back with a wave of bomb attacks, in-cluding a series of blasts that left more than 160 dead in Syrian regime coastal strongholds on Monday.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the start of the opera-tion to retake Fallujah on Monday and less than a day into the battle, Iraqi forces had secured the nearby town of Garma.

That cut off IS fi ght-ers in Fallujah from one of their last support ar-eas and paved the way for more advances towards the city, which lies only 50km west of Baghdad.

“Federal forces ad-vanced towards the east of Fallujah early today from three directions,” police Lieutenant General Raed Shakir Jawdat said.

The Hashed al-Shaabi umbrella paramilitary organisation, dominated by Tehran-backed Shia militias that are heav-ily involved in the opera-tion, said ground was also gained south of Fallujah.

With forces converg-ing on the city, concerns mounted that the tens of thousands of civilians be-lieved to still be inside had nowhere to go.

AFRICA


9 charged over Nairobi clashesReutersNairobi

A Kenyan court charged nine men yesterday for their role in a protest against an electoral

oversight body, a lawyer said, after the fourth fl are-up on the streets in a month left three people dead and up-set international donors.

One demonstrator in the western city of Kisumu died from an injury while fl eeing the scene of a protest, while another two died in violence in Siaya County related to the dem-onstrations, also in the west, police from those areas told Reuters. A gov-ernment offi cial earlier said only one person died.

Dozens have been arrested in pro-tests that began on April 25 and have been held on virtually every Monday since then.

“We are deeply concerned by the escalation of violence during the dem-onstrations in Kenyan cities,” ambas-sadors from the United States, Britain

and other Western nations said.In a statement, they called for an

investigation into the use of “exces-sive force” by the east African coun-try’s security services and urged pro-testers to act peacefully.

After last week’s demonstration, a senior police offi cer said there would be an investigation to see if there had been any violations in the conduct of the police.

The demonstrators want the In-dependent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to be scrapped, saying it is not impartial and cannot oversee fair presidential and parlia-mentary elections due in August 2017.

The IEBC, which oversaw a vote the opposition disputed in 2013, denies being biased.

The government says the opposi-tion is taking to the streets as it cannot win a vote.

The nine people charged yesterday were accused of unlawful assembly, court documents showed.

“My clients pleaded not guilty and were released on cash bail pending

hearing of the matter,” lawyer Harun Ndubi told Reuters.

Fifteen people faced similar charges last week. The protests have extended beyond Nairobi to cities such as Kis-umu, where there is strong support for opposition leader Raila Odinga.

He is expected to run again against President Uhuru Kenyatta, now serv-ing the fi rst of a maximum two terms.

Police fi red tear gas and water can-non at demonstrators in Nairobi on Monday.

A week earlier, offi cers had fought running battles in the street with pro-testers, beating some of them with ba-tons and kicking them.

Some demonstrators had thrown stones.

Western envoys have previously urged the government and citizens to prepare carefully for the elections in a nation where the 2007 vote was followed by ethnic blood-letting that killed 1,200 people.

The 2013 election result was unsuc-cessfully challenged in court by the opposition.

SA shanty-town demolition sparks riots, guards killedReutersJohannesburg

The demolition of shacks north of the South African capital Pre-toria triggered riots on Monday

evening and overnight in which two security guards were killed, police said yesterday.

Four people had been arrested and would be charged with public violence while a fi fth faced a charge of murder, po-

lice spokesman Tsekiso Mofokeng said.Poverty, a swelling population and

migration from the countryside is ag-gravating a shortage of urban housing in South Africa, leading to sprawling informal settlements springing up.

“We have intensifi ed our patrols in the area and the situation is under con-trol at the moment,” Mofokeng said.

He said the operation to demolish shacks in the Hammanskraal township, which had been ordered by the local authorities, had been suspended.

The latest fl are-up comes ahead of local government elections in August where the ruling African National Congress, which came to power in 1994 when white minority rule fell, is expected to face a tough test especially in urban centres where unemployment and poverty have led to mushrooming shanty-towns.

President Jacob Zuma is also beset with scandals and his opponents are seeking to capitalise on what they see as his economic and political missteps.

A boy plays with a bicycle in front of the remains of a bus that was burnt during the demolition of shacks north of Pretoria.

Liberia ruling party chief ’s offi ce searched

AFPMonrovia

Liberian investigators and police have searched the offi ces of rul-ing party chairman Varney Sher-

man following allegations that a British mining fi rm employed him to distribute bribes to government lawmakers.

Campaign group Global Witness has accused Unity Party chairman Sherman, often described as Liberia’s most well-connected lawyer, of or-chestrating parts of a $950,000 brib-ery campaign on behalf of Sable Min-ing Africa between 2010 and 2012.

“Offi cers of the LACC (Liberia anti-corruption commission) backed by the police, went to Varney Sherman house this morning, and to his offi ce, with a search warrant.

This process is ongoing,” Jonathan Koff a, head of a presidential task force investigating the claims, told jour-nalists on Monday night. They were unable to enter his home, which was blockaded by young party activists.

Sherman has denied the allega-

tions and has said he will refuse to co-operate with the task force set up by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has herself faced criticism for alleged nepotism and corruption.

“The members of the task force are all presidential appointees,” Varney said following the publication of the Global Witness report levelling the accusations.

The attorney has however agreed to work with a separate, independent body in the process of being appointed by Liberia’s House of Representatives.

Sherman has admitted making payments on behalf of Sable but told Global Witness he could not comment on their nature due to confi dentiality clauses.

A spreadsheet mentioned in the report lists alleged bribes to former House speaker Alex Tyler, Richard Tolbert, ex-head of the National In-vestment Commission, the body overseeing the tendering process for mining projects, and Willie Belleh, who oversaw the body responsible for government investment agreements.

Koff a said the task force would leave

“no stone unturned” in its quest to as-certain the facts.

“No one is above the law. We are asking all those alleged to be involved in the saga to peacefully submit to the investigation. We will be forced to use the power given to us if any one refus-es to appear,” he said.

Sable, co-founded by former Eng-land international cricketer Phil Ed-monds, is accused of organising the handouts to win iron ore concessions and of paying for favourable represent-atives to be appointed to key posts with responsibility for licences and tenders.

The company denies the allegations.The report has also caused con-

sternation in neighbouring Guinea, where on Monday Justice Minister Cheick Sako announced the opening of a criminal investigation following claims Sable gave millions of dollars to President Alpha Conde’s fi rst election campaign in 2010.

A permit Sable had applied for during the election campaign was awarded af-terwards following allegedly substantial payments to Conde’s son. The president was not implicated in the report.

Eritrea celebrates 25 years of ‘freedom’AFPNairobi

Eritrea yesterday celebrated 25 years of independence with street parties, giant fi re-

works displays and music, shrug-ging off international criticism that the government has stifl ed basic freedoms.

In the run up to the celebrations, an “independence torch” was car-ried across the country, with the party kicking off over the weekend with camel races, military parades, cultural events and artistic dis-plays, the state-run EriTV broad-caster showed.

Reports in the local media said the celebrations off ered “vivid demonstrations of the prevailing peace and stability” in a country

which ranks below North Korea as worst in the world for press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders.

But on the eve of independ-ence celebrations, the UN’s Spe-cial Rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea, Sheila Keetharuth, said the country had been in a “consti-tutional vacuum” since 1997, and called on Eritrea to “fully embrace democracy and the rule of law to achieve the vision established” at independence.

The hardline regime is accused of jailing thousands of political prisoners while refugees from the repressive Red Sea state have in recent years made up one of the largest contingents of people risk-ing the dangerous journey to seek a new life in Europe.

“National independence should

match with individual independ-ence and freedoms: freedom of conscience, thought, mind and ex-pression; freedom to engage in em-ployment and education of one’s own choice,” Keetharuth said.

Eritrea split from Ethiopia in 1991 after a three-decade inde-pendence war, which saw Eritrean rebels battling far better-equipped Ethiopian troops which were backed fi rst by Washington and then by the Soviet Union. Victory in May 1991 was followed by a ref-erendum two years later.

But independence for Eritrea meant Ethiopia lost direct access to the Red Sea, fuelling resentment from Addis Ababa.

A subsequent 1998-2000 bor-der confl ict between the two coun-tries still rankles, with analysts saying Asmara uses as an excuse

for its continued iron-fi sted rule.President Isaias Afwerki, 70,

who led the rebel army to victory and has remained in power with-out an election ever since, was to address the nation at a military rally yesterday night.

Tales of war sacrifi ces are used to boost patriotism and fl agging morale under persistent economic and social hardships which are blamed on the long-running “no-war no-peace” border stalemate with Ethiopia.

A “quarter century of resilience and development” read a headline in the Eritrea Profi le newspaper this week.

“I call on the government to do more to respect, protect and fulfi l human rights and to establish the rule of law,” Keetharuth said in a statement released in Geneva.

“I salute the heroism and cour-

age of all those women and men who struggled for their freedom and fought for their country’s in-dependence. I also acknowledge the determination of those who are still engaged in preserving such hard-won freedom.”

Exiled opposition Eritrean ac-tivists produced a video released to coincide with independence celebrations, speaking out about repression in the country and ex-plaining why they fl ed.

“What do we have to celebrate in a country, where if you speak against the regime you could be imprisoned?” read the article on the opposition Asmarino website.

In the past, entire Eritrean foot-ball teams have absconded while playing in tournaments abroad and fi ghter jet pilots have escaped in their aircraft.

Ethiopian wants to be fi rst African WHO chief

AFPGeneva

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom yesterday launched his candidacy to lead the World

Health Organization, insisting it was time for an African to occupy the key UN job.

“The fresh view we can bring from our continent and the perspective of a developing country can help improve the global health situation,” Tedros told reporters in Geneva, as he announced his desire to succeed WHO chief Mar-garet Chan of Hong Kong when she steps down next year.

Tedros, a doctor by training, high-

lighted the experience he acquired during his seven years as Ethiopia’s health minister until 2012, when he implemented widespread reforms that among other things allowed the coun-try to slash its infant mortality rate by two thirds.

He also said he had held top interna-tional health jobs and helped guide the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculo-sis and Malaria through far-reaching reforms.

The 51-year-old said that uptil now global health had been seen “from the rest of the world’s perspective only”, adding: “But as you know, Africa and many of the developing countries carry most of the burden.”

“It’s time for a director-general who

has lived some of the most pressing challenges facing our world today, as I have lived in Africa.”

His candidacy has the unanimous backing of the African Union and Te-dros is among the fi rst to offi cially throw his name into the hat.

Former French health minister Philippe Douste-Blazy has also been campaigning for the post in Geneva this week on the sidelines of WHO’s main annual assembly, and Pakistan has thrown its weight behind the can-didacy of former health minister Sania Nishtar.

Candidates have until September 22 to join the race and next May the WHO will elect the winner, who will take the over as director-general in July 2017.

AMERICAS13Gulf Times


New Yorker charged with providing support to ISReuters New York

A New York City man was arrested yesterday and charged with providing

material support to Islamic State by trying to help an undercover law enforcement employee travel to Syria to fi ght with the militant group.

Sajmir Alimehmeti, a 22-year-old from the Bronx borough, was charged in a criminal complaint fi led in federal court in Manhat-tan, which said that he had also since mid-2015 made multiple purchases of knives and mili-tary-type equipment.

Alimehmeti was arrested at his Bronx residence yesterday morning, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said, and is expected to appear in court later in the day.

A lawyer for Alimehmeti could not be immediately identifi ed.

Prosecutors said he is a natu-ralised US citizen.

He is among nearly 90 peo-ple who since 2014 have faced US charges over crimes related to Islamic State, which controls territory in Syria and Iraq and has claimed responsibility for at-tacks in Paris in November that killed 130 people.

According to the complaint Alimehmeti had been on the ra-dar of authorities since at least 2014, when he was twice denied entry to the United Kingdom.

During his second attempt, when he arrived at Heathrow Airport, authorities seized his laptop and cellphone and discov-ered he had numerous images of Islamic State fl ags and impro-vised explosive device attacks, the complaint said.

Once back in New York, un-dercover law enforcement em-ployees with the FBI and New York Police Department posing as Islamic State supporters be-

gan meeting with Alimehmeti in 2015, the complaint said.

During a lunch at a Manhattan restaurant last Tuesday, Alime-hmeti told two of the undercover agents, including one who claimed to be planning to travel to Syria, that he had saved $2,500 for his own trip but still needed a passport.

The complaint said Alimeh-meti had applied in October 2015 for a new US passport, falsely claiming that he lost his previous one, when in fact he believed us-ing his one with the UK rejection stamps would raise suspicions.

At the lunch, Alimehmeti re-ported that his brother had also planned to go to Syria but was ar-rested in Albania in August 2015 on weapons and assault charges.

After the meal, Alimehmeti bought boots for two under-cover agents and helped one of them secure supplies including a phone, compass, bag and fl ash-light for his purported trip to Syria, the complaint said.

The only two Muslim members of the US Congress, Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Representative Andre Carson (D-IN) hold a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington about what they call ‘the rhetoric attacking Muslims and the Islamophobia’ in the 2016 presidential election. Highlighting remarks by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Ellison and Carson said the issue of Islamophobia is not isolated to just one candidate or one election.

Fighting Islamophobia

Firefi ghters protect Canada’s oil sands battling 1,100C fl amesReutersEdmonton, Alberta

Fighting massive forest fi res is dangerous and taxing enough, but those sent into

Canada’s oil sands are not just wrestling with one of the worst wildfi res in the country’s history.

They are doing it surrounded by the volatile, explosive chemi-cals and compounds critical to pumping oil from some of the world’s largest reserves.

Now in its third week, the fi re’s proximity to the billions of dollars worth of oil equipment, fl ammable liquids, and extrac-tion sites had people fearful that the fl ames, which can jump as far as more than a kilometre with

gusts of wind, could do cata-strophic damage to critical infra-structure.

Dozens of safety workers and industrial fi refi ghters are work-ing at places like Syncrude and Suncor Energy’s upgrading fa-cilities north of Fort McMurray surrounded by fl ames burning to the edges of the oil sands, facing temperatures running as high as 1,100 Celsius. The heavy bitu-men in the oil sands themselves is not fl ammable, but the facili-ties and people inside are at risk.

“The most harrowing mo-ments were when we fi rst arrived on scene, dealing with these for-est fi res growing on you, fl ames jumping fi fty feet in the air,” said Aron Harper, 35, a fi refi ghter and emergency medical technician

employed by Suncor, who lives in Fort McMurray, Alberta prov-ince’s main oil hub.

“We were yelling at guys to get out of there because the thing was growing so fast. I’ve never seen a fi re grow that fast in my life.”

Firefi ghters do not measure for-est fi res by temperature, but by a measure known as “head fi re inten-sity,” said Travis Fairweather, Al-berta wildfi re information offi cer.

It is calculated as the rate of heat energy released over time at the front of the fi re, and this fi re at times reached fi ve times a level considered extreme, he said.

Almost half of Alberta’s 2,351 fi refi ghters have been assigned to Fort McMurray and oil compa-nies have drafted industrial fi re-fi ghting specialists to protect op-

erations in the area, where about one million barrels of capacity has been shuttered.

These specialists are armed with special foam used to spray exposed equipment and sprin-klers that can cover distances of 45m. In Alberta many facilities are built with protection against such fi res.

This includes fi rebreaks around them, where vegetation is cleared and replaced with pave-ment or gravel to stop the pro-gression of fi re.

But with this fi re, companies including Enbridge and Suncor had to enhance their buff er zones by widening fi rebreaks.

Philip Haggis, a wildfi re tech-nologist with the province of Al-berta, found himself driving an

all-terrain vehicle over blackened earth and through smoke-fi lled forests, leading a small convoy of bulldozers in containing the fi re surrounding them.

Haggis was involved in protect-ing a Brion Energy Corp facility northwest of Fort McMurray.

He was a “dozer boss” for the fi rst week of the fi re, supervising a team that removes vegetation - what he calls “fuel” - from the path of the blaze to prevent its spread.

The fi re shifts without warn-ing, and at least one team has been caught off -guard in a dead end.

“They got overtaken by fi re,” Haggis said.”They had to get evacuated and some of their equipment got burned up.”

Suncor, one of Canada’s larg-est oil producers, put additional sprinklers on its sites, a company spokesperson said.

Enbridge Inc, which saw a fi re come within just one kilome-tre (0.62 mile) of its Cheecham crude oil tank farm, said it has not yet had to use a foam perim-eter at its facilities but did spray tanks down with water to protect from the fi res.

Early last week, after the fi re forced the evacuation of thou-sands of workers from oil sands sites, Harper was tasked with securing the perimeter of Sun-cor’s facilities from behind the wheel of a massive 8-wheeled “ARFF” fi re truck (aircraft rescue and fi refi ghting) with a built-in 3,000-gallon water tank linked

to a water cannon operated by a crew member.

For days they drove up and down a 10km-stretch of high-way adjacent to the plant, with the fi re raging on the other side, and would beat back encroach-ing fl ames to make sure the fi re didn’t jump the highway onto Suncor’s land.

“The major concern was if it ever jumped the highway. There’s a lot of valuable stuff behind us that you defi nitely can’t have catch fi re,” he said.

“The weather, it was so dry, the wood so dry, the wind, eve-rything was working against us. You think you’d have (the fi re) out and you’d turn your back and ... this fi re would come right back to life.”

The Royal Canadian Air Force Snowbirds aerobatics team perform a fly-past above the Jeff erson Memorial in Washington, DC yesterday.

Flypast

Solar Impulse defers Ohio departureAFP Washington

A solar-powered plane set to fl y from Ohio to Penn-sylvania yesterday de-

layed its departure to inspect possible damage due to a mishap, organisers said.

The Solar Impulse 2, set to be piloted by Swiss national Ber-trand Piccard, was scheduled to fl y out of Dayton International Airport and head to Lehigh Val-ley International Airport near the

city of Allentown at 10GMT.However problems arose with

the fan needed to keep the giant plane’s mobile hanger infl ated, and while rebooting the system, “some parts of the airplane were lightly touched by the defl ating hangar fabric,” organisers said in a statement.

The slow-moving, single-seat plane with the wingspan of a Boeing 747, contains 17,000 so-lar cells that power the aircraft’s propellers and charge batteries.

The panels provide the plane’s sole source of energy for the fl ight.

At fi rst check engineers found no damage.

“However this will have to be studied more carefully over the next few days and as such the fl ight from Dayton to Lehigh Valley has to be postponed,” the statement said.

No rescheduled departure time or date was announced.

The Solar Impulse 2 has tra-versed much of the globe in stag-es since taking off March 9, 2015 from Abu Dhabi.

The project aims to promote renewable energy.

Cosby to face sex assault trialAFPNorristown, Pennsylvania

Disgraced television legend Bill Cosby will face trial over accusations that he sexually assaulted a woman after

plying her with drugs at his Philadelphia home 12 years ago, a judge ruled yesterday.

The 78-year-old pioneering black come-dian looked subdued and kept his glance averted from onlookers as he left a county court house in Pennsylvania, dressed in a grey suit and fl oral tie, leaning on a member of his entourage.

More than 50 women have publicly al-leged sexual abuse at the hands of the former megastar, who attained his greatest fame for his role as a lovable obstetrician and family man in the hit 1980s sitcom The Cosby Show.

But the allegations dating from 2004 and made by Andrea Constand, who worked for Temple University basketball team and now lives in Canada, have amounted to the only criminal assault charge brought against him.

Judge Elizabeth McHugh ruled after a three-hour preliminary hearing in Norris-town, just outside Philadelphia that there is enough evidence to put Cosby on trial.

“We’re here because we want to seek the truth. We want to service justice,” Mont-

gomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele told reporters.

“We’re going to move forward on the case and consequently look forward to getting a trial date,” he added.

The former star posted bail at $1mn in the case last December but has yet to enter a plea. If he pleads guilty, he can still avoid the enormous publicity that will come with one of America’s most famous entertainers going on trial.

Cosby has become a pariah since an ava-lanche of women accused him of feeding them pills and having sex with them over four decades.

Constand, 43, did not attend yesterday’s hearing but Steele called as a witness Kath-erine Hart, a detective who took her original deposition in January 2005 detailing the al-leged assault.

Hart read out passages from the deposi-tion in which Constand said Cosby plied her with pills and wine until she was unable to resist his advances at his suburban Philadel-phia home in 2004.

After sitting her down on the couch, Con-stand claimed in the passages read in court, Cosby fondled her breasts, put his fi ngers in her vagina and put her hand on his erect penis.

But Cosby’s legal team attacked Con-stand’s credibility.

Lawyer Brian McMonagle said Constand had chopped and changed certain passages and omitted from the fi nal version having laid down on a bed next to the actor to relax and having visited his home for dinner after the alleged assault.

“We’re not at trial,” warned McHugh at one point to Cosby’s team.”Let’s try to keep it limited Mr McMonagle.”

Cosby has admitted giving Constand a pill but said all relations with her were consensu-al and accused her of lying about the assault.

The case was initially settled by a civil suit in 2006 and Cosby’s lawyers say reopening it has violated an agreement that he would never be prosecuted.

But prosecutors have justifi ed revisiting the case, saying that new evidence came to light last July.

In his deposition in the suit, US media reported that Cosby admitted to having sex with at least two teenage girls and that “fi ve or six” models were brought to his studio each week while he was fi lming one of his sitcoms.

Although dozens of women have publicly accused Cosby of assault dating back four decades, the vast majority of their claims cannot be prosecuted because they have ex-pired under statutes of limitations.

Cosby’s lawyers fl atly deny any wrongdo-ing by the actor.

Kids get payout for father shot dead by campus cop

The 13 children of a black man killed by a Univer-sity of Cincinnati police

offi cer during a traffi c stop will each receive about $218,000 plus free college tuition under a roughly $5mn settlement, local media reported on Monday.

Ohio probate Judge Ralph Winkler, charged with distrib-uting the settlement reached between the university and the family of Sam DuBose, also ruled on Monday that DuBose’s mother would receive $90,000, the Cincinnati Enquirer report-ed.

“The children have suff ered the greatest loss, and the great-est amount of the settlement proceeds should be provided to (his) children,” Winkler said at a hearing to announce his ruling, the newspaper reported.

It said the children range in age from four to 23.

Body camera video of the traf-fi c stop showed DuBose, 43, was shot in the head by Offi cer Ray Tensing last July after he was pulled over for a missing front license plate on his vehicle.

DuBose attempted to prevent the offi cer from opening the

car door before the car started slowly rolling forward.

Tensing, who is white, pulled his gun and fi red once.

He has pleaded not guilty to murder and voluntary man-slaughter charges and is free on a $1mn bond.

DuBose’s death fuelled dem-onstrations and intensifi ed a debate on policing and race in the United States.

A settlement was reached with the university in January for $4.85mn and free tuition for DuBose’s children.

The settlement is worth about

$5.3mn, including the free tui-tion, family attorneys have said.

In addition to the distribution for DuBose’s mother and chil-dren, Winkler also ruled that his six siblings would each be paid $32,000 from the settlement, the Enquirer said.

His father, Sam Johnson, will receive $25,000, according to the newspaper.

More than 33% of the $4.85mn in settlement money was allocated for attorneys’ fees and costs.

That amount totalled $1.67mn, the newspaper reported.

12 dead in Myanmar jade mine landslideAFPYangon

A landslide in Myanmar’s northern jade mining re-gion has killed at least 12

people and many more are miss-ing, offi cials said yesterday, the latest deadly accident to hit the shadowy but lucrative industry.

The bodies were recovered af-ter a wall of unstable earth col-lapsed Monday night following heavy rain in the town of Hpa-kant in Kachin state, the centre of a multi-billion-dollar trade that feeds a huge demand for the precious stones from neigh-bouring China.

“We retrieved seven dead bodies last night and fi ve more this morning,” a police offi cer in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw said, requesting anonymity.

But eff orts to look for more bodies among the rubble have been halted as renewed rain threatens to trigger fresh land-slides.

At least 15 people were injured and an estimated 30 others are missing, the offi cer added.

Confi rming the death toll Ni-

lar Myint, a local offi cial in Hpa-kant, said around 50 people were searching for the stone when an earth wall inside the mine col-lapsed.

“We are checking homes near the landslide to see who is miss-ing among their friends and rel-atives,” she said.

The area has suff ered a string of deadly landslides over the past year, with a major incident in Hpakant last November kill-ing more than 100.

Numerous other smaller acci-dents have left scores more dead or injured, including a landslide that killed 13 people earlier this

month. The victims are usually impoverished itinerant workers scouring the area for chunks of jade overlooked by the industrial mining fi rms that have carved up the once-forested landscape.

A resident said hundreds of people have been searching for gems in the craters scooped out

by the mining giants during My-anmar’s rainy season, when ma-jor companies cease operations.

