In brief

MONDAY Vol. XXXIX No. 10776

April 2, 2018Rajab 16, 1439 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978

Animal ProductionResearch Stationopens in Sheehaniya

QATAR | Page 28

QATAR | Crisis

Doha Forum calls formaintaining GCC unityThe sixth Doha Forum for Policies and Strategies urged the major powers to exert their influence in the region and put pressure on the siege countries to end the current Gulf crisis and to ensure the unity of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC). In its the final statement, the forum highlighted the need to pay attention to changes in the map of political and economic relations between the Gulf states and their reflections on the map of regional and international alliances in the Middle East, especially as the strategic equations change cautiously. Page 8

ARAB WORLD | Unrest

Palestine for urgent ArabLeague meet on GazaPalestine has requested an urgent meeting of the Arab League at the level of Permanent Representatives to discuss Israel’s crimes against peaceful demonstrators, Palestinian ambassador to Cairo Diab al-Louh said. President Mahmoud Abbas and Minister of Foreign Aff airs and Expatriates Riyad Malki pressed for the urgent meeting. Louh, who is also Palestine’s Permanent Representative to the Arab League, said that the meeting would discuss Israeli crimes against demonstrators who participated in the Great March of Return on the occasion of the Land Day on Friday.

ARAB WORLD | Confl ict

Deal reached for Syriarebels to quit GhoutaThe Syrian regime yesterday drew closer to taking full control of rebel bastion Eastern Ghouta after a deal appeared to be reached for fighters and civilians to leave the enclave’s last opposition pocket. The agreement brokered by government ally Moscow would see fighters with the Jaish al-Islam rebel faction leave Ghouta’s main town of Douma for opposition territory in northern Syria. There was no immediate confirmation from the rebels, but Russia’s military said it had “reached a preliminary agreement for the withdrawal” of the group from Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Page 13

IRAQ | Mass grave

Indian workers’ bodiesto be fl own homeThe Iraqi government said yesterday that they had handed over to Indian off icials the remains of 38 Indian workers killed by Islamic State militants. The remains were handed over to Indian ambassador to Iraq Pradeep Singh Rajpurohit in order to be flown to India. The handover came after the bodies were identified via DNA samples. The remains of another person are still in the process of identified. The workers were abducted and killed by Islamic State in Mosul in 2014. Their bodies were found in Mosul in a mass grave.

SPORT | Page 1

‘Innovative expo’ lets Qatarifi rms tap global marketsBy Peter AlagosBusiness Reporter

The inaugural edition of the Qa-tar Self-Suffi ciency Exhibition (QSSE 2018) will open oppor-

tunities for Qatari companies to tap international markets, the Qatar Busi-nessmen Association (QBA) chairman HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani said yesterday.

After leading the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the three-day QSSSE 2018 at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre, he explained that the “innova-tive expo” aligns with the goals of His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani’s “visionary leader-ship for a diverse, sustainable econo-my.”

“This gives Qatari companies a unique opportunity to engage with global players on the world stage and it enables international exhibitors to demonstrate how they can contribute to that goal. Walking the exhibition fl oor, it was clear to see how important this exhibition and its potential to set the future agenda,” Sheikh Faisal said.

QSSE 2108 is a fi rst-of-its-kind event showcasing the latest manufac-turing and production line innovations that could play a signifi cant role in driving Qatar’s transformation towards a diverse, sustainable economy.

It showcases 120 booths from Qatar and the region, as well as France, Ger-many, Austria, Tunisia, Netherlands, Brazil, Kuwait, Canada, Greece, Iran, China, Finland, Kurkistan, and Turkey.

With self-suffi ciency being a key pil-lar in Qatar’s long-term strategy, there is a growing need for new lines of pro-duction within the country that will help facilitate a sustainable economy of the future, according to event organis-ers.

Qatar Development Bank CEO Ab-dulaziz bin Nasser al-Khalifa said QDB’s sponsorship of QSSE 2018 forms part of the bank’s eff orts towards self-suffi ciency through small and medi-um-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Manateq CEO Fahad Rashid al-Kaabi said as the exhibition’s Economic Part-ner, QSSE 2018 “is the perfect plat-form” and a “great two-way potential” for Manateq to share expertise and of-fer a deep dive into the business solu-

tions and initiatives it off ers to those looking to set up business in Qatar, and for those looking to be part of creating a sustainable economy for Qatar.

Gulf Warehousing Company chair-man Sheikh Abdulla bin Fahad bin Jassem bin Jabor al-Thani said GWC’s long-term strategies and forward thinking have established a standard in logistics operation that support the country’s ability to be self-reliant.

“This duty towards innovation has always formed an essential core of our purpose – to set a world-class standard in logistics operation, while supporting Qatar, now more than ever, in becom-ing a sustainable and diverse economy,” he said.

Abdulrahman Saleh al-Obaidly, chairman of Hisky for Tourism and Exhibitions, organisers of QSSE 2018, added: “We have been extremely en-couraged by the level of support from distinguished fi gures from the lo-cal business landscape and across the various sectors, ever since we proposed the idea for this exhibition. And it was an honour to have someone in such a prominent position as Sheikh Faisal to inaugurate this event.”

5,000 companies tobe benefited by the new programme

All governmentservices to be providedonline by 2020

QNADoha

HE the Minister of Transport and Communications Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti launched yes-

terday the ‘digital transformation for SMEs programme’ that is aimed at em-powering enterprises to adopt technol-ogy seamlessly.

The initiative is designed to ensure the success of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by increasing their productivity and innovation.

At a press conference, the minister said 5,000 companies are expected to benefi t through the scheme by the end of 2019, stressing that the ministry is committed to keep pace with with the digital age. He said the government of Qatar has clear plans for digital trans-formation and the enhanced role of technology in diff erent sectors, in order to realise the Qatar National Vision goal of building a knowledge-based society.

Al-Sulaiti noted that Qatar now has some of the world’s most developed IT and communications infrastructure, in-cluding fi bre-optic network, data centres and cloud-based computing services.

He said there are now 2,400 e-gov-ernment services, with more than 1,000 of them on the Internet and more than 600 of them on mobile, stressing that he is confi dent the government will provide all its services electronically by 2020.

The minister stressed that it is the citizens who will lead the digital trans-formation initiative, noting that Qatar is fi rst worldwide in the use of Internet. “The use of smartphones is at 147% and social media 99%. The ministry will also implement the smart Qatar pro-gramme “Tasmu” to use smart solutions in fi ve economic sectors in a bid to speed

up the implementation of Qatar Nation-al Vision 2030.”

Al-Sulaiti called upon the owners of small- and medium-sized enterprises to participate and benefi t from the pro-gramme, which is designed to support them to be at the forefront of ICT devel-opment.

He also called on them to establish companies capable of playing a role in the development of digital economy and to take advantage of this golden era in the history of Qatar to build companies capable of contributing to the diversifi -cation of sources of income.

The ministry’s “Digital Transforma-tion for SMEs programme” is set to pro-vide strategic partnership with the Min-istry of Economy and Commerce, Qatar Development Bank, Qatar Chamber, The Communications Regulatory Authority, Qatar National Bank, Ooredoo and Mi-crosoft, for a range of digital and consult-ing services in the fi elds of e-commerce.

The programme will improve the busi-ness model through digital solutions, to off er the best services to meet the demands of customers, and to enable electronic partnerships with technology companies, fi nanciers and government agencies to enhance the digital economy in the country, and to increase invest-ment and raise gross domestic product.

The minister also toured an exhibi-tion being held on the sidelines and met with offi cials of a number of small- and medium-sized companies working in the fi eld of digital services.

After the tour, he said the fi rms par-ticipating in the accompanying exhibi-tion represent companies that were able to provide services through the adop-tion of the programme of digital trans-formation, which has contributed to the expansion of their services. Besides, it enabled the customers of those com-panies to deal smoothly with them via smart phones .

Two discussions held on the occasion focused on the role of digital transfor-mation in driving innovation in busi-ness and promoting economic growth and the power of web technologies, e-commerce and cloud services in the growth of small- and medium-sized enterprises. Page 2

Upbeat Al Sadd eye last-16 spot as they face Al Wasl

MoTC launchesdigital plan toempower SMEs

Ashghal has opened the pedes-trian bridge on the E-Ring Road, located between Al Thumama

Intersection and the intersection of Al Matar Street with E-Ring Road, as part of completing the E-Ring Road and Na-jma Street Development Project.

“There is a continuous co-operation with the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) to construct a number of bridges in all parts of country with the aim to enhance traffi c safety and ensure the safety of pedes-trians,” said Saoud al-Tamimi, senior engineer of Ashghal’s Roads Projects Department.

The E-Ring Road bridge will enable the area’s residents and visitors to cross this vital road and reach commercial establishments on either sides. This is in addition to facilitating access to the residents of the localities between Old Airport (Area 45) and Al Rawda “Thu-mama” (Area 47).

While complimenting Ashghal, Cen-tral Municipal Council (CMC) member Sheikha al-Jufairi expressed happiness at the MoTC response to her request and its eff orts in pushing for the con-struction of the bridge, which is ben-efi cial for her constituents.

The new bridge, which is 66m long

and 4m wide is equipped with eleva-tors on both sides which can accom-modate a large number of users in-cluding those with special needs.It is equipped with lighting, closed-circuit television system and a pedestrian counter.

Ashghal completed in July 2017 all the works of the E-Ring Road and Na-jma Street Development Project which included the development of around 3km of Najma Street and the develop-ment of around 3.3km of the E-Ring Road to increase the number of its lanes to four lanes in each direction. The project works also included the con-

struction of three new signal-control-led intersections and a U-turn facility at the E-Ring Street junction with Al Matar Street, in addition to providing cyclist lanes, infrastructure utilities, and landscaping.

The opening of the E-Ring Road’s pedestrian bridge is part of Ashghal’s eff orts to provide a number of pedes-trian bridges in various parts of the country, through expressways, main roads and local roads projects.

One of the most prominent pedes-trian bridges implemented by Ashghal is the heavily used 80m long East In-dustrial Road’s pedestrian bridge.

Ashghal opens pedestrian bridge on E-Ring Road

FM meets US Congress members

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met yesterday with Billy Long and Joe Barton, both Republicans Representatives of the US Congress, who are currently visiting Qatar. The meeting discussed bilateral relations and ways to develop them, in addition to matters of common concern.

Qatar stadium workers givenQR19mn repayment package

About QR19mn will be paid to workers building stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar

over the next two years as compensa-tion for recruitment and hardship fees which may have been paid in the past.

Driven by the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC) – the organisa-tion responsible for delivering tourna-ment infrastructure for the fi rst FIFA World Cup in the Middle East – a number of contractors working on SC projects

will reimburse workers as part of a ‘Uni-versal Payment’ system, an announce-ment posted on the SC website said.

The SC Workers’ Welfare Stand-ards (WWS), the principles enshrined in all contracts relating to World Cup projects, prohibit the charging of re-cruitment fees. Many of the SC’s con-tractors employ legacy workers – hired before the introduction of the WWS – which the Universal Payment initiative is designed to address. To Page 6

A view of the new pedestrian bridge on E-Ring Road.

QBA chairman HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani tours the exhibition floor of QSSE 2018 with organisers and other off icials. PICTURE: Jayan Orma

QATAR

Gulf Times Monday, April 2, 20182

OFFICIAL

Minister meetsSouth Koreanambassador

Qatar-San Marinoties reviewed

Panel reviews draftlaw on permanent residency

HE the Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi met the ambassador of the Republic of Korea to Qatar Park Hyung Kyung, on the occasion of the end of his tenure in Qatar.HE al-Muraikhi thanked the outgoing ambassador for his eff orts to support and enhance bilateral relations, wishing him every success in his future mission.

The Minister for Foreign Aff airs and Justice of San Marino Nicola Renzi met the non-resident ambassador of Qatar to San Marino Abdulaziz bin Ahmed al-Malki al-Juhani.During the meeting, they discussed bilateral relations and means of supporting and developing them, as well as matters of mutual concern.

The Advisory Council’s Internal and Foreign Aff airs Committee met yesterday during the Council’s 46th regular session, under the chairmanship of its Rapporteur Abdullah bin Fahad bin Ghorab al-Marri. The committee continued to review the draft law on the permanent residency and decided to further study the draft in the next session.

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani has received a written message from the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergei Lavrov, pertaining to bilateral relations and ways to develop them. The message was handed over by Russia’s ambassador to Qatar Nurmakhamad Kholov during his meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister yesterday.

HE the Minister of Transport and Communications Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti led yesterday’s launching of the ‘Digital Transformation of SMEs’. The initiative is designed to enable small and medium-sized enterprises in Qatar to apply digital technology in developing their companies. PICTURE: MoTC

FM receives message from Lavrov

‘Digital Transformation of SMEs’ programme

Spar’s fl agship store opens at Tawar Mall

Spar Hypermarket has opened its fl agship store at Tawar Mall,

featuring a wide range of food, as well as non-food, items.

Spar, a leading voluntary food and household goods retail chain globally, is op-erated by Al Wataniya In-ternational Holding, the li-cence partner for Qatar.

“We opened our fi rst su-permarket at B Square Mall at Al Thumama area in Novem-ber last year and very quickly we opened our second and fl agship store at Tawar Mall,” Spar’s human resources di-rector Maher Alhousari told Gulf Times during the inau-guration last week.

The new store features various quadrants and sec-tions for big groceries, health and beauty products, organic and ethnic foods, and non food items, among others. Another section dubbed as ‘My Bake Box’ is dedicated for pastries, sweets, and freshly baked breads.

Shoppers can also select an array of fi sh and sea foods at Spar’s ‘Daily Catch’ sec-tion while freshly cooked meals are readily available in one of its sections. Beef, chicken and other meat products are displayed at its ‘Bbq Broil Grill Roast’ area.

“We are basing on a strong strategy on fresh-ness, quality, choice and service and this is Spar is all about,” Alhousari noted.

“We don’t compete with anyone, we have our own strategy, we are building our

own stores and we just want to add value to our beloved customers,” he added.

While Spar welcomes all suppliers, Alhousari pointed out that they will continue off ering diff erent kinds of Qatari products in its two supermarkets.

Spar vows to cater its cus-tomers with a wide range of choices and the products they are looking for year round in a bid to further in-crease its footfall.

Asked about Spar’s ex-pansion plans, Alhousari said they will announce “another two surprises” be-fore the end of the year.

Spar began operating with one Dutch store in 1932 and grew to more than 12,500 in 44 countries on four conti-nents, receiving more than 13 million people daily.

The brand, founded on the principle of joint co-op-eration between wholesal-ers and retailers, focuses on

six key areas of ‘Responsible Retailing’: health, sourcing, community, environment, climate and people.

By Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

(From left) Spar’s head of operations Martin Schoeman and HR director Maher Alhousari at the opening. PICTURE: Jayaram

Spar opened its flagship store at Tawar Mall recently. (supplied picture).

QRCS announces $1mn

healthcare project in Gaza

Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) announced the

implementation and fi -nancing of an integrated programme worth $1mn, as part of its strategy for health sector development in the Gaza Strip.

The society stated that the project, which will be implemented over the course of two years, con-tributes to improving the quality of health services provided in the Strip.

QRCS added that the

programme includes sev-eral aspects, notably the hiring of consultants in cardiology, urinary tract treatment, as well as two major programmes to de-velop the capacity of local cadres, namely a Master of Mental Health at the Uni-versity of Jerusalem, An-aesthesia diploma and in-tensive care at the Islamic University as well.

In a related context, physicians from the urol-ogy section are hosted in Qatar, within the special-ised Emiri scholarship for Palestinian physicians, aiming at treating and providing service to the

sick, as well as training Palestinian cadres who have been denied exit and travel for training outside Gaza due to the siege and the closure of the cross-ings.

QRCS has been imple-menting a series of quali-tative programmes in Gaza’s healthcare sector since 2008, with the aim of improving health con-ditions and save the lives of patients and reduce the treatment bill outside the Strip, noting that the total value of QRCS hu-manitarian projects in Gaza has so far exceeded $110mn.

QNADoha

Palestinian physicians undergoing training as part of QRCS health sector project.

Five planets to be seen in Qatar sky this month

Qatar Calendar House announced that fi ve planets in our solar

system (Jupiter, Mars, Sat-urn, Mercury and Venus) will be visible in the sky of Doha during April.

Each planet will reach the nearest point to the moon in diff erent times of the month.

Astronomer at the Qatari Calendar House Dr Bashir Marzouk said that Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, will reach the near-est point to the moon twice during April – the fi rst time will be on Tuesday, 3 April –

pointing out that residents of the Arab region and Qatar will have a chance to see the moon and Jupiter together all night from the time of the moonrise until before the sunrise the next day.

The second time will be on Monday, 30 April, he added. Dr Marzouk said that people of the Arab region

can observe three celestial bodies in the sky, which are the moon, Saturn and Mars on Saturday, 7 April while they will be able to see Mer-cury and the moon together on Saturday, 14 April.

It is expected that the brightest planet in the solar system, Venus, will be visible on April 17, Dr Marzouk said.

QNADoha

QATAR3Gulf Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

Qatar to mark World Autism Day todayQatar joins the world to

observe the World Au-tism Awareness Day to-

day under the theme Empow-ering Women and Girls with Autism.

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and a number of other or-ganisations in the country are or-ganising activities throughout the month of April. The events include workshops on the methods of com-municating with people with au-tism, in order to increase awareness among parents and employees in healthcare institutions.

Qatar Autism, Hamad Medi-cal Corporation, Primary Health Care Corporation, Sidra Medi-cal, Mada Assistive Technology Centre of the Ministry of Trans-portation and Communications, Biomedical Research Institute of Hamad Bin Khalifa University and Shafallah Center for people with special needs, will take part in the activities.

Assistant to Minister of Public Health for Health Af-fairs and head of national

autism committee Dr Saleh Ali al-Marri said due to Qa-tar’s interest in the health of all its residents, its give great importance to those with au-tism, to improve their lives. He revealed that the National Autism Plan (2017-2021) aims to improve their lives and their families, whereas the recently launched national health strategy 2018-2022 has identified seven priority population groups, including those with special needs.

He said the National Autism Plan has been launched as a re-sult of collective action by all relevant government agencies, civil society organisations and families of autistic people, and is also being implemented through this fruitful and constructive co-operation to improve the lives of autistic people and reduce the burden on their families.

The national plan lists 44 goals to be implemented by 2021. The goals focus on programmes to increase public awareness, facilitate early diagnosis and improve the quality of inter-ventions and services, as well as continuity of care and meaning-

ful development in education and social participation.

The ministry said Qatar played a major role in raising awareness on autism global. In 2007, Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser supported the campaign which called for marking a day for autism, during the 62nd ses-sion of the UN General Assem-bly which was unanimously ap-proved by all UN member states.

In addition to setting April 2 as the World Autism Awareness Day, the resolution encouraged member states to take measures to raise awareness about autism in their communities.

Autism is a lifelong condition that aff ects how an individual communicates with others and how they perceive the world around them. People diagnosed with it get aff ected in diff erent ways and to varying degrees, and in most cases it is unknown.

The UN General Assembly decided in 2007 that April 2 will be recognised as World Autism Awareness Day to highlight the need to improve the lives of chil-dren and adults living with the condition, it was the fi rst to be celebrated in 2008.

QNADoha

Qatar Airways plans special events

Qatar Airways is set to launch a series of initia-tives and special events as

part of the ‘Autism Awareness Month.’ The national carrier con-tinues its successful collaboration with Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) for the second consecutive year by hosting a programme of activities throughout April.

A series of seminars and train-ing will be conducted by HMC doctors, specialists and thera-pists. Qatar Airways wants to ensure its cabin crew and ground staff have a better understanding of the disorder so as to support autistic passengers.

HMC doctors and therapists will guide and advise cabin crew members on how to effec-tively support and assist autis-tic passengers while travelling on Qatar Airways flights.

“Qatar Airways has always been a major advocate of social and hu-manitarian causes,” the airline’s Human Resources senior vice president Nabeela Fakhri said.

An information kiosk has also been set up at the Qatar Airways operations centre where medical representatives from HMC will distribute informative brochures about the disorder.

World Autism Awareness Day is held every year on April 2, with the goal of bringing atten-tion to autism. To mark the day, the national carrier will host a lively Kids Fun Day at Kidzmon-do Doha, where pilots and cabin crew will have the opportunity to interact with children with autism and their parents.

In addition, to support World Autism Day, Qatar Airways staff across the airline’s network will be wearing blue – the offi cial colour of Autism Awareness month - and

posting messages about how they will contribute to raising awareness among the community.

During the month, Qatar Air-ways staff and cabin crew will be visiting Renad Academy, a mem-ber of Qatar Foundation, to spend a day with autistic children.

In-house training sessions on autism awareness conducted by Qatar Airways First Aid train-ers will be given to every crew member as part of their recur-rent training.

A special social media cam-paign will be launched on Qatar

Airways social media platforms with a hashtag #qatarairways #autismawarenessmonth, to foster support and further in-crease awareness.

The airline also organised a photo shoot with its cabin crew, enabling it to publish autism-re-lated content across the airline’s popular social media channels, helping to further increase glo-bal awareness.

Corporate Social Responsibil-ity is an important part of Qatar Airways’ values. Last year the airline renewed its sponsorship

as the Offi cial Airline Partner to Orbis UK for a further three years, supporting its blindness prevention programmes.

Qatar Airways continues to support the Educate-A-Child programme, which helps provide quality primary school education to millions of out-of-school chil-dren globally.

The airline also partnered with Doha’s Shafallah Centre, Qatar’s special needs associa-tion, to provide special needs adults with employment oppor-tunities at Qatar Airways.

Qatar Airways is all set to mark ‘Autism Awareness Month’ with a series of initiatives and special events.

Development Planning and Statistics Ministry conducts survey to assess public satisfaction with government services

Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) has started conducting a field survey for the third consecutive year in an eff ort to appraise the services provided by other governmental

ministries and institutions in the country.In a statement issued yesterday, the MDPS has urged government agencies, public and private institutions, and the general public to co-operate with the field

researchers to make the survey a success.Besides, the MDPS has invited all nationalities to participate and give their opinions through personal interviews with the researchers, or through filling

up the online data form of the survey on the ministry’s website.The survey aims to know the opinions and evaluation of government service recipients.

It intends to identify their impressions and form a clear vision on the level and quality of government services, seeking to help develop them and improve their quality.The survey will also provide a solid

platform for establishing a direct link between government agencies and service recipients by listening to their views and working to meet their requirements.

4 Gulf TimesMonday, April 2, 2018

QATAR

HMC initiative helpingdiabetics control sugarAn innovative approach

being pioneered by Ha-mad Medical Corpora-

tion’s Internal Medicine Clinic is improving health outcomes for patients with type 2 diabe-tes.

As part of the Shared Medical Appointments initiative, type 2 diabetic patients receiving care at the Internal Medicine Clinic meet once a month for a six-month period, known as a cycle, to discuss and learn about dia-betic care and how the disease impacts their overall health.

The initiative, which is a clinician-led support group, is designed to help patients better manage their blood sugar levels, and in turn their diabetes, by providing accurate information, adequate tools, and the support needed to live well with diabe-tes.

“We introduced this initiative in 2016 as a unique approach to providing care to patients with type 2 diabetes. We created groups of 10 to 12 patients who would meet monthly to dis-cuss themes relevant to their condition, such as diet, exer-cise, medication management, health tips for safe fasting dur-ing Ramadan and anything else we, or they, felt was relevant. Interactive group discussions are facilitated by physicians, diabetes educators, and dieti-tians, and usually last between one to two hours,” said Dr Nas-seer Masoodi, vice chair, Medi-cine and lead physician for the programme.

To date, the results have been extremely positive. More than 35 patients have completed the programme, with a number of them reporting a noticeable

drop in their blood sugar levels and an overall improvement in their general health.

Dr Aisha al-Kubaisi, con-sultant, Medicine at HMC, said support groups can reinforce proper self-care and off er im-portant social support. She noted that individuals are often more able, and willing, to man-age chronic conditions when they have consistent contact with peers who can provide

practical and emotional sup-port.

“We measure each partici-pant’s blood sugar level at the start of each cycle, three months into the cycle, and when the cy-cle ends so we are able to com-pare blood sugar levels at each stage of the cycle for any no-table changes. We usually see a signifi cant drop in blood sugar as the cycle progresses, high-lighting the positive benefi ts of

the initiative,” said Dr al- Ku-baisi.

Prof Abdul-Badi Abou-Samra, chairman, Department of Internal Medicine, said the programme is one of the fi rst of its kind in the country and possibly the region. He said the programme’s approach is in line with the provision of a patient-centred model of care that aims to empower patients to be ac-tive participants in their own

care, as outlined in the National Health Strategy.

“This initiative is unique. It brings patients with diabetes to-gether and allows them to focus on concerns and questions rel-evant to their health and current living situation. Participants discuss problem-based issues, share experiences, and try to identify solutions to pressing di-abetes management issues,” Prof Abou-Samra added.

Dr Nasseer Masoodi with members of the team that is spearheading the initiative to help diabetics control their sugar level.

HMC stresses onpatient safetyand quality careBy Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

The Patient Safety Pro-gramme at Hamad Medi-cal Corporation has

conducted over 400 quality im-provement programmes since 2014, an offi cial said.

“Quality improvement pro-grammes aim to increase patient safety and the quality of care for patients at all the facilities,” Dr Moza al-Ishaq, executive di-rector, Clinical Transformation Corporate Quality Patient Safety Programme at HMC said.

“The whole concept of quality enhancement has been divided into several sections. They are quality improvement, patient safety, education and training as well as quality improvement re-search,” said Dr al-Ishaq.

“We run several improvement projects. Some of them run for six months while others for one year. These programmes aim to increase patient safety and the quality of care that we give to the patients,” she said.

“We aim to build a culture of

safety. At the ME forum, held recently, we discussed the theme of building a culture of safety. We have to be responsible about the safety of the patients. So we have decided to run a workshop of quality and safety in collabo-ration with Joint Commission International,” the offi cial said.

“We have started the qual-ity improvement training pro-gramme in several groups for all the facilities and entities under HMC. We have had three co-horts last year. In cohort one, we had about 100 participants and in the second one we had we had 11 groups and 95 participants. In the third cohort, we trained about 102 members.”

The offi cial also said the HMC would launch a new training programme next week on the occasion of the patient safety awareness week.

According to Dr al-Ishaq, every patient has the right to ask three questions to the medical team:

“What is my main problem?, why should I do this? and why is it important for me to do this? The medial team also focuses on reducing the harm and improv-ing patient safety. We are plan-ning to engage the patients and the families in the whole proc-ess,” she said.

“We are also starting the quality improvement research. Before implementing a qual-ity improvement programme we have to test it. We have adopted a particular plan called PDSA (Plan, Do, Study and Act) to en-force this programme. You have to test before implementing a programme as it should be evi-dence-based. Every year we are going to have quality improve-ment studies.”Dr Moza al-Ishaq

QFCRA holds blood donation drive

The Qatar Finan-cial Centre Regu-latory Authority

(QFCRA) yesterday hosted a blood donation drive in collaboration with the Qatar Financial Markets Authority (QFMA), the Qatar Financial Centre Authority (QFCA), the Qa-tar Business and Finance Academy (QFBA), and the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre (QICDRC).

The drive was held in co-operation with Ha-mad Medical Corporation’s Blood Donor Unit at QFC Tower, a central location for the QFC entities.

The initiative aimed to shore up national blood reserves and create wider awareness of the need for regular blood donations, given the short shelf-life of

blood and blood products.The blood donation drive

saw enthusiastic partici-pation from a number of QFC-registered entities, employees as well as indi-viduals working in offi ces in the vicinity of the QFC headquarters.

“We are proud to spear-

head this important CSR initiative for the QFC enti-ties. Our employees were happy to participate, es-pecially when they under-stood that every pint of blood collected can help save up to three lives,” Michael Ryan, QFCRA chief executive, said.

QFCA chief executive Yousuf Mohamed al-Jaida said as an active and re-sponsible member of Qa-tar’s community, it is im-portant that it contributes to making a positive impact on the society.

“The CSR is a part of our regular sustainable busi-ness practices...Among the social programmes we support, there is a special signifi cance for those that save lives,” said Ahmed Salem Sultan, director of Public Relations and Com-munication Department, QFMA.

Faisal Rashid al-Sahouti, chief executive, QICDRC, said “voluntary blood do-nation is extremely impor-tant and we were pleased to see the large turnout to the mobile blood donation unit.”

HMC’s mobile blood bank at the QFCRA for the blood donation drive.

Marginal fallin populationBy Ramesh MathewStaff Reporter

There was a marginal fall of 15,300 in the coun-try’s population during

the one-month period be-tween February 28 and March 31, according to the fi gures released by the Ministry of de-velopment Planning and Sta-tistics (MDPS) yesterday. The fi gures show a falling trend between February and March for the third year running.

The MDPS said the coun-try has 2,685,053 individuals in March against 2,700,390 in February. Of them 2,012,745 are males (almost 75% of the total population) and 672,308 females.

Last year also, there was a fall between February and March, according to the min-istry. While the total was 2,673,022 in February 2017, the number fell to 2,659,261 the next month. In 2016 also there was a similar fall, from 2,545,603 to 2,526, 994, it said.

The Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Aff airs said it has received scores of applications from job-seeking citizens of diff erent education levels, adding that the number of candidates on the first day was 928 for 2,065 jobs. The Ministry said the job-seekers only need to go to the the website of the Ministry and choose the link for the type of job, then key in their the ID number and phone number, and finally enter the code sent by text message.The Ministry added that the system allows the job aspirants to view the available openings in diff erent institutions and select up to three job opportunities.They will receive a text message confirming they have completed registration.The statement added that due to some of the observations received on the first day from the job-seekers, which needed some adjustments, the system was put on hold to add the updates and raise its eff iciency so that users can view all open vacancies and select the suitable jobs according to their qualifications.

Ministry receivesapplications for jobs

The Indian embassy has appealed to parents looking for admission at various Indian schools for this academic year to submit the details of the children before April 7.“As the data is to be submitted to the Ministry concerned within a stipulated time frame, the information on admission issues may kindly be sent at the designated e-mail (doha.admission@gmail.com) by April 7, 2018 positively,” said a press note from the embassy.

Indian embassy asks for student details

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC) has launched a new service that enables law firms to send their queries on establishing companies through a designated e-mail.The specialists at the designated MEC department would respond to these e-mails within 24 hours. This

would save these law firms the trouble to go to the MEC for any queries. The e-mail for this service is: SLAM@mec.gov.qa and questions could be sent during normal working hours. This initiative is part of the MEC eff orts to constantly improve its services and upgrade its comprehensive business solutions system.

MEC launches new service

QATAR5Gulf Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

Nepalese ambassador Professor Ramesh Prasad Koirala has met with the adviser to HE the Minister for Culture and Sports, Faleh al-Ajlan al-Hajri, at the latter’s off ice. They discussed the cultural participation of the Nepalese community, prospective co-operation between Nepal and Qatar in culture and sports and the establishment of ‘Nepal House’, a Nepalese cultural centre in Doha. Professor Koirala also introduced al-Hajri to the various cultural activities conducted by the Nepal embassy and the Nepalese community, as well as the model of ‘Nepal House’.

