MONDAY Vol. XXXIX No. 10860

June 25, 2018Shawwal 11, 1439 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978

Qatar plans for 100%FDI seen boostinginfl ows to banks

BUSINESS | Page 1 SPORT | Page 8

Erdogan winselections withgrand lead

Briton Hamilton claims French GP

His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani along with a number of ministers and senior off icials at the inauguration ceremony of the Institute of Criminal Studies yesterday.

AgenciesIstanbul/Ankara

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday claimed victory in Turkey’s dual presidential and

parliamentary elections based on unof-fi cial results.

“Our people granted me the presi-dency and executive rule,” he said in a speech in Istanbul.

The presidential and legislative polls were held simultaneously for the fi rst time in Turkey’s history and complete the country’s transition to an executive presidency with sweeping powers.

“The message is clear,” Erdogan said. “With turnout of nearly 90%, Turkey has taught the whole world a democ-racy lesson.

“I hope nobody will overshadow the election results to bury their own fail-ures,” he added.

Opposition parties have alleged manipulation in the initial results, re-leased by state news agency Anadolu. Counting is still under way and the Su-

preme Election Council (YSK) is yet to announce the fi nal results.

Anadolu reported that Erdogan had won with 52.65% of the vote.

Supporters of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) were out on the streets of the capital in large num-bers celebrating, waving Turkish fl ags and honking car horns.

“Our people put a serious responsi-bility on us ... I am happy we had few problems across the country,” he said.

“My beloved nation, our people did their part ... it is time for us to work harder. It is time to leave the tensions of the campaign behind. It is time to focus on our future,” Erdogan said.

Both the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) claimed that Anadolu - the only offi cial source for partial results - was fi xing the returns.

CHP presidential candidate Muhar-rem Ince earlier said on Twitter: “Ana-dolu agency is doing manipulation. I call on our polling station representa-tives, no let down, never leave the bal-lot boxes.” To Page 12

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has become the fi rst healthcare organisation in the

Middle East, Western Asia, and Af-rica region to receive the Extracorpor-eal Life Support Organisation’s (Elso) Award for Excellence in Life Support (Gold Level) for its extracorporeal life support programme.

Also called extracorporeal mem-brane oxygenation (Ecmo), the therapy is used as a last resort support system for the lungs or heart and has helped save the lives of around 100 infants, children, and adults in Qatar since fi rst being introduced at HMC in 2014.

The award was presented to mem-bers of HMC’s Ecmo team on May 24. The award is for a three-year term and recognises centres worldwide that demonstrate an exceptional commit-

ment to evidence-based processes and quality measures, advanced education for staff , patient satisfaction, and on-going clinical care. It also demonstrates an assurance of high-quality standards, specialised equipment and supplies, and defi ned patient protocols. Recipi-ents of the Excellence in Life Support Award are designated as Centres of Ex-cellence.

The Ministry of Public Health com-missioned the lifesaving programme in 2013 in response to the Mers-CoV outbreak in the region. The Mers-CoV infection is associated with a high mor-tality rate due to the rapid onset of se-vere respiratory and renal failure.

HE the Minister of Public Health Dr Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari congratu-lated HMC’s Ecmo team on the award, noting that the technology is an exam-

ple of Qatar’s commitment to providing patients with the world’s best care.

“In early 2013, the ministry facilitat-ed an Ecmo partnership between HMC and UK-based Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS as part of our national Mers-CoV preparedness and response plan, and specifi cally the need to treat patients with severe respiratory illness. Ecmo off ers patients the highest level of life support and over the last four years, HMC’s skilled Ecmo team has used this technology to treat some of the sick-est and most severely traumatised pa-tients. The Elso award signifi es Qatar’s commitment to bringing the world’s best technologies and treatments to Qatar and it demonstrates to patients and families a dedication to provid-ing the best care possible,” said Dr al-Kuwari.

HMC’s director of the Medical Criti-cal Care Division and Ecmo Programme, Dr Ibrahim Fawzy Hassan, said in addi-tion to being one of the few healthcare systems in the Middle East region to use Ecmo, HMC is also a regional training centre for the technology.

Last year, a group of medical experts in the country developed a fi rst-of-its-kind mannequin to help train teams on the system. The Ecmo simulation man-nequin was conceptualised, designed, and built in Qatar.

HMC’s extracorporeal life support programme is ranked among the best in the region, a distinction that Dr Fawzy credits to the Ecmo team. He says HMC is honoured to receive the prestigious designation that recognises his team’s expertise in critical care and life sup-port. Page 2

HMC receives award for excellence in life support

Qatar opens Instituteof Criminal StudiesBy Ayman Adly Staff Reporter

Under the auspices of His High-ness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, His Highness

the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani inaugurated the Insti-tute of Criminal Studies, Cybercrime Prosecution, Money Laundering and Economic Crimes Prosecution, State Security and Counterterrorism Pros-ecution, at the headquarters of Qatar Public Prosecution yesterday.

HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, attended the inau-guration ceremony along with a number of their excellencies ministers, heads of diplomatic missions accredited to Qatar and senior offi cials, Qatar News Agency reported.

HE the Attorney-General Dr Ali bin Fetais al-Marri, delivered a welcoming speech on this occasion. He said that Qatar off ers great support to the judi-ciary on all levels and affi rms its inde-pendence.

“The opening of this institute refl ects the support of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani for the independence of the judiciary and working for the supremacy of the state of law and organisation, and the separa-tion between authorities,” he said.

In his remarks on the sidelines of the ceremony, Dr al-Marri appreciated the role of HE the Prime Minister and In-terior Minister in maintaining harmony between the judicial and executive au-thorities though these are in confl ict with each other in many countries.

The attorney-general pointed out that the new institute is specialised in crimi-nology and gives the staff of the General Prosecution training courses and work-shops all year round. It will also include a statistics centre that would provide ac-curate fi gures on the number of crimes, their types and reasons and study them to put practical solutions accordingly.

“Though Qatar has one of the lowest crime rates and the most secure envi-ronment worldwide, this institute is expected to make a quantum leap in re-ducing further the crime rates, keeping Qatar ahead of the most secure coun-tries in the world,” he said.

He further pointed out that special-ised Qatari professors and experts work at the institute in co-operation with in-ternational experts and specialists from diff erent parts of the world.

Dr al-Marri said that the importance of the cybercrime prosecution has in-creased after the hacking of Qatar News Agency, stressing that counteracting such crimes has become an absolute ne-cessity.

“We care about such crimes and co-

operate in this fi eld with other big coun-tries with sophisticated technological experiences.”

He explained that the new specialised prosecution departments would pro-duce specialists in fi ghting cybercrimes, economic crimes, money laundering, and terrorism.

The attorney-general stressed that money laundering and economic crimes have become more complicated and linked to terrorism and hence it has be-come very important to maintain spe-cialised prosecution departments in the country, as these crimes evolve quickly and require creative local mentalities to handle them.

Dr al-Marri explained there is active co-operation between the Public Pros-ecution and Qatar Central Bank and the Ministry of Interior with regard to com-bating trans-border money laundering and economic crimes and cybercrimes. Qatar has also maintained various bind-ing agreements with most world coun-tries in these fi elds, where information sharing and necessary support in such cases are mandatory. Page 3

Yesterday’s resultsEngland 6 Panama 1Senegal 2 Japan 2Colombia 3 Poland 0

Today’s matchesEgypt vs Saudi Arabia, 5pmRussia vs Uruguay, 5pmIran vs Portugal, 9pmSpain vs Morocco, 9pm

WORLD CUP

Piracy of beIN Sports will be prosecutedWhether it takes a long or short time, all those involved in the piracy of beIN Sports will be prosecuted, HE the Attorney-General Dr Ali bin Fetais al-Marri declared yesterday.He further stressed that world is governed by laws and regulations and there are strict legislations to protect intellectual property rights internationally. Regarding the latest updates of the

Compensations Claims Committee, Dr al-Marri pointed out that during the fi rst phase of its work, which involved collection of information and preparations of the related fi les, it was headed by the Public Prosecution, but the next stage is headed by HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, as this phase will be on the international level.

England sink PanamaAgenciesMoscow

Harry Kane struck a hat-trick as England demolished Panama 6-1 yesterday to ease into the

World Cup last 16 alongside Group G rivals Belgium. Kane, who now has fi ve goals in Russia, leapfrogged Cristiano Ronaldo and Romelu Lukaku in the race for the Golden Boot as the Central Americans were sent packing along with Tunisia.

Belgium and England — who meet in Kaliningrad on Thursday to battle it out for top spot — both have six points after two games and are level on goal diff erence and goals scored.

Two penalties from Kane and two goals from John Stones, plus an im-pressive strike from Jesse Lingard, gave England an unassailable 5-0 lead at half-time.

Later yesterday, Japan and Senegal played out a 2-2 draw in Group H, keeping both on course for a place in the next round.

Japan, who beat 10-man Colombia in their fi rst match in Russia, dug deep in Yekaterinburg, coming back twice in an entertaining match.

Sadio Mane’s opening goal was can-celled out by Takashi Inui later in the fi rst half. In the second period Moussa Wague re-established Senegal’s lead but substitute Keisuke Honda pegged them back again.

In the last match of the day, Colombia thrashed Poland 3-0 with Yerry Mina, Radamel Falcao and Juan Cuadrado scoring for the winners. Sport Pages 1-5

England’s Harry Kane celebrates scoring against Panama yesterday.

Amir congratulatesErdogan on victoryHis Highness the Amir Sheikh

Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani held a telephone conversa-

tion with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday evening to congratulate him on his victory in the presidential elections, wishing him continued success and the brotherly people of Turkey further progress and prosperity.

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mo-hamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani held a telephone conversation with Turkish Minister of Foreign Aff airs Mevlut Ca-vusoglu.

During the phone call, the Minister of Foreign Aff airs congratulated the Turkish Foreign Minister on Erdogan’s victory in the elections.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gestures during a speech yesterday in Istanbul, after initial results of presidential and parliamentary elections were declared.

QATAR

Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 20182

OFFICIAL

Dominican honour for Qatar’s envoy

Guniea-Bissau leader meets Qatar envoy

Advisory Council panel holds meeting

Qatar-Uruguay relations reviewed

President of the Dominican Republic Danilo Medina awarded the Order of Merit of Duarte, Sanchez and Mella, in Grade of Grand Cross Silver plate to the outgoing ambassador of Qatar Khamis bin Bati al-Sahouti for his eff orts in promoting the relations between the two countries.Dominican Minister of Foreign Aff airs Miguel Vargas awarded the Order of Merit to Qatar’s ambassador on behalf of the President of Dominican Republic, during a ceremony held at the Dominican Foreign Ministry headquarters.Commenting on the occasion, the Dominican Foreign Minister said that ambassador al-Sahouti contributed to the development and strengthening of relations between the Dominican Republic and Qatar.For his part, the ambassador thanked the Dominican government for the support accorded to him during his tour of duty in the country, and expressed his gratitude to the president, the Dominican government and people for honouring him with the Order of Merit.The ceremony was attended by the deputy ministers of foreign aff airs and the ambassadors accredited to the Dominican Republic.

President of Guinea-Bissau Jose Mario Vaz has met Qatar’s non-resident ambassador to Guinea-Bissau Sarea bin Ali al-Qahtani.Talks during the meeting tackled the bilateral relations and ways of enhancing them, as well as issues of mutual concern.

The Advisory Council’s Legal and Legislative Aff airs Committee yesterday held a meeting within the 46th regular session of the council under the chairmanship of its rapporteur Nasser bin Rashid Saria al-Kaabi.During the meeting, the committee completed the discussion of a draft law on the regulation of non-Qataris’ ownership of properties and benefiting from them.The committee decided to submit its recommendations thereon to the Advisory Council.

Minister of Foreign Aff airs of Uruguay Rodolfo Nin Novoa has met ambassador of Qatar to Uruguay Mohamed bin Hassan al-Jaber in Montevideo. The meeting discussed the bilateral relations and means of developing them, as well as matters of common concern.

Envoy highlightsQatar’s steps to diversify economy

Qatar’s ambassador to Germany Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-

Thani has delivered a lecture at the German Chamber of Com-merce and Industry for Munich and Upper Bavaria, dealing with the economic situation in Qatar and its promising investment opportunities and the safe in-vestment climate.

The ambassador presented in depth the practical step adopted by Qatar to diversify its sources of income and increasing the competitiveness of its national economy in order to ensure inte-gration into the global economy

and keeping up with contempo-rary developments.

Meanwhile, the ambassador noted that the government of Qatar attaches great impor-tance to investing in human capital, promoting the culture of innovation and localising in-dustries.

Ambassador Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani stressed Qatar is taking steps, with all confi dence, to achieve its ambi-tions and implement the plans of economic transformation in a smart and unique manner in line with the new changes.

The lecture was attended by businessmen, economists and representatives of German com-panies in the region of southern Germany.

QNABerlin

Zakat Fund gives

over QR6mn to help

needy families

SSC exam results to be announced tomorrow

The Zakat Fund Depart-ment at the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Aff airs

has provided more than QR6mn to the General Authority for Minor’s Aff airs, as assistance to minors, orphans and widows who are under the auspices of the authority.

Director of the Zakat Fund Department Jassim bin Mo-hamed al-Kubaisi said that the assistance comes within the framework of the Fund’s mandate to spend on those in

need, as decided by Islamic law.

He stressed the importance of co-operating with the General Authority for Minors’ Aff airs and providing fi nancial assist-ance to meet the needs of many families under the auspices of the authority, in the framework of the Fund’s eff orts to help all segments of the benefi ciaries of Zakat.

Al-Kubaisi noted that the Za-kat Fund Department has been providing assistance to citizens and resident benefi ciaries of Za-kat since the establishment of the Fund more than two decades ago.

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education will announce tomorrow

afternoon the results of the gen-eral and specialised Secondary School Certifi cate (SSC) exami-nations for the academic year

2017/2018. Results will be pub-lished on the website https://nateeja.edu.gov.qa/ once they are endorsed by HE the Minister of Education and Higher Educa-tion Dr Mohamed Abdul Wahed Ali al-Hammadi.

QNADoha

Qatar Charity rebuilds 250 homes

for poor families in Gaza Strip

Qatar Charity’s (QC) of-fice in the Gaza Strip has launched a project

to rebuild the homes of poor people with a generous dona-tion made by the philanthro-pists of Qatar.

Implemented in co-opera-tion with the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, the project will benefi t 250 families from diff erent parts of the Gaza Strip.

The project includes re-building 250 houses at a cost of QR6.5mn to make them usable, which will help preserve the hu-man dignity of the needy fami-lies in the Gaza Strip.

The aim is to improve the liv-ing conditions of these families, as they are constantly living in diffi cult economic and social conditions, and harsh circum-stances.

The project seeks to eff ectively contribute to creating the health environment suitable for the poorest people through the pro-vision of services and relief inter-ventions to rehabilitate the homes of the needy.

The project will also help ease the economic and social burdens of poor families and activate the role of international institutions to contribute to housing projects to serve vulnerable people.

Mohamed Abu Haloub, direc-tor of the QC offi ce in the Gaza Strip, said Qatar Charity, with the support of the people of Qatar, has been implementing these humanitarian projects for the poor in various governorates of the Gaza Strip to improve their living conditions.

“We strive to provide a decent life for these families by off ering various assistance, whether in cash, in kind, or by building so-cial housing”, Abu Halub said in a statement.

Hassan Khamis, a benefi ciary of this housing project, thanked the people of Qatar, saying “I owe them this greet kindness.

For the fi rst time in my life, I

will be able to live in dignity in a decent home after I and my fami-ly have suff ered from the housing problems throughout my life.”

Last year, Qatar Charity hand-

ed over 50 apartments to the poor families in the Gaza Strip, which were destroyed by the war in 2014.

The charity also rebuilt the

destroyed apartments with the support of the Qatari people at a cost of QR8mn, in co-operation of the Ministry of Public Works and Housing.

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has become the first healthcare organisation in the Middle East, Western Asia, and Africa region to receive the Extracorporeal Life Support Organisation’s (Elso) Award for Excellence in Life Support (Gold Level) for its extracorporeal life support programme. Picture shows HE the Minister of Public Health Dr Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari and members of HMC’s Ecmo team with the award.

HMC wins prestigious award

QC off icials visit one of the houses as part of the project.

Blockade fails to stop Qatar residents from travelling

Qatar residents have shown a great appetite for travelling, either tak-

ing a short break or going for long vacations, despite the on-going blockade on the country, a veteran travel agent has said.

“Qatar has shown it is strong and the people have gone ahead with their travel plans with full confi dence,” Al Tawfeeq Travel country head Rehan Ali Syed told Gulf Times.

He was speaking on the side-lines of the opening of the Por-tugal Week at the Mall of Qatar recently. Al Tawfeeq Travel was a sponsor.

Syed stressed that residents

pursued their travel itineraries even when the blockade was im-posed on June 5 last year.

“When people looked at it, it was absolutely normal and noth-ing to worry, so they just went ahead with their plans, it was like business as usual,” he pointed out.

The travel agency witnessed what it described as “a tremen-dous opportunity on travel,” cit-ing its big departures to Georgia.

Besides the visa on arrival privilege for Qatar residents, Syed noted that Georgia also of-fers a very competitive price as a destination.

He said some airlines, such as Salam Air, are fi lling the slots for Georgia now, apart from Qatar Airways’ daily fl ights.

“I think all the major Qatar Airways sectors are doing fan-

tastically well and East Europe is also picking up, including Bosnia and Armenia,” Syed stressed. “Also Portugal, I hope will come up very soon with Lisbon, and I am sure there is a big potential to

grow in this market.”He cited Turkey’s charm, say-

ing that the destination is also continuously attracting many travellers from Qatar, especially during the Eid al-Fitr holidays. “Eid was good and fl ights have been full.”

Syed also lauded Qatar Tour-ism Authority (QTA) saying it “is doing a fabulous job” for attract-ing more tourists from diff erent parts of the world and for sup-porting travel agencies.

Citizens of 80 nationalities can now enter the country visa-free, while others can apply for visas online with ease.

“I think if we don’t get the support from QTA it will be very diffi cult to promote this, they are willing to work with us on how to get more people,” Syed said.

In the Gulf region, he noted that many residents prefer trav-elling to Kuwait and Oman espe-cially during winter.

Last year, Al Tawfeeq Travel saw a surge towards Kuwait, which it considered a shopping destination.

“Whatever the circumstances have been, travel is always there, whether it is good or bad, it is al-ways an opportunity to travel,” he explained.

“There were some eff ects (of the blockade) but I think the country has been robust, we have come out very well and people have shown resilience and they have been very supportive,” Syed explained. “We have seen a tre-mendous growth in travel last year where our market registered almost double digit growth.”

By Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

Rehan Ali Syed

Al Meera leasing dept to be relocated

Al Meera Consumer Goods Company has announced the relocation of its leas-

ing department from its head offi ce location in West Bay to Al Meera’s Nuaija Branch.

The leasing department’s new offi ce is located on the fi rst fl oor in the Nuaija Mall and is man-aged by a team of specialist em-ployees dedicated to the care of the entire estate. The move aims to ease access for those inter-ested in renting a space at any of the 51 Al Meera branches across Qatar, and to better serve the ex-isting tenants.

The new offi ce opened after the Eid holiday from 7.30am to 3pm, Sunday to Thursday.

“The relocated leasing de-partment offi ce will serve as a convenient platform to provide services related to renting shops at Al Meera, all under one roof. The offi ce was selected for its convenient location and will of-fer all its facilities to serve the public for every enquiry or sug-gestion about its services,” Al Meera said in a statement.

The relocation refl ects Al Meera’s eff orts to continually improve the quality of its serv-ices. Potential tenants for any branch can contact the new Al Meera leasing offi ce for more information or visit the Nuaija branch in person.

A meeting of stakeholders and a group of beneficiaries.

“The relocated leasing department offi ce will serve as a convenient platform to provide services related to renting shops at Al Meera, all under one roof. The offi ce was selected for its convenient location and will off er all its facilities to serve the public for every enquiry or suggestion about its services”

QATAR3

Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 2018

Under the auspices of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani inaugurated the Institute of Criminal Studies, Cybercrime Prosecution, Money Laundering and Economic Crimes Prosecution, State Security and Counterterrorism Prosecution, at the headquarter of Qatar Public Prosecution yesterday. HE Attorney-General Dr Ali bin Fetais al-Marri delivered a welcoming speech on this occasion. HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, attended the inauguration ceremony along with a number of ministers, heads of diplomatic missions and senior off icials.

Deputy Amir inaugurates Institute of Criminal Studies, Specialised Prosecution

Aman offi ce opens at Public ProsecutionThe Public Prosecution

signed a memoran-dum of understanding

(MoU) with Qatar Social Work Foundation, and opened an offi ce for the Protection and Social Rehabilitation Centre (Aman) to serve cases, shorten procedures and time, and pro-vide advice, treatment, assist-ance and rehabilitation be-fore transferring them to the competent courts.

The MoU was signed in the presence of HE the Minister of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Aff airs Dr Issa Saad al-Jafali al-Nuaimi and

HE Attorney General Dr Ali bin Fetais al-Marri.

The one-year renewable MoU, aims at facilitating work of the centre and exchange of experi-ence between the Public Pros-ecution and the foundation, and the creation of agreed formula-tions to serve the cases based on international standards, in addi-tion to the continuous co-ordi-nating and mutual understand-ing to achieve the full benefi t to the cases.

Commenting on the occa-sion, Ibrahim Abdullah al-Qubaisi, solicitor general and director of judicial inspection

at the Public Prosecution, said that signing the MoU gives a legal framework for the co-operation between the Public Prosecution and Qatar Social Work Foundation and its cen-tres. Through this agreement, the foundation will have offi ces in the Public Prosecution to deal with social and family prob-lems within its natural range before being transferred to the competent courts.

“The opening of Aman of-fi ce within the Public Prose-cutor’s building comes within the framework of the role of the Public Prosecution to pro-

tect the community, noting that in special cases relating to women and children who resort to the prosecution, they are referred to the offi ce for counselling, treatment or re-habilitation before recourse to the judiciary and under the confi dentiality and privacy necessary for such cases,” al-Qubaisi added.

For her part, Qatar Social Work Foundation chief ex-ecutive offi cer Amal Abdulla-tif al-Mannai said that the MoU, which the Foundation worked on for more than two years, leads to co-operation protocols between

the Public Prosecution and the relevant centres affi liated with the foundation.

She noted that the Pub-lic Prosecution embodies the meaning of justice and social protection, which are the ul-timate goal pursued by Qatar Social Work Foundation and its affi liated centres. “The signing of the MoU is a result of a natu-ral integration and a genuine and eff ective partnership, and that the united objective of both sides makes them continue to achieve justice in their legal and social perspective,” she added.

Al-Mannai underlined the

keenness of the foundation and its affi liated centres on pursu-ing professionalism through the implementation of interna-tional standards in the protec-tion of women and children. In the forefront of these standards is providing the service and facilitating access.

Mansour al-Saadi, execu-tive manager of the Protec-tion and Social Rehabilitation Centre, said that the Aman of-fi ce provides for institutional co-operation between the two sides, and includes a host of services including reception, consultation, and social, psy-

chological and legal meetings.He added that the statistics

of the centre for 2017 showed that the number of cases of vio-lence and family disintegration transferred between the Center and the Prosecution reached 50. “These cases benefi ted from the centre’s services, including tem-porary accommodation. More than 90% of these cases were re-solved in co-operation between the Family Prosecution and the Aman offi ce, taking into account the privacy and confi dential-ity of cases, and avoiding the re-sorting to courts or exacerbating the problem. (QNA)

Filmmaker Mishal al-Qubaisi addressing viewers before the screening of the movie. PICTURES: Thajudheen

A Woman in the Time of Blockadescreened at Mirqab Mall

A special screening of the Qatari feature fi lm A Woman in

the Time of Blockade was held at one of the screens at Mirqab Mall on Saturday.