“Locals said that area was a fa-vourite of companies and work-ers because it had good quality stones. That is why many people were gathering and searching in that particular place,” he said on the condition of anonymity, adding that rain and poor roads have hampered the rescue.

Myanmar is the chief source of the world’s fi nest jadeite, a near-translucent green stone that is prized in China, where it is known as the “stone of heaven”.

But while mining fi rms — many linked to the country’s junta-era military elite — are thought to be raking in huge sums, locals say they do not share in the bounty.

In an October report corrup-tion watchdog Global Witness estimated that Myanmar jade produced in 2014 alone was worth $31bn, with huge profi ts going to local drug lords and fi g-ures from the powerful military and former junta.

Much of the best jade is thought to be smuggled directly to China.

Thai blaze victim, 10, ‘called for her mum and dad until voice was gone’ReutersWiang Pa Pao, Thailand

A 10-year-old Thai girl called out for her moth-er and father as a blaze

swept through her school dor-mitory “until her voice was gone”, her mother said yester-day.

The fi re broke out late on Sunday as the girls, aged be-tween fi ve and 12, slept at a Christian school for children of hill-tribe families in the northern province of Chiang Rai.Investigators are look-ing at the possibility of faulty lighting on the ground fl oor below the dormitory.

Malawian Saw-wa’s daugh-ter, May, died in hospital.

Her elder daughter survived by jumping from a second-fl oor window, she said.

“My eldest daughter said she heard May calling for mum and dad to help until her voice was gone,” Ma-lawian said.

“Never in my lifetime will I let my daughter out of my sight. The school must be held responsible for this.My daughter was my heart and soul.”

Five of the victims have been identifi ed and police were seeking to identify the others through DNA tests.

Police questioned witnesses yesterday, and said they had

not yet reached a conclusion on the cause of the fi re.

“We still need to gather evi-dence from the scene fi rst on what caused this and whether this was due to negligence,” said district police chief Pray-ad Singsin.

A forensics offi cer told Re-uters evidence pointed to a loose light bulb melting on the ground fl oor of the two-storey building, causing the fi re that killed the girls in the dormi-tory above.

Around 10 of the 19 girls that survived slept on the school grounds on Monday night as their parents had yet to arrive from far-fl ung areas to pick them up, said Tuenjai Tanachaikant a local who vol-unteered to help at the school after the fi re.Some of the par-ents also slept at the school where they lit incense sticks and prayed.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha sent his condo-lences to the families of the victims and the school.

“The prime minister want-ed to sent a message to all the teachers and students that the fi re may burn down the school buildings but don’t let it burn away their hopes,” govern-ment spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd told reporters.

Prayuth said he had ordered government agencies to work to reduce the number of deadly accidents in Thailand.

Obama implores Vietnam to embrace human rightsAFP Hanoi

President Barack Obama urged communist Vietnam yesterday to abandon authoritari-anism, saying basic human rights would

not jeopardise its stability, after Hanoi barred several dissidents from meeting the US leader.

In a sweeping speech, which harked back to the bloody war that defi ned both nations but also looked to the future, Obama insisted that “upholding rights is not a threat to stability”.Vi-etnam ruthlessly cracks down on protests, jails dissidents, bans trade unions and controls local media.

But the US leader, speaking to a packed au-ditorium including Communist Party offi cials, said bolstering rights “actually reinforces stabil-ity and is the foundation of progress”.The visit is Obama’s fi rst to the country and the third by a sitting US president since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

Direct US involvement in the confl ict ended in 1973.

Obama’s visit has formally reset the relation-ship between the former foes with the lifting of a decades-old US arms embargo.

Trade has dominated the trip, with multi-billion-dollar deals unveiled, as well as further endorsement by both sides of the planned Trans-Pacifi c Partnership (TPP). Immediately after his speech, Obama fl ew to Vietnam’s boister-ous southern commercial hub Ho Chi Minh City where thousands lined the streets to greet him.

He has been cautious to avoid aggressively hectoring his hosts — an increasingly important regional ally — on human rights.

“Vietnam will do it diff erently to the United States,” Obama said.

“But these are basic principles that we all have to try to work on and improve,” he added, refer-ring in particular to the importance of a free me-dia.

His speech, punctuated with humorous asides and references to Vietnamese culture and history, was greeted with warm applause and cheers.

Earlier, Obama met civil society leaders, in-cluding some of the country’s long-harassed dis-sidents.

One of those present was Mai Khoi, a pop star dubbed Viatnam’s ‘Lady Gaga’ who was recently barred from standing as an independent in legis-lative elections.

She said she had asked Obama to use Amer-ica’s alliance with Vietnam to push for “meas-urable improvements, not just rhetoric and for-mal agreements.” But in a country where state control remains the default response, authori-ties also stopped several prominent activists from meeting Obama.

Nguyen Quang A said he was bundled into a car by “plainclothes security men” and re-leased only after Obama had left for the com-mercial capital.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who is also in Vietnam, later confirmed at least three invitees were stopped by local authorities from attend-ing.He said progress had been made on rights but added: “Is it as much progress as we want? No, not at all.”

Washington has trailed the three-day visit as a chance to cement ties with Vietnam, a fast-growing country with a young popula-tion seen as a key element in America’s dip-lomatic pivot to the Asia-Pacific.

Crowds have enthusiastically welcomed Obama wherever he has gone, including late Monday at a streetside restaurant where he supped beer and a local noodle soup speciality.

Cambodia revives Aussie refugee dealReutersPhnom Penh

Cambodia said yester-day it will send a team to a South Pacific de-

tention centre next month to interview two refugees who have volunteered to be reset-tled, reviving an agreement with Australia that seemed on the verge of collapse.

Australia has vowed to stop asylum seekers sailing from Indonesia and Sri Lanka and landing on its shores, instead intercepting boats at sea and holding those on board in camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

Cambodia agreed with Australia in 2014 to take

in refugees from Nauru in exchange for A$40 mn ($28.56mn) in aid, but it later threatened to withdraw from the agreement.

Only five people have gone to Cambodia under the pact and three of them later chose to go back home.

But now two more might be on their way.

“Our team is ready to go and interview two more ref-ugees who volunteered to be resettled,” Tan Sovichea, head of the Interior Minis-try’s refugee unit, told Reu-ters yesterday.

Sovichea said his three-man team would fly to Nauru in the first week of June to vet the refugees, an Iranian man and woman.

Indonesia’s capital Jakarta is bring-ing beer back to its mini-marts, the city’s governor said yesterday, more than a year after sales of the alcoholic drink were banned in small retailers in the nation.“The point is (drinks with alcohol content) below 5 % will be allowed, and beer is included,” Jakarta gov-ernor Basuki Purnama Tjahja told reporters, adding that unlicensed vendors would be penalised.But the ban, which was last year issued by the trade ministry, remains in place across the rest of the country. “The prohibition of sales of alcoholic beverages in retailers the size of mini-marts and below, is still in place,” Trade Minis-ter Tom Lembong told Reuters by text message.According to media reports at the time, the trade ministry implemented the ban to crack down on underage drinking.Larger retailers can still sell beer, as well as spirits and wine. Provincial and city governments in Indonesia are allowed to regulate the sales and distribution of alcohol independently of central govern-ment rules.Major brewers have raised concerns over the national ban, saying the regulation could hurt profits and expansion plans in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.PT Multi Bintang Indonesia, majority-owned by Heineken, had said last year that a planned 40mn euro ($43 mn) investment hinged on regulatory certainty, The east Javanese city of Surabaya this month proposed a ban on alcohol, but it remained unclear if this would apply to hotels and bars in the country’s second-largest city.

Jakarta to allow small stores to sell beer again

POLICY

Ng Sin Nee (left) and Lee Shin May from Malaysia take pictures with the panoramic view of the city from the Sky Box at KL Tower, the world’s seventh tallest telecommunications tower, in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. Off icially opened on May 20, the Sky Box has been the latest attraction for tourists arriving to the Malaysian capital. It stands 300 metres above ground and can fit six people at any one time, and off ers spectacular views of the Kuala Lumpur skyline, including the iconic Petronas Twin Towers.

Sky Box selfie

Royal oxen predict ‘bountiful’ harvest despite severe droughtAFPPhnom Penh

Cambodia may be suff er-ing the worst drought for half a century but a

ritual involving royal oxen yes-terday nevertheless predicted a bountiful harvest this year.

The ploughing ceremony, presided over by King Noro-dom Sihamoni, was held at the famed Angkor temple complex in the northwestern province of Siem Reap.

Thousands of locals and tourists gathered to observe the ancient rite, which marks the start of the harvest season.

After the symbolic ploughing of a portion of the fi eld, a pair of decorated oxen were led over to seven dishes containing food or drink and laid out on trays.

The dishes of rice, corn, beans and sesame represent the harvest, and the more the oxen eat, the better it is expected to be.

However if the beasts choose the off erings of grass, water or alcohol, it suggests illness, fl oods or war are on the way.

The oxen ate most of the rice, beans and corn, prompting the palace’s chief astrologer Kang Ken to declare to a crowd that those crops would see “boun-tiful harvests”.The astrologer did however warn it was “just

a prediction”. He then ap-pealed to holy spirits to bless the country with regular rain so that “the kingdom of Cambo-dia avoids any natural disaster that would aff ect agricultural products, which are the life of the people and the nation”. The Greater Mekong region was scorched by an unusually hot dry season this year, with tem-peratures regularly hitting 40C (104 Fahrenheit). Cambodian offi cials said the country was suff ering the worst drought in 50 years, forcing authorities to assist 18 out of 25 provinces with water supply.

Some 2.5mn people were af-fected by the dry spell, which

also led to the deaths of cattle, monkeys and tonnes of fi sh, ac-cording to offi cials.

Despite the royal oxen’s prophecy, a spokesman for Cambodia’s disaster manage-ment centre said he expected a weaker agricultural yield this year.

“Due to bad weather, I think the harvests this year will be re-duced,” Keo Vy said, explaining that farmers across the country have delayed planting rice - an irrigation-intensive crop - due to the drought.

“Rice exporters have voiced concerns there would won’t be enough milled rice for export,” he added.

Cambodian royal cows eat corns during the annual royal plowing ceremony at Angkor complex in Siem Reap province yesterday.

Rescue workers gather beside a landslide in a jade mining area on the outskirts of Hpakant in Myanmar’s northern Kachin State yesterday.


ASEAN

AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA15Gulf Times


Japan locks down for G7 summitAFPTokyo

Japan is on high-alert ahead of a Group of Seven summit with thousands of police on

the streets of Tokyo and fanning out across the country as au-thorities boost security to un-precedented levels.

The annual event, which takes place tomorrow and on Friday, draws leaders from some of the world’s richest nations, includ-ing US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Host Japan said it is taking no chances in the wake of the Paris and Brussels terror attacks, and Fukushima’s operator said yes-terday that work at the crippled nuclear plant would be suspend-ed during the talks.

Up to 70,000 police are be-ing deployed before the two-day meeting of the club of rich na-tions, with about one-third of the offi cers headed to Ise-Shima, an area between Tokyo and Osaka that is hosting the event.

Thousands of other police will be on hand in Hiroshima when

US President Barack Obama makes an historic visit to the atomic-bombed city on Friday, the National Police Agency said.

Dustbins have also been re-moved or sealed and use of coin-operated lockers blocked at train and subway stations in the capital and areas around the venue site.

Electronic message boards in train stations are warning pas-sengers of the elevated risks and advising them to keep watch for suspicious activity.

Authorities said they will be keeping a close eye on so-called “soft targets” such as theatres and stadiums.

There have been few public protests so far in Japan unlike some previous G7 gatherings.

Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power told AFP it will also suspend most work at the site - which was destroyed dur-ing the 2011 quake-tsunami dis-aster - tomorrow and on Friday.

As many as 8,000 employees are working on decommissioning and other tasks at the plant.

The company said the measure was not taken over fears of an at-tack at the plant itself, which is hundreds of kilometres (miles)

away from both Tokyo and the G7 venue, but rather to “minimise the risk of incidents” that could divert authorities’ attention.

“The summit is happen-ing when there is a very serious threat of terrorism internation-ally,” said National Police Agency chief Masahito Kanetaka said.

“Protecting Japanese people from the risk of terrorist attacks on soft targets, not only at the summit venue but also in big cit-ies such as Tokyo, is a key issue.

We will be ready for any inci-dent.”

The March Brussels airport and metro attacks which killed 32 people are believed to be the work of jihadists closely linked to the cell which carried out the November Paris massacres in which 130 people died.

Japan is unused to incidents of international terrorism and is seen as a low-risk target “in nor-mal times”, said security expert Shiro Kawamoto.

“But because of international events such as the G7 summit and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japan could be a target for ter-rorists,” the former senior police agency offi cial said. Police patrol Tokyo Station in central Tokyo as part of increased security measures ahead of the Ise-Shima G7 summit that begins tomorrow.

Light show

A giant lantern in the shape of a rhinoceros sits among grasses during a preview of Taronga Zoo’s inaugural contribution to the Vivid Sydney light festival.

A family walks past giant lanterns in the shape of sea turtles during a preview of Taronga Zoo’s inaugural contribution to the Vivid Sydney light festival, the annual interactive light installation and projection event around Sydney.

More North Korean workers defect to SouthAFPSeoul

A group of North Koreans work-ing at a restaurant in China have defected to the South, Seoul con-

fi rmed yesterday, a month after a simi-lar, high-profi le defection.

South Korean news agency Yonhap had reported Monday that three women in their 20s were waiting in Thailand to board a fl ight to Seoul after leaving their jobs at a restaurant in the Chinese city of Xian.

Seoul’s unifi cation ministry, which handles cross-border aff airs, confi rmed the defection in a statement but de-clined to elaborate, citing safety of the refugees.

It is the second such incident in two months, after 13 workers at a North Korea-themed restaurant in the Chinese city of Ningbo made a high-profi le defection to Seoul in April.

Nearly 30,000 North Koreans have fl ed poverty and repression at home to settle in the capitalist South.

But group defections are rare, espe-cially by staff who work in North Ko-rean restaurants abroad, which are a key source of hard currency for the regime in Pyongyang.

They are generally handpicked from families that are “loyal” to the regime and go through extensive ideological training before being sent out.

Pyongyang reacted angrily to April’s

defection, insisting that the 12 women were tricked by spies from Seoul who eff ectively “kidnapped” them with the help of a North Korean manager who also escaped.

Seoul says all 13 members of staff de-fected voluntarily.

The isolated, impoverished North operates a network of more than 100 restaurants abroad where young female workers entertain patrons with singing and dancing.

But many suffered a drop in sales after the United Nations imposed tougher sanctions on Pyongyang fol-lowing its latest nuclear and long-range rocket tests staged in viola-tion of UN resolutions, according to Seoul’s spy agency.

The UN sanctions do not target the restaurants but Seoul has urged its citi-zens to avoid them, saying a boycott would block the foreign currency cash fl ow to the regime.

Pyongyang wants to know legal basis for UN sanctions

North Korea has challenged United

Nations chief Ban Ki-moon to clarify the

legal basis for UN sanctions against it,

Pyongyang’s state media said yesterday.

The North’s permanent representative

to the UN wrote to Secretary-General

Ban on Monday, saying that UN sanc-

tions imposed over its nuclear tests and

“peaceful satellite launches” had no legal

foundation, KCNA news agency reported.

It did not identify the permanent repre-

sentative by his name, Ja Song-Nam.

The UN Security Council in March

imposed its toughest sanctions on North

Korea to date following its fourth nuclear

test in January and a long-range rocket

launch the following month.

The North had already been subject to

a range of sanctions because of earlier

nuclear tests - in 2006, 2009 and 2013 -

and a series of long-range missile tests

presented as satellite launches.

The Security Council resolutions

condemned the nuclear tests and rocket

launches as a threat to international

peace and security.

But the North Korean envoy asserted

that no international laws or agreements

- such as the UN charter and the nuclear

Non-Proliferation Treaty - stipulate that

nuclear tests are a threat to international

peace and security.

The second question, he said in the

letter, was why the Security Council had

never sanctioned the United States or

other countries for their nuclear tests or

ballistic missile launches.

If no “convincing legal clarification”

was given on such questions, the Secu-

rity Council would be seen as enforcing

double standards, the envoy said.

The North insists it needs atomic

weapons to defend itself from what it

calls a US nuclear threat. A rare ruling

party congress this month depicted the

North as a fully-fledged nuclear weapons

state and endorsed a push to improve

and expand the arsenal.

Japan, Canada share ‘serious concerns’ on S China Seas

Japan and Canada share “serious concerns” over reclamation and militarisation in the South China Sea, Japanese Prime Minister

Shinzo Abe said yesterday, in an apparent ref-erence to China’s maritime activity.

China and the United States have traded accusations of militarising the South China Sea as Beijing undertakes large-scale land reclamation and construction on disputed features while Washington has increased its patrols and exercises.

Abe’s comment, made at a joint news con-ference with Canadian Prime Minister Jus-tin Trudeau, came ahead of a Group of Seven summit later this week, where maritime se-curity, along with the global economy and terrorism, will be among main issues.

“As for the South China Sea, we share se-rious concerns over unilateral actions that raise tensions, such as large-scale reclama-tion, the building of facilities and militarisa-tion,” Abe told reporters.

“It is a signifi cant achievement that we have agreed to cooperate to secure rule-based, free, safe seas,” he said, referring to his talks with Trudeau.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philip-pines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the waters, through which about $5tn in trade is shipped every year.

Tokyo has no claims on the waterway but worries about China’s growing military reach into sea lanes through which much of Japan’s ship-borne trade passes.

Trudeau steered clear of the maritime dis-pute in his comments and instead chose to focus on economic ties with Japan.

Detained HK bookseller’s daughter seeks US help

Reuters Washington

The daughter of a Hong Kong-based bookseller detained in China took

her campaign for his release to Washington yesterday, appeal-ing for help in pressing China for information as to his status and to release him.

Angela Gui told a hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that her father, Gui Minhai, a natural-ized Swedish citizen, had been detained for eight months without trial and was being denied consular access or legal representation.

“I still haven’t been told where he is, how he is being treated, or what his legal status is - which is especially shock-ing in light of the fact that my father holds Swedish, and only Swedish, citizenship,” she said.

The commission was created by Congress in 2000 to monitor human rights in China.

Gui Minhai disappeared in Thailand in October and sub-sequently appeared in a tearful confession broadcast on Chi-nese state television in January in which he said he had vol-untarily turned himself in to mainland authorities and had been detained for “illegal book trading.”

Angela Gui, who was born and raised in Sweden and is

now studying in Britain, said the confession was “clearly staged” and that her father was in “unoffi cial and illegal deten-tion.”

She appealed for support in working with Sweden and oth-er governments to secure his release, or if he was suspected of a real crime, for details of his detention and proof that his case was being handled in ac-cordance with legal procedures.

“I also want to ask the United States to take every opportuni-ty to ask China for information on my father’s status, as well as urge that he be freed immedi-ately,” she said.

“The US, Sweden, and other countries concerned about these developments need to work to make sure that Chinese authorities are not allowed to carry out illegal operations on foreign soil.”

The disappearance of Gui Minhai and four associates who sold books critical of Chinese leaders sparked fears that Chi-nese authorities were over-riding the “one country, two systems” formula protecting Hong Kong’s freedoms since its return to China from British rule in 1997.

In February the United States called on China to clarify the status of the booksellers.

Many in Hong Kong and some foreign diplomats sus-pect they were illegally abduct-ed by mainland agents.

BRITAIN/IRELAND


I nearly quit music,reveals McCartneyAFPLondon

Paul McCartney said he began drinking heavily and almost quit music al-

together after The Beatles broke up, in an interview due to air this week.

The music icon, now 73, ad-mitted turning to alcohol to cope with the strain of leaving the Fab Four in April 1970, according to extracts of a BBC radio interview released yesterday.

“I was breaking from my lifelong friends, not knowing whether I was going to continue in music,” McCartney said.

“I took to drinks. It was great at first, then suddenly I wasn’t having a good time. It wasn’t working. I wanted to get back to square one, so I ended up form-ing Wings.”

Wings, which included Mc-Cartney’s wife Linda, formed in late 1971 and began by play-ing small unannounced gigs to students.

The band eventually enjoyed success, but McCartney ac-knowledged that some of the criticism levelled in the early years was valid, when his first wife, a novice musician, was still learning how to play the keyboard.

“To be fair we weren’t that good. We were terrible. We knew Linda couldn’t play but she learned and, looking back on it, I’m really glad we did it,” he said.

“I could have just formed a supergroup and rung up Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page and John Bonham, but we gradu-ated from playing universities to town halls, which was quite funny as I’d been at Shea Sta-dium quite recently.”

McCartney, 73, said he was pleased he repaired his strained relationship with Beatles band-mate John Lennon before he was shot dead in 1980.

“I was really grateful that we got it back together before he died. Because it would have been very difficult to deal with

if... well, it was very difficult anyway,” he said.

In 1982, McCartney wrote the song “Here Today” about Lennon. After playing a section from it, he said: “I was thinking of all the things I never said to him. I’m quite private and don’t like to give too much away. Why should people know my inner-most thoughts? But a song is the place to put them. In ‘Here Today’ I say to John, ‘I love you’.

“You can put these emotions, these deeper and sometimes awkward truths, in a song.”

McCartney said rivalry with-in The Beatles and their rise to global fame helped him to write some of his best tunes. “When you’re younger, more magical things come to you: being in a band, the competition with John, being kids, suddenly get-ting famous... all that lent itself to good work,” he said.

“If John came up with a bril-liant song, I’d go, ‘OK, let’s try and be brillianter’.”

The programme airs on Sat-urday.

Hi-tech Thameslinktrains unveiledLondon Evening StandardLondon

A new mega-train was un-veiled yesterday to ease overcrowding on busy

London rail routes.The 12-carriage Thameslink

trains will be able to carry up to 1,750 people, the equivalent of 21 double-decker buses.

They will be 50% longer than most of the rail fi rm’s trains.

Thameslink currently has four 12-carriage trains, which each have a capacity of about 1,100 passengers. But it has or-dered 55 more and they will car-ry even more passengers due to the new design and fewer seats per carriage.

The Siemens Class 700 Thameslink train, unveiled at Blackfriars station yesterday, will have electronic signs show-ing which carriages have more space to sit or stand in, as well as information about how the Tube is running.

Changes to seating, which will be two-by-two rather than two-by-three, will be welcomed

by some passengers as there will be more space to stand at rush-hour.

Some commuters, however, are likely to be riled by the re-duction of seats per carriage, al-though rail bosses stressed that there would still be more than on the eight-carriage trains as the new model is so much big-ger.

Walkways between carriages will be “spacious” so passengers can move more easily through the train.

Wider doors and aisles are designed to make it easier to get on and off . Adaptive climate-controlled air con-ditioning will adjust to the number of passengers in a bid to make travelling more com-fortable.

The new trains will be run-ning on the Brighton to Bed-ford route through central London within weeks. Charles Horton, the chief executive of Govia Thameslink Railway, said: “These trains have been designed to meet the huge growth in passenger numbers that have soared 40% in the past decade”.

Visitors photograph Chelsea Pensioners performing in front of a display of thousands of crochet and embroidered poppies at the Chelsea Flower Show in London yesterday.

Chelsea Flower Show

Auctioneer Christie’s has been fined £3,250 for selling elephant ivory without the correct documentation, London police said yesterday. Last month, Christie’s off ered for sale an ivory tusk mounted on silver with a guide price of £1,200 to £1,800, a police statement said. At Hammersmith magistrates’ court this week it admitted selling elephant ivory in contravention of Article 8 of Council Regulation, under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The 63-year-old owner of the piece of unworked ivory has been charged with off ering it for sale, the police statement added.

Singer-songwriter Adele has signed a new contract with Sony worth up to £90mn, in one of the biggest ever record deals, the media reported. The 28-year-old was the biggest selling artiste in the world last year, and broke sales records in Britain and the US with her third album “25” and its hit track “Hello”. Adele has been at London-based independent label XL Recordings since she was a teenager. It appears the Grammy-award-winning singer has now moved to music giant Sony. An industry source quoted in The Guardian did not specify the number of albums required under the contract but said it “gives Sony the rights to release her future music exclusively around the world”.

Actor Burt Kwouk, best known for his role as Inspector Clouseau’s manservant Cato Fong in the Pink Panther comedy films, died yesterday aged 85. Born in England but raised in China, Kwouk’s career began on British television in the 1950s and over the next six decades he had parts in some of its best-known shows most notably Last of the Summer Wine and 1980s war drama Tenko. He also starred in numerous films. But he will be most remembered for starring alongside Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films in which Cato would leap out at unexpected moments to attack his boss to test his readiness, leading to furious, comedy fight scenes.