Qatar-Nepal cultural ties discussed

300 security experts toattend Doha conference

A total of 300 experts in the security field in Qatar and abroad

will take part in the sev-enth conference of the International Association of Police Academies (IN-TERPA).

The main theme of the conference this year will be “New Trends in Combating Terrorism and Extremism.”

The three-day event aims at exchanging exper-tise and gaining knowledge of the best international practices in facing ter-

rorism and in halting the spread of extremism.

Director-General of the Police College Brigadier Mohamed Abdullah al-Mu-hana al-Marri stressed the importance of holding an international conference to discuss the region’s and the world’s urgent issues.

He added that terrorism was a real threat that must be dealt with scientifi cally, and based on the expert opinions of specialists in se-curity, legal and other fi elds.

He added that this year’s theme was chosen due to the threat terrorism poses on the entire world, and due to the need for co-operation

to deal with it.He noted that Qatar was

one of the leading countries in fi ghting terrorism. It was

one of the fi rst countries to adopt a law for tackling ter-rorist acts and extremism.

He said the conference was a great platform for ex-changing ideas on counter-terrorism methods.

Al-Marri noted that 42 countries will be repre-sented in the conference, in addition to international organisations in the security fi eld.

He added that it was also an opportunity to improve ties with INTERPA mem-bers, which would mean having access to a com-prehensive database to the most eff ective counter-ter-rorism practices.

QNADoha

Director-General of the Police College Brigadier Mohamed Abdullah al-Muhana al-Marri giving details of the conference.

QATAR

Gulf Times Monday, April 2, 20186

Qatar Charity (QC) has received more than 370 entries from the prepara-

tory and secondary schools for boys and girls as part of its grand annual “Future’s Writers” com-petition.

The competition is a new way for QC to discover and develop young literary talents by select-ing, training and honouring short story writers, and publishing and distributing winning stories to the public, it was announced yesterday.

Qatari students make up about 20% of the participants.

QC, through this competi-tion, aims to contribute to the achievement of Qatar National Vision 2030 by providing a range of talent search programmes, preparing a well-educated and cultured generation capable to

meet challenges, spreading the culture of reading and develop-ing writing student’s skills, in co-operation with the Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Minis-try of Education and Higher Ed-ucation, Qatar University, Barwa Bank, Qatari Forum For Authors, “Khair Jalees” Book Club, and Dar Roza Publishing.

Ali Ibrahim al-Ghareeb, ex-ecutive director of the QC’s Lo-cal Operations Department, said that community development and service are among main goals of the organisation.

It also seeks to promote and preserve the Arabic language and spread the culture of reading among middle and high school students.

Project manager Maysoun Ali Asida said the entries have been forwarded to the judging com-

mittees in order to select the can-didates for the second phase of the competition, which is about attending the short story writing workshops conducted by profes-sors from Qatar University and the Arabic Language Committee.

The fi nal groups for the second phase of the programme will be announced on April 4.

The judging committee for boys consists of Dr Ahmed Sa-far, co-ordinator of the Arabic Language Department at Qatar

University; Arabic language ex-pert Hassan al-Nuaimi; Arabic Language Standards Specialist Ahmad al-Dukas; and, Ali al-Ra-chied, head of the QC’s Content and Publishing Section.

The judging committee for the girls includes Arabic Language Standards Specialist Safi naz al-Hasasneh; Arabic Language Co-ordinator Noor al-Hammadi; Shama al-Kuwari, a novelist and fi ctionist; and, Dar Roza Pub-lishing chief executive Aisha al-Kuwari.

The fi rst edition of the “Fu-ture’s Writers” Programme has achieved many of its objec-tives and was also praised and promoted by a number of well-known bodies and personali-ties, including HE the Minister of Culture and Sports Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali.

Over 370 entries to QC writing contest

HE the Minister of Culture and Sports Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali, QC off icials and other dignitaries at a press conference to launch the competition.

More than 1,000 students, both male and female, have graduated at Qatar

Charity’s (QC) Al Kawthar Multi-Services Centre School over the past fi ve years.

The school in Indonesia, estab-lished by QC in 2012, now has more than 600 students, more than 200 of whom graduate each year.

After the graduation, many con-tinue their higher education within the country and abroad country, while some start their career.

Al Kawthar Multi-Service Centre consists of a school with six class-rooms, a mosque, a laboratory hall, a library and a well.

The centre actively contributes to the improvement of the educa-tion level of the community in the city of Banjar, in the province of West Java, Indonesia.

The centre also plays a signifi cant role in raising the social awareness among students and highlighting the importance of healthy environ-ment for people.

The director of QC’s Project Management, Khalid al-Yafei, said that the charity set up Al Kawthar

School to provide education to as many students as possible in the country, with the aim of achiev-ing Universal Primary Education, which is one of the UN Millennium Development Goals, growing from having dozens of students to more than 600 now.

Qatar Charity carried out 786 development projects last year, at a cost of QR14.2mn, which has ben-efi ted hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia.

QC school graduates more than a thousandstudents in fi ve years

Right: A computer lab at the school.

Students of Qatar Charity’s Al Kawthar Multi-Services Centre School during an assembly.

Commercial Bank has redesigned its mobile banking app with sig-

nifi cant improvement to the user interface, making banking easier and convenient for cus-tomers, it was announced in a statement.

The new mobile banking app is the fi rst fi nance app in Qatar with voice recognition tech-nology.

The new app includes fa-cial recognition for iPhone X users, an intuitive approach remembering your favour-ite transactions for repetitive usage, along with dashboard customisation and profi le per-sonalisation.

The new mobile banking app helps customers save time and money by banking at a time and place that suits them, and will be available for custom-ers from the fi rst week of this month.

Commercial Bank EGM of consumer banking Amit Sah said: “Commercial Bank is the

market leader in high-quality digital and mobile banking channels in Qatar, using inno-vative technology to provide the best customer experience.

“Our commitment to inno-vation, which drives customer value, never stops and there-fore we have enhanced our mobile app with new features along with a modern and in-tuitive design that has made it more convenient for customers to bank with us.”

Commercial Bank mobile app features voice recognition

The new feature in Commercial Bank’s mobile app helps customers save time and money.

More than 80 artistes from various countries, including six bands and 18 individual performers, will per-

form at the second annual Oud Festival at Katara – the Cultural Village from April 5 to 8, it was announced.

Oud players and bands from Qatar, Ku-wait, Spain, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Ar-menia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iraq, Japan, Greece, Oman, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia are set to captivate the audience with daily performances at Katara’s Opera House from 8pm.

“The success of the fi rst edition is why we are now hosting the second edition of the festival. We continue our journey with this musical instrument, the Oud,” Katara gen-eral manager Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim al-Su-laiti said in a statement. “This year’s chosen theme is the renowned Islamic philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi (the Second Master).”

The Festival, under the theme Al Farabi the Second Master, will see Oud maestros from across the globe enchanting the audi-ence at Katara for four days, with a mix of the East and the West in Oud tradition.

“We will again celebrate the Oriental mu-sical instrument that has captivated people, which goes hand in hand with art and crea-tivity, the Oud,” Dr al-Sulaiti noted. “The melodic rhythm of the Oud is enjoyed and revered in the East and the West.”

Al-Farabi, a connecting link between dif-ferent cultures across the Muslim world, has important contributions to culture, philosophy and music.

Katara’s fi rst Oud festival in March last year was dedicated to Ziryab, the legendary

musician of the Arab and Islamic world.“This time we chose al-Farabi because

Katara believes music connects people. The tunes, the rhythm and the strings have a magical eff ect,” Dr al-Sulaiti said.

A fi lm on al-Farabi will be screened on April 5 (opening) followed by performances by a Turkish band dedicated to al-Farabi.

Daily performances by Indonesian bands and musicians at the Al Farabi theatre will take place from 4pm to 6pm.

Oud makers from across the globe will display their skills and craftsmanship on the sidelines of the festival.

Kiosks of Oud makers from Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Greece, and Iraq will turn Al Mas-rah street, near the Katara Amphitheatre, into a hub for Oud fans and professionals.

Nine renowned Oud makers are expected to participate in the festival.

In addition, the festival, which will fea-ture lectures and forums on Oud making, concludes with a musical show dedicated to al-Farabi.

Katara’s musical journey continues with the Oud

Oud musical instruments are set to enchant the audience once again at the second annual Oud Festival.

QR19mn package for stadium workers

From Page 1

The ground-breaking steps to tackle the issue of recruitment fees has been re-flected in the SC’s Third Annual Progress Report.

Hassan al-Thawadi, Secretary General of the SC, said: “The significance to re-imburse workers who paid recruitment fees should not be underestimated. Un-ethical recruitment is a global issue and an area many countries all over the world struggle to manage. All too often, the very people who have left their homes

to provide for their families are the ones exploited.

“We have been steadfast in our belief that this World Cup can be a catalyst for change, both in Qatar and in other parts of the world. Recruitment fees is a hugely complex issue, yet the SC and several of our contractors have agreed on a mechanism to ensure that our workers are reimbursed for the hardships they may have endured when coming to Qatar to work.”

Four main contractors and two other contracted parties (OCPs) have made com-mitments towards this initiative.

QATAR

Gulf TimesMonday, April 2, 20188

Stop Palestinian divisions: forum Call to end Gulf crisis, maintain GCC unity

QNADoha

Speakers at the sixth Doha Forum for policies and strategies called for the need to stop internal Palestinian divi-

sions and to work on uniting parties to face the occupation.

They said overcoming this deadlock will come from fi nding new national strategies to face the Israeli occupation and its violations.

This came in a session on Al Quds and the Palestinian issue, at the forum which is organised by Centre for Strategic Studies of the Armed Forces in co-operation with Arab Center for Research and Policy Stud-ies, which concluded yesterday.

The speakers called for the need to activate and continue the resistance that unites the internal eff orts and recruits an international opinion, to activate the boycotting move-ment to trigger international solidarity, to support the resistance of the Palestinian people and encourage them not to emigrate.

In addition to instilling the philosophy of resistance between Palestinians internally and externally, ending division and uniting away from power struggle.

Founder and head of the Palestinian Na-

tional Initiative Dr Mustafa Barghouti con-demned the ongoing siege on Gaza Strip, describing it as a complete siege blocking electricity, water, food, medicine and basic needs. He confi rmed that these Israeli ac-tions against the Strip results in humanitar-ian crises due to global silence.

This is in addition to the water pollution and the prohibition of fi shermen from prac-tising their work under the pretext of laws enacted by the Israelis to limit the rights of the Palestinians. He added that all the ongo-ing actions against the Gaza Strip and siege, restricts the Palestinians from entering 24% from the area.

He said objecting to US President Donald Trump’s decision to move the embassy to Al Quds, and recognising it as the capital of Is-rael, described as “Deal of the Century”, is to be adopted by the Palestinian factions and forces of the uprising. He said the decision challenges the US’ alleged respect for hu-man rights and respect for international law, adding that the American decision is based on an Israeli point of view, which rejects the compromise of a two-state solution.

Researcher at Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies Mueen al-Taher said Trump’s decision to recognise Al Quds as the capital of Israel is an early declaration of

the “Deal of the Century”. He added that despite standing with Israel, the previ-ous US President Barack Obama rec-ognised the Arab-Israeli negotiations, however Trump’s administration denies any recognition. Al-Taher added that the deal depends on redrafting the alli-ances in the regions and enabling Israel to play a larger role.

It also includes making Israel a party in the negotiations, and giving it a re-gional role that allows it to interfere in Middle East aff airs.

He added that Hamas had said that the decision will harm US’ interests, whereas Chief of Hamas Political Bu-reau Ismail Haniyeh had called for a new uprising and to suspend security co-ordination in the West Bank.

On his part, legal scholar, head of Conference for Palestinians Abroad Dr Anis Qasem touched on the legal aspects of the decision, confi rming that the US decision is based on three themes, the fi rst of which was the claim that Israel was a sovereign state and has the right to determine its capital’s location.

Qasem refuted the claim saying the national legislations are not binding on states unless it is consistent with inter-national law and customs.

He then referred to the confl ict be-tween Spain and the US, when Spain was colonising Cuba, where Spain is-sued a decision to increase the territorial waters of Cuba. US rejected the decision since it was a national law which was unbinding internationally.

This precedent had become an interna-tional principle until it was adopted by the Vienna Convention, by which no state has the right to invoke national law in contra-vention of international law, he said.

Professor of international law Dr Qasem referred to previous Israeli de-cisions, considering West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which no country has recognised. In addition he referred to another decision to acknowledge Je-rusalem as the capital of Israel, which the Security Council nullifi ed with a resolution, considering that Jerusalem is an occupied territory.

About the second argument made by the US president to justify his decision, Dr Qasem said the decision was a recog-nition of the status quo. He stressed that this argument will lead to the recogni-tion of settlements becoming a reality.

He described this argument as con-trary to international law and in par-ticular the Security Council resolution of 1967, which states that no third party shall be forcibly seized, which is also a well-established rule of law and inter-national custom.

On the third argument that was jus-tifi ed by the US president, was that the Jewish people and since ancient times had founded Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Dr Qasem refuted this argument by saying that peoples, states and capitals did not exist in those distant days as jus-tifi ed by this resolution, adding that the US Constitution explicitly prohibits any issue of a religious nature, citing the po-sition of former President Truman when he signed the document of recognition of Israel, where he deleted the word Jew associated with people, and had it re-placed with Israeli.

He added that it seems that President Trump’s advisers do not know about the US document that states that the United States government does not recognise the concept of the Jewish people as an international concept.

Dr Qasem pointed out that the system of Israeli law is divided into a special sec-tion for Jews only and another for non-Jews, describing it as apartheid, stressing that it aims to throw the Palestinians out of their borders, in addition, under this system, the displaced and Palestinian refugees, whether at home or abroad are not entitled to return to their lands.

Dr Qasem expressed optimism about the steps taken by the Arab group to reach out to the Security Council, which was vetoed by the US. He added that the draft resolution received a positive vote for its importance, whereas the inter-national community condemned this decision and considered it contrary to international law.

In another context, the fi rst session of the second day of the Doha Forum for Policies and Strategies, which was con-ducted by International Relations Ex-pert at the International Relations Stra-tegic Studies Centre Dr Osama Kubbar, discussed the topic of Middle East in US strategy, while Professor Anthony Cordesman, a strategic expert at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington, gave a presenta-tion on the features of the new US na-tional security strategy.

Middle East Aff airs expert Oytun Orhan gave a presentation about the in-tersections of the interests of regional powers with the US strategy. Researcher at Brookings Tarun Chhabra spoke about human rights issues in the US strategy.

Qeeri facility marks fi ve years of energy research

The Solar Test Facil-ity (STF), operated by the Qatar Environ-

ment and Energy Research Institute (Qeeri), a part of Hamad Bin Khalifa Univer-sity (HBKU), has celebrated fi ve years of testing diff erent photovoltaic modules and providing hard evidence of which technologies perform best in Qatar’s climate.

The large-scale fi eld test-ing is a key asset at Qeeri and plays a vital role in the institute’s contributions towards tackling Qatar’s energy security grand chal-lenge.

The STF is a 35,000sq m test site at Qatar Sci-ence and Technology Park (QSTP).

Inaugurated in 2012 by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development, it performs a detailed and long-term evaluation of solar technologies in Qa-tar’s harsh climate. In 2016, the STF came under the umbrella of Qeeri, and its research agenda is being expanded to soiling mitiga-tion, battery storage, con-centrating solar power, and a pilot micro-grid.

Over the last fi ve years,

the performance of 30 photovoltaic technologies — both commercially avail-able and prototypes — have been tested in terms of their energy yield, response to soiling, and reliability. Daily dust and rain measurements for fi ve years have precisely quantifi ed the soiling rate, and allowed diff erent clean-ing strategies to be simu-lated.

Soiling-mitigation tech-nologies such as coatings and machines continue to be tested.

Dr Marc Vermeersch, Qeeri’s executive director, said, “The STF at Qeeri is a state-of-the-art facility that enables our scientists to study solar technologies in real-world conditions, and with real-time data. This is crucial as it will help us to develop and deploy solar devices that are ideally suited for Qatar’s environ-ment and industry.”

Qeeri marked the fi fth anniversary of the STF with an event which saw the presence of numerous dig-nitaries and stakeholders.

The guests were given an insight into the various ele-ments at the STF including PV testing, trackers and in-verters, and the upcoming micro-grid project.

QNADoha

The sixth Doha Forum for Policies and Strategies has stressed the impor-

tance for major powers to exert their infl uence in the region and put pressure on the siege countries to end the ongoing Gulf crisis that has harmed the interests of all, and ensure the unity of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), which is “col-lapsing under the infl uence of the continuation of the crisis and its painful social and hu-manitarian consequences”.

The forum emphasised in its fi nal statement, which was read out by the director of the Directorate of International Studies and chairman of the Forum’s Preparation Commit-tee, Brigadier (pilot) Rashid Hamad al-Naimi, the need to pay attention to changes in the map of political and economic relations between the Gulf states and their refl ections on the map of regional and inter-national alliances in the Mid-dle East, especially with the strategic equations changing.

The statement called on the educated elite in the Gulf coun-tries to play a positive role in preventing the negative impact of the Gulf crisis on popular mentality and to protect com-munication between relatives.

In another context, the state-ment stressed the need to pre-serve the legal and religious sta-tus of Jerusalem and to confront attempts to its Judaisation as well as ending any diff erences that would distract eff orts and the need to support the besieged Palestinian people.

It also called on the interna-tional community to shoulder its responsibilities to end the painful and escalating confl icts in the Middle East, stressing that the resulting damage would not exclude anyone from their cross-border threat and the col-lective action they required.

The statement considered political and cultural elites and research centres responsible for the social analysis of con-fl icts and fi nding ways to re-store the values of coexistence between diff erent peoples in areas of civil confl ict.

It pointed to the need to pay attention to the changes taking place in the economic policies of some countries, which rep-resent a decline and a chal-lenge to global economic poli-cies and freedom of trade and globalisation.

The statement said military institutions must respond to the new challenges of regular armies such as urban wars, militia fi ghting, drone wars and cyber warfare. It stressed the urgent need to develop new technologies and the es-tablishment of specialised departments in the security and military institutions to deal with so-called directed electronic armies, which has become a danger to communi-ties, especially young people.

At the end of the forum, Commander of the Centre for Strategic Studies at the Ministry of Defence, Major General Dr Hamad Mohamed al-Marri, praised the positive contributions of the forum participants. These included presenting ideas, analyses and discussions, which adequately and satisfactorily covered most of the questions that were on everyone’s minds.

He noted that the forum was an ideal platform from which participants made valuable discussions, rich in analysis and futuristic vision on the is-sues raised through the event’s various sessions. He added that the participation of represent-atives of important research centres and institutions in the area of policy making and anal-ysis was a great enrichment for the sixth edition of the forum.

Dr al-Marri expressed hope that the areas of co-operation between Qatar and the coun-tries participating in the forum would be extended to other levels, especially as Qatar be-lieved in the importance of in-tegration and co-operation in the fi eld of scientifi c research in general and strategic studies in particular.

The forum was held un-der the patronage of HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Aff airs Dr Khalid bin Moham-ed al-Attiyah with the theme “The Middle East: Reality and Challenges”.

Off icials at the Qeeri Solar Test Facility during the fifth anniversary event.

The forum speakers called for the need to activate and continue the resistance that unites the internal eff orts

QATAR

Gulf Times Monday, April 2, 201810

The Qatar national team for 8-way skydiving, belonging to the Joint Special Forces, won the first place at the recently held French indoor skydiving championship (wind tunnel). A team from France finished second following strong competition and with a diff erence of only one point. There were a total of 13 teams competing in the event. This was the second achievement for the Qatar national team this year, the Directorate of Defence Communication at the Ministry of Defence said in a statement yesterday. The team also bagged the second place, second to a French team, in the 4-way category. Fourteen teems from diff erent countries took part in this competition.

Qatari team wins first place in French indoor skydiving championship

Ghada al-Khater hosts open studio night in Paris

Qatari artist Ghada al-Khater successfully hosted an open studio

night at the renowned Cite Internationale Des Arts, Paris.

The event, part of al-Khat-er’s three-month Paris Art Residency Programme, was an opportunity for the artist to welcome visitors to her stu-dio, talk about her experience in Paris and the inspiration behind her work.

A graduate of Virginia Com-monwealth University Qatar with a BFA in Graphic Design, al-Khater is a political AR-Toonist who tackles subjects of freedom of speech, fake news and injustice.

The artist’s recent work, “Blockade: Energy Drink”, was showcased at the open night studio and presented a humorous take on how the blockade on Qatar was a moti-vation for the country to speed up its eff orts towards achiev-ing its National Development Vision 2030.

Organised under the pa-tronage of Qatar Museums’ (QM) chairperson, HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the pro-gramme is an extension of QM’s Fire Station: Artist in Residence programme in Doha.

The initiative aims to give talented Qatari artists the chance to expand their creativ-ity by immersing themselves in celebrated hub for artistic exchange between artists.

As part of the initiative, the Fire Station supports gifted artists with studio and ac-commodation at the Cité in-ternationale des Arts in Paris for three months, as well as a monthly stipend for their stay and art materials purchases. The programme is open to

all Qatari artists aged 18 and older, covering all art forms.

Al-Khater is the fourth Qatari artist to join the initiative. Before her, Ebtisam al-Saff ar, Nasser al-Attiya and Abdullah al-Ku-wari successfully completed the programme, with Abdullah al-Kuwari recently hosting his fi rst solo exhibition in Qatar, titled Imaginary Motifs.

“The last three months have been fi lled with inspir-ing conversations, interesting workshops and a complete immersion in the Parisian art scene – everything I had hoped for when joining the programme,” al-Khater said. “It was a pleasure to interact with our guests today and talk to them about this enriching experience and its impact on my work.”

“The Paris Residency Pro-gramme highlights QM’s com-mitment to nurturing a new generation of creative talents. It presents a unique experi-ence for Qatari artists to ex-pand their horizons and build bridges with other like-mind-ed individuals in one of the biggest art residencies in the world,” Fire Station director Khalifa al-Obaidli said. “We are very proud of al-Khater and are looking forward to see her new works here in Qatar.”

All-new 2018 Mazda CX5 launched National Car Company

(NCC), the sole agent for Mazda vehicles in Qatar,

has introduced the all-new 2018 Mazda CX-5.

This realises Mazda’s “dream of delivering an SUV that breaks through the traditional trade-off between driving pleasure and passenger comfort”, according to a press statement issued in Doha by NCC.

The Mazda CX-5 was launched in 2012 as the fi rst new general model featuring the KODO design and SKY-ACTIV TECHNOLOGY, and has been “acclaimed world-wide for its dynamic design, responsive driving feel and excellent environmental and safety performance”. It proved to be a core model, account-ing for approximately 25% of Mazda’s annual sales, and till date 1.4mn units have been sold in around 120 countries, the statement notes.

The all-new CX-5 has “rede-fi ned every aspect of Mazda’s current technology and design”. For the design, Mazda has set-tled on “refi ned toughness” as a keyword and challenged itself to elevate the KODO concept to a new level.

“Inspired by traditional Japa-nese crafts, Mazda has pursued minimalist aesthetics – the ‘less is more concept’, free of all non-essential elements. The result is a bold and premium-looking ex-terior, and an interior that gives all occupants a pleasant feeling. The new body colour, Soul Red

The all-new Mazda CX-5.

A view of the interior.

Crystal, combines vivid high-lights and crystalline depths and further accentuates the design of the new CX-5,” the statement explains.

The all-new CX-5 adopts G-Vectoring Control, the fi rst of the SKYACTIV-VEHICLE DY-NAMICS technologies. Driving performance has been “polished in line with human sensibilities, realising dynamic behaviour that corresponds with driver expec-tations and a comfortable ride with minimal torso-sway for all

vehicles occupants. The cabin is quieter, allowing for more com-fortable conversation, and the rear seats provide greater levels of comfort and usability”.

To help provide driving pleas-ure for everyone in the car, latest technologies are incorporated, including i-ACTIVSENSE ad-vanced safety features to help keep occupants safer, an Active Driving Display that promotes safer driving by projecting in-formation onto the windshield, and the Mazda Connect car

connectivity system.The all-new CX5 comes with

a SKYACTIV-G 2.5 direct-in-jection gasoline engine, paired with the six-speed SKYAC-TIV-DRIVE automatic-manual transmission. These powertrains provide powerful acceleration, delivering a power output of 187hp@5,700rpm and torque of 250Nm@5,000rpm (AWD).

Also available is Mazda’s pre-dictive i-ACTIV AWD system, which helps prevent the front wheels from slipping.

The salient features available with the all-new Mazda CX5 high-grade are as follows: six airbags, multi-adjustable power front seats, dual-zone climate control, Smart Key and press button start, MZD Connect In-fotainment System, GPS Navi-gation System with Commander, nine speakers and premium Bose audio system, 40/20/40 split-folding rear seat, Advanced Blind Spot Monitoring System, Rear Cross Traffi c Alert, Smart City Brake Support, Traffi c Sign Rec-ognition System, Mazda Radar Cruise Control with Stop & Go function, Smart Brake Support, Distance Recognition Support System, Forward Obstruction Warning, Lane Departure Warn-ing System, Lane-keep Assist System, Adaptive Front-lighting System, power sunroof and 19” alloy wheels.

An NCC spokesperson said, “Mazda’s aim is to defy conven-tion and create cars that provide pure driving pleasure, not only for the driver, but also for the co-passengers. I am sure that our customers in Qatar will ex-perience the enhanced driving pleasure without compromising on the passenger’s comfort in the new CX5.”

National Car Company of-fers the entire range of new-generation Mazda sedans, SUVs and pick-ups at its showroom in Fereej Al Nasr, which is open seven days a week from 9am to 9pm except on Fridays, when the showroom is open during evening hours.

The artist’s recent work was showcased at the open night studio in Paris.

The Media One sponsored Khayal 2018 turned out to be an unforgettable night for ghazal lovers in Qatar. Popular singers Talat Aziz and Manjari rendered Urdu ghazals whereas the latter also presented a few in Malayalam too at the concert at Qatar National Convention Centre. Indian ambassador P Kumaran and Member of Parliament representing Lakshadweep Mohamed Faizal PP were among the special guests. Inauguration of the new off ices of Madhyamam and Media One in Doha were also held during the occasion. Khalid al-Mulla from Qatar News Agency inaugurated the off ice of Media One whereas Ibrahim Hashim al-Sada inaugurated the off ice of Gulf Madhyamam.

Ghazal singers enthral Doha audience

P Kumaran, Indian ambassador to Qatar, and Haji Bakel Mohamed Shali, chairman of Bombay Silk Centre, launching the 30th anniversary festivities of Bombay Silk Centre at a special gathering. Vipresh Seth, manager of Bombay Silk Centre, was also present on the occasion.

Bombay Silk Centre begins anniversary festivities

QATAR11Gulf Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

QU-CENG to launch new programmes

The Offi ce of Research and Graduate Studies at Qatar University Col-lege of Engineering (QU-CENG)

will launch several new programmes in-cluding a new PhD programme soon.

“The College of Engineering is also considering new programmes including six certifi cates and a research-based PhD programme focusing on research areas which are fully aligned with the research priorities of Qatar National Vision 2030,” disclosed CENG acting associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies Prof Ab-bes Amira.

CENG recently organised the Gradu-ate Open Day 2018 to provide prospec-tive graduate students with information on the Masters and PhD programmes of-fered at CENG and to familiarise them on admission requirements and registration procedures for Fall 2018 applications.

Attendees had the opportunity to meet with faculty members, programme co-ordinators, department heads and grad-uate staff , and to learn about the eight graduate programmes off ered at CENG.

The programmes include seven Mas-ter’s degree programmes — Civil En-gineering, Computing, Electrical En-gineering, Engineering Management, Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Urban Planning and Design — and one PhD programme with 12 concentrations — Architecture, Urban Planning, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Compu-ter Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Engineering Man-agement, Environmental Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering.

Prof Amira ... new programmes

Qatar e-Nature schools contest fi nalists namedFive schools have qualifi ed for the

fi nals at the fi fth Qatar e-Nature Schools Contest, the Ministry

of Education and Higher Education; Sasol, international integrated chemi-cals and energy company; and Friends of the Environment Centre (FEC) have announced.

The fi ve fi nalists are Al Manar In-ternational School – Dafna, Abi Ay-oub Al Ansari Model School, Global Academy International, Lebanese School and Markhiya Primary School for Girls.

The fi nal round and the awards

ceremony will be held on April 18 with the winners receiving trophies, medals, and vouchers starting from QR9,000.

“The Qatar e-Nature school con-test promotes a spirit of competition and learning, and combines knowl-edge with fun, which is important in building the generation who will lead the future,” Fatima al-Obaidli, head of Programmes and Activities at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, said.

Some 321 students from 63 public schools and 44 private schools across

Qatar took part in the interactive contest.The questions were based on in-

formation available on the award-winning Qatar e-Nature smartphone application and website.

Phinda Vilakazi, President of GTL Ventures, Sasol, said: “We hope to call attention to Qatar’s rich and diverse environment, and encourage students to learn more about the nature of the country.”

FEC director Frahood al-Hajiri stressed that: “Our contribution to the development of the Qatar e-Na-ture app stems from our love for Qa-

tar’s rich nature and the need to pro-tect it.”

“This is a responsibility that must be passed on to the next generation in order to secure a better future for Qa-tar,” he added.

During the competition, students answered questions live to gain points and win.

The fi ve-day quarter-fi nals ended with 25 schools qualifying for the semi-fi nals, which were held over two days.

This year’s contest was designed to be more challenging in terms of the

type of questions, the level of skills, and the style of the competition.

Qatar e-Nature app, a Sasol ini-tiative launched in co-operation with FEC in 2013, highlights the country’s fl ora, birds, insects, mammals, rep-tiles, marine life and nature reserves in the country in Arabic and English.

The user-friendly app has won four awards, including two prestigious regional awards, and it is available for download free of charge on Apple Store, Google Play store, and Win-dows Phone Store and on the website www.enature.qa.

Students take part in the Qatar e-Nature Schools Contest.

QATAR

Gulf Times Monday, April 2, 201812

‘Nursing Now Qatar’ campaign launchedThe World Innova-

tion Summit for Health (WISH), an initiative of

Qatar Foundation, has joined forces with Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) to launch ‘Nursing Now Qatar’.

The Qatar chapter of Nurs-ing Now, a global campaign run in collaboration with the Inter-national Council of Nurses and the World Health Organisation (WHO), is the fi rst of its kind in the Arabian Gulf region.

Nursing Now Qatar was an-nounced on the fi nal day of the Middle East Forum for Quality and Safety in Healthcare, held recently. The campaign aims to improve healthcare globally by raising the profi le and status of nurses worldwide; infl uencing policymakers; and supporting nurses to lead, learn, and build a global movement.

Speaking at the event HE the Minister of Public Health Dr Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari, said, “I am proud of our nurses who bring a unique and valu-able set of competences and experience that are relevant to the diverse population groups

we care for in Qatar. This global campaign plays a vital role in our eff orts to profi le the profession-alism of nurses and midwives in our health sector; and will help to promote this important pro-fession among Qatari nursing professionals.”