It is the fi rst full-length Qatari feature fi lm (90 minutes) to be screened in movie theatres in Qatar, director Mohamed Ab-dullatif Hashim had told the offi cial Qatar News Agency earlier.

A number of people from such areas as media, art, culture and fi lm industry were invited for the spe-cial screening. The fi lm shows the moral aspect of the Qatari people in deal-ing with the siege, as it ad-dresses the crisis from the humanitarian point of view.

According to the direc-tor, the fi lm highlights the ethical side of the people of Qatar. The plot of the movie bears symbolic mes-sages touching on several humanitarian cases and stories of people of the re-gion aff ected by the unjust siege imposed on Qatar by the Saudi-led quartet since June 5, 2017.

The fi lm also shows the spirit of aff ection and tol-erance of the Qatari people and their patriotism.

Through a Qatari family of an Emirati mother, the

fi lm’s message affi rms that many people have become victims of the injustice

infl icted by the siege.Hashim said that dur-

ing the 1980s a full-length Qatari feature fi lm was produced but it was not screened in theatres.

He pointed out that the making of A Woman in the Time of Blockade encoun-tered some diffi culties, but the production team was able to overcome these problems, noting that the fi lm has English subtitles because it was meant to be presented to the global au-dience and will be screened

outside Qatar and in international festivals.

Ghada Shakour, execu-tive producer of the fi lm, said in remarks to QNA: “We chose to present the fi lm on Eid al-Fitr holiday on the occasion of the siege anniversary”.

She pointed out that the fi lm has recorded a great success and attracted scores of viewers, especially as it shows how Qatar has dealt with the siege and also the blockade’s consequenc-es on the siege countries.

The screening of the fi lm began on the fi rst day of Eid al-Fitr and will last for two

weeks. The fi lm is based on a novel with the same title, authored by Dr Hashem al-Sayed. The script was written by Talib al-Dos.

A Woman in The Time of Blockade features a number of Qatari actors, name-ly Faleh Fayez, Abdullah Ghaifan, Mohamed Anwar, Mohamed al-Sayegh, Ali al-Khalaf, Abdullah Mu-barak, Huda al-Maleki, As-rar Mohamed, Nada Ahmed and the child Mayasa al-Malki.

Before the special show began, Qatari fi lm maker Mishal al-Qubaisi addressed the gathering.

A scene from A Woman in the Time of Blockade.

QATAR4 Gulf Times

Monday, June 25, 2018

CIRS celebrates a decade of researchThe Centre for Interna-

tional and Regional Stud-ies (CIRS) under Geor-

getown University in Qatar is celebrating its 10-year anniver-sary issuing a commemorative report that presents archival data on its research accomplish-ments for the past 10 years. Since its establishment in 2007, CIRS has sponsored and sup-ported major cross-disciplinary research initiatives focused on the Gulf, the Middle East and Asia.

CIRS’s goal is to explore ques-tions related to the Gulf region, the broader Middle East, and Asia through supporting original and theoretically informed research. CIRS, the premier research insti-tute of Georgetown University in Qatar, is devoted to the academic study of regional and interna-tional issues through dialogue and exchange of ideas, research and scholarship, and engagement with national and international scholars, opinion makers, practi-tioners, and activists.

The centre sponsors major studies of regional and interna-tional signifi cance by regularly identifying emerging socioeco-

nomic and political trends, and developing research initiatives towards further focused schol-arship. Over the past decade, the institute has published 29 books, 19 peer reviewed papers, and 32 summary reports across a broad range of topics, from food security in the Gulf to arts and cultural production in the GCC.

Director of CIRS Dr Mehran Kamrava recalled the beginning

of the centre with gratitude and appreciation on how it all start-ed from humble beginnings. “It was a learning experience, be-cause up until the early 2000s the Gulf region was not seen as an important and consequential area of research. I discovered how important and dynamic this region is in terms of devel-opments and their repercus-sions elsewhere. I also learned

what a blind spot it had been in terms of the broader study of the Middle East. We were fortunate to be able to fi ll a huge gap and to use our location, resources and our team as a basis of compara-tive advantage to that end.”

CIRS has pioneered pushing the limits, expanding its foun-dation of contributors, bringing in unconventional participants. The centre invites practitioners or nonacademic guests, in addi-tion to academic researchers, to take part in its discussions and study groups because “they agi-tate diff erent parts of our brains and help us think diff erently,” says Dr Kamrava.

“They are in contact with everyday issues and problems, and sometimes academics, my-self included, can get so bogged down in abstractions and in footnotes. We need constant reminders of what is actually happening in the world outside in the realm of policy makers, journalism and practitioners so that we don’t get caught in an academic echo chamber and to make sure that the impact of the topic that we study can be mag-nifi ed,” he added.

Dr Mehran Kamrava

The flower petal-themed ceiling of Al Riff a Station’s pedestrian bridge is ready to receive its final coat of paint, Qatar Rail tweeted yesterday. The exterior aluminium cladding of the underside of the bridge is also nearly complete.

Al Riffa Station bridge nearing completion

Tamuq, QU establish fi rst ACS chapter in Qatar

Qatar has its fi rst-ever in-ternational chapter of the American Chemical

Society (ACS), thanks to the ef-forts of faculty from Texas A&M University at Qatar (Tamuq) and Qatar University. The Qatar chapter has been designated an ACS International Chemical Sci-ences Chapter, joining 19 other international chapters around the world. The chapter aims to provide chemists and chemi-cal engineers from across Qatar and the region the opportunity to connect with one another, as well as ACS members worldwide.

The new chapter is co-chaired by Dr Hassan S Bazzi, associate dean for research, executive di-rector of development, engage-ment and outreach, and a chem-

istry professor at Tamuq and Dr Siham al-Qaradawi, professor of organic chemistry at Qatar University. Dr Bazzi said, “The American Chemical Society is the largest professional commu-nity for chemists and chemical engineers — more than 150,000 members worldwide. Establish-ing our chapter in Qatar is a tes-tament to the success of all the scientifi c activities that we have been hosting in the last few years. The Qatar ACS chapter will be engaging in a number of confer-ences and workshops that will involve universities, industry, as well as high schools”

Participating in an ICSC brings additional benefi ts to members, such as eligibility for a variety of grants and prestigious awards.

Another benefi t of ICSC sta-tus is the opportunity to engage with ACS international student chapters, which are organised by university students study-ing the chemical sciences. The world’s largest scientifi c society, ACS was founded in 1876 and chartered by the US Congress. Its mission is to advance the broad-er chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefi t of the planet and its people and its vision is to improve people’s lives through the transforming power of chemistry. The society pro-vides information, education, career services, professional development and engagement programmes to help scientists and researchers thrive in an ever-changing global economy.

The chapter aims to provide chemists and chemical engineers from across Qatar and the region the opportunity to connect with one another, as well as ACS members worldwide.

HEC Paris fetes executive degree graduates in ParisHEC Paris honoured its latest cohort of executive degree graduates from Qatar at its an-nual Convocation Ceremony at the HEC Paris main campus in Jouy en Josas, Paris on June 16. Dr Nils Plambeck, dean and CEO, HEC Paris in Qatar, attended the ceremony alongside VIP guests and dignitaries such as Ali Zainal, Qatar’s ambassador to Unesco. In the presence of Jean-Paul Vermes, chairman, HEC Paris, Peter Todd, dean of HEC Paris, and Didier Kling, chairman of the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry. 72 graduates from HEC Paris in Qatar were honoured in

the ceremony. HEC Paris offers in Qatar two degree programmes, the Executive MBA (EMBA) and the Specialised Master in Strate-

gic Business Unit Management, as well as short programmes and custom programmes for companies.

As many as 72 graduates from HEC Paris in Qatar were honoured in the ceremony.

Complaints of improper handling of food items at some eateries

The practice of han-dling food items with bare hands

is apparently rampant in some of the smaller cafete-rias and other eateries in Doha, it is learnt.

“While a large number of restaurants in the city are strictly following the municipal guidelines, there have been several com-plaints about the opera-tions of many others, espe-cially small outlets in busy areas,” a resident told Gulf Times.

It is understood that the issue has not been eff ec-tively dealt notwithstanding the inspections carried out by municipal authorities at some of the restaurants op-erating in busy areas of the city. Though the monitoring by municipal authorities had a positive eff ect in some of the localities during the sec-ond half of the holy month

of Ramadan, still there were instances of residents com-plaining of restaurant op-erators paying no attention to such issues as handling of food items with bare hands.

Regular customers at some of the restaurants told Gulf Times that de-spite their complaining to the operators, there were instances of their staff openly flouting municipal guidelines and instructions on hygiene and cleanliness, mainly by handling food with bare hands.

“Sometimes it is found that such problems are happening at restaurants which were penalised by authorities in the past fol-lowing similar or same complaints,” said a cus-tomer. He said the staff at some of the restaurants had no qualms in handling food items with bare hands in front of their customers.

QATAR5Gulf Times

Monday, June 25, 2018

Fendi timepiece gets new strap

Blue Salon has launched the new Selleria Nastro strap for Fendi’s Selle-

ria Man timepiece, it was an-nounced yesterday.

The interchangeable strap embodies an elegant yet casual attitude. Embroidered with the FF — Fun Fendi logo, the strap blends sophisticated textures and leathers in the refi ned tones of brown.

The combination of woven textile, genuine calfskin leather fi nishes and lining emphasises the highest Fendi craftsmanship.

The FF – Fun Fendi logo in dark brown reveals the Roman Maison’s herit-age in a modern way, while the strap edges are

hand stitched representing the ultimate detail that echoes the Selleria iconic aesthetics.

The Selleria Nastro strap in warm brown tones is coupled with a black stainless steel case with 18-karat rose gold-plated bezel and crown giving to the watch a casual allure.

A simple rotation of the case back allows to switch the strap and to create a look the occa-sion inspires.

Fendi, the Italian luxury House with roots dating back to 1925, began its foray into the world of luxury timepieces in

1988. All Fendi Timepieces are manufactured in Switzerland.

A Selleria with the Nastro strap.

Oman Air adds third Boeing 737 Max to its fl eet

Oman Air has taken delivery of the third of 30 Boeing 737 Max 8s it has on order,

it was announced in a statement yesterday in Doha.

The national carrier of Oman expects to receive a total of fi ve 737 Max by September.

The 737 Max family has been designed to off er customers ex-ceptional performance, fl exibility and effi ciency, with lower per-seat costs and an extended range that will open up new destina-tions in the single-aisle market.

Confi gured with 162 seats in a two-class confi guration: 12 in business and 150 in economy with signifi cant enhancements across

both cabins, the Max aircraft is a testament to Oman Air commit-ment to continually upgrade its product off ering to improve its customer satisfaction and enhance the overall guest experience.

With the addition of the new Max, Oman Air’s fl eet currently consists of seven Boeing 787 Dreamliners, six Airbus 330-300s, four Airbus 330-200s, fi ve Boeing 737-900s, 21 Boeing 737-800s, three Boeing 737 Max and four Embraer 175s.

By the end of this month, Oman Air will also receive the fi rst of its three 787-9 Dreamliner on order, two of which will have a new First Class product with eight private

suites, 24 Business class seats and 232 Economy seats.

The airline will also launch two more destinations — Casablanca

(Morocco) on July 1 and Moscow (Russia) on October 28, besides the resumption of its operations to the Maldives.

The new 737 in Oman Air livery.

NBK Heavy Equipment, QBS continue collaborationNasser Bin Khaled Heavy

Equipment, a subsidiary of NBK Holding, expand-

ed its collaboration with QBS International WLL, by deliver-ing 11 CASE Crawlers Excavators and 34 Montabert Breakers to the company to fulfi l its needs and requirements in projects being undertaken in Qatar.

The deal underscores the strong collaboration between the two companies and refl ects their mutual ambition to contribute in building the future of Qatar.

Eyad Rashid, the general man-ager, NBK Heavy Equipment said: “Nasser Bin Khaled Heavy Equipment’s winning card lies in excellence and authenticity. We consider the client needs before anything else.

“Today, we are proud to collab-orate again with QBS and provide them with best heavy equipment needed to complete their projects in Qatar, and contribute together in delivering a world-class infra-structure in the country”.

Osama Chaaban, managing director of QBS, said: “QBS re-ceived 11 CASE Crawlers Exca-vators and 34 Montabert Rock

Breakers which we need to com-plete our projects in Qatar. Reli-ability and functionality are two main factors in our work, and NBK Heavy Equipment is a per-

fect partner to QBS to provide us with the necessary equipment we require.

“QBS’s commitment to Qatar is borne out by the investment it

continues to make in its local op-eration”.

QBS was established in Qatar in 2007.

It is a member of the QBS In-

ternational group of companies operating in the areas of infra-structure and public project de-velopment in the United States, Africa and the Middle East.

QBS strictly abides by inter-national standards and industry best practices.

At the operational level, the company has implemented a

rigorous quality control pro-gramme designed to identify and immediately correct any non-conformities in supplied material and works.

Nasser Bin Khaled Heavy Equipment was launched in 1975.

It excels in providing premium products and services.

It strives to stay on top of the market need, by promoting pre-mium brands and continue to de-velop the existing ones to match changing consumer needs.

The heavy equipment dealer-ship is also a recipient of awards from CASE IH, CASE Construc-tion, BOMAG, CIFA, Zoomlion and Montabert for high market share and other areas of excel-lence.

With key partnerships with many of the leading global man-ufacturers of heavy equipment, a well-staff ed fi eld force and service centres, Nasser Bin Kha-led Heavy Equipment is up to the challenge of collaborating with enterprises that are building the future of our nation.

The division has supplied a va-riety of equipment towards sev-eral projects around the country.

A view of the new equipment.

REGION/ARAB WORLD

Gulf TimesMonday, June 25, 20186

Fighting moves closer to centre of Hodeidah cityReuters Aden

Yemen’s Houthis deployed additional forces in the main port city of Hodei-dah yesterday as a Saudi-led military

coalition moved closer to the city centre in the largest off ensive of the war, raising UN fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The alliance led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched its assault on the heavily defended Red Sea city on June 12 to try to weaken the Houthi movement by cutting off a key supply line for the group which controls the capital Sanaa and most populated areas.

“There is a heavy deployment of armed Houthis in the city and new check points have been set up in neighbourhoods where there are supporters of the Tehama brigades,” said one resident, referring to a Yemeni fac-tion from the Red Sea coastal plain that is fi ghting with coalition forces.

Fierce clashes broke out after midnight near Hodeidah University, around 3km west of the city centre, on the coastal road linking the airport to the port, added the resident, who requested anonymity.

Coalition forces seized the airport on Wednesday and have been consolidating their hold in the area as UN eff orts continued to reach a political deal that would avert an assault on the port, a lifeline for millions of Yemenis. The United Nations fears the esca-lation in fi ghting could exacerbate what is al-ready the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis, with 22mn Yemenis dependent on aid and an estimated 8.4mn believed to be on the verge of starvation.

The fi ghting has wounded and displaced civilians. Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it had received 151 in-jured people in recent days in Al Thawrah Hospital, the main public medical facil-ity serving Hodeidah, and expects to receive more as the fi ghting moves towards the city.

“There are 86 beds in Al Thawrah and we desperately need more...We hope to set up a fi eld hospital with 20 beds in the next two weeks,” Caroline Seguin, MSF programme manager for Yemen, told Reuters by tel-

ephone from the UAE. The Western-backed coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 to re-store the internationally recognised govern-ment in exile, but since then neither side has made much progress in the war, widely seen as a proxy confl ict.

The World Food Programme said the fi ght-ing could result in up to 1.1mn people being either displaced or trapped within the city and in need of emergency food assistance.

UN envoy Martin Griffi ths has visited Sanaa and Saudi Arabia to try to negotiate a solution.

The Houthis have indicated they would be willing to hand over management of the port to the United Nations, sources told Reuters.

A US offi cial said Washington was urging the Saudis and Emiratis to accept the deal.

“The coalition will achieve its goal of liber-ating Hodeidah, city & port. Yet we will sup-port all eff orts to achieve an unconditional peaceful withdrawal of Houthi gangs,” UAE Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Anwar Gargash said in a Twitter post on Saturday.

Yemeni civilians receive food aid for displaced people who fled battles in the Red Sea province of Hodeidah and are now living in camps in the northern district of Abs, under control by the Houthi rebels in Hajjah province, yesterday.

N-deal collapse would be ‘very dangerous’

AFPTehran

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif warned yesterday that

failure to save the nuclear deal after the exit of the United States would be “very dangerous” for Tehran.

The United States an-nounced in May that it was

withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal and reimpos-ing sanctions that would hit international businesses working in the Islamic re-public.

“Failure of the JCPOA (nuclear deal) would be very dangerous for us,” Zarif told members of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, quoted by the offi cial IRNA news agency.

Air strikes on rebel towns in southern Syria killed five civilians and damaged two hospitals yesterday, a monitor said, in fresh signs of a loom-ing government assault.Russian-backed regime forces have for weeks been prepar-ing an off ensive to retake Syria’s south, a strategic zone that borders both Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The regime has sent military reinforcements to the area, dropped flyers demanding rebels surrender, and ramped up air strikes in recent days. Late Saturday, President Bashar al-Assad’s Russian allies began bombing the rebel-held south for the first time since summer 2017, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Iraq will conduct a manual recount of votes from a May election only for ballots mentioned in off icial reports on fraud or in formal complaints, a move likely to speed up the ratification of final results and the formation of a new government. The parliamen-tary election has been marred by historically low turnout and fraud allegations. The outgoing parliament this month passed a law mandating a nationwide manual recount of votes.

Air strikes kill five as southern Syria assault looms

Iraq plans manual recount only for suspect ballots

CONFLICT

POLICY

Saudi women celebrated taking the wheel for the first time in decades yesterday as the king-dom overturned the world’s only ban on female motorists, a historic reform expected to usher in a new era of social mobility. The much-trumpeted move is part of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman’s plan to modernise the conservative petrostate — but it has been dented by the jailing of female activists who long opposed the driving ban. Women in Riyadh and other cities began zipping around streets bathed in amber light soon after the ban was lifted at midnight, with some blasting music from behind the wheel. “I feel free like a bird,” said talk show host and writer Samar Almogren as she cruised across the capital.

Saudi govt overturns ban on women drivingSOCIETY

ARAB WORLD

7Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 2018

Prince William in Jordan for historic Mideast tourAFP Amman

Prince William fl ew in to Jordan yesterday at the launch of a Middle East

tour that will see him become the fi rst British royal to pay of-fi cial visits to both Israel and the Palestinian territories.

He was greeted at Amman’s Marka military airport by Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah, hosting William for the two-day visit in Jordan.

The 36-year-old Duke of Cambridge’s Royal Air Force plane touched down at the small airport in eastern Amman, where he was given a red-carpet welcome by the heir to the Jor-danian throne. Royal guards car-rying rifl es fi tted with bayonets and wearing Jordan’s traditional red-and-white chequered kef-fi yeh scarves stood to attention as the prince, in a dark suit, de-scended from the plane.

The visit by the second in line to the British throne has been billed as a chance to bond with 23-year-old Prince Hussein, a fellow graduate of Britain’s Royal Sandhurst Military Academy.

Yesterday evening, Wil-liam attended a birthday party in honour of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, whose of-fi cial 92nd birthday was cel-ebrated on June 9, at the British ambassador’s residence.

“I greatly admire the resil-ience you in Jordan have shown in the face of the many security and humanitarian challenges that have confronted you as a result of confl icts in this region,” William said at the party.

“The way in which you opened

your doors to hundreds of thou-sands of refugees from Syria, not to mention your longstand-ing commitments to Palestinian refugees, is remarkable,” he said.

“In so many ways, Jordan as an open and stable society is a beacon of hope for many other people in the Middle East.”

Today, William will visit the ancient Roman ruins of Jerash, north of the capital, as well as a vocational training college for young Jordanians and Syrian refugees. That evening, he will begin his history-making visit to the Jewish state and occupied West Bank during which he will meet both Israel’s Prime Min-

ister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Kensington Palace has underlined the “non-political nature of His Royal Highness’s role — in common with all royal visits overseas”. But the region is a minefi eld of sensitivities.

The visit comes at a particu-larly volatile time after US Presi-dent Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as capital of Israel and moved Washington’s embassy there, sparking Arab outrage and deadly clashes.

Britain governed the region under a League of Nations man-date for almost three decades until Israel’s independence 70

years ago, and is still blamed by both sides for sowing the seeds of a confl ict that continues to wrack the region.

Ahead of William’s arrival, the offi cial schedule’s reference to east Jerusalem as “in the Oc-cupied Palestinian Territories” sparked anger among right-wing Israeli politicians.

Offi cial visits by British royals take place at the request of the UK government, but statements from the prince’s household have given little explanation for the timing of this trip.

Israel has long pushed for an offi cial visit by a member of the British monarchy.

Other members of William’s family — including his father Prince Charles — have made un-offi cial visits to Israel and east Jerusalem in the past.

During the trip, William will have plenty of reminders of Brit-ain’s role in the region. In Jerusa-lem, he will stay at the King David hotel, which was Britain’s admin-istrative headquarters during its rule of Palestine prior to Israeli statehood in 1948.

In 1946, militant Jews waging violent resistance against British rule bombed the building, killing and wounding scores of people, many of them British civil serv-ants or military personnel.

Britain’s Prince William and Jordan’s Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah during their visit to the Crown Prince Foundation in Amman, yesterday.

Govt says unable to host new wave of refugeesAFPAmman

Jordan said yesterday it would be unable to host a new wave of Syrian refu-

gees, as troops loyal to Damas-cus prepare an off ensive for the war-torn country’s rebel-held south.

“The large number of Syr-ians we’re hosting in terms of fi nancial resources and infra-structure does not allow for the reception of a new wave of asylum seekers,” Jumana Ghanimat, minister of state for media aff airs, said.

Some 650,000 Syrian refu-gees have registered with the United Nations in Jordan since fl eeing their country’s seven-year war which was sparked by peaceful anti-government protests in 2011.

Amman estimates the ac-tual number is closer to 1.3mn people and says it has spent more than $10bn (8.5bn euros) hosting them.

“Jordan has not and will

not abandon its humanitar-ian role and its commitment to international charters, but it has exceeded its ability to absorb (more refugees),” said Ghanimat, who also serves as a spokeswoman for the govern-ment. “Everyone should co-operate to deal with any new wave of displacement within Syria’s borders,” she said, add-ing Jordan would work with “concerned organisations” to fi nd an arrangement for the displaced inside Syria.

Her comments came as Syr-ian government forces ready an off ensive to retake the southern provinces of Daraa, Quneitra and parts of Sweida, still mostly held by rebels.

Southern Syria is a strategi-cally vital zone: it borders both Jordan and the Israeli-occu-pied Golan Heights, and also lies close to Damascus.

After neutralising rebel strongholds on the edge of the capital earlier this year, Presi-dent Bashar al-Assad is now turning his attention to the south.

Trump adviser questions Abbas’ desire for peaceAFPJerusalem

US President Donald Trump’s adviser Jared Kushner yester-day questioned the ability and

willingness of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to make concessions for a peace agreement with Israel.

Kushner’s remarks, made in a rare interview with Palestinian newspaper Al Quds, came as he and special envoy Jason Greenblatt were in the region to advance eff orts to renew the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The US duo have not met with Pal-estinian offi cials, who froze all contact with US offi cials following the Trump administration’s December recogni-tion of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“President Abbas says that he is com-mitted to peace and I have no reason not to believe him,”

Kushner said. “However, I do question how much President Abbas has the abil-ity to, or is willing to, lean into fi nishing

a deal.” “He has his talking points which have not changed in the last 25 years. There has been no peace deal achieved in that time,” Kushner said.