A man has been found guilty of raping and murdering a 20-year-old woman at his wife’s bungalow. Susan Whiting was attacked with a blunt object and found with a fractured skull, her wrists bound and a plastic bag over her head. She had been invited to have dinner and spend the night at the property in Bloxwich, Walsall, when she was brutally attacked in August last year. Steven Beards, 34, of Bentley, West Midlands, was convicted of murder and rape after a three-week trial at Leicester Crown Court. The jury are still deliberating on his wife Julie Beards, 36, of Walsall, who is accused of murder.

A fragment of bone belonging to the murdered archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, has returned to England from Hungary for the first time in 800 years. The relic is believed to be from the arm of Becket, slain at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, after his relationship with medieval English King Henry II soured when he stood up for the church against the monarchy. The bone, held in a gold case, is on a week-long loan from Hungary but it is unclear how it arrived in the eastern European country. British media said the fragment could have been taken when Becket was re-buried in the cathedral in 1220.

Undocumented ivory salelands Christie’s in trouble

Adele ‘signs toSony for £90mn’

Actor Burt Kwoukdies aged 85

Man found guiltyof woman’s murder

Archbishop bone fragmentarrives in UK from Hungary

LAW AND ORDER ENTERTAINMENTOBITUARY VERDICT EVENT

Man shotdead inDublingang warGuardian News and MediaDublin

A relative of an Irish crime boss whose attack on a boxing bout weigh-

in triggered a gangland war in Dublin has been shot dead in the city. The man, a nephew of Gerry “The Monk” Hutch, was killed while sitting in a car near Dublin city centre yesterday morning.

The man, who is in his 30s, is thought to be the seventh person to die in the gangland feud since armed men stormed into the weigh-in at the Regency Hotel in February.

The victim of that attack was David Byrne, a member of a rival Irish crime gang led by Christy Kinahan, a convicted gangster based in the Costa del Sol in Spain.

The majority of those who have died since in the wave of violence have been members of Hutch’s gang, apparently killed in revenge for the Regency Hotel attack.

Witnesses to yesterday’s at-tack said that up to six shots had been fi red into the victim’s car at about 10am. Although the man was known to have a number of criminal convictions, it is not thought that he was a major player in the gang led by Hutch.

Hutch’s home in Dublin city centre had previously been searched by the Garda Siochana, Ireland’s police force, as part of its inquiries into the Regency Hotel shooting.

It is claimed that Hutch’s gang launched the February hotel at-tack in revenge for the murder in Spain last September of Hutch’s nephew, Gary Hutch, by men al-legedly linked to Kinahan.

Gary Hutch’s killers appar-ently believed he had told Irish police and Interpol about a drug shipment that was intercepted. In the February attack, men dressed in Garda-style uni-forms carried AK-47 rifl es into the front of the hotel while two other gunmen, one dressed as a woman, came into the building by another entrance seeking out their targets.

Khan nameswomen forkey city hallpositionsLondon Evening StandardLondon

Sadiq Khan lived up to his promise of being a “proud feminist” at City Hall yes-

terday by giving two of his top three jobs to women.

The new mayor fi nally ap-pointed his deputy mayors for policing and transport — who between them control multi-billion-pound budgets and hold huge power.

Sophie Linden, deputy mayor of Hackney council and a former adviser to David Blunkett at the Home Offi ce, will oversee the Metropolitan Police.

Val Shawcross, an experienced City Hall operator who sat on the London Assembly for 16 years, will be his No 2 on transport and deputy chair of Transport for London.

Khan will follow Boris John-son’s lead and chair the body himself.

Former Labour transport sec-retary Andrew Adonis had been lined up for the job but it is un-derstood he was unwilling to give up other public sector roles.

Instead he will chair the board of Crossrail 2, responsible for de-livering the crucial North-South rail link.

The third major City Hall dep-uty mayoralty — housing — goes to Islington Labour councillor James Murray, as revealed by the Standard this month. He will also advise the mayor on planning in relation to housing, but not from a regeneration and infrastructure perspective.

Khan’s statutory deputy is long-standing Assembly mem-ber Joanne McCartney, mean-ing three of his four deputies are women.

The new mayor has taken two weeks to announce his fi rst tranche of big jobs but insiders said the delay was because he was keen to get them right.

Johnson lost several key mem-bers of his team in the fi rst weeks of his mayoralty in part because he rushed into appointments.

Khan also announced that Labour Assembly member Fiona Twycross would be-come chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority.

During the mayoral contest, he promised to

“put the fi ght for gender equal-ity” at the very heart of his may-oralty.

He spoke of how his mother sewed dresses for 50p each to help make ends meet and how he wanted his teenage daughters to have the opportunity to do less insecure and diffi cult work.

“It is unacceptable that in London, one of the world’s great-

est and most progressive cit-ies, someone’s pay, career prospects and their safety are still dependent on their gender,” he said.

Khan said yesterday his new top team brought

together Lon-doners with extensive ex-perience and knowledge.

Val Shawcross - Deputy mayor for transportRespected and liked former Labour

Assembly member. Her expertise

will make her task — getting TfL’s

finances into shape before it loses

government funding in 2018 — a

little easier. Warm and diplomatic

but a tough operator.

Sophie Linden - Deputy mayor for policingA special adviser to David Blunkett

at the Home Off ice, and worked

closely with former respect czar

Louise Casey on anti-social behav-

iour. She is regarded as compas-

sionate, but no woolly liberal on

crime and community safety policy.

Insiders say she “won’t take any

nonsense” from senior off icers.

Joanne McCartney - Statutory deputy mayorThis highly thought-of Labour

Assembly member was Khan’s first

appointment — reflecting his trust

in her ability and experience. The

new mayor’s right-hand woman is

expected to take on a beefed-up

role, perhaps including community

engagement. Although softly spo-

ken, this former barrister is a force

to be reckoned with.

James murray - Deputy mayor for housingThe pressure is on this young

former Islington councillor to

deliver the mayor’s pledge of thou-

sands more aff ordable homes. His

intellect impressed his boss during

the election campaign.

Paul McCartney: candid confessions

M AYO R ’ S T O P T E A M

BRITAIN17Gulf Times


Actress hospitalisedafter collapse at spaLondon Evening Standard

London

Actress Sheridan Smith was yesterday recovering after reportedly collapsing at a

health retreat and being rushed to hospital. The actress, who is tak-ing a month-long break from the West End, fell ill at the Champneys spa, it was claimed.

Ambulances were called to the fi ve-star retreat after staff rang 999 on Sunday. The actress, 34, was said to have been taken to the Royal Surrey County Hospital at Guildford as a “priority”.

Earlier this month, Smith with-drew from Funny Girl at the Sa-voy Theatre after suff ering from “stress and exhaustion”. It fol-lowed what the theatre called a “very diffi cult” period for her.

A source told The Sun news-paper: “Sheridan has been at Champneys to undergo total rest while she’s been recuperating dur-ing her time off from Funny Girl. Things have been looking up, but on Sunday there was a medical emergency and ambulances were called. But she is doing much bet-ter and it has nothing to do with

stress or her state of mind.” A source close to the actress yester-day said she was consulting with her lawyers.

Smith — whose father Colin was diagnosed with cancer this year — has hit out at “bullying” she has suff ered online. Her spokeswom-an did not respond to requests for comment and Champneys said it was unavailable to comment.

Champneys has long been pop-ular with celebrities wanting to escape the pressures of fame and living in London. Famous clients have included Barbra Streisand, Victoria Beckham and Tony and Cherie Blair.

The reported health scare comes after it was announced the star would take four weeks off af-ter cancelling three performances in a row.

The Savoy Theatre announced that the star’s understudy, Nata-sha Barnes, would be playing her lead role in Funny Girl for ‘two to four weeks’ amid growing specu-lation about her health.

The producers released a state-ment, which said the star is now getting the “rest and support she needs during this very diffi cult and stressful time”.

Family holidays

could cost more

after Brexit,

claims Cameron Guardian News and MediaLondon

The cost of a family holiday could rise by £230 and new limits on duty free could put

an end to “booze cruises” to the continent if Britain votes to leave the EU, David Cameron claimed.

In the latest warning about the price of Brexit, the prime minis-ter argued that the cost of holiday spending and accommodation could go up because of the falling pound.

The Leave campaign is likely to level charges of exaggeration and scaremongering at the new Treas-ury fi gures, released a day after a warning about job losses, lower wages, higher infl ation and falling house prices.

But Downing Street insists it is setting out the government’s ob-jective viewpoint ahead of the June 23 vote. In its new analysis, the Treasury claimed holiday prices could go up as soon as this sum-mer because the pound is likely to fall by around 12%, making the cost of accommodation, food and drinks higher for those travelling overseas. It predicted that two years after Britain leaving the EU, the average holiday for four people travelling together for eight nights in Europe would cost £230 more.

The government argued that other benefi ts would be at risk, including the end of roaming charges from 2017, free healthcare within the EU and booze cruises because of potential limits on duty free.

“All the evidence points to the value of the pound falling after a vote to leave the EU. A weaker pound means people’s hard-earned savings won’t go as far on holidays overseas,” Cameron warned.

“The choice facing the British people on June 23 is increasingly clear: the certainty and economic

security of remaining in the EU, or a leap in the dark that would raise prices – including the cost of a family holiday.” His warnings add to previous ones by airline chief executives, including Caro-lyn McCall of easyJet and Michael O’Leary of Ryanair, that the price of fl ights could be aff ected.

McCall said: “For easyJet and our passengers, membership of the EU has been a good thing. The common aviation area created by the EU allows any European airline to fl y anywhere in Europe. This has kept all airlines’ costs low and has enabled low-fare airlines like easyJet to expand.”

Two bosses of mobile phone companies backed the govern-ment’s claims that the UK would not necessarily benefi t from the end of mobile roaming charges from June 2017 if it left the EU.

Gavin Patterson, chief executive of BT Group, which owns EE, said: “Because of the UK’s membership of the EU, BT and EE have been able to off er our customers lower charges, including inclusive roam-ing plans and data charges that are over 90% lower for Britons travel-ling on the continent. Voters need to think very carefully before turn-ing their backs on an institution that helps to ensure benefi ts like that are delivered.”

Vittorio Colao, chief execu-tive of the Vodafone Group, said: “The end of roaming charges – which was driven by the EU – and Europe-wide off ers from opera-tors like Vodafone – the European leader in 4G – mean that everyone can use their mobiles anywhere in Europe without having to worry about excessive costs.

“Britain will benefi t from being part of a borderless European sin-gle digital market as it will create new opportunities for economic growth. Consequently, we believe it is better to be a shaper and leader from within, rather than being just a commercial neighbour.”

Lorry driver held ascyclist dies in crash

A 25-year-old cyclist has died after she was knocked down in a col-

lision with a lorry. Paramedics and onlookers went to help the woman after she was struck on a bridge over a railway line in Croydon. Despite attempts to save her, she was pronounced dead at the scene.

The lorry driver was arrested on suspicion of causing death by careless driving and failing to stop, and was questioned at a south London police station.

Mayor of Croydon Wayne Trakas-Lawlor said: “Deeply sorry to learn of the tragic death of the young woman cyclist in Croydon. Thoughts are with her friends and family. RIP.”

Witnesses told of the battle to save the woman’s life following the collision, which happened shortly before 2pm on Monday. Staff at a nearby nursing home rushed outside with blankets as

paramedics arrived.A resident said: “I could see

her lying in the road. The am-bulance team were giving CPR but there was no movement and I don’t think she was breath-ing.”

The crash was in St James’s Road at the junction with Lansdowne Road.

Mark Lovett, 46, bar manager of the Windmill pub, said: “I came down after my break and there were police everywhere. There were about seven police cars and about 30 police offic-ers. They had given up trying to resuscitate her and there were barriers all around.”

Another witness said she was left “shaken” by the crash.

“I saw a person wobble a lit-tle bit on their bike and then I looked again and the lorry jolt-ed from side to side, like it had hit something.

“I stopped my car and could see someone lying in the gutter between the pavement and the road covered in dirt.”

Another resident said: “I saw

police gathering all her belong-ings. It was heartbreaking. Only a little bit of the back of the bike was bent. That poor girl, her rucksack was lying on the road.”

Campaigners claim the layout of the road is dangerous, with cyclists being forced out into the road as a cycle lane ends at the approach to the bridge.

Tony James, 35, of cycling website Bikesy.co.uk, described the tragedy as “needless”.

He said: “This left me feeling sick because it was completely unnecessary. I know that bit of road well and it’s nasty. The cycle path stops there and the pavement juts out — throwing you out into the line of traffic. It’s a really bad design.”

Police were called by Lon-don Ambulance Service and the surrounding roads were cor-doned off.

A spokesman for the Met said: “The cyclist — a 25-year-old woman — was pronounced dead at the scene. Next of kin have been informed, but offic-ers await formal identification.”

Prime Minister David Cameron delivers a speech on the EU at Luton Airport yesterday.

London Evening StandardLondon

Sheridan Smith: ‘stressful time’.

Expats lose top courtfi ght for right to EU voteAgenciesLondon

British expats have lost their Supreme Court battle for the right to vote in the EU

referendum.The UK’s highest court upheld

the decisions of both the High Court and Court of Appeal. UK citizens are not eligible to vote on June 23 if they have lived outside the UK for more than 15 years.

The challenge was brought by World War II veteran Harry Shindler, 94, who lives in Italy, and lawyer and Belgian resident

Jacquelyn MacLennan, 54.Shindler, who has lived in Ita-

ly for 35 years, and MacLennan, from Inverness, who has lived in Belgium since 1987, argued that the 15-year rule acted as a pen-alty for them having exercised their rights to free movement, and was an infringement of their common law right to vote.

But fi ve Supreme Court justic-es – Lady Hale, Lord Mance, Lord Reed, Lord Sumption and Lord Hughes – unanimously rejected the last-ditch legal challenge.

MacLennan said she was “desperately disappointed” with the ruling.

Giving the verdict Lady Hale

said: “We have decided that it is not arguable that there is an in-terference with the right to free movement for the reasons given by both the High Court and the Court of Appeal in this case.”

She added: “We do have con-siderable sympathy for the situ-ation in which the applicants fi nd themselves. We understand that this is something that con-cerns them deeply, but we can-not discern a legal basis for chal-lenging this statute (2015 Act).”

More than 2mn British ex-pats are aff ected by the decision, which marks the end of the legal battle for an expat’s right to vote.

MacLennan, who had trav-

elled by train from Brussels to be at the hearing said: “I thought our arguments were very com-pelling. I feel we have tried our best but, having got to this stage and been able to make our ar-guments before the Supreme Court, we have not been able to change this law, which is so manifestly unjust.”

Both Shindler and MacLennan wanted to vote to oppose Brexit.

Shindler, a UK passport hold-er, was in the World War II land-ings at Anzio and still pays taxes on his pension to HM Revenue and Customs. He is worried that leaving the EU could seriously disrupt his way of life in Italy.

Shindler’s lawyer said the test case was being watched by many other expats, who fear a vote to leave the EU will lead to them being deprived of EU citizenship and the rights that go with it.

Downing Street welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling, saying the matter was discussed as part of the passage of the Referendum Bill and debated at length.

“The result of that discussion in Parliament and the vote was that people who left the UK more than 15 years ago would not be eligible to vote. We welcome the fact that the decision has been upheld,” the prime minister’s of-fi cial spokesman said.

Anti-fracking activists vow to fi ght council nod for projectGuardian News and MediaLondon

Anti-fracking campaigners have declared “war” on the industry after North York-

shire council approved the fi rst fracked well in the UK in fi ve years.

Campaigners opposed to the development outside Kirby Misperton – a village nestled in Ryedale near the North York Moors national park – have vowed

to fi ght the landmark decision.Activists have launched a

“people’s declaration” in a bid to stop the process from going ahead. There have also been calls for a judicial review by Frack Free Ryedale, which led the campaign against the application by the UK fi rm Third Energy, and by Friends of the Earth.

It said in a statement: “We urge and will support the government to develop a balanced long-term energy policy that will achieve our

globally agreed climate change targets. Today we resolve to con-tinue to fi ght to remain free from fracking, to protect our commu-nities, our beautiful countryside, our air and water, and to protect the future of the planet. We ask people across the country to join us by supporting this declaration.”

Following the council’s deci-sion, there were chants of “We say no” and “You will be held ac-countable” as protesters vowed to continue to fi ght fracking plans in

North Yorkshire and around the UK. “It is a war, now, they’ve de-clared on us,” said Sarah Hockey, an anti-fracking campaigner from east Yorkshire. “It’s a war on our human rights to clean air and wa-ter so we’ve got to take it like that and keep pushing and pushing and pushing.”

She added: “We need to mo-bilise people more. We need to inform people more. It may well be, tragically, that when the work starts and something goes wrong

like it did before in Lancashire that people will be horrifi ed and say, ‘We can’t have this’.”

Friends of the Earth said it is considering whether the decision can be challenged. Campaigner Simon Bowens said: “This is an absolute travesty of a decision but the battle is very far from over.”

One of the councillors who voted in favour of the application said he had received intimidating e-mails. He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Yes, a few. But that’s par for the

course, I suppose. But we tried to look to the future, the best for the people of England.”

Following a two-day meeting at county hall in Northallerton, councillors voted by a majority of seven to four to give the green light to the fracking operation near Pickering.

Despite thousands of objec-tions from residents and cam-paigners, councillors approved the plans, which will allow frack-ing in the UK for the fi rst time in

fi ve years. Fracking was halted on the Fylde coast in 2011, when tests found it was the probable cause for minor earthquakes in the area. Since then, two high-profi le ap-plications to frack in Lancashire have been rejected by councillors and are the subject of appeals.

Planners had recommended the most recent application be approved, despite acknowledg-ing that the majority of represen-tations received in consultation were objections.

EUROPE


Turkey’s new prime minis-ter has vowed to work im-mediately on forging the

stronger presidency wanted by the incumbent, Recep Tayyip Er-dogan, and announced a cabinet that signalled policy continuity but left little doubt as to who was in charge.

Top members of the economic management team including Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek, favoured by foreign in-vestors as a reformer, kept their posts in the new government; but around half of the names were reshuffl ed as Erdogan consoli-dated his 14-year hold on power.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told parliament he would seize a “historic opportunity” to change a constitution born of a 1980 army coup.

The new basic law would re-fl ect the fact that the president had for the fi rst time been popu-larly elected, rather than chosen by parliament.

Erdogan won Turkey’s fi rst presidential election in 2014 hav-ing stepped down from the prime

minister’s post with the inten-tion of imbuing a largely ceremo-nial presidency with strong pow-ers akin to those of the US and French heads of state.

Opponents fear creeping au-thoritarianism on the part of Erdogan, a polarising fi gure who commands fervent support from roughly half the country, helped by a weak and divided opposition that lacks strong leadership.

The nationalist MHP opposi-tion, whose support Erdogan may need to press through changes, said a presidential system would inevitably lead to despotism.

Yildirim told a parliamentary meeting of the ruling AK Party that change was needed as Tur-key aims to become a top-10 glo-bal economy within seven years.

“Turkey cannot reach its 2023 targets with its current constitu-tion.

This suit is too tight for this body now,” he said. “We are going to start working immediately on a new constitution that includes a presidential system ... It’s the AK Party’s most important duty.”

Yildirim rejected suggestions that the president, who will chair the new cabinet’s fi rst meeting today, was meddling in govern-

ment aff airs in violation of the current constitution.

His words refl ected the con-fused nature of a system that, while parliamentary in name, is dominated by Erdogan, by far Turkey’s most popular politician but loathed by opponents suspi-cious of his Islamist ideals and intolerance of dissent.

The lira currency fi rmed to 2.98 to the dollar after Yildirim announced the cabinet, from be-low 3.00 beforehand, refl ecting investors’ relief that Simsek and Finance Minister Naci Agbal had kept their positions.

The Istanbul stock market rose 3.4%, with banks leading the way.

The two advocate reforms to boost labour productivity and household savings, which econo-mists say are long overdue.

Tim Ash, a strategist at Nomu-ra and a veteran Turkey watcher, said the decision to retain Simsek appeared to be an attempt to keep investors happy, but questioned whether he would have the room to deliver the reforms needed.

“The power is moving to Er-dogan and his less orthodox policy advisers,” he wrote in an e-mailed note.

Erdogan favours consump-tion-led growth and has said high interest rates cause infl a-tion, a stance at odds with ortho-dox economics.

Investors have been unnerved by pressure to push rates down that has been exerted on the central bank, which cut the top end of its rate corridor for a third month yesterday.

Yildirim said he would priori-tise growth by boosting produc-tion, encourage investment and job creation, and maintain fi scal discipline, in a sign of continuity with policies that fuelled Tur-key’s growth during the AKP’s fi rst decade in power.

Nihat Zeybekci, a close Er-dogan ally, returned as economy minister, a post he had held until last November.

Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak kept his position as en-ergy minister.

In a new government pro-gramme that Yildirim read out to parliament, he also promised to protect central bank independ-ence and push ahead on struc-tural reforms.

On foreign policy, he said Tur-key still aimed for full member-ship of the European Union but

noted frustratingly slow progress so far.

Yildirim added that Ankara would support UN eff orts to-wards a resolution in the divided island of Cyprus, and work to boost ties with Iran and mend relations with Moscow, deeply strained since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane last Novem-ber.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Ca-vusoglu kept his job in the new cabinet, but former AK Party spokesman Omer Celik became the new EU minister at a critical time in relations with Europe.

Brussels and Ankara are try-ing to keep a deal on track which would allow Turks visa-free travel to Europe in return for Ankara continuing to stop illegal migrants reaching its shores.

While the EU is desperate for the deal to succeed, it also insists that Turkey meet 72 criteria, in-cluding reining in its broad anti-terror laws.

The EU and rights groups say Turkey uses the laws to sti-fl e dissent, while Ankara says it needs sweeping legislation to fi ght Kurdish insurgents and Is-lamic State militants who have launched attacks in Turkey.

New cabinet refl ects Erdogan’s authority

ReutersAnkara

Yildirim with Erdogan at the Presidential Palace after the prime minister submitted his new cabinet line-up, two days after being given a mandate.

Erdogan says Turkey parliament will block EU migrant deal if visa-free travel is not granted

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned the European Union that the

Turkish parliament would block laws related to the landmark deal to stem

the flow of migrants to Europe if Ankara was not granted its key demand

of visa-free travel.

“If that is not what will happen ... no decision and no law in the framework

of the readmission agreement will come out of the parliament of the

Turkish Republic,” Erdogan said at the close of the World Humanitarian

Summit in Istanbul.

There have been growing indications Turks will not be given the visa-

free travel by the target of the end of this month and Chancellor Angela

Merkel warned after talks with Erdogan on Monday that the target was

unlikely to be met.

The agreement – which is already being implemented – saw Turkey

pledge to work to stop migrants cross the Aegean to Europe and also

readmit migrants who crossed illegally.

EU off icials have hailed the success of the deal, but Ankara has grown in-

creasingly uneasy about the bloc’s wariness to grant it the visa-free travel

to the passport-free Schengen Area it was off ered in return.

Erdogan also complained about the EU’s wariness in handing over to

Turkey a promise of €3bn followed by another €3bn to help with Syrian

refugees.

“Turkey is not asking for favours what we want is honesty,” Erdogan said.

“Turkey is supposed to fulfil criteria? What criteria are these I ask you?” he

asked in an angry tirade that overshadowed the end of the summit.

EU leaders are insisting that Turkey abides by 72 conditions before the

visa exemption takes place, with a demand to change counter-terror laws

proving particularly contentious.

Erdogan complained that Latin American countries were not asked such

strict conditions as Turkey to be given visa-free travel.

“Turkey on the other hand is a candidate country, so why are you asking

for these conditions, all these question marks?” he said.

Austria’s centrist govern-ment, shaken by a far-right, near-victory in an

election for president, pledged yesterday to take fresh action on the asylum issue and to boost security in an eff ort to win back voters.

The anti-immigration Free-dom Party, whose candidate lost by a whisker to an environmen-talist, meanwhile said it would examine what it called numerous reports of irregularities in the election even though it accepted its candidate, Norbert Hofer, had been defeated.

Europe’s political estab-lishment, challenged in many countries by resurgent populist and anti-immigration parties, breathed a sigh of relief on Mon-day when postal ballots swung the election in favour of Alexan-der Van der Bellen in a dramatic photo-fi nish.

Hofer lost to Van der Bellen by less than one percentage point – a record performance for the party and a watershed for its al-lies across Europe.

A win would have made him the fi rst far-right head of state in the European Union.

“An election result is to be respected,” Hofer told a news conference, adding that he had congratulated Van der Bellen on his victory in the contest for the largely ceremonial post.

Looking at lessons to be learned, Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said yesterday: “One thing is absolutely clear – the protest that was expressed here is to be taken seriously.”