Sultana Afdhal, CEO, WISH, announced the formation of a Nursing Now committee, which will be headed by Dr Nicola Ry-ley, chief nursing offi cer, HMC, with support from Mariam Nooh al-Mutawa, executive director of nursing, HMC, during the fo-rum’s plenary session.

Nursing Now board mem-ber Maureen Bisognano from the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, who reviewed the fi ve strategic priorities for the Nursing Now campaign, was also present during the announcement.

Messages of encouragement were received from Elizabeth Iro, Chief Nursing Offi cer, WHO, and representatives of the nurs-ing community of Jordan, who will be launching Nursing Now Jordan in the coming months.

Nursing and Universal Health

HE Dr Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari with off icials at the launch of ‘Nursing Now Qatar’.

Coverage will be one of nine re-search topics that will form the focus of WISH 2018. The nine forums will highlight and ad-

dress some of the world’s most pressing challenges across top-ics that cover medical, ethical, technological, and humanitarian

aspects of healthcare. The top-ics announced so far include viral hepatitis, eye health, and design in health.

WISE shares study reports at ARC’18The World Innovation

Summit for Education (WISE), an initiative

of Qatar Foundation (QF), recently presented a range of research reports address-ing topics in education at the Annual Research Conference 2018 (ARC’18).

WISE presented its 2017 Research Reports on areas in-cluding school leadership and collaborative professionalism, design thinking, apprentice-ship, disability, early child-hood education, and migration, among others, to ARC’18, held at the Qatar National Conven-tion Centre from March 19-20. The reports were produced in collaboration with experts from around the world, including the World Bank, IDEO, Univer-sity of Oxford, LearnLabs, and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in Qatar.

Dr Ahmed Baghdady, man-ager of Research and Content Development, WISE, who presented at ARC’18, said: “I am delighted to share my views on how to move from research to impact. We need to understand that the main goal

of research is to improve hu-man life. In education, this is clear in the impact that policy research has on the outcomes of education and human capital development.”

The comprehensive reports address global education is-sues and refl ect the priorities of the Qatar National Re-search Strategy. They feature action-oriented recommen-dations and policy guidance for all education stakeholders off ering concrete, improved practices in specifi c contexts. The reports are available on the WISE website and selected reports are available in Arabic editions.

ARC is Qatar Foundation Research and Development’s fl agship conference showcas-ing the latest multidiscipli-nary knowledge tackling the most pressing challenges in research.

The comprehensive reports address global education issues and refl ect the priorities of the Qatar National Research Strategy

Doha Bank hosts Employee Recognition AwardsDoha Bank has hosted its

fi rst monthly ‘Employ-ee Recognition Awards’

ceremony for 2018 at its West Bay headquarters, it was announced in a statement.

In the presence of Doha Bank CEO Dr R Seetharaman and other senior offi cials, the ceremony acknowledged and congratulated the outstanding service and achievements of many employees from various work disciplines for January and February.

Award categories included the ‘Most Committed Employee’, which was given to Nishantha Fernando and Lamia Husam; ‘Best Customer Service Employ-ee’ awarded to Mohamed Rilwan, while Nesiri Ehalawela and Tho-mas Varghese were recognised

Doha Bank CEO Dr R Seetharaman and other senior off icials with the awardees during the ceremony.

as ‘Best Relationship Manager’. Hesham Elmalky was named ‘Best Dealer’, while Adel Mohamed Ali and Dana Sulaiman received the special recognition in the ‘Best Recovery Agent’ category.

Seetharaman, who handed the awards to the recipients,

said: “As every month, I’m very proud to personally acknowl-edge our team and staff ’s eff orts. All the recipients have excelled in their respective areas of work and gone the extra mile to en-sure customer satisfaction and boost business growth towards

their departments and the bank. “Everyone’s eff ort is build-

ing our success locally and glo-bally, therefore it is my pleasure to thank you all and I’m looking forward to many more ‘Employ-ee recognition Awards’ in the year ahead.”

Katara, QSE to host Green Engineering Conference and Exhibition from April 23

Qatar Society of Engi-neers (QSE), in collabo-ration with Katara – the

Cultural Village Foundation, will host the Green Engineering Conference and Exhibition from April 23 to 25 with the aim of raising public awareness about ‘green’ concepts and techniques in engineering and construction.

The event will take place at Regency Hall, Building 12 – Katara under the patronage of HE the Minister of Energy and Industry Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada.

The event aims to raise aware-ness in the community about green engineering and encour-age the sectors operating in the country to carry out their mis-sion of ensuring a sustainable future, said Mohamed Abdulla al-Kuwari, vice-chairman of the Qatar Society of Engineers and general supervisor of the event.

“Green engineering is a rela-

tively new and developing con-cept and many people are not aware of its importance in our daily life and how it can be prac-tically applied in diff erent sec-tors. The main objective of this event is to raise public awareness on this issue,” he said, adding that the conference also seeks to promote the best standards and specifi cations in green en-gineering and present Qatar’s signifi cant achievements in ar-eas of sustainability and green engineering.

Experts from Qatar Univer-sity, Qatar Foundation, Qatar Airways, Mowasalat and vari-ous private companies have been invited to speak on a wide range of topics related to green engi-neering to an audience compris-ing students, experts, company representatives and industry stakeholders.

The Green Engineering exhi-bition will showcase latest tech-nology, innovation, information, resources and materials used in green engineering in diff erent sectors, the organisers have said in a statement.

Sessions of the conference will be dedicated to discussing diff erent aspects of green engi-neering and the six key sectors it has been applied to: energy and industrial; buildings and con-struction; agriculture and food products; transport and com-munications; healthcare; and investment and consulting.

Mohamed Abdulla al-Kuwari

Ashghal organises seminar on dispute resolution methodsThe Public Works Author-

ity (Ashghal) has hosted seminar in co-operation

with the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre (QICDRC) and Char-tered Institute of Arbitration (CIArb).

The seminar addressed al-ternative dispute resolution methods and investment treaty arbitration in relation to con-struction projects.

The event was held in the presence of senior Ashghal management, including assist-ant president Abdullah Hamad al-Atiyya. Representatives from the CIArb and QICDRC also at-tended the seminar.

More than 190 participants, including experts in the fi eld of construction law and the busi-ness of building and contract-ing, attended the seminar that covered a presentation on the role of CIArb, its programmes for 2018 in Qatar – to be held in co-operation with Ashghal and QICDRC, and the procedures of CIArb membership.

In his opening remarks, Ahmed Ali al-Ansari, technical offi ce manager at Ashghal and president of the CIArb in Qa-tar, explained the relationship between Ashghal, CIArb and QICDRC.

Dr Virginie Colaiuta

Ahmed Ali al-Ansari

Matthew Walker

He also explained the insti-tute’s eff orts to spread aware-ness on the culture of develop-ing alternative resolutions in construction projects and how the institute develops relations with various entities in the State through inking co-operation agreements and memorandums of understanding.

Matthew Walker, secretary of the CIArb, gave a presentation on the institute’s training pro-

grammes and events scheduled for the current year, besides the procedures of availing of CIArb membership and diff erent levels of membership.

This presentation followed by a lecture and discussion on in-ternational and bilateral invest-ment treaty arbitration in rela-tion to construction projects. The lecture was delivered by Dr Virginie Colaiuta, a specialist in construction and commercial arbitration and a faculty member at the Kings College, London.

The lecture covered a range of topics that concern investors and their relationship with gov-ernment clients through con-struction contracts and part-nership contracts between the public and private sectors.

Leading driving schools take part in Traffi c WeekThe 34th Traffi c Week,

which was held at Darb Al Saai recently, brought

together some of Qatar’s largest driving schools and other or-ganisations partnering with the General Directorate of Traffi c.

The participation came as the General Directorate of Traf-fi c once again “showed its com-mitment and collaboration with partners to realise the vision of spreading awareness on road safety in the country”, a press statement noted.

Major Jaber Mohamed Rash-id Odaiba, assistant director of the Media and Traffi c Aware-ness Department, General Di-rectorate of Traffi c, said: “The General Directorate of Traf-fi c aims to spread awareness on road safety and realise the National Road Safety Strategy. In this regard, we co-operate with our stakeholders through diff erent awareness cam-paigns, and are very pleased to partner with Engineering Solutions and the participat-ing driving schools in the 34th Traffi c Week.”

Engineering Solutions QSTP is a technical development and technology deployment com-pany established in 2010 within the Qatar Science and Technol-ogy Park. Its areas of expertise include driving and road safety.

The driving schools par-ticipating in the event included Dalla Driving Academy, Al-Hasba Driving School, Qatar

Driving Learning Institute, United Driving Academy and Doha Driving Academy. The participants were keen to reach out to visitors by answering their queries on road safety, or by off ering training sessions on the “state-of-the-art” driving simulator provided by Engi-neering Solutions, the state-ment added.

At the event, offi cials high-lighted the “uniqueness of the advanced technology of a 100% Qatari-made” simulator,

manufactured by Engineering Solutions. The company is the sole manufacturer of advanced driving simulators in the Mena region.

Raff at Zreik, Operations manager at Engineering So-lutions, said: “Our main priority is road safety as we strive to realise the Qatar National Road Safety Strat-egy. We are delighted to have co-operated with the General Directorate of Traffi c and the participating driving schools

during the Traffi c Week.”Hassan Nassar, manager of

Dalla Driving Academy, added: “We are proud to have par-ticipated in the Traffi c Week, where we had the chance to assume our role in realising the Qatar National Road Safety Strategy and spread awareness on such an important topic. We would like to extend our gratitude to the General Di-rectorate of Traffi c for the out-standing initiatives it executes in this regard.”

An off icial highlighted the simulator manufactured by Engineering Solutions.

REGION/ARAB WORLD13Gulf Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

Last eastern Ghouta rebels ‘poised for deal with govt’Reuters Amman

The group in control of the last rebel bastion near Damascus appeared yes-

terday to have agreed a deal for its fi ghters to make peace with the government or quit the eastern Ghouta enclave, Syrian state media said yesterday.

Jaish Al Islam, most of whose members are drawn from the area, has been defend-ing the city of Douma against a months-long onslaught by gov-ernment forces.

If confi rmed, its surrender or departure for rebel-held areas in northwest Syria would herald an end to large-scale confl ict in the enclave.

State television and Syrian newspapers said information indicated that, under the deal, the group would hand over heavy and mid-sized weapons and acknowledge the restora-tion of state sovereignty over Douma. A Hezbollah run-media unit said yesterday an agree-ment had been reached after several days of negotiations to spare bloodshed in Douma.

The unit of the powerful Lebanese militia that has been fi ghting with the Syrian army said among the terms of the deal was setting up a Syrian govern-ment-approved local council to run the city’s aff airs after rebels withdraw.

It also said a Russian-led committee with representatives from Turkey, Iran and Russia, the three guarantors of the As-tana peace talks who set up “de-escalation” zones across Syria,

would be responsible for hand-ing over prisoners of war jailed by the rebels.

Jaish Al Islam had no imme-diate comment on the reports but responded to earlier claims by the Syrian government that it was negotiating a deal to stay and not to pull out of the city.

The government lost control of Douma, the largest urban centre in the eastern suburbs of

Damascus in insurgent hands, in the early phase of Syria’s civil war, now in its eighth year.

If confi rmed, the agreement with Jaish Al Islam would mir-ror others reached by insurgents following heavy bombing of ar-eas under their control by gov-ernment forces and Russian jets that has killed hundreds of civil-ians. Late on Saturday, negotia-tors reached a deal to evacuate

wounded Jaish Al Islam civil-ians and fi ghters to Idlib in the northwest. A group of stranded fi ghters from another insurgent group, Failaq al-Rahman, who had fl ed to Douma from advanc-ing army troops at the start of the latest campaign, left the city yesterday, state media said.

On Saturday it concluded a week-long evacuation of thou-sands of its fi ghters from areas it

had controlled in other parts of the enclave.Opposition sources say Jaish Al Islam offi cials have been desperately trying to strike a deal that would bring Rus-sian military police into Douma, and let the group keep a role in maintaining internal security but under the state’s overall ju-risdiction.

Russian military offi cers ne-gotiating with Jaish Al Islam

told the group it accepted such an arrangement but the Syrian government remained against it, a senior opposition source familiar with the talks said.

Russia, a key ally of President Bashar al-Assad, was behind the main battle plan, direct-ing elite forces and militias on the ground and calling in air strikes from Syrian and Russian warplanes, two Western intel-ligence sources based in the re-gion told Reuters this week.

The Syrian army last week warned the insurgents to sur-render or face a military assault to drive them out.

The Syrian army command said on Saturday it had regained most of the towns and villag-es in eastern Ghouta and was pressing its military operations in Douma.

The city’s fall would seal the rebels’ worst defeat since 2016.

The once bustling commer-cial hub on the outskirts of the capital was the main centre of street protests in the Damascus suburbs against Assad’s rule that ignited the confl ict more than seven years ago.

Defence analysts say a major goal of the government’s cam-paign was to complete a security belt around the capital, where for years rebels dug into a net-work of tunnels and well-forti-fi ed positions resisted countless off ensives to seize the enclave.

Many of the inhabitants of eastern Ghouta say they fear their displacement was part of a deliberate attempt to bring de-mographic changes in strategic areas that dilutes their presence in favour of Assad’s Alawite sect and other minorities.

Libyan returnees stuck in desert say no going backReuters Garart Al-Gatef, Libya

The wind whips up sand storms in Garart Al-Gatef. Snakes and scorpions lurk

amongst the desert scrub.But hundreds of people who

were stranded while trying to re-turn to a town emptied in an act of collective punishment dur-ing Libya’s 2011 revolution have sworn to stay put here until they are allowed home.

The makeshift camp of 250 tents sprang up in early Febru-ary after armed groups from the city of Misrata blocked convoys of displaced families trying to approach Tawergha, a town of about 40,000 that still lies in ruins.

In doing so, they thwarted — at least temporarily — a land-mark reconciliation eff ort to re-solve a case that has symbolized the political and communal divi-sions which surfaced during and after Libya’s uprising.

It was forces from Misrata that chased Tawergha’s residents from their homes more than six years ago, accusing them of sup-porting a military siege of their city by Muammar Gaddafi , part of his failed attempt to crush the

Nato-backed revolt that over-threw him.

Tawergha’s residents, many of them the dark-skinned de-scendants of sub-Saharan Afri-can slaves, have since been scat-tered in squalid camps across Libya.

After long negotiations, they were told by the internation-ally recognised government in Tripoli that they could start moving back on February 1.

Offi cials had even ordered

3,000 meals and a stage for a ceremony in Tawergha, said Mustafa Ghrema, a town council member living at Garart Al-Gtef.

Diggers had started clearing some of the land.

But repeated attempts to ap-proach Tawergha and set up camp there were blocked by a combination of uniformed forces and militiamen in civilian clothes, some of whom opened fi re, Ghrema said.

“The militiamen who shot at

us were not the same as the fi rst group, who appeared to be or-ganised military forces.

They talked to us with respect and told us it was a problem and we could be exposed to danger,” he said.

“The militias used racist words, abuse and repugnant terms, and fi red on us.”

Nearly 200 families settled on the roadside at Garart Al-Gatef, about 27km from Tawergha.

A smaller number trying to re-

turn from Benghazi were blocked east of Tawergha.

Local and international aid agencies are now delivering food, water and medical assist-ance at Garart Al-Gatef.

A nursery has been up in one large tent, and some young chil-dren are being bussed to a local school.

But conditions are harsh.”You can see the wind for yourselves. It’s diffi cult to describe what the dust does to your eyes,” said Ghazala Awad, 41, as she stood

allocating tents to families at the camp.”Sometimes we can’t even hear, and it doesn’t make a dif-ference if you put a scarf on.”

Tawergha, about 200 km south-east of Tripoli, is an ee-rie collection of bombed-out, abandoned buildings that have been left all but untouched.

The UN concluded that the town was deliberately destroyed in 2011 in order to make it un-inhabitable, and said Misrata’s militias had committed crimes against humanity.

For the past few weeks, the Tripoli government and the United Nations have both been pushing to resolve the standoff .

The camp’s residents say they will only go in one direction.

“These camps are temporary, not permanent,” said Salem Ib-rahim, 61, a retired teacher who arrived at Garart Al-Gatef in a convoy from Tripoli.

“We will not relinquish our land and our home and the soil we grew up on. We will stay here until we return.”

Libyan women displaced from the town of Tawergha are seen at a camp in the Garart Al-Gatef.A Libyan woman displaced from the town of Tawergha prepares food at a camp in the Garart Al-Gatef.

Syrian children who were displaced from Homs stand outside a make-shift clinic in the northern town of Al-Dana, north of Idlib, yesterday.

Baby who lost an eye, arrives in TurkeyAFPAnkara

A baby boy who lost an eye in a Syrian regime air raid has arrived in Turkey, af-

ter his plight was highlighted by social media, the Turkish Red Crescent said.

“Alhamdulillah (Praise be to God...baby Kerim is safe now,” Kerem Kinik, head of the Turk-ish Red Crescent tweeted.

The child, who was just fi ve weeks old when he was injured, will “survive on behalf of all in-nocent children of Syria” and “remind us that we have a con-science as humanity,” he added.

President Recep Erdogan per-sonally greeted little Karim Ab-dallah, now six months old, and surviving members of his family after their arrival in the Turkish border province of Hatay, ac-cording to Turkish media.

Karim lost his left eye in an air raid last October, in the op-position-held area of Eastern Ghouta, which also killed his mother.

The damage to his frontal lobe and left eye will likely leave him suff ering long-term eff ects, said the brain surgeon who treated him and who identifi ed himself as Abu Jamil.

“The frontal lobe plays an es-sential role in a human being’s

comprehension, intelligence, and memory,” said the 50-year-old doctor who added that it could be “treatable with be-havioural and cognitive therapy and cosmetic surgery, but not in Ghouta”.

A fi nal deal appeared to have been reached yesterday for fi ghters and civilians to leave the last opposition-held area of Eastern Ghouta, paving the way for Syria’s regime to retake all of the one-time rebel enclave near Damascus.

More than 45,000 rebels and their families have been evacu-ated from Eastern Gouta since March 22 to be relocated in Idlib, according to Syrian authorities.

This handout picture taken and released by the Turkish Presidential Press Service yesterday in Hatay shows Head of the Turkish Red Crescent, Kerem Kinik (left) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holding Syrian infant Karim Abdel Rahman, during Erdogan’s visit to border units.

Erdogan, Netanyahu in angry exchangeReutersIstanbul

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called his Is-raeli counterpart Ben-

jamin Netanyahu a “terrorist” yesterday, escalating an ex-change of insults that started after he criticised Israel’s le-thal military response to a demonstration on the Gazan border.

Israel has defended the kill-ing of 15 Palestinians during Friday’s demonstration and Netanyahu tweeted that the Israeli army “will not be lec-tured by those who have indis-criminately bombed civilian populations for years”, refer-ring to Turkey.

Erdogan told supporters yesterday: “We don’t have the shame of invading on us, Netanyahu. You are an invader and right now are present in those lands as an invader. At the same time, you are a ter-rorist.”

In another speech he said: “You are a terrorist state. It is known what you have done in Gaza and what you have done in Jerusalem.

You have no one that likes you in the world.”

In a later tweet, Netanyahu said: “Erdogan is not accus-tomed to being answered back to, but he should start getting used to it.”

Israel’s defence minister has rejected calls for an inquiry into Friday’s events.

15 dead as buses collideAFPKuwait City

Fifteen oil workers, most of them from the Indian subcontinent, were killed

yesterday in a head-on collision between two buses in southern Kuwait, offi cials said.

Seven of those killed were In-dian nationals, fi ve were Egyp-tians and the other three from Pakistan, said Mohamed al-Bas-ri of the state-owned Kuwait Oil Company (KOC).

Two Indian citizens — one in critical condition — and a Ku-waiti were also injured in the ac-cident, Basri said.

Fire department spokesman Colonel Khalil al-Amir said the victims were employees of Bur-gan Drilling, a private subcon-tractor for KOC.

A magnitude 5.3 earthquake hit western Iran yesterday, injuring at least 54 people, hours before a more moderate tremor shook an area near the capital Tehran, state media reported. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage after the later, magnitude 4.2, earthquake which shook an area about 90km from Tehran, the off icial news agency IRNA re-ported. Most of the 54 injured were released after receiving treatment in hospitals in the western province of Kermanshah, IRNA quoted Iran’s medical emergency services as announcing. Iranian news agencies said most of the injuries were minor, with some people being hurt by falling items.

5.3 quake hits western Iran, dozens injured

TREMOR

AFRICA

Gulf Times Monday, April 2, 201814

Botswana’s new president vows to tackle unemploymentBy Oarabile Mosikare, AFPGabrone

Botswana’s new President Mokgweetsi Masisi yester-day used his inauguration

speech to vow to tackle youth unemployment in one of Africa’s most stable countries.

The swearing-in ceremony in parliament came after Ian Khama stepped down having completed the constitutional maximum of 10 years in offi ce.

As the vice president, Masisi took over automatically, and he is likely to secure a further fi ve-year term in elections in October 2019 when the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) is ex-pected to hold on to power.

Botswana prides itself on good governance and rule of law, and the carefully managed handover of power comes a full 18 months ahead of parliamentary elections in 2019.

Masisi, the former vice presi-dent, takes over a county widely seen as an African success story that has made good use of its lu-crative income from diamond, beef and tourism.

It is rated as the least corrupt country in Africa by Transpar-ency International.

But it has also struggled with rising unemployment rate of about 18% and an HIV epidemic.

“It is because of the peace and tranquillity that our leaders have sustained for so long that Bat-swana (people) have continued to enjoy relative prosperity,” Masisi said after taking his oath.

“One of my top priorities as the president of this country will be to address the problem of un-employment especially amongst the young people.”

He also pledged to improve treatment and prevention of HIV in a country with a 22% infection rate among adults.

President Masisi, 55, is a close

ally of Khama and a BDP veteran.He is a US-educated former

teacher, Unicef offi cial and edu-cation minister, whose father was also a cabinet minister.

“Despite its small size, Bot-swana continues to play an im-portant role in the promotion of global issues such as respect for human rights, democracy, good governance (and) the rule of law,” Masisi said.

Khama, 65, completed a months-long national farewell tour last week, bidding goodbye to the country’s population of 2.2mn.

He earned a record for straight talking, often criticising leaders including US President Donald Trump and — unlike many in the region — neighbouring Zim-babwe’s then-president Robert Mugabe as well as Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila.

Khama led the BDP to land-slide victories in two elections,

although the party won less than 50% of the vote for the fi rst time in 2014.

“Internationally, Khama posi-tioned himself as a moral leader,” Matteo Vidiri, a BMI Research analyst, told AFP.

“(But) a slowing economy and increasing public discontent has damaged the narrative of Bot-swana’s ‘special character’, of a country being able to escape the ‘resource curse’.”

Four opposition parties have said they could unite for the 2019 election to try to unseat the BDP, which has held power since inde-pendence from Britain in 1966.

At a farewell event in his home village, Khama was showered with gifts including a 4x4 truck, 143 cows, hundreds of chick-ens, more than 415,000 pula ($44,000) and a fully-equipped luxury caravan.

His father, Seretse Khama, served from 1966 to 1980 as Bot-swana’s fi rst president.

Botswana’s newly elected President Mokgweetsi Masisi poses for a picture with Chief Justice Maruping Dibotelo (left) and the Speaker of the National Assembly Gladys K T Kokorwe after taking the oath at the National Assembly in Gaborone yesterday.

Shebaab attacks AU base in SomaliaReutersMogadishu

Islamist insurgents battled for hours yesterday with African Union troops after exploding two car bombs out-

side one of their bases, Somali police, military and the militants said.

Shebaab militants attacked an Afri-can Union (AU) peacekeeper base in the town of Bulamarer, 130km southwest of the capital Mogadishu, around 9am, residents from the area told Reuters.

Since withdrawing from Mogadishu in 2011, the Al Qaeda-linked group has lost control of most of Somalia’s cities and towns.

But it still retains a strong presence in regions outside the capital.

The militants initially detonated two suicide car bombs that hit one AU ve-hicle and one Somali military vehicle, Somali army major Farah Osman, who is stationed near the AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) base, said.

“Then a large number of Shebaab fi ghters began fi ring from under the trees...it was a hellish battle,” he said, adding there was an unknown number of casualties.

Militants on foot then attacked near-by villages, said Ali Nur, deputy gover-nor of the Lower Shabelle region where the base is located.

“They were repulsed, but all these at-tacks were to stop reinforcement.”

The phone of the spokesman for the AMISOM force based in Mogadishu was switched off yesterday and Reuters was unable to reach any other offi cials from the force for comment.

The Ugandan army said in a state-ment that Ugandan soldiers serving in the AU peacekeeping mission killed 22 Shebaab militants that had attacked the Bulamarer base and two other posts, all in the Lower Shabelle region.

Four Ugandan soldiers were killed, the army said.

Abdiasis Abu Musab, a spokesman for Shebaab said 14 of the group’s fi ght-ers and 59 AMISOM troops were killed in the incident.

Nur, the government offi cial, said no soldiers from the Somali army were killed and was not sure if any AMISOM troops were killed.

A police major stationed in a nearby town also said two car bombs exploded outside the base before the Shebaab fi ghters entered it.

Major Nur Ali told Reuters that So-mali and AMISOM forces had attacked Shebaab in rural areas near the base on Saturday night.

“Then Shebaab attacked this morn-ing as a revenge,” he said.

Somalia has been mired in civil war since 1991.

A person from the Baoule community wearing a Goly mask dance at the youth residence in Assounvoue village, 40km from Yamoussoukro, central Ivory Coast, during the ‘Paquinou’ celebration traditionally marked by “palaver”, reconciliation, feast, music and dance.

‘Paquinou’ celebration

Congolese migrants claim a better, safer life in RwandaAFPGoma

A small but remarkable new mi-gration is taking place in east-ern Democratic Republic of

Congo, as well-heeled Congolese up sticks to live in Rwandan towns lying just across the border.

Gisenyi and Kamembe, on the northern and southern tips of Lake Kivu respectively, are seen as more stable, more secure and with a better standard of living than their sprawl-ing, troubled Congolese neighbours, the cities of Goma and Bukavu.

“In 2013 I received threats in Goma. I was evacuated to Gisenyi. I went back to Goma a year later. I was still worried for my safety. Three friends in my dis-trict were killed,” said Jacques Kahora, a humanitarian worker who settled permanently in Gisenyi in 2016.

Adrien, a 28-year-old employee with an NGO, has been renting a house in Gisenyi for $80 a month for almost a year, roughly half of what he would pay in his home town of Goma.

Each day he nips back across the border to Goma, a matter of a few

kilometres, to work and see family and friends.

“I mainly do it for access to certain basic things, like water and electricity. In Gisenyi, there are hardly any power cuts, but in Goma they happen daily — sometimes you can go a whole week without electricity,” said Adrien.

Rwanda also off ers a high-per-formance wifi service, which is used by residents of Goma and Bukavu whenever Congolese authorities cut internet access as part of a crackdown on anti-government protests.

Like Adrien, most of the Congo-lese nationals still work in Goma or Bukavu and only spend the night in Rwanda.

“Here all we bring is sleep,” says Leston Kambale, 38, who moved to Gisenyi eight years ago and has put his three children into Rwandan schools.

“As an IT specialist, I needed elec-tricity 24 hours a day. And there’s also the question of safety. Here in Gisenyi, you can walk around from dusk to dawn without a problem,” he added.

To cross the border, Congolese must present their passport or special authorisation issued by the Economic

Community of the Great Lakes Coun-tries (ECGLC) at the two brand-new customs posts on both sides of the border.

People returning at night have to watch the time, as the Congolese bor-der post closes at 10pm.

To live in Rwanda, the Congolese must pay 20,000 Rwandan francs (about $23) to obtain a two-year resi-dence permit — more than a week’s average pay in this part of the world, but a modest sum for middle-class Congolese.

How many Congolese live part-time or permanently in Rwanda is unclear. But anecdotal evidence — the numbers of people looking for homes or building plots, and rising prices driven by the demand — suggests the movement is gaining momentum.

On Sundays, young people from Goma, which lies on the northern tip of Lake Kivu, cross the border to enjoy a day of relaxation on the Tam-Tam beach, a popular well-tended spot on the shore.

“In Goma, there are only private properties on the lakeside. Here in Gisenyi, we can still go for a swim,” says Guilain Balume, a journalist met

between the paddle boats and the vol-leyball pitch.

At the southern end of the lake, Congolese people are leaving over-populated Bukavu, where houses with steep roofs are clustered together on rising hillsides.

They head for Kamembe, close to Cyangugu on the frontier.

“More than 900 families have left Bukavu to live in Kamembe,” said Pa-tient Bashombe, a lawyer in charge of the coordination bureau for civil so-ciety in DR Congo’s South Kivu prov-ince.

“Rwanda is the ‘Land of a Thou-sand Hills’ and we live in the Land of a Thousand Potholes,” a Congolese driver, Jean, said drily as he contem-plated a cratered local road.

At the Goma-Gisenyi border post, an aged Congolese man was returning “back home” to Rwanda after a Sun-day spent with the family in Goma.

Referring to Rwandan military in-volvement during the Second Congo War, which offi cially ended in 2003, the man quipped: “The Rwandans conquered us by force of arms. Today we are conquering them economi-cally.”

Chadian opposition rejects proposed political reformsAFPN’Djamena

Chad’s main opposition group said yesterday it had rejected the conclusions of the central

African state’s forum on constitutional change and reforms to the presidency.

The political, religious and social group members of the Forum proposed to increase presidential tenure from fi ve to six years, with a maximum of two terms rather than the current mandate of fi ve years with no limits on re-election.

But the opposition, which boycotted the forum, said in a statement to AFP it found the proposals “ridiculous and fantastical.”

“The political parties, members of the New Opposition Front for Change (FONAC), condemns and rejects all the disgusting, ridiculous and fantastical resolutions” of the forum which met over the last fortnight.

FONAC, created in 2016, groups some 30 opposition parties.

More than 700 pro-government fi g-ures in political parties and religious and social groups attended the forum launched on March 19 by Chadian Pres-ident Idriss Deby — currently serving his fi fth term due to end in 2021 — who

declared that it would “lead to the birth of the Fourth Republic.”

The opposition refused to take part, describing the proposed changes as a ploy to keep Deby, 65, in power.

Another proposal endorsed by the forum would increase the tenure of law-makers from four to fi ve years.

Deby, named in a US corruption probe, has promised that elections on hold since 2015 will take place this year.

But FONAC says the reforms are not enough to deal with the “serious crises” the country faces which are “a thousand times more urgent and important” than the forum.

A Western ally in combating militan-cy in the volatile Sahara region, cash-strapped and poverty-stricken Chad has endured two years of severe reces-sion worsened by a slump in oil prices.

The state is imposing cuts in public spending that the fi nance ministry says are vital to stave off bankruptcy, fanning discontent in a country where almost half the population of 14mn lives below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

On Friday, former presidential can-didate Saleh Kebzabo, who lost out to Deby in 2016, said the reforms would simply prop up the incumbent, who has ruled since 1990.