“To make a deal both sides will have to take a leap and meet somewhere be-tween their stated positions. I am not sure President Abbas has the ability to do that.” Kushner and Greenblatt met on Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss “ad-vancing the diplomatic process, devel-opments in the region and the security and humanitarian situations in Gaza”, according to the premier’s offi ce.

They held a second meeting Satur-day night “to continue their discus-sions,” the White House said.

The visit comes after a fl are-up of hostilities between Israel and the Ha-mas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Israel pounded Hamas targets in re-sponse to a barrage of rockets and mor-tar shells, while troops have killed over 130 Palestinians taking part in clashes on the fringes of demonstrations.

Speaking at his cabinet meeting

yesterday, Netanyahu said the US of-fi cials “fully supported our position and actions to ensure the security of Israel and its civilians around Gaza”. The Palestinians have been infuriated by Trump’s policies and see east Jeru-salem as their future capital, insisting the status of the disputed city is an is-sue to be negotiated between them and the Israelis.

Senior Palestinian offi cial and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said yester-day that Kushner’s interview showed “there’s nothing of substance” coming from the Trump Administration.

“Kushner represents a policy of dictation rather than negotiations. It is the Trump Administration that has walked away from the negotiations, from international law and UN resolu-tions,” Erekat said.

Kushner — who has also visited Jor-dan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the trip — told Al Quds they were “almost done” preparing the plan, which could be presented without Palestinian

consent.

Israeli shelling injures three PalestiniansQNAGaza

Three Palestinians were injured in an Israeli shelling in Zaitoun neighbourhood east of Gaza

city yesterday evening. According to the Palestinian news agency, an Israeli drone targeted a group of Palestinians with a missile in Zaitoun neighbour-hood, injuring three of them.

Earlier yesterday, an Israeli drone fired two missiles at a group of Pales-

tinians east of Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

No injuries were reported. The Occupation Forces target Palestin-ian youths in the areas close to the border fence with Gaza Strip on daily basis.

Relatives mourn during the funeral of 29-year-old Osama Khalil Abu Khater, who died after he was shot by Israeli forces during clashes on the Gaza border two days before, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, yesterday.

Egypt to extend state of emergencyReutersCairo

Egypt’s parliament ap-proved yesterday the ex-tension of a nationwide

state of emergency for three months from July 14.

Egypt imposed the emer-gency in 2017 after two church bombings killed at least 45 people. It was last extended in April. Egypt faces an Islamic State insurgency in the remote North Sinai region that has killed hundreds of soldiers, po-licemen and civilians.

AFRICA

Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 20188

32 Fula killed in Mali attack

AFPBamako

At least 32 civilians were killed and ten are missing follow-ing an attack in central Mali,

believed to have been carried out by traditional hunters, local offi cials said yesterday.

Armed Dozo hunters, linked to the Dogon ethnic group, were suspected of ambushing the isolated village of Koumaga in the Mopti region on Sat-urday, killing dozens of Fulani herd-ers, including children.

“They surrounded the village, separated the Fulani people from the others and killed at least 32 civilians in cold blood,” said Abel Aziz Diallo, president of the local Tabila Pullaku association.

Another 10 people were missing, he added.

“The men were dressed in Dozo clothing but we wonder if they were all Dozo hunters,” said an elected of-fi cial from the region, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Malian authorities were not im-mediately available for comment.

Violence has increased over the past three years in central Mali be-tween nomadic Fulani herders and Bambara and Dogon farmers, sparked by accusations of Fulanis grazing cattle on Dogon land and disputes over access to land and water.

Central Mali is a vast area where the state is near-absent and extrem-ists, blamed for exacerbating the dispute, roam with little constraint.

The Bambara and Dogon ethnic groups accuse the pastoralists of col-luding with the extremists.

The armed forces are facing in-creasing accusations of arbitrary arrests and extra-judicial killings in their fi ght against the insurgents.

“What is happening is very seri-ous, we must avoid confusion. Just because we are Fulani, does not mean we are terrorists,” said Diallo.

On May 19 a Malian soldier and at least 12 other people were killed in violence that occurred during an army patrol through a market.

The army said the 12 were “terror-ists” who had been “neutralised”, but local residents said they were civil-ians.

The Malian army is often accused of making arbitrary arrests and car-rying out extra-judicial executions in the fi ght against extremists.

On Thursday, The United States asked for a “credible and transpar-ent” investigation following the discovery of the bodies of 25 Fulani in three mass graves in the Mopti re-gion.

Washington called on Bamako to recognise the involvement of “cer-tain personnel” of the army.

Canada, which will deploy some 250 peacekeepers in Mali in the coming weeks, said it was “deeply concerned” by the alleged military involvement and called for the “per-petrators of these heinous crimes to be brought to justice”.

Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on Friday insisted on “the re-spect of human rights by all the mili-tary, which has an obligation to pro-tect the population”.

Mali’s unrest stems from a 2012 Tuareg separatist uprising against the state which was exploited by ex-tremists in order to take over key cit-ies in the north.

They were largely driven out in a French-led military operation launched in January 2013.

But large stretches of the country remain out of the control of Malian, French and UN forces, which are fre-quent targets of attacks.

Zimbabwe police search formotive after 49 hurt in blastReuters/DPAHarare

Police said yesterday they were searching for a mo-tive for an explosion on

Saturday at Zimbabwean Presi-dent Emmerson Mnangagwa’s election rally that injured 49 people.

Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, the general who led a de facto coup that forced long-time leader Robert Mugabe to re-sign in November, described Sat-urday’s blast as a “terrorist act” that would not stop the July 30 presidential, parliamentary and local elections, Zimbabwe’s fi rst post-Mugabe vote.

“The police will hunt down the criminals. They will be hunted down and they will be brought before the law,” Chiwenga told a campaign rally of the ruling ZANU-PF party in the town of Chitungwiza, 30km south of the capital Harare.

“Let me be very clear, nothing will stop the election in Zimba-bwe, nothing at all,” Chiwenga told supporters in Chitungwiza town near Harare, a day after he sustained slight bruises on his face in the attack.

“We want an election which is free and fair, credible,” Chiwenga told a rally of around 400 sup-porters who raised clenched fi sts, a ZANU-PF symbol, chanting “forward with the president”.

He promised fellow politicians that they will be provided with

security during their election rallies and urged them “we must all continue to campaign peace-fully.”

Mugabe has said he felt be-trayed by Mnangagwa, his former protege, and has called his presi-dency illegal.

Mnangagwa, 75, and Nelson Chamisa, 40, the leader of the opposition Movement for Demo-cratic Change, are the main con-tenders in next month’s vote.

Chiwenga’s wife was among those injured and police said the toll could rise as more people came forward.

National police spokeswoman Charity Charamba said police were pursuing leads after the blast at a stadium in Bulawayo, the opposition heartland where ZANU-PF has lost all national

elections since 2000.Mnangagwa escaped injury.It was not clear who was re-

sponsible for the explosion, which Mnangagwa called a cowardly act, or how the secu-rity around the president was breached.

Mnangagwa adopted most of Mugabe’s security and bureau-cratic system, fearing a complete overhaul, which the military had sought, could cause government instability and cost him votes.

As internal security minister at independence in 1980, Mnan-gagwa built the system that pro-tected Mugabe, but as tensions rose over who would succeed the 94-year-old, it broke into fac-tions.

Without mentioning names, Mnangagwa said there were

some people who did not accept his presidency and his “usual en-emies” were behind the blast.

Two sources close to Mnan-gagwa said some Mugabe loy-alists in the security and gov-ernment establishment were “hurting” over the November coup.

“You cannot say this is a ter-rorist act and neither can you say it was done by state actors who want to take power. These are people who are hurting, who want to harm the president and they have access,” one of the sources told Reuters, declining to be named.

South African President Cyril Rampahosa condemned the at-tack and said the regional South-ern African Development Com-munity would “evaluate the incident and appropriate steps.”

Among Zimbabwe’s small but vibrant Twitter and Facebook communities, people posted the-ories, including accusations this was an inside job meant to gain sympathy votes in an opposition stronghold.

Hasnain Malik, global head of equity research at Exotix Capital said Saturday’s incident could have been a result of tensions within Mnangagwa’s govern-ment.

“There are two long-standing tensions in Zimbabwe: First, within ZANU-PF, between Mnangagwa’s Lacoste faction and Mugabe’s G40 factions, with an undertone of tribal tension,” Malik said in a note to investors.

Paramedics assist an injured ZANU PF supporter disembark from an ambulance at Mpilo hospital in Bulawayo late on Saturday.

Ethiopia PM rally attack toll risesDPAAddis Ababa

A second person has died after succumbing to their injuries in hospital following an explosion at a po-litical rally in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, the

country’s health minister has confi rmed.“My sincere sympathy and condolences to the family,

friends and all Ethiopians,” the minister, Amir Aman, said yesterday, the day after the attack.

Over 150 people were injured in the explosion at the po-litical rally as organizers claimed that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was the target of the attack.

Nine police offi cials were detained following the blast, state broadcaster ETV reported.

Those detained include the deputy head of the Addis Ababa Police Commission, the report said.

An eyewitness told DPA that the person behind the at-tack was “a policeman in uniform.”

Prime Minister Abiy, who visited some of the injured in hospital, described the blast as a “well-orchestrated at-tack,” but did not speculate further on the possible culprit or motive. He also confi rmed on his Facebook page that two people had died and 156 had been injured. He added that 44 people had been taken to hospital, and fi ve of them were in a critical condition.

Togo test drives hi-tech orthopaedic careBy Emile Kouton, AFPLome

In a consulting room in Togo’s capital, Lome, Geraldo Em-manuel — handicapped since

birth six years ago — waits pa-tiently on a bed while a digital scan is taken of his right leg.

Thanks to new 3D technology, he may be able to walk normally within a few months.

“The child walks on his toes so I’m scanning his leg so we can make him an orthotic using a 3D printer,” said Enyonam Ekpoh, from Togo’s National Orthopae-dic and Physiotherapy Centre.

A few hours later, Adjovi Kou-dahe, 46, has tests to receive a 3D brace for her right leg, which has been paralysed since a car acci-dent in 2012.

“I’ve stopped doing anything because I’m in pain. I can’t walk properly anymore,” said the former trader, who limps heavily, aided by a crutch.

“Despite all the treatment I’ve had, my leg won’t respond and drags along the ground. But with the brace they want to make here, I’ve got high hopes.”

Three-dimensional print-ing is a fast-track way to make individually-tailored prosthetics and orthopaedic supports that compensate for a lack of a limb, deformity or paralysis.

The technology, initiated by a charity called Handicap Interna-tional, allows the bespoke devic-

es to be produced faster and reach a larger number of patients.

But if it is familiar to orthopaedic clinics in rich countries, it has yet to be introduced to poorer countries where needs are greater and the so-cial safety net much smaller.

Only 5% to 15% of people in low income countries who need a prosthetic limb or orthopaedic brace get one, according to the non-profi t organisation based in France.

Handicap International — re-cently renamed Humanity & In-clusion — is pushing ahead with research and clinical trials to see how the technology can be used in poor settings.

In 2016, it carried out clinical trials of three types of lower limb prosthetics in Madagascar, Syria and Togo, the results of which were highly encouraging.

A more ambitious project called “3D Impact” has been running in Togo, Mali and Niger since November last year, where 100 patients are getting made-to-measure 3D devices for free.

The project is backed by 700,000 euros ($816,000) of funding from the Belgian Devel-opment Agency.

Fifty of the 100 patients will be in Togo, where many handi-caps aff ecting mobility are linked to strokes or infectious diseases such as polio, said Impact 3D manager Simon Miriel.

3D printing is revolutionary for doctors working in confl ict zones or even just hard-to-reach areas:

the scanner is the size of about two mobile phones and very easy to transport.

One has been tested at a re-gional orthopaedic centre in Dapaong, some 620km by road north of the capital.

Normally, patients far from hospitals would have had to trav-el to have casts taken.

“It saves us a lot of time,” said Miriel. “As need be, scans can be sent directly by telephone to the specialist in charge of making the digital orthotic on a 3D printer.”

In all, four 3D scanners are be-ing used in the three countries.

The project’s two printers are located in a laboratory in Ave-pozo, some 15km from Lome, and work non-stop to produce all the orthopaedic devices.

Togo is a good choice, said Mir-iel. “It is one of the few countries

in West Africa which has a good structure for orthopaedic care.”

Specialists from across the re-gion are trained at the National School of Medical Auxiliaries, which is a partner in the project.

The test phase is expected to fi nish before the end of the year, and will be followed by a long evaluation about the successes and problems, costs and benefi ts.

But, if all goes well, the cost of 3D orthopaedic devices will fall dramatically, the charity hopes.

The devices that were tested in 2016 were printed overseas and cost between 1,500 and 2,000 euros each ($1,745 to $2,330) — a huge sum in West Africa, where the average wage often does not exceed $100 a month.

But once the devices are made in-country, they will become “a lot more accessible”, said Miriel.

Emmanuel Geraldo, 5, is helped by a technician with his new 3D printed prosthetic support at Togo’s National Orthopaedic and Physiotherapy Centre in Lome.

AMERICA9Gulf Times

Monday, June 25, 2018

Court to rule on Trump’s travel ban, other casesBy Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung, Reuters Washington

The US Supreme Court, wind-ing down its nine-month term, will issue rulings this week in its

few remaining cases including a major one on the legality of President Don-ald Trump’s ban on people from fi ve Muslim-majority nations entering the country.

The nine justices are due to decide other politically sensitive cases on whether non-union workers have to pay fees to unions representing certain public-sector workers such as police and teachers, and the legality of Cali-fornia regulations on clinics that steer women with unplanned pregnancies away from abortion.

The justices began their term in Oc-tober and, as is their usual practice, aim to make all their rulings by the end of June, with more due today.

Six cases remain to be decided.The travel ban case was argued on

April 25, with the court’s conserva-tive majority signaling support for Trump’s policy in a signifi cant test of presidential powers.

Trump has said the ban is needed to protect the United States from attacks by Islamic militants.

Conservative justices indicated an unwillingness to second-guess Trump on his national security rationale.

Lower courts had blocked the trav-el ban, the third version of a policy Trump fi rst pursued a week after tak-ing offi ce last year.

But the top court on December 4 al-lowed it to go fully into eff ect while the legal challenge continued.

The challengers, led by the state of Hawaii, have argued the policy was motivated by Trump’s enmity toward Muslims.

Lower courts have decided the ban violated federal immigration law and the US Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring one religion over another.

The current ban, announced in Sep-tember, prohibits entry into the United States by most people from Iran, Lib-ya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

In a signifi cant case for organized labor, the court’s conservatives indi-cated opposition during arguments on February 26 to so-called agency fees that some states require non-mem-bers to pay to public-sector unions.

Workers who decide not to join un-ions representing certain state and local employees must pay the fees in two dozen states in lieu of union dues to help cover the cost of non-political activities such as collective bargaining.

The fees provide millions of dollars annually to these unions.

The justices seemed sceptical dur-ing March 20 arguments toward Cali-fornia’s law requiring Christian-based anti-abortion centers, known as cri-sis pregnancy centers, to post notices about the availability of state-subsi-dized abortions and birth control.

The justices indicated that they would strike down at least part of the regulations.

Han Solo’s Return of the Jedi blaster auctioned off for whopping $550,000

In the wildly popular Star Wars films,

Han Solo once told a lightsaber-wield-

ing Luke Skywalker: “Hokey religions

and ancient weapons are no match

for a good blaster at your side, kid.”

That was the case when one of the

blaster pistol props used by Harrison

Ford in Return of the Jedi (1983)

went under the hammer, selling for

$550,000 — topping the $450,000

previously fetched by Skywalker’s

lightsaber from the first two films.

“SOLD for $550,000! An original

Han Solo blaster used in Star Wars:

Return of the Jedi!” Julien’s Auctions

announced on Twitter over the

weekend.

The faux weapon, mainly made

of wood, had been put on display in

New York by Julien’s Auctions last

month after more than 30 years

tucked away in the belongings of

James Schoppe, art director of

Return of the Jedi.

Martin Nolan, the auction house’s

executive director, said Schoppe, an

Oscar nominee for his work on the

film, finally decided to part with Solo’s

gun and about 40 other items from

the movie, including an Ewok axe and

plans for Jabba the Hutt’s ship.

The Ewok axe went for $11,250,

while another blaster prop from the

film fetched $90,624, according to

Julien’s Auctions.

But none of the props were a

match for the space saga’s much-

loved droid: last year, an R2-D2 used

in the making of several Star Wars

films sold for $2.76 mn at auction in

Los Angeles.

As Facebook ages, teens look elsewhere to connectBy Julie Charpentrat, AFPSan Francisco

Manon, 17, has a Facebook ac-count but to connect with her friends she turns to other so-

cial networks like Instagram or Snap-chat.

“I don’t use it to post status updates or personal information,” the San Francisco teen says.

Manon maintains her Facebook ac-count to be able to stay in touch with the large number of users on the huge social network and as a “gateway” to log into other apps.

“But to communicate with my friends, it’s Snapchat,” the high schooler said.

“Everyone says Facebook is out of date. I think it’s because all the parents are on Facebook.”

As Facebook has grown into a net-work of more than 2bn people globally it has lost its luster for younger users who made up a core base.

While Facebook has become one of the world’s most valuable and power-ful companies, it’s no longer seen as a cool destination for teens, who are turning to Snapchat and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

According to a Pew Research Center survey this year, 51% of US teens ages 13 to 17 use Facebook, compared with 72% for Instagram and 69% who are on Snapchat.

The survey found 85% used the Google video sharing service YouTube.

The landscape has shifted since a 2014-15 Pew survey which found Fa-cebook leading other social networks with 71% of the teen segment.

“The social media environment among teens is quite diff erent from

what it was just three years ago,” said Pew researcher Monica Anderson.

“Back then, teens’ social media use mostly revolved around Facebook. To-day, their habits revolve less around a single platform.”

The breakup of teens and Facebook was occurring before the latest scan-dals which have hit Facebook over hi-jacked user data and propagation of misinformation.

According to a Forrester Research survey 34% of US online youth view Facebook “as a website for old people and parents.” “US online youth regard Facebook as utility, while other net-works that deliver niche value steal attention from Facebook’s broad plat-form,” said Forrester’s Anjali Lai in a research note. “Established social net-works face an image problem.”

A separate report by the research fi rm eMarketer came to a similar conclusion,

estimating that Facebook would lose some 2mn US users under age 24 this year.

Facebook remains king of the social media space and is still growing, though more slowly than in past years. Its profi t in the fi rst quarter of 2018 jumped 63% from a year ago to $5bn, and total rev-enues increased 49% to $11.97bn.

And the California company has been moving to become more diver-sifi ed, with its “family” of apps that include Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, and virtual reality gear from its Oculus division.

To connect with younger audiences, Facebook has launched a parentally-controlled Messenger Kids app for those too young to have their own Fa-cebook account, and recently expand-ed that to Peru and Canada.

Facebook is also moving to challenge YouTube, and potentially other serv-ices like Netfl ix, with original video

on its own platform and on Instagram, which now has 1bn users.

With 2.2bn users, Facebook still has a big lead over Snapchat, with 191mn us-ers at the end of March, and Twitter with 336mn. “Snapchat has a lot of growing to do before it can really be a huge challenger to Facebook,” said Debra Williamson, so-cial media analyst at eMarketer.

But the trends show services like Insta-gram and Snapchat — which has grown beyond its original off ering of disappear-ing messages — have become the new, cool place for young smartphone users.

With Snapchat, “you can add ani-mation, special eff ects, that’s what’s interesting for my generation,” said 16-year-old Charlotte, another San Francisco high school student.

Manon said she also likes Instagram because it is “more about creativity, people who make music or photogra-phy can post what they do.”

More than 500 kids ‘reunited’ after US border separationsAFP Washington

More than 500 children sepa-rated from family members under the US “zero toler-

ance” immigration policy have been reunited, administration offi cials say, after confusion followed President Donald Trump’s sudden backtracking on the practice.

Releasing its fi rst offi cial data since Trump on Wednesday ended the fam-ily separations — but without an im-mediate plan for putting parents and children back together — the Depart-ment of Homeland Security said the reunifi cation process “is well coordi-nated.”

It said 522 children separated as part of “zero tolerance” have been reunited with their families, but another 2,053 separated minors remained in the care of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

“The United States government knows the location of all children in its custody and is working to reunite them with their families,” Homeland Securi-ty said in a statement late on Saturday.

Trying to stanch the fl ow of tens of thousands of migrants from Central America and Mexico arriving at the southern border every month, Trump in early May had ordered that all adults crossing illegally would be arrested, and their children held separately as a result.

After images of children in chain-link enclosures sparked domestic and global outrage, Trump ended the sepa-ration practice but has continued his hardline talk on immigration.

He sees the issue as crucial ahead

of midterm congressional elections in November.

“We cannot allow all of these peo-ple to invade our Country,” Trump said yesterday on Twitter.

“When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came,” said Trump, sug-gesting they be handled without the due legal process guaranteed for “any person” by the US Constitution.

Nearly all of the arriving families have offi cially requested asylum.

“Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Or-der,” said Trump, who has repeatedly tried to link immigrants with crime.

Fleeing from impoverished Cen-tral America, the arrivals say they are seeking a better life and also a refuge from criminal gangs terrorizing their region, which has one of the world’s highest murder rates.

Central American migrants deport-ed from the US without their children have spoken of their anguish at seeing families split under the “zero toler-ance” approach.

Trump’s former deputy national se-curity advisor, Tom Bossert, said the past week had provided “terrible op-tics” for the administration, and “al-most from the outset we didn’t have the capacity to detain these parents and children, together or separately.”

Speaking on ABC’s This Week, Bos-sert predicted that Trump’s executive order ending the family separations will not stand up in court because a judge had ruled in 2015 that even de-taining parents and children together is “inhumane.”

US lawmakers yesterday spoke of the need for a longer-term solution.

But in a poisoned political climate, they have failed to advance either of two Republican immigration bills in the House of Representatives, which the Re-publicans control along with the Senate.

A hardline proposal was defeated last week, as expected, and a vote on a “compromise” bill between the party’s

hard-right and moderate factions has been pushed back, with signs it could not pass.

Trump and other hardline Republi-cans accuse opposition Democrats of being soft on crime and immigration.

On Saturday, former Republican presidential hopeful Mike Hucka-

bee posted a picture on Twitter of MS-13 gang members and joked that the heavily tattooed Latinos were the “campaign committee” for top Demo-crat Nancy Pelosi.

Trump frequently brings up the Hispanic gang when he talks of immi-gration.

Protestors led by a coalition of interfaith religious leaders demonstrate against US immigration policy that separates parents from their children outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, California, on Saturday. The Otay Mesa Detention Center, owned and operated by private prison company CoreCivic, has an inmate population that includes detainees of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Restaurant asks Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders to leaveAFPWashington

A Virginia restaurant was inun-dated with reviews from both ends of the political spectrum

over the weekend after White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said its owner asked her to leave because of her job.

On Friday, a Facebook user claim-ing to be a waiter at The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia — around 110km southwest of Charlottesville — said he served Sanders “for a total of 2 min-utes” before she and her party were asked to leave.

His post went viral when Bren-nan Gilmore, a musician, activist and former US diplomat, uploaded a screenshot to Twitter alongside an im-age of a handwritten note which read “86 — Sara Huckabee Sanders,” sup-posedly from the restaurant. To “86” someone is a slang term meaning to refuse to serve a customer.

“Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I po-litely left,” Sanders tweeted on Satur-day, confi rming the incident.

“Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, re-spectfully and will continue to do so.”

Chef-owner Stephanie Wilkinson said that politics were especially ex-plosive in her small town which voted against Trump in a county that did not.