Though he said isolationism and euroscepticism were not op-tions for export-dependent Aus-tria, Kern, who was thrust into the top job after a party rebellion forced Werner Faymann to re-sign as head of the government, pledged action on fi ve points, in-cluding asylum and security.

“Isolationism and the belief that one can magically make the asylum issue disappear ... is an il-lusion,” Kern said.

Austria took in 90,000 asy-lum-seekers last year, more than 1% of its population, many of them shortly after it and neigh-bouring Germany opened their borders last autumn to a wave of migrants including refugees from Syria’s civil war.

Kern gave no details of what new measures might be planned.

The economy, jobs and cutting through state red tape would also be priorities, he said.

“You will hear from us in the coming weeks,” he said, adding that another aim was to hold a closed-door meeting with op-position parties on possible co-operation.

Frustration with traditional parties of government has fuelled Europe’s rising tide of populism, not least in Austria, where the Social Democrats and their coa-lition partner, the conservative

People’s Party, have dominated for decades.

The coalition government must work together until the next parliamentary election in 2018 or face the prospect of a snap vote that polls suggest the Freedom Party would win if it were held now.

Though Hofer conceded de-feat, Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache said the party had received many reports of abuse and he did not rule out challenging some results.

“We have indications that will be verifi ed,” he said alongside Hofer at the news conference. “Only after an assessment can one say whether there is some-thing in it, whether there is meat on the bone.”

The party says the postal vot-ing system is open to abuse.

Before the election it said it was watching for irregularities given the relatively high number of requests for ballots that are mainly used for postal voting.

Of the roughly 750,000 valid postal ballots cast, 61.7% were for Van der Bellen.

The examples Strache gave in-volved suspected discrepancies in counting, including one case the interior ministry announced yesterday, in which the number of ballots in one town was over-reported by around 6,000.

The ministry added, however, that the error did not signifi cant-ly aff ect the candidates’ percent-ages – 50.3% to 49.7%, or a dif-ference of just over 31,000 votes.

Shaken Austrian government promises action on asylumReutersVienna

Greece sent in police and bulldozers yesterday to knock down tents and

relocate hundreds of migrants who had been stranded for months in a squalid makeshift camp on the border with Mac-edonia.

Several busloads of people, most of them families with chil-dren, left the sprawling expanse of tents at Idomeni to move to state-run centres further south.

Buses were lined up ready to take more, Reuters witnesses said.

By the latest count, at least 8,000 people were camped at Idomeni in diffi cult, overcrowd-ed conditions with poor sanita-tion, ignoring previous calls by the government to leave.

As many as 12,000, mainly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, were stuck there at one point after Balkan countries shut their borders in February, barring them from crossing to central and northern Europe.

Greece was the main entry point for more than a million migrants who made it to Europe last year, mostly after perilous sea crossings.

New arrivals there have slowed sharply since the Euro-pean Union struck a deal with Turkey to get it to curb the fl ow, but the government says there are still more than 54,000 mi-grants on Greek soil.

It plans to move people grad-ually to state-supervised facili-ties which currently have a ca-pacity of about 5,000.

About 1,500 people had been relocated by late afternoon, po-lice said.

“The evacuation is progress-ing without any problem,” said Giorgos Kyritsis, a government spokesman on the migration crisis.

They would be relocated “ideally by the end of the week”, he said. “We haven’t put a strict deadline on it.”

A Reuters witness on the Macedonian side of the border said there was a heavy police presence in the area, but no problems were reported as peo-ple with young children packed up huge bags with their belong-ings.

Media on the Greek side of the border were kept at a distance.

Inside the Idomeni camp, po-lice in riot gear stood guard as people boarded the buses, state TV footage showed.

But at the Oreokastro camp near the city of Thessaloniki, migrants already there shouted

at new arrivals not to get off the buses because of conditions there, a Reuters witness said.

A police offi cial said about 1,000 people continued to block the only railway tracks linking Greece and Macedonia, closed off for weeks by protesters de-manding passage to northern Europe.

Trains were forced to divert through Bulgaria to the east, and some goods wagons have been stranded on the tracks for weeks.

“This should have happened a long time ago,” said Anastasios Sachpelidis, a local transporters association representative.

The closure was “a big loss”, he said. “We lost clients, we lost money, time and our credibil-ity.”

Human rights groups had raised alarm about the dete-riorating conditions at Idomeni, where children slept in the open, scuffl es broke out over food, and Macedonian forces who tear-gassed migrants trying to storm past the razor-wire fence.

International charity Save the Children said it was also concerned about a lack of basic services such as bathrooms and shelters for children in some of the offi cial camps.

“Many of the children, es-pecially lone children, have been through enough trauma already,” said Amy Frost, its Greece team leader. “Reloca-tions to formal camps need to be managed sensitively to ensure the process is not adding to the trauma.”

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said Greece had to ensure the individuals now

had access to asylum.“That has been an issue –

making sure Greece has this ca-pacity to do that. It is something that we have to continue to watch,” spokesman Adrian Ed-wards told a briefi ng in Geneva.

A sharp rise in asylum ap-plications since the EU-Turkey deal has burdened Greece’s asy-lum system, already criticised as inadequate and slow.

Progress has also lagged on a scheme to redistribute 160,000 asylum-seekers from Greece

and Italy to other EU states to alleviate pressure on the two frontline countries.

Just 1,145 people have been relocated so far.

The evacuation of Idomeni signalled “the establishment of medium to long-term camps on European soil”, said Melanie Ward of aid group International Rescue Committee. “How long do we expect people – so many of whom have fl ed war and con-fl ict – to be living in tents in refugee camps in Greece?”

Greece sends teams to move migrants from border campReutersIdomeni, Greece

A migrant family carries their belongings during an evacuation operation by police forces at the border camp near the Greek-Macedonian border village of Idomeni.

The surge of migration to Europe is enormously positive for EU economies

in the long term, the director general of the International Or-ganisation for Migration (IOM) said, praising improved eff orts by European nations to integrate migrants into the economy.

More than 1mn migrants, many refugees escaping confl ict in Syria and other states, arrived in Europe in 2015 and almost 200,000 have arrived so far this year by land and sea routes.

The infl ux has caused concern in some conservative EU socie-ties, boosting right-wing par-ties, and also prompted the bloc to negotiate a controversial deal with key transit country Turkey

to stem the fl ow of migrants.But with labour shortages in

ageing EU societies, IOM direc-tor general William Lacy Swing said migration has a positive eco-nomic eff ect on Europe.

“In general it is positive, be-cause migrants bring a lot of mo-tivation,” Swing told AFP at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul.

“Many of them bring a specifi c skill or they bring low level skills that fi ll jobs that people ... in the European Union, United States, Japan for example ... don’t want to do,” the head of the inter-governmental organisation said. “They will soon be putting mon-ey into the market and the sooner they can become regularised, the sooner they will pay tax, and the sooner they can become citizens, the sooner they can vote.”

“It (the benefi t) is all very

positive if you look over it in the medium term at least. And in the long term it’s enormous.”

With 20mn refugees and 40mn displaced persons in the world, the issue of integrating migrants has taken on a huge im-portance at the summit.

Overall, around one in seven people around the world could be considered in a state of migra-tion, said Swing.

He said Europe had started to act seriously after failing to “see or hear the early warning signals” that migrants who had spent up to half a decade in refugee camps would want to move north.

“The EU is making a serious eff ort to try to address the ques-tion of trying to fi nd a way to de-cide who these people are, which ones are actually refugees, which ones could be integrated into lo-cal economy.”

Migration is ‘enormously positive’ for Europe economies: IOM chiefAFPIstanbul

Drop in deaths in Mediterranean ‘a hopeful sign’

Fewer migrants are dying as they try to cross the Mediterranean to

Europe, which may reflect better management of refugee flows and

swifter rescue operations, the International Organisation for Migration

(IOM) said yesterday.

So far this year 1,370 migrants and refugees have perished at sea,

nearly 25% fewer than in the same period last year, IOM spokesman

Joel Millman said.

An estimated 191,134 people have arrived by boat so far this year in

Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Spain.

The death toll included 13 in May, none of them on the eastern Mediter-

ranean route between Turkey and Greece, where arrivals have slowed

to a trickle since the European Union struck an agreement with Turkey

to get it to curb the flow.

This compared with 95 deaths in May a year ago and 330 in May 2014.

More than 3,770 people are estimated to have died in the whole of

2015, most of them by drowning after their flimsy, overloaded boats

capsized.

“Obviously now that the Turkey-Greece route appears suspended for

the time being, we hope that this is the beginning of a sound manage-

ment policy of refugees and migrants who wish to make the crossing

and don’t take these enormous risks,” Millman told a news briefing.

Some 2,725 migrants were rescued attempting to reach Europe from

Libya over the past 24 hours by various vessels, he said.

The IOM also had reports that Libya’s coastguard had turned back 850

migrants.

The IOM has had greater access to Libya since a UN-backed national

unity government was formed last month.

The agency is helping to organise charter flights to repatriate sub-

Saharan migrants who agree to take a package or receive a re-integra-

tion grant.

EUROPE19Gulf Times


France’s government stepped up eff orts yes-terday to break blockades

and strikes at refi neries that are threatening to paralyse the coun-try just three weeks ahead of the Euro 2016 football tournament.

But the leader of the CGT, the union driving the action, vowed to continue the disruption until the Socialist government with-draws planned reforms to the la-bour laws.

Police used tear gas and water cannon to clear a blockade erect-ed by CGT activists at the key Fos-sur-Mer refi nery near the southern city of Marseille.

At least six out of the eight refi neries in France have either stopped operating or have re-duced output due to strikes and blockades.

With a fi fth of the country’s 12,000 service stations either dry or low on fuel, President Francois Hollande said a deadlock caused “by a minority” was unaccept-able.

The chief executive of Total said yesterday that the disrup-tion meant the French oil giant would have to “seriously review” its investment plans in France.

“If our colleagues want to take an industrial asset hostage for a cause that is foreign to the com-pany, you have to ask whether that is where we should invest,” Total chief executive Patrick Pouyanne told reporters.

Total operates fi ve of the refi n-eries that are aff ected.

Adding to the pressure on the government, hundreds of thou-sands of football fans will soon travel to France for the month-long European football champi-onships that kick off on June 10.

Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls vowed to lift the blockades, part of an escalating three-month campaign of strikes against the labour reforms.

Valls appealed to the CGT un-ion, France’s largest, to act re-sponsibly.

“To take consumers, our econ-omy, our industry hostage in this way – to continue actions aimed at getting the draft law with-drawn – is not democratic,” Valls said, speaking during a visit to Israel.

At dawn yesterday, riot police clashed with union activists as they moved in to lift a blockade of the refi nery and fuel depots at Fos-sur-Mer, on the Mediterra-nean coast.

The local police authority said offi cers had met “signifi cant re-sistance” and several police and activists had been hurt.

Police would attempt to clear blockades at other refi neries, Valls said.

But CGT general secretary Philippe Martinez remained de-fi ant.

Most people in France are op-posed to the labour reforms that the union was fi ghting, he told BFMTV.

The prime minister was play-ing “a dangerous game” trying

to set the CGT against the wider population, he said.

Labour Minister Myriam El Khomri told parliament that while the government respect-ed the right to strike, blocking transport routes went beyond that.

“Can the CGT bring the coun-try to a standstill?” asked the left-leaning daily newspaper Liberation asked on its front page yesterday.

Jean-Christophe Cambade-lis, fi rst secretary of the Social-ist Party, told reporters: “It’s not for a trade union organisation to make the law.”

Some local authorities in the north and northwest of France have imposed rationing.

In the northeast meanwhile, motorists were crossing the bor-

der to fi ll up at Belgian petrol sta-tions.

A few minutes’ drive from France, in Hertain, Belgium, a 24-year-old lorry driver who gave his name as Amazigh, was grateful for the lifeline: “With-out petrol, we can’t work. Here, I fi lled up for tomorrow and I can go back to Lille”, the French city just 18km (11 miles) away.

In Belgium itself, riot po-lice fi red water cannon at anti-austerity protesters yesterday as unions there called for mass protests and strikes over their government’s proposed labour reforms.

To add to the French govern-ment’s problems, rail unions are due to strike from today for two days.

Another nationwide day of

strikes and demonstrations against the draft law has been called for tomorrow.

And the unions representing ground personnel and air traffi c controllers threatened yesterday to call a three-day strike from June 3 as part of a separate dis-pute.

Opponents of the labour re-forms say they are too pro-busi-ness and will do little to reduce France’s jobless rate of around 10%.

But an International Monetary Fund report backed the govern-ment yesterday, arguing that the reforms were needed to reduce joblessness.

The government contro-versially forced the legislation through the National Assembly without a vote earlier this month.

French govt breaks union-led blockadesAFPParis

Police take up positions after striking workers blockaded roads near the refinery at Fos-sur-Mer, Marseille.

Belgian police used water cannon during clashes with protesters at a huge

demonstration in Brussels against the centre-right gov-ernment’s labour reform plans, leaving 10 people injured.

A group of around 100 masked protesters broke away from the peaceful main rally of around 60,000 people in the Belgian capital and started hurling objects and fi recrack-ers at riot police, AFP journal-ists said.

Offi cers then drove them back with jets of water from three cannons in the clashes, which took place near the ter-minal for the Eurostar high-speed international train that links London and Brussels.

Eight protesters and two po-lice offi cers were injured, the Belga news agency quoted the police as saying.

The protest was supposed to kick off months of planned demonstrations and national strikes led by trade unions against the austerity poli-cies of Prime Minister Charles Michel’s government.

It came as the government in neighbouring France stepped up eff orts to break blockades and strikes at refi neries that are threatening to paralyse the country ahead of the Euro 2016 football tournament.

“I am here to protest against all the measures that this right-wing government is tak-ing. They are attacking work-ers, pensioners and the unem-ployed,” Michel Beis, a union member taking part in the rally told AFP before the violence broke out.

Security had been tight amid fears of a repeat of the vio-lence that marred a mass rally

against reforms announced by Michel just after he came to power in 2014.

Brussels also remains under security alert following the March 22 suicide bombings at the airport and metro system, claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

Three main unions oppose proposed reforms from Em-ployment Minister Kris Peeters allowing employers to impose a more fl exible work week of up to 45 hours if needed, followed by shorter weeks to retain the principle of the 38-hour work week.

A mass public services rally and a rail strike are now due to take place on May 31, as well as general strikes on June 24, Sep-tember 29 and October 7.

“We are going backwards,” said Jacques Warnier, a pro-tester from the town of Liege.

Former socialist prime min-ister Elio di Rupo was among the crowd of protesters, who wore red, green and blue tops in the colours of the main unions from both Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia.

“The government endlessly talks about social dialogue but it doesn’t take into account the arguments of the unions and does not respect the dignity of the workers,” said Marc Gob-let, head of the socialist FGTB union.

Belgium’s government faces pressure on several fronts, being unable to end a near month-long strike by prison personnel which has forced it to mobilise the army to fi ll the gaps.

It has also come under fi re for alleged security lapses in the run-up to the Brussels at-tacks as in the November 13 Islamic State gun attacks and suicide bombings that killed 130 people in Paris.

Police use water cannon at protest against austerityAFPBrussels

Riot police arrest a demonstrator yesterday during a national anti-austerity demonstration in Brussels.

Europe’s Galileo sat-nav system, a rival to Amer-ica’s GPS, took a step

closer to becoming operational yesterday with the launch of a fresh pair of satellites to join a dozen already in space.

Orbiters 13 and 14 blasted off on a Russian Soyuz rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 0848 GMT as planned, according to space agencies.

After a journey of near-ly four hours, the 700kg (1,540-pound) satellites en-tered Earth orbit at an altitude of 23,522km (14,615 miles).

“Named for the astronomer who pinpointed the Earth’s true position in the Solar Sys-tem, the Galileo satellite navi-gation system that will help Europe fi nd its way in the 21st century now has 14 satellites in orbit,” the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

Seventeenth century Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was tried for heresy and jailed by the Catholic Church for insist-ing the Earth orbited the Sun.

Ultimately, the multi-bil-lion-euro constellation named after the “father of modern science” is meant to comprise 30-odd satellites – the fi nal number is yet to be determined – providing navigation and search-and-rescue services.

“This morning’s launch ... marks a further step towards European independence in satellite navigation,” said Stephane Israel, chairman of launch fi rm Arianespace.

Another launch, this time of four orbiters on a single rocket, is expected to boost the con-stellation to 18 by year-end, allowing for Galileo to start providing usable signals.

Israel told AFP the target launch date was November 17.

More modern than the US Global Positioning System (GPS), Galileo’s high-tech in-struments should allow it to provide a more precise signal, its developers say.

But the project has been plagued by delays, technical glitches and budgetary diffi -culties.

The launch of the seventh and eighth orbiters in March

last year was about three months late to allow engineers time to probe an August 2014 mishap which sent satellites fi ve and six into a lopsided or-bit.

That incident was blamed on frozen fuel pipes on the Soyuz rocket’s fourth stage, called Fregat – a problem the ESA says has since been fi xed.

The fi rst four, so-called In-Orbit Validation (IOV) satel-lites, were hoisted in 2011 and 2012.

In March 2013, the quar-tet managed to pinpoint their fi rst-ever ground location with an accuracy of between 10m-15m (32’ to 49’).

However, the launch of sat-ellites fi ve and six – meant to have been the fi rst fully op-erational Galileo constituents – was delayed by more than a year due to “technical diffi cul-ties”.

This was followed by the mi-slaunch of orbiters seven and eight, which the ESA says have since been nudged closer to their intended orbit, although their ultimate usefulness to the constellation has yet to be de-termined.

Another satellite dubbed IOV4, among the fi rst four launched, has developed an-tenna problems, according to the ESA, but is still able to transmit on one frequency.

The space agency had ini-tially hoped for early naviga-tion services to be available from 2014.

Yesterday’s launch, the sev-enth for Galileo, was a late ad-dition to the schedule in a bid to speed up deployment of the project funded by the Euro-pean Commission, the EU’s executive body.

“Today’s launch brings Eu-rope’s Galileo constellation halfway to completion,” said ESA Galileo director Paul Ver-hoef.

The commission had budg-eted some €7bn ($7.8bn) for Galileo until 2020.

“It is time we view Galileo in a positive light; it has been a fantastic success even if there were some stumbling blocks along the way,” insisted Israel.

The next 12 satellites will be launched with Europe’s own Ariane 5 ES launcher, espe-cially adapted to handle four at a time.

Europe launches fresh satellite pairAFPParis

A handout picture released yesterday shows the launching of Europe’s Galileo sat-nav system with a fresh pair of satellites to join a dozen already in space.

Poland’s right-wing gov-ernment and the European Commission said yester-

day that they were upbeat about fi nding a solution that would roll back Warsaw’s overhaul of the top Polish court, which critics warn endangers its independ-ence.

However, neither side pro-vided details about the measures meant to change controversial legislation introduced by the Law and Justice (PiS) government that has paralysed the constitu-tional court.

“I am confi dent we are moving towards fi nding a sustainable so-

lution to this problem,” European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans told reporters in Warsaw after talks with Prime Minister Beata Szydlo.

Szydlo said that changes her government plans are intended to heal the situation around the Constitutional Tribunal and ful-fi l the principles of a democratic

state with the rule of law”.The conciliatory tone comes

just fi ve days after Szydlo ac-cused Brussels of violating Po-land’s sovereignty and vowed that Warsaw would never bow to any EU ultimatum on the Consti-tutional Tribunal.

“We both agree this is a mat-ter that Poland must resolve it-self, but as an EU member we are always open to dialogue and providing information about our steps,” Szydlo said.

Last week the Commis-sion empowered Timmermans to adopt an “opinion” on the state of the rule of law in Poland on Monday, in the event Szy-dlo’s government failed to make progress on fi nding a resolution to the crisis over the weekend.

The Monday deadline came and went, without any action by the commissioner.

The European Commission – the EU’s executive arm – in Janu-ary launched an unprecedented probe to see if changes by Szy-dlo’s party to the constitutional court violated EU democracy rules and merited punitive meas-ures.

Warsaw is unlikely to be sub-ject to any punitive measures by Brussels over its controversial legislative moves, which also include tightening the govern-ment’s grip on public media.

Poland’s regional ally Hungary has vowed to torpedo any pos-sible sanctions, which would re-quire the unanimous approval of all 28 EU members.

Poland, EU ‘confi dent’ about solving row over top courtAFPWarsaw

Szydlo with Frans Timmermans (left) at the Prime Minister’s Chancellery in Warsaw.

Dutch MPs voted yesterday to strip dual nationals of their Dutch citizenship if

they join terror groups such as the so-called Islamic State (IS) group to fi ght, offi cials said.

The lower house of parliament approved the controversial bill to revoke the Dutch citizenship of people with dual nationality, if they are deemed to have joined foreign terror groups like IS or Al Qaeda – even if they have not been convicted of any crime.

The move comes in the wake of attacks in Paris last year and in

Brussels in March, carried out by European extremists thought to have returned home after joining radical organisations in Syria or Iraq as foreign fi ghters.

“These (Islamic militants) can pose a threat to national security when they return to the Nether-lands,” the justice ministry said in a statement.

“Therefore, even without a conviction on a terror charge, the justice minister can decide to strip a person of their nation-ality, if that person is deemed to have joined a terror organisa-tion,” ministry spokesman Wiebe Alkema told AFP.

However, the ruling does not apply to those who only have

Dutch nationality, Alkema said.Under international conven-

tions, countries are not allowed to intentionally make people stateless.

Justice Minister Ard Van der Steur fi rst proposed the changes to the law last year, saying they were necessary to stop militants returning to the Netherlands.

Dutch MPs vote to strip militants of dual nationalityAFPThe Hague

Three JeM suspects sent to 14 days judicial custody

No threat from Islamic State: Rajnath Singh

Two boys killed inManipur flash floods

One worker was killed and 14 were injured in an ammonium tank explosion in Srikar Pharmaceutical Company at J N Pharma City in Parawada near Visakhapatnam yesterday, police said. The explosion happened around 11am when about 20 workers were cleaning ice near the ammonium tank. The liquefied ammonium fell on the workers. A wall also collapsed under the impact, police said. One worker, identified as Ramakrishna, died while being shifted to the hospital. The condition of two is stated to be critical. The joint chief inspector of factories visited the factory and ordered a probe. The district administration shifted all the injured to the district headquarters hospital and local corporate hospitals for better treatment.

A Central Bureau of Investigation court yesterday sent suspended home ministry off icial Anand Joshi to judicial custody till June 6 in a case of corruption. CBI Special Judge Vinod Kumar remanded Joshi in 14 days’ judicial custody after the probe agency told the court that the accused was not required for further custodial interrogation. Joshi, who was undersecretary with the union home ministry until he was suspended, was presented before the court after the expiry of his earlier four days’ police custody. He was arrested on May 15 on the charge of “obtaining illegal gratification” from various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) after issuing notices to them under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA).

One killed in tankblast at drug firm

Home ministry off icial sent to jail

ACCIDENTCORRUPTION

A New Delhi court yesterday sent to 14 days judicial custody three Jaish-e-Mohamed (JeM) suspects arrested for planning a terror attack in Delhi and nearby areas. Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh remanded Mohamed Sajid, Shakir Ansari and Sameer in judicial custody till June 6 after Delhi police told him they were not required for further custodial interrogation. According to the police, the suspects were plotting to target “sensitive and crowded” areas in the national capital region. Police said the terror module, which was being closely watched by security and intelligence off icials, was busted after separate raids in parts of Delhi and neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.

TERRORISM SECURITY TRAGEDY

Two boys were killed and at least 15 houses washed away in flash floods in Manipur. A seven-year-old boy in Imphal East district was electrocuted on Monday when he walked on a live wire under the flood waters in Kyamgei area. The other boy is reported to have drowned in Ukhrul district. Villagers said: “We had informed the off icials before the breach of the Imphal river bank at Kyamgei. No off icial came with flood control materials. Even today the off icials and the local MLA have not visited us.” Fifteen more houses have been washed away in Kyamgei area in Imphal West district. The state’s Irrigation and Flood Control Minister Ngamthang Haokip said one executive engineer has been suspended for dereliction of duty.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh yesterday said there was no threat to India from Islamic State (IS) as people of the Muslim community are against the terror group. “Along with the alertness of the security, the Muslims in India are against the IS. They cannot grow in India as Muslims won’t allow them,” Singh said in an interview to ETV. Speaking about underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, Singh said: “He would be nabbed and brought back to India. Dawood is an international terrorist and there is need to take the help of international agencies to nab him. All the relevant documents against Dawood have been given to Pakistan.”


INDIA20

As expected, the knives are out in the Congress Party. Several leaders like Digvi-

jaya Singh, Satyavrat Chaturvedi and Shashi Tharoor are call-ing for “immediate surgery” and “prompt action” to restore the health of the party following the shock (only to them) losses in the latest round of assembly elections in four states.