UN peacekeepers attacked by Central African armed group

UN peacekeepers on patrol in the Central African Republic exchanged fi re with members

of an armed group in a Muslim enclave of the capital Bangui, the United Na-tions said yesterday.

The peacekeepers were fi red at in the

Muslim rebel bastion called PK5, home to several armed groups and they re-sponded, said Herve Verhoosel, spokes-man for the UN peacekeeping mission known by its initials MINUSCA.

The attack occurred Saturday evening and “clearly the target was

the peacekeeping troops,” he added.The armed groups operating in the

PK5 area have taken advantage of the weakness of the state since the end of a sectarian confl ict pitting mainly Muslim rebels against nominally Christian militias.

Saturday’s attack was the fi rst on UN peacekeepers in the area since violence resumed in PK5 in 2017.

“These attacks...show the criminal nature of the groups who have taken up arms in the PK5 area,” Verhoosel told reporters in Bangui.

AMERICA15Gulf Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

Trump nixes DACA deal for young immigrantsReutersWashington

President Donald Trump said yesterday on Twitter that there will not be a deal on le-

galising the status on young adult immigrants known as Dreamers, declaring that the US-Mexico bor-der is becoming more dangerous.

After posting a “Happy Easter” message on the social media plat-form, Trump followed with: “Bor-der Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Dem-ocrat) laws like Catch & Release. Getting more dangerous. ‘Caravans’ coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!”

He also threatened to kill the North American Free Trade Agree-ment, which is currently being re-negotiated with Mexico and Can-ada.

The Deferred Action for Child-hood Arrivals (DACA) is the pro-

gram created in 2012 under Dem-ocratic former president Barack Obama that Trump sought to re-scind last autumn.

Designed for individuals brought to the United States as children by parents who were undocumented immigrants, the programme shield-ed the individuals from deportation and gave them work permits.

Trump is spending the Easter holiday in Palm Beach, Florida, at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

He told reporters on his way into Easter services that “Mexico has got to help us at the border.”

Trump has said he was open to brokering a deal with congression-al Democrats who want to protect the programme in exchange for funding to build a US-Mexico bor-der wall, a frequent campaign trail promise.

He insisted during his presiden-tial campaign Mexico would pay for the wall.

Although Trump threatened a veto last month of an omnibus spending bill because it did not ad-

dress the fate of Dreamers and did not fully fund his border wall, he did sign the bill.

Trump yesterday continued on Twitter that Mexico is doing “very little, if not NOTHING,” to stop the fl ow of people across the southern border.

“They laugh at our dumb immi-gration laws. They must stop the big drug and people fl ows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA. NEED WALL!”

Last week, US Trade Represent-ative Robert Lighthizer expressed optimism that negotiations to modify Nafta to terms more fa-vourable to the United States were making progress and that a deal in principle could be reached quickly.

The thorniest issues in the Naf-ta talks with Mexico and Canada concern US demands on automo-tive trade and dispute settlement systems.

Linking the future of the 24-year-old trade deal to Trump’s border wall plan has never been among US negotiating objectives.

A boy tries to keep his kite in the air as hundreds of kites fly in the sky near the Washington Monument on the Mall in Washington, DC during the annual Blossom Kite Festival on Saturday.

Flight of fancy

50 years later, echoes of 1968 resonate in the USBy Chris Lefkow, AFPWashington

US troops in a never-end-ing war. Students march-ing in the streets. Women

demanding respect. Black ath-letes protesting for racial justice. Political upheaval.

Today’s headlines? Yes.But they also could be from 50

years ago — 1968 was a year so eventful that it’s become known as ‘The Year That Changed America’.

“Assassinations, riots, rebel-lions, protests, disorder and cha-os — 1968 was a year of really ex-traordinary shocks, shocks that I think still reverberate through today,” said David Farber, a his-tory professor at the University of Kansas.

“The 1960s are this incredibly turbulent, tumultuous decade of politics and 1968 really sticks out,” said Amy Bass, a history

professor at The College of New Rochelle.

Some Americans are thinking “the people are rising and will have a voice,” said Bass, author of One Goal.

“And then there’s this other faction, (Richard Nixon’s) so-called ‘silent majority’ who sees the 1960s as America as coming apart at the seams.”

Rocking America in 1968 was the assassination in April of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and that of Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy just two months later.

By then, the country was al-ready reeling.

In January, North Vietnamese troops had launched the Tet Of-fensive, a blitz on South Vietnam that would eventually turn the US public against a war that was America’s longest until the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

US college campuses were

gripped by anti-war protests and 700 students were injured in clashes with police at New York’s Columbia University in April 1968.

The war in Afghanistan has spawned no such protest move-ment despite entering its 17th year.

This can be explained in part because it stemmed from 9/11 — a direct attack on the US — but also because the military draft was eliminated in 1973, said Co-lumbia University history pro-fessor Todd Gitlin.

“And the intensity of the war is far less,” said Gitlin, author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.

“It’s off the screens for Ameri-cans and the body bags are few and far between, relatively speaking.”

US students are on the march once again though — not to op-pose an unpopular war, but to demand tougher gun laws.

“There’s a big diff erence, however,” Gitlin said. “The high school students are actually starting something.”

In the largest student protest in decades, hundreds of thou-sands took part on March 24 in the “March for Our Lives” organ-ised by teenagers from a Florida high school where 17 people were shot dead in February.

“The political system again seems frozen for students today and they’re trying to fi nd answers that don’t fi t normal electoral politics,” Farber said.

Students were not the only ones protesting in the 1960s — the decade was marked by the civil rights movement led by King.

King notably advocated non-violence but his April 4, 1968 assassination in Memphis, Ten-nessee sparked riots in several US cities.

Fifty years on, the banner for ra-

cial equality has been taken up by the Black Lives Matter movement and its protests against police mis-conduct and the use of force.

One of the iconic images of 1968 is that of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, winners of the gold and bronze medals in the 200m dash at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, raising black-gloved fi sts as the Star-Spangled Banner played.

Five decades later, a black ath-lete has once again become one of the most visible symbols of the struggle for racial equality.

Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, has cited Smith and Carlos as an inspiration for his decision to kneel during the playing of the national anthem — a protest which has drawn sharp criticism from President Donald Trump.

Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter have been subjected to “vilifi cation much like what we

saw in response to the Black Power movement in the late 1960s,” said Susan Eckelmann Berghel, an assistant professor of history at the University of Ten-nessee Chattanooga.

The women’s movement in the United States also took on a new dimension in 1968 with a protest by hundreds of women in Atlan-tic City against the Miss America beauty pageant.

“They tried to ask a very dif-fi cult question, which was ‘How should women be treated?’” said Farber. “Which is the kind of question we’re still asking.”

“That doesn’t get settled in a year or a decade,” Gitlin said.

In January 2017, hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets to protest Trump’s inau-guration, he noted, and the #Me-Too movement is “the next wave of a similar sentiment.”

Eckelmann Berghel said an-other echo in 2018 of 1968 could

be what some see as the “short-comings of the promises of a lib-eral presidency.”

President Lyndon Baines Johnson unveiled ambitious plans to abolish poverty and ra-cial injustice under the banner of the Great Society.

But Johnson, wearied by the Vietnam War, shocked the nation in March 1968 by announcing he was not running for re-election.

That paved the way for the election of Nixon, a conservative Republican who promised Amer-icans he would restore order to a chaotic decade.

And just as Johnson did not win the “War on Poverty,” the elec-tion of Barack Obama, America’s fi rst black president, did not lead to a “post-racial society.”

Trump reached into Nixon’s 1968 playbook to win the White House, Farber said, creating his “new version of conservative populism.”

A woman dressed in costume attends the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival along Fifth Avenue in New York City yesterday.

Top cover

Some states press ahead on climate change goals, despite TrumpBy Ivan Couronne, AFPWashington

US President Donald Trump has taken an axe to the environmen-tal regulations he inherited from

his predecessor Barack Obama, cutting dozens of rules ranging from fracking on public land to protections for endangered species.

Yet supporters of the Paris climate change accord believe state-level eff orts could mean the US will meet greenhouse gas emissions targets envisaged under the landmark agreement, despite being the only country to announce its withdrawal.

Automobile fuel and emission stand-ards are the latest regulations in the ad-ministration’s crosshairs, according to a report by the New York Times.

The paper reported Environmental Pro-tection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt, a climate change sceptic with ties to the fos-sil fuel industry, has determined Obama-era controls placed too great a burden on manufacturers.

It comes on the heels of the EPA’s an-nouncement last fall it was seeking to re-peal the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s sig-nature environmental policy that would have limited each state’s greenhouse-gas emissions.

Already tied up by legal challenges, the Trump administration has vowed to bury it for good.

These and other regulations consti-tuted the building blocks of Obama’s plan to fulfi l US commitments to the 2015 pact.

The targets, which were already modest compared to those of the European Union, are clearly in danger.

But the United States’ federal system

of government and polarised political climate off er hope: states like California and New York are governed by opposi-tion Democrats horrifi ed by their Repub-lican president’s stance on global climate change, and are taking steps to oppose it.

It was for these reasons that UN Sec-retary-General Antonio Guterres was the most recent fi gure to suggest “there are expectations” the US will meet its erst-while commitments, with or without Trump’s blessing.

Twenty of the 50 states, some hun-dred cities and a thousand companies have already set targets for reducing the greenhouse eff ect, according to America’s Pledge, an initiative launched by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and the California Governor Jerry Brown.

California on its own is responsible for about the same amount of greenhouse gases as France, and is gunning for a 40% reduction in its emissions by 2030 com-pared to 1990 levels, targets as ambitious as the EU’s.

But the question remains: can action taken by certain jurisdictions and fi rms be a complete substitute for federal legisla-tion at the centre?

“It’s not impossible, but it’s improbable that the US can meet its objectives with no further federal action,” Marc Hafstead, an economist at Resources for the Future, a non-profi t research institute, told AFP.

According to America’s Pledge, those states and cities which back the Paris agreement contribute only 35% of the country’s overall greenhouse gas emis-sions.

Texas, the country’s biggest polluter, is not a part of the movement.

The combined eff orts of non-federal jurisdictions will reduce America’s green-

house gas footprint by only half of the original target, according to a report last September by the Germany-based New-Climate Institute.

A more precise fi gure is set to be pub-lished by America’s Pledge in September during a global summit on climate change in San Francisco.

For now, warned Michelle Manion, the lead senior economist at the World Re-sources Institute leading analysis for this report: “if you just do a straight line from the states and cities that have committed to it, it doesn’t look like we’ll meet those numbers.”

“It’s heading in the right direction, I can’t tell you what the number is going to be in 2025, nor can anybody else,” she continued, adding that future techno-logical innovations could prove to be game changers.

Ten years ago, no one foresaw the dra-matic decline in natural gas prices, she recalled.

Or predicted that the cost of solar pan-els would fall by 70 % over the course of seven years.

It remains imperative, she argued, for states to continue to work towards a low-carbon economy, through measures like the installation of electric charging sta-tions for cars or more environmentally friendly building regulations.

Vehicle emissions standards, which Trump is seeking to change, are a good ex-ample, she said.

If California and the ten states in the country’s northeast that account for 40% of all domestic light duty vehicle sales continue to impose tighter controls, it’s likely that automobile manufacturers will adhere to the stricter standards rather than create a two-tier market.

Aussie church leaders urge forgiveness for disgraced cricketersReutersSydney

A cheating scandal that has ripped through the core of Australia’s most vener-

ated pastime, cricket, prompted church leaders to provide guid-ance over the Easter weekend on how to emerge from the moral tailspin.

Addressing yesterday’s con-gregation at Sydney’s St An-drew’s Cathedral, Anglican Archbishop Glenn Davies said the redemption of Easter gives hope of forgiveness to all who face moral failure — even dis-graced sportsmen.

Australian cricket was shaken to the core when three national players were discovered to have conspired to scuff the ball with sandpaper during the third Test match against South Africa last

month. Roughing up one side of a ball can help it to swing through the air, making it more diffi cult for the opposing bats-man to play.

An investigation led to the sacking of captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner who were both banned from playing for 12 months.

Batsman Cameron Bancroft was suspended for nine months.

“When we all look at our own selves, we recognise we’ve all been there, we’ve had our own failures,” Davies said.”Perhaps not quite as public as Steve Smith’s and the other two, but failures nonetheless. If it’s hard enough to confront and stand up to a press gallery and admit you’re wrong, what would it be like to stand before the living God and admit that you were wrong?”

The inclusion of the ball-tam-

pering in Easter sermons under-scores how deep the scandal has run in a sports-loving country that prides itself on fair play.

Past cricket giants such as master batsman Sir Donald Bradman are revered for their conduct as much as for their vic-tories.

“None of us have been per-sonally damaged by what Steve Smith and David Warner have done but they represent Austral-ia so we feel it’s personal,” Ever-ton Hills Wesleyan Methodist Church pastor Nathan Bell told Reuters. “Forgiveness is diffi cult as not everyone wants to give it.”

Bell discussed the cricketing scandal at the conclusion of his Wednesday service in the state of Queensland, leading the con-gregation in a prayer for Smith and the team.

Smith broke down in tears and begged the nation for forgive-

ness during a press conference at Sydney airport on Friday after being sent home from South Af-rica in disgrace.

Ashen-faced and distraught, Warner issued an abject apology for his role in the ball-tampering scandal when he arrived home on Saturday.

Both Smith and Warner have

admitted collusion in the plan for junior player Cameron Ban-croft to use a piece of yellow tape to rough up the ball in the international Test match in Cape Town.

There was an immediate out-pouring of anger after Bancroft’s actions were caught on camera, with Australians fl ooding social

media with questions on how to explain the scandal to their chil-dren.

A poll by Australian cable tel-evision network Sky News found that more than 52% of Austral-ians thought suspending play-ers for a season was the most appropriate punishment for ball tampering, while nearly a third supported a lifetime ban.

Major corporate sponsors, including Magellan Funds Man-agement, tore up lucrative con-tracts with sporting body Crick-et Australia and the individual players.

Other sponsors, such as the country’s fl agship airline Qan-tas, gave the players and the ad-ministration a tongue lashing.

Church leaders however urged forgiveness.

“It seemed like a natural thing to do,” Reverend Dr David Rei-chardt from the Normanhurst

Uniting Church in Sydney told Reuters. “Forgiveness means eventually full restoration. I cer-tainly hope the cricket authori-ties will come to view this in a more kindly light.”

Uniting Church President Stuart McMillan said concerned parents could use the cricketing scandal as a teachable moment in forgiveness and the humanity of heroes.

“Their character is seen in owning their mistakes, and ac-cepting their punishment,” Mc-Millan said in his Easter message on Good Friday, which was sent by video link to 2,500 Uniting churches across Australia.

“Our character as a nation is not to be found in cricket-ing greatness; rather in humil-ity, forgiveness and hope. The Easter story reminds us that a fresh start is always possible for all of us.”

Archbishop Dr Glenn Davies speaks at St Andrews Cathedral in Sydney, yesterday.

Kim attends rare concert by South Korean pop starsAFPSeoul

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un yesterday at-tended the fi rst concert

in Pyongyang for over a decade by South Korean entertainers, including a K-pop girlband, the latest gesture of reconciliation before a rare inter-Korean sum-mit.

The visit, described by many as a cultural charm off ensive by the South, came as a diplomatic thaw quickens on the peninsula after months of tensions.

The 120-member group — 11 musical acts as well as dancers, technicians and martial artists — gave one concert yesterday with another set for tomorrow.

Kim and his wife, a former singer herself, came to watch yesterday’s show, making him the fi rst leader of the North to attend a concert by South Ko-rean performers.

Kim shook hands and took photos with the stars backstage, saying inter-Korean cultural events should be held more often and suggesting another event in the South Korean capital this au-tumn, pool reports said.

The young couple were seen clapping their hands during the two-hour event — also attended by Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo-jong, and ceremonial head of state Kim Yong-nam.

“Please tell (South Korean) President Moon Jae-in how great an event like this is...I am grate-ful for a gift like this (concert) to the people of Pyongyang,” Kim told visiting Seoul offi cials.

Kim also showed “great in-terest in the songs and lyrics (of South Korean singers) during the concert,” Do Jong-hwan, Seoul’s culture chief and the head of the delegation, told reporters.

The South’s taekwondo ath-letes also staged a performance before an audience of 2,300 in Pyongyang yesterday ahead of a joint display of the Korean mar-tial art with the North’s practi-tioners on Monday.

The ongoing rapprochement was triggered by the South’s Winter Olympics, to which the North’s leader Kim Jong-un sent athletes, cheerleaders and his

sister as an envoy.A North Korean art troupe

staged two performances in the South in February to celebrate the Games.

Kim followed up by agreeing to a summit with Moon, and of-fering a face-to-face meet with US President Donald Trump.

Kim also met Chinese Presi-dent Xi Jinping in Beijing last week during his fi rst overseas trip.

The inter-Korean summit, the third after meetings in 2000 and 2007, will be held on April 27.

No date has been set for the US-North Korean summit al-though it is expected before the end of May.

In another sign of eased ten-sions, an annual US-South Ko-rean military exercise which got under way in the South yester-day will last for just one month compared to some two months normally.

This year’s drills feature fewer strategic weapons such as nu-clear-powered aircraft carriers, Seoul’s military has said.

Such deployments during past

drills has frequently drawn an angry response from Pyongyang.

Yesterday’s concert to a packed audience at the elabo-rately decorated 1,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theatre ended with a standing ovation after a fi nale in which all the stars ap-peared on stage to sing a song about unifi cation.

One of the most closely

watched acts was Red Velvet, part of the South’s hugely popu-lar K-pop phenomenon that has taken audiences in Asia and be-yond by storm in recent decades.

Before the concert, even the leader Kim joked: “There was so much interest in whether I’d come to see Red Velvet or not.”

The fi ve-member girlband — known for its signature K-pop

mix of upbeat electronic music, stylish fashion and high-voltage choreography — performed two of their hits, Bad Boy and Red Flavour.

“The North’s audience ap-plauded to our performance much louder than we expect-ed and even sang along to our songs... it was a big relief,” band member Yeri told reporters.

“I told myself, ‘let’s do our best even if there’s no response (from the audience)...but they showed so much reaction,” add-ed a member called Wendy.

Another member, Seulgi, ap-peared red-eyed as she bid fare-well to the audience at the end of the concert, apparently over-come with emotion.

Despite the North’s isolation and strict curbs on unauthor-ised foreign culture, enforced with prison terms, K-pop and South Korean TV shows have be-come increasingly popular there thanks to fl ash drives smuggled across the border with China.

The emcee of yesterday’s con-cert was a popular member of K-pop band Girls’ Generation, Seohyun, who had performed with the visiting North Korean singers during their Seoul con-cert in February.

Legendary South Korean sing-er Cho Yong-pil, who held a solo sell-out concert in Pyongyang in 2005, was another star of the show.

Kim’s late father and longtime ruler, Kim Jong-il, was known to be a fan of the 68-year-old Cho.

Another famous singer, Choi Jin-hee, also performed for the fourth time in the North and sang Maze of Love — a hit in both Koreas and another of the late Kim’s favourites.

But not all onlookers were re-ceptive to the K-pop off ensive. During the taekwondo event, a previously-enraptured audi-ence turned stone-faced during a performance combining K-pop dance and Taekwondo routines to a hit song by the ultra-popular boyband BTS.

The stiff ened crowd refused to respond to the athletes who asked them to clap their hands to Fire — an intense electro-dance score peppered with rapid-fi re rap delivered in both Korean and English.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Do Jong-hwan during a rare concert by South Korean musicians at the 1,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theatre in Pyongyang, yesterday.

Members of K-pop girlband “Red Velvet” pose for a photo after a rehearsal for a rare concert at the 1,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theatre in Pyongyang, yesterday.

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA

Gulf TimesMonday, April 2, 201816

‘Out of control’ space lab to become celestial fi reball todayAFPBeijing

A defunct space labora-tory is set to become a celestial fi reball as it

re-enters earth’s atmosphere in the next 24 hours, China’s space authority said yesterday, hitting speeds of over 26,000 kilometres an hour before dis-integrating.

The Tiangong-1 is expect-ed to make an uncontrolled earthbound plunge today Beijing time, China Manned Space said in a statement, an estimate roughly in line with European Space Agency pro-jections.

The abandoned eight-tonne craft is unlikely to cause any damage when it comes down, but its fi ery disintegration will off er a “splendid” show akin to a meteor shower, Chinese au-thorities said previously.

The re-entry window re-mains “highly variable” and the debris from the lab could land anywhere between the latitudes of 43 degrees north and 43 degrees south — from New Zealand to the American Midwest, the ESA said.

There is “no need for people to worry”, the China Manned Space Engineering Offi ce said earlier on its WeChat social media account.

Such falling spacecraft do “not crash into the Earth fi ercely like in sci-fi movies, but turn into a splendid (me-teor shower) and move across the beautiful starry sky as they race towards the Earth”, it said.

Tiangong-1 — or “Heavenly Palace” — was placed in orbit in September 2011, an impor-tant step in China’s eff orts to-wards building its own space station.

The module — which was used to practise complicated manual and automatic dock-ing techniques — was origi-nally intended to be used for just two years, but ended up serving considerably longer.

It had been slated for a con-trolled re-entry, but ceased functioning in March 2016.

Space enthusiasts have been bracing for its fi ery re-turn since.

During its brief lifespan, it hosted Chinese astronauts on several occasions as they per-formed experiments and even taught a class that was broad-cast into schools across the country.

Beijing began its manned spacefl ight programme in 1990 after buying Russian technology which enabled it to become the third country to send humans into space fol-lowing the former Soviet Un-ion and the United States.

Canberra raises travel warning for Russia

Australians travelling in Russia were warned yesterday of the possibility of harassment due to heightened tensions over the two countries’ tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats.The Australian government’s off icial travel advice for Russia was updated yesterday to warn of possible retaliation against Westerners and to encourage travellers to exercise a “high degree of caution.” “Due to heightened political tensions, you should be aware of the possibility of anti-Western sentiment or harassment,” the travel advice said.It said the government was not aware of any increased diff i-culties for Australians travelling in Russia, but noted that peo-ple should follow the security and political situation closely and keep up to date with travel advice. “Remain vigilant, avoid any protests or demonstrations and avoid commenting pub-licly on political developments,” it said.

Senator says US is waking up to Chinese abusesReuters Beijing

US policy toward China has been misdi-rected for decades and policymakers are now recalibrating ties, Senator Elizabeth

Warren told reporters during a visit to Beijing amid heightened trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

Warren’s visit comes as US President Donald Trump prepares to implement more than $50bn in tariff s on Chinese goods meant to punish Chi-na over US allegations that Beijing systematically misappropriated American intellectual prop-erty.

The Massachusetts Democrat and Trump foe, who has been touted as a potential 2020

presidential candidate despite rejecting such speculation, has said US trade policy needs a rethink and that she is not afraid of tariffs.

After years of mistakenly assuming eco-nomic engagement would lead to a more open China, the US government was waking up to Chinese demands for US companies to give up their know-how in exchange for access to its market, Warren said.

“The whole policy was misdirected. We told ourselves a happy-face story that never fit with the facts,” Warren told reporters on Saturday, during a three-day visit to China that began on Friday.

“Now US policymakers are starting to look more aggressively at pushing China to open up the markets without demanding a hostage price of access to US technology,” she said.

Models presenting creations from the “J Queen” collection by designer Xie Jiaqi during China Fashion Week in Beijing.

Style parade

A Thai editor faces possible criminal charges for sharing a student’s “disrespectful” picture of historic kings wearing face masks to highlight air pollution in the northern city of Chiang Mai. The governor of Chiang Mai told Reuters yesterday that he believed Pim Kemasingki, editor of the Chiang Mai Citylife magazine, had breached the Computer Crime Act by sharing the picture. “It is up to the police to gather evidence,” Pawin Chamniprasart said. In a letter to police, he wrote that the kings are worshipped and respected in Chiang Mai and “using the picture wearing masks is disrespectful.” Thailand’s cyber crime law, which criminalises defamation and obscenity, has been widely criticised by rights groups.

Thai editor faces charges over picture of kings wearing masks

CENSORSHIP

BRITAIN17Gulf Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

Watchdog takes on foreign car hire cheatsLondon Evening StandardLondon

Foreign car hire fi rms which prey on British tourists face an unprecedented

crackdown following a surge in complaints and a Daily Mail in-vestigation. The competition watchdog is taking its fi rst direct action against fi rms outside the UK, it announced.

The Competition and Markets Authority said the move follows ‘extensive complaints’ from cus-tomers hit by ‘hidden costs’ when collecting their car at the airport.

Although the CMA is not yet al-lowed to name and shame the for-eign fi rms involved, it paid tribute to Money Mail’s campaign against car hire rip-off s, saying: ‘Com-plaints from Mail readers... (help us) go a long way to improving the (car hire) sector.’

Common grievances include sneaky charges for fuel, huge ex-cess charges for damaged cars, and ‘hidden’ insurance costs.

The crackdown follows a ma-

jor review of price comparison websites used by millions to rent a car abroad. This found many sites reel in customers with cheap quotes, then sting them with hid-den charges later. The CMA says this leaves them paying more than expected, and not having the full information required under con-sumer protection law about what they were paying for.

Data collected by the UK Euro-pean Consumer Centre between last March and this February showed a 35.6% increase in complaints and inquiries from UK consumers com-pared with the previous year.

The main causes of complaint from those hiring cars abroad in-cluded disputed insurance claims, overpriced or unrequested excess waiver policies, shock charges for damaging the car, and hidden charges for fuel.

Michael Grenfell, CMA execu-tive director for enforcement, said: ‘The CMA received a high number of complaints and evidence from members of the public, including those supplied by Daily Mail read-ers. The results go a long way to

improving the sector.’ He added: “This move sends a clear mes-sage: Just because a business is not on UK soil doesn’t mean the law doesn’t apply when it sells in the UK.

“Prices must be transparent and include all compulsory costs so that people can fi nd the deal that’s best for them.”

Money Mail and consumer groups have repeatedly exposed the tactics used by car hire fi rms to squeeze more money out of holidaymakers when they arrive at the airport. Often tired after a long journey, or with young children in tow, they are seen as easy targets by some foreign car hire fi rms.

Alex Neill, from consumer group Which? said: “It’s good to see the CMA take action. However, the industry still has more work to do to prevent customers being ripped off .”

In another move, against the UK-based car hire industry, the CMA revealed three comparison websites had been forced to make their costs more transparent fol-lowing enforcement action.

Encourage teens to getSaturday jobs: ministerGuardian News and MediaLondon

Teenagers should be en-couraged to have Satur-day jobs to prepare them

for their working lives, the work and pensions secretary has said.

Esther McVey said she did not believe British youngsters were lazy but said there had been a fall of up to 60% in the number of children with weekend jobs.

She also suggested the gov-ernment remains concerned about intergenerational fair-ness and said changes to the retirement age is something ministers will “always have to talk about” because people are living longer.

McVey, who worked in her family’s construction business and at a bistro as a youngster, said the drop in numbers of young people in part-time em-ployment may be down to more focus on school work but meant they do not always have the “soft skills” needed for work.

McVey, 50, who was appoint-ed work and pensions secre-

tary in January, told the Daily Telegraph: “What you’ve seen from the 1980s, particularly in this country, is far fewer people doing Saturday jobs and doing jobs after school.

“It’s about people under-standing what a boss wants and what you want out of a job and I think we’ve come a long way in supporting people in that and that’s why you’ve seen more people getting employed and more British people getting employment.”

Employers need to apply for a licence to hire staff under the age of 16. Research by the BBC last year found that the number of child employment permits issued by councils fell by more than 20% between 2012 and 2016, from 29,498 to 23,071.

One of the biggest drops in employment permits being is-sued to 13-15-year-olds was in Middlesbrough, with seven is-sued in 2016 compared with 101 in 2011.

The council said the “mas-sive drop” was due to a decline in the number of people in the area who had a newspaper de-livered to their door.

Queen Elizabeth leaves the annual Easter Sunday service at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle in Windsor yesterday.

Queen attends serviceDivorce cases drop by a third in 14 yearsLondon Evening StandardLondon

The number of divorce cases has fallen by almost a third in 14 years, offi cial

fi gures show.Fewer than 110,000 couples

began the legal process to split last year – a dramatic drop from 172,000 in 2003.

At the same time, the number going to court to ask a judge to divide their property and set maintenance payments has also plunged.

But while divorce rates have plummeted, the number of cou-ples who do marry has only dropped by around 10%.

Family court fi gures released by the ministry of justice suggest that although fewer couples are marrying, those who do are in-creasingly likely to stick together.

Reasons for the decline in di-vorce may lie in the same devel-opments which have led to fewer marriages. In past decades many couples married because their families expected them to do so. Since there is less pressure on modern couples to wed, those who do so are more likely to have made their own choice to com-mit to each other.

And those considering split-ting may be more aware of the emotional and fi nancial toll of divorce on parents and their children.

The ministry fi gures show that there were 109,339 divorce peti-tions – the documents that begin the legal process of divorce – in 2017, compared to 172,357 in 2003, the year fi gures were fi rst col-lected.

There were 102,883 decrees ab-solute – the orders that complete a divorce – against 153,716 in 2003.

The ministry said the number of petitions was ‘down 4% on 2016, and the lowest annual fi g-ure recorded in the years reported’. Decrees absolute fell by 5% in 2017 compared to 2016.

The number of divorce fi nancial remedy claims – including calls for lump sums, maintenance, and shares of property and pensions – started in the courts in 2017 was 42,296.

Izzard callson Labourto ‘stamp outantisemitism’Guardian News and MediaLondon

Comedian and activist Ed-die Izzard has marked his arrival on Labour’s

ruling national executive com-mittee by saying the “stain of antisemitism” present among “a minority” of members has to be removed.

He said Labour had to “make amends and repair the damage with the Jewish community”, in line with the commitment given by Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader, to tackle antisemitism.

Izzard was promoted to the NEC after the resignation of Christine Shawcroft on Satur-day night. Shawcroft, a Corbyn ally, had been under pressure to quit since it emerged she had op-posed the suspension of a Labour councillor accused of Holocaust denial. Izzard took her place as the runner-up in the NEC elec-tions.

He spoke out as the party dismissed the implications of a Sunday Times investigation that found 12 offi cials working for Corbyn or John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, were mem-bers of Facebook groups that routinely featured anti-Jewish, violent or abusive messages.

Izzard ran for election to the NEC with the support of Labour centrists, and the resignation of Shawcroft – which was initially resisted by the leadership – will marginally weaken Corbyn’s ma-jority on the body that takes key decisions about party manage-ment.

However, Izzard stressed his

support for Corbyn, saying: “We must unite our party around the platform of hope that Corbyn has built so that we can kick out this terrible Tory government and build a Britain for the many, not the few.”

Commenting on the fl urry of antisemitism allegations that have engulfed the party over the last week, triggered by the reve-lation that in 2012 Corbyn posted a message on Facebook back-ing the creator of an antisemitic mural, Izzard said he had cam-paigned against hate all his life.