Given her own moral position that the spokeswoman serves in an “inhu-mane and unethical” administration, Wilkinson told The Washington Post, she could not accept a defender of the president’s “cruelest policies.”

“I’m not a huge fan of confronta-tion,” Wilkinson said.

“I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when peo-ple have to make uncomfortable ac-tions and decisions to uphold their morals,” she stressed.

She said she was stunned by the spokeswoman’s defense of Trump pol-icies leading to migrant children being taken from their parents’ care.

“I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compas-sion, and cooperation,” the owner ex-plained.

“I said, ‘I’d like to ask you to leave.’”The restaurant continued to be

fl ooded on Saturday afternoon with fi ve-star online reviews praising the restaurant’s stance — and one-star reviews accusing the owner of “dis-crimination.”

“Sarah, you’re a class act. I’m so sorry you were treated this way,” was

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert’s response on Twitter.

It comes after US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled as she dined at a Mexican restaurant in Washington last Tues-day.

Protestors chanted “shame! shame!” repeatedly at Nielsen, a frontline defender of the Trump ad-ministration’s practice of separating migrant children from their parents, until she left the restaurant.

Two days earlier, according to the New York Post, White House adviser Stephen Miller was branded a “fascist” while dining at another Mexican eatery in Washington.

Ugliest of them all!Zsa Zsa, an English Bulldog, takes the stage during The World’s Ugliest Dog Competition in Petaluma, north of San Francisco, California on Saturday. Zsa Zsa won first place and was awarded $1500, a trophy, and will be flown to New York for media appearances.

S Carolina winning candidate seriously hurt in car crash

South Carolina Republican congressional candidate Katie Arrington, who ousted incumbent US Representative Mark San-

ford in a primary this month, was seriously injured in a car crash that killed the driver of a second vehicle, her campaign said on Saturday.

Arrington, 47, was the passenger in a car driven by a friend on Friday night when a ve-hicle traveling in the wrong direction struck them on Highway 17 in Charleston County as they were going to Hilton Head where Ar-rington was to receive an award from a state medical organization, her campaign said.

Campaign spokesman Michael Mule said Arrington will defi nitely stay in the race for Congress. “She’s determined, if not more than ever, to get back on the trail,” Mule told the Post and Courier newspaper of Charleston.

Tim Scott, a Republican US Senator from South Carolina, told the same newspaper: “There is no doubt she will make a strong re-covery.”

Arrington broke her back and several ribs, and sustained injuries that required her to un-dergo major surgery including the removal of a portion of her small intestine and part of her colon, her campaign said in a statement.

It said a main artery in one of Arrington’s legs collapsed and that she will require additional surgery and will be hospitalised for two weeks.

Local media said the candidate’s friend, Jac-queline Goff , 59, of Mandeville, Louisiana, was in critical condition.

The Charleston County coroner’s offi ce named the woman killed in the crash as Helen White, 69, of Ravenel, South Carolina.

Arrington, a state representative, defeated Sanford, who at times was critical of US Presi-dent Donald Trump in a primary on June 13.

Trump tweeted on Saturday that his “thoughts and prayers are with Representative Katie Arrington of South Carolina, including all of those involved in last nights car accident, and their families.”

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA

Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 201810

Thailand banks on tech to end abuses in fi shing industry

Under growing consum-er pressure, Thailand has introduced a raft

of modern technologies since 2015 – from satellites to optical scanning and electronic pay-ment services – to crack down on abuses in its multibillion-dollar fi shing industry.

It is one of a growing number

of countries using innovation to deal with modern slavery, from mobile apps in India to block-chain in Moldova, but experts warn against over-reliance on tech as a silver bullet without stronger workers’ rights.

“Technology can be a dou-ble-edged sword,” said Patima Tungpuchayakul, co-founder of the Labour Rights Promotion Network Foundation, a Thai advocacy group.

“It has become an excuse the government is using to justify they have done something, but in practice they don’t use it to solve the problem.”

More than half the estimated 600,000 industry workers are migrants, often from neigh-bouring countries such as Cam-bodia and Myanmar, United

Nations (UN) data shows.After the European Union

threatened to ban fi sh exports from Thailand, and the US State Department said it was fail-ing to tackle human traffi ck-ing, the Southeast Asian coun-try toughened up its laws and increased fi nes for violations.

It banned the use of workers aged below 18 and ordered fi sh-ermen to be given contracts and be paid through electronic bank transfers.

Authorities ordered Thai vessels operating outside na-tional waters to have satellite communications for workers to contact their families or report problems at sea, plus tracking devices to spot illegal fi shing.

“We are serious in law enforcement regard-

ing human traffi cking and illegal labour cases,” said Weer-achon Sukhontapatipak, a Thai government spokesman.

“There might not be abrupt change... it will take time.”

Thailand is also rolling out an ambitious plan, using iris, facial and fi ngerprint scans to record fi shermen’s identities to make sure they are on the boats they are registered with and help inspectors spot traffi cking victims.

Rights groups meanwhile have tried to use satellites to pinpoint the location of ships that remain at sea for long pe-riods, potentially indicating enslavement.

But human traffi cking ex-pert Benjamin Smith said us-ing satellites to tackle slavery at sea was not easy unless there

is a lead on where to track in the vast ocean.

“I think people underesti-mate the size of the ocean and the ability to pinpoint where something as small as a boat is,” Smith from the UN Offi ce on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.

“If you have good informa-tion, intelligence, then satellite images can be good... It has to be a small part of a much bigger eff ort.”

Smith also highlighted diffi -culties prosecuting cross-bor-der traffi cking cases and mari-time police funding shortages, adding that continued consum-er pressure on fi rms to clean up their supply chains could be a potent force to help end slavery.

“That’s probably the best

way you can start,” he said.Thailand has also pledged to

ratify two other conventions on collective bargaining and the right to organise, which campaigners say would better protect seafood workers.

This would be good news for Thai and Migrant Fishers Un-ion Group (TMFG), which has helped rescue more than 60 people since 2015, but has no legal status as Thai law does not permit fi sher unions, lead-ing rights advocates to use other terms, like workers’ groups.

“There are still lots of vic-tims, and I want to help them,” said Tun Lin of TMFG. “As fi sh-ermen who have suff ered in a similar manner, we understand each other’s needs and are able to help better.”

After the EU threatens to ban fish exports from Thailand, and the US says it is failing to tackle human traff icking, Thailand toughens up its laws and increases fines for violations in multibillion-dollar fishing sector

Thomson Reuters FoundationSamut Sakhon/Bangkok

Lanka arrests villagers for killing leopardPolice in Sri Lanka yesterday arrested two men accused of beating a leopard to death in a “sickening” attack that was captured on film and sparked revulsion.The pair were accused of killing the big cat on Thursday after it attacked nearly a dozen people in a village 330km (210 miles) north of Colombo.Gruesome images of the leopard, a protected species in Sri Lanka, being savagely beaten were shared on social media, generating widespread disgust.“It is sickening to see these images,” Wildlife Deputy Minister Palitha Thewarapperuma told parliament as he promised swift action to arrest the perpetrators.Police said the two men were remanded in custody by a court as investigations continued to track down the others responsible.“We have the two main suspects in custody, but we are looking for 10 others who have aided the killing,” a police spokesman said.Sri Lanka’s leopards are on the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of endangered animals.

Oli: Rail link to enhance connectivity with China

Nepali Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli yester-day said that his recent

visit to China was instrumental in enhancing bilateral co-op-eration between the two coun-tries in wide-ranging areas in-cluding cross-border railroad connectivity.

Oli made the remarks upon his arrival at the Kathmandu Inter-national Airport after paying a six-day visit to China that began on June 19, reports Xinhua news agency.

“The two sides discussed

deepening friendship, mutual trust and understanding so as to further strengthen the political relationship between Nepal and China,” Oli said.

The Chinese leadership pledged to extend support to the Nepali government’s endeavours to achieve political stability and economic prosperity under the slogan of “Prosperous Nepal, Happy Nepali”, according to Oli.

He said the two sides chalked out a framework for long-term co-operation in the fi elds of rail-road connectivity, energy, trans-portation, infrastructure devel-opment, investment, tourism, and people-to-people contacts under the Belt and Road initiative.

“Especially, a memorandum of understanding on cross bor-der railway signed between the two sides during the visit has paved the way for further en-hancing cross-border connec-tivity between the two countries in the days to come,” the prime minister said, referring to the proposed cross-border railway line connecting Nepal’s capital Kathmandu with the Chinese border town of Kerung.

Oli said the two sides agreed to jointly build railways, roads, ports, and air links under the trans-Himalayan multi-dimen-sional connectivity network as part of the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative.

IANSKathmandu

Nepali Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli

The two sides also promised to implement landmark bilateral agreements including the tran-sit transport agreement reached between the two governments in March 2016 during his visit to China, he added.

This was Oli’s fi rst offi cial visit to China after returning to pow-er in February and the second foreign trip after India.

Lankan port eyeing $500mn investment

Sri Lanka’s southern Ham-bantota Port is aiming to attract investments

worth $500mn as plans are afoot to set up port related in-dustries inside the port as well as general operation expan-sion, Ports Minister Mahinda Samarasingha has said.

China Merchant Port Holdings (CM Port) and state-owned Sri Lanka Ports Authority in July last year signed an agreement to man-age and run the operations of the Hambantota Port,

Xinhua news agency reported. Following the signing, the

Hambantota International Port Group (HIPG) was set up, which is a joint venture com-pany formed by the Sri Lankan government and CM Port.

Samarasingha said that to date, HIPG received 15 propos-als to set up plants inside the port from local to international investors.

With the establishment of the joint venture with CM Port, the port has been able to double the number of transshipment vehicles handled from 15,000 to 35,000 per quarter, the minister said.

He said that although

from quarter-to-quarter, the number of ships re-mained the same, the number of transshipment vehicles handled had doubled at the Hambantota Port.

“It is through the global network that CM Port has that we were able to increase the numbers,” Chief Oper-ating Offi cer of HIPG, Tissa Wickramasinghe said.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe ear-lier called the Hambantota Port “the largest multi-purpose port in Sri Lanka that will add to the country’s concept of transforming into a hub in the Indian Ocean”.

IANSColombo

NZ premier hopes for new world for daughter NeveAFPAuckland

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed her newborn daughter would be called Neve as she left an Auckland hospital yesterday, and expressed hope that one day a woman giving birth in off ice would no longer be a “novelty”.Speaking publicly for the first time since her delivery on Friday – which made waves around the world – Ardern said she and her partner Clarke Gayford had settled on the full name of Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford for their first child. “We chose Neve because we just liked it, and when we met her we thought she looked like she suited the name,” the 37-year-old told reporters as she cradled her daughter in her arms.

Ardern, who said the couple kept a short list of names, added that Neve meant “bright and radiant and snow”, while Te Aroha was the name of a rural town some 140km southeast of Auckland where

her family is from.The New Zealand leader said she was blown away by well-wishes locally and internationally, including from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke and Duchess of

Jacinda Ardern carries her newborn baby Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford with her partner Clarke Gayford as she walks out of the Auckland Hospital in New Zealand, yesterday.

Sussex, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan. “We wanted to say thank you (to New Zealanders for their support) and we are all doing really well. Sleep deprived, but super well,” she said.Ardern is only the second world leader to give birth while in off ice, after former Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto, and said she hoped such experiences would not be unusual in the future. “Hopefully, these things said in these moments now, I guess for want of a better word – novelty, they are still new – that one day they aren’t new anymore,” she said. “And that it’s generally accepted, not just that women can make choices, but actually that men can too,” Ardern added, referring to Gayford, who was standing beside her.Her partner, a 40-year-old television fishing personality, will be a stay-at-home dad while the prime minister will return to work after six weeks’ maternity

leave. “Clarke’s been as much of a role model here as I am, and that’s something that I think a lot of people talk about too and it’s true,” Ardern said.“So I hope for little girls and boys that actually there’s a future where they can make choices about how they raise their family and what kind of career they have that is just based on what they want and it makes them happy.”Former New Zealand PM Helen Clark had said the couple was sending sent a significant message to the world and were “inspirational” for younger men and women. The birth capped an eventful year for Ardern, who became prime minister in October just three months after taking charge of the Labour Party as it languished in the polls. Her deputy Winston Peters is now acting prime minister, although Ardern will continue to be consulted on significant issues.

Vietnamese craftsman making World Cup mascots from eggshells

Football scarves, shirts and... eggshell art? World Cup swag has

taken a quirky turn in Vietnam where a retired schoolteacher is making mascot memora-bilia from hollowed-out eggs, meticulously crafted by hand.

Nguyen Thanh Tam, 67, spends hours every day mak-ing the models, driven by his football fanaticism – a passion shared by millions across Vi-etnam glued to the World Cup since the tournament kicked off in Russia earlier this month.

Most of his tiny statues are of tournament mascot Za-bivaka, a wolf in sports gog-gles kicking a football, and he has models of football heroes Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in the works.

“Over the past few years, I have been spending my time making football mascots with eggshells as a way for me to show my love for football,” Tam said, speaking before a basket of eggs in his Ho Chi Minh City home.

Though not widespread in Vietnam, using eggshells in art is not unheard of: tra-ditional lacquer works often

feature inlaid eggshell in lieu of white paint.

“I love this work because it requires me to be creative, observant, meticulous and relaxed,” Tam added.

He fi rst developed the unique hobby around Christ-mas in 2002, when he was looking for the right material to make a Santa statue with his 13-year-old students.

Tam decided that an egg-shell perfectly captured Saint Nick’s rotund belly.

He eventually married his passion for crafts and foot-ball and started making World Cup mascots during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Now he has about 1,000 of the small fi gurines scattered throughout his apartment, some commemorating the 2016 Rio Olympics and Euro 2016 in France.

Others are of celebrities – Charlie Chaplin, Barack Obama, and Gangnam Style’s PSY all feature in his collec-tion – or birds and animals, like his porcine series to mark the Year of the Pig in 2019.

Tam says the biggest chal-lenge is fi nding the right egg shape to fi t the creation, so he has expanded beyond chicken eggs to include ostrich and quail.

AFPHo Chi Minh City

Nguyen Thanh Tam displaying various Football World Cup mascots including Fuleco (front R), the 2014 Brazil World Cup mascot, at his home in Ho Chi Minh City.

Cambodian female blogger tackles taboos via Facebook

A taboo-busting video blog called “A Dose of Cath” unabashedly wrestles

with hush-hush topics in con-servative Cambodia, drawing both applause and abuse in the patriarchal country.

Hosted on Facebook, the show by a 23-year-old Cambodian woman tackles the fi ner points of sex education, women’s health and gender imbalances in a country where the #MeToo movement has barely registered.

A recent episode on a well-known 19th-century Cam-bodian poem that used to be taught in schools and advises women not to laugh too loudly

gained nearly 350,000 views. The videos feature Catherine

Harry, the pen name of the self-described feminist who featured in Forbes’ 2018 “30 under 30” list of outstanding leaders and entrepreneurs in Asia.

Having ditched her birth name more than 10 years ago, Cath is following in the footsteps of other Cambodian writers and media personalities turning to blogs and social media to make a name for themselves.

But few have waded so deeply into the sensitive social issues that Cath confronts in short no-frills monologues fi lmed in her Phnom Penh apartment.

“What I expect to get from what I’m doing, from my videos, is to start a conversation, because the topics that I talk about, people

don’t really talk about,” she said.Statistics point to an urgent

need for conversations in a king-dom where one in fi ve Cambo-dian men surveyed as part of a 2014 UN study admitted to having committed rape.

Cath has shared her own #Me-Too experiences to help spur de-bate, but said those who speak out in Cambodia face victim-blaming or even violence.

“If a woman talks about her experiences of sexual assault or sexual harassment, she will be rejected by society, by her fam-ily, her friends,” she said.

And while 65% of all busi-nesses in Cambodia are run by women, the country’s major po-litical and fi nancial institutions are still male-dominated.

Cath, who studies mass me-

AFPPhnom Penh

dia at Pannasastra University in Phnom Penh, started the “vlog” in early 2016 and it is now a full-time job, monetised through product placements.

Raymond Leos, one of her pro-fessors, brings up Cath when dis-cussing a wider trend of students moving beyond traditional career paths and family expectations.

“They’re very technologically savvy, they’re very sophisticat-ed, and they’re very independent in their thinking,” he said.

“A Dose of Cath” has found a ready audience in a country where one third of the 15mn population is under 30 and smartphone usage has more than doubled over the past fi ve years, helping her amass more than 200,000 followers on Facebook.

Cath says men have harassed her by sending pornographic im-ages to the account, while she is frequently accused of denigrat-ing Khmer culture and being indecent.

Cambodian blogger using the pen name Catherine Harry, editing a video for her blog in her Phnom Penh studio.

BRITAIN11Gulf Times

Monday, June 25, 2018

Grayling under

attack for pulling

out of crucial

transport meetGuardian News and MediaLondon

Chris Grayling has been ac-cused of “running scared” after he pulled out of a key

transport summit in Manchester because it clashes with a House of Commons vote on Heathrow expansion.

The transport secretary had been due to appear at the Place North West conference today alongside political leaders from across the region following weeks of rail misery for commut-ers.

Organisers confi rmed Grayling would not attend the summit and would instead send Liz Sugg, the parliamentary undersecretary of state for transport, to give a pres-entation in his place.

The about-turn was con-demned by Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who said it told commuters “all you need to know about the government’s transport priori-ties”.

Instead of addressing rail is-sues in the north of England, Grayling is to attend a Commons vote expected to approve plans for a third runway at Heathrow. They will be opposed by a hand-ful of prominent Conservatives including Greg Hands, who re-signed as international trade minister last week so he could vote against expansion.

Lisa Nandy, the Labour MP for Wigan, criticised Grayling for choosing London over the north.

“After four weeks of rail chaos and real misery for rail passen-gers across the north of England, it’s unbelievable that Grayling has decided to prioritise dealing with issues in London around Heathrow rather than coming here to the north of England to explain what he’s going to do to get a grip on the problems occur-

ring under this watch,” she said.“It’s yet another kick in the

teeth for rail commuters and it says everything you need to know about the contempt with which this government holds the north of England.”

Commuters across the region have faced hundreds of cancella-tions and delays since Northern rail introduced a new timetable on May 20. Northern, a subsidi-ary of Arriva, has blamed the dis-ruption on delayed engineering works and a shortage of trained drivers.

The rail conference will take place days after the publication of private e-mails in which of-fi cials in Grayling’s department described some northern routes as “valueless”, in comments that showed “complete disrespect and contempt” for passengers, said Nandy.

The situation was made worse last week by three 24-hour strikes by some Northern staff over a long-running safety dis-pute about guards on trains. Earlier this month, the RMT union said it planned to demon-strate outside the Hilton hotel in central Manchester, where the meeting is taking place, as part of the dispute and what they de-scribed as the “ongoing rail fran-chise fi asco”.

Mick Cash, the RMT gen-eral secretary, said: “Grayling is running scared. He’s scared of the passengers he’s hung out to dry and he’s scared of the staff whose safety-critical jobs his franchise shambles have left facing the axe.

“Grayling may have chickened out of meeting RMT members and their supporters today, but I’ve got a message for him – you can run but you can’t hide.”

The department for transport has yet to comment on Grayling’s absence from the event and could not be reached yesterday.

Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, speaks on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show in London yesterday.

Hunt slams Airbus forBrexit jobs warningsGuardian News and MediaLondon

Jeremy Hunt has called warn-ings by the aerospace giant Airbus about the UK’s Brexit

strategy “completely inappro-priate,” saying the government should ignore the “siren voices”.

In the most bullish comments yet from a Cabinet minister since the warning from the company’s chief executive, Hunt said busi-nesses sounding the alarm about job losses risked undermining the government at a key moment in the negotiations.

“It was completely inappro-priate for businesses to be mak-ing these kinds of threats, for one simple reason,” the health secre-tary told the BBC’s Andrew Marr

Show yesterday. “We are in a critical moment in the Brexit dis-cussions. We need to get behind Theresa May to deliver the best possible Brexit, a clean Brexit.”

Hunt said the best way for businesses to achieve the “clar-ity and certainty” they needed was to back the prime minister in her negotiations with Brussels. “The more we undermine May, the more likely we are to end up with a fudge which would be an absolute disaster for everyone,” he said.

His comments were echoed by the International Trade Secre-tary, Liam Fox, who said the UK’s negotiating position was being undermined by those urging the government to take “no deal” off the table.

“If we actually say we’ll ac-

cept any deal you give us rather than walk away, that weakens our negotiating position,” he told Sky’s Ridge yesterday. “And peo-ple who are making these com-ments need to understand that they may be actually putting the UK at a disadvantage by making these cases.”

Over the weekend, the car gi-ant BMW followed Airbus in warning about the consequenc-es of Brexit uncertainty, saying the company needed clarity on customs arrangements within months. Airbus, which employs 14,000 people, has said “a no-deal scenario directly threatens Airbus’ future in the UK”.

Further pressure came as the biggest business groups in the UK wrote a stinging letter to the prime minister, as well as to the

European council president, Donald Tusk, and the Euro-pean commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, yesterday, demanding greater input for business in the negotiations.

Business leaders have been further angered by reports that the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, allegedly contemp-tuously dismissed businesses’ Brexit concerns at a diplomatic reception this month.

Hunt said it was not surprising there was concern by corpora-tions about the impact of Brexit but said it was not in the interests of the European commission to say negotiations were going well. “That’s part of their negotiating tactics,” he said.

“We have to ignore these si-ren voices ... get on and support

May. If you look at the approach May has taken to Brexit so far, she has the instincts of a Brexiteer but the cautious pragmatism of a Remainer, which is where I think the British people are.

“She brings incredible resil-ience and we have to allow her to get on and negotiate this deal.”

Hunt also dismissed criti-cism of government claims that the £20bn spending boost to the NHS would come partly from a “Brexit dividend” – which the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said does not exist, given eco-nomic forecasts about the impact on growth of leaving the EU.

He said there would not be “very much” extra cash by the time Britain leaves the EU in 2019, given the fi nancial settle-ment with the EU.

Williamson allies reject reports of bid to topple premierGuardian News and MediaLondon

Allies of Gavin Wil-liamson, the defence secretary, have moved

to quash reports that he had threatened to topple the prime minister unless defence spend-ing was increased, but warned there was signifi cant backbench anger over Theresa May’s re-fusal to confi rm the UK would

remain a “tier one” military na-tion.

Williamson is scheduled to meet Philip Hammond in the next fortnight in an attempt to secure concessions ahead of a Nato summit in Brussels in July, following a tense meeting with May and the chancellor last Tuesday, which ended without any promise of further funding.

After the meeting, May de-clined to confi rm the UK should remain a “tier one” military

power, a defence term referring to the full spectrum of military capabilities, including nuclear weapons.

May said only that the UK was “a leading defence nation”, de-spite being asked to use the spe-cifi c phrase “tier one”.

Conservative MPs have ex-pressed concern both privately and publicly about the com-ments. “There is certainly a large cohort of backbench Tory MPs who were deeply concerned at

the lack of backing for the UK re-maining a ‘tier one’ nation,” one defence source said.

“It would be massively reas-suring for the party and the mili-tary if she was to confi rm it and use those terms.”

Williamson’s lobbying for more funding was backed by Julian Lewis, the chair of the defence select committee, who said the defence ministry needed similar sums like the £20bn extra given to the NHS

“just to stand still”.He added: “There needs to be

no political risk to the PM if she does the right thing. I’ve been in parliament 20 years and have never known such unanimity.”

However, some Tory MPs have voiced frustration at the tactics of some Cabinet ministers.

The former minister Nick Boles hit out at Williamson on Twitter, but also voiced frustration at the conduct of other Cabinet ministers such

as Boris Johnson.In a coded warning to her

Cabinet colleagues, the chief secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, is set to warn in a speech that it is “not macho” to demand more money for their depart-ments and they should concen-trate on fi scal discipline.