But there is a minor problem. You perform surgery on a patient after administering anaesthesia, not when the patient is in coma. The Congress has been comatose for more than two years. Anaes-thesia is medically induced coma and is reversible. Coma does not promise such reversibility. On empirical evidence the Congress can remain comatose for a long time to come. Any doctor worth his salt will, therefore, rule out surgery. What then?

There is much depressing sta-tistics available on the sorry state of aff airs in the Congress. From a party that once governed the entire country, it has been reduced to rul-ing just six states plus one federally administered territory (Puduch-erry). Only about 85mn Indians, out of a total of around 1.3bn, live in Congress-ruled states which now cover just over 7% of the country’s landmass. Five of the six states it is in power are considered second-rung, Karnataka being the sole exception. The rate at which the Congress is losing power and

popular support - it is not even second in many of the states where other parties are in power - it could itself end up as a regional party in the not-too-distant future. What is the way forward?

Since India is still a farming country, the imagery best suited for the party can be taken from the farm itself. Imagine a farmer having ten acres of which nine are drought aff ected. He can presently cultivate only on a single acre. So he would then concentrate on get-ting the most out of that one acre. He knows that if he puts all his ef-forts into that one acre he can, over time, earn enough to invest in a drip-irrigation system for the rest of the acreage and can eventually get yields from them too.

For the Congress Party Kar-nataka is that one acre and good governance is cultivation. Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi or whoever matters in the party should now concentrate on Karnataka to make sure that the party delivers there. In the three years it has been in power there under the chief min-istership of S Siddaramaiah it has been hotchpotch governance at best. Farmers have been commit-ting suicide at regular intervals. Bengaluru, the city that even US President Barack Obama men-tions with a certain element of envy, is now a gridlocked mass of humanity breathing poisonous air. Its potholed roads and pol-luted lakes are a far, far cry from

Silicon Valley to which it is quite often compared. To top it all, the administration at every level is neck deep in corruption. It is any-body’s guess what the outcome of the next elections will be.

Elections will come round to Karnataka in May 2018. In the two years to that date if the Gandhis - for, that’s the only name that matters in the party - can make sure that the state is governed in the best possible manner, that the “Karnataka model” of governance is equal to or better than the “Gu-jarat model” which the then chief minister Narendra Modi marketed so well in 2014, then the Congress can hope to retain power in the state and go on to challenge the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the general elections in 2019. For this the Congress will have to invest heavily in the state. If “surgery” is needed, whereby a new chief minister and new ministers are inducted, then so be it. Shape up or ship out is what the Gandhis should be telling Siddaramaiah and his ministers.

Of course all this is easier said than done. But then again if you

are the principal opposition party at the national level with aspira-tions to one day rule India again nothing comes easy. Rahul Gan-dhi taking over the presidency of the party or even Priyanka Gandhi stepping into that post will have only limited impact if the ground realities are not faced up to. And today the best place to do that is Karnataka. If there is one message that the Indian voter is sending to her leaders through these recent elections it is that she wants re-sponsible and responsive admin-istration. While doles and freebies are welcome, what she is really looking for is a government that meets her aspirations for jobs, security and clean environment. (Both Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee who retained their holds in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, respectively were able to come up with a mixture of both although in varying degrees. The Congress in Kerala and Assam failed to live up to those expectations).

The problem with the Con-gress Party is it has lately become a synonym for corruption. Two years after it was thrown out of

power at the centre allegations continue to fl ow unabated. Even as the AugustaWestland issue was engaging national attention, there came the sting video of Ut-tarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat trying to “buy” support for his government. Where would he have got the money from? Sid-daramaiah himself was embroiled in a controversy recently when he displayed wrist watches costing millions and declared they were “gifts from an NRI friend.” These are tips of that proverbial ice-berg. Apparently the feeling is the party’s days are numbered and, therefore, those who can get their hands in the till must make good while it lasts. Surely not the ideal recipe for winning elections.

Even as it hopefully gets its Karnataka house in order, the Congress can also revisit its present strategy of opposing Modi for the sake of opposing, some-thing that has taken the party no-where. It can possibly extend sup-port to legislations like the goods and services tax (GST) by going to town that it was originally the Congress Party’s idea which the BJP is now trying to lay claim to. Rahul Gandhi can also stop try-ing to rent a rebellion through his visits to the Jawaharlal Nehru University and such. The vice-president of India’s second largest party must be seen to be espous-ing more important causes.

India certainly needs a strong

opposition party, else the Modi-led BJP, already suff ering from ar-rogance, could lose its democratic moorings. While some of the re-gional parties like the Trinamool Congress, the AIADMK, the Jana-ta Dal (United), the Biju Janata Dal and the two main parties in Uttar Pradesh have all had unquali-fi ed successes in their respective states, they will remain local par-ties because of their intrinsic pro-vincial nature. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is trying hard to slip into prominence but Arvind Ke-jriwal is his own worst enemy. If the AAP fails to do well in next year’s Punjab assembly elections, it will remain a Delhi party and may even dissipate further. Sud-denly the Congress, in its hour of defeat, looks to be the only hope! Ironical, isn’t it?

CPM has goldenchance to reformWhat is true for the Congress in Karnataka is true for the Com-munists in Kerala. With West Bengal rejecting it emphatically once again and with out-of-sight Tripura its only other citadel, the Communist Party of India (Marx-ist) has a long and arduous road ahead on its comeback trail.

A defeat in Kerala would have fi nished off the party complete-ly. Instead the Marxists have a golden chance to prove that they

have mended their 19th century revolutionary ways and are now a modern party attuned to a young electorate. The fi rst sign towards this was visible in the selection of chief minister. Pinarayi Vijayan himself admits that doctrinaire communism has no relevance to-day and people want development more than ideology. That the party chose him over V S Achuthanan-dan, the sterner apparatchik, to lead the government is indication enough that the CPM is serious in turning over a new leaf in the state.

Kerala enjoys a high literacy rate and is at the top of several positive human indices. Its high stand-ard of living has so far been made possible mainly due to the nearly 3mn Gulf-based Malayalis mak-ing regular remittances. Experts call it the state with a “money order economy.” While some dire predictions had been made about the fl eeting nature of this wealth, it has somehow held on for the past four decades.

But there is no alternative to industrialisation for development and growth as has been proven the world over. For this one of the fi rst pre-requisites is a favourable labour climate. The Marxists, in the name of fi ghting for the work-ing class, had destroyed all work in both West Bengal and Kerala. Now it will be up to Vijayan to cut a new path to restore confi dence in both the worker and the indus-trialist.

Congress faces risk of ending up as regional partyDelhi Diary

By A K B Krishnan

Gulf Times Correspondent

Rights groupurges govtto repeal‘abusive’ lawsIndia is using outdated laws to silence dissent, says HRW

AFPNew Delhi

India routinely uses outdated and loosely worded laws to crack down on dissent, Hu-

man Rights Watch said yesterday, urging the government to repeal or amend legislation used to sti-fl e free speech.

A new report from the group details the use of colonial-era laws such as sedition and crimi-nal defamation to clamp down on government critics in the world’s biggest democracy.

It comes months after the ar-rest of Jawaharlal Nehru Univer-sity students’ union leader Kan-haiya Kumar on a controversial sedition charge sparked major protests and a nationwide debate over free speech.

“India’s abusive laws are the hallmark of a repressive soci-ety, not a vibrant democracy,” Meenakshi Ganguly, HRW’s South Asia director, said in a statement.

“Putting critics in prison or even forcing them to defend themselves in lengthy and ex-pensive court proceedings un-dermines the government’s ef-forts to present India as a modern country in the Internet age com-mitted to free speech and the rule of law.”

The report says the law on se-

dition, which prohibits anything that can trigger “hatred or con-tempt” for the government and carries a maximum punishment of life in prison, is among the most abused.

Convictions are rare, but the Indian judicial system is notori-ously slow and those charged can spend months or even years in jail awaiting trial.

In 2012, police in Tamil Nadu fi led sedition complaints against thousands of people who peace-fully protested against the con-struction of a nuclear power plant.

In 2014 - the most recent year for which fi gures are available -

47 sedition cases were registered across the country and just one person was convicted, accord-ing to the government’s National Crime Records Bureau.

The HRW report also says a law criminalising the deliberate wounding of religious feelings has had a “chilling eff ect” on freedom of expression in India and has led to self-censorship by authors, artists and publishers.

It cites Penguin India’s 2014 decision to withdraw a book on the history of Hinduism by American scholar Wendy Do-niger rather than fi ght a case brought by a fringe religious group.

Courtsdeny bailto Bihar legislator, husbandIANSPatna

A Bihar court yesterday re-fused to hear the bail ap-peal of suspended Janata

Dal-United legislator Manorama Devi.

Also yesterday, another court rejected the plea of her husband Bindi Yadav.

Manorama Devi and Bindi Ya-dav were arrested in connection with the killing of teenager Adi-tya Sachdeva by their son Rocky Yadav in Gaya town.

Rocky is the main accused in the killing of the Class 12 stu-dent.

“Gaya district and session judge has refused to hear her regular bail plea and deferred it to May 27,” a district police offi cial said.

The court asked the police to produce the case diary and their report.

“She is prisoner number 10,460 in the same Gaya central jail where her husband Bindi Ya-dav and son Rocky Yadav have been lodged,” a jail offi cial said.

Manorama Devi surrendered last week and the court remand-ed her in 14 days’ judicial custody.

An arrest warrant was issued against Manorama for keeping liquor in her home in Gaya town in violation of the prohibition law of the state and for harbour-ing her fugitive son who has since been arrested.

The chief judicial magistrate of the court has rejected the bail plea of Bindi Yadav who was also arrested in connection with the killing.

Rocky Yadav, 30, allegedly killed Aditya Sachdeva on May 7 on the Bodh Gaya-Gaya road for overtaking his car.

Rocky was on the run after the incident, allegedly with the help of his parents.

In 2012, police in Tamil Nadu filed sedition complaints against thousands of people who peacefully protested against the construction of a nuclear power plant.

Vice-Governor of Guangdong Province He Zhongyou welcomes President Pranab Mukherjee on his arrival at Guangzhou in China yesterday. Mukherjee began his four-day China visit from Guangzhou, a heavily industrialised city in south China which has strong trade links with India. It is Mukherjee’s maiden visit to China as president.

Pranab begins China visit

21Gulf TimesWednesday, May 25, 2016

INDIA

Air ambulance makesemergency landingIANSNew Delhi

An air ambulance coming from Patna with seven people on board, includ-

ing a patient with brain haem-orrhage, made an emergency landing in a fi eld on the outskirts of Delhi after both its engines failed.

The Beechcraft’s King Air C-90A aircraft (VT-EQO) was only a few kilometres away from Delhi when the engine malfunction led it to make an emergency landing in Najafgarh village in west Delhi at around 2.40pm.

An offi cial said the aircraft was only 9km away from runway number 10 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

One of the seven occupants, identifi ed as Bhagwan Rai, 60, received injuries and was rushed to Rao Tula Ram Memorial Hos-

pital where his condition is stat-ed to be stable.

“Bhagwan received minor abrasions on his head and some injuries on his thighs. He is sta-ble and is being treated. He will be referred to Medanta hospital soon,” Rao Tula Ram Memorial Hospital’s chief medical offi cer Neha Martolia said.

Martolia said the other peo-ple travelling in the aircraft were safe and have been taken to Medanta hospital in Gurgaon.

Apart from Bhagwan, Virender Rai (patient), pilot Amit, co-pilot Rohit, Rupesh (doctor), woman attendant Juhi and Jain Bahadur (technician) were travelling in the aircraft which was being operated by Al-chemist Airways Pvt Ltd.

Patna Airport director Ra-jinder Singh told reporters that a Director General Of Civil Avia-tion inquiry will reveal the rea-sons of engine failure.

No disrespect to Stalin, Jayasays after row over seatingIANSChennai

Tamil Nadu Chief Minis-ter J Jayalalithaa yester-day expressed her hap-

piness at opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader M K Stalin attending her swear-ing-in ceremony and thanked him.

But she said the seating ar-rangement at the event was ac-cording to protocol and that there was no intent to show dis-respect to him or his party.

In a statement issued here, Jayalalithaa said: “I am informed that the Public department had followed the protocol manual in allocating seats in the hall for the event.

“If this seating plan caused him any discomfi ture, I would like to assure him that there was

no intent to show disrespect to him or his party.”

The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief said if the offi cers had brought to her notice that Stalin would be at-tending the event, then instruc-tions would have been given to them to give him a seat in the fi rst row.

“I convey my good wishes to him and look forward to working with his party for the betterment of the state,” she added.

On Monday soon after Jay-alalithaa and her council of ministers were sworn in, DMK president and Stalin’s father M Karunanidhi complained that the AIADMK had insulted his party by relegating Stalin to the back rows.

Karunanidhi said that the DMK, by winning 89 seats in the elections will be the princi-pal opposition party in the as-

sembly and Stalin would be on the front rows in the house, but at the ceremony, R Sarathku-mar, of AIADMK ally All India Samathuva Makkal Katchi but who had lost in the elections, was seated in the front row, and Stalin and other DMK leaders were allotted seat in the tenth row.

Meanwhile, Stalin was elected as leader of the DMK legislature party in the Tamil Nadu assem-bly yesterday.

In a statement, the DMK said the decision was taken at a meeting of the party’s newly-elected legislators presided over by Karunanidhi, and will pave the way for Stalin to become the leader of the opposition.

Senior leader Duraimurugan was elected deputy leader of the legislature party, R Chakrapani as the whip and K Pichandi as deputy whip.

Corruptionwill not betolerated,says VijayanIANSThiruvananthapuram

Communist Party of In-dia (Marxist) leader and Kerala chief minister-

designate Pinarayi Vijayan said yesterday that his government would not tolerate infl uence peddling and corruption.

Even before assuming offi ce, “some people have started to move around using my name,” Vijayan said at a press conference.

“I have been told that some-one who is right now in Hydera-bad claims I have sent him there. I will not reveal who it is but through this statement he will know that,” Vijayan said.

“The people of Kerala should be careful of such people and corruption will not be tolerated at any level,” said Vijayan who is set to be sworn in today along with 18 other ministers.

He said all necessary scrutiny would be carried out before ap-pointing the staff members of the ministers to make sure only clean people get appointed.

Vijayan said a new chapter would begin in the history of Kerala today when another new Left government assumes offi ce.

“We will ensure that we will be a government that will work for the betterment of the people and it will have to be devoid of any preference for caste, creed or communities; instead it will be one for all people.”

Sweets were distributed be-fore the start of Vijayan’s press conference, which he explained was on account of his birthday.

Vijayan said records show March 21 to be his offi cial date of birth, but it was on May 24 that he was born.

Gulf Times Correspondent adds:Vijayan, known as a pragmatic

communist and a man of action who does not believe in token-ism, will be the state’s 22nd chief minister, and the sixth com-munist leader to occupy the hot seat.

He will chair the fi rst meet-ing of his 19-member cabinet at

6.30pm where some crucial de-cisions are expected.

Vijayan said he had not yet re-ceived the list of all the ministers and would meet the governor only in the morning after the list was ready.

“The May 16 assembly elec-tion was fought fi ercely. That is over. Various candidates have been elected and those who got a majority are forming the govern-ment. For the state’s betterment, everyone should work together,” he said.

Meanwhile CCTV cameras installed in the Chief Minister’s Offi ce were removed yesterday.

Aides of outgoing chief min-ister Oommen Chandy said no instructions went from him to the state-run Centre for Devel-opment of Imaging Technology (C-DIT), which maintains the system, to remove the cameras.

Chandy installed the devices when he fi rst took over as the chief minister from A K Antony in 2004 as part of his transparency initiatives and threw open the doors of his offi ce to the public.

However, his successor V S Achuthanandan, who occupied the offi ce 2006-11, shut the cameras and doors of the CMO till Chandy came back in 2011.

Chandy also started live-streaming on smartphones, and the webcast earned him nation-al attention as he was the fi rst leader in India, perhaps in the world, to do so.

He pursued his transparency initiatives more vigorously and strengthened eGovernance re-ducing corruption at government offi ces and his offi ce again turned “free-for-all” which fi nally did his rule in despite unprecedented development eff orts.

The CM’s website www.kera-lacm.gov.in, now offl ine for the new leader to take over, also fea-tured a host of facilities such as online fi ling and tracking peti-tions.

In 2013, the CMO received the UN Public Service Award from the Asia-Pacifi c region for “pre-venting and combating corrup-tion in the public service.”

Assam Governor P B Acharya administers the oath of off ice and secrecy to Sarbananda Sonowal in Guwahati yesterday. Also seen is Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Govt will work for all, says new Assam CMPM attends Sonowal’s swearing-in ceremony

IANSGuwahati

Assam’s newly sworn-in Chief Minister Sarba-nanda Sonowal yester-

day promised a “poverty-free” state that will serve all sections of the society irrespective of caste, creed and religion.

“We all have to work together. In this election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bodoland People’s Front and the Asom Gana Parishad went to the peo-ple with a pledge to work for all sections of the society, for Assamese, Bengalis, Rabhas, Marwaris and all others. Peo-ple have reposed their faith in

us,” Sonowal said in his maiden speech after being sworn-in as the chief minister.

“In Assam, all kinds of peo-ple reside. We may have diff er-ent manners of praying to the God, but we have all been liv-ing together for ages,” Sonowal said.

Referring to the issue of lin-guistic divide in the north-eastern state, Sonowal, who spoke in Assamese, said: “Our government will work along with all sections of the society, ranging from the Barak Valley to Brahmaputra Valley.”

He said in the last two years Prime Minister Narendra Modi has steered an inclusive central government committed to de-velopment and “good govern-ance.”

Sonowal also appreciated the

immense sacrifi ces and hard work of foot soldiers of the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Sonowal was earlier sworn in as the fi rst BJP chief minister of Assam at a massive public meeting that was also attended by Modi and his senior cabinet and party colleagues.

Sonowal, 53, took the oath along with Himanta Biswa Sarma, the former Congress strongman who crossed over to the BJP last year and is largely credited for its huge electoral victory that dislodged 15 years of the Congress rule.

Assam Governor P B Acharya administered the oath of offi ce and secrecy to Sonowal, for-merly federal minister of state for youth aff airs and sports, and his council of ministers.

Modi addressed the gather-ing after the oath ceremony which turned into a BJP’s show of strength on the first day of its first government in the state.

“Our job doesn’t end at vot-ing. For development it is im-portant the people work with the government together,” Modi said.

The prime minister promised that the central government “will always try to stay ahead, even if by a step, than the Assam government” for the develop-ment of the state.

The ceremony, also attended by BJP president Amit Shah and veteran leader L K Advani, was held at the sprawling Khanapara rally ground Guwahati.

Also present at the event were the chief ministers of the BJP-

ruled states and leaders of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Chief ministers of other northeastern states also partici-pated.

Former chief minister Tarun Gogoi, who headed the Con-gress government for 15 years before Sonowal dethroned him, also attended the event.

Leaders who took oath as cabinet ministers included BJP’s Parimal Shuklabaidya, Chandra Mohan Patowary and Ranjit Dutta.

Atul Bora and Keshav Ma-hanta from the AGP, Pramila Rani Baishya and Rihan Daim-ary of the BPF also took oath as cabinet ministers.

Two BJP legislators - Nab Doley and Pallab Lochan Das - were sworn-in as ministers of state with independent charges.

Security personnel secure the site where an air-ambulance, carrying seven passengers, crash landed after losing both its engines in New Delhi yesterday.

Two-thirds of Indians happy with Modi government: surveyIANSNew Delhi

About two-thirds of In-dians are happy with the two years of Prime Minis-

ter Narendra Modi government’s performance, according to a sur-vey.

Sixty-four percent of citizens say the government’s perform-ance met with expectations, while 36% found it below expectations, the survey by LocalCircles said.

The key areas where more ef-forts were needed include wom-en and child safety and control-ling price rise.

The respondents rated the di-rect benefi ts transfer initiative highly over the Swachh Bharat and Make in India programmes. Overall, 76% citizens feel opti-mistic about their and their fam-ily’s future in India.

Most want the government to focus on bringing investments and creating jobs in the next three years, said the report.

“Around 61% believe the gov-ernment has done its best to get GST approved while 30% don’t believe so. About 72% believe there has been growth in infra-structure development but only 20% disagree.”

Citizens from diff erent parts of India and some NRIs partici-pated in the exercise which last-ed almost a month and included a combination of 20 polls and discussions. Over 15,000 citi-zens participated in each one of the polls and a total of 375,568

responses were received making it a very large sample size.

The sample also included people from all age groups - 18 and above. Also, 46% of the re-spondents were from tier 1 cit-ies, 27% from tier 2 cities and 27% from tier 3 and rural parts of India.

The report said that 35% be-lieved that the unemployment rate had fallen, while 43% be-lieved otherwise. About 38% believed prices of essential commodities have come down,

while 55% believed they have gone up.

“About 38% believe crime against women/children has reduced, while 44% believe it has not. Around 18% believe their elected MP is engaged in constituency issues, while 66% see no engagement,” said the re-port.

According to the survey, 36% believed the ministries are tak-ing citizen feedback and acting but 48% believed they are not. About 67% believed cleanliness

and sanitation in their city has improved, while 28% saw no im-provement.

The report also said that 61% believed corruption has reduced, while 32% didn’t see any fall. About 56% saw an improvement in power/water situation while 34% haven’t experienced im-provement.

“About 72% believe that ter-rorism has reduced, only 21% believe they have not. A whop-ping 90% feel India’s image and infl uence in the world has im-

proved, while only 8% disagree,” the report added.

According to the survey, 34% believe relationship with Paki-stan has improved, while 51% don’t see an improvement. About 63% believed issues of communalism have been eff ec-tively handled, while 31% didn’t think so.

“About 68% believe the gov-ernment is on track to deliver on promises made before elections, while 26% don’t believe so,” it added.


LATIN AMERICA

Argentineex-securitychiefs jailedfor protestdeathsAFPBuenos Aires

An Argentine court jailed two former top security offi cials for the deaths

of fi ve demonstrators in a 2001 crackdown on protests that brought down then president Fernando de la Rua.

De la Rua was forced to resign and fl ee the presidential palace at the height of a raging econom-ic crisis that triggered riots in the streets after his government slashed Argentines’ salaries and froze their bank deposits.

The court ruled that former security secretary Enrique Mathov and former federal po-lice chief Ruben Santos were responsible for the deaths of protesters killed when police opened fi re on a crowd outside the presidential palace.

Mathov was sentenced to four years and nine months for culpable homicide and culpable injuries and banned from public offi ce for nine-and-a-half years.

Santos was sentenced to four years. Two former police chiefs and four police offi cers were giv-en sentences ranging from three to three-and-a-half years.

The sentences can be appealed.

Two journalists gomissing in ColombiaAFPBogota

Five journalists covering a colleague’s suspected kid-napping by leftist guer-

rillas in northeast Colombia were attacked and detained by unknown assailants, and two of them are still missing, offi cials said yesterday.

The reporters had gone to the restive region of Catatumbo to cover the disappearance of Span-ish-Colombian journalist Salud Hernandez-Mora, a prominent correspondent for Spanish news-paper El Mundo who went miss-ing over the weekend.

While working in the town of El Tarra, where Hernandez-Mora was last seen, the journal-ists were attacked and detained by a group of assailants who stole their cameras, cell phones and other equipment, breaking some of it in the process, said the Foundation for Press Freedom, a Colombian watchdog group.

President Juan Manuel San-tos said the fi ve journalists then went missing - one from Spanish news agency EFE, two from Co-

lombian broadcaster Caracol and two from Colombian TV channel RCN. Santos, who has ordered a sweeping police and army op-eration to fi nd Hernandez-Mora, said three of the journalists have since reappeared, but the two from RCN are still missing.

“I have ordered the army commander and police chief to the scene to reinforce all opera-tions to fi nd Salud Hernandez and the two missing reporters,” Santos told journalists.

Communications with the re-gion - where guerilla groups and drug traffi ckers dominate - are diffi cult, and details on the kid-nappings and the reappearance of the three journalists remain vague.

Spain fears Hernandez-Mora was kidnapped by the National Liberation Army (ELN), the second-largest guerrilla group fi ghting in Colombia’s half-cen-tury confl ict, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said Monday.

Hernandez-Mora’s newspa-per also accused the ELN. The rebel group recently agreed to begin peace talks with the gov-ernment.

More than 100 bodiesbeing exhumed in MexicoAFPTetelcingo, Mexico

Mexican authorities and independent experts have begun exhum-

ing more than a hundred bod-ies buried in pits in the central state of Morelos.