“This is a very important time for the Labour party and we must stamp out completely the stain of antisemitism from a minority of members. It has no place in our party,” he said. “We must make amends and repair the damage with the Jewish community as Jeremy Corbyn has promised to do.”

The Sunday Times reported that a two-month investigation into 20 of the biggest pro-Cor-byn Facebook groups – headed by We Support Jeremy Corbyn, which has 67,000 members –

had uncovered more than 2,000 racist, antisemitic, misogynist, violent and abusive messages.

The paper said 12 Labour staff -ers working for Corbyn or Mc-Donnell were members of these groups. But it did not provide ev-idence of any of them posting or supporting off ensive messages, and a Labour source said the staff members identifi ed by the paper were adamant they had not seen off ensive material of the kind fl agged up by the Sunday Times.

“This has been written up in a way that makes it look as if these people were active and complicit in the abuse,” said a senior party source. “But a lot of these peo-ple did not even realise they were members of these groups. On Facebook you can be added to a group without your knowledge. That happens quite often.

“And there is nothing wrong with being a member of a Face-book group that supports the La-bour party. Most of the messages in groups like this are about what a particular CLP (constituency Labour party) is doing, or about the anniversary of the NHS”.

Worboys case will lead to huge changes to parole: sacked bossGuardian News and MediaLondon

Nick Hardwick, the former chair of the Pa-role Board sacked last

week after the high court’s de-cision to block the release of the serial sex attacker John Wor-boys, has predicted the case will lead to welcome and wide-

ranging changes to the system.After the high court ruled that

the Parole Board “should have undertaken further inquiry into the circumstances of his off end-ing” before taking the controver-sial decision to release the former black-cab driver, Hardwick pre-dicted the case would lead to far reaching reform.

“It will be a better system for the challenge,” Hardwick told

the Guardian. “And it won’t just work for victims. I think it will be a more just system.”

Hardwick had previously made the case for reform of the Parole Board to make its processes more transparent as the controversy grew about the decision to re-lease Worboys, who now goes by the name John Radford. The 60-year-old was jailed indefi -nitely in 2009 with a minimum

term of eight years, and has spent 10 years in prison.

“I think at the very least the Parole Board should be able to explain its decisions. People say, you’ll get high-profi le cases and you’ll get a big row. Well, this was a high-profi le case. There was no openness in this case and we got a big row.”

He said he and the Parole Board had previously thought Worboys’

other alleged off ences should not be considered.

“What the judge said was that in this unusual and exceptional set of circumstances, the panel should have questioned him about those allegations, to test some of his other responses,” added Hardwick.

“We didn’t think we could do that. The judge has said that with this set of exceptional cir-

cumstances you could have done that – and I think probably that’s a good thing.”

Hardwick paid tribute to the victims of Worboys. After the high court ruling, Phillippa Kaufmann QC, who represented the two women who brought the case, said Hardwick had been “scapegoated” over his role.

“The women in this case – I don’t want to call them victims

as that almost diminishes them – have been fantastic, very feisty, very determined and very brave,” he said.

“And what has been very hum-bling is that they’ve been very gen-erous towards the Parole Board. They could have been furious – they haven’t, in public, at any rate. And they’ve been quite personally supportive of me, as their lawyer has”.

Top donor exits Labour party

One of the Labour’s biggest private

donors launched a bitter attack yes-

terday, denouncing the party’s failure

to deal with anti-Semitism under its

leader Corbyn. Sir David Garrard,

who has donated around £1.5mn

since 2003, said he had left the party

after seeing it fail to respond to “the

most blatant acts of anti-Semitism,”

according to news agency PA. The

Labour party “has failed to expel

many of those who have engaged

in the grossest derogatory fantasies

about Jewish/Zionist conspiracies...

which conjure up the very kind of

antisemitic attacks that led to such

unbearable consequences for in-

nocent millions in the past,” Garrard

told The Observer newspaper. The

Sunday Times reported that an

investigation into 20 of the biggest

pro-Corbyn Facebook groups had

uncovered routine attacks on Jewish

people, including Holocaust denial.

Esther McVey: 60% fall in number of children with weekend jobs

BRITAIN/IRELAND

Gulf Times Monday, April 2, 201818

Man termedillegal migrantafter living 59 years in UKGuardian News and MediaLondon

A man who has lived in Brit-ain for almost 60 years has been told by the Home

Offi ce he is in the UK illegally.Elwaldo Romeo moved from

Antigua to the UK when he was four, 59 years ago, and has lived and worked here continuously ever since.

He was extremely distressed to receive a Home Offi ce let-ter earlier this month informing him that he was “liable to be de-tained” because he was a “person without leave”.

The letter continued: “You have NOT been given leave to enter the United Kingdom within the meaning of the Immigration Act 1971.”

He has been told to report fort-nightly to Home Offi ce premises. The letter also off ered advice on “help and support on returning home voluntarily”.

Romeo, 63, has no desire to be helped to return to a country he has not visited for more than half a century, where he has no close family.

Given that all his schooling was in London, he studied at col-lege here, has worked here for more than 40 years, has held a British passport, owns his own home in London, and has two adult British children and fi ve British grandchildren, he cannot understand why the Home Offi ce has classifi ed him as someone who is here illegally.

He reported in person for the fi rst time to the Home Offi ce on Tuesday, but there was offi cial confusion about who he was and where his papers were and he was told to report again in two weeks’ time. Until the situation is resolved, he remains worried that immigration offi cials may visit him at home and remove him to a detention centre. He has tried repeatedly to call the number printed on the Home

Offi ce letter, but it is never an-swered.

“It scares the living daylights out of you – the threatening language on the letters,” he said. “This is the country I’ve grown up in. I love it and it’s been very good to me over the years. But I’m devastated it has come to this. I feel like I’m being thrown aside.”

His problems are similar to those experienced by an increas-ing number of people who were born in Commonwealth coun-tries, moved to the UK as chil-dren in the 1960s, and have only discovered decades later that their status here has never been formalised.

Some, such as Paulette Wil-son, have been wrongly sent to immigration removal centres and threatened with deporta-tion, others have been made homeless, lost their jobs or been refused free NHS treatment be-cause they are unable to produce a British passport.

The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, said: “It is impor-tant that the Home Offi ce is more compassionate. I think they are being unreasonable. These are not people who came in on the back of a lorry. These are law-abiding British citizens.”

When Romeo’s MP, Kate Os-amor, raised the case with the Home Offi ce, she was told that he was someone who was “lia-ble for detention”, and someone who has “had no status since 2005”.

Osamor said she wanted the Home Offi ce to explain why a large group of black Caribbean men and women who have been here since the 1960s were being targeted by immigration offi cials. “There is a level of discrimina-tion. The rules have changed since they were children. Why hasn’t the Home Offi ce made a plan for how it’s going to help them? It needs to have a much more commonsense approach to handling these cases,” she said.

London fi rm revamps pay by letting staff set salariesAFPLondon

Against a backdrop in Britain of gender pay gaps and ongo-

ing disputes over executives’ earnings, employees at one London company are help-ing each other set salaries.

Betting fi rm Smarkets has adopted a radical pay trans-parency policy, through which staff can see col-leagues’ salaries and have pay rise requests endorsed by peers.

“Most people get what they ask for,” said Angeline Mulet-Marquis, a software engineer at Smarkets.

In a company where in-creases of 10% to 30% are common, Mulet-Marquis received the 12% more she asked for — as all of her col-leagues could see on the in-ternal website.

Recently graduated en-gineers are paid a salary of around £45,000 at Smar-kets, which rises to six-fi g-ure salaries for highly quali-fi ed senior engineers.

Despite London’s reputa-tion as a hub for start-ups and a global business cen-tre, such openness about salaries is rare in the British capital.

Within view of the city’s famous Tower Bridge, the Smarkets offi ce boasts add-ed perks such as a team of chefs to make lunch each day, a foosball table and vid-eo games to keep staff happy.

Susana Pinto oversees Smarkets’ biannual pay re-views, through which an employee asks around fi ve peers for feedback and a suggested pay increase that they can take forward.

“It’s not just a matter of saying, ‘Hey, I think you’re great!’ It’s actually going to be probed,” Pinto said of the feedback provided.

Further talks and compar-isons to industry data deter-mine the fi nal pay increase, although if the employee is not happy they can set their own salary.

Such a move is said to be rare, however, as employees are well aware they will have to face their colleagues who

will know they have gone against their advice.

“The good thing about the fact that our salaries are transparent is that they, by default, keep the company fair,” said Pinto.

This extends to stamping out alleged gender inequal-ity which has marred some British companies including the BBC.

The broadcaster was forced last year to disclose

the salaries of some of its top staff , showing men made up 12 of the 14 highest-paid posts and leading to com-plaints of unequal pay for the same work.

Software engineer Caglar

Senel said allowing employ-ees to see each other’s sala-ries is a way through which companies can ensure equal pay. “It would be super ob-vious that the women in the company is getting this

much amount of money, and the guys are getting this much amount of money, so I think that would be helpful,” he said.

Despite the success of pay transparency at Smarkets, which has around 100 em-ployees, a number of staff said they were unsure the same approach would work for large companies or dif-ferent industries.

Jordi Blanes i Vidal, a pro-fessor at the London School of Economics, said such a system would work best in areas such as sales where there are clear markers of performance.

“But in settings in which it is not as easy to justify diff erences in pay — that is, pay inequality — with dif-ferences in productivity, pay transparency can be very de-motivating,” he said.

Despite his warning, pay transparency is more widely accepted in other countries.

In Norway the tax agency publishes key information online about taxpayers each year, including their earnings and wealth, allowing Norwe-

gians to see how much their colleagues are earning.

There are similar ap-proaches in Sweden and Finland, where people can request tax information by phone or in person, while in Ireland employees have a right to request pay in-formation broken down by gender for the same level of work.

A study by the European Commission found “cultural sensitivity” was the most common barrier to rolling out similar pay information rules across the continent, while in Britain the associated costs were the main obstacle.

Despite the challenges in diff erent countries and for big companies, Mulet-Marquis urged other fi rms try a transparency drive. “The advice would be to have healthy communica-tion even outside of the salary review,” she said. “If your teams don’t commu-nicate well, that process is probably not going to work anyway, you have to build it on something that’s already healthy.”

Rain, snow threatensto disrupt travel todayAgenciesLondon

The threat of snow com-bined with roadworks, rail engineering works

and strikes could cause misery for many returning home from the Easter holiday weekend.

Up to 60mm of rain may fall in parts of south-west England and southern Wales, and the Met Office has issued yellow weather warnings for snow in parts of northern England and southern and central Scotland as the band of wet weather

hits colder air to the north.Met Office forecaster Helen

Roberts said: “The main risk is rain. We have a number of warnings out at the moment, including a fairly large rain warning covering most of the country. It is going to cause problems for people travelling today. There will be a lot of surface water on roads.”

Although fears of a return of the “beast from the east” and predictions of a white Easter proved wide of the mark, the Met Offi ce said snow could prove disruptive in some places today, causing some travel issues.

There are currently more than 100 flood alerts and seven flood warnings in place across England.

Southern England could see sleet showers but snow is un-likely to settle, and in Northern Ireland heavy rain is forecast, continuing into tomorrow.

There is a chance of flooding and hill snow in Northern Ire-land could see some rain, with today and tomorrow.

Motorists are also expected to face delays on the roads with some stranded vehicles and rail and air travel is also predicted to be disrupted.

Mobile phone service and some rural communities face the threat of being cut off.

Engineering works continue at Bristol Temple Meads sta-tion, which is not set to reopen until Wednesday after what Network Rail described as its largest resignalling project. Replacement buses were run-ning on many popular holiday routes including to Weston-super-Mare.

There were reduced services at London’s Euston, Liverpool Street and Waterloo stations, and services at Manchester Victoria will resume today.

South Western Railway was hit by another strike by the RMT union over the holiday weekend in a continuing dis-pute over staffing levels on trains, but it pledged to operate a full service.

The RAC predicted there would be about 1mn more lei-sure journeys by car over this Easter weekend compared with the same period last year.

The AA warned motorists to take extra care and said the bank holiday weekend is “like-ly to be one of the busiest on the roads in recent years”.

Former swimming baths to reopen as art galleryGuardian News and MediaLondon

Part of a Victorian swim-ming baths and the iron tanks that supplied the wa-

ter are to open as one of the UK’s most eagerly anticipated new contemporary art spaces, at the birthplace of the Young British Artists.

Goldsmiths, the south Lon-don art college whose students have included Bridget Riley, An-

tony Gormley and YBAs such as Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Gil-lian Wearing and Gary Hume, is to open a 1,000 sq metre gallery designed by the Turner prize-winning collective Assemble.

It will have an affi nity with overseas university galleries such as the Wattis Institute in San Francisco and Portikus in Frank-furt, and a feel of places such as the ICA and South London Gal-lery in London, but it will not be exactly like them, its direc-tor, Sarah McCrory, hopes. “The

whole point is not to be like any-where else,” she said.

The £4mn gallery, which will open in September, has been funded in part by an auction of work donated by alumni, which raised £1.7mn.

It is one of the most exciting gal-lery openings of the year for several reasons. For one, it bucks a trend. “In a troubling time for cultural in-stitutions, it is really nice to be part of something that is opening rath-er than a story that is about closure or cuts,” said McCrory.

“I also really hope that the impact of spaces like this can be seen by those that fund them be-cause I think it is a tragedy that so many are disappearing, often secretly and quietly … they just suddenly disappear.”

The gallery is also the fi rst build-ing from Assemble, an architec-tural collective of young and radi-cal designers, artists and architects who won the Turner prize in 2015 for their project helping residents in Toxteth to renovate their homes and gardens.

Assemble won the commis-sion in a competition, selected by a panel that included Gormley and the architect David Chipper-fi eld. They promise to expose the hidden character of what was the plant works and water tanks for the Victorian Laurie Grove baths. The main baths building will continue to be used as studios for students.

Assemble were recruited be-fore McCrory was appointed but she could not be more excited. “I love working with them, it is like working with artists,” she said.

Many original features will be kept, including the iron tank walls, which will enclose two of the upstairs galleries, in deliber-ately stark contrast to the white cube spaces below.

McCrory, formerly a Frieze Projects curator and director of the contemporary art festi-val Glasgow International, said the new Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art off ered a huge number of curating possibilities with a variety of spaces, some of them challenging.

“Probably one of the reasons why I ended up getting the job is that a lot of my previous jobs have been curating in odd spaces,” she said. “In Glasgow it would be fi re stations and swimming pools and dungeons.

“Of course this is a building with a roof and walls and lighting, something I’ve wanted to do for a while; at the same time there is still an element of working with artists to make the building make sense, to use the idiosyncrasies of the building.”

Swans swim past a car submerged under flood water on a residential street in Richmond, west London, Britain, yesterday.

Employees of Smarkets have lunch at their off ice in central London.

EUROPE19Gulf Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

French state railway opera-tor SNCF warned yesterday of major disruption caused

by strikes this week that analysts say will be a major test of how much weight the country’s once fearsome trade unions still carry.

Train drivers and other staff are set to walk off the job tonight at the start of three months of planned stoppages against re-form plans announced by Presi-dent Emmanuel Macron and his government.

From tomorrow, rubbish col-lectors, some staff in the elec-tricity and energy sector, and employees of Air France are also set to strike in the biggest wave of industrial unrest since Macron’s election last May.

In an update yesterday, the SNCF said that travel would be “very disrupted” tomorrow, with one in eight high-speed TGV trains operating, around one in fi ve regional trains and major cancellations on suburban com-muter trains.

SNCF chief Guillaume Pepy warned that some train lines might be closed due to the walk-outs and that problems might accumulate over time because stoppages have been announced for two out of every fi ve days un-til June 28.

“Three days after normal serv-ices resume, another strike se-quence will start. It’ll completely disorganise our work,” he told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, warning the network’s 4.5mn

daily users to brace for problems.Unions are reacting to govern-

ment plans to revamp the debt-laden and loss-making SNCF which they believe – despite consistent denials from the gov-ernment – is a fi rst step toward privatisation.

Under the proposed changes, new rail employees will not ben-efi t from a special status histori-cally given to railway workers, which guarantees them a job for life and early retirement.

Forty-eight per cent of staff are set to join the strike tomorrow and a second day on Wednesday, including 77% of drivers, the SNCF said.

Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne, interviewed in yesterday’s edition of the Parisien newspa-per, took a harder line than in previous statements, calling the industrial action “incomprehen-sible”.

The government has so far had public opinion on its side over the rail reform, but a survey yester-day showed sympathy growing for SNCF staff .

A new poll by the Ifop group showed that 46% of respondents found the strike “justifi ed”, up four points from two weeks ago.

Only a slim majority, 51%, thought the government “should complete the reform as it has been announced”.

Unions have so far failed to block any of the changes pro-posed by Macron since his elec-tion last year, a victory that vir-tually swept away the Socialist Party, long the political cham-pion of the labour movement.

But by taking on the SNCF,

a totem of French unionism, Macron has inevitably drawn comparisons to a previous turn-ing point in Europe’s industrial relations: Margaret Thatcher’s showdown with British coal mine unions in 1984.

The 40-year-old centrist ap-pears to be seizing the oppor-tunity provided by his surprise victory in presidential and par-liamentary elections last May and June when he stood as a re-formist candidate promising to transform France.

Like controversial labour mar-ket reforms last October, he has promised to push through the SNCF overhaul by executive or-der to avoid a lengthy debate in parliament, while also pressing ahead in other areas.

“His tactical approach is work-ing. By constantly opening new fronts, he renders opposition to the previous one obsolete,” said political expert Philippe Braud.

With French opinion divided between “resignation” and “deep conviction that things must move forward”, Braud said, “the planets were aligned: So many reforms have been aborted over the past 20 years”.

France’s union landscape has also shifted markedly, with the hardline CGT recently dethroned as the biggest player by the more moderate CFDT, which has re-fused calls for a “convergence” of the various protests.

Union membership has also plummeted, with just over 11% of French workers unionised, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), one of the

lowest levels in the EU.However, unions continue to

punch above their weight and even CFDT chief Laurent Berg-er has warned Macron against “knocking over everything”, de-scribing his method as “You dis-cuss, I decide”.

Fresh on the heels of loosen-ing France’s strict labour rules to make hiring-and-fi ring easier, Macron appears eager to take ad-

vantage of his momentum.CGT head Philippe Martinez,

whose union is the biggest at the SNCF, said last week that France was poised for another May 1968, when a series of strikes snow-balled into a social revolution.

Fifty years ago, “there was no general call for a strike, but a chain reaction of mobilisations that came together”, Martinez told L’Humanite newspaper.

French rail warning ahead of union strikeAFPParis

Cars drive past a sign reading ‘strike: think carpool’ on A55 highway in Marseille, southern France yesterday, on the eve of the start of a French rail unions strike.

Pope Francis has called for an end to “carnage” in Syr-ia and “reconciliation” in

the Middle East in his traditional Easter message.

“Today we implore fruits of peace upon the entire world, beginning with the beloved and long-suff ering land of Syria,” the Pontiff said in the “Urbi et Orbi” (To the City and the World) ad-dress.

Appealing to the “consciences of all political and military lead-ers”, Francis urged “that a swift end may be brought to the car-nage” in Syria as 80,000 pilgrims listened in Saint Peter’s Square and millions watched the speech broadcast live around the world.

The Pope asked that “provi-sions be made to facilitate access to the aid so urgently needed by our brothers and sisters, while also ensuring fi tting conditions for the return of the displaced” to Syria.

As he spoke, a fi nal deal was reportedly reached for fi ghters

and civilians to leave the last op-position-held pocket of Eastern Ghouta.

That would mark a major mile-stone in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s eff orts to regain con-trol of territory seized by rebel factions during the seven-year civil war which has left some 350,000 dead and displaced mil-lions.

The 81-year-old Francis said the Holy Land was “also expe-riencing ... the wounds of on-going confl ict that do not spare the defenceless”, singling out the confl ict in Yemen where some 10,000 people have died since March 2015.

Francis then prayed for the “fruits of dialogue for the Korean peninsula” and that the “discus-sions under way may advance peace and harmony within the region”.

“May those who are directly responsible act with wisdom and discernment to promote the good of the Korean people and to build relationships of trust within the international community,” the Argentine Pope said.

February’s Winter Olympics

triggered a fast-moving rap-prochement that will see the North’s Kim Jong-un sit down with the South’s President Moon Jae-in in late April, with a US

summit with President Donald Trump planned for May.

Francis also spoke of “hunger, endemic confl ict and terrorism” in Africa, calling for dialogue and

mutual understanding in strife-torn Congo and South Sudan.

Earlier yesterday, the Pontiff celebrated Easter mass in the fl ower-bedecked square, which was under tight security.

Tourists and clergy alike formed long queues to have their belongings checked and pass through metal detectors to ac-cess the mass on the holiest day in the Christian calendar, mark-ing Jesus’s resurrection.

“Rome is the centre of the Catholic faith,” anti-terror pros-ecutor Federico Cafi ero de Raho said on Saturday. “For those who believe in the radical form of holy war, Rome represents so many things put together – there’s the Pope, the Vatican...”

Italian authorities are con-cerned that some of the esti-mated 120 radicalised Italians who left for Syria or Iraq to fi ght with extremist groups could be returning to the country posing as migrants.

Last week saw a wave of anti-terror arrests by the authorities, with Interior Minister Marco Minniti warning of a high risk of an attack.

Pope urges end to ‘carnage’ in SyriaAFPVatican City

In this handout picture released by the Vatican press off ice, Pope Francis waves to the crowd during his delivery of the ‘Urbi et Orbi’ blessing to the city and to the world from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, following Easter Sunday Mass.

Hundreds of Catalan in-dependence supporters marched in Berlin yes-

terday to demand the release of former regional president Carles Puigdemont, who was arrested in Germany last month and faces extradition to Spain on rebellion charges.

Huddled under umbrellas in the rainy German capital, the protesters walked from Branden-burg Gate to the justice ministry, carrying banners that read “Free Puigdemont and the Catalan po-litical prisoners” and “Spain is not a democracy”.

Many also waved Catalonia’s blue, yellow and red separatist fl ag as they took part in the rally organised by the German branch of the Catalan National Assem-bly (ANC), a grassroots pro-in-dependence group.

“What we want to say is sim-ply: free our elected Catalan pol-

iticians,” said 34-year-old mar-keting worker Monica Zaldivar, who accused the Spanish gov-ernment of using the courts to go after Catalan leaders instead of trying to fi nd a political solution.

“For me, it’s about democracy in Spain,” she said.

One of the organisers, Ferran Cornella, told AFP that he esti-mated the crowd to number “400 or 500” people, while police gave

a tally of over 300 demonstra-tors.

Puigdemont was arrested by German highway police on March 25 as he was travelling from Fin-land back to Belgium, where has been living in self-imposed exile since Catalonia’s failed inde-pendence bid last October.

The detention came two days after a Spanish judge issued in-ternational arrest warrants for Puigdemont and other fugitive separatist leaders.

They have been ordered to stand trial for rebellion, misuse of public funds and disobeying

the state for organising last year’s referendum on Catalan inde-pendence, which Madrid deemed illegal.

Puigdemont’s arrest has sent tensions soaring at home, trig-gering a wave of protests in the wealthy northeastern Spanish region.

German judges have ordered Puigdemont to remain in custody in the northern town of Neum-uenster as they mull Spain’s re-quest for him to be handed over.

They have 60 days to make a decision.

German media say that the request has been complicated by the fact that rebellion, which carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in jail in Spain, is not a crime under German law.

In a tweet on his offi cial ac-count yesterday, Puigdemont was quoted as saying that the October 1 independence refer-endum, held exactly six months ago, marked “the start of a new era from which there is no turn-ing back”.

Hundreds rally in Berlin calling for Puigdemont’s releaseAFPBerlin

Puigdemont: there is no turning back.

Protesters hold a banner reading ‘Free Puigdemont’ while taking part in a demonstration in Berlin organised by the pro-independence association ANC (National Assembly of Catalonia) to demand the release of former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont.

Russian diplomats ex-pelled from the United States arrived in Mos-

cow yesterday, with post-Cold War tensions soaring in the wake of a nerve agent attack on a former spy in Britain.

A deepening crisis in ties between Russia and the West over the past weeks has seen the biggest wave of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions in re-cent memory.

Another salvo in the spat was fi red on Saturday, when Russia warned its nationals to think twice before travelling to Brit-ain, where it said they could be singled out for harassment.

By expelling 60 Russian dip-lomats, the US joined a score of Britain’s allies in responding to the poisoning of former dou-ble agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.

Britain has said it is “highly likely” that Russia was re-sponsible for the attack using the Soviet-designed Novichok nerve agent, while Moscow calls the allegations unsub-stantiated anti-Russian prop-aganda.

Two planes arrived at Mos-cow’s Vnukovo airport yes-terday, bringing home a total of 171 people – the 60 diplo-mats and their families – from Washington and New York.

Russian television showed passengers disembarking from a government plane while sev-eral buses waited to pick them up.

The US alleged the 60 dip-lomats were “spies” and sent them home from posts around the country and at the Russian mission to the United Nations, as well as closing Russia’s con-sulate in Seattle.

Moscow responded by send-ing home 60 US diplomats and closing Washington’s consu-late in Saint Petersburg on Sat-urday.

Washington has since said Russia is free to apply to ac-credit more diplomats to re-place those expelled.

More than 150 Russian dip-lomats have now been ordered out of the US, EU members, North Atlantic Treaty Organi-sation (Nato) countries and other nations.

Four of those diplomats were sent home from Germany, whose foreign minister said yesterday that his country re-

mained open to dialogue and hoped eventually to “rebuild trust” with Moscow.

While admitting Russia’s behaviour had “caused a lot of trust to be lost”, Heiko Maas said “we need Russia as a part-ner”.

The US embassy in Moscow also took a more conciliatory tone, saying on Twitter that “the consulate is closed but our work to improve Russian-US ties is continuing”.

US President Donald Trump has often appeared reluctant to criticise Russian leader Vladimir Putin and has said the two could meet for a summit in the near future.

However, the furious dip-lomatic war between Russia and Britain showed no sign of abating as Moscow’s embassy in London urged Russians to think carefully before travel-ling to the UK or sending chil-dren to summer school there.

The embassy warned that British authorities including police could single out Rus-sians for additional checks, citing “the anti-Russian poli-cies and an escalation of the British side’s threatening rhet-oric”.

The Russian embassy even urged fans of football team CSKA Moscow fl ying to Lon-don for Thursday’s Europa match with Arsenal to exercise “extra vigilance” because of Britain’s “anti-Russian cam-paign”.

Britain has acknowledged that border offi cials searched an incoming Aerofl ot fl ight from Moscow on Friday in what Russia blasted as an act of “blatant provocation”.

However, Britain said that it conducts routine checks on aircraft to protect the UK from organised crime and people attempting to bring harmful substances into the country.

Moscow summoned British ambassador Laurie Bristow on Friday, giving London a month to cut the number of diplomat-ic staff in Russia to the same number Russia has in Britain.

“Russia suggested parity. The British side has more than 50 more people,” foreign min-istry spokeswoman Maria Za-kharova told AFP.

The measure came after Russia expelled 23 British dip-lomats, closed a British con-sulate in Saint Petersburg and halted the activities of the British Council educational and cultural organisation last month.

Moscow tells Russians to avoid travel to UK

AFPMoscow

The governor of a Russian region where a huge mall inferno killed dozens of

people – most of them children – resigned yesterday after bit-ter criticism over his response to the tragedy.

Aman Tuleyev, who had been at the helm of the coal-mining region of Kemerovo since 1997, said in a video address that he could no longer remain at his post with “such a heavy bur-den” and that quitting was “the only right choice”.

The Kremlin swiftly said that President Vladimir Putin had accepted his resignation.

Tuleyev’s move is unusual as top offi cials in Russia rarely re-sign over failings in the emer-gency response to tragedies.

However, the huge fi re which ravaged a shopping centre in the Siberian industrial city of Kemerovo last Sunday, killing at least 64 people including 41 children, plunged Russia into shock.

Some parents lost all their children, and the youngest vic-tim was a two-year-old boy.

Many people who lost rela-tives have said they perished because of inaction by fi re-fi ghters and police lacking the necessary equipment and skills, while some said a cin-ema door was locked, trapping children inside.

Tuleyev, who himself lost a young relative in the blaze, came under heavy criticism for

failing to visit the scene of the tragedy in the fi rst few days or meet with angry relatives.

Putin had initially refused to sack the 73-year-old gov-ernor despite a rare protest which saw thousands of people pack a square in Kemerovo on Tuesday, the same day Putin travelled to the scene of the tragedy.

Tuleyev apologised to the president over the rally – where protesters also called for Putin’s resignation – calling its organisers troublemakers.

Offi cials have said multi-ple safety rules were violated, the fi re alarm system was not working and staff did not fol-low correct emergency proce-dures.

The four-storey shopping mall was redeveloped several times and previously housed a sweet factory.

Seven people have been ar-rested in the aftermath of the blaze, investigators said.

The ailing Tuleyev had long been expected to leave the post.

Russian governor resigns over deadly shopping mall blazeAFPMoscow

Tuleyev: quitting is the right choice.

Gulf Times Monday, April 2, 2018

INDIA20

Tamil NaduRoundupBy Umaima Shafiq

Award-winning sculptor arrestedfor alleged fraud

Muthiah Sthapathi, a world renowned sculptor and a Padma Shri award winner, was arrested for alleged fraud in the re-sculpting of an ancient idol at the heritage Dhandayuthapani Swami hill temple in Palani in Dindigul district, last week.K K Raja, an executive off icer of the Palani temple and a member of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), was also arrested. The two men allegedly conspired to replace an ancient Sidhar Bogar idol with a replica in 2003 by claiming that it was losing strength. Based on their recommendations, the government’s Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department (HR&CE) sanctioned Rs20mn for sculpting a fresh idol cast in five metals including gold. Many devotees contributed cash and gold for the idol. However within four months of installation, devotees complained of the new idol’s inferior quality. Based on this, an engineers’ panel inspected and confirmed the defects. The HR&CE then informed police who found Muthiah and Raja guilty. They admitted to have wantonly removed the original idol to be sold abroad for millions.Muthiah has sculpted gigantic idols in India and abroad, including 32 for temples in the US. He also constructed the tallest Buddha statue of 75ft in Sri Lanka.

Man dies aftertaking medicinesold by vendor

Pradeep Kumar, 28, died after reportedly consuming herbal medicine sold by a vendor of a mobile van at Ayyapakkam in Chennai last week.Kumar’s family told police he was worried about his obesity and had tried exercise, diets and medicines without success. He became desperate over being rejected by prospective brides and had bought the herbal medicine as the vendor promised quick results. However he developed severe stomach pain soon after talking it and was rushed to hospital where he died. Doctors claimed the medicine may have contained lead or other chemicals. Police have launched a search for the vendor. Meanwhile Pradeep’s neighbours set fire to another van selling herbal products two days later.