“It is a tougher skill to demand better value for money and chal-lenge the blob in your depart-ment,” she will tell the LSE to-morrow, and add that the NHS

funding boost was “exceptional”. Truss met Williamson this week to discuss defence spending, along with May and Hammond.

A source close to the row said Williamson was “genuinely pas-sionate about the military get-ting the right resources” but said it was far-fetched to suggest he was threatening May.

“To suggest that the defence secretary is behind a plan to bring down the prime minister is absurd,” the source said.

Family pays tribute tomurdered ‘fab dad’Guardian News and MediaLondon

The family of a man who died after being allegedly beaten with a cricket bat

following a robbery have paid tribute to him.

Derek Whyteside, 42, died hours after being attacked in Tel-ford, Shropshire. A 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named for le-gal reasons, has since appeared in Kidderminster magistrates court charged with his murder.

“Derek was a nice guy, he was loveable and could always see the best in people and if he consid-ered you a friend he would strive never to let you down,” his rela-tives said in a statement released by West Mercia police.

“He would always be there for you and was very proud of his ex-tended family. He was a fab dad to his partner’s children, very protective, cheeky and loving and always meant well. He was Michelle’s world and was so good to her. He was a great brother, too. We can’t understand why anyone would do this.”

Whyteside’s partner, Michelle

Beddall, alleged on Facebook that he had been hit on the head with a cricket bat. Hours earlier, she had sought help in tracing a group of people she said had sto-len bikes outside her house.

The investigation is being led by detective inspector Mark Bel-lamy. He said: “Our thoughts are with the family at this time and we off er them our deepest sympathy, we continue to have specially trained offi cers off ering them support and will continue to do so throughout our investi-gation.

“The local community will play a signifi cant role in our en-quiries and, while I am grateful for the people who have already come forward and spoken to us, this is now a murder investiga-tion and it is vitally important anyone who has any information and has not yet spoken to us gets in contact.”

The 16-year-old appeared before magistrates. Two men arrested in connection with the incident were released on police bail. A woman and two teenage boys were released under in-vestigation, West Mercia police said.

Britain should cancelTrump visit: CorbynGuardian News and MediaLondon

Theresa May has “ample reasons” to cancel Don-ald Trump’s visit to the

UK next month, Jeremy Corbyn has said.

The Labour leader said the escalating trade dispute be-tween US and the EU, as well as the US treatment of child mi-grant detainees separated from their parents, were reasons enough to rescind the invita-tion to the US president.

His comments came as Trump threatened to impose tariffs on European cars after Brussels confirmed it would introduce retaliatory levies on American products including Levi’s jeans and Harley-Dav-idson motorbikes as a response to the US steel and aluminium tariffs.

“Donald Trump needs to understand that declaring a trade war by putting tariffs on aluminium and steel and then

building up a series of tit-for-tat series of retaliations, in which the US retreats in on it-self and starts a trade war with the rest of the world, is going in a very bad and dangerous di-rection,” Corbyn said.

Corbyn told Sky News that Trump’s visit on July 13 would achieve little.

“Interestingly, it’s been downgraded time after time from a state visit to an official visit to a visit,” he said. “So I’m not absolutely sure what he’s going to do on this very brief time he has in the UK.”

“I wouldn’t have invited him and I think the prime minister’s got ample reasons to withhold the invitation if she wants to. We need to say very clearly to Donald Trump ‘We live in a multicultural society, we’re

proud of it. Get over it and start living in one yourself’.”

Asked if Corbyn would invite Trump for a state visit were he in No 10, Corbyn said: “We’d have to change the date to a long way down the line.”

Theresa May offered the US president a state visit to the UK during her visit to Washing-ton shortly after his election. However, his visit this summer has been described as a “work-ing visit” and he is not expect-ed to visit key areas of central London to avoid mass protests.

Instead, Trump is likely to meet the prime minister in her country retreat at Cheq-uers and the Queen at Windsor Castle, with a visit to his Scot-tish golf course also a possibil-ity.

Trump could return for a full state visit next summer. Brit-ain’s national security adviser, Sir Mark Sedwill, was recorded suggesting the date in a Chan-nel 4 documentary to mark the opening of the new US embassy in south-west London. Jeremy Corbyn: Trump’s visit to achieve little

“I wouldn’t have invited him and I think the prime minister’s got ample reasons to withhold the invitation if she wants to”

EUROPE

Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 201812

Germany is pushing for agreements between individual European

Union member states to move the bloc forward on its long-standing debate over how to solve the issue of migration as leaders of 16 EU countries met yesterday for an extraordinary summit.

Recent disputes in Germany and Italy have brought the de-bate on migration and asylum policy – which the EU has been trying to overhaul since the 2015

migrant crisis – back into focus in Europe.

The mini-summit on migra-tion, which European Com-mission President Jean-Claude Juncker described as an “infor-mal working meeting”, comes ahead of a crucial summit with all EU leaders scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she did not expect a “total solution to the problem of migration” to be found at a sum-mit of all EU leaders next week.

“That is why it’s about [fi nd-ing] bilateral or trilateral agree-ments that are mutually benefi -cial,” Merkel said.

Germany pushing for bilateral deals on migrationDPABrussels

Italy’s far-right Interior Min-ister Matteo Salvini has told foreign charities to back off

and let Libya take care of rescue operations in the Mediterranean.

“Let the Libyan authorities do their work of rescue, recovery and return (of migrants) to their country, as they have been doing for some time, without the ships of the voracious NGOs disturb-ing them or causing trouble,” he said. “Italian ports are and will be closed to those who aid human traffi ckers.”

Salvini’s comments came as the Spanish group Proactiva Open Arms said they had re-ceived “seven or eight” messages alerting them to boats in distress in the Mediterranean yesterday.

“Combining all the notifi ca-tions, it would add up to 1,000 people” near the coast of Libya, Laura Lanuza, a spokeswoman for the group told AFP.

But she said the Italian coast-guard had told the group they “weren’t needed” and “the op-eration was being handled by the Libyan coastguard”.

“If the Libyan coastguard co-ordinates this eff ort, all these people will be sent back to Libya,” she said.

Contacted by AFP, the Libyan coastguard said they had res-

cued 97 migrants yesterday and that “other operations are under way”, but did not give further de-tails.

In recent weeks, Italy’s new populist government has cracked down on foreign rescue ships op-erating in the Mediterranean.

Salvini has repeatedly accused the charities of being complicit with human smugglers operating in Libya.

“These boats can forget about reaching Italy, I want to stop the business of traffi cking and mafi a,” the minister, who has promised to curb the number of migrants arriving in Italy, said on Saturday.

The Italian coastguard also sent a message to rescue boats operating in the Mediterranean on Friday, informing them that it would no longer be co-ordinat-ing rescue operations in the Libya search and rescue area.

“From now on, under the So-las Convention (Safety of life at Sea), captains who are at sea in the area near Libya will have to turn to the Tripoli Centre and the Libyan Coast Guard for help,” the message, reported in the Italian media, said.

The groups, which have been chartering boats to rescue mi-grants, point to the very diffi cult conditions for migrants in Libya as they attempt to reach Europe.

Previously, Rome often played an important role coordinating

migrant rescue missions in the Mediterranean.

But Salvini wants to drastically reduce Italy’s involvement.

Earlier this month Salvini trig-gered an EU-wide row when he barred the Aquarius rescue ship, chartered by French charity SOS Mediterranee, carrying around 630 migrants, from docking in Italy.

Nearby Malta also turned the boat away and the ship was later accepted by Spain.

Two other ships carrying hun-dreds of migrants – the German NGO ship Lifeline and Danish container ship Alexander Mae-rsk – are currently stranded in the Mediterranean awaiting in-

structions on where they will be allowed to dock.

Both Italy and Malta have re-fused to take them in.

Reacting to the situation yes-terday, Barcelona mayor Ada Co-lau called on the Spanish govern-ment to help.

“Right now more than 1,000 people adrift in seven boats and Italy intends to leave them in the hands of Libya, where people are tortured, raped and enslaved,” she said on Twitter.

She urged her own country to “help save lives” and said the mi-grants could would be welcomed in her city.

“Barcelona is off ered as a safe harbour,” she added.

Salvini tells foreign NGOs to stop rescuing migrants

AFPRome

Salvini: Italian ports are and will be closed to those who aid human traff ickers.

This picture taken on Saturday shows a rescuer carrying a migrant child, who was part of a group intercepted aboard dinghies off the coast in the Mediterranean Sea, at the port of Malaga, Spain.

‘No meat on board, but humans’: NGO migrant vesselActivists on a migrant rescue ship that has been waiting since Thursday to be allowed to disembark more than 230 people told Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, to remember there were people on board.“We have no meat on board, but humans. We cordially invite you to convince yourself that it is people we have saved from drowning,” Mission Lifeline, the German non-governmental organisation that owns the ship, said yesterday in a tweet, inviting the leader of Italy’s far-right League party to come on board.In a video posted to Facebook on Thursday, Salvini criticised Mission Lifeline for not heeding the instructions of Italian or Libyan authorities.“They risk the lives of the migrants on the dinghy, refuse to listen to Italian and Libyan authorities and intervene so they can load this valuable cargo of humans – of human flesh – on board,” he said.Italy closed its ports to the Lifeline on Thursday, after accusing it of dodging Italian coastguard orders to leave it to the Libyan coastguard to save migrants spotted at sea.Salvini has long accused NGOs of profiting from migrant rescues and of being in cahoots with human traff ickers.The accusation is unproven, and strongly denied by NGOs.Mission Lifeline co-founder Axel Steier told DPA that the people on board have so far been lucky with the weather, but “if we get 3m-high waves, then we have a problem”.The Rome government said the Lifeline would be impounded and its crew arrested if it decided to proceed to Italy anyway.The ship has since stayed in Maltese search and rescue waters.

Rabbis and Muslim imams took to tandem bicycles yesterday to ride through

central Berlin in a joint show of inter-faith respect and against racism and anti-Semitism.

Dubbed the “meet2respect” ride, it was backed by religious and civic groups, among them the House of One foundation, which combines prayer spaces for Jews, Christians and Mus-lims.

“We imams and rabbis want to lead by good example,” said Muslim theologian Ender Cetin, who took a ride in one of the 25 tandems as part of a 200-strong group of religious leaders and supporters.

The route led from the city’s Holocaust memorial past syna-gogues and mosques and ended

at the Bebelplatz public square that was the site of the notorious Nazi book burning in 1933.

It also passed Breitschei-dplatz with its iconic war-dam-aged Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, scene of a 2016 religious extremist attack when a truck sped through a Christmas mar-ket crowd, leaving 12 dead.

One of the rides was made in a rickshaw that was shared by community leaders from the three major religions of the book, also including a Christian pastor.

One of the three, Rabbi An-dreas Nachama, said that “we are cycling because our world does not want to believe that we were all created by a god whom we do not argue about, but rather whom we – each in a diff erent way – adore”.

Riding with him, Imam Sanci, called the journey “our peace-keeping mission” on which the “the imams, rabbis or pastors

share a vehicle ... and share re-sponsibility”.

Racism, hate speech and vio-lent attacks have risen in Germa-ny since a mass infl ux of mostly Muslim refugees starting in 2015 brought more than one million asylum seekers to Europe’s big-gest economy.

The anti-immigration Alter-native for Germany party (AfD), which captured nearly 13% in a general election last September, has railed against the migrant infl ux and also challenged Ger-many’s “remembrance culture” and atonement for the Nazi era.

Amid the heightened tensions, Muslim communities have re-ported an increase of attacks on mosques, and Jewish groups have pointed to rising anti-Semitism, both from the far-right and some Muslim newcomers, including a street assault in April by a Syrian refugee on an Israeli man wearing a kippa skullcap.

Imams, rabbis ride in Berlin rallyAFPBerlin

Jews and Muslims, one person of each faith sharing a tandem bicycle, are seen at the start of the ‘Meet2respect’ bicycle demonstration in Berlin yesterday.

Five people were seriously injured overnight when an explosion ripped through

an apartment building in the western German city of Wup-pertal.

Residents were awoken by a violent bang just before mid-night on Saturday when a blast ripped through large parts of the three-storey terrace house.

People ran out of neighbour-ing houses in panic as metre-high fl ames billowed from the rubble.

Thirty-one residents either escaped the building on their own or were rescued by fi re-fi ghters.

Hours later, another larger section of the house collapsed.

It had been unclear wheth-er other residents had been trapped or killed by the fall-ing debris, but authorities used neighbours’ accounts and sniff er dogs to ultimately rule out any further victims.

Photos of the scene showed piles of rubble and debris sur-rounding the building.

Large parts of the facade and roof were missing, and a car in the street was completely

crushed by the rubble.An excavator began demoli-

tion work on the ruins yesterday afternoon.

The cause of the explosion re-mained under investigation.

“How this came to pass and

what the background is, that remains completely unclear,” a police spokesman said.

Authorities initially said that 24 people were injured in the explosion and fi re before revis-ing the count downward.

Five seriously hurt in explosion at German apartment buildingDPABerlin

Debris of the house that exploded in the night is seen on the street in Wuppertal, western Germany.

French President Em-manuel Macron’s popu-larity has hit a new low, a

poll showed yesterday, follow-ing recent controversies over spending at his residences and cutting remarks he made on welfare benefi ts.

Despite upbeat business sen-timent and rising foreign in-vestments, the number of peo-ple with a favourable opinion of the 40-year-old leader dropped

one percentage point in June to 40%, the Ifop poll for French weekly JDD showed.

Several prominent business-men and economists have re-cently voiced concerns over Macron’s economic policies that are viewed as favouring the rich.

The former investment banker has justifi ed the scrap-ping of the wealth tax, for ex-ample, with the metaphor of a lead mountaineer drawing up companions clinging to a rope below.

Macron also hit at France’s

large social transfers this month, saying that they cost “too much dough”.

Then this week reports emerged that taxpayers’ money will pay for dinner plates at the Elysee Palace and a new swim-ming pool at a presidential re-treat on the Riviera.

“(These controversies) strengthen the sentiment of some sort of social contempt from the president,” Ifop’s dep-uty chief Frederic Dabi told JDD.

He added: “There’s a feeling that the head of state is out of touch.”

Macron has dismissed ac-cusations of being out of touch and arrogant, saying he wanted to restore dignity to the offi ce of the president.

“People are mixing up arro-gance with determination and courage,” government spokes-man Benjamin Griveaux told RTL radio station earlier this year, defending Macron’s re-formist agenda.

The Ifop poll was conducted among 1,963 people between June 15 and June 23.

The margin of error is 2.2 per-centage points.

Macron hits new low in poll ratings: JDDReutersParis

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses his supporters in Istanbul last night.

Erdogan wins electionsFrom Page 1Anadolu put Ince in second

place at 30.75%.While Erdogan also asked his

supporters to delay their vic-tory celebrations, he said: “Our commitment to democracy and expanding rights and freedoms will continue. We won’t allow freedoms being blocked for peo-ple due to their beliefs.”

The new presidential system, which narrowly passed in a

constitutional referendum in April 2017, will abolish the prime minister’s post and the president will become both the head of state and government.

For Erdogan, installing an ex-ecutive presidency has been his

years-long ambition and he has now staked his career on it.

The elections - being held under a state of emergency imposed after an attempted coup in 2016 - were scheduled for November 2019.

But a united and boisterous opposition had threatened Er-dogan’s dominance and is still aiming to at least force a run-off vote on July 8.

Erdogan has won every elec-tion in the last 16 years.

He was prime minister from 2003 until 2014. When he couldn’t contest a fourth time in line with his party’s statutes, he ran for president in 2014 - and won in the country’s fi rst direct election for that role.

Army offi cerarrested forkilling wifeof colleague

In Tihar’s 36 factories, prisoners learn skills for a new life

Mehbooba denies BJPcharge of discrimination

IANSNew Delhi

An army major, “ob-sessed” with his col-league’s wife, was ar-

rested yesterday for killing her by slashing her throat and run-ning his car over her to make it look like an accident.

Police arrested Nikhil Rai Handa from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh – more than 100km from Delhi – and recovered a Honda City car in which he committed the gruesome mur-der on Saturday.

Handa told investigators that he had an altercation with Shailja, 35, wife of another major Amit Dwivedi, in his car and slashed her throat with a “Swiss knife” before pushing her out on the road.

“To make it look like an ac-cident, Handa then ran over his car on Shailja. Handa had an obsession with Shailja and was pressurising her to marry him,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Vijay Kumar said.

Handa revealed during in-terrogation that he knew Shailja since 2015 and in 2017, he and the victim’s husband were posted together in Di-mapur in Nagaland.

“While Amit was there with his family, Handa lived alone,” he said.

As Shailja came to Delhi two months ago and started resid-ing in army quarters in Naraina near the Cantonment with her husband who was assigned to leave on deputation to Sudan for a United Nation’s mission in a couple of weeks, Handa also came here on June 2.

When Handa came to know that Shailja was undergo-ing physiotherapy at the Base Hospital in the Cantonment area, he also started taking mi-

graine treatment in the same hospital to maintain proxim-ity with the victim, said the offi cial, adding he also got his child admitted to that hospital.

Shailja, who hailed from Am-ritsar, had been coming to the hospital for the last four days for treatment of her ankle.

Around 10am on Saturday, Shailja left home in an army vehicle for the physiotherapy session but she went with Handa in his car from outside the hospital as their image was captured in a CCTV camera in-stalled there, the offi cial said. When the driver went to pick her up later, he was informed that she had not attended the session.

Later in the afternoon, her body was seen by a passerby near Brar Square.

“Though they shared a strong friendship, Shailja was not in a situation to get mar-ried to Handa. They had an altercation in the car over the issue after which he killed her,” the police offi cer said.

“It seems that Handa slit Shailja’s throat suddenly as there was no resistance mark in the car but her clothes were torn which means that she made failed attempts to save herself when she was run over,” he said.

“Handa’s car has enough evidence against him. There are blood stains on the tyres. There were multiple knives in the car including a Swiss knife which was used in the murder.”

Investigators said they be-gan to suspect Handa as there were a huge number of calls exchanged between them – the maximum of them made by the major.

“The victim’s husband had once caught the two on a video call. He informed us that he didn’t want Handa to ever be seen around his wife or family.”

AgenciesNew Delhi

Escorted by police guards as they re-enter the country’s most crowded

prison, some cry, a few are vis-ibly upset, while many oth-ers try to show no emotions. But for most people who have been here a while, it is normal – Tihar is home.

But for this man in his mid-30s – jailed for allegedly harass-ing a woman – the fi rst day, was diff erent. It was diff erent for the jail offi cers too.

On his fi rst day in the jail on a winter afternoon in December last year, the man had a meeting with the jail superintendent. The inmate, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the offi cer he used to work in a perfume fac-tory and that he could help teach other prisoners the art of making perfume.

“The idea of starting a per-fume factory in the jail was born at that moment. So far we have manufactured over 1.5 lakh bot-tles,” says Rakesh Kumar, super-intendent of Jail 1.

The perfume factory is among the 36 factory units run from the

India’s largest and most crowded Tihar jail. With at least 4,000 prisoners working in shifts, the 36 factories in the prison have an annual turnover of about Rs350mn.

From cakes to biscuits, LED bulbs to pickles, and furniture to blankets and power looms to designer clothes, prisoners spread across 400 acres of the jail compound are engaged dif-ferent units.

“Our aim is not to make prof-its... We are here to reform pris-oners,” says Ajay Kashyap, di-rector general of prisons. “When prisoners work in the factories

here, they earn a living. When they are trained here by the staff or the fellow inmates, it increas-es their chance of rehabilita-tion.”

The story of LED bulb factory in the jail started in October last year with a prisoner, a gradu-ate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. The man had come to the prison in a case of alleged cheating. “He wasn’t here for a long time but he was intelligent and was an IIT graduate. Since then, he has been released on bail. But dur-ing his short stint, he visualised setting up the LED factory inside

the prison,” said Tariq Salan, an-other superintendent.

At over 15,000 prisoners, Tihar is the most crowded pris-on in India. Prison offi cials say that fi nding talent in prisoners is never a problem. “This is Tihar. You will fi nd all types of prison-ers here. From a graduate from the country’s premier engineer-ing institute to a former minister or a skilled carpenter, there is no dearth of talent here,” a jail of-fi cer said.

Apart from the elderly, the unwell and those who choose not to work, every prisoner can find employment in the 36

factories. The wages aren’t too bad as well. For a day’s work, a skilled worker makes Rs320. A skilled worker is a prisoner who is an expert at his job. The prisoner could be a baker or a perfume maker, who apart from working can also train fel-low prisoners. A semi-skilled worker gets Rs180, while a trainee makes Rs200 a day. The daily wages are collected by the prisoner administration. Twenty-five percent of the every prisoner’s daily wages is deducted and sent to a fund known as the Victim’s Welfare Fund. The money is given to

families or victims of crimes committed by the prisoners.

Jail offi cers say that one of the earliest factories set up was the paper unit. In the early 1960s when the prison was only a few years old, a paper manufacturing and an oil extraction unit was set up. Prisoners recycle papers and make folders for government of-fi ces, the six lower courts, the Delhi High Court and the Su-preme Court. “Do you know we do not buy oil from outside?” the prison’s deputy superintendent Dheeraj Mathur said, adding the prisoners manufacture their own cooking oil.

IANSKolkata

India’s tea exports are ex-pected to clock a 5% growth this year in terms of volume,

provided shipments to Iran do not get disturbed, Tea Board chairman P K Bezboruah said yesterday.

“There are some challenges in the current year in terms of tea exports. India’s tea exports to Iran, which was a good customer last year, may get disrupted as the US has threatened to re-establish (nuclear programme-related) sanctions on Iran. The government is working on it so that bilateral trade between the two countries (India-Iran) con-tinues,” Bezboruah said.

India achieved the highest tea exports in 2017 after 36 years, exporting 251.91mn kg in the last calendar year, up by 13.24% from 222.45mn kg exported during 2016.

“The export growth this year would not be spectacular but it is

expected to go up by 5% in terms of volume, provided exports to Iran do not get disturbed,” he said.

Indian exporters are keen to regain its market share in Kaza-khstan which used to import a signifi cant volume of Indian tea earlier, he said.

Bezboruah exuded confi dence that tea exports will continue to expand in the US, China, Russia and the Middle East.

Notably, the country had ex-ported 256.57mn kg of tea in the last fi scal year (2017-18), up by 12.71% from 227.63mn kg exported in the previous year (2016-17).

On the production front, the crop production was at 1,325.05mn kg in the last fi scal year, an increase of 74.56mn kg compared to 2016-17.

The production of the crop is expected to be higher this year against last year though estimated April production at 85.74mn kg was down by 7.21% compared to year-ago month, he said.

Tea exports likely to grow by 5%: offi cial

IANSSrinagar

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti yesterday denied

that she discriminated against Jammu and Ladakh regions and wondered why none of the Bharatiya Janata Party ministers spoke about it till now if it was true.

In a string of tweets, the Peo-ples’ Democratic Party (PDP) chief said that whatever hap-pened during the time of the PDP-BJP rule in the state was in accordance with the Agenda of Alliance (AoA) the two parties had drawn up.

“Many false charges levelled against us by our former allies,” she said, in response to BJP pres-ident Amit Shah’s statements made in Jammu a day earlier.

“Our commitment to the AoA, co-authored by (BJP leader) Ram

Madhav and endorsed by senior leaders like Rajnath (Singh) nev-er wavered. It is sad to see them disown their own initiative and label it a ‘soft approach’.

“Status quo on Article 370, dialogue with Pakistan and Hur-riyat were a part of AoA. En-couraging dialogue, withdraw-ing cases against stone-pelters and the unilateral ceasefi re were much needed measures to re-store confi dence on the ground. This was recognised and en-dorsed by the BJP.