Prosecutors announced that the 116 bodies in the mass grave - located in the town of Tetelc-ingo, just south of Mexico City - were buried on March 28, 2014.

Activists are question-ing the validity of the official record because authorities have files on only 88 bodies in the pits.

The unfenced rural grave consists of two adjacent 10-metre deep holes cover-ing an area about six metres in length and four in width.

Morelos has been one of the Mexican states most aff ected by drug violence plaguing the country, including kidnappings and murders.

“We recognise the tireless

struggle of the relatives and victims’ organisations of the more than 30,000 missing in this country that’s sinking into barbarism,”

said Alejandro Vera, rector of the Autonomous Univer-sity of the state of Morelos (UAEM), who started a pro-gramme for those searching for loved ones who have dis-appeared in the Mexican drug war.

The United Nations along with several human rights or-ganisations estimate that at least 20,000 people have gone missing in Mexico.

The head prosecutor in Morelos, Javier Perez, was among those witnessing the exhumation, which could last up to fi ve days.

Dozens of relatives of the disappeared also attended, including Maria Concep-cion and Amalia Hernandez, mother and aunt of the kid-napped and murdered Oliver Wenceslao Navarrete Hern-andez.

In 2013, his body was discov-

ered in a ravine and identifi ed by his family.

But prosecutors insisted on delaying burial to obtain fo-rensic evidence, and over time the body disappeared from the records.

After months of “many com-plaints and many battles,” an offi cial revealed that the vic-tim’s body had been buried in Tetelcingo “with signatures of false authorisation,” Hernan-dez said.

On December 9, 2014, a judge ordered his body be ex-humed.

The body was found under dozens of others, “violating in-ternational protocols that indi-cate that in mass graves bodies must be separated from each other to allow eventual claims,” said Roberto Villanueva, direc-tor of a programme for victims at UAEM.

The bodies found alongside Navarrete’s were reburied. His family fi lmed the process, and have widely publicised the footage since then to bring at-tention to the case.

Temer slams‘psychologicalaggression’against govtAFPBrasília

Brazil’s acting president Michel Temer yesterday called for reforms to haul

Latin America’s biggest econo-my back from crippling reces-sion and slammed what he called “psychological aggression” against his government.

Temer, who took power on May 12 after the suspension of Presi-dent Dilma Rousseff pending her impeachment trial, is seeking to cement his authority in the face of multiple challenges on both the economic and political fronts.

He faces accusations from Rousseff of having engineered a coup, and suff ered a blow when secret recordings were leaked on Monday in which his key ally, planning minister Romero Juca, allegedly discusses a plot to re-move Rousseff as a way of halt-ing a huge corruption probe.

Juca, a pointman on economic reforms, was sacked yesterday, the government announced.

Opening a meeting with min-isters and congressional allies in the capital Brasilia, Temer said that restoring economic growth will require strong medicine.

“I want to emphasise that it won’t be 12 days or two months that will pull Brazil out of crisis,” he said.

The government says it is fac-ing a record 170.5bn reais ($48bn) primary budget defi cit in 2016, far higher than suspended presi-dent Rousseff ’s earlier target of a 97bn reais defi cit.

To try and balance the books, Temer is proposing austerity measures and bringing effi cien-

cy to the bloated government. The primary budget defi cit is the diff erence between government spending and revenue, excluding interest payments on debt.

It is a key indicator for creditors.All three main ratings agencies

consider Brazil’s credit rating as junk. Fitch Ratings made its latest cut to Brazil’s rating earlier this month, lowering by two points to BB with a negative outlook.

In addition to high infl a-tion, the eff ect of low commod-ity prices, and rising unemploy-ment, investors are spooked by Brazil’s political instability. Rousseff ’s trial could go on as long as six months and she has vowed to fi ght all the way.

The leftist leader is accused of illegal accounting tricks in 2014 and 2015 to mask the depth of government shortfalls.

She says the manoeuvres were common practice with previous governments and not an im-peachable crime, alleging that the issue was blown out of pro-portion in order to get Temer, her vice president, into offi ce.

Temer, from the centre-right PMDB party which used to be in coalition with Rousseff ’s Workers’ Party, has moved quickly to lay out plans to shift Brazil to more mar-ket-oriented policies, prompting an outcry from the left.

Temer, who was heckled live on television by activists shout-ing “putschist” during a public appearance on Monday, dis-missed such attacks yesterday as “psychological aggression.” “I know how this works. It’s psychological aggression to see if they can frighten the govern-ment,” he said. “We’re not the slightest bit worried by this. We

have to look after the country. Those who want to yell, let them do what they want.”

The leaked Juca recording and his subsequent fi ring have em-barrassed Temer, who took offi ce calling for an end to the instabil-ity, economic drift and corrup-tion scandals of Rousseff ’s last two years in power.

In the conversation taped in March, Juca appears to tell a former oil executive that im-peachment of Rousseff would allow the shutting down of a huge anti-corruption drive cen-tred on state oil giant Petrobras in which both of them have been implicated, along with a string of other high-ranking politicians and executives.

Juca, who says the comments have been misinterpreted, is heard saying that he has dis-cussed the plan to impeach Rousseff with “the generals, the military commanders” and with members of the Supreme Court.

Rousseff said on Monday that the remarks confi rm “the putschist nature” of her im-peachment process. Temer’s eco-nomic measures have been wel-comed by investors as a way to return Brazil from the wilderness.

Just a few years ago the Latin American giant was one of the world’s stand-out emerging markets, but it is now in sharp decline The economy shrank 3.8 % last year, and the IMF has forecast 3.5 % negative growth for 2016, although Brazilian economists expect more than 3.8 % shrinkage. Temer’s gov-ernment has proposed sweeping spending reductions, including to social programmes and the government itself.

Police guards attempt to detain demonstrators during a protest inside the government house against the government’s education reform in Santiago, Chile.

Reforms opposed

A woman holds an image of her missing relative near the perimeter of the Tetelcingo cemetery where the exhumation and identification of unidentified victims is being held.

14 dead in prison riot

Prison riots in northeast

Brazil left 14 inmates dead last

weekend, off icials said. The

riots broke out during a strike

by prison guards, local media

reported, pitting rival groups

of inmates against each other

at two prisons in the state of

Ceara. “I deeply regret what

has been happening in our

penitentiaries and will spare no

eff ort, together with our secu-

rity forces, to ensure stability

in the prison system as quickly

as possible,” Governor Camilo

Santana said in a Facebook

post. He called for reinforce-

ments from the elite National

Security Force.

Venezuela crisis draws timid international responseAFPCaracas

Venezuela is sinking deeper into political and economic chaos, but the internation-

al response has been timid so far - and is unlikely to put much pres-sure on an unbending President Nicolas Maduro, analysts say.

So far, the international com-

munity’s main plan of action for Venezuela has been to call for a “great national dialogue,” in the words of the former presidents of Spain, Panama and the Domini-can Republic, one high-profi le group trying to mediate the crisis.

But with the once-booming oil giant sliding ever deeper into recession and hyperinfl a-tion, the leftist president and his centre-right opponents are so

far apart that “dialogue” seems impossible.

The opposition, which won control of the legislature in De-cember, refuses to hold talks unless the authorities agree to allow a referendum on removing Maduro from offi ce this year.

Maduro’s camp says that isn’t happening. As if to hammer home the point, the president has declared a state of emergen-

cy giving himself sweeping new powers.

The country faces a “long and diffi cult” road, acknowledged the trio of foreign mediators - Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Za-patero, Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic and Martin Torrijos of Panama.

They have been working in Venezuela since Thursday, sent by the Union of South American

Nations (UNASUR), a 12-mem-ber regional bloc, to hold talks with both sides on a crisis that is increasingly worrying the region.

“There’s growing action by part of the international com-munity on Venezuela,” said Felix Arellano, an international rela-tions specialist at Central Uni-versity of Venezuela.

But “the reactions have been timid,” he said.

The UNASUR mission drew words of encouragement from the US, which Maduro accuses of plotting his ouster.

US offi cials have been reluc-tant to go much further than that for fear of playing into the fi ery Socialist’s allegations of a coup plot orchestrated in Washington at the behest of the “fascist Ven-ezuelan right.”

Trying to strike a less con-

frontational tone, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay have pro-posed setting up a “group of friends” to get both sides to the negotiating table.

But that isn’t likely to work ei-ther, said Milagros Betancourt, a professor of international law at Andres Bello Catholic Universi-ty. “I’m a little sceptical because I don’t know what they can ac-tually negotiate,” she said.

PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN23Gulf Times


Can’t confi rm Taliban leader killed in US strike: Pakistan

Pakistan’s interior minister said yesterday he could not confi rm that Afghan

Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour had been killed in a US drone strike, and described Washington’s justifi cation for the attack as “against interna-tional law”.

US President Barack Obama said on Monday that Mansour had been killed in the drone at-tack, and the Pentagon said sep-arately that Mansour was plot-ting attacks that posed “specifi c, imminent threats” to US troops in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, Pakistani Inte-rior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told reporters that the body recovered near the Afghan border was charred beyond rec-ognition, adding that DNA sam-ples would be tested against a relative who had come forward to claim the body.

“The government of Pakistan cannot announce this without a scientifi c and legal basis,” Khan told a news briefi ng.

He did not identify the relative or say whether he or she claimed to be related to the Taliban leader or someone else.

Khan criticised US statements that the drone strike, which he said hit a car on Pakistani soil but was fi red “from another coun-try”, was justifi ed because Man-sour was plotting attacks.

“For the US government to say that whoever is a threat to them will be targeted wherever they are, that is against international law.

“This could have serious im-plications for the Pakistan-US relationship,” Khan said, adding that decisions would be made

once Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned from abroad.

Pakistan and the United States have been uneasy allies in the war against Islamist militants in the region.

US critics accuse Pakistan of allowing the Afghan Taliban’s leadership to take shelter on its territory, something that Islam-abad has denied.

The militant movement has made territorial gains and car-ried out a series of deadly attacks across Afghanistan since Nato forces offi cially wound down their combat mission at the

end of 2014, undermining the Western-backed government in Kabul.

Meanwhile, offi cials said yes-terday that slain Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour used a Pakistani passport in a false name to make dozens of foreign trips over a ten-year pe-riod, mainly to the United Arab Emirates.

Mansour, who was killed in a US drone strike deep inside Pakistani territory on Saturday along with a driver, was travelling with a pass-port and ID card bearing the name “Mohamed Wali”.

Three investigation offi cials said Mansour used the passport for extensive travel, mainly be-tween the southern Pakistani city of Karachi and Dubai in the UAE but also to Iran.

He travelled 37 times, mostly to Dubai from Karachi, during the last 10 years, a senior inves-tigating offi cial said.

The offi cial said Mansour fi rst used the passport to travel to Dubai from Karachi in March 2006.

A second offi cial confi rmed the trips, adding: “He also trav-elled to Dubai from Quetta (in

southwest Pakistan) on July 16, 2015.”

The offi cial said he last left for Iran on April 25 and returned on the morning of May 21, the day he fell victim to the drone strike.

An immigration offi cial on Sunday said that “Wali” had changed euros to Pakistani ru-pees after crossing the border to the town of Taftan.

Iran has denied Mansour en-tered and left on those dates.

“We are now trying to ascer-tain how he managed to secure a Pakistani identity card and pass-port and who he was visiting in

Dubai,” a third investigating of-fi cial said.

Mansour was appointed head of the Taliban in July 2015.

The group has not publicly confi rmed the killing but since Sunday have been trying to fi nd a successor, according to Taliban sources.

Pakistan says US justification for drone strike “against international law”; Slain Taliban chief travelled on Pakistan passport: off icials

AgenciesIslamabad

A Pakistani demonstrator holds a burning US flag as others shout slogans during a protest in Multan yesterday, against a US drone strike in Pakistan’s southwestern province Balochistan.

Pakistan summons US ambassador

The Foreign Ministry of Pakistan

has summoned the US ambas-

sador over the airstrike that

targeted the Taliban Chief Mul-

lah Akhtar Mansour.

“The ambassador of the United

States David Hale was called

in today by Pakistan’s Special

Assistant to the Prime Minister

on Foreign Aff airs, Syed Tariq

Fatemi, to express concern over

the drone strike on Pakistani

territory on Saturday, 21 May

2016,” the Foreign Aff airs

Ministry said in statement,

cited by Afghan’s News Agency

(Khaama).

“In the meeting, Tariq Fatemi

pointed out that the drone

strike was a violation of Paki-

stan’s sovereignty and a breach

of the United Nation’s Charter

that guarantees the inviolability

of the territorial integrity of its

member states,” the statement

read.

“He also emphasised that such

actions could adversely impact

the ongoing eff orts by the

Quadrilateral Co-ordination

Group (QCG) for facilitating

peace talks between the Afghan

Government and the Taliban,”

the statement said.

The statement also added that

the Special Assistant to the

Prime Minister also underlined

that Pakistan and the United

States had been closely co-

ordinating in the fight against

the menace of terrorism and

that this co-operation needed to

be maintained.

Debate on drone strike that killed Taliban chief sought in parliament

Insurgents struggling to select Akhtar Mansour’s successor

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) moved the Senate yesterday to discuss the

implications of the US drone strike that killed Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in Balochistan.

Senator Farhatullah Babar submitted an adjournment mo-tion in the house to discuss the ‘security calculus in the region and implications of extending drone strikes to Balochistan’ brought into focus by the killing of Mansour.

“The issue will alter the secu-rity calculus in the region while extending drone strikes to Ba-lochistan, already reeling with insurgency and militancy, has posed new threats to national security and sovereignty,” the motion stated.

“If the reports of Mullah Man-sour being eliminated are cor-rect it means that fi ve years after OBL was killed by the US from

a sanctuary in Abbottabad can-tonment, a Taliban leader Mul-lah Mansour whose existence on our soil has been denied was also killed on Pakistani territory by the US.

“This strengthens the percep-tion that elements in the state are harbouring militants, the motion says and warns that such a perception will “give new am-munition to forces inimical to Pakistan.”

The motion says even if Mansour has not been killed, a drone strike in Balochistan it-self sets a dangerous precedent for an escalation against the ‘red lines’, reportedly set long ago.

“Even those who have no sympathy for the militants are deeply concerned by it. Reports that Pakistani was in-formed well before the drone strike has further complicated the situation and added to the gravity and urgency of the matter,” said Babar. Senator Babar also outlined what he said were “several disturbing

aspects” related to the inci-dent.

The passport photograph of the person killed resembles Mansour, but documents iden-tify him as Mohamed Wali, a resident of Qila Abdullah in Ba-lochistan with a second address in Karachi.

Mohamed Wali’s body was reportedly hastily released to Mohamed Rafiq, a young man claiming to be his nephew, without confirming his iden-tity, claimed Babar. Apart from a dangerous rise in vola-tility, it signals a readiness to target Taliban commanders deep inside Pakistani territory even though the Afghan Tali-ban have not yet been named as ‘terrorist group’, the motion said.

“Juxtaposing this incident with Sartaj Aziz’s recent can-did admission, that Pakistan provided shelter and support to Taliban commanders, has given rise to serious questions which the Parliament cannot ignore,” Babar said.

The Afghan Taliban are struggling to fi nd a suc-cessor to slain chief Mul-

lah Akhtar Mansour, militant sources said yesterday, with one saying the two main con-tenders had backed out of the leadership race.

Mullah Yakoub, the Taliban founder’s son, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, an implacable foe of US forces, were seen as the two frontrunners for the job after Mansour was killed on Satur-day in a rare American drone strike deep inside Pakistan.

“Yakoub has refused to accept the role, saying he is too young for it,” a senior Taliban source in northwest Pakistan said.

“Mansour’s deputy and op-erational head of the Haqqani network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, has also refused due to personal reasons.”

That development will com-plicate the job of the Taliban’s

supreme council, which has been holding emergency meet-ings since on Sunday at an un-disclosed location in Pakistan to fi nd a unifying fi gure for the leadership post.

The insurgents have yet to offi cially confi rm the death of Mansour, which has thrown the deeply factionalised Taliban into disarray nine months after he was elevated to the Taliban leadership following a bitter power struggle.

“The main challenge is to save the Taliban movement from being further divided,” another Taliban source told AFP, adding that supreme council members were con-stantly changing the venue of their meetings to avoid poten-tial air strikes.

“It will take time to reach a consensus for the leadership position.” Other candidates in the fray include Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the movement’s former deputy who is said to be close to the Pakistani military establishment.

He was jailed by Pakistan in 2010 but freed in September 2013 as part of eff orts to boost Afghanistan’s peace process.

He has since been reported to be under house arrest by Paki-stani authorities.

Mullah Adbul Qayyum Zakir, considered one of the group’s most violent and committed commanders, is another lead-ing contender.

The complicated search for a new leader risks igniting a new succession battle within the Taliban, which saw its fi rst for-mal split last year.

Many top commanders re-fused to pledge allegiance to Mansour, saying the process to select him was rushed and biased as they accused him of keeping founder Mullah Omar’s death secret for two years.

“The Taliban movement is passing through a very crucial stage. We need a conciliator not a warrior to take his place,” one of the Taliban sources said, cit-ing some of the commanders at the supreme council meetings.

Internews Islamabad

AFP Kabul

Shahbaz Taseer talks about drone strikes

“Every time a drone strike kills someone in Pakistan, we are reminded (by the

Pakistani government) about how our sovereignty is being vi-olated. A few days later everyone moves on and we forget that a foreign country routinely bombs us and we routinely publish the same statement”.

Shahbaz Taseer, son of slain former Punjab governor Sal-maan Taseer, decided to engage his followers on the govern-ment’s hypocrisy when it comes to drones, while also giving his

own two cents on their eff ec-tiveness.

It’s safe to assume that he had some hands-on knowledge about the topic after almost fi ve years with the Taliban.

He started out with this poignant tweet and went on to answer a host of questions by his followers.

Taseer went on to add how drones were loud and never ‘ran-domly’ hit anything.

“99.9% if not more is the ac-curacy of a drone. Always hits its intended target,” he added.

A day before, US President Barack Obama confi rmed Mul-lah Akhtar Mansour’s death in a US air strike, Pakistan’s foreign

ministry disclosed that a pass-port found at the site, bearing a diff erent name, carried a valid Iranian visa.

It added that the purported passport holder was believed to have returned to Pakistan from Iran on Saturday, the day of the drone strike target-ing Mullah Mansour. Photos of the passport, bearing the name Wali Mohamed, showed a passing resemblance to some of the old photos avail-able of Mansour.

Opening up about his captors once again, Shahbaz said, “My kidnappers were Uzbek with Pa-kistani ID cards. At least he looks local.”

Further, referring to the issue of whether or not Prime Minis-ter Nawaz Sharif was informed prior to the attack, Shahbaz, in a seemingly sarcastic tone said, “PM is aware of very little.. Gen-erally.. Let’s not bother him with this.”

When asked whether Shah-baz was in favour of killing the children of militants (some-thing US presidential candidate Donald Trump has no qualms about), he said he wasn’t pro death but asked his followers to ask survivors and families of suicide blast victims about col-lateral damage.

InternewsIslamabad

Shahbaz Taseer after his release from captivity.

Five navaloffi cers sentenced to death

Pak panel on

Panama Leaks

to meet today

Pakistan has sentenced to death fi ve naval offi cers for their involvement in a

deadly attack on a Karachi dock-yard in 2014, the father of one of the men and their lawyer said yesterday.

The September 2014 attack on the Pakistan Navy Shipyard (PNS) Zulfi qar left one Pakistani offi cer and three attackers dead, while seven sailors were wound-ed.

Reports in Pakistan’s Dawn and the Wall Street Journal later said the militants wanted to hi-jack a frigate in order to attack US Navy patrol vessels in the northwest Indian Ocean.

“My son has informed me that a naval court has awarded him and four other offi cers the death penalty for charges such as having links with the militant Islamic State group (IS), mutiny, hatching a conspiracy and car-rying weapons in the dockyard,” said Saeed Ahmed, a retired army major and father of one of the convicted men, sub-lieuten-ant Hammad Ahmed.

The alleged ties to IS con-tradicts the Pakistani Taliban’s claim of responsibility at the time.

Al Qaeda’s then newly-formed South Asia chapter also claimed responsibility.

Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban have carried out joint operations for years, but both are hostile to the Islamic State group which is an upstart in the region.

Ahmed added his son was convicted on April 12 but he only became aware of it last week when he visited him in prison.

“My son was denied the right to a fair trial,” he said.

Ahmed’s lawyer Inam-ur-Rahim said that his client was preparing to fi le an appeal but so far had not been given docu-mentation relating to the case by the military court, including the charge sheet.

When contacted for com-ment, a senior navy offi cial did not explicitly confi rm the sen-tences or whether a trial had tak-en place, but said: “Such actions were part of the National Action Plan (NAP) to purge the country of terrorists.”

Pakistani parliamentary committee that will for-mulate the Terms of Ref-

erences (TORs) catering the in-vestigation of the Panama Leaks issue will meet today for the fi rst time, reported Dunya News.

Earlier on Monday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif approved the names of the members be-longing to the government who shall be a part of the committee.

All six members representing the government are ministers. Four members of the commit-tee belong to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) where-as the other two members be-long to Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) and National Party.

The six members are: Ishaq Dar, Khawaja Asif, Saad Rafique, Anusha Rehman, Mir Hasil Bizenjo and Akram Dur-rani. Speaker National Assem-bly (NA) Sardar Ayaz Sadiq has also issued notification regard-ing the names of these mem-bers of the government. Op-position parties have already presented the names of their six members.

Meanwhile, adviser to Sindh Chief Minister on Information and Archives, Maula Bakhsh Chandio said that Prime Min-ister Nawaz Sharif had always turned to Pakistan People’s Par-ty (PPP) whenever he had found himself fi n a crisis, and once again he has asked former presi-dent and PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari to play his role in sav-ing democracy after the Panama Papers issue.

AFP Islamabad

Internews Islamabad

Hero’s burial plan for dictator sparks outrageAFPManila

Plans by the Philippines’ controversial president-elect to give late dicta-

tor Ferdinand Marcos a hero’s burial triggered outrage yes-terday, with martial law vic-tims warning it would white-wash the strongman’s crimes.

Rodrigo Duterte, who won this month’s elections in a landslide, announced on Mon-day he would allow Marcos to be buried at the Heroes’ Cemetery in Manila, in what would be another big win for the dictator’s family as it ce-ments a remarkable political comeback.

“Burying him at the (ceme-tery) will whitewash all crimes he committed against the peo-ple and will send the wrong message to the world: that in the Philippines, crime pays,” said Bonifacio Ilagan, who was detained and tortured by Mar-cos forces.

Ilagan, who heads a group trying to stop the Marcos fam-ily from returning to power, said the highly emotional and symbolic burial of the dicta-tor at the cemetery - where the nation’s most revered war

heroes have been laid to rest - would trigger street protests.

Marcos’ two-decade rule ended in 1986 when millions of people took to the streets in a famous military-backed “People Power” uprising, forcing the family into US exile

where the patriarch died three years later. Marcos and his wife Imelda were accused of plundering $10bn from state coffers and overseeing wide-spread human rights abuses by security forces.

Rights groups say Marcos’s

forces killed or tortured thou-sands of people.

However Imelda and her children were allowed to re-turn and over the past two decades have enjoyed a stun-ning rise back into the political elite while fending off a bar-

rage of lawsuits and crimi-nal probes. Imelda is a con-gresswoman representing the family’s northern provincial stronghold, while Ferdinand Marcos Jr was elected to the Senate in 2010.

Marcos Jr ran for the vice presidency in this month’s elections.Although he looks set to narrowly lose, at age 58 he is still young enough to achieve his goal of becoming president.Duterte said Mon-day he wanted to have the body of Marcos, currently em-balmed and enclosed in a glass casket, to be buried at the He-roes’ Cemetery to end decades of divisions in society over the issue.

However Nilda Lagman-Se-villa, chairwoman of a group of families whose relatives van-ished under Marcos’ rule, said healing would only come from discovering what happened to their loved ones and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Her brother, a human rights lawyer who vanished in 1977, is among 882 people who disap-peared under Marcos’ rule, ac-cording to the group.

“They (the families of peo-ple who vanished) are still in pain because of the absence of closure,” Lagman-Sevilla said.

Malaysian navy detains three Filipino fi shermen in South China SeaReuters Manila

A Malaysian naval patrol detained three Philip-pine fishermen for en-

croaching in territorial waters in the disputed Spratlys this month, the Philippine military said yesterday, in what may be the first such incident involv-ing Southeast Asian neigh-bours.

Malaysia and the Philippines have overlapping exclusive economic zones in the disputed South China Sea, which is be-lieved to have rich deposits of oil and gas and is almost en-tirely claimed by China.

But Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Viet-nam also claim the sea, through which about $5tn in ship-borne trade passes every year.