Police rope inNIMHANSfor counselling

The Tamil Nadu police have sought help from psychologists of Bengaluru–based National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) to counsel their personnel to deal with job stress, anger and work pressure. The move was sparked by a spate of police suicides during duty hours and a court directive for a humane approach. Accordingly NIMHANS will handpick 300 policemen and train them in counselling, who will then guide batches of 30 personnel at a time. Each police station would then have a trainer and a counsellor who would be monitored by an experts’ panel.Senior police off icers are confident that NIMHANS will deliver as they are already training Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Kerala and Chattisgarh police.

Gang arrested for bank heistFour Nepalese men were arrested for stealing gold and money from the Virugambakkam branch of Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) in Chennai last week.The kingpin Shabi Lal took up the job of a security guard in the bank to know its layout and planned the robbery. He escaped to Nepal and was arrested based on an Interpol alert.The gang drilled holes in the bank’s ceiling and entered the building using drills powered by gas cylinders. They then broke open two lockers and stole about 130 sovereigns of gold and Rs300,000 cash.

ISRO suff erssetback as itloses contact with satelliteAgenciesNew Delhi

Scientists have lost contact with a satellite days after it was launched into orbit

with much fanfare, in a setback for India’s national space agency.

The Indian Space Research Or-ganisation (ISRO) lost communi-cation with the GSAT-6A satel-lite as it prepared to undertake its third and fi nal orbiting manoeu-vre on Saturday.

“Eff orts are underway to es-tablish the link with the satellite,” ISRO said in a statement.

The satellite – an indigenous model weighing more than 2,000 tonnes – was designed to improve communications.

It was launched from Sri-harikota in Andhra Pradesh on Thursday.

The satellite was to be placed in its intended orbit 36,000km above ground level after ma-noeuvres from the space agency’s Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka, about 180km from Bengaluru.

Only after communication link is re-established can the satellite be placed in its intended orbit.

Scientists completed the fi rst orbit raising operation of the sat-ellite at 9.22am on Friday, which saw the satellite changing its closest and farthest point from earth besides changing its incli-nation.

The LAM (liquid apogee motor) engine worked perfectly fi ne, and the fi rst orbit raising manoeuvre was a success, and the satellite reached the right spot as intend-ed, a source said.

The second orbit raising ma-noeuvre was scheduled for 10.51am on Saturday, and well-placed sources said the operation was also completed with a suc-cessful fi ring of the LAM engine.

The agency received data from the satellite for about four min-utes after the second orbit raising operation, after which the it went blank, the sources said.

Initial analysis points to a pow-er system failure.

On Saturday, the agency’s new chairman K Sivan held a mara-thon meeting with senior scien-tists through a teleconference.

This was ISRO’s fi rst launch af-ter Sivan took charge, even as the mission itself was conceived and developed before his time.

GSAT-6A is a high power com-munication satellite which was to have a mission life of about 10 years.

It was to provide mobile com-munication for India with mul-ti-band coverage facility – fi ve beams in S-band and one beam in C-band.

The satellite has a 6m-wide antenna, the biggest used by an ISRO communication satellite so far, meant for the S-band com-munication.

This was to enable the satellite

to provide mobile communication for the country through handheld ground terminals, which was not possible earlier as smaller anten-nas meant larger ground stations.

The satellite was also to provide with communication facilities for the armed forces.

The space programme is a source of much pride in India and an achievement that highlights its emergence as a rising power and major world economy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the launch on Thursday, saying he was “proud of @isro for taking the nation towards new heights and a brighter future”.

The launch of the satellite was seen as another feather in the cap for ISRO scientists, who won Asia’s race to Mars in 2014 when an Indian spacecraft reached the Red Planet on a shoestring budg-et.

That feat burnished India’s reputation as a reliable low-cost option for space exploration, with its $73mn price tag drastically undercutting Nasa’s Maven Mars $671mn mission.

In February last year India put a record 104 satellites into orbit from a single rocket, surpassing Russia which launched 39 satel-lites in one mission in June 2014.

But the Indian space pro-gramme has also been blighted by failures, most recently in August last year when a mission to launch a backup navigation satellite suf-fered a major technical glitch.

Candidates restless over Kerala by-election dateIANSChengannur, Kerala

Even though candidates of three rival fronts in Kerala have hit the campaign trail

for by-election to the Chengan-nur assembly constituency, they are getting restless as the Elec-tion Commission is yet to an-nounce the date for the much-awaited contest.

The by-election was necessi-tated by the death of Communist Party of India (Marxist) legisla-tor K K Ramachandran Nair in January.

Chengannur constituency falls in Alappuzha district, con-sidered the bastion of the CPM-led Left Front, which has eight of

nine assembly seats here under its belt. The ninth, Haripad, was won by Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala.

Expectations were high that the date would be announced along with the schedule for the Karnataka assembly elections, but it was not to be.

Contrary to what is often seen in Kerala, this time the Con-gress was the fi rst to announce its candidate – D Vijayakumar, a party veteran born and brought up in Chengannur, who has been eyeing the seat for the past 25 years.

He had to face a small chal-lenge from his daughter, but the party fi nally decided to give the seat to him as he knows the con-stituency well.

Then came the announce-ment by the CPM that it is fi eld-ing Alappuzha district party secretary Saji Cheriyan, who has had an outing here in the past but was defeated.

And the Bharatiya Janata Par-ty (BJP), on expected lines, has named another local personal-ity and former state party chief P S Sreedharan Pillai, who in the 2016 assembly polls put up an unexpectedly strong show-ing and came a close third to the sitting Congress legislator P C Vishnunath, who lost to Nair of the CPM.

Nair secured 52,880 votes, Vishnunath 44,987 and Pillai 42,682.

Barring the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA),

Kerala’s traditional rivals – the ruling Left Front and the Con-gress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) – have held their opening election conventions.

The NDA is still trying to put its house in order as the second biggest ally, the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), the political arm of the SNDP, an organisa-tion that works predominantly for the backward Ezhavas, is feeling disgruntled.

The BDJS is said to be un-happy with the BJP as it is yet to get the posts “promised” to it when it decided to join the NDA in 2015.

However, although the poll date is yet to be announced, all three candidates have begun their campaigns which includes

house visits, family get-togeth-ers, besides holding wayside meetings.

Over the past two days, all the three candidates made it a point to be present in churches in the constituency during the “Pas-sion Week” prayer sessions. And they made it to Easter Sunday mass as well.

The star campaigner of the UDF is none other than former chief minister Oommen Chan-dy. He is spending most of his time in the constituency trying to build bridges with the strong Christian community, which for some reason is believed to have taken an anti-Congress stand in the 2016 assembly election in which the party lost to the Left Front.

“I am slated to visit Dubai on the 5th and 6th of April, but that visit will be cancelled if the date of polls are announced as not a single minute of the campaign can be wasted. I am commit-ted to devoting the maximum time for the campaign,” Chandy said, adding the delay in the an-nouncement is a cause of worry.

BJP candidate Pillai, however, said it was understandable that his rival candidates have openly expressed their reservations on the delay in announcing the dates.

“While they rely on money to be spent for campaigning, I feel the delay for me is a good thing as my style of campaign is to meet each and every voter per-sonally.

TN parties to enforceshutdown on April 5IANSChennai

Opposition parties yes-terday condemned the central and the Tamil

Nadu governments for “betray-ing” the state on the Cauvery river water issue, and yester-day decided to hold a statewide shutdown on April 5.

A meeting of the parties was held at the headquarters of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Gov-ernor Banwarilal Purohit met Chief Secretary Girija Vaidy-anathan and some senior offi -cials at Raj Bhavan.

While the purpose of Puro-hit’s meeting is not known of-fi cially, it is speculated that it could be to take stock of the Cauvery issue fallout and other protests in the state.

The DMK said in a statement that the central government had failed to set up the Cauvery

Management Board (CMB) ac-cording a Supreme Court order of February 16. The six-week deadline ended on March 31.

The parties also decided to organise a ‘Securing Cauvery Rights March’ from the Cauvery Delta region to the Raj Bhavan in which leaders of all political parties and the public would participate.

According to the statement, black fl ags would be shown to Prime Minister Narendra Modi whenever he comes to Tamil Nadu for not setting up the CMB.

The parties denounced the Bharatiya Janata Party-led cen-tral government for acting in the narrow interests of the par-ty ahead of assembly elections in Karnataka and squeezing the rights of Tamil Nadu by misus-ing its powers on the Cauvery issue. Karnataka does not want the CMB to be set up.

They also condemned the state government for being an

“inseparable partner” of the central government and not putting pressure on New Delhi despite having 50 MPs.

Later, DMK leader M K Stalin told reporters that he request-ed the traders’ associations to postpone their strike from to-morrow to Thursday.

Stalin said the protest would involve blocking trains and buses.

Later in the day, Stalin was taken into custody while stag-ing a protest.

Leaders of Congress and VCK parties also joined the protest at Valluvar Kottam. A large number of DMK activists par-ticipated in the event.

Besides Stalin, Congress leader S Thirunavukkarasar and members of the Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi (TVK) in-cluding party chief T Velmuru-gan were also arrested.

TVK members damaged a toll booth at Ulundurpettai, around 205km from Chennai.

Residents along with their children hold placards and shout slogan demanding the shutdown of a copper smelter factory of Sterlite at Thoothukudi, in Chennai yesterday. The residents are on a month-long protest demanding the closure of the factory for its hazards waste which they say is causing health problems and polluting the environment.

Factory closure demanded

Ten killed inbuilding crash

Ten people have died after a car crashed into a dilapidated building in Indore and brought down the century-old structure, burying them beneath rubble, police said yesterday.The driver lost control of his vehicle and struck a pillar holding up the near 100-year-old structure, said a police off icer.“The impact was such that the entire building collapsed,” he said.“Rescue workers pulled out 12 people from the rubble, 10 of them were already dead. The other two are being treated in hospital.”Images from the scene showed battered and bloodied corpses being pulled from twisted piles of brick and concrete.The rubble was being cleared with cranes and industrial equipment.Building disasters are common in Indian cities where millions are forced to live in cramped, run-down properties due to spiralling real estate prices and a lack of proper housing.Activists say owners often cut corners on construction to save costs with little regard to safety.Some 30 people perished in September last year when a 117-year-old apartment building collapsed in Mumbai.

Police, rescue teams and residents take part in rescue operations after a building collapsed in Indore.

INDIA21Gulf Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

20 killed as fi ghtingrages across Kashmir

No infi ghting in Congress over CM post: Sachin Pilot

Three held, ‘lax’CBSE offi cialsuspended over paper leak

AgenciesSrinagar

At least 20 people have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir in some of the

fi ercest fi ghting this year in the restive state, police said yester-day, as authorities braced for more violence.

A total of three soldiers and 11 suspected militants died in sev-eral clashes south of Srinagar.

Six civilians were also killed and dozens injured when po-lice opened fi re on thousands of demonstrators who poured onto the streets, throwing stones and chanting slogans against Indian rule.

There were also demonstra-tions in Srinagar.

Seven of the militants were killed along with two soldiers in a protracted shootout in the vil-lage of Dragad, where helicop-ters were seen swooping low over the battle zone.

Another man, described by the authorities as a militant, was gunned down in a brief exchange of fi re in Dialgam.

Security forces were still tak-ing fi re from gunmen in the vil-lage of Kachdora, where one soldier and three insurgents had been killed, police chief Shesh Paul Vaid said.

“It is a massive operation. The fi ght is still on,” Inspector Gen-eral of Police Swayam Prakash Pani said.

S P Vaid, the state director general of police, said the army received information on Satur-

day night about militants hiding in an area near Dragad village, about 50km south of Srinagar and also in Shopian district.

“In Dragad, 7 bodies of mili-tants were recovered including top commanders. They were killed in a gunbattle,” Vaid said, adding that the owner of the house in which the militants were trapped was also killed.

Authorities have directed schools and colleges in Kashmir to remain closed today to pre-vent any recurrence of violence, and restrictions have been im-posed in several areas.

Train services to south Kash-mir have been suspended as a precautionary measure, a rail-ways offi cial said, and Internet services in fi ve districts have also been blocked.

In south Kashmir’s Pulwama district the local administration has imposed restrictions on the movement of people and vehi-cles to prevent any violence.

Addressing a joint press con-ference at Awantipora in Pul-wama district, Lt Gen A K Bhatt, commander of the army’s Srina-gar-based 15 Corps, said: “Today is a very special day for all our security forces. We have killed several terrorists.”

“I appeal to youths not to get lured by weapons. Anybody who uses weapons will be dealt with in the same manner we dealt with the terrorists today.”

He said it was was the biggest anti-militancy operation in the Kashmir Valley in a long time.

Pakistan condemned the violence as a “mindless killing

spree” and said those slaugh-tered were innocents.

“Such cowardly actions of the occupying forces only serve to fortify the resolve of the Kashmiri people,” its foreign office said in a statement yes-terday.

Last year was the deadliest of this decade in the state, with more than 200 alleged militants killed in a counter-insurgency off ensive dubbed “Operation All Out”.

That upsurge in violence has escalated in 2018, with 49 mili-tants already killed this year.

The weekend clashes were the worst since a three-day skirmish in the forests of northern Kash-mir last month left ten dead – fi ve unidentifi ed militants and fi ve government forces.

IANSMysuru, Karnataka

Bharatiya Janata Party pres-ident Amit Shah equated the Congress with corrup-

tion yesterday, and cautioned the Karnataka voters against re-electing the ruling party on May 12 as it would result in more graft in the southern state.

“If the same party is re-elected and forms the government, then corruption will turn into a tsunami wave,” Shah told reporters on the second day of his visit to Mysuru.

Claiming that the people wanted to oust the corrupt Con-gress from power, Shah said the ruling party had turned the state government into an ‘ATM’ of corruption for itself.

“The Karnataka government is nothing but the ‘ATM’ of corrup-tion for the Congress,” Shah said.

Noting that 3,500 farmers had allegedly committed suicide across the state over the last four years due

to agrarian crisis, Shah it was unfor-tunate Chief Minister Siddaramai-ah had termed the death of so many farmers as a conspiracy.

“It’s a pathetic and insensitive statement by the chief minister,” he said.

Blaming the Congress for ig-noring the Other Backward Class-es (OBCs), Shah regretted that the grand old party had prevented the central government from giving constitutional status to the OBCs by blocking an amendment bill in the Rajya Sabha.

“Siddaramaiah says he is an OBC leader and that his gov-ernment was doing a lot for the OBCs. If it were so, why did he fail to convince his party not to stall the constitutional amend-ment,” the BJP chief said.

Appealing to the people to vote for the BJP in the May as-sembly election, Shah said the state would development rapidly under its chief ministerial candi-date B S Yeddyurappa and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Siddaramaiah govt‘ATM of corruption’

IANSJaipur

There is no clash between leaders in the Congress over the post of chief

minister in Rajasthan, says state party chief Sachin Pilot as the party high command appointed veteran leader Ashok Gehlot to a crucial post in the All India Con-gress Committee (AICC).

“It’s not an issue, and the credit for blowing it (the report-ed diff erences between him and Gehlot) out of proportion goes to our opponents, who are busy cooking up stories,” he said.

“We are working as a team and there is no such clash in the party for the coveted post,” Pilot told IANS in an interview.

There have been reports of in-fi ghting between Pilot and former chief minister and strongman Gehlot over who will be the chief

minister if the party wins the next elections due this year end.

On Friday, Congress president Rahul Gandhi appointed Gehlot as general secretary in charge of organisation and training, re-placing Janardhan Dwivedi.

Interestingly, however, Gehlot said in a newspaper interview that young leaders should learn to wait in queue and not try to jump it, remarks seen as a mes-sage to his younger rivals in the state unit of the party.

Pilot, who is the president of Rajasthan Congress, said the party has a tradition in which, once it wins an election, the newly-elected MLAs meet and elect their leader.

On his likely appointment as a general secretary, he said: “I am yet to get any information in this regard. What I know is that I have been sent here to lead the party.

“When I took charge, there were only 21 MLAs. I, along with my

team, have struggled hard to build the party and ensure that our party wins the assembly elections.”

At 26, Pilot became the youngest MP. Five years later in 2009, he be-came the youngest federal minister. Under his watch, the Congress this year won crucial by-elections to the Ajmer and Alwar parliamentary constituencies and the Mandalgarh assembly seat. But the credit, he said, goes to the workers.

On Congress’ electoral per-formance in the state, he said: “In the last four-and-a-half years, there have been by-elec-tions in 22 seats and our party has snatched 20 of them, which speaks volumes about our grow-ing credibility among voters.”

He said that the success of the Congress is not only because of the Bharatiya Janata Party gov-ernment’s failure. “We are win-ning because of our sustained eff orts and for standing by the people. People believe in us.”

AgenciesNew Delhi

Two teachers of a private school in New Delhi and a tutor at a private insti-

tute were arrested yesterday over the Class 12 economics question paper leak as a Central Board of Secondary Education offi cial found “lax” in the performance of duty was suspended.

The two suspects – Rishabh, 29, and Rohit, 26 – taught math-ematics and physics respectively at Mother Khazani Convent School at Bawana. The third is Tauqeer.

Human Resource Develop-ment Ministry secretary Anil Swarup announced the suspen-sion of CBSE offi cial K S Rana and said a formal inquiry has been launched against him.

“On HRD Minister Prakash Javdekar’s direction for swift ac-tion against culprits, the CBSE has suspended K S Rana, who was found lax in supervising ex-amination centre, with immedi-ate eff ect. A formal inquiry has been launched,” Swarup said in a series of tweets.

“Consequent to the arrest of two teachers of Mother Khajani Convent School, Mungeshpur, Delhi, and coaching institute head Tauquir by the Delhi police for colluding to leak the Class 12 economics paper and a probe carried out by the CBSE, a board personnel K S Rana was found lax in supervision,” he wrote.

Special Commissioner R P Upadhyay told reporters that the three accused arrested yesterday morning had been sent in two-day police remand by a court.

“Though question papers were supposed to be opened 15 minutes prior to the start of exams at 10am, the Class 12 economics paper was opened around half-an-hour or 40 min-utes before the commencement time. Its contents were shared on WhatsApp with a few students who later passed it on to others,” he said.

“The question paper was then forwarded to 26-year-old Tau-qeer, a tutor at a coaching cen-tre in Bawana, by his friend Ro-hit following instructions from Rishabh,” Upadhyay said.

The police offi cer said a hand-written paper leaked a day before the examination was a “diff erent case”, which is under investiga-tion.

“As many as 915 students ac-cessed the picture of the ques-tion paper received by various groups on WhatsApp,” the police offi cer said.

The CBSE has said that the Class 12 economics paper exam would now be held again on April 25.

The arrests from the national capital take the total number of people in custody to 15. On Saturday, three people were ar-rested and nine minors detained in Jharkhand.

Delhi police have questioned more than 60 people, including 53 students and seven teach-ers. They have zeroed in on six WhatsApp groups that fi gured in the trail of transmission of pa-pers.

Police have also received a reply from Google, which iden-tifi ed the e-mail address from where CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal was sent a mail about the Class 10 mathematics paper be-ing leaked.

An offi cer of the Crime Branch of the Delhi police said a Class 10 student had received the math-ematics paper on WhatsApp and he had used his father’s e-mail ID to send the mail to the CBSE chairperson. The student and his father are being questioned, he said.

Karwal had received an e-mail a day before the Class 10 mathe-matics exam, which was held on March 28, informing her about the paper being leaked.

The sender of the e-mail had stated that the paper was leaked on WhatsApp and that the exam should be cancelled. The mail also contained 12 images of the handwritten mathematics paper allegedly leaked on WhatsApp.

The police registered sepa-rate cases on March 27 and 28 to probe the leak of the Class 12 economics paper and Class 10 mathematics paper, following a complaint by the regional direc-tor of the CBSE.

The cases were registered on charges of criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal conspiracy.

Villagers stand on a tree as they look at a funeral procession of a militant killed in Shopian, south of Srinagar yesterday.

Congress workers greet Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah with a garland of apples weighing 750kg during his visit to Chamundeshwari in Mysuru yesterday.

Veteran Tamil film director C V Rajendran died in Chennai yesterday. He was 81. Rajendran has directed popular movies in Tamil including Galatta Kalyanam, Sumathi En Sundari and Raja starring Sivaji Ganesan and J Jayalalithaa who later became Tamil Nadu’s chief minister. He also directed other popular movies like Vani Rani, Sivagamiyin Selvam, Ponnoonjal, Maalai Sooda Va, Garjanai and several others in Tamil starring Sivaji Ganesan, Jaishankar, Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth. Many songs in his movies were big hits. Hailing from a village near Madurantakam, Rajendran was related to another popular Tamil movie director C V Sridhar, with whom he worked during his initial days.

Five people were arrested in connection with the alleged theft of 56 pistols and 58 magazines from a Manipur Rifles camp, off icials said, adding four police off icers were suspended. Authorities issued the order on Saturday night to suspend Kamjong Superintendent of Police H Golmin, who belongs to the Indian Police Service, and Manipur Police Service off icers K Ajit, H Basulal and Bikramjit. The suspended off icers cannot leave their stations without permission from the government. It is not yet known when the firearms and ammunition went missing. Police said five people were arrested and two pistols seized from them.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan yesterday inaugurated a state-of-the-art interpretation and tourist facilitation centre at the Sun Temple at Konark to coincide with the Utkal Divas celebrations in Odisha. The centre at the Unesco World Heritage site costing Rs450mn showcases the unique architectural features of the temple, situated 65km from state capital Bhubaneswar. Pradhan praised the Indian Oil Foundation for developing the visitor-friendly infrastructure and associated facilities at the temple. He also complimented Raghunath Mahapatra for recreating the sculptural wealth of the sun temple at the interpretation centre for the benefit of domestic and foreign visitors.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a fresh bank fraud case over Rs190mn that was sanctioned by UCO Bank to 18 fake borrowers under various home and property loan schemes with concessional interest rates in 2013 and 2016, it was announced yesterday. The agency’s move comes in the wake of a complaint received from UCO Bank on March 27. The CBI filed the FIR on March 29 naming five people, including former UCO Bank Jayanagar’s branch manager K R Saroja. Others were middleman B S Srinatha and three approved valuers of the bank – Jambunath and proprietor of two Bengaluru-based firms identified as Gopinath R Agnihotri and N Venkatesh.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi will attend a Dalit Sammelan in New Delhi on April 23 in the wake of the Supreme Court’s order diluting some stringent provisions of the SC/ST anti-atrocity Act. The party will also organise a protest on April 4 at Parliament Street against the verdict on the SC/ST Act and the atrocities and oppression against Dalits in different parts of the country, said a party source. The Congress had also urged the government to take “corrective steps” in parliament and file a review petition in the Supreme Court. Congress members had also protested in parliament over the verdict.

Veteran Tamil film directorRajendran dead aged 81

Police off icers suspendedover missing weapons

Konark temple getsinterpretation centre

CBI files case in Rs190mnUCO Bank fraud case

Rahul to attend Dalit Sammelan in Delhi

PEOPLE INVESTIGATIONTOURISM SCAM REACTION

22 Gulf TimesMonday, April 2, 2018

LATIN AMERICA

Five police offi cialsheld over jail disasterReutersCaracas

Venezuela has arrested fi ve state police offi cials for their alleged role in a

riot and fi re that killed 68 peo-ple in an overcrowded police station cell, the country’s pub-lic prosecutor said.

“The prosecutor’s offi ce has issued arrest warrants for fi ve offi cials of PoliCarabobo who have been identifi ed as responsible for the tragic in-cident that led to the death of 68 citizens in the cells of the headquarters of said regional police: THEY HAVE BEEN DETAINED#Justice,” tweeted prosecutor Tarek Saab.

Saab, a former Socialist Party governor close to leftist President Nicolas Maduro, did not provide any further details on the cause of the disaster, the worst to aff ect Venezuela’s notoriously violent jails in over two decades.

Relatives of dead inmates and one surviving prisoner said there was a shoot-out with police on Wednesday morning in the jail in

Carabobo state capital Valencia.One inmate’s widow said

offi cials had doused the area with gasoline, which fuelled a fi re through the small cells strung with hammocks and di-vided with sheets.

There was no immediate comment from Carabobo state police. Venezuela’s opposition blames the tragedy on Maduro’s inability to reform Venezuela’s lawless jails, where inmates strut around with weapons and orchestrate crimes from cells.

“The situation in detention centres and police jail cells in Venezuela is unacceptable!” said opposition lawmaker Miguel Pizarro. Opposition politicians have also criticised the government for its long si-lence about the incident.

Maduro’s administration only issued a statement late Friday ex-pressing its condolences to rela-tives and the president has yet to publicly speak about the deaths.

A former bus driver and union leader who has grown widely unpopular, Maduro is running for re-election in a May election largely boycotted by the opposition.

Tiny Til Til facesbig trash problemReutersTil Til, Chile

The trains seem to never stop. One after anoth-er, they haul more than

12 tonnes of rubbish daily to the small Chilean community of Til Til, 56km northwest of Santiago, the equivalent of at least two-thirds of the capital’s municipal waste. This town of 17,000 is the last stop for much of the trash produced by a city of 7mn. And now there will be more.

The Minister’s Committee, a gathering of high-ranking Chilean political offi cials who decide the fate of controversial projects, last year approved the construction of a sprawling new industrial waste processing fa-cility here.

Already, Til Til, a desert-dry community of yellow hills fringed with cactus fruit farms, has more than 30 industrial projects.

Among them: several mining

waste sites, an animal farm, a ce-ment plant and Lomas Los Colo-rados, one of Santiago’s largest waste dumps.

With this newly approved facility, operated by Ciclo, a local waste management com-pany, Til Til will become the last stop for more than half the industrial waste produced from northern Chilean mining region of Atacama to Bio Bio province in the south, accord-ing to a report from Chile’s Congress.

The community has protest-ed, blocking the train tracks that funnel trash north, and Route 5, known locally as the Panameri-can Highway and a major truck-ing thoroughfare that transits the city.

“Why Til Til again? Why must Til Til solve the environ-mental problems of 8mn in-habitants?,” said Til Til mayor Nelson Orellana on a radio pro-gramme following the project’s approval.

The national committee that approved the project says safe-

guards have put in place to mini-mise contamination or impact on townspeople.

Ciclo said that the site is the only one within the greater San-tiago region that is “apt and pos-sible” for an industrial waste site of this magnitude.

“There is no health risk for the population,” Ciclo says on its website.

The company hopes to see the project begin operation in 2019, according to its promotional materials.

Meanwhile, Santiago’s trash problem is only getting worse.

A 2015 fi re at another large landfi ll in Santa Marta — much nearer the city centre than Til Til — put citizens here on edge, shrouding Santiago’s skyscrap-ers and crowded streets in toxic dust.

Only 10% of the country’s trash is recycled, according to environment ministry statis-tics — putting the country near the bottom of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) nations.

Divided Costa Rica votes for new presidentAFPSan Jose

Voters in Costa Rica yes-terday cast their votes in a presidential election that

has split the country between an ultra-conservative evangelical preacher who slams gay mar-riage and a former minister from the centre-left ruling party.

The result will determine who rules the small Central American nation of 5mn people for the next four years.

Pre-vote surveys suggest a neck-and-neck race between Fabricio Alvarado, a right-wing 43-year-old preacher, journal-ist and singer, and Carlos Al-varado, a 38-year-old former journalist who was a labour minister in the outgoing gov-ernment.

Fabricio surged from no-where in the first round of the election held in February, tri-umphing over a field of 13 can-didates by fiercely criticising gay marriage.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights in January urged the recognition of same-sex marriages, setting off a polaris-ing debate in Costa Rica.

The country is both social-ly conservative and proud of its progressive human rights record.

Carlos, in contrast, ran on a broad campaign to tackle the priorities identifi ed by his Citi-zens’ Action Party, which has been in power since 2014 under outgoing president Luis Guill-ermo Solis.

Those issues include reining in a steadily climbing defi cit, boosting education and uphold-ing ecological standards.

In the first round, the preacher won 25% of the bal-lots against 22% for the former labour minister — both well short of the 40% required to avoid a run-off.

The last pre-election survey in March suggested a very tight election: Fabricio was credited

with 43% support against 42% for Carlos.

“Neither of the two candi-dates motivates me suffi ciently to give my support,” the head of the small Liberal Progressive Party, Eli Feinzaig, wrote on his social media accounts.

“But, ultimately, one of them has done enough to earn my clear and unequivocal repudia-tion,” he said, declaring he would vote for Carlos.

Winning over undecided or ambivalent voters was key for the candidates.

“The population still isn’t clear on what development model it wants,” a political analyst from the Latin Ameri-can Social Sciences Institute, Gustavo Araya, said. “This is a photo fi nish. It isn’t statisti-cally clear who will be the victor between these opposing plat-forms,” he said.

Alfredo Bonilla, a 72-year-old voting in the capital San Jose, said he favoured the former minister. “I see that one of the two (candidates) wasn’t very prepared.

The other seems to me a per-son prepared to run the country,” he said.

Electoral authorities re-ported no problems, and fine, sunny weather prevailed yes-terday. Roads back to the capi-tal were choked as many voters drove back home to cast their ballots.

“Voting is so diffi cult. The two who are left aren’t to my taste. I don’t know if I’m going to vote. Truly, I’m undecided,” said Ligia Vargas, a street vendor who sells fruits and juice in the main city park.

Solis, who is step down as president after his maximum single-term mandate, tried to bridge the divide exposed by the election campaign. “I am call-ing, with all respect, for an end to the hateful displays we’ve been seeing on social networks,” he said as he voted. “Once this is over we have to shake hands,” he said.

Luis Rosales, lawyer of former Guatemalan dictator general Jose Efrain Rios Montt speaks to the press outside the former dictator’s residence in Guatemala City yesterday moments after his death was announced.

Ex-Guatemala dictatorRios Montt dies aged 91AFPGuatemala City

Efrain Rios Montt, a former military dictator who ruled Guatemala between

1982 and 1983 and who was fac-ing retrial on genocide charges, died yesterday aged 91, sources close to his family said.

One of his lawyers, Luis Ro-sales, told reporters that Rios Montt “died in his home, with the love of his family and a clear conscience.”

Montt is accused of being responsible for the murders of 1,771 indigenous Ixil-Maya people during his short reign, which came at the height of a brutal 36-year civil war.

A May 2013 trial delivered a

conviction and an 80-year sen-tence against Rios Montt — the fi rst time a Latin American ex-dictator had been convicted of genocide.

But that verdict was over-turned just days later by Gua-temala’s constitutional court because of a “procedural error,” and a new trial was ordered.

That trial of Montt and his spy chief, Jose Rodriguez, was halted in 2016 after an appeals court ruled each man should be tried separately.

Montt’s lawyers sought to block further proceedings against their client, arguing his health was too poor and he suf-fered from dementia.

According to the UN, some 200,000 people died or were made to disappear during the

Guatemala’s long, brutal civil war, which ended in 1996.

Montt was accused of or-chestrating an extermination policy against the indigenous population, which was per-ceived to be collaborating with leftwing guerrillas wag-ing war against government forces.

He denied the charges in his original trial. “I never author-ised, never signed, never or-dered an attack against a race, an ethnicity or a religion. I never did it!” he said at the time.

Short in stature and vigorous into old age, the former dictator had a humble beginning, with little to suggest a rise to national power.

He was born in Guatemala’s remote Huehuetenango prov-

ince, near the border with Mexico. He enlisted in the army as a teenager and rose through the ranks, receiving training courses at the US-run School of the Americas, where Latin American offi cers learned harsh tactics used in crack downs on dissidents.