“Allegations of discrimina-tion against Jammu and Ladakh have no basis in reality. Yes, the (Kashmir) Valley has been in turmoil for a long time and the fl oods of 2014 were a setback, therefore needed focused atten-tion. But that does not mean that there was any less development elsewhere,” she added.

“If anything they (BJP) should review the performance of their own ministers, who largely rep-

resented the Jammu region. If there were any such concerns, none among them either at the state or central level talked about it during the last three years.”

Mufti said that not handing over the Rasana rape and mur-der case to the Central Bureau of Investigation, getting the “pro-rapist ministers” removed from the cabinet and issuing orders not to harass the Guj-jar and Bakarwal community in the guise of anti-encroachment drives were her duty as chief minister.

“After expressing concern about freedom of expression in J&K following Shujaat (Bukhari)’s murder, their MLA, notorious..., still threatens journalists belong-ing to the valley. So what are they going to do about him?”

She was referring to BJP legis-lator Choudhary Lal Singh who had warned journalists at a press conference in Jammu to “draw a line”.

Monsoon to hit Delhiby June 29, says IMDIANSNew Delhi

Monsoon will hit the na-tional capital between June 29 and July 1, with

pre-monsoon activities expect-ed to begin next week, bringing a much needed respite for Delhi which is currently reeling under heat wave conditions.

According to both India Mete-orological Department (IMD) as well as private weather forecast-ing agency Skymet, Delhi will see on-time arrival of monsoon. However, the rainfall in Long Period Average (LPA) is not yet clear.

“The onset of northwest monsoon is expected to be be-tween June 29 and July 1 for

Delhi. The pre-monsoon show-ers can be expected around June 27,” M Mohaptra, senior scientist at IMD, said.

While Skymet prediction also expects monsoon to arrive after June 29, it sees the pre-monsoon showers to hit the national capi-tal from today.

The monsoon’s course had been subdued for over a week. However, from yesterday, it has revived and started moving to-wards the north, weather ana-lysts said.

“Monsoon has revived and is moving northwards. It has al-ready reached parts of Gujarat, western Madhya Pradesh, Vid-harbha, Odisha and West Ben-gal,” Mahesh Palawat, director of Skymet said.

He added that the revival of

monsoon towards north was a great indicator that Delhi will receive on-time monsoon rains beginning “this week”.

Till the fi rst two weeks of June, monsoon rainfall was 19% surplus, but after June 13, they reduced to a defi cit of 4% till June 19. However, even when subdued, heavy rainfall activ-ity continued along the western coast and parts of northeastern states.

According to the IMD, India is likely to receive a “better mon-soon” than it did in 2017, with the entire country expected to see “normal rainfall” between 96 to 104% from June to Sep-tember.

In 2017, the country received 97% rainfall, which is consid-ered normal. Earlier the IMD

said India in 2018 is, quantita-tively, likely to receive 97% rain-fall of LPA with error estimate of plus-minus 4%.

The National Highways Au-thority of India (NHAI) has in-stalled 40 pumps across the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway to prevent waterlogging during the monsoon.

The pumps, which can clear up to 7,200 litres of water every minute, have been strategi-cally placed at the newly built underpasses at Rajiv Chowk, Iff co Chowk, Signature Towers and Hero Honda Chowk. These stretches went under water dur-ing the monsoon in 2016, trig-gering a 48-hour-long gridlock in the city.

The NHAI carried out a few mock drills over the last one

week by using fi re engines to fi rst fl ood the underpasses. “The pumps managed to successfully clear water from the aff ected area during the drill,” said Ashok Sharma, project director of Del-hi-Gurgaon Expressway.

He, however, said that the highways authority would have been even better equipped to deal with any situation had the work expanding the Khandsa drain been completed.

The number of pumps has been increased from 21 last year, as NHAI wants to ensure that the movement of vehi-cles is not hampered at key intersections. The pumps are automatic and would become functional as soon as the un-derground sump tanks are filled with rainwater.

People wade through a flooded road after heavy rains in Ahmedabad yesterday.

INDIA13

Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 2018

Activists stage a demonstration against the felling of trees for the construction of flats for central government employees in Sarojini Nagar and Nauroji Nagar areas, in New Delhi yesterday.

Protest against tree-felling

Bank chiefs to appear before parliament panel

Vijayan always anti-Modi,says BJP leader Rajagopal

Bodies of three students recovered from river

The collector of a Manipur district bordering Myanmar yesterday said a part of Indian territory has been encroached upon and he has refused to sign a Survey of India report certifying the location of the pillars demarcating the border. Tengnoupal Collector A Tombikanta said he is seeking to have the exact locations of the boundary pillars verified following complaints from residents of Kwatha Khunou village that boundary pillar No 81 is located inside the village, 3km inside Indian territory. He said that since May 22, the day he was posted to Tengnoupal, he has been under pressure, including from the state Home Department, to sign documents to the effect that there is no dispute over the territory.

Alleging that there was “a complete breakdown of law and order” under the Bharatiya Janata Party government, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) yesterday said that people’s constitutional rights were being allowed to be violated with impunity. Taking stock of the four years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, a CPM statement said this period had seen “unprecedented attacks on people’s livelihood, sharpening of communal polarisation accompanied by murderous assaults on Muslims and Dalits, severe undermining of institutions of parliamentary democracy and independent constitutional authorities”. It said that the unending rise in prices of petroleum products was leading to a cascading inflationary spiral despite a weak economic activity as a consequence of demonetisation and GST.

Collector claims Indian territory encroached upon

Law and order has brokendown under Modi: CPM

COMPLAINTASSESSMENT

Senior off icials of 11 public sector banks (PSBs) will appear before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance tomorrow on the issue of the banks’ massive non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans, and an increasing number of fraud cases, according to off icial sources. The committee, headed by Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, is preparing a report on the “Banking Sector in India - Issues, Challenges and the Way Forward, including Non-Performing Assets/Stressed Assets in Banks/Financial Institutions”. The PSBs are Allahabad Bank, Bank of India, Central Bank of India, Dena Bank, IDBI Bank, Corporation Bank, UCO Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Bank of Maharashtra and United Bank of India, Finance Ministry sources said. The accumulated NPAs in the Indian banking system have touched Rs9 lakh crore, of which the bad loans of state-run banks amount to over Rs7.5 lakh crore.

INVESTIGATION POLITICS TRAGEDY

The bodies of three out of four engineering students from Andhra Pradesh who drowned in Krishna river near Vijayawada on Saturday, were fished out yesterday, police said. Rescue workers found the bodies of three students while the search was still on for the fourth. The bodies of Praveen, 18, Chaitanya, 18, and Srinath, 19, were shifted to a government hospital in Vijayawada for autopsy. Police said the rescue workers were still searching for Rajkumar, 19. The incident occurred at Pavitra Sangamam, the confluence points of Krishna and Godavari rivers at Ibrahimpatnam. Five students had gone there for a picnic. When one of them was drowning while taking a bath, three others tried to save him but all of them were washed away in strong currents. The fifth student alerted the police.

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader O Rajagopal yesterday slammed Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for issuing statements against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying Vijayan always has anti-Modi feelings. Rajagopal, the lone party legislator in the 140-member Kerala assembly, said it was because of this attitude of Vijayan that he feels the central government is always anti-Kerala. Vijayan, who was denied an appointment with Modi, said on Saturday that “this consistent stand taken against Kerala by the prime minister is not acceptable”. Reacting to Vijayan’s statement, Rajagopal said the chief minister should be specific when levelling allegations against Modi. “It has now become a practice for Vijayan to drop in to meet the prime minister each time he comes to Delhi for his party meeting. What Vijayan fails to understand is Modi is a busy person and might not be able to meet him every time,” said Rajagopal.

Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 2018

INDIA14

GST symbol of integrityand honesty,says premierIANSNew Delhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday said that information technology

has replaced the ‘Inspector Raj’ under the Goods and Services Tax (GST), as he termed the fi rst year of the indirect tax regime as a “victory of integrity, celebration of honesty and a symbol of co-operative federalism”.

In the 45th edition of his monthly radio address ‘Mann ki Baat’, Modi credited states with “successful” implementation of the ‘one nation, one tax’ reform, saying people of diff erent ide-ologies have taken part in its 27 meetings but its decisions have been unanimous.

In his address, Modi took a veiled dig at the opposition while referring to his “greatest satis-faction” at seeing people trans-form their lives through the video bridge programmes in which he interacted with benefi ciaries of government schemes.

“There are certain people in so-ciety, who fi nd no solace till they do not express their frustrated views, their depressed views and seek ways to divide rather than unite. In such an environment, when the common man comes to you talking about emerging hope, new zeal and events that have taken place in his life, it is not to the government’s credit,” he said.

Modi also credited Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee with laying a strong foundation for country’s industrial develop-ment in his capacity as independ-

ent India’s fi rst industry minister.The prime minister also in-

voked Sant Kabir and Guru Nanak to drive home the message of so-cial harmony and brotherhood.

Pointing out that 2019 would mark the 550th Prakash Parv (birth anniversary) of Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, Modi urged his followers to think about ways in which this historic occa-sion should be celebrated.

“Guru Nanak Dev wanted to end caste discrimination in soci-ety and to embrace entire man-kind as one. He used to say that to serve the poor and the needy was to serve God,” he said.

Recalling the sacrifi ce made by freedom fi ghters at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919, he said: “We must also remember the everlasting message that this incident has imparted, that is, violence and cruelty can never solve any prob-lem. It is peace and non-violence, renunciation and martyrdom that are triumphant in the end!”

On GST, Modi said that al-though it was estimated that in a country as vast as India, it would take fi ve to seven years for the “world’s biggest tax reform” to get streamlined, it has stabilised in just a year, and under it Infor-mation Technology had replaced ‘Inspector Raj’ as everything from return-to-refund was being done online with little manual interfer-ence.

Modi said he had interacted with 4-5mn people, including farmers and benefi ciaries of gov-ernment schemes through his video bridge programmes, and that it imparted him with new strength.

He said an incident regarding a small girl from a remote village too can inspire the 1.25bn people.

“With the help of technology, through the video bridge even a single moment spent with the benefi ciaries was very enjoyable, very motivational and provided satisfaction to work more. There is a renewed joy in dedicating your life for the uplift, and you’re left with renewed fervour and in-spiration.”

Modi greeted doctors on Doc-tors Day on July 1 and recalled the eff orts of corporate professionals and IT engineers in Bengaluru in creating ‘Samridhi Trust’ through which they had doubled the in-come of farmers.

Recalling India-Afghanistan cricket match in Bengaluru ear-lier this month, Modi said: “I will cherish the match for a special reason. The Indian team, while receiving the trophy, invited the Afghanistan team to pose to-gether for photographs. This inci-dent exemplifi es the very spirit of sportsmanship.”

Referring to the International Yoga Day celebrations on June 21, Modi hoped more and more peo-ple will come forward to make the practice a part of their lives.

He said the event presented some of “the rarest of sights” as hundreds in the European Par-liament in Brussels, in the UN headquarters in New York and on Japanese naval warships practised yoga ‘asanas’.

He said country’s soldiers performed yoga in submarines, snow-clad mountains and even in the air, some 15,000ft above the ground.

IANSChennai

Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit’s of-fi ce yesterday warned

that those who try to overawe the governor will be dealt with sternly.

In a statement issued here, the Raj Bhavan said the governor would continue his visits to dis-tricts in the coming months and the Offi ce of Governor was pro-tected under Section 124 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Any attempt to overawe or as-sault or use criminal force would be dealt with as per the law, it said.

“Whoever, with the intention of inducing or compelling the president of India, or the gover-nor of any state, to exercise or re-frain from exercising in any man-ner any of the lawful powers of such president or governor, as-saults or wrongfully restrains, or attempts wrongfully to restrain, or overawes, by means of crimi-

nal force or the show of criminal force, or attempts so to overawe, such president or governor, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fi ne,” the Raj Bhavan statement said.

Referring to a news item that Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader M K Stalin sought to lay siege to the area around Raj Bha-van to protest against the district visits of Purohit, the statement categorically said that “the gov-ernor enjoys full authority and freedom to visit any part of the state”.

“The use of the word ‘review’ by the Leader of the Opposition is an attempt to mislead the peo-ple. He is either ignorant of the law or attempting to overawe by threatening to besiege Raj Bha-van or block the roads leading to the Raj Bhavan,” it said.

The statement said Purohit, during the times of his initial dis-trict visits, was engaged in trying to inform the Leader of the Op-position and other members of

the opposition parties about the legal position by inviting them to Raj Bhavan.

“Suffi cient time was given for understanding the law so as to change course and abide by it.”

As the head of the Executive, the governor enjoys unhindered freedom to meet and interact with offi cials of the state who are members of the executive wing, according to the statement.

“The governor has to be fa-miliar with the features, charac-teristics and the problems faced by people in various districts to take right decisions at critical times and also to send meaning-ful reports monthly to the Indian president.”

The statement added that Purohit during his district visits had not criticised any offi cial or given any direction.

On Saturday, the DMK led by Stalin took out a procession to Raj Bhavan protesting against the ar-rest of party cadres in Namakkal, around 390km from Chennai, for showing black fl ags to Purohit during his visit on Friday.

Purohit warns against bid to ‘overawe’ governor’s offi ce

Body of Messi fanfound in Kerala riverIANSKottayam, Kerala

The body of a man who went missing after Argentina lost to Croatia was found

fl oating in Meenachil river near Kottayam town in Kerala.

The 30-year-old Binu Alex was a diehard fan of Argentine star Li-onel Messi.

According to police, a group of people who had come to take a bath in the river yesterday found the body. Alex’s relatives identi-fi ed the body.

The body apparently fl oated some 30km downstream from his house at Arumannoor.

Alex was devastated after Ar-gentina was thrashed by Croatia 0-3 on June 21.

He was last seen by his mother watching the match on TV. She told him to go to bed as he had to go to work the next day.

But on Friday, his mother found the kitchen door wide open and Alex missing.

A suicide note was recovered from the house in which Alex

wrote: “I have no more interest in this world. I am proceeding to-wards death and none is respon-sible.”

A police dog traced Alex’s fi nal journey to the river.

Alex was unmarried and worked as an accountant in a pri-vate company here.

“We will hand over the body to relatives after the postmortem. It seems to be a case of suicide,” said a senior police offi cer.

“We got suspicious after we recovered the letter from his room. We initially thought it was a prank. Later, we found his slip-pers on the banks of the river,” said his father P V Alexander.

Police are on their toes in soc-cer-crazy north Kerala as match-es are progressing with many upsets. Several areas observed a near-shutdown on Friday after Argentina’s loss. Police had to in-tervene after a group of Brazil fans celebrated Argentina’s loss by bursting fi recrackers in Kunna-mangalam on Thursday night. In 2014, when Brazil lost to Germany in the semi-fi nal many areas had observed a shutdown.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath participates in the desilting of Gomti river at the launch of a cleanliness drive, in Lucknow yesterday.

Cleanliness drive

AgenciesMumbai

Several shops in Mumbai are fl outing a ban on use of plastic, offi cials said.

Some of the shops belonged to leading multinational food and beverage companies.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said it would serve prosecution notices to the shops after they refused to pay fi ne.

While neighbouring civic bodies have begun collecting fi ne from citizens, BMC’s 250 inspectors visited major markets and public spaces to explain the nuances of the ban. The BMC on Friday said it will actively start levying fi nes from today.

Under an awareness drive, the 250 inspectors, divided into 23 teams, visited retailers, shop-keepers, hoteliers and citizens. Many citizens approached the

inspectors enquiring about the banned items, while others con-gratulated them for the ban.

In addition to raising aware-ness, the BMC confi scated many bags that were being passed off as a plastic alternative on the streets.

Despite the ban, plastic bags could be seen in various mar-kets across Mumbai. “Initially, we are allowing rain cover plas-tic used by shopkeepers. But it is also a banned item. In the fi rst few weeks, we are targeting plas-tic bags,” said another inspector from the plastic ban squad.

Though citizens have lauded the plastic ban, they are worried about paucity of alternatives, es-pecially when it rains. “The ban is a noble initiative, but we need alternatives. It is raining today; no cloth or jute bag can with-stand it,” said Mukesh Shah, a shopper at Crawford market.

Retailers have also seconded citizens over the lack of alterna-

tives. Fearing the fi ne, nearly 40 shops in Malad (West) were shut, said Viren Shah, president of the Federation of Retail Traders Wel-fare Association.

The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena has opposed fi nes slapped on people found using plastic. It has urged citizens to not pay fi ne.

“We have no problem with the plastic bag ban. However, levying such fi nes is wrong,” said MNS leader Sandeep Desh-pande.

“The BMC should educate the people, spread awareness about the ills of plastic. Just levying fi nes will result in harassment of people,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Pune Munici-pal Corporation’s (PMC) drive to enforce the plastic ban began on a determined note with the collection of Rs369,000 in fi nes from 73 off enders on the very fi rst day. Small traders staged protests and reacted angrily to the ban, even as traders on Sin-

hagad road downed their shut-ters in protest.

“The PMC has seized 8,711kg plastic and 75kg thermocol from various traders,” said Suresh Jag-tap, PMC’s solid waste manage-ment department head. He said the PMC had chalked out a de-tailed plan to implement the ban and had deployed a staff of 150 offi cers to enforce the ban.

“The teams were formed keeping in mind all wards to keep a watch on violations. All 15 ward offi ces of the PMC conducted the drive on Saturday,” he said.

Under the new law, the fi ne for use of plastic is Rs5,000 for the fi rst off ence and Rs10,000 for the second off ence. In case of a third off ence, the PMC will fi le a police case against the person concerned, he said.

The PMC has appealed to citi-zens to deposit plastic bags and other banned items in their pos-session at corporation’s ward of-fi ce or collection centres.

Mumbai shops face actionfor fl outing plastic ban

Bollywood dancers perform during the opening ceremony of the 19th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards festival at the Siam Niramit Theatre in Bangkok yesterday.

Bollywood dancers dazzle in Bangkok

LATIN AMERICA15Gulf Times

Monday, June 25, 2018

Parents deportedfrom US vow toreturn for kidsAFPSan Pedro Sula, Honduras

When Ever Sierra ar-rived back in his native Honduras, deported

after trying to enter the US, his eight-month-old daughter’s shoes were hanging from his backpack.

She was being held in a deten-tion centre in McAllen, Texas, along with her mother.

Sierra planned to try again in a few days.

“I’m going back soon,” the 28-year-old mason said. “I want to be with my family.”

Sierra had left the northern city of El Progreso on January 2 to pursue the American dream. With him were his wife, Iris Janeth, 26, and their daughter, then only two months old.

“It’s about looking for a bet-ter future for our family,” said the young man. “Here, with 250 or 300 lempiras ($10 to $12) a day, you can’t do anything.”

A month after their departure, on February 3, while crossing the Piedras Negras River near the Mexican border, a US immigra-tion patrol arrested them.

They were accompanied by Sierra’s brother, Juan Carlos, his wife and their fi ve-year-old son.

According to Sierra, Iris Janeth and their daughter were taken to a juvenile detention centre in McAllen; his sister-in-law was taken to a centre in Miami, Flor-ida; his brother was sent to the LaSalle detention centre in Tex-as; while he was sent to a centre in neighbouring Louisiana.

The separation of families try-ing to cross the border — the result of the Trump administra-tion’s “zero tolerance” policy for undocumented migrants — has led to more than 2,300 children being taken from their parents’ custody.

The approach has generated such widespread outrage that Trump on Wednesday reversed course, ordering an end to the separations.

Sierra, a thin man of light complexion and sparse hair, ar-rived on Friday on one of two fl ights bringing deportees from Louisiana to San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city of Honduras,

180kms from the capital.The fi rst fl ight carried 118 peo-

ple, the second, 120.“They brought us chained by

the feet, hands and waist,” com-plained Jose Miguel Sagotizado, a 32-year-old deportee. “They didn’t take off our chains even to go to the bathroom.”

“Trump is a racist,” said Sagotizado, a solidly built man, his eyes fl ashing. “He’s got the whole world against him.”

Meantime, at the Guatemala City airport, an additional 108 deportees arrived, greeted by blar-ing marimba music piped in over loudspeakers to cheer them up.

One of them, Benjamin Ray-mundo, 33, left his indigenous Q’anjob’al-speaking community in western Guatemala in April with his fi ve-year-old son Roberto.

He said the grinding poverty in his region coupled with a deep desire to provide a better life for his family had led him to make his second attempt to enter the US.

Leaving behind his wife Ro-salia and their two-year-old daughter, he and Roberto set out.

They crossed Mexico by bus and managed to reach the US border but were stopped by im-migration offi cers in California.

Raymundo was separated from his son, who he learned only later had been taken to New York.

A brother-in-law who lives in the US and a lawyer managed to fi nd the child’s whereabouts and the boy was eventually placed in this relative’s custody.

“It’s a great sadness for me, as if I’ll never see my son again,” he lamented.

Raymundo said he has no plans for now to return to the US. He hopes his son will be granted asylum.

A 40-year-old Guatemalan woman, who declined to give her name, said she had spent 10 months in detention in an Arizona centre. The woman, on crutches after recent foot sur-gery, said she had migrated to the US in 2004. Two years ago her 14-year-old son arrived alone.

But when the woman was de-ported, another son, who is 22 and also has no papers, was left in charge of her younger son and of a three-year-old daughter who has US citizenship.

Nicaragua clashes leave eight dead: rights groupAFPManagua

At least eight people in-cluding a baby were killed when pro-government

forces clashed with opponents in Nicaragua, according to a rights group.

Seven people were killed in the capital Managua and one in Masaya and a baby was among the dead, said Georgina Ruiz, an activist with the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights (CE-NIDH).

The rights group says more than 200 people have been killed in protests that started just over two months ago demanding Pres-ident Daniel Ortega step down.

Starting after midnight, po-lice and paramilitary forces fl ooded six neighbourhoods in the east of Managua, as well as the National Autonomous Uni-versity of Nicaragua (UNAN) where scores of students were holed up.

Among the dead were two students killed in the university area and two minors who died in Managua — a 17-year-old and a baby who was shot in the head.

The baby was killed when his mother was taking him to a ba-bysitter. “He was killed by a po-lice gunshot. I saw them. They were police,” the mother Kenia Navarrete told news channel Cien por Cien Noticias.

The government denied the charge, saying criminals in the

university area were to blame.UNAN is one of several stu-

dent protest camps in Managua.About 450 students have been

living there under plastic tarp tents and in class buildings, sur-rounded by empty bottles, old food and used rounds from their homemade mortars.

“Ortega’s government con-tinues to repress and kill young people,” CENIDH said on Twit-ter.

According to Alvaro Leiva, secretary of the Nicaraguan Pro-Human Rights Association, the attack against the university was intended “to plant terror in the population” ahead of a march planned in memory of victims of the violence.

Later organisers cancelled the

march due to what they branded “indiscriminate” attacks by government forces.

The organising Civil Alliance opposition called for a 48-hour strike among social sectors and trade unions to press for Orte-ga’s departure.

The Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference has urged Ortega’s government and the opposition to return to the negotiating ta-ble to discuss a proposal to bring elections forward from 2021 to March 2019, in a bid to end the crisis.

Ortega, 72, has not responded to the Catholic bishops’ ini-tiative, but has previously ex-pressed his willingness to work toward democratisation.

Talks between the govern-

ment and the opposition Civic Alliance were suspended once again last Monday when the government failed to allow international human rights bodies to investigate the vio-lence.

It eventually did so on Wednesday.

Protests erupted on April 18 against now-scrapped social se-curity reforms, but have grown into demands for justice for those killed and the exit of Or-tega and his wife and vice presi-dent Rosario Murillo.