On May 9, the Philippine vessel was about 29km south-west of Commodore Reef, one of nine Philippine-held terri-tories in the South China Sea, when a Malaysian patrol boat intercepted it for encroaching in territorial waters.

When the vessel tried to flee, the patrol boat gave chase, and briefly detained the fishermen.

Hours later they were turned over to Philippine troops sta-tioned on Commodore Reef, a Philippine navy spokeswoman said.

“The Western Command is saddened by the incident in-volving our fellow Filipinos,” Captain Cherryl Tindog said in a statement, adding that

the fishermen received medi-cal treatment.”They are in sta-ble condition, except for some bruises.”

The statement gave no rea-son for the time elapsed since the event.

The fishermen complained of having been punched and kicked during questioning by the Malaysian Navy after being apprehended, Tindog added.

“We were treated like crimi-nals,” Nelson Plamiano, one of the fishermen, told broadcaster GMA 7.

The Malaysian Navy did not immediately respond to a re-quest for comment.

The Philippine military di-rected questions on diplomacy and policy issues to the Phil-ippine foreign ministry, which did not respond to queries from Reuters. Political analysts say the incident was the first re-ported to involve the Malaysian navy and Philippine fishermen since a 2012 escalation of ten-sion in the South China Sea, when China harrassed Philip-pine and Vietnamese fisher-men in the Spratlys.

Malaysia’s handling of the Philippine fishermen was a violation of an informal code of conduct signed in Cambodia in 2002, said Jay Batongbacal, an expert in maritime law from the University of the Philip-pines.

“Our Department of Foreign Affairs should talk to Malaysia about this incident, because hitting our fishermen was not part of any agreement,” he added.

Workers use sledge hammer to destroy seized laboratory equipment used for the production of illegal drug, methamphetamine hydrochloride headed by Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Manila yesterday. President-elect Duterte vowed on May 15 to reintroduce capital punishment and give security forces “shoot-to-kill” orders in a devastating war on crime.

Drugs crackdown

File photo shows former first lady Imelda Marcos kissing the glass case bearing her late husband and former president Ferdinand Marcos during a visit to the mausoleum on her 85th birthday in Batac town, Ilocos norte, north of Manila.

Federalism ‘can be fast-tracked with presidential nod’By Neil A Alcober Manila Times

A shift from a presiden-tial to a federal form of government is possible

for the Philippines if President-elect Rodrigo Duterte pushes its legislation and Congress works fast to amend the Constitution, former senator Aquilino Pimen-tel Jr and incoming Batangas Governor Hermilando Mandan-as said yesterday.

Pimentel and Mandanas be-lieve that Congress can amend the Charter in just six months.

“It is good if it is done imme-diately” while Duterte’s popu-larity remains high in the minds of the people, Pimentel said in a news briefi ng.“It is easier to convince the people now than later,” he said.

“You do it by Constituent As-

sembly, then form a leadership. You can do it in six months as long as discussions go smooth-ly,” the former senator said.

“They (Duterte administra-tion) will help me push for it in any systematic manner. I am not worried,” he added.

However, Pimentel noted that it is important for the people to know and understand what fed-eralism is, and why the Duterte camp is advocating it.

With a federal form of govern-ment, Pimentel said, basic serv-ices will be given directly to the people.

“It will bring the matter of development to the hands of the people more directly. In other words, power will now be trans-ferred from the hands of a highly centralised government in Metro Manila to the diff erent federal states in a realistic manner so that it will benefi t the ordinary

man on the streets. They will no longer depend on the national government,” he explained.

Pimentel said under feder-alism, each federal state shall be represented by one senator, governor and vice governor and other local offi cials.

But, according to him, the only way to change the form of government is by amending the Charter.

“You cannot just pass an ordi-nary law. You have to revise the Constitution,” he pointed out.

In 2008, Pimentel fi led a joint resolution seeking to form a fed-eral government, but the move never took off in the Senate be-cause some lawmakers were worried that it be might be used to extend the term of then-Pres-ident Gloria Arroyo.

“I fi led a resolution to hold a Constituent Assembly which was approved by 16 senators at

the time,” the former lawmaker recalled.

Pimentel said the best way to change the system is through a Constitutional Convention,

although this is more costly.Under Section 1, Article XVII

of the Constitution, accepted manners of amending the Con-stitution will be done either

through a Constitutional Con-vention, Constituent Assembly or People’s Initiative.

Meanwhile, Mandanas said the Charter can be amended if the Duterte administration has the political will to do so.

When Mandanas was a con-gressman, he fi led a resolution amending the Constitution and even introduced a measure on how amendments could be le-gally expedited.

The governor-elect said there is a fourth and more expeditious way of amending the Constitu-tion – the Senate and House of Representatives introducing a measure and each chamber vot-ing on it separately.

For the bill to take eff ect, it should be approved by 75 % of the members of the Senate and the House, Mandanas added.

The incoming governor of Batangas also pointed out that

a plebiscite is required in ap-proving any amendment to the Constitution, except when in-troduced through People’s Ini-tiative.

Pimentel said Mandanas’ proposal is acceptable. “To my mind, the interpretation of Gov-ernor Mandanas is encompassed already in the third way – the Constituent Assembly. He is right (because the original plan of the Constitutional Commis-sion called by then-President Corazon Aquino was to have only one House but we ended up hav-ing two),” Pimentel said.

“Now you have to talk to two Houses of Congress (where the Senate and the House can adopt a principle for revising the Con-stitution by voting separately.

Separately because there are only 24 senators, and they will be defeated by almost 300 con-gressmen),” he added.

Former Senate President Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel speaks at a news conference in Greenhills, San Juan City. With him is incoming Batangas Governor Hermilando “Dodo” Mandanas.

Marcos Jr’s camp fi le complaint against Smartmatic offi cialsBy Nelson S Badill & Michael Joe T Delizo Manila Times

The camp of Senator Ferdi-nand “Bongbong” Mar-cos Jr yesterday slapped

criminal charges against offi cials of Smartmatic and IT personnel of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for an unauthorised change of script in the transpar-ency server of the poll body on the night of the May 9 polls.

A complaint for violating the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2010 (RA 10175) was fi led at the Manila Prosecutor’s Offi ce by Abakada party-list Representa-tive Jonathan dela Cruz, cam-paign adviser of Marcos.

Charged were Smartmatic executive Marlon Garcia; Elie Moreno, Smartmatic project di-rector; and Neil Banigued and Mauricio Herrera, members of the Smartmatic Technical Sup-port Team.

Also included in the case were Rouie Penalba, Comelec IT Of-

fi cer and Nelson Herrera and Frances Mae Gonzales, Comelec employees.

Dela Cruz maintained that the change of script was a clear and deliberate violation of RA 10175 since it assailed the “confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems,” including the “illegal access of any part of a computer system without right.” He said the replacement of the script was a “security breach.”

The complainant noted that the interference in the system to correct the typographi-cal error (from “?” to “N”) was not authorised and can be considered as illegal access to a computer. “Indeed, the act of ‘tweaking’ the script of the transparency server caused widespread anxiety and con-cern among the nation.

The lapses in the protocol have undermined the cred-ibility and integrity of the 2016 elections,” de la Cruz said in his complaint affidavit.


PHILIPPINES

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL25


Lanka rain death toll hits 101 as waters recedeFloods subsided across

Sri Lanka yesterday re-vealing the full extent of

damage from last week’s deluge that also triggered landslides, offi cials said, as the death toll crossed 100.

The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said 101 people were known to have died last week while another 100 people were still listed as missing in the worst hit central district of Kegalle.

Military offi cials in the district, 100km (60 miles) northeast of the capital, said a search was still under way for the missing people although there was little hope of fi nding anyone alive under the tonnes of mud.

“The fl ood waters have re-ceded across the country,” DMC spokesman Pradeep Kodip-pili said. “Over 530 houses have been completely destroyed and another 4,000 partly damaged.”

He said most of the capital’s fl ood-aff ected population had returned to their homes since Monday when the water levels started going down.

At the height of the fl oods, a third of Colombo’s 650,000 res-idents were driven out of their homes, according to offi cial

fi gures.The fi nance ministry has es-

timated the damage to small businesses and industries at

AFPColombo

Residents clearing debris from outside homes following flooding in the Kolonnawa suburb of Colombo yesterday.

about $2bn. The government has promised compensation to victims, but details are yet to be announced.

Sri Lanka’s parliament has been recalled to meet today, a week ahead of schedule, to dis-cuss reconstruction and reha-bilitation following the worst

fl ooding in the capital in nearly a quarter of a century.

Soldiers and relief workers were seen distributing essential supplies to people cleaning up their homes in low-lying areas of Colombo.

Floodwaters from the Kelani, which fl ows to the Indian Ocean

through Colombo, were contam-inated with garbage from a dump on the edge of the city as well as raw sewage, raising concerns of a disease outbreak, offi cials said.

Doctors and nurses were seen across the aff ected areas yester-day while the authorities main-tained mobile medical units.

Sri Lanka has received inter-national aid as well as support from nationals keen to help the victims.

Rain has eased since Cyclone Roanu moved away from Sri Lanka to hit southern Bangladesh on Sat-urday, leaving at least 24 people dead there, before weakening.

Tens of thousands need aid after cyclone

Tens of thousands of peo-ple in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka need aid including

clean drinking water, dry food rations and medicines after a deadly cyclone hammered the South Asia region, aid agencies said yesterday.

With wind speeds reaching 90kph (56mph) and heavy rains, cyclone Roanu struck Bangla-desh on Saturday, after buff eting India and Sri Lanka in the Bay of Bengal - killing at least 120 peo-ple and aff ecting hundreds of thousands more in the region.

Aid workers said Roanu’s tor-rential rains triggered fl ood-ing, landslides and tidal surges mostly in Sri Lanka and Bangla-desh - ripping apart thousands of rickety homes, burying entire villages and inundating swathes of farmland.

“Tens of thousands of poor families will have lost most of their assets - not just their hous-es, but also their food stores, seasonal crops and vital livestock such as cows, goats and ducks,” said Shakeb Nabi, Christian Aid’s Bangladesh head.

“Access to food, safe drink-ing water, health supplies and sanitation materials is limited in some villages. Water points have been ruined, ground water con-taminated and agricultural land destroyed.”

In Sri Lanka, where more than a week of heavy rains has trig-gered the worst fl ooding in 25 years, the United Nations said it was worried about the spread of diseases due to large amounts of standing water.

The World Health Organisa-tion said there was an increased

risk of vector borne diseases like malaria, water borne and diarrhoeal diseases, the bacte-rial disease leptospirosis, fungal diseases and acute respiratory infections.

“Prevention measures to combat such diseases are essential,” it added.

Roanu is the fi rst cyclone of the season, which generally lasts from April to December, with se-vere storms often causing mass evacuations from coastal low-lying villages and widespread crop and property damage.

Aid agencies in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka said they had be-gun distributing relief in the worst aff ected districts and foreign aid had started arriv-ing in Sri Lanka from countries including India, Pakistan and Singapore.

Half a million people have had their lives disrupted in Bangla-desh’s low-lying coastal areas such as Barisal and Chittagong, and over 255,000 people are af-fected in Sri Lankan districts in-cluding Kegalle, Gamapaha and the capital Colombo in the west.

“We have pre-positioned household materials and hy-giene kits that we can dispatch to aff ected areas and distrib-ute to communities in urgent need,” said Senait Gebregzia-bher, country director for Plan International.

“These materials will be es-sential as children and families aff ected by the cyclone, particu-larly those forced to leave their homes, will most likely be seek-ing food, shelter, basic sanitation and access to clean water.”

Sri Lanka has reported 94 deaths and 107 people missing. Bangladesh said at least 24 peo-ple had died and India reported two deaths.

Thomson Reuters FoundationNew Delhi

Madhesis boycott meet called by PM

Nepal’s Madhes-based parties, which have been agitating for nearly a year

demanding better representation in parliament and the admin-istrative divisions envisaged in the new constitution, yesterday boycotted an all-party meet-ing called by Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli.

The prime minister called the all-party meeting to negotiate a settlement of all the contemporary as well as constitutional issues, the prime minister’s press adviser Pramod Dahal told Xinhua.

“The Madhes-based parties did not join today’s (Tuesday) meeting, but the government still hopes that the agitating parties will sit for the dialogue,” he said.

Noting that the prime minis-ter wrote a six-point letter to the Madhes-based parties on Mon-day calling them to sit down for talks, the advisor said the prime minister was making all eff orts to address the genuine demands of Madhes-based parties through political peaceful means.

During the meeting, Prime Min-ister Oli said he is sincere about addressing the genuine concerns raised by the Madhes-based par-ties and fi nding a way out from the ongoing political impasse in the country, according to Dahal.

“The government is fl ex-ible and positive about address-ing the genuine demands of the Madhes-based parties. The prime minister wrote a letter to Madhes-based parties on Mon-day requesting them to have a fresh round of dialogue. We hope the agitating parties will soon join the negotiations,” said Agni Kharel, law minister and the gov-ernment spokesperson.

The opposition party urged the prime minister to create a conducive environment to sort out pending issues raised by the Madhes-based parties.

“Today’s meeting did not yield any positive results as the Mad-hes-based parties shunned the meeting. We have urged the gov-ernment to create a conducive environment to invite the agitat-ing parties for talks and resolve the turmoil,” Nepali Congress leader Mahesh Acharya said.

IANSKathmandu

BB heist trail goes cold in Manila as probes falter

More than three months have passed since $81mn was stolen in a

brazen cyber-heist from Bang-ladesh Bank (BB) and sent to Manila - yet authorities in the Philippines appear no closer to nabbing those who laundered most of the money through a bank and casinos here.

Nobody has been arrested, the National Bureau of Inves-tigation (NBI) - the nation’s equivalent of the FBI - has not been allowed to get fully in-volved in the probe, and a Phil-ippines Senate investigation petered out last week.

Several offi cial and private in-vestigators said they had hoped to make headway by following the money trail in the Philip-pines, but they said it has gone cold. They said the perpetrators probably knew the Philippines well and likely chose it because of the weakness of its money laundering laws.

The cyber-heist, one of the biggest-ever in the world, shouldn’t be seen as just the hacking of a bank, said Augus-tus “Ace” Esmeralda, a Manila-based private investigator.

“It’s more of somebody

stealing the money employ-ing a hacker, and someone who knows banks, the anti-money laundering system, the ca-sinos... It’s the modern-day Ocean’s 11,” he said, referring to the Hollywood movie about a crime syndicate robbing Las Vegas casinos.

“I call it Manila 12,” added Esmeralda, who says he is fol-lowing the case on behalf of two international bank clients.

One of the key reasons is that casinos are not covered under the Philippines’ anti-money laundering law, which means they are not obliged to report suspicious transactions or the players involved.

Also hindering investigators are antiquated bank secrecy laws that are among the strict-est in the world. They stipulate that almost all deposits and for-eign currency details are confi -dential.

The unidentifi ed hackers in-fi ltrated the computers at BB in early February and tried to make 35 transfers of money, worth a total $951mn, from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. All but one of the at-tempted transfers involved were to the Rizal Commercial Bank-ing Corp (RCBC) in the Philip-pines. Most were blocked, but $81mn went to accounts at a

single branch in Manila.The Senate inquiry heard

from those who handled the money that most of it then went to casinos and casino agents in the Philippines, including jun-ket operators, through a remit-tance agency.

“You go into a casino with 1mn bucks,” said Senator Serge Osmena, a member of the com-mittee investigating the case. “You bet 10,000, probably lose it, and you hand over 990,000 to your friend and he goes out and cashes it.”

The money then is untraceable, he said.

Immediately after the heist it became clear that the money came to the Philippines. An NBI agent said that a team was on standby to make an arrest dur-ing Easter week at the end of March but was ordered to stand down with no reason given.

The agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he did not know the arrest target’s name.

The investigations are be-ing handled by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), a government agency with mod-est resources, while the NBI, which has 5,000 agents on its rolls, is only being used in a sup-port role.

“We have minimal participation

in the investigation,” said NBI di-rector Virgilio Mendez when asked about the heist. He said he could not comment further.

AMLC chief Julia Bacay-Abad said earlier this year the agency has only nine fi nancial ana-lysts to review millions of large transactions each month. She said last week that resources were not hindering the probe, though she declined to disclose how many investigators the AMLC has.

Bacay-Abad also declined to comment on the probe’s status.

The NBI agent said he was frustrated watching the case from the sidelines and see-ing the Philippines compared with other havens of money laundering.

The AMLC has fi led criminal complaints against the man-ager of the RCBC branch that received the funds, the owners of relevant bank accounts at the branch and the owners of the remittance agency that it says was a “cleaning house” for the money.

It has also fi led a complaint against Kim Wong, who owns the gaming fi rm Eastern Hawaii Lei-sure Company and also operates the VIP area of the Midas casino in Manila, and a Chinese associ-ate of his called Weikang Xu.

Wong, who is also Chinese

and lives in Manila, told the Senate inquiry he received almost half the heist funds without knowing they were stolen.

He, the owners of the remit-tance agency and the branch manager have denied any wrongdoing. Government agents told the Senate inquiry they have not been able to fi nd Xu.

Wong, who has been seem-ingly relaxed when giving tes-timony at Senate hearings, is close to several senior politi-cians, such as Alfredo Lim, a former Manila mayor. Sena-tor Panfi lo Lacson, a former national police chief, has told Reuters that Wong is “a friend of mine”.

Of the $81mn stolen, Wong told the Senate probe he re-ceived almost $35mn from the remittance company Philrem, and has handed back $15mn to authorities. Much of the rest, he said, had been spent in buying chips for clients.

He has said the money was brought into the Philippines by two Chinese acquaintances, one from China and one from Macau, the world’s biggest gambling hub.

Out of the rest of the money, the Solaire casino received about $29mn.

Philrem, the remittance agency, has said it handed over the remainder to Wong and Xu in cash, but Wong has said the agency still has $17mn.

Senator Ralph Recto, vice chairman of the Senate Com-mittee on Finance, has said the network of Chinese people involved suggested the mas-terminds were from China, but that has been dismissed by Chi-nese foreign ministry spokes-man Lu Kang as “complete nonsense.”

The focus of the Senate committee’s report is likely to be on drawing up legisla-tion that can strengthen anti-money laundering laws and ease bank secrecy laws, rather than identifying who was be-hind the laundering. But it is unclear whether any proposed change in the laws will get traction.

Osmena said lawmakers had not wanted to amend the laws because their own fi nances could come under scrutiny.

The Philippines elected a new congress this month and it will take offi ce in July along with the nation’s new president. But both Osmena and another sena-tor leading the inquiry, Teofi sto Guingona, lost their seats in the elections.

By Raju Gopalakrishnan/ReutersManila

Hopes fade for two Indian climbers missing on Everest

Rescuers searching for two Indian climbers missing on Mount Everest said

yesterday there was little hope of fi nding the pair alive after losing contact with them over the weekend.

The two men - identifi ed by the Indian embassy as Paresh Nath and Goutam Ghosh - were near the summit of the 8,848m (29,029ft) mountain on Satur-day when they lost contact with the rest of their team.

The missing climbers were part of a team of four, one of whom - Subhash Pal - died after falling ill on Sunday. The

fourth team member, a wom-an, was rescued and taken to hospital.

“We are trying to locate them and pray they are okay, but they were very high up and it has been over two days. It is diffi cult to keep hope alive,” Wangchu Sherpa of Trekking Camp Nepal said.

Three offi cials from India have arrived in Kathmandu to co-ordinate searches and an-other mountain rescue team will be deployed on Wednesday, Sherpa said.

Subhash Pal was the third mountaineer to die on Everest in recent days after an Australian and a Dutch climber succumbed to altitude sickness.

As climbers ascend above

8,000m, they enter the “death zone” - notorious for its diffi -cult terrain and thin air - where oxygen supplies fall to dan-gerously low levels and make mountaineers susceptible to altitude sickness.

Nava Kumar Phukon, an In-dian climber who summitted on Friday, said the weather had been harsh through the week-end with strong winds severely hampering visibility.

“The wind would blow the snow and everything would become white. I could barely see a few metres ahead,” said Phukon, 44.

Some 400 people, includ-ing more than 150 foreigners, have summitted Everest this season after two consecutive

years of deadly disasters that led to almost all attempts being abandoned.

US climber Melissa Arnot on Monday became the fi rst American woman to success-fully summit and descend Everest without using extra oxygen.

“Climbing Everest without supplemental oxygen has been a goal of mine for a long time... I’m incredibly fortunate,” Arnot said in a statement.

Since the world’s highest peak was fi rst conquered in 1953 more than 300 people have died on Everest and neighbouring Lhotse, which share the same route until Camp 3 at 7,200m.

Despite the risks and recent disasters, Everest’s allure re-

AFPKathmandu

mains undimmed, with Nepal issuing 289 permits to for-eigners for this year’s spring climbing season.

Hundreds of climbers fl ed Everest last year after an earth-quake-triggered avalanche at base camp killed 18 people.

Only one climber reached the

top in 2014 after an avalanche killed 16 Nepali guides that year.

Mountaineering is a major revenue-earner for impov-erished Nepal. But last year’s earthquake, which killed almost 9,000 people, threatened the future of the Himalayan nation’s climbing and trekking industry.

Nepalese mountaineer Phurba Tenjing Sherpa unfurling a flag on top of Mount Everest on May 20. Phurba reached the summit of Mount Everest for the 10th time carrying the flag to tell the world that Nepal will rise up from the devastation of the massive earthquake of April-May, 2015.

What brought down the EgyptAir aircraft from a normal cruising altitude of 37,000ft in mild weather, killing 66 people on board, among them three children, still remains unclear.

Thursday’s crash of the Airbus A320, which has an excellent safety record as the best-selling medium-range airliner in the world, has baffl ed aviation experts.

Whether caused by terrorism or mechanical failure, the crash of MS804 into the Mediterranean, en route from Paris to Cairo, is the latest blow to Egypt’s eff orts to rebuild a struggling economy after fi ve years of political turmoil.

The 2011 revolution, the mayhem that followed and the downing of a Russian airliner last year have brought down an economy (which was once one of the most promising and fastest-growing tourism markets in the region) to the knees.

And in March, an Egyptian man who wanted to see his ex-wife hijacked an EgyptAir fl ight and forced it to divert to Cyprus.

Bad news keeps coming to derail a fl edgling recovery in the tourism-dependent Egyptian economy.

The drop in tourism revenues has complicated the task of bridging a $12bn annual funding gap expected in the coming few years.

In the fi scal year to June 2015, tourist receipts stood at $7.4bn, compared with a peak of $11.6bn in 2009-10.

Tourism directly employed 1.3mn people, or 5.2% of Egypt’s workforce, in 2014, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.“But its indirect contribution exceeds

multiples of that,” said Hany Farahat, a senior economist at Cairo-based CI Capital Holding.

The crash could “ worsen unemployment, aff ect consumption and other sectors linked” to the tourism industry, he said.

The number of foreign visitors arriving in Egypt peaked in 2010 at 14.7mn, an almost three-fold increase in 15 years.

But next year, as former president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown and revolutions swept the Arab world, the numbers fell to 9.8mn.

The Russian jet crash, which killed 224 people on October 31, dealt a severe blow too.

Russia, Britain and Germany suspended fl ights to Sharm el-Sheikh.

Tourist arrivals in the fi rst quarter of 2016 were 40% lower than a year earlier, according to the government.

The holiday industry now accounts for about 3.5% of Egypt’s GDP, central bank data show, compared to 5% before 2011.

Egypt is suff ering from a crippling foreign-currency crunch that has slowed economic activity and kept investors away.

No longer can the Arab world’s most populous nation fall back on the generosity of its oil-rich Gulf allies, who have provided billions of dollars in aid since 2013.

The aviation industry each year spends an estimated $6bn for pre-emptive actions to ensure every aircraft fl ies safer.

But the precious 66 lives lost in the MS804 crash is a grim reminder of enduring aviation security gaps; and the disaster should bring about fool-proof improvements in airline safety measures with transparency and professionalism.

Putting better defences in place against all possible scenarios - terrorist, mechanical, weather, or deliberate adversities - is the best way to do it.

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Bad news keeps coming to derail a fl edgling recovery in the tourism-dependent Egyptian economy

Monetary policy is an eff ective means of managing infl ation and can boost employment and output in a recession Central banks must keep helicopter drops as a last resort

By Lee Jong-Wha Seoul

The central banks of major advanced economies have been navigating uncharted territory in recent years.

While their use of a range of unconventional monetary-policy tools has had benefi ts, it has also generated signifi cant uncertainty, without fully stabilising the world economy.

Now the time has come to head back toward more familiar policy terrain.

Following the 2008 fi nancial melt-down, the US Federal Reserve cut the policy rate to almost zero and pursued so-called quantitative easing (QE), by purchasing long-term securities from the public and private sectors.