Politically, Montt came to the forefront in 1974 when, as a brigadier general, he was put forward as a coalition presiden-tial candidate.

Historians say he won an overwhelming victory, but elec-toral fraud prevented him from taking offi ce. Another general, Kjell Eugenio Laugerud, took power instead.

As a consolation prize, Montt was sent to Spain as the military attache.

Upon returning home three years later, he turned away from Catholicism, his religion of birth, and became a fer-vent evangelical Christian. On March 23, 1982, he took power in a bloodless coup, deposing Lucas Garcia.

During his 18-month rule, ruthless even by the standards of Latin American dictators, Montt engaged in a “scorched earth” policy against dissi-dents, wiping out entire rural towns where leftists were sus-pected of living or having sup-port.

He appointed so-called face-less judges who mounted sum-mary trials and ordered numer-ous alleged criminals — often leftist rebel sympathisers or militants — executed.

Former Paraguayan president Federico Franco joins a demonstration outside the historic Victory Barracks in San Lorenzo, near Paraguay, against the occupation of the barracks by alleged landless people who are demanding the government give them part of the 76-hectare lot.

Anger at squatters

Mexican front-runner campaigns close to US borderReutersCiudad Juarez, Mexico

Mexico’s presidential front-runner launched his campaign close to

the US border yesterday amid tension over US President Don-ald Trump’s plan to put up a wall between the countries.

If leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wins the July 1 election, he is expected to be less accom-

modating towards Trump than the ruling Institutional Revolu-tionary Party (PRI), which has been lagging in polls because of anger over its failure to contain violence and graft.

His three-month campaign started yesterday in Ciudad Juarez, a tribute to the city’s namesake Benito Juarez, the 19th century Mexican president from indigenous roots whose exiled government resisted a French colonialist intervention

from the unruly border city.Obrador recently criticised

President Enrique Pena Nieto for “governing with recipes sent from abroad,” but he has lately softened his opposition to the government’s policy of allowing foreign investment in the oil in-dustry.

The ruling party candidate trailing in third place, former fi nance minister Jose Antonio Meade, launched his own cam-paign yesterday at the other end

of the country in the southeast-ern town of Merida.

Second-place Ricardo Anaya began campaigning on Friday.

Silver-haired leftist Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor, fi rst ran for president in 2006. He would seek a meeting with Trump “as soon as possible” a senior adviser said, while indi-cating foreign policy would hew less closely to US regional priori-ties if he wins.

Trump’s tough trade policies,

insults against Mexican migrants and demands for the border wall have angered ordinary Mexicans who see their country as a natu-ral ally of the US.

Obrador has made clear US-Mexican relations will remain strong if he wins, while prom-ising to throw Trump a “curve ball” and defend Mexican pride.

His unconventional, and at times inconsistent, policy stanc-es have sometimes led to com-parisons with the US president.

He supports the North Ameri-can Free Trade Agreement (Naf-ta) with Canada and the US, but has called for talks started by Trump to renegotiate the deal to be suspended until after the election.

In a possible sign of the moderation Obrador is keen to project, Ciudad Juarez also har-boured another of his heroes — Francisco I

Madero, a wealthy, US-ed-ucated, moderate leader of the

Mexican revolution who tried to unite conservatives and radicals.

However, the 64-year-old continues to play to his leftist base, attacking the current gov-ernment over a $13bn airport project he says is tainted by cor-ruption.

He has promised to “con-sult the people” on reforms and plans to turn the presidential residence into a cultural centre, sell the presidential plane and cut his salary in half.

PAKISTAN23Gulf Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has proposed con-stituting a permanent

committee comprising all stake-holders for bringing continuous improvement in the Pakistan’s justice system.

The IHC proposal, presented to the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) recently, has been prepared in response to a petition seeking fresh rules for lower courts for deciding suits, petitions and ap-peals within a stipulated time limit.

At the last hearing of the pe-tition on February 19, a three-judge SCP bench headed by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar asked the federal government and other re-spondents in the case to answer the questions raised in the peti-tion.

In response, the IHC furnished a reply through Advocate Gen-eral for Islamabad Tariq Jahangiri that the committee of all stake-holders, including judges, legal academics, lawyers, litigants and parliamentarians, may be consti-tuted under the auspices of the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan for continuously work-ing for bringing improvement in the country’s justice system through formulations, experi-mentation, monitoring and eval-uation of diff erent mechanism for providing access to justice to the public in a meaningful man-ner.

About the cost of litigation, the IHC reply recalls that the Cost of Litigation Act 2017 has been promulgated in the Islamabad Capital Territory, but its rules are yet to be prescribed.

The reply highlights that the major expense of litigants is the counsel fee and that typically, the

lawyer does not issue a receipt as a common practice.

Thus, litigants are unable to bring on record the expenses they have incurred, which means the cost is never made part of the decree sheet.

This non-provision of the re-ceipt to litigants is the main hur-dle in compensating a successful litigant regarding the expenses of litigation.

However, the mandatory pro-vision of receipts to litigants is the domain of the Pakistan Bar Council, which has not been made party to the case, the reply says.

The petition has been moved by Umer Gilani, Attaullah Kundi, Haider Imtiaz, Raheel Ahmed, and Hadiya Aziz, all of whom are legal practitioners.

They have pleaded for a di-rective from the SCP against the National Judiciary Policy Mak-ing to revise the National Judicial

Policy Committee, including a policy on delay reduction based upon scientifi c assessment of the present state of aff airs and its causes.

The petitioners have high-lighted that they are aggrieved by the lack of enforcement of the fundamental right of access to justice, and loss of reputation of the judicial system in the eyes of the people of Pakistan due to delays in the dispensation of jus-tice.

The petitioners have also cited a number of studies published by eminent social scientists, in-cluding the World Justice Index, the World Bank’s Ease of Do-ing Business Survey, and a study conducted by the Supreme Court itself, to highlight evidence showing that at present the right of access to justice is being vio-lated in Pakistan in a systematic and wholesale manner.

Litigants of all kinds who seek

to enforce their right through courts face inordinate delays which cannot be reasonably pre-dicted, they argue.

Quoting a research conducted by SCP under the directives of former chief justice Jawad Kha-waja, they contend that it takes an average of 25 years to conclude litigation in Pakistan.

Likewise, another study on lower courts conducted by one of the petitioners suggests that the total shelf-life of an average case in the civil courts of the Punjab is around 37.3 months (more than three years) and from institution onwards all the way to the pass-ing of decree, an average case re-quires around 58 hearings.

The petition has requested that the SCP order the federal and provincial governments to submit a report about the total number of pending cases, in-cluding suits, petitions, appeals and revisions.

High court proposes justice reform panelInternewsIslamabad

Easter vigil

Above: Police off icers stand guard during Easter mass yesterday at the Christ Church in Karachi.

Above, right: This photograph taken on Saturday evening shows devotees holding candles during an Easter vigil mass at the Sacred Heart Church in Lahore.

Right: Security personnel are seen outside a church in Quetta during an Easter mass.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has ap-proved the service struc-

ture of the Lady Health Super-visors (LHSs) and Lady Health Workers (LHWs) after the lat-ter ended their fi ve-day sit-in, which had bought Lahore’s traffi c to a screeching halt.

Apprising media of the de-velopment, Punjab Primary and Secondary Health (PSH) Secretary Ali Jan Khan said that Punjab had become the fi rst province which approved SNE (sanctioned numbers of employees) for 50,000 LHWs.

The secretary said that the protesters create problems for the people, which are a con-demnable act, adding that the department reserved the right to take disciplinary action against those who deliberately failed to join or work responsi-bly while at duties.

As per the notifi cation, 50% of the Lady Health Supervisors (LHSs) have been promoted to Grade 10 from Grade 7, 35% promoted to Grade 12, and the remaining 15% to Grade 14.

Similarly, 55% of the Lady Health Workers (LHWs) will remain in Grade 5.

Meanwhile, 40% have been promoted to Grade 7, and the

remaining 5% to Grade 9.Khan told the media that the

required qualifi cation for LHSs is at least a bachelor’s degree while for LHWs, the standard is set at “middle pass”.

On the occasion, the PSH secretary said that during the last eight months, some nota-ble goals were achieved ensur-ing the welfare of the LHWs.

Khan said that nearly 50,000 LHWs and LHSs were regular-ised in 2017 and their dues have been issued from District Ac-count Offi ces without further delay.

Moreover, Service Rules ap-proved in October 2017 had been published in the gazette notifi cation in November 2017.

The PSH secretary further said that the salaries of LHSs and LHWs have been paid up to March 2018.

Notifi cation of the Rs5,000 monthly allowance for LHSs has also been issued.

While responding to ques-tions posed by media person-nel, Khan said that Punjab gov-ernment has released Rs1.2bn as fi rst instalment for clearance of arrears, adding that keeping in view the diffi culties of the workers, Punjab government provided these funds from the provincial budget.

These funds would be trans-ferred to their accounts this month, he assured.

Punjab okays service structure for women healthcare workersInternewsLahore

The Punjab government has purchased generic drugs and disposable

surgical items at prices higher than Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province for public sector hospitals.

The purchases are for the current fi scal year 2017-18 and the price diff erential has cost a Rs1.48bn loss to the public exchequer, according to offi cial documents and a comparative analysis of the items procured.

A comparison of 95 items bought by both the provinces has revealed a big diff erence in the price of same drugs or dis-posable items procured for the public-sector hospitals.

Punjab government spokes-man Malik Ahmad, however, denies the diff erential.

“In fact, we have purchased 38 items at lower prices than KP,” he said.

According to the lists of drugs purchased by both the provinces, Punjab purchased CVP Line Double Lumen Drug at Rs3,000, while KP paid Rs2,530 for the same, a diff er-ence of Rs470.

The former paid Rs6.1mn more for the same drug.

Punjab paid Rs649 for each unit of Erythropoietin, paying Rs383 more than Khyber Pa-khtunkhwa’s Rs266.

KP procured circle round body needles (silk) for Rs18 each while Punjab paid Rs154.

The rate for Tobramycin + Dexamethasone, an eye drop, was Rs26.70 in KP and Rs122.85 in Punjab.

The diff erence in prices ranges from Rs1 to Rs470 for all the 95 items purchased by the provinces, according to details contained in the lists.

A total of 218 items have been purchased by the Punjab authorities, but 95 most com-mon items were analysed to compare the rates while a few of the items had the same pric-

es in both the provinces.Punjab’s budget for medi-

cines is 100 times bigger than KP’s.

Punjab had 218 items on its formulary list compared with KP, which had 700 approved items.

Both the provinces are re-quired to purchase drugs to meet the requirements of all the patients.

Punjab, having fewer items on formulary list, covered the gap by purchasing drugs through local purchase on market rates, which enables the concerned hospital admin-istrators to buy the drugs from the local market directly.

KP has a Rs50mn budget for hepatitis drugs compared with Punjab’s Rs550mn.

Punjab mostly banked on brands based on Intercon-tinental Marketing Service (IMS), which focuses on phar-maceutical marketing and sale resources.

Viewing its importance, the KP had made it part of its tech-nical evaluation criteria, but it’s not the only source for the selection of quality medicines, according to experts involved in the process of drug pur-chase.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been following a process for drug procurement which is based on quality parameters, starting from raw material to fi nished products.

Under this process, 70% of the criteria covers technical evaluation for the selection and rate contracting, and 30% cov-ers fi nancial evaluation.

Technical evaluation aims to ensure quality and trans-parency in line with interna-tional standards, including international accreditation, quality certifi cations and good manufacturing, laboratory and storage practices keeping in view the importance of general fi nancial rules to rationalise and utilise the government’s resources and to put brakes on the brand monopoly.

KP pays less for drugs, disposable items than PunjabInternewsPeshawar

Premier to visit Kabul on April 6Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi will undertake a daylong visit of Afghan capital Kabul on April 6 on the invitation of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.Off icial sources here confirmed on Saturday that three ministers will accompany the prime minister on the visit to facilitate a negotiated settlement of the Afghan situation.Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif and Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua will be part of the delegation.Sources say that Abbasi is expected to assure his interlocutors in Afghanistan about Islamabad’s desire for peace and stability in Afghanistan.

The Punjab Examination Commission (PEC) has announced the results of

the annual Grades 5 and 8 exami-nations, with more than 80% of the participating students pass-ing in both grades.

According to the results an-nounced by the PEC, a total of 2,549,680 participants from all the 36 districts of the province belonging to both public and pri-vate schools took part in the ex-amination.

Out of the total, 1,480,366 students were of Grade 5, and

1,069,314 students of Grade 8 took the exam.

For Grade 5, 86.58% of stu-dents were declared as having passed. For Grade 8, the fi gure was 86.62%.

In the Grade 5 exam, Zainab Iqbal from Faisalabad and Mu-hammad Haseeb from Toba Tek Singh got top marks, obtaining 494 marks.

The second position was also shared among two students, Mu-hammad Haseeb from Vehari and Musfi rah Rana from Faisalabad, who secured 493 marks.

The third position for Grade 5 was shared among six students with 491 marks: Hafi z Muham-mad Asjad Bashir and Hadia Re-

hman from Faisalabad, Muham-mad Huzaifa and Sheraz Ali from Layyah, Jam Ali Baksh from Mu-zaff argarh, and Muhammad Asif from Vehari.

For Grade 8, the top students are Ghulam Mujtaba Khalid from Bahawalpur and Rija Batool from Vehari, with 496 marks.

Attaur Rehman from Vehari was declared second with 495 marks, while the third position was shared by six students with 492 marks.

The six students are Muham-mad Nadeem from Bahawalna-gar, Daima Tariq from Lahore, Hira Sajid from Vehari, Zain Ahmed Chaudhry from Bhakkar, Yousaf ur Rehman from Dera

Ghazi Khan, and Eman Ahmad from Toba Tek Singh.

For Grade 5 in Lahore, a total of 85,238 students took the exam, with 58,981 passing, giving a pass percentage of 69.20%.

From the government-run schools, a total of 22,747 boys and 29,319 girls took the exam.

Of these, 68.21% of boys and 72.95% of girls passed.

From private schools in the district, a total of 15,157 boys and 15,812 girls took the exam.

Out of these, 63.97% of boys and 70.71% of girls passed.

A total of 1,039 boys and 1,164 girls took the exam as private candidates; of these 54.96% of boys and 53.95% of girls passed.

Similarly, for Grade 8 in La-hore, the pass percentage was calculated at 68.31%.

A total of 73,496 students took the exam and 50,203 passed.

Out of the total, 24,834 boys and 29,135 girls from government schools took the exams.

A total of 17,608 boys and 20,555 girls from public schools passed, with the pass percentage of 70.90% and 70.55% respec-tively.

From private schools, 7,399 boys and 10,106 girls took the exam, in which 4,447 boys and 6,695 girls were declared suc-cessful in the exam, a 60.10% pass rate for boys and a 66.25% for girls.

Province announces 80% pass in annual school examsInternewsLahore

The Directorate of Culture of Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP)

province has shortlisted 500 ar-tistes and literati for monthly subsistence stipends.

“A summary has been for-warded to the Finance Depart-ment seeking the early release of funds. We will start paying stipends to the selected group of artistes and literati as soon as we received the amount,” said an of-fi cial here on Friday.

The government had launched

the initiative in 2016 wherein 500 artistes and literati had been paid the much-needed money.

However, the process was dis-continued in the current fi scal due to non-availability of re-quired funds.

Under the programme, Rs30,000 will be paid to the ar-tistes and literati as stipend per month.

The initiative was aimed at providing fi nancial support to people associated with languages and literature, performing art and visual art to compensate them as the entertainment in-dustry was hit hard due to the long years of militancy.

Assistant Director for Cul-ture Riaz Khan said that 2,600 candidates had applied for the stipends and 500 were selected after a thorough vetting process.

He said that the vetting proc-ess was time-consuming as only the genuine artistes and literati were shortlisted to make the process transparent.

The offi cial said that several employees of the Culture Di-rectorate and other government departments had applied for the stipends.

“We thoroughly scrutinised the applications to ensure that no undeserving person could avail the benefi ts,” he added.

Khan said that the directo-rate had sent a summary to the Finance Department to release Rs150mn for the purpose.

He said that it was a temporary programme.

“The incumbent provincial government has started the pro-gramme to provide temporary re-lief to the artistes and literary. It would be up to the next govern-ment whether or not it continue the programme,” he added.

Khan is confi dent that the funds for the programme would be released in the fi rst week of April.

Takhleeq Development Foun-dation director and famous Pa-

shto drama artiste Arshad Hus-sain appreciated the initiative but said that it is an interim relief.

“Steps are needed to revive the entertainment industry and en-able it to stand on its own feet,” he stressed.

Hussain said that artistes lacked work and there are very few opportunities for the people associated with the entertain-ment industry.

He said that the stipends are not a permanent solution to the problem: “The government should start a social security sys-tem for artistes as it has done for the employees of other depart-ments.”

500 artistes and literati shortlisted for monthly stipendsInternewsPeshawar

PHILIPPINES

Gulf TimesMonday, April 2, 201824

Painful homecoming for residents in battle-torn MarawiAFPMarawi

After fl eeing for their lives nearly a year ago, some residents of the battle-

scarred Philippine city of Ma-rawi were allowed back yester-day for the fi rst time — to dig through the rubble that was once their homes.

Swathes of the southern city were destroyed in fi ve months of house-to-house fi ghting be-tween troops and militants loyal to the Islamic State group that killed nearly 1,200.

The stunned and tearful resi-dents, who once lived in what became the main battle zone, had not been allowed home until now due to fears of unexploded bombs still buried in the ruins.

Authorities fi nally relented as rebuilding plans are moving for-ward, which will likely result in many of the worst-hit areas be-ing razed.

Yesterday some 7,000 resi-dents returned, digging charred furniture and broken toys from the rubble left by the battles that broke out in May 2017.

“I cried in anger, pain,” Sam-sida Mangcol, 44, said of the moment she saw what was left of her bridal boutique, which now has “I love ISIS” spray-painted across one its walls.

“I used to rent out clothes but now I have become a beggar,

asking my relatives for things to eat and wear,” the mother-of-three said as she caressed a ru-ined wedding gown.

Marawi on Mindanao island, the principal Islamic city in the Philippines, was besieged by hundreds of local and foreign gunmen waving black IS fl ags who attacked it in what authori-ties said was an attempt to es-tablish a Southeast Asian base.

Over the course of the next

month other groups of residents will be allowed to return for up to three days each, to view their old homes and salvage what they can before rebuilding starts.

Yesterday’s group walked for-lornly through streets littered with rubble, twisted metal and the skeletons of bullet-riddled cars.

“Our house was still new when we left it. We had prepared everything for Ramadan,” said

Maimona Ambola, a 44-year-old mother of seven.

“A bomb has destroyed it all. Our bed has turned into ashes.”

The battle, which ended in October, was the biggest secu-rity crisis under fi rebrand Presi-dent Rodrigo Duterte.

The destruction was similar to that infl icted on Aleppo or Mo-sul, military and local offi cials say.

Many of the city’s 200,000

residents fl ed their homes in a rush for safety, including more than 10,000 people from the so-called “ground zero”. They have since been living in evacuation centres or with relatives in other towns.

Months after the fi ghting ended, residents still visited at their own risk.The confl ict zone has 53 unexploded bombs from military airstrikes weighing as much as 226 kilogrammes as well

as explosives left behind by the militants, according to Colonel Romeo Brawner, deputy com-mander of the military task force in Marawi.

“We lack the equipment to ex-cavate the bombs. One bomb we recovered, for example, took us fi ve days because we had to dig 10 metres deep and 10 metres wide,” Brawner said, adding the military aimed to fi nish the ef-fort by June. The threat posed by

those bombs as well as memories of their fl ight, were uppermost in the minds of yesterday’s visi-tors.

“We crawled in fear... We brought nothing but the clothes on our backs. We left because we thought the soldiers were about to respond and there would be a gunfi ght,” said Mangcol, the bridal shop owner, of her escape.

“A bullet does not recognise a civilian from a terrorist.”

Residents carry belongings collected from their destroyed house during a visit to the main battle area in Marawi City, in the southern island of Mindanao, yesterday.

A resident stands on his destroyed house, as he tries to salvage belongings during a visit to the main battle area in Marawi City.

Filipinos swim in Manila Bay as a celebration to mark Easter Sunday in Pasay, Metro Manila, yesterday.

Festive celebration

Couple sentenced to death over murderAFP Kuwait City

A Kuwaiti court yesterday sentenced in absentia a Lebanese man and his

Syrian wife to death by hang-ing over the murder of a Filipina maid, a judicial source said.

The court issued the sentence in the fi rst hearing in the case of Joanna Demafelis, the 29-year-old maid whose body was found in a freezer in Kuwait earlier this year.

The sentencing can still be appealed if the couple returns to Kuwait, the source said on con-dition of anonymity.

Philippines ambassador Ren-ato Pedro Villa declined to com-ment on the verdict, telling AFP his country would await the ren-dition of the convicts.

The Lebanese-Syrian couple was arrested in February in the Syrian capital Damascus follow-ing an Interpol manhunt.

Syrian authorities handed the husband, Nader Essam Assaf, over to Lebanese au-

thorities, while his Syrian wife remained in custody in Da-mascus. Philippines Under-secretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Sarah Arriola yesterday was scheduled to hold talks with officials in Kuwait on conditions for Filipino work-ers, including labour law vio-lations. The Demafelis murder triggered a diplomatic crisis between Kuwait and the Phil-ippines, prompting Manila to impose a departure ban for its citizens planning to work in the Gulf state.

An estimated 252,000 Fili-pinos and Filipinas work in Kuwait and depend on remit-tances to help their families back home.

In the wake of the Demafelis murder, Manila has been work-ing to facilitate the return of its nationals who wish to leave, including those who have lost their residency status.

Ambassador Villa said yester-day that his country has already repatriated 4,000 Filipino na-tionals living in Kuwait without the necessary paperwork.

Vice presidency poll recount to begin todayBy Jomar CanlasManila Times

The Supreme Court (SC), sitting as the Presiden-tial Electoral Tribunal

(PET), begins today the manual recount of votes cast in three provinces for the vice presiden-tial race in 2016, the results of which were contested by former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

Former Camarines Sur repre-sentative Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo had been declared winner of that election, beating Marcos by 263,473 votes.

The recount of votes will be held at the gymnasium on the Fifth Floor of the SC-Court of Appeals (CA) Building on Padre Faura, Manila.

The recount had been origi-nally scheduled for February but was moved back to March 19, and then again to

April 2.The recount will be conduct-

ed from 8.30am to 4.30pm from

today until Friday under the watch of the tribunal’s clerk of court, Edgar Aricheta.

Ma. Carina Cunanan, head of the Property Division and PET Ad Hoc Committee mem-ber, said the SC’s 101 security personnel will be augmented to secure the proceedings.

Security will be tight. Mem-bers of the Philippine National Police, Philippine Coast Guard and Police Security Protection Group will secure the recount venue round-the-clock.

The PET has about 1,400 bal-lot boxes from Camarines Sur, one of Marcos’ chosen pilot provinces for the recount.

The other ballot boxes are with the Commission on Elec-tions.

Once the PET has fi nished counting the contents of the 1,400 ballot boxes, it will re-ceive the other ballot boxes from Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.

Jose Lemuel Arenas, another PET Ad Hoc committee mem-ber, said for each table, there

will be three revisors composed of the head revisor, an employee of PET, and one revisor each from the Marcos and Robredo camps.

Psychometricians, revisors, lawyers and representatives from the two camps will make up the 213 personnel who will be reporting daily to the PET dur-ing the counting process.

Arenas said the time limit per ballot box with less than 300 votes will be 5.5 hours, 8.25 hours for boxes with 300-700 votes and 11 hours for boxes with more than 700 votes.

Marcos questioned the elec-tion results in 39,221 clustered precincts but he paid only for the recount of votes in 36,465 precincts. He claimed that the vice presidential election was marred with massive electoral fraud, anomalies and irregu-larities such as preshading of ballots, pre-loaded Secure Dig-ital cards, misreading of ballots, malfunctioning VCMs, and an “abnormally high” unaccount-ed votes/undervotes.

The former lawmaker claimed that his team gathered “solid and incontrovertible evidence of cheating” while going through the printed bal-lot images from the decrypted Secure Digital (SD) cards.

This include samples of questionable ballot images from two of his pilot provinc-es, Camarines Sur and Negros

Oriental, which showed that votes for him were not count-ed. Yesterday, Marcos’ camp said it was looking forward to the start of the manual re-count.

“We have endured two years of waiting due to Robredo’s habitual and intentional moves to delay the election protest and deliberate attempts to bury the truth,” Marcos said in a statement.

His lawyer, Vic Rodriguez, said Marcos’ poll protest is historic because it was the first to have reached the recount stage.

He said the conclusion of the recount will determine the

winner of the vice presidential contest. “This will dispel once and for all the uncertainty that beclouds the true choice of the electorate and prove that Ro-bredo cheated her way to the vice presidency,” the state-ment read.

“Finally, we have reached the day when manual recount would finally commence and we very much look forward to its final conclusion to deter-mine the bona fide winner,” the Marcos camp added.

Robredo’s camp, mean-while, said it does not fear the recount of votes.

“We are confident and we have nothing to fear about the recount. There is no doubt that Vice President Robredo won the 2016 elections,” Romulo Macalintal, one of Robredo’s legal counsels, said in a state-ment.

“This recount will prove Vice President Robredo’s 2016 win and will expose that Mar-cos’ accusations are all lies,” Macalintal added.

De Lima urges global community to criticise drug warBy Jeff erson AntipordaManila Times

While Philippine of-fi cials denounce ef-forts of various hu-

man rights advocates and international watchdogs to po-liticise the government’s war on illegal drugs, detained Sen. Leila De Lima, on the other hand, is urging the international com-munity to continue condemn-ing President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign.

In a message read during the 61st Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drug in Vienna in March, De Lima insisted that the Duterte administration must be made accountable for its “mur-derous war on drugs that lacks moral and legal justifi cation.”

According to the senator, Du-terte is bent on resolving the drug problem in his own unjus-tifi ed way, at the expense of the rule of law and human rights and despite the lessons learned by countries that had adopted the same hard stance against the drug menace and failed.

“How many more lives are going to be cut short? How many more Filipino families are

going to suffer? How far will my country regress in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs? Until when do we reach the tipping point and say, as a collective people, enough is enough?” De Lima said in her message to the gathering.

Various human rights advo-cates and other international bodies have criticised the Phil-ippines for its bloody campaign against drugs that resulted in the death of thousands of indi-viduals, including several mi-nors.To date, there are around 13,000 reported cases of ex-trajudicial killings committed since the all-out war on drugs was launched in 2016.

De Lima, who is detained at the Philippine National Po-lice Custodial Centre in Camp Crame in Quezon City for drug-related charges, said the number could be bigger con-sidering that some cases have remained unreported to au-thorities.

She noted that despite the continuing death toll, only a handful is being investigated and prosecuted by the authorities and, worse, only low-level deal-ers and users were targeted and victimised.

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL25Gulf Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

Bangladesh begins relocating Rohingya

Bangladesh has begun relo-cating 100,000 Rohingya refugees to safer ground

before the monsoon season for fear of deadly landslides and fl oods in the congested camps, an offi cial said yesterday.

The UN says about 150,000 refugees in Bangladesh’s south-east - where nearly 1mn Ro-

hingya in total live in shanties on hillsides - are extremely vulner-able to disease and disaster this rainy season.

Humanitarian groups have been racing to reinforce the ba-sic shelters erected hastily by the Rohingya as they fl ed across the border after a fi erce army crackdown on the community in western Myanmar.

Nearly 700,000 refugees have crossed the border since Au-gust into the Cox’s Bazar region, clearing trees and packing whole hillsides with unstable shanties.

Bangladesh’s refugee com-missioner Mohammad Abul Kalam said 100,000 refugees living in “priority” areas most at risk from fl oods and landslides

would be relocated before June.“We have already shifted some

10,000 refugees from diff erent locations to safer settlements,” he said.

Bangladesh had allocated roughly 3,500 acres (14sq km) of forested land in Cox’s Bazar to the newly-arrived Rohingya to build simple shelters.

But the forest is being felled at a rate of four football fi elds a day, Kalam said.

The refugees, who use the fi rewood for cooking, have al-ready cleared 5,000 acres of for-est, Cox’s Bazar deputy district administrator Mahidur Rahman said.

The once lush hillsides have turned barren, exposing the

topsoil and leaving them highly vulnerable to landslides during heavy rain, he said.

“Some 200,000 people are vulnerable to landslides,” he said.

Monsoon rains wreak havoc every year in Cox’s Bazar and the adjacent Chittagong Hill Tracts, a tropical forest zone home to wild elephants.

Last season heavy rain trig-gered landslides in the tract re-gion, killing 170 people. Experts blamed deforestation for wors-ening the impact of the mud avalanches.

More than 100 people were killed in landslides in the region in 2012, and two years earlier heavy rain killed around 50.

In the past week, UN Secre-tary General Antonio Guterres has expressed fears the Rohingya were “extremely vulnerable” to the annual storms.

He told reporters he had stressed to Bangladesh that “higher ground is the best place for this kind of relocation”.

Dhaka had earlier said about 100,000 refugees from the per-secuted Muslim minority would be shifted to an island in the Bay of Bengal where the Bangladesh navy is building accommodation for the refugees.

But Abdul Mannan, the Chit-tagong regional commissioner, said the Rohingya would not be relocated to the island before the end of the year.

Some 100,000 refugees living in “priority” areas most at risk from floods and landslides would be relocated in Cox’s Bazar before June

AFPDhaka

Top lawyer disappears after trial of militants

A prominent Bangladeshi lawyer who fought the state’s case in a high-

profi le murder trial against Islamist extremists has disap-peared, police said yesterday, with grave fears for his safety.

Ratish Chandra Bhowmik, a respected prosecutor and champion of minority rights, has not been seen since he left his home in Rangpur early Friday morning.

His disappearance comes a fortnight after seven militants from the Jamayetul Muja-hideen Bangladesh (JMB) were sentenced to death for mur-dering the caretaker of a Sufi shrine in November 2015.

Bhowmik led the case that saw nearly a dozen hardliners from the homegrown extrem-ist group convicted for killing the caretaker because they considered him a heretic.

Lawyers in the northern Bangladeshi city have staged protests calling for information about their colleague.

“We are concerned and worried,” said Abdul Malek, a lawyer who represented the state with Bhowmik in the trial against the militants.

Bhowmik, a leading cultural activist, also led the state’s prosecution against fi ve JMB extremists sentenced to death for the murder of 66-year-old Japanese farmer Hoshi Kunio in 2015.

Rangpur regional police chief Khandaker Golam Faru-que said that Bhowmik had refused the off er of an armed escort during the high-profi le trials.

“There was no threat against him. His family fi led a complaint about his disap-pearance on Friday night,” Faruque said.

JMB regrouped after the execution of its founder and top leadership in 2007 and has been blamed for a wave of attacks on religious mi-norities, atheist bloggers and foreigners in recent years.