Ortega, a former leftist guer-rilla, led the country from 1979 to 1990 and then returned to the presidency in 2007.

He is now serving his third consecutive term.

Brazil grain buyers ‘outof market for weeks’ReutersSao Paulo

Grain handlers have stopped buying Brazil-ian corn and soy from

local farmers for more than three weeks as concerns over rising freight costs have frozen the market for two of the coun-try’s main commodities, traders said.

Brazil has recently finished harvesting its 2018 soybeans and is now collecting its second corn crop in earnest.

The rise of freight prices is also disrupting pickup of soy-beans bought during April and May, when port premiums spiked at the onset of a trade fight pitting the US against China, accelerating sales of Brazilian beans.

Concerns over transporta-tion costs have led handlers in Brazil to delay removal of prod-ucts from farmers’ warehouses to avoid doing so at a loss, the traders said.

“The order is not to buy,” a Mato Grosso-based trader said. “There have been no bids for corn or future soy for about 25 days,” said a Parana-based trader who also is not author-ised to speak to the media.

The problem is likely to per-sist until rules to set truck freight prices are more clearly defined by the government, the traders said.

The situation increases op-erational risks to grain handlers in Brazil, the world’s largest soybean exporter and second-largest corn exporter.

“At some point they will need to return to the market to fulfi l orders and honour take or pay contracts,” one of the traders said.

According to farmer-backed Mato Grosso research institute

IMEA, through last week Bra-zil’s largest grain state had yet to sell about 32% of this year’s second corn.

Brazilian grain shipping costs rose sharply in the past few weeks after the government im-posed minimum prices for truck freight.

Such a measure followed a na-tionwide trucker protest which virtually paralysed the country’s economy for 11 days last month.

The movement forced gov-ernment to subsidise fuel and impose minimum freight prices as part of the solution to lift the stoppage.

Chaos in Brazil’s transportation sector and lower Chicago grain prices due to the escalation of the global trade war also caused Bra-zilian farmers to lose the oppor-tunity to sell future soy when the beans were quoted above $10 per bushel, the traders said.

“There is strong demand for Brazilian soy but our logisti-cal bottlenecks means farmers cannot take advantage,” one of the traders said.

Caracas urged to stopspread of measlesAFPWashington

The Pan American Health Organisation painted a bleak picture of Ven-

ezuela’s healthcare system, call-ing for urgent action to stop the transmission of measles and diphtheria amid an intensifying crisis that has seen an exodus of doctors.

The Americas were declared measles-free in 2016, but the vi-ral disease, which causes pneu-monia, brain swelling and death made a comeback in Venezuela last year, according to PAHO, which is the regional offi ce for the World Health Organisation.

The fi rst case was confi rmed in July 2017 but as of June 2018 that fi gure has risen to 2,285, with cases in 21 of Venezuela’s 24 states and the federal capital.

In a report, PAHO blamed a breakdown in vaccine coverage, “leaving pockets of susceptible population,” as well as inad-equate monitoring and manage-ment.

There has also been a major

outbreak of diphtheria, a bacte-rial infection that makes it dif-fi cult to breathe and in severe cases causes heart and nerve damage, with 1,086 cases con-fi rmed from 2016-18 and a con-fi rmed fatality rate of 14.7%.

The malaria rate, meanwhile, increased almost four-fold from 2015 to 2017, which had 406,289 cases.

President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government is in the midst of an ever-deepening cri-sis with food and medicine in short supply.

That in turn has led to “a progressive loss of operational capacity in the national health system,” the report said, with the Venezuelan Medical Federation estimating that approximately 22,000 physicians have migrated out of the country.

The fi gure represents a third of the country’s 66,138 doctors re-ported in 2014.

More than 1.6mn Venezuelans fl ed in 2017, raising public health concerns in several neighbour-ing countries, notably Colombia, Guyana, Ecuador and Trinidad and Tobago, the report said.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has scrapped a law that sought to ban making fun of presidential candi-dates ahead of October elections. The law had already been suspended by injunction, but the 11 Supreme Court justices unanimously voted to lift the ban definitively. Under the 2009 measure, satirising or mocking candidates would be illegal on television or radio for a three-month period ahead of polls. The law was suspended a year later. “People who don’t want be caricatured stay home — they don’t put themselves forward for political off ice,” Justice Alexandre de Moraes said during ruling, calling the law “totally unconstitu-tional.”

Chile wants to start taxing digital giants like Uber, Spotify and Netflix to level the playing field for their more traditional counterparts, a minister has said. “It is not fair that for the same service some pay taxes and others no,” Finance Minister Felipe Larrain told reporters in an area of Santiago that is home to traditional shoe manufacturers who are struggling to compete with online rivals. The idea is for these online players to pay tax and VAT on their earnings in Chile, unless their country of origin has a free trade agreement with Santiago, the minister said. The proposal is part of a major tax over-haul the government is preparing.

At least 14 people were killed in three shooting incidents in the northern Mexican city of Juarez, notorious for its drug gang related violence. One of the attacks occurred in the southern part of the city, where eight men who were gathered watch-ing the World Cup football match were shot at by armed gunmen who killed six and injured two, according to security off icials. Almost simultane-ously, in a downtown neighbourhood, five other men gathered at a hairdressing salon to watch football were killed by a group who arrived at the scene in a blue van, according to witnesses. The killings bring to 128 the number of people killed in the city this month alone.

Seven people, including a boy of 14, have been killed in continuing violence between army-backed police units and Rio de Janeiro’s criminal gangs, reports said. In the latest crackdown, soldiers and marines in camouflage and carrying rifles could be seen searching people as they came in and out of two poor neighbourhoods, known as favelas, within the posh Copacabana beach area. The military, which was put in charge of security in Rio de Janeiro earlier this year, said the operation involved 1,800 troops and 50 police off icers. Their goal was to remove roadblocks put up by gangs and to “check up on reports of criminal activity and other illicit conduct,” it said in a statement.

Brazilian authorities arrested 15 people as part of an investigation into alleged corruption in high-way contracts in the state of Sao Paulo, according to a statement from federal prosecutors and po-lice. One of the targets was Laurence Casagrande Lourenco, former head of state-run Dersa, the company in charge of Sao Paulo’s highways, court documents showed. Lourenco was the head of state-run utility Companhia Energetica de Sao Paulo SA, widely known as Cesp, until Thursday. However, the company has now said that he had resigned. He also served as transport and logistics secretary for former Sao Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin.

Making fun of presidentialcandidates ‘not an off ence’

Chile mulls taxing firmslike Uber and Netflix

14 killed in shootingattacks in Juarez

Seven die in crackdownon Rio criminal gangs

Police arrest 15 in Sao Paulo highway probe

LEGALPROPOSALCRIME LAW AND ORDER INVESTIGATION

Mexico’s presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya (centre), standing for the “Mexico Al Frente” coalition of the PAN-PRD-Movimiento Ciudadano parties, leaves after the final rally of his campaign at Angel de la Independencia monument in Mexico City, yesterday ahead of the July 1 presidential election.

Demonstrators carry a fence outside the National University of Nicaragua (UNAN) after clashes in Managua, Nicaragua.

Poll campaign

“There is strong demand for Brazilian soy but our logistical bottlenecks means farmers cannot take advantage”

PAKISTAN

Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 201816

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan, who is yet to win from La-

hore despite three attempts, will contest the 2018 polls against Pakistan Muslim League – Na-waz (PML-N) bigwig Khawaja Saad Rafi que from NA 131.

Khan contested for the fi rst time from Lahore in 1997 for two seats – the then NA-94 and NA-95 – and lost to PML-N can-didates Tariq Aziz and Nawaz Sharif respectively.

In 2002, Imran contested against Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, his

former party stalwart, who was contesting as PML-N candidate from NA-122.

Imran lost to Sadiq but won from Mianwali.

In 2008, the PTI boycotted the elections, but the party chief faced Sadiq again in 2013 from NA-122, and lost after a tough contest.

This year, Khan is trying his luck from NA-131 against Saad, who has not faced defeat since 1997 from this constituency.

In NA-95 Mianwali, the PTI chief will face the PML-N’s Obaidullah Shadi Khel.

The PML-N has so far nomi-nated candidates for 116 seats of National Assembly and 192

of the provincial legislature in Punjab, where the majority of its nominees will face the PTI rep-resentatives as major opponent.

In one of the major contests to be watched for the PML-N, Maryam Nawaz, the daughter of deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif, is contesting from NA-125 against the PTI’s Dr Yasmeen Rashid, who gave Nawaz a tough time in the 2013 elections, and then to his wife Kulsoom Nawaz in the 2017 by-election.

In NA-132 Lahore, PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif will contest against Mansha Sindhu of the PTI.

Another PML-N stalwart, Khawaja Asif, who barely es-

caped disqualifi cation, will face his traditional rival from the PTI, Usman Dar, in NA-73 Sialkot.

In NA-127 Lahore, veteran PML-N leader Pervaiz Malik will face Jamshed Iqbal Cheema of the PTI.

In NA-124, Hamza Shehbaz – the son of Shehbaz Sharif – will face the PTI’s Nauman Qaiser.

In NA-62 Rawalpindi, an in-teresting contest will be seen between the PML-N’s Daniyal Chaudhry and the Awami Mus-lim League’s Sheikh Rashid, who is also up against his traditional rival Hanif Abbasi of the PML-N from NA-60 Rawalpindi.

In NA-129 Lahore, the PML-N’s Sardar Ayaz Sadiq is con-

testing against the PTI’s Abdul Aleem Khan.

Former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi will contest from NA-57 Murree, but his rival from the PTI is yet to be announced.

Similarly, another PML-N stalwart, Abid Sher Ali, will con-test from NA-108 Faisalabad.

Former interior minister Ah-san Iqbal will contest from NA-78 Narowal against the PTI’s Abrar-ul-Haq.

The PML-N’s Rana Sanaul-lah will face the PTI’s Nisar Jatt from NA-106 Faisalabad.

Khawaja Saad Rafi que’s brother, Khawaja Salman Rafi que, had however lost the election in 2013 but returned to

the Provincial Assembly in a by-poll.

He remained the adviser on health to the Punjab chief minis-ter until he ceased to be a mem-ber of the Provincial Assem-bly, but was made the minister of specialised healthcare after winning the by-election.

The PML-N’s Khurram Dast-gir Khan is contesting from his ancestral seat NA-81 Gujranwa-la; the PTI is yet to announce its candidate from there.

In Lahore, besides Imran, can-didates like Malik Zaheer, Aleem Khan, and Mansha Sindhu are PTI ticket holders who have won in the past as candidates of other political parties.

Tough election fi ght seen between PML-N and PTIInternewsLahore

Cricket star-turned-pol-itician Imran Khan has kicked off his election

campaign by staging a major rally and promising sweeping changes in the country if his party wins.

Pakistan will hold a general election on July 25 and Khan is hoping to achieve a years-long dream of becoming prime min-ister.

The polls will bring to a head political tensions that have been mounting since former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted by the Supreme Court on corruption charges last July and later barred from politics for life.

“Today I am launching my election campaign and weeks after, you will see emergence of a new Pakistan,” Khan told a rally of thousands in his native Mi-anwali constituency, more than 200km (120 miles) southwest of Islamabad.

Khan said yesterday that if he is elected, he will root out cor-ruption by strengthening insti-

tutions, bring investment from abroad, and provide better job opportunities for young people.

He also promised changes in the agriculture and education sectors and wide-ranging re-forms to introduce a culture of paying tax.

“With the grace of God, we will make a new Pakistan which will be self-suffi cient and will stand on its own feet, will pros-per and where government will serve its people,” Khan said.

Sharif was the 15th prime minister in Pakistan’s seven-decade history to be ousted be-fore fi nishing a full term.

The country witnessed its fi rst democratic transfer of power following polls in 2013, which Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) won in a landslide.

The upcoming elections are expected to pit the PML-N against its main rival, the Paki-stan Tehreek-e-Insaf party led by Imran Khan.

Despite the numerous court rulings against the PML-N, the party has won a string of recent by-elections proving it will like-ly remain a powerful force.

Imran Khan kicks off poll campaignAFPMianwali

Supporters of former Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan participate in an election campaign in Mianwali, some 240km southwest of Islamabad, yesterday. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief kicked off his election campaign by staging a major rally and promising sweeping changes in the country if his party wins the elections.

Musharrafhasn’t quit politics

InternewsIslamabad

Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has clarifi ed that he had

not quit politics but had only re-signed as chairman of his party, the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML), “after due legal consul-tation”.

In a video message released by the APML, he asked party work-ers to support the new party chairman, Dr Muhammad Am-jad, and general secretary Me-hreen Malik Adam.

Musharraf said that he had a strong desire to return to the country but had decided to stay away due to three reasons.

“For my return to the coun-try, I required three things: that I should be allowed to take part in the election, that my name should not be placed on the Exit Control List (ECL), and that I should not be arrested,” he said.

Musharraf, who ruled the country from 1999 to 2008 af-ter staging a military coup as an army chief, asked his party can-didates to go into the elections with full zeal.

“Good times will come and we will then decide accordingly,” he said.

He said that there are certain rumours circulating after his resignation as party chairperson, which is why he had to “person-ally explain in this regard”.

The self-exiled former mili-tary dictator said that the Is-lamabad High Court (IHC) had issued a decision regarding the disqualifi cation of the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N)’s Khawaja Asif that was nulli-fi ed by the Supreme Court.

“I was also disqualifi ed by a high court bench from contest-ing the elections but the Su-preme Court did not nullify the decision like it did in Khawaja Asif’s case,” he regretted.

Similarly, he said, the name of PML-N supremo Nawaz Shar-if had not been placed on the ECL, and he continued to travel to London and address public gatherings all over the country.

“I also required that liberty,” he said.

The former army chief said that the Supreme Court had de-clared that he would not be ar-rested till he arrived at the court, “but the court did not clarify that if I would not be arrested after that”.

“These three issues were im-peding my way back to the coun-try. If my movements could be restricted upon my return to the country, what I could have done for my party?” he pointed out.

Musharraf: If my movements could be restricted upon my return to the country, what I could have done for my party?

Popular singer and musi-cian Ali Zafar has fi led a defamation suit against

fellow singer Meesha Shafi , who had accused him of sexual har-assment.

Shafi took to Twitter to allege that Zafar had subjected her to sexual harassment on more than one occasion.

Zafar has vehemently denied the allegation.

The claim, which triggered a fi restorm on the social me-dia, was dubbed as “Pakistan’s #MeToo moment” by some us-ers.

Zafar fi led the defamation suit through his counsel Rana Intizar, demanding Rs1bn in damages from Shafi .

Intizar contended before the court that Shafi has damaged the reputation of his client with

“baseless allegations”.He asked that the court di-

rect Shafi to tender an uncondi-tional apology and pay Rs1bn in damages.

Zafar had previously sent a legal notice to Meesha stating that her tweets, dated April 19, 2018, are “false, slanderous, and defamatory” and “caused tremendous injury to the plain-

tiff ’s reputation, goodwill, and livelihood”.

Since the “defamatory state-ments are patently false, it can only be concluded that this malicious campaign has been launched against the plaintiff as part of a motivated conspiracy to tarnish the plaintiff ’s good image through making false ac-cusations”, Intizar said.

Singer Ali Zafar fi les defamation lawsuit against Meesha Shafi InternewsLahore

Meesha and Ali: were an item.

Caretaker govt takes measures on tribal areas’ mergerThe interim government of Pakistan has formed two sub-committees to chalk out a plan with regard to financial requirements of the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and for drafting rules and regulations to expedite process of its merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.The decision to form these sub-panels was made on Thursday during a meeting of a committee earlier formed by the premier to facilitate the merger of the Fata and the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (Pata) with the KP, in

line with the recently passed 25th Constitutional Amendment.Minister for Law and Justice Ali Zafar chaired the meeting – held at the ministry of states and frontier regions (Safron) – and urged the ministry off icials and all stakeholders to ensure that the merger process is smooth and successful.The meeting was held to review the decisions that were taken in the last meeting.It was attended by off icials of Safron, the secretary for planning and development, and representatives from the army and the KP government.

A sum of $15.25bn was transferred abroad by in-dividual account holders

in Pakistan during the fi nancial year 2016-17 through normal banking channels, while a sub-stantial amount was believed to have been transferred abroad under the unauthorised and un-documented hundi and hawala (informal) mechanism.

This information was part of a report submitted to the Su-preme Court (SC) by a 12-mem-ber committee of experts, head-ed by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) governor Tariq Bajwa.

The committee, which had been constituted on the or-ders of a three-judge SC bench headed by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar, was tasked with trac-ing assets and bank accounts stashed abroad by Pakistani na-tionals.

The court initiated a suo motu (acting on its own ini-tiative) hearing of the matter pertaining to illegal transfer of money from Pakistan to other countries when it came to its notice that many Pakistanis had neither disclosed the accounts they were maintaining abroad nor paid taxes on the money in accordance with the law.

In its report, the committee stated that both types of out-fl ows – through regular chan-nels and through hundi or ha-

wala – had a huge impact on the stability of the country’s foreign exchange reserves and adverse-ly aff ected the exchange rate of the Pakistani rupee.

As a result, the report feared, the national economy had be-come vulnerable to pressure due to foreign currency obligations of the state.

This trend could cause un-due and disruptive infl ation besides draining the exchequer of substantial amounts of tax, it stated.

The Supreme Court earlier recalled that the committee had urged the federal government to announce a scheme for volun-tary disclosure of foreign assets owned by Pakistanis, providing them with an opportunity to declare or transfer foreign as-sets to Pakistan in lieu of pay-ment of tax.

The SC was informed that af-ter its March 26 order, the fed-eral government promulgated the Foreign Assets (Declaration and Repatriation) Ordinance 2018.

The signifi cant feature of the act is the promised immunity from taxation and penal action in respect of undeclared for-eign assets subject to payment of taxes.

The apex court said the gov-ernment had made legislative amendments in the relevant laws for regulating the cash feeding of foreign currency ac-counts by restricting the privi-lege to tax fi lers only.

A regulatory check in cash movement of foreign currency above $100,000 within Pakistan had been imposed, the court said, adding that the immunity from taxation of inward remit-tances under Section 111(4)(a) of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001 had been limited to a maximum $100,000 per annum.

It is acknowledged by the SBP governor and the commit-tee members that the suo motu proceedings had encouraged the federal government to review its policy leading to the legislative and regulatory changes.

The apex court also acknowl-edged that it was not an expert on economic, fi scal or fi nancial matters but was persuaded to initiate the suo motu proceed-ings amid grave public con-cern over the country’s declin-ing foreign exchange reserves, exchange rate of rupee, and the corresponding infl ation-ary trend of imported essen-tial commodities, and govern-ment’s indiff erence towards the unhindered outfl ows of valu-able foreign exchange encour-aged by immunities from scru-tiny and taxation.

Thus, the proceedings were aimed at drawing the atten-tion of the federal legislative and regulatory bodies towards issues of national priority, the court said, adding that legis-lation on the subject is a good start to curtail misuse of privi-leges granted by the law and ex-ecutive regulation.

More than $15bn sent abroad in one year, Supreme Court toldInternewsIslamabad

Bulk ofdeclarationsunder tax amnestyreceived from Dubai

InternewsKarachi

Dubai is the off shore des-tination of choice for Pa-kistanis to park untaxed

money as the bulk of funds for the declaration of foreign assets under the tax amnesty scheme were received from the Emirates, a top offi cial said yesterday.

“We will disclose more details regarding declarations of foreign assets on June 30,” Tariq Mah-mood Pasha, chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), told a gathering of businessmen.

The government in April an-nounced a tax amnesty aimed at broadening the revenue base of the country where only about 1% of the adult population is tax payers.

Under the plan, all Pakistanis will be able to declare their un-reported income and assets and bring their money into the tax base after paying a 5% one-off penalty.

Pakistanis living overseas and declaring income or assets would pay a 2% one-time pen-alty.

Media recently reported that Pakistanis have bought proper-ties worth Rs1.1tn in Dubai in the past 15 years.

Around 7,000 rich Pakistanis bought luxury residential villas/fl ats/estates in 12 localities in the Emirati commercial hub.

With the expiry of the dead-line for declaring illegal assets fast approaching, billions of ru-pees hidden in foreign bank ac-counts or funnelled into prop-erty abroad are likely emerge into light – or so the government hopes.

Ratings service Moody’s ex-pects the government’s tax am-nesty scheme to have a modest impact of around $2-3bn in for-eign exchange infl ows.

Pasha asked businessmen to avail the amnesty as those “fail-ing to declare their assets would face the music after June 30”.

“If we fi nd any undisclosed assets after the amnesty expires, the owners of such assets would be liable to pay the tax as well as the penalty, which would go as much as 70% of the value of such assets,” he said at a meeting held at the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and In-dustry (FPCCI).

PHILIPPINES

17Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 2018

Army modernisation ‘not a waste’ of moneyBy Dempsey ReyesManila Times

Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana yesterday brushed aside claims of

Communist Party of the Phil-ippines (CPP) founding chair-man Jose Maria “Joma” Sison that the military’s modernisa-tion programme is a “waste” of government funds.

“It is never a waste of mon-ey to invest in the security of our people and our territory,” Lorenzana told Manila Times in a text message.

He said the government’s “neglect to spend” funds was the reason behind a “very weak” military “that we can-not even protect our exclusive economic zone(EEZ).”

“He (Sison) would pre-fer that our soldiers are ill-equipped so that his (New People’s Army) fighters will have an advantage,” Lorenzana added, referring to the armed wing of the CPP, the NPA.

Last week, Sison posted

on his social media account a news report indicating that President Rodrigo Duterte had

approved the second horizon of the military’s modernisa-tion programme, amounting to

around P300bn.He claimed that Duterte’s

spending for the military up-

grade is a “waste” of taxpay-ers’ money and borrowed funds from other nations.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) had said it does not expect decent state-ments from Sison and that the modernisation programme would be the communist lead-er’s “worst nightmare.”

Under the second horizon of the AFP modernisation programme, the military will acquire equipment such as submarines, frigates and cor-vettes for the Philippine Navy; multi-role fighters and radar systems for the Philippine Air Force; and howitzer tanks and night fighting system for the Philippine Army, among oth-ers.

In 2015, the Japanese gov-ernment said it will donate a Lockheed Martin P-3C Orion patrol aircraft to the Philip-pine military.

Lorenzana said there was no official communication yet with Tokyo regarding the agreement with Manila in 2015 for the patrol plane.

Lorenzana: backing investment in security

Devotees slather themselves in soilAFPAliaga

They say there’s nothing quite like it for cooling the blood, but for more than a

thousand Filipinos at a Catho-lic festival yesterday, slathering their bodies in mud was a way to show devotion and humility.

The annual tradition forms part of a joyous religious festival honouring a saint.

Men, women and children sat in soggy rice paddies before dawn in the town of Aliaga, 100 kilometres north of Manila, cov-ering each other in muck before donning dried banana leaves in the annual “Mud People” festi-val. A tradition that draws the faithful and tourists alike, the event celebrates the feast of John the Baptist with devotees taking part in what they see as an act of humility and penance.

“I got goosebumps when I joined the festival. I have re-ceived blessings,” 35-year-old businessman and village offi-cial Win Javaluyas said.

The Philippines is Asia’s Catholic bastion with a flock of more than 80mn. Spain colo-nised the archipelago in the

16th century and spread the faith.

The “Mud People” festival, believed to have begun more than a century ago, became much more prominent after 1944 during Japan’s wartime occupation of the former US colony, local priest Elmer Vil-

lamayor said. Residents say Japanese soldiers were about to execute men in Aliaga to avenge the death of their compatri-ots when a heavy downpour broke out, forcing the troops to scamper away in what villagers saw as a miracle.

Grateful locals, who rolled

happily in the mud, attributed the rain to the saint who is as-sociated with water.