The central banks of the European Union, Japan and the United Kingdom soon launched similar unconventional programmes.

The result was a vast amount of cheap liquidity that helped to stabilise the fi nancial sector, restore stock and real-estate prices, and increase domestic demand.

All of this helped to limit the fallout of the fi nancial crisis and push the global economy toward recovery.

But this aggressive approach has its limits.

Indeed, as Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan has pointed out, after years of eff ort, the benefi ts of unconventional monetary policy are diminishing, while the costs are increasing.

Recognising this, the Fed ended QE at the end of last year and raised its policy rate by 25 basis points.

The rate hikes will likely continue this year, though the speed and extent

of the increases are uncertain.Yet the European Central Bank and

the Bank of Japan (BOJ) have decided to sustain their QE programmes.

Moreover, they have adopted a negative interest-rate policy – which amounts to charging a fee for bank reserves – to revitalise depressed demand.

Unsurprisingly, the eff ects on infl a-tion and real output have been limited.

Monetary policy is an eff ective means of managing infl ation and can boost employment and output in a recession.

Lowering interest rates below zero, however, has hurt banks’ balance sheets, reducing their lending capac-ity.

As a result, it has failed to increase business investment.

Even low positive interest rates, if maintained for a prolonged period, could backfi re, fueling asset bubbles and enabling household and corporate debt to grow to unsustainable levels.

Meanwhile, asset purchases have caused the balance sheets of major central banks to swell to unprecedent-ed levels.

The orderly rewinding that is now needed will be very diffi cult to man-age.

Beyond the domestic sphere, un-conventional monetary policies have had far-reaching spillover eff ects.

In particular, they have sent emerg-ing economies, with their fi nancial links to advanced economies, on a capital-fl ow roller-coaster ride.

First, the emerging economies were fl ooded with liquidity fl owing from the advanced economies.

Large capital infl ows led to over-heating and infl ation, asset-price bubbles, and rapid currency apprecia-tion.

Then, the Fed’s tapering of QE led to the sudden withdrawal of that capital, creating a risk of fi nancial disruption and currency crises.

The emerging economies’ monetary authorities have struggled to cope with these shocks using available instruments, including interest rates, exchange rates, prudential regulation, and capital controls.

But that is not all.Because advanced economies’ un-

conventional monetary policies have also depreciated their currencies and stimulated their exports, the risk of competitive devaluations is now a real concern.

If, say, the BOJ moved to intervene outright in the exchange-rate markets to depreciate the yen, the odds that the People’s Bank of China and the Bank of Korea would opt for weaker currencies would increase.

All of this would be highly destabil-ising, particularly for emerging econo-mies like Brazil that are facing a brutal combination of internal and external challenges.

Instead of viewing all of this as mo-tivation to back away from unconven-tional monetary policy, however, some economists are recommending that the ECB and the BOJ pursue an even more extraordinary policy: so-called “helicopter drops”.The idea, intro-duced by the Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman in 1969, entails the distribution of freshly printed money directly to the public, with a commit-ment from the central bank never to withdraw it.

As Former Fed chairman Ben Ber-nanke points out, monetary fi nance is essentially equivalent to a broad-based tax cut, with the central bank committing to purchase government debt.

Among the infl uential economists advocating helicopter drops for Eu-rope and Japan are Bernanke, Willem Buiter, Kemal Dervis and Adair Turner.

They argue that even if it is not an ideal solution, it can cure their economies.

For governments restrained by high public debt and defi cits, the proposal is certainly tempting.

But helicopter drops are highly risky.

As Bernanke himself warns, such a policy could undermine central banks’ long-term independence.

Moreover, it would enable gov-ernments to monetise fi scal defi cits without constraints, and potentially to abuse money-printing power for political considerations.

And it might not even work as intended, with the money benefi ting only certain groups.

Given the diffi culty of regaining lost sovereignty and credibility, central banks must keep helicopter drops as a last resort.

The reality is that recourse to easy windfalls produced through loose monetary policy could have serious long-term repercussions, especially if they are used to delay eff orts to ad-dress underlying issues.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic revitalisation strategy – so-called Abenomics – is a case in point.

The strategy was supposed to use a mix of monetary and fi scal expansion to help facilitate structural reforms.

Yet the reforms have faced delays, and employment and output growth has been limited.

What advanced-country central banks should be doing now is imple-menting monetary policies aimed at restoring their credibility, while governments focus on implementing eff ective fi scal policies and structural reforms.

Crucially, advanced and emerging economies must co-ordinate their policies, in order to foster confi dence and strengthen growth.

This is the only way back onto the path of sustained global economic health.

Last month, fi nance ministers and central-bank governors of the G-20 countries acknowledged the limitations of monetary stimulus and embraced structural reforms, infra-structure investment and fi scal policy as the key to future growth.

But they have yet to back their words with strong action.

Their credibility – not to mention the fate of the global economy – is on the line. - Project Syndicate

Lee Jong-Wha is professor of eco-nomics and director of the Asiatic Research Institute at Korea University.His most recent book, co-authored with Harvard’s Robert J Barro, is Education Matters: Global Gains from the 19th to the 21st Century.

The way back for central banks’ monetary policy

Make America trade againBy Anders Fogh Rasmussen Copenhagen

No matter how much some US presidential candidates may deride free trade, it remains the backbone of

the American economy.Without it, the country would

become signifi cantly poorer and its global infl uence would diminish signifi cantly.

So why has bashing free trade become a key theme in this year’s presidential race?

One of the clearest reasons for this is that economic anxiety is widespread in the United States, which is still reeling from the aftereff ects of the 2008 fi nancial crisis.

Too many Americans are working fewer hours and earning less than they once did.

They are tired of the status quo and the presidential candidates are right to address their concerns.

But introducing protectionist measures is a quack cure that would solve nothing; on the contrary, it would only exacerbate the economy’s problems.

Free trade is not a liability for the US economy; it is a necessity.

The US has negotiated free-trade agreements with 20 countries.

And though these countries represent only 10% of the rest of the

world economy, in recent years they have purchased nearly half of all US exports.

Furthermore, free trade benefi ts working-class families and low-income groups.

Surges in cheap imports have greatly increased US workers’ spending power.

One study calculated that the American median-income earner would lose 29% of his or her purchasing power if the country were to be closed to trade; the poorest in the US would forfeit as much as 62% of their purchasing power.

The US is in a unique position to reap the benefi ts of free trade, so its leaders are right to be working to secure trade agreements with the world’s most important economic regions – Europe and Asia.

The proposed trade deal with the European Union (the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP) would boost US exports to the EU by $300bn annually, adding $125bn

to America’s annual GDP.It would also increase the typical

American family’s purchasing power by nearly $900.

Europeans would reap similar gains; that is the nature of mutually benefi cial free-trade agreements.

American workers, farmers, and businesses are also positioned to benefi t greatly from the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership (TPP) agreement with Asia.

Many countries in the Asia-Pacifi c region maintain steep barriers against imports from the US.

The TPP would lower tariff s and allow consumers in Asia to buy more US products.

This could, according to research conducted by the Peterson Institute, boost US incomes by 0.4% – roughly $77bn a year.

To be sure, free trade is not trouble-free.

The costs often are very focused, while the benefi ts are more widely dispersed.

And the negative consequences can be very concrete; competition from Mexico can force US workers to accept a wage cut or cause their workplaces to be relocated across the border.

What Americans need are political leaders with the courage to pursue a balanced approach to free trade, championing its long-term benefi ts, while delivering short-term relief to those at risk of displacement.

For example, US legislators could ease economic anxiety by allocating more resources to retraining schemes and job programs.

Concluding the trade deals now on the table with Asia and Europe would not only demonstrate political leadership; it would also underline the US’s commitment to preserving the international order.

Speaking as a former Nato secretary general and former prime minister of a longstanding American ally, I urge the US presidential candidates to stop bashing free trade and begin working toward a balanced approach, one that eases economic anxiety while ensuring American prosperity in the decades to come.

America does not need to be made “great again”. It remains the world’s preeminent power, because it has the world’s pre-eminent economy.

The challenge facing America is to ensure that its greatness lasts far into the future.

And doing so will require coupling its longstanding pursuit of free trade with policies addressing the very real needs of the small number of Americans for whom the costs outweigh the benefi ts. - Project Syndicate

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former prime minister of Denmark and secretary general of Nato, is founder and chairman of Rasmussen Global.

Egypt’s eff orts to rebuild economy suff er a setback

Introducing protectionist measures is a quack cure that would solve nothing

COMMENT

Gulf Times Wednesday, May 25, 2016 27

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Improving governance in the Arab worldThe Arab Spring uprisings brought to the fore the inadequacy of the region’s outdated social contracts in the face of current political and economic challenges

By Marwan Muasher Washington

A recent survey of 100 Arab thought leaders

conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace revealed a sweeping consensus about what underlies many of the region’s problems: a lack of good governance.

Indeed, those polled emphasised domestic problems resulting from that failure – authoritarianism, corruption, outdated education systems and unemployment – over regional concerns, including the threat of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) or interference by regional heavyweights or outside powers.

This is not new information.The Arab Spring uprisings brought

to the fore the inadequacy of the region’s outdated social contracts in the face of current political and economic challenges.

Yet Arab governments still seem not to have gotten the message.

Five years after the uprisings erupted, Arab citizens have little – in some cases, even less – voice in running their countries’ aff airs.

Moreover, they depend on rentier economies that are unable to create enough jobs for their young, educated populations.

And they face an alarming absence

of the rule of law, leaving them with no assurances that they will be treated equally, regardless of gender, ethnic origin, or religion.

But poor governance today does not mean the Arab world is doomed to failure.

Tunisia serves as a beacon of hope.After the 2011 revolution, it pursued

a consensual, inclusive process to develop a new social contract that upholds all of its people’s individual and collective rights.

While Tunisia still faces serious economic and security problems, the national dialogue that the country has undertaken is the crucial fi rst step toward resolving them.

Other Arab societies now must undertake similar dialogues, with the ultimate goal of creating economies and institutions that meet their people’s needs.

History has taught us that such transformational processes take time.

The long-suppressed ideas and energies unleashed by events like the Arab Spring must mature before having their full effect on society.

Consider the uprisings in Europe in 1848, in which citizens protested against authoritarian, feudal systems and the lack of economic opportunity.

By the end of that year, status quo forces managed to retake the reins of power, and the uprisings appeared to have been all but crushed.

But something had changed.Taboos had been broken, and during

the subsequent decades, technological advances enabled the spread of new ideas.

It was not long before feudalism began to dissolve; liberal and democratic values gained traction; women secured greater rights; and economic systems emerged that could boost productivity, achieve high growth rates and improve living standards.

A similar process is unfolding gradually in the Arab world, with citizens (especially young people) who lack trust in their governments seeking alternative sources of information and new ways to survive economically.

This shift has so far gone largely unnoticed by governments, a refl ection of just how disconnected

they are from their own people.But it will soon be impossible to

ignore.All of this comes at a time when

another important development is underway: Oil-based rentier systems are rapidly diminishing, owing to the steep decline in energy prices over the last two years.

In particular, Saudi Arabia has

been forced to initiate a shift toward an economic model that emphasises investment and productivity as the main drivers of economic growth.

Other countries in the region will have to follow suit and reform their economic systems, or face the wrath of their increasingly disgruntled citizens.

One important element of

economic-reform strategies will be technology.

Already, 240mn Arabs – largely young people – have access to the Internet through mobile phones; by 2020, it is estimated that all Arab youth will be connected.

Technology is facilitating the creation and sharing of knowledge, in a region that has historically lagged in this area, and technology start-ups are on the rise.

This is not to say that technology is a panacea for the region.

After all, IS is also using technology, but in a sinister way: to spread gruesome propaganda and recruit new members.

But technology can speed up the Arab world’s social and economic progress, even as countries build a modern institutional framework capable of supporting it.

Nowadays, no country can evolve without developing eff ective and credible institutions, establishing a meaningful system of political checks and balances, and diff using control over decision-making.

These elements are vital to enable countries to off er their citizens an adequate quality of life.

In time, the Arab world will have them.

While the international community is focused on IS or Iran’s destructive role in the Middle East, most Arabs are focused on improving their lives.

Their governments should encourage them. - Project Syndicate/Mohammed bin Rashid Global Initiatives

Marwan Muasher, a former deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Jordan, is vice president for Studies and director of the Middle East Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His most recent book is The Second Arab Awakening: And the Battle for Pluralism.

By Oliver Burkeman New York

It’s been known for some time that people share things on social media – a lot – without reading them fi rst.

The writer Alex Balk recently compared Facebook to “the coff ee table on which people placed their unread copies of Thomas Piketty’s Capital”: when we share, we’re often really focused on promoting a certain image.

But a new study goes further: apparently, sharing things, or just having the option to share, undermines the ability to digest and remember them. (Participants were twice as likely to make errors in a comprehension test.) When your attention is partly occupied by thoughts of how you’ll share or discuss what you’re reading, it’s a distraction from actually reading it – made worse, presumably, if your newsfeed’s also scrolling by in the corner of your eye.

It should be obvious that attention

is a limited resource (that’s why people crash when they text and drive) yet we rarely treat it like other such resources.

If a major corporation took £10

from your bank account daily, for no benefi t, you’d be furious.

But as Matthew Crawford points out in his book The World Beyond Your Head, the same corporation can help itself to your attention with a loud TV ad in an airport lounge, dragging your focus from conversation.

Indeed, we actively collaborate with attention theft: iPads that let you jump from your novel to the web or to FaceTime chat are more popular than e-readers that won’t.

In a culture that viewed attention diff erently, we might pay extra for such limitations.

Instead, we act as if our attentional capacities are infi nite, then feel scattered and exhausted when it turns out they aren’t.

You can deal with the situation by denying there’s a problem, as some pundits like to do; or you can take draconian measures, quitting social media for ever, or going on digital detox retreats.

But I prefer the middle path encapsulated in the Buddhist idea of “guarding the sense doors”. The world stakes its claims on our attention, this

argument goes, through the “sense doors”, chiefl y the eyes and ears.

So it’s wise to employ a doorman. (I imagine a fi rm but polite butler, not a bouncer on steroids.) You don’t need to nail the door completely shut, as Facebook quitters do; you just need to stay mindful of who’s trying to get in.

In practical terms, this means not mixing attentional modes: read when you’re reading, share when you’re sharing.

You could send articles you discover online to Instapaper or Evernote, read them later offl ine, then treat sharing as a discrete task, perhaps at a specifi c time.

This may not mean always being narrowly focused on one task; plenty of social situations need “wide-angle” attention instead.

But it does mean not trying to use attention simultaneously for two incompatible tasks.

Let one visitor across the threshold at a time.

The others will wait on the doorstep.

Or, better yet, wander off and stop pestering you.

The threat of pandemics Dear Sir,

Mosquito-borne yellow fever is on the rise in many parts of the world.

There are 600 kinds of those tiny, annoying and extremely deadly creatures which kill 3mn people every year, over 1mn in Africa alone.

The mosquito is mankind’s greatest foe. Its impact on mankind is monumental.

The reappearance of yellow fever is a graphic reminder of how vulnerable mankind is to infectious diseases.

Through the centuries, man’s greatest threat often has not been natural disasters or warfare but the microscopic creatures with which we share the earth.

When epidemics break out, man has often been able to do little more than let the epidemics run their deadly course.

Has the threat disappeared or is it lurking in the background, waiting to strike again?

Our sense of history is skewed and our understanding of the relative nature of threats is lacking.

Because of this we are ill-prepared to face the coming biological storm.

Throughout history, infectious diseases have been the great killer of humanity.

Billions have perished, nations and entire cultures have been destroyed, untold lives met with tragedy.

Disease was the foundational terror of humanity.

Infectious diseases are on the increase throughout the world.

Pathogens are increasingly immune to current drugs and new drugs are no longer being developed.

New pathogens are emerging due to human population growth and environmental degradation.

Nature continually throws challenges at human civilisation in the form of infectious diseases, the devastating diseases that periodically emerge remind us how thin is the veneer that separates our high-tech society from personal and community disaster.

Most people assume that medical science will shield us from disasters in previous centuries.

We are more vulnerable than we suppose.

The horrendous precipitators to pandemics are reported every day in the media.

The deadly march is from war to famine to pestilence.

Mankind is on the precipice.

Farouk Araie [email protected]

A right decision

Dear Sir,

Kenya is right on the closure of the Dadaab Refugee Camp for security reasons.

It is becoming hard to know who is a genuine refugee or a terrorist at the camp.

However, the countries where these refugees come from are not fully stable.

Because of this, the United Nations believes its sudden closure will bring more problems.

I believe the best solution to this debacle is to off er the refugees countries they can chose to go. Countries that are refugee-friendly and stable.

This will eventually cool down the impending impasse and it will be a

win-win situation for all.Permanent solutions need to be

provided for those refugees who want to return home when things become normal in their countries.

As the saying goes, East or West, home is the best.

George Matubia [email protected]

Letters

Exhausted? It’s time to focus

Three-day forecast

TODAY

FRIDAY

High: 39 C

Low : 30 C

High: 39 C

Low: 29 C

Weather report

Around the region

Abu DhabiBaghdadDubaiKuwait CityManamaMuscatRiyadhTehran

Weather todaySunnySunnySunnySunnyCloudySunnyCloudyCloudy

Around the world

Athens BeirutBangkok BerlinCairoCape Town ColomboDhakaHong KongIstanbulJakartaKarachiLondonManilaMoscowNew DelhiNew York ParisSao PauloSeoulSingaporeSydney Tokyo Rain

Max/min27/1825/2132/2624/1434/2319/1230/2633/2631/2622/1633/2634/2815/0832/2624/1340/2731/1920/1122/1227/1632/2721/1228/20

Weather todaySunnySunnyT StormsS ShowersSunnySunnyT StormsS T StormsP CloudyM SunnyS T StormsSunnyShowersS T StormsS ShowersSunnyM SunnyM CloudyP CloudyP CloudyT StormsM Sunny

Fishermen’s forecast

OFFSHORE DOHAWind: NW 18-28/35 KTWaves: 6-9/13 Feet

INSHORE DOHAWind: NW 20-28/35 KTWaves: 2-4/5 Feet

High: 37 C

Low: 28 C

THURSDAY

Strong wind and high seas

Cloudy

Sunny

Max/min39/2735/2238/2739/2633/2939/3137/2329/17

Weather tomorrowCloudySunnySunnySunnyCloudySunnySunnySunny

Max/min36/2537/2336/2641/2634/2939/3138/24

Max/min28/1928/1932/2623/1234/1822/1231/2634/2631/2720/1532/2634/2821/1034/2527/1441/2829/1923/1424/1324/1433/2721/1129/17

Weather tomorrowSunnyP CloudyS T StormsS T StormsSunnySunnyT StormsS T StormsM CloudyShowersS T StormsP CloudyP CloudyS T StormsP CloudySunnyP CloudyS ShowersP CloudyCloudyS T StormsS ShowersCloudy

32/20

People are seen at a radio web studio during training at a youth centre in Ben Guerdane, Tunisia. The North African country serves as a beacon of hope in the Arab world. After the 2011 revolution, it pursued a consensual, inclusive process to develop a new social contract that upholds all of its people’s individual and collective rights.

QATAR

Gulf TimesWednesday, May 25, 201628

AAB ‘main sponsor’ of Milipol Qatar 2016Abdullah Abdulghani & Bros Co

(AAB), the sole distributor for Toy-ota and Lexus vehicles in Qatar, has

been announced main offi cial sponsor of the 11th international exhibition of home-land security (Milipol Qatar) 2016.

Toyota and Lexus vehicles also have been designated as the offi cial cars for the event.

An agreement to this eff ect was signed yesterday by Brig. Sheikh Nasser bin Fa-had al-Thani, head, Milipol Qatar and Osama Abdullah Abdulghani, chair-man, AAB at the Toyota main showroom yesterday. Brig. Saoud Rashid al-Shafi , Milipol Qatar Committee member and Serdar Toktamis, chief executive offi cer, AAB were also present on the occasion.

Under the auspices of HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Milipol Qatar will be held from October 31 at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre for three days.

This exhibition is organised biennially in rotation between Paris and Doha and displays the latest innovations of leading manufacturers in the fi eld of homeland security.

The previous exhibition occupied a to-

tal space of 6,055sqm and 261 companies from 36 countries had participated in the exhibition.

Brig. Sheikh Nasser said Milipol Qatar is considered as one of the leading safety and security exhibitions with the partici-pation of leading companies and manu-facturers in the fi eld of state security.

He also stressed that the exhibition is the result of a mutual collaboration and continuous co-ordination between offi -cials at Ministry of Interior, Qatar and the Republic of France.

Osama Abdulghani said that his com-pany has been sponsoring Milipol Qatar Exhibition events in a signifi cant manner since 1996.

“We have always looked forward to the future and always been keen in nurturing our corporate mission. Being the mar-ket leaders, it has been our rich tradition to support major government sponsored events in the country,” he added.

AAB will have a 362sqm booth where the organisation will be displaying the ve-hicles which are currently used by various ministries. AAB will also provide a fl eet of Toyota and Lexus vehicles for the trans-portation of offi cials of the exhibition. AAB and Milipol Qatar 2016 off icials after the signing ceremony. PICTURE: Jayan Orma.

Al-Attiyah Energy Awards fetesseven global industry leadersBy Peter AlagosBusiness Reporter

The fourth edition of the annual “Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah In-

ternational Energy Awards” has honoured seven global industry leaders during a gala dinner at the Museum of Islamic Art yes-terday.

The event recognises individ-uals for their lifetime achieve-ment in advancing fi elds of work that have made a distinguished contribution to the global en-ergy industry over the span of a career.

Former RasGas chief execu-tive offi cer Hamad Rashid al-Mohannadi received the “Life-time Achievement Award for the Advancement of the Qatar En-ergy Industry” alongside

Dr Majid A al-Moneef, adviser to the Royal Court of Saudi Ara-bia, recipient of the “2016 Award for the Advancement of Opec,” and Adnan Z Amin, director-general of the International Re-newable Energy Agency, who accepted the “Advancement of Renewable Energy Award.”

The other awardees included former International Energy Agency (IEA) executive direc-tor Claude Mandil, who received the “Advancement of Producer-Consumer Dialogue” award, Ox-ford Institute for Energy Stud-ies director Dr Bassam Fattouh (“Advancement of Education for Future Energy Leaders” award), and former S&P Global Platts senior correspondent Marga-

ret McQuaile (“Advancement of International Energy Journal-ism” award). Meanwhile, former Saudi Arabia Minister of Petro-leum and Mineral Resources Ali Ibrahim al-Naimi was honoured with the “Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award for the Ad-vancement of International En-ergy Policy and Diplomacy.”

“Excellence, creativity and passion are characteristics that are integral to our human spirit, but also to our success as profes-sionals, and all the 2016 award

winners have these qualities in abundance,” said the former minister of energy and industry, HE Abdullah bin Hamad al-Atti-yah, who presented the trophies to this year’s awardees.

“The Al-Attiyah Foundation is very proud to now have such an eminent alumni group of 30 win-ners recognised over the last four years,” al-Attiyah said.

Every year, the nominees for the International Energy Awards for lifetime achievement are re-viewed by an international se-

lection committee of respected peers, which, in 2016, included Abdalla Salem el-Badri, secretary general, Opec; Dr Fatih Birol, ex-ecutive director, IEA; Nasser Kha-lil al-Jaidah, board member, Qatar Petroleum and Narendra Taneja, chairman, Energy Security Group, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, India.

The Al-Attiyah International Energy Awards has emerged as “the foremost honour” to recog-nise individuals for their lifetime achievement in the global energy

industry, which was supported this year by Maersk Oil, Qatar Pe-troleum, Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, and Dolphin Energy.

“We’re honoured to be part of these awards to celebrate His Ex-cellency’s legacy of a strong and prosperous energy industry in Qatar, which Maersk Oil is proud to be a part of, and to recognise this year’s winners for their own dedication and commitment to excellence,” said Maersk Oil CEO Jakob Thomasen.

This year’s winners of the 2016 “Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah International Energy Awards” with other dignitaries. PICTURES: Thajudheen

RasGas’ former chief executive off icer Hamad Rashid al-Mohannadi receives the “Lifetime Achievement Award for the Advancement of the Qatar Energy Industry.”

Dr Majid A al-Moneef, adviser to the Royal Court of Saudi Arabia, is the recipient of the “2016 Award for the Advancement of Opec.”

Former Minister of Energy and Industry, HE Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, honours Saudi Arabia’s former Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Ali Ibrahim al-Naimi, with the “Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award for the Advancement of International Energy Policy and Diplomacy.”

Adnan Z Amin, director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency, accepts the “Advancement of Renewable Energy Award.”

$65 oil price 'vital' for investment - Gulf Times

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