In July 2016, suspected JMB militants stormed a Dhaka cafe and massacred 22 hostages, including 18 foreigners, in an assault claimed by the Islamic State group.

Bangladesh has been wag-ing a campaign against JMB and other homegrown mili-tant outfi ts in the wake of the attacks.

Security forces have shot dead more than 70 alleged militants in a crackdown since the cafe assault.

Hundreds of suspected Islamists have also been ar-rested, and scores have been sentenced to death.

AFPDhaka

Ratish Chandra Bhowmik, a respected prosecutor and champion of minority rights, has not been seen since he left his home in Rangpur early Friday morning

Eight killed in accident

At least eight peo-ple were killed and 26 others injured

when a bus veered off the road and fell into a ditch

in Bangladesh’s Gopalganj district.

A police offi cial said the accident occurred at around 3am, reports Xinhua news agency. Six victims were killed on the spot and two others succumbed to injuries in a hospital.

IANSDhaka

Lanka refl oats WW2 shipwreck

A British passenger ship that sank after it was bombed in a Japanese

air strike in the World War Two has been raised off the Sri Lanka coast after 75 years, the media reported.

The SS Sagaing, whose pas-sengers and cargo were largely saved back in 1942, was refl oat-ed on with the help of a team of divers from Sri Lanka’s navy, re-ports the BBC.

It had been resting about 35ft under the water at Trincomalee harbour.

The salvage operation took several months and was carried out by Sri Lanka’s Eastern Naval Command unit.

It required the strengthening of the 452ft long vessel’s main structural framework, which began on September 11, 2017, the navy said in a statement on Saturday.

The team of divers also erect-ed an artifi cial side to the ship in order to seal an area before “dewatering” it to recover lost buoyancy.

Prior to the ship’s refl oat, the damaged sunken vessel was used as a pier for other naval ships in the harbour.

IANSColombo

Riders control their bulls during a traditional cart race ahead of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in Homagama near Colombo yesterday. Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese and Tamil communities will mark the new year on April 14.

Traditional cart race

Youth accused of child abuse killed in gunfight with RAB team

A young man, accused of abusing a child, was killed in a gunfight between his associates and members of Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in Cox’s Bazaar district early yesterday.Rahim Uddin, 20, was accused in a case filed for abusing a five-year-old girl in the district last week.Major M Ruhul Amin, a senior RAB off icial, said that the accused died during a shootout between his associates and RAB early yesterday.After the gunfight, according to the off icial, RAB team recovered the bullet-riddled body of Rahim from the spot while others managed to flee the scene.Last month’s brutal rape of the child has caught huge public attention and aroused countrywide outrage which along with many similar incidents of rape cases shook national conscience.The number of alleged rapes reported to police in Bangladesh has risen in a dreadful manner in recent months.A report of local human rights body - Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK) - showed that at least 187 women were raped and 29 others sexual harassed across the country over the past three months.

Nepal launches trekking trail for disabled, elderly

Nepal has launched its fi rst “accessible” trek-king trail in Pokhara

city for the disabled and the elderly.

The trail was inaugurated as a part of a three-day interna-tional conference on Accessi-ble Tourism’ held for the fi rst time in the Himalayan country from March 29 to March 31.

Nepal’s Minister for Cul-ture, Tourism and Civil Avia-tion Rabindra Adhikari inau-gurated the 1.3km section of the 14km long hiking path in the ridge connecting Sarang-kot to Naudanda areas, Ne-pal Tourism Board (NTB), the main tourism promotion body of Nepal, said in a statement.

“The trail off ers a magnifi -cent view of Mt Annapurna, Mt Fisthtail and Mt Manaslu Himalaya range,” it said.

The NTB, one of the organis-ers of the conference, built the trail with the local trail devel-opment committee. It said that the trail would enhance the prospect of attracting a strong segment of disabled and eld-erly tourists’ population to Ne-pal. The trail is well endowed with proper signage and has an accessible washroom.

“The concerned authori-

ties have pledged more sup-port in the coming fi scal year that will begin in mid-July this year to lay down all the stand-ards and facilities to establish the trail as ‘probably the best’ and ‘leading trail’ in Asia,” the NTB said.

During the inauguration, Minister Adhikari said the trail could be a benchmark of Nepal’s commitment to tour-ism and his ministry would look into this to establish it as a model trail in Nepal.

The NTB said the initiative was taken to add innovation in product and to diversify the tourism trails to generate greater interest among visi-tors and to ensure that no one is left behind in experiencing the magnifi cence of Nepal’s beauty.

‘Accessible tourism’ is an emerging concept to ensure that tourist destinations, products and services are accessible to all people, ir-respective of their physical limitations, disabilities or age. The global tourism off late has witnessed a major boom in ac-cessible tourism.

The estimated population of the accessible segment is 1bn in the world and considered as rapidly growing and one of the niche and high-end seg-ment in tourism, according to the NTB.

IANSKathmandu

‘I did not start climbing to set a world record’

A Nepali Sherpa is hoping to summit Mount Ever-est for a record-breaking

22nd time next month, dur-ing the busy climbing season that each year sees hundreds of climbers reach the top of the world.

But to Kami Rita Sherpa, who has worked as a guide on Ever-est for over two decades, climb-ing to 8,848m (29,029ft) is a job not a record-shattering feat.

“I did not start climbing to set a world record. But in the course of my work in the guiding industry this is go-ing to be my 22nd ascent. It wasn’t for any competition,” Kami Rita said in Kathman-du before setting out for the mountain.

When 48-year-old Kami Rita fi rst summited Everest in 1994, he was one of just 49 climbers to reach the peak.

Last year, 634 people made it to the top.

Over the last two decades the booming number of climbers on Everest has created a lucra-tive mountaineering industry in both China and Nepal, which share the peak.

In Nepal - home to eight of the world’s highest peaks - the climbers provide vital income: last year the impoverished country netted over $4mn in permit fees on Everest alone.

Each year hundreds of climb-ers begin gathering at the foot

of the world’s highest peak from early April, turning the base camp into a bustling nylon tent city.

They spend nearly two months on the mountain to ac-climatise to the harsh high al-titude environment before at-tempting to reach the summit in May.

Spring is the busiest time of year on the mountain as the winds and temperatures are more forgiving than at other times of the year. But nonethe-less each spring Everest claims a few lives: last year seven climbers died on the mountain.

The rapid growth in the climbing industry has also led to fears of deadly over-crowding on Everest, with the mountain opening up to more people as competition be-tween expedition organisers has seen the costs plummet.

The cheapest operators charge clients around $20,000 to take them to the top of the world, a quarter of the amount demanded by the most expensive.

That discrepancy has caused tension on the moun-tain, with the mostly for-eign-run companies accus-ing the largely Nepali-run cheaper ones of skimping on basic safety to keep costs low while also accepting cli-ents who lack high-altitude climbing experience.

Kami Rita, who has worked for US-based Alpine Ascents for much of his career, said the key diff erences between the operators is how well they train - and pay - their Sherpa guides.

“Some foreigners (climbers) seek only cheap options, which means they will get low quality, cheap Sherpa. If they pay high

price they will get a high price (quality) Sherpa,” he said.

Most paying climbers try to reach the summit with the help of a dedicated Sherpa guide, but the number of ex-perienced Sherpa has not been able to keep pace with demand, warned Kami Rita.

“Earlier, we had to knock on the companies’ doors for jobs. Now the tables have turned, the companies have to please the Sherpas to work with them. Why? Because there is shortage,” he said.

Last year a record number of rescues were made from the mountain, which observers point as a sign of the growing cost of inexperience - amongst both paying climbers and Sher-pa guides - on the mountain.

The Nepali and Chinese authorities, who monitor all climbs on the southern and northern faces of the mountain respectively, are yet to release the number of climbing permits issued for this year.

But the season - which marks the 65th anniversary of the fi rst summit of Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay - is expected to be as busy as last.

Meanwhile, for Kami Rita it is just another year of work.

“I am not extremely happy, excited or very sad no matter how many times I climb. There are many Sherpas who have held world records, I am just starting.”

“My life is just normal,” he added as he headed off for the top of the world.

By Annabel Symington, AFPKathmandu

Kami Rita Sherpa sitting in his rented room at Boudhanath Stupa, on the outskirts of Kathmandu.

Gulf Times Monday, April 2, 2018

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New immunotherapytrial holds out hopefor treating cancer

A new type of immunotherapy, successfully tested in mice, holds a promise of a new cancer vaccine, though experts caution it is still a long way off to be prescribed to patients. Researchers from Stanford University, US, cured up to 97% of tumours in mice through the method. They are scheduled to test the therapy in about 35 people with lymphoma by the end of the year, according to SFGate, a local news outlet in San Francisco.

The treatment stimulates the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells. In studies in mice with various cancers — including lymphoma, breast cancer and colon cancer — the treatment eliminated cancer tumours in 87 out of 90 mice, even when the tumours had spread to other parts of the body, the researchers said.

The new treatment is not technically a vaccine, a term used for substances that provide long-lasting immunity against disease. But the treatment does involve a vaccine-like injection. It is a type of immunotherapy, containing a combination of two agents that stimulate T cells, a type of immune cell,

to attack cancer. Normally, the body’s T cells recognise cancer cells as abnormal and will infi ltrate and attack them. But as a tumour grows, it suppresses the activity

of the T cells so that these cells can no longer keep the cancer at bay.

The new treatment works by reactivating these T cells. Researchers inject the “vaccine” directly into the tumour. The two agents in the treatment work synergistically in activating the T cells. Because these T cells were already inside the tumours, they have essentially been “prescreened” by the body to recognise cancer-specifi c proteins, the researchers said.

In the animal studies, injecting the treatment into just one tumour worked to eliminate tumours in other parts of the body (so-called metastatic cancers). This occurs because active T cells migrate to other parts of the body and destroy tumours that have spread.

According to a study published in January in the journal Science Translational Medicine, scientists gave the treatment to mice that were genetically engineered to develop breast cancer in all 10 of their mammary pads. The drug was injected into the fi rst tumour that appeared in the animal, and the researchers found that the treatment also prevented the occurrence of future tumours in many cases, the researchers said.

Immunotherapy is not new; indeed, several other immunotherapies have been approved for treating cancer. For example, a treatment called CAR T-cell therapy, which was recently approved for some types of leukaemia and lymphoma, involves removing certain immune cells from patients’ bodies and genetically engineering those cells to fi ght cancer.

Compared with CAR T-cell therapy, one advantage of the new treatment is that it does not require doctors to remove and customise the patient’s immune cells for fi ghting cancer, the researchers said. “We’re attacking specifi c targets without having to identify exactly what proteins the T cells are recognising,” Dr. Ronald Levy, a professor of oncology at Stanford University School of Medicine and the senior author of the Science Translational Medicine study, said in a statement.

The new trial is a phase I study, which means it will test only the safety of the treatment and is not designed determine how eff ective it is.

The new treatment works by reactivating these T cells

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How Asia should respondto US protectionismBy Lee Jong-WhaSeoul

Over the last fi ve decades or so, Asia’s economies have relied largely on an export-oriented development model to

support rapid economic transformation and growth. But with US President Donald Trump fulfi lling his promise to adopt a more protectionist approach to trade – an eff ort that could spur retaliatory measures by other countries – that model is coming under increasing strain.

In the last year, Trump has withdrawn the US from the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership (TPP), renegotiated its free-trade agreement with South Korea, and raised “safeguard” tariff s on imported washing machines and solar panels from China and South Korea. Now, the White House has announced steep tariff s on steel and aluminium, supposedly to strengthen national security. And it is set to impose punitive tariff s on a range of Chinese goods over alleged intellectual-property theft.

This is a startling reversal for the United States, which has served as the world’s main champion of free trade since the 1930s. Of course, some of Trump’s predecessors adopted protectionist policies; but those arose out of actual negotiations with trade partners. As Harvard’s Dani Rodrik has put it, “Trump’s trade restrictions have more of a unilateral, in-your-face quality.”

Trump’s actions are unlikely to do the industries in question, much less the overall US economy, much good. The steel tariff , for example, will help a small number of workers in the steel industry itself, while hurting a much larger number of workers in downstream industries like construction, oil and gas,

and automobile manufacturing. Such measures have no chance of reversing the decline of traditional manufacturing industries in the US.

Tariff s won’t do much for America’s trade balance, either. Trump and his advisers believe that international trade is a zero-sum game, and thus that tariff s are a direct route to smaller trade defi cits. But the real source of US trade defi cits is macroeconomic imbalances in the US economy, such as excessive household consumption and fi scal defi cits – imbalances that tariff s will do very little to address.

What Trump’s tariff s will do is raise the risk of a global trade war. According to the Chinese state mouthpiece, the Global Times, China is preparing for just such an outcome. In response to increased trade restrictions, China could limit imports of aircraft or agricultural products such as soybeans from the US.

Even US allies have been bracing for a trade war. Before the European Union won a last-minute reprieve from the steel and aluminium tariff s, it announced that it was considering retaliatory tariff s on American goods, including motorbikes, to which the US responded by threatening tariff s on European cars. Meanwhile, the EU and Asian steel-importing countries, like India and Indonesia, are preparing to adopt safeguard measures to counter a potential surge of imported steel diverted from the US.

When Trump claims that “trade wars are good, and easy to win,” he could not be more wrong. The truth was stated clearly by Chinese President Xi Jinping in January 2017: “No one will emerge as the winner in a trade war.”

A global trade war would undermine economic recovery, hurting businesses and consumers by encumbering global supply chains and raising prices for

imported goods. The Asian economies with export-dependent growth models – such as Vietnam (where exports constitute 90% of GDP), Malaysia (71%), and South Korea (45%) – would be hit particularly hard.

To mitigate the risks, Asia’s economies must take on a more proactive role in preserving free trade. Working together, Asian economies could use forums like the G20 and the World Trade Organisation to improve global trade monitoring, reduce trade tension, and prevent self-destructive beggar-thy-neighbour policies.

To improve their chances of success, Asian economies should eliminate any protectionist measures in their own markets, and refrain from dumping output from overcapacity on global markets at subsidised prices. China, which has faced sharp criticism from the US, the EU and Japan for unfair trade practices – including export subsidies, currency manipulation, intellectual-property theft, and forced technology transfer – has a particular responsibility here.

Asian economies should also work to promote trade liberalisation within their own region. The ten economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), together with six more countries (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand), have already agreed to launch the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. That agreement could generate momentum for further expansion and deepening of intra-regional trade.

Another deal with considerable potential is the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for TPP, the TPP’s successor, which emerged after the US withdrawal. Seven Asia-Pacifi c economies (Japan, Australia, New

Zealand, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam) have already signed onto the pact, which accounts for a combined 13.5% of global GDP, and more members are being sought. South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka are all viewed as potential additions. If China joined, or the US rejoined, the pact’s positive impact would be strengthened considerably.

Finally, Asian economies should strengthen their domestic growth engines, including consumption and investment, thereby reducing their reliance on external markets. In particular, they should pursue policies that foster the creation of quality jobs and the transfer of more corporate savings to households.

At the same time, these countries should improve the investment climate for domestic and foreign firms, by removing excessive regulations in product, labour, and financial markets. More investment in high-productivity service industries – such as healthcare, education, telecommunication, and financial services – would also help.

The Trump administration seems set on pursuing a destructive protectionist path. But, rather than retaliate, Asian economies should use the threat of broader US tariff s as an opportunity to revamp their own development models, thereby boosting their own prosperity and resilience, not to mention their positions as constructive global actors. – Project Syndicate

Lee Jong-Wha is professor of Economics 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.

US President Donald Trump signs trade sanctions against China on March 22, 2018, in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Monday, April 2, 2018 27

Painkiller overuse spikes during fl u season

A networked solution to education reform

Should tech fi rms be more tightly regulated?By Simon JohnsonWashington, DC

In the wake of recent high-profile tech scares, such as a fatality involving an Uber self-driving car and Facebook’s

alleged mishandling of users’ personal data, stricter regulation of the industry – along the lines of, say, the financial sector – has become the policy question du jour. Stock-market values for leading tech companies are down – or perhaps just becoming more volatile – in the light of such concerns.

Obviously, rules regarding motor vehicles need to be examined carefully. In the United States, this is generally a state-level decision, though the federal National Transportation Safety Board has a very good reputation for its investigations and often changes how we think about best practices. The NTSB is investigating the Uber crash and previously assessed a fatality involving a Tesla vehicle.

As for Facebook, press reports suggest that the company may have made some egregious mistakes. One hopes we will learn more about the details of its decision-making on data privacy when its chairman and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, testifi es before Congress, as he has agreed to do.

But responding with tighter regulation at the federal level seems premature, even for these specifi c activities – let alone for the broader tech sector.

Finance is regulated because of major potential spillover eff ects: bank failures can bring down the whole economy. That is why safety nets, such as deposit insurance, have been put in place. But the existence of deposit insurance creates room for abuse, in the form of excessive risk taking, because bank executives get the upside if things goes well, and

any potential losses are imposed on the insurance fund. Preventing abuse and encouraging appropriate caution requires rules, and the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is one

of the world’s best examples of how to make these work.

The world of high technology – computer hardware, software, and digital services – is very diff erent.

There is plenty of competition for hardware. If one fi rm gets into trouble, it will not bring down the system. Of course, some policymakers like to favor “national champions” vis-à-vis

international competitors; but this raises issues that are diff erent from regulating behaviour.

Amazon is a powerful and rising company, spanning multiple activities – now including grocery stores and the delivery of fresh food. But it has plenty of competitors in this area, and existing rules and regulations (such as those covering how food is handled) seem suffi cient.

Other digital-based companies, such as Google and Apple, are very strong in specifi c activities. But they do not exhibit the kind of monopoly pricing behavior that triggers anti-trust action by the government. And it is not clear what other kind of regulation would be helpful to customers.

The European Union is considering more regulation of digital fi rms, and insisting on greater care for the handling of data may make sense. But the EU also substantially missed out on the round of digital entrepreneurship that began in the 1990s, and it is not generally at the forefront of this sector currently – so few people in the US are rushing to follow its example.

To avoid misunderstanding, let me be clear: not everything is going well with regard to US government policy in this area. In particular, the impending repeal of the “net neutrality” rule by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) appears to be a major step toward favouring large incumbents and away from making it easy for digital start-ups to prosper quickly. Andy Lippman of the MIT Media Lab has a very good video explainer on this issue, which should be required viewing for policymakers (and voters).

Facebook currently looks like a special case, in the sense that network eff ects mean millions of people will stick with this service, regardless of how they are treated. And there may have been some misunderstanding or (allegedly) miscommunication

regarding how their personal data would be treated. Facebook faces understandable political pressure to change its practices, but what it really needs is new competitors that prove they can be profi table while putting privacy fi rst.

Cryptocurrencies reflect a growing overlap between finance and tech. It would not be a surprise if the US Securities and Exchange Commission determined that a great deal of recent money-raising activity (known as Initial Coin Offerings) in this industry actually amounts to the issuance of securities, which would trigger the application of various rules and requirements. But such a decision would not amount to new regulation – just the application of existing regulations. The principles applied by securities regulators since the 1930s remain sensible: protect investors and require sufficient disclosure of all the risks involved in an investment.

The same is true of self-driving cars. There were 40,000 road fatalities in 2016 in the US, and more than 1mn worldwide, according to the latest World Health Organisation data. As in all previous years, human error of various kinds was responsible for most of these deaths. Reducing road fatalities is an important goal, and the growing engagement of tech companies (and competition with the established auto companies) should be welcomed, in the interest of improving road safety. Here, too, existing regulatory principles, and the agencies that apply and enforce them, should be given an opportunity to prove themselves. – Project Syndicate

Simon Johnson is a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the co-author of White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You.

Live issues

By Lisa RapaportReuters Health

A growing number of people are taking high doses of the painkiller acetaminophen, and

many take so much during cold and flu season that they run the risk of liver and kidney damage, two studies suggest.

Throughout the year, 6.3% of acetaminophen users take more than the maximum recommended daily dose at least one day during weeks when they use the drug, one study of 14,481 US adults found.

During cold and fl u season, however, people were 24% more likely to exceed the maximum recommended dose of 4,000 milligrams at least once a week.

Acetaminophen, sold as paracetamol in Europe, can ease a fever, but many people may take too much of the painkiller out of a mistaken belief that it will also cure the fl u, said Dr Liff ert Vogt, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam Academic Medical

Centre in the Netherlands who wasn’t involved in the study.

“I would not recommend taking acetaminophen for cold and fl u symptoms,” Vogt said by e-mail. “Taking a cup of soup will be much more effi cacious than taking a pill.”

In the US study, the proportion of people taking too much acetaminophen wasn’t large – 6.5% during cold and fl u season compared with 5.3% at other times of year. But because millions of adults use the drug, the increase during cold and fl u season adds up to a large added risk in the general population, the authors note.

Taking too much acetaminophen (Tylenol) is associated with liver and kidney damage, especially at high doses and with long-term use, Vogt said. While the risk of these complications is lower with acetaminophen than with other painkillers like ibuprofen (Motrin) or nonsteroidal anti-infl ammatories (NSAIDs) like Aleve, all of these painkillers can cause problems when people take too much.

Patients need to read labels

carefully to make sure all of the different remedies they try to ease cold and flu symptoms don’t contain more than the maximum recommended doses of acetaminophen or other painkillers.

“Getting this message out is especially important during cold and flu season, when people may be more likely to treat symptoms with acetaminophen combination products, sometimes without even realising they contain acetaminophen,” lead study author Dr Saul Shiffman of Pinney Associates and the University of Pittsburg said in a statement.

The problem of acetaminophen overuse isn’t limited to the US; a second study examining painkiller use in France from 2006 to 2015 found that country to be the top user of acetaminophen in Europe. France also ranked third for use of mild opioids, researchers found.

During the study period, use of acetaminophen surged 53% in France.

Thousand-milligram tablets of acetaminophen have been the most commonly used drug among adults

there since 2008. While use of these high-dose pills more than doubled during the 10-year study period, use of 500-milligram tablets declined by 20%.

Both studies were published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

Neither study examined rates of health problems associated with taking too much acetaminophen, nor why usage goes up seasonally or over time. Another limitation of the studies is that researchers couldn’t distinguish medically necessary usage from potential substance use problems or accidental overuse.

“This extensive analgesics consumption that we have documented raises the concern of overuse and misuse, as well as addiction to opioids,” said the lead author of the French study, Karima Hider-Mlynarz of the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety in Saint-Denis.

“Even it is prescribed and widespread used, none of the analgesic drugs are harmless and the dose must always be respected,” Hider-Mlynarz said by e-mail.

By Amy Black and Alexis MentenWashington, Dc

Around the world, some 250mn children are unable to attend school, and many who do have access to a classroom

are not learning the skills they need to succeed in life. And, despite a growing consensus about the systemic nature of the challenges aff ecting education, there is less agreement about how address those systemic challenges. Yet 2018 is shaping up to be a promising year for global eff orts to improve educational access and quality.

One reason is the emergence of so-called peer action networks, which facilitate knowledge-sharing globally and encourage continuous improvement locally. Such networks, if organised properly, could off er a partial solution to the systemic challenges aff ecting education.

There are numerous peer groups tackling some of the planet’s most diffi cult problems, but two that are associated with our organisations are worth highlighting. One is the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN), a community of practitioners and policymakers from 30 countries supported by Results for Development and other development partners. The other is the Asia Society’s Global Cities Education Network (GCEN), which facilitates

improvements in urban education systems throughout North America and Asia.

Each of these international peer networks has produced local results. For example, in 2016, Denver Public Schools in Colorado – a GCEN member – created the CareerConnect programme, which provides workplace-based learning opportunities for students. The programme draws on lessons from vocational education systems in Hong Kong, Melbourne, and Singapore – all GCEN member cities – as well as Switzerland, to help graduates prepare for life after high school.

Similarly, the JLN has made signifi cant progress helping developing countries move toward universal health coverage. Network support has enabled members to navigate technical roadblocks and secure political support at home. Adapting the JLN model to support offi cials of national education ministries could produce comparable gains in education in many countries.

Both of these networks off er a global platform for local practitioners to devise solutions and drive innovation. And both are organised around fi ve principles that we believe successful peer groups – in education or any sector – should strive to incorporate into their own work.

First, networks bring together leaders who are facing similar issues

in varying contexts. International peer action networks are most eff ective when they are cross-cultural; we have found that connecting disparate groups that are working toward similar goals often produces unexpected solutions that are more robust.

Second, the “peer” component of these networks is strongly emphasised. Members are equally empowered to set priorities and contribute to discussions. Networked learning is most successful when participants feel a sense of ownership with respect to outcomes.

Third, membership includes those with the authority and the ability to infl uence change. For example, many challenges at the national or city level in education planning require both political and technical solutions. For a network to be eff ective, policymakers and practitioners must work in concert to fi nd solutions to shared challenges.

Fourth, the JLN and the GCEN are committed to measuring collective and individual progress. While gauging success in education can be diffi cult, especially across contexts, peer action networks must be oriented toward achieving results, and that means measuring their eff ectiveness. Moreover, accountability metrics should be derived from systems that members are already using at home.

Finally, these networks strive to be sustainable. To drive large-scale and lasting change through a network in

any sector, but especially in global education, requires consistent vision, staffi ng, and fi nancial resources. Peer group participants cannot simultaneously work as policymakers or practitioners and collaboratively run a network organisation. Budgeting for central teams to manage the technical support to members and operations of the network is critical to success.

Unfortunately, very little education funding is currently set aside for investments in new learning networks. Increasing investment in peer action networks could help to bolster leadership and implementation capacity – critical to expand learning opportunities around the world, a key objective of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

There are no easy solutions to providing high-quality education to every child on the planet. However, as the growth in peer action networks demonstrates, global education leaders are not in this struggle alone. When like-minded policymakers and practitioners share ideas and collaborate on solutions, the world’s educational challenges become a little less daunting. – Project Syndicate

Amy Black is a senior fellow at Results for Development. Alexis Menten is Executive Director for Program Development at the Center for Global Education at Asia Society.

Chairman and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg.

WARNINGInshore : NilOffshore : Strong wind and high

seaWEATHERInshore : Slight dust to blowing

dust at places at times and relatively hot daytime with scattered clouds and weak chance of light rain at places.

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18/20 KTOffshrore : Northwesterly 18-25/32

KT at places at times.Visibility : 4-8 KM/3 KM or less at

places at times SEA STATEOffshore : 5-10 FT,rises to 12 FT at

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QATAR

Gulf Times Monday, April 2, 201828

Minister of Municipality inaugurates Umm Ghuwailina Green Fodder projectQNA Doha

HE the Minister of Munici-pality and Environment, Mohamed bin Abdullah

al-Rumaihi, yesterday inaugu-rated the production phase of the Umm Ghuwailina Green Fodder project, which was launched by the State of Qatar with the par-ticipation of the private sector as part of the government’s quest for self-suffi ciency of green fodder.

The project was developed by Al-Baida Group.

HE the Minister of Municipal-ity and Environment said that the project comes as part of the Qatar’s strategy to achieve food security, explaining that the gov-ernment has paid great atten-

tion to the agricultural sector to reduce dependence on imported food and to realise self-suffi cien-cy of basic foodstuff .

He added that achieving the aspired steps in this path would contribute to the expansion of the production base of the Qatari economy to bridge the gap be-tween supply and demand in the local market of high-quality green and dry fodder, and the building-up of strategic stocks of fodder at competitive prices with the high-est production rates according to the best standards and practices.

The minister praised the prac-tical experience in agricultural production based on the con-tribution of the private sector, adding that the comprehensive agricultural development expe-rienced by the state during the

past years is an evidence of its wise approach and good policies in all fi elds.

In a press release issued yes-terday Al-Baida Group chair-man Engineer Ali bin Abdullatif al-Masnad said that the group is working to complete the project on time in spite of the siege con-ditions, relying on alternative markets to provide all agricul-tural equipment, fertilisers and seeds in a record time to comply with the time agreed upon with the Ministry of Municipality and Environment.

He explained that the total area of the project is 191 hectares.

The area agreed with the Ministry of Municipality and has been planted is 80% of the project area to produce 2,700-3,000 tonnes of clover per year.

HE the Minister of Municipality and Environment, Mohamed bin Abdullah al-Rumaihi, at the inauguration of the Umm Ghuwailina Green Fodder project. Photo courtesy: Ministery of Municipality and Environment

QR30mn researchfacility for animal production opensHE the Minister of Munici-

pality and Environment Mohamed bin Abdullah al-

Rumaihi yesterday inaugurated the Animal Production Research Station in Sheehaniya Municipality.

The QR30mn research station is one of the vital projects launched by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) to provide the local market with necessary food products and achieve self-suffi cien-cy in this area, the MME has said in a statement.

The inaugural ceremony was also attended by Dr Hassan Rashid al-Derham, president of Qatar Uni-versity; Sheikh Faleh bin Nasser al-Thani, MME assistant undersec-retary for Agriculture and Fisheries Aff airs; a number of MME depart-mental managers and members of the Central Municipal Council.

The minister conducted a tour of the key facilities and components of the research station.

He said the MME was seeking – through such projects – to boost quality, increase production in terms of the number of births and quantity of milk produced, as well as curb livestock diseases, which would have

a signifi cant impact on all species of local animals in the country (camel, goat, sheep), the offi cial Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.

He also praised the State’s support for such vital projects and the eff orts of those working on the research station as a centre of protecting ani-mal products and enhance livestock in Qatar.

Masood Jarallah al-Marri, direc-tor of the MME’s Agricultural Re-search Department, said the new facility is the fi rst such of its kind specialising in research and devel-opment related to animal produc-tion techniques and exploring ways to improve economic returns from the country’s livestock.

He stressed that the agricul-tural sector in the ministry has paid great attention to this “pioneering project” in co-operation with the Public Works Authority (Ashghal), to complete it in a short period and with appropriate specifi cations to become a reference for studying and improving the productivity of livestock in Qatar, according to the report.

Al-Marri said the facility, built on a total area of 78,000sqm at a total

cost of about QR30mn, was part of the MME’s projects aimed at achiev-ing food security and strengthening the infrastructure for agricultural research as well as improving and preserving genetic characteristics.

Through this station, the agricul-tural sector “puts its practical and human capabilities to serve livestock breeders, through research aimed at raising the productivity of milk and red meat, improving the methods of animal breeding and feeding and selection of breeds of desired traits, and then disseminate these results to breeders as well as the distribu-tion of animals selected to improve the breeds of livestock”, QNA adds.

The new station comprises a number of facilities, including three laboratories for animal feed, artifi cial insemination and animal biotechnol-ogy, as well as 30 barns and spaces for small ruminants and one for camels and cows where measurements and research activities are to be carried out. It also houses a large numbers of goats, camels and sheep.

The MME is currently conducting research on the eff ectiveness of the intensive production pattern for dif-ferent goat and sheep species.

Various kinds of research activities are to be carried out at the facility.

HE the Minister of Municipality and Environment Mohamed bin Abdullah al-Rumaihi and other dignitaries at the inauguration of the Animal Production Research Station in Sheehaniya Municipality yesterday. PICTURES: Shaji Kayamkulam

HE Mohamed bin Abdullah al-Rumaihi during a tour of the facility.

A view of the Animal Production Research Station.