“Some people view this event as yucky but this is a very solemn festival. People humble themselves and are sorry for their wrongdoings,” said Vil-lamayor, parish priest of Saint

John the Baptist. Participants say their devotion has led to miracles. “My mother was healed after suffering from tu-berculosis of the bone, a rare illness. Now my wife is preg-nant with twins. I am praying for her healthy delivery,” said Javaluyas.

Devotees wearing costumes made of banana leaves attend a mass as part of a religious festival, also known locally as the “mud people” festival, in Aliaga town, Nueva Ecija province, north of Manila, yesterday.

Police chief warns against abuses in anti-crime driveBy Jaime G AquinoManila Times/Lingayen

The provincial police di-rector here warned all policemen in the police

stations of four cities and 44 municipalities against any ir-regularities in the implemen-tation of Rid the Streets of Drunkards and Youth (Oplan Rody) operations or face pun-ishment.

Senior Supt. Ronald Oliver-Lee said the “anti-tambay” (anti-loiterer and bystander)

campaign should be in adher-ence with Police Operational Procedures and urged po-lice operatives to co-ordinate closely with barangay (village) offi cials in its enforcement.

“It is not far from our regular operations on ‘Oplan Sita’ and enforcement of curfew hour and other ordinances related to safety and protection of night-life activities in Pangasinan,” Lee reminded policemen.

Oplan Sita was implemented in 2010 based on Letter of In-struction 63 under the Police Integrated Patrol System that

directs all units to enhance crime prevention and solution. The campaign has been one of the police interventions to de-ter criminality.

Lee said the anti-tambay op-eration ordered by President Ro-drigo Duterte is aimed at deter-ring crimes especially at night.

The enforcement of laws and local ordinances, he added, should be based on the Philip-pine National Police’s (PNP) Community and Human Rights Based Policing which calls for the respect of the rights of every individual, including loiterers.

Lee said they have not re-ceived any complaint from the public so far on the police’s im-plementation of the anti-loiter-ing rule.

In a report to Chief Supt. Romulo Sapitula, PNP regional director, Lee said more than 1,400 minors and adults violators have been apprehended from June 18 to 22. Apprehended were those who violated local ordinances ranging from anti-smoking, anti-nuisance, sobriety law, drinking on the streets, urinating in public and other infractions relating to public order.

Health dept blamed for failed village projectBy Jordeene SheexlagareManila Times

Triple A company JBros Construction yesterday refuted allegations that

the P8.1bn Barangay Health Station project it signed with the Department of Health (DoH) was anomalous.

The BHS programme, imple-mented by the previous admin-istration, aimed to build 5,700 barangay (village) health sta-tions to give residents access to primary care.

JBros said it should not be blamed for the project’s failure and denied allegations that it was involved in the forging of documents related to the con-tracts. “This is a very serious and potentially libelous allega-tion and we dare (Health Secre-tary Francisco) Duque to prove this,” it said.

The company said it termi-nated the contract with the Health department “because of the agency’s breach of con-tract for failing to provide all the sites for construction and unjustifiably refusing to pay for the request for payment almost a year after it was first filed.”

“Health Secretary Francisco Duque himself admitted that almost three years since the bidding for the project in 2015, all of the sites were still not all available,” it added.

The company said the DoH billed them twice – on May 15, 2017 and August 1, 2017 – for completed works amounting to more than P1.6bn.

However, the billings re-mained unpaid for more than a year.

Although Duque has ap-proved the payment, the de-partment still refused to re-lease the money “prompting the contractor to suspend the contract for fear of its accu-mulating operational and over-

head expenses.” “Realising that the DoH consistently failed to comply with its fundamen-tal obligations, setting up the contractor to fail and lose bil-lions of its investments, JBros finally terminated the contract on March 13, 2018,” JBros said in a statement.

The BHS project was rolled out under former Health Sec-retary Janette Garin.

JBros clarified although it re-ceived P1.2bn in payments, the value of its accomplishment surpassed the amount.

“The total accomplish-ment consists of completed units, substantially and par-tially completed units, and completed foundation pads amounting to P1.6bn for Phase 1 and P518.9mn in Phase 2. For both contracts, the total ac-complishment of the contrac-tor was P2.1bn versus a com-bined mobilisation payment of P1.2bn,” it added.

Duque had warned that “heads will roll” over the failed project.

“There will be no sacred cows. Heads will definitely roll,” he warned.

The Health chief said a probe was launched in April after the Commission on Audit reported a “high level of suspicion on alleged anomalies in the pro-curement process.”

A CoA report said the project “was obstructed by ineligible and non-workable project sites that were not fully validated before project contracting and implementation due to the ab-sence of specific guidelines.”

The “delayed and non-completion of the total BHS contract again impacts on the procured equipment, which remain idle or undistributed to intended school-based BHS,” the report said.

Duque has requested the Of-fice of the Ombudsman to in-vestigate the project.

Unidentifi ed gunmen shoot dead businessmanBy Celso M CajucomManila Times/Cabanatuan City

A businessman noted for helping the needy was killed by two unidenti-

fi ed gunmen while he stopped at a dimly lighted intersection shortly before midnight on Sat-urday.

Manuel Gabriel Lacsamana,

an engineer-contractor, was driving his pick-up truck and yielded at an intersection along Mabini Extension to give way to passing vehicles along Mahar-lika Highway in this city, when the gunmen got off from a mo-torcycle, walked towards his vehicle and fi red shots at close range.

Witnesses said the victim managed to drive and cross

the highway until Mabini main street. His red Mitsubishi pick-up truck slowly stopped, hit-ting a parked car on the roadside where he died.

The autopsy report showed the victim was hit on the left side of his face with two .45 ca-liber bullets piercing his right jaw and right ear.

Lacsamana had been build-ing several government housing

projects and 18 gasoline stations in Central Luzon. He is also an associate member of a local me-dia organisation and was elected chairman of the Board of the Central Luzon Media Associa-tion-Nueva Ecija.

It was previously reported that Lacsamana and his older son, Manuel Junior had been receiving death threats but the victim just laughed these off .

Richard Francisco, the victim’s friend and part-time driver, said Lacsamana recently showed him a text message he received which said: “Play Jack and Poy with your son on who should go fi rst.” Jack and poy is a chil-dren’s game to determine who should play fi rst.

Francisco suspected the reason for Lacsamana’s murder could be the controversial issue of quarry-

ing in Nueva Ecija. As a building contractor, Lacsamana main-tained a sand and gravel quarry site near the Pampanga River bank in a Nueva Ecija town. He stockpiled the quarry materials for his projects.

The provincial government had issued Lacsamana a permit to operate the quarry while the Cabanatuan City government al-lowed him to haul the materials.

Supreme Court offi cials told to explain role in Sereno car purchase

The Supreme Court wants three

of its off icials to explain their par-

ticipation in the procurement of

a luxury car by then-Chief Justice

Maria Lourdes-Sereno, Manila

Times reported. The Commission

on Audit (CoA) said it had found

the acquisition of the Toyota

Land Cruiser irregular.

It issued an Audit Observation

Memorandum (AOM) dated June

1, 2018, to Acting Chief Justice

Antonio Carpio.

On June 13, Carpio instructed

Ma. Carina Cunanan, assistant

chief of off ice of Administrative

Services and chairman of the

Procurement Planning Commit-

tee; Thelma Bahia, former SC

deputy administrator and former

chairman of the Bids and Awards

Committee; and Corazon Ferrer-

Flores, Deputy Clerk of Court and

chief of the Finance Manage-

ment and Budget Off ice, to com-

ment on the memorandum.

The CoA said no bidding was

conducted for the procurement

of the luxury car and documents

pertaining to the acquisition

were submitted late. The car was

bought for P5,110,500.00.

The CoA the purchase of the

Toyota Land Cruiser was contrary

to Republic Act 9184 and its Inter-

nal Rules and Regulations because

only Toyota Makati joined a public

bidding for the procurement of

the vehicle. On May 19, the SC

voted 8-6 to oust Sereno for lack of

integrity over her failure to file her

complete Statements of Assets,

Liabilities and Net Worth.

Representative Michael Romero yesterday pushed for a P6,000 yearly subsidy for 10mn poor families to cushion the impact of the Tax Reform for Inclusion and Acceleration (Train) law that hiked taxes on fuel and sugar-sweetened beverages, Manila Times reported.. Romero, the rep-resentative of 1-Pacman party-list that is allied with the ruling coalition in Congress, made the proposal under his House Bill 7773. The bill seeks to grant poor families P500 per month instead of P200 for the first year implementation of the Train law’s Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) programme. “Given the new developments since the Train law, it should be amended (by passing my proposal). My proposal is to increase it to P500 per month because that figure will be enough to withstand the eff ects of a four to five percent inflation rate, peso depreciation against the US dollar of 10% and elevated world crude oil prices,” Romero said in a statement.

Yearly subsidy for poor families urgedREQUEST

Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 2018

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‘Gaming disorder’classifi ed as mentalhealth condition

The latest action by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in announcing “gaming disorder” as a new mental health condition is immensely laudable. The step is truly in keeping with the times. Gaming disorder has been included in the 11th edition of its International Classifi cation of Diseases (ICD), released last week. While proposing the new diagnosis to WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly, Dr Vladimir Poznyak, a member of WHO’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, said, WHO has followed “the trends, the developments, which have taken place in populations and in the professional fi eld.”

A diagnosis standard, the ICD defi nes the universe of diseases, disorders, injuries and other related health conditions. Researchers use it to count deaths, diseases, injuries and symptoms, and doctors and other medical practitioners use it to diagnose disease and other conditions. In many cases, healthcare companies and insurers use the ICD as a basis for reimbursement. According to Poznyak, the expectation is that the classifi cation of gaming disorder means health professionals and systems will be more “alerted to the existence of this condition” while boosting the possibility that “people who suff er from these conditions can get appropriate help.”

He said there are three major diagnostic features or characteristics of gaming disorder. The fi rst is that the gaming behaviour takes precedence over other activities pushing the latter to the periphery. The second feature is impaired control of these behaviours. Even when the negative consequences occur, this behaviour continues or escalates.

A diagnosis of gaming disorder, then, means that a “persistent or recurrent” behaviour pattern of “suffi cient severity” has emerged, according to the ICD. A third feature is that the condition leads to signifi cant distress and impairment in personal, family, social, educational or occupational

functioning. The impact may include disturbed sleep patterns.

Overall, the main characteristics are “very similar” to the diagnostic features of substance use disorders and gambling disorder, Poznyak said. Gambling disorder “is another category of clinical conditions which are not associated with a psychoactive substance use but at the same time being considered as addictive as addictions.” For a diagnosis to be made, the negative pattern of behaviour must last at least 12 months. However, exceptions can be made when the other criteria are met and symptoms are severe enough.

“Millions of gamers around the world, even when it comes to the intense gaming, would never qualify as people suff ering from gaming disorder,” Poznyak said, adding that the overall prevalence of this condition is “very low.” He stressed that gaming disorder is a clinical condition, and clinical diagnosis can be made only by health professionals properly trained to do that. Poznyak noted that the ICD does not make “prescriptions” in terms of insurance coverage or the development of health services – these decisions are made by national authorities – but “prevention and treatment interventions can help people to alleviate their suff ering.”

Most interventions or treatments for gaming disorder are “based on the principles and methods of cognitive behavioural therapy,” he said. Diff erent types of support may also be provided, including “psychosocial interventions: social support, understanding of the conditions, family support.” The therapy should be based on understanding the “nature of the behaviour and what can be done in order to improve the situation.” Prevention interventions may also be needed. Ultimately, WHO hopes that inclusion of gaming disorder in the classifi cation will stimulate debate as well as further research and international collaboration.

Most treatments are “based on the principles of cognitive behavioural therapy”

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CHAIRMANAbdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing EditorK T Chacko

By Carolina A MirandaVenice, Italy

In 1962, two men from East Berlin attempted a daring escape to the West. Peter Fechter and Helmut Kulbeik were young – all of 18. On

August 17, the pair slipped away from their construction jobs during their lunch break and made their way to the border, hiding in an old factory near the Checkpoint Charlie crossing of the Berlin Wall, which had been erected only the year before.

Around 2pm, they slipped out of an open window into the barbed wire-fi lled no man’s land alongside the wall. They then made a run for it. Kulbeik managed to scramble over the wall, then still a crude barrier not much taller than a man.

Fechter did not.An East German guard shot him

before he could make the climb. His body fell to the East, but was visible in the West, from the windows of buildings close to the wall. He cried for help, but no guards or medics came. In full view of the world, he bled to death. On the Western side of the wall, a crowd of hundreds gathered and chanted “murderers” at the East German guards. The security zone in which he died became known as the “death strip.”

After Fechter’s killing, it seemed beyond the realm of imagination that the Berlin Wall could ever come down. Yet, less than three decades later, it did: In November 1989, after a member of the East German Politburo announced that restrictions on travel would be lifted, East Germans fl ooded the border, and joined by West Berliners on the other side, tore the wall apart with whatever tools they could fi nd. Within months, this seemingly intractable political barrier had crumbled. By the following year, Germany was one again.

The wall and its physical and political aftermath are at the heart of one of the most captivating pavilions at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, on view through November 25. In keeping with the biennale’s “Freespace” theme, “Unbuilding Walls,” as Germany’s exhibition is titled, charts the ways in which architects and urbanists have sought to weave back together East and West since 1989 – both physically and psychologically.

Step into the German pavilion and you are greeted by a grim black wall bisecting the room before you. Walk farther into the space, however, and the wall appears to fragment. The long, black barrier, it turns out, isn’t solid. It is a series of unconnected vertical slabs,

laid out at diff erent depths, that provide a passing illusion of fortitude. It could not be more sculptural.

It also could not be a more propitious time for this show.

This year, February 5 marked the day that the wall had been gone as long as it had been up – 10,316 days. The wall, as the curators note in a related essay, “represented not only the division of a city and the division of an entire country” but also became a symbol of “state repression, forcible separation, autocratic despotism and the inhuman potential of political ideology.”

Moreover, the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall and its attendant Cold War legacies highlights the construction of walls elsewhere – such as the “big, fat, beautiful wall” President Donald Trump wants for the US-Mexico border – and points to a future in which those walls may be no more.

Architect Lars Kruckeberg is a founder of the Berlin-based design studio Graft and served as a curator of the exhibition. He says that growing up in Germany – in the West – the wall seemed like it would always be a part of the landscape.

“If you had asked me in Germany, even half a year before it did, will that wall come down?” he says. “I would have have said, ‘No. It can’t come down.’ And a lot of people would have said that.”

Today, tourists fl ood sites such as Checkpoint Charlie, the wall’s most recognisable crossing point, to have their pictures taken with actors in military costume.

Walls that go up, one day come down.Kruckeberg organised the exhibition

with his fellow Graft founders Wolfram Putz and Thomas Willemeit, in collaboration with Marianne Birthler, a human rights advocate who served on a commission that investigated the crimes of the Stasi, the East German secret police.

“There have been many stories in exhibitions about the wall,” Kruckeberg says of the impetus for the show. “But there have been no exhibitions that look at the space around it – a space that could be very deep.”

Together, the curators have put together a dense but fascinating show – with an essential (and blessedly well-written) catalogue that looks at the urban and rural sites occupied by the Berlin Wall before, during and after its existence.

As part of this, they recount riveting bits of the Berlin Wall’s urban history.

The wall, for example, cut indiscriminately across existing rail

lines, but subterranean rails were left untouched. This meant that West Berlin underground lines regularly crossed into Eastern territory as part of their daily routes. To observe the political boundaries, however, Western trains didn’t stop in on the Eastern side, resulting in a number of ghost stations. Except for one: Friedrichstrasse, which served as an offi cial border crossing, and which was dubbed the “Palace of Tears,” since it’s where easterners said goodbye to friends and family heading back to the West.

There is the long history of Potsdamer Platz, a busy intersection of traffi c and trams – once home to Europe’s fi rst traffi c lights – that was bombed to rubble during World War II and was later unsympathetically divided by the wall. And there was the Gothic Revival church from the 19th century that was blown up in 1985 because it had the misfortune of being in the middle of the death strip. (At this spot now stands the Chapel of Reconciliation, designed by Sassenroth & Reitermann, that is built on the foundations of the earlier church.)

“Unbuilding Walls” reviews the myriad architecture and urbanism projects that have arisen as a reaction to the Berlin Wall – such as the Band des Bundes, a strip of federal buildings designed by German architects Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank that seem to strap together East and West like the buckle of a belt. The show also reviews the parks and monuments that incorporate elements of the wall as a nod to historical memory and the many that do not – such as an apartment complex by Italian postmodernist Aldo Rossi. His ebullient Schutzenstrasse Quarter complex, built on the site of the former death strip, completely overwrites the area’s deadly history.

Most signifi cantly, “Unbuilding Walls” looks at the ways in which the country has attempted to weave itself back together socially and culturally since the end of the Cold War.

This reunifi cation has not been an equal proposition. In her catalogue essay, Birthler notes the disparities faced by those in the former East Germany, who on average earn less and wield far less power socially and politically. “Two of the 13 ministers of the German government in 2017 came from the East,” she notes. “Only three of the 60 state secretaries originate from the East. Of the 190 board seats of stock companies, just three are occupied by East Germans.”

This has led to a lopsided cultural representation as well.

In a separate essay, cultural journalist Michael Pilz notes that the West doesn’t always show much regard for the East’s architectural history. Socialist Modernist buildings have been demolished or ill-preserved – such as the Ahornblatt, the so-called maple-leaf restaurant from the 1970s known for its swooping fi ve-point canopy. It was torn down to make way for a hotel and shopping mall. Other key sites have been reborn as luxury car dealerships or tourist viewing platforms – generally with little acknowledgement of what they once signifi ed.

“Buildings are not just aesthetic compositions or profi table investments,” writes Pilz. They are “monuments.” And “those who tear them down erase entire biographies.”

Nearly three decades after it came down, the Berlin Wall still casts a long shadow.

“Some people thought, ‘Let’s just heal the city. Let’s erase traces of the wall and it’ll be fi ne,’” Kruckeberg says. “If you say that, you are lying to yourself.

“You can’t just divide things. If you do, you’re cutting through tissue – and you damage and you hurt and you scar. We know that from Berlin.”

What makes the exhibition relevant beyond the German context is the ways in which it connects with other political scenarios.

“Unbuilding Walls” features video testimonials gathered by the architects at border walls around the world – North and South Korea, Israel and Palestine, the US and Mexico. In these testimonials, residents of those nations refl ect on what border walls mean and how they have aff ected their lives. It’s a piece that ties in nicely with a project by Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, on view at the US pavilion nearby, that makes a case for viewing the US-Mexico border not as a dividing line but as a holistic ecological region.

In one of the videos, a man named Jose Efrain from Tijuana is asked how long he thinks the US border wall may ultimately last.

“I can’t be sure,” he responds. “As you see in Berlin, where they took down that wall – here, we can do the same thing, and we could just not have a border.”

The hardened US-Mexico border may seem like a permanent part of life in North America. But Kruckeberg says making those assumptions can be foolhardy.

“That’s the lesson of the Berlin Wall. Each wall is temporary. There is a time it will come down.” - Tribune News Service

AFPLos Angeles

In a room at the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles, beyond a vast space where paintings and sculptures are displayed, around a

dozen students gather at small tables.Henry, 15, is hard at work developing

a musical pedestrian crossing, using an innovative little device called MESH that attaches to household objects and turns them into switches for various connected devices.

Henry and his classmates are taking part in STEAM learning — science, technology, engineering, art and math — an innovative artistic twist on the more traditional STEM education.

The pupils from south LA — a relatively deprived part of the city — are spending the morning in this hothouse of learning, a partnership with education organisation Genesis to combat inequalities in arts and science education.

The youngsters have been given a whistlestop tour of the tools in the cutting edge lab — from the industrial grade laser cutter and 3D printer pens to the 11-foot interactive touch wall.

They are tasked with dreaming up

inventions that will make everyday life more convenient and fun, inspired by such innovations as the playable musical staircases seen occasionally at metro stations.

“You have seven minutes,” Lauren Rodrigues, Genesis’s director of education, instructs the group, and the urgent murmur of focused teenagers spreads across the room as they rush to develop the next revolutionary recycling system, garbage collection robot or some other neat innovation.

“We want to function as a start-up incubator. Go very quickly and collaborate, that’s the future,” says Sheri Schlesinger, who founded Genesis fi ve years ago.

The non-profi t aims to demystify the sciences by making them fun for children, including those from privileged backgrounds, would normally feel intimidated by the idea of Bunsen burners and complicated equations.

“70% of the jobs of the future, we haven’t invented yet, and STEAM is a critical component of innovative thinking,” says Schlesinger.

As automation increasingly does away with the need for unskilled human labor, Schlesinger warns that the days of washing dishes in a cafe or

performing other menial chores to earn a living will soon be over.

Over the last 15 years the US has been jolted out of its complacency on science education, with its youngsters falling far below the academic standards of Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Finnish and Polish students.

The American system has been playing catch-up, introducing federally-funded programmes while private schools across the board have been equipping themselves with workshops boasting industrial machinery and the latest in robotic gadgetry.

Around 500,000 children in the greater Los Angeles area live near or below the poverty line.

“100% of underserved kids have no access to a robust STEAM education. The opportunity this will provide for future jobs is staggering,” says Schlesinger.

The Marciano Art Foundation (MAF) was started up in 2012 by the Guess clothing company brothers Maurice and Paul Marciano.

Paul recently stepped down from the fashion brand without admitting any wrongdoing after settling with fi ve sexual misconduct accusers.

Maurice took over the executive chairman role at Guess and it is he who

runs MAF, the organisation says, with Paul’s only role being as co-founder.

“We see so many artists today working with technology and science and sort of intermingling the two,” MAF deputy director Jamie Manne told AFP.

“We really feel that’s the next sort of movement in art. So bringing up the science and mixing it with the art, I think you really get a better understanding of each subject by knowing more about the other.”

Genesis has given more than 4,000 children a grounding in computer coding, virtual reality and electrical engineering, in museums, private schools, after-class clubs — and even in a mobile lab.

More than 800 children have been through the Marciano foundation lab since the collaboration was launched six months ago.

Clea, watching her programable mini robot make its way along a line drawn by marker pen, is in her creative zone.

“I’ve had a lot of ideas like this before, like a crosswalk that would fl ash diff erent colours, or street light that would give more light when someone walks by,” she enthuses.

“It would be really useful at night when you’re a woman walking alone in the street.”

Lessons for Trump from dismantling of Berlin Wall

Full STEAM ahead for US youngstersIn November 1989 East Germans flooded the border, and joined by West Berliners on the other side, tore the wall apart with whatever tools they could find.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Monday, June 25, 2018 19

Portable music players tied to hearing loss in kids

Melania’s jacket is the Trump administration

Trump’s order to end separation policy politicalBy George SkeltonSacremento, Califorfnia

The heart-rending sound of children crying for their mothers and the disturbing sight of little kids confi ned in

wire cages are more powerful than any president.

No national policy is worth ripping weeping toddlers from their parents’ arms and placing them in custody, and most people instinctively understand that – even if some politicians don’t.

Hyperbolic, you might say. But perhaps you haven’t listened to an audio recording obtained by ProPublica, a nonprofi t investigative news agency. The audio quickly went viral. On it you’ll hear the sobbing of several Central American children, crying desperately for “mami” and “papa.”

There’s a persistent 6-year-old Salvadoran girl who keeps pleading for someone to please call her aunt. She’ll come and get her. That’s what her mother said she should do. She has memorised the phone number. Finally someone listens.

But the aunt couldn’t pick her up, she told ProPublica, because she also has an immigration problem and it was too risky.

“I know she’s not an American citizen,” the aunt was quoted as saying about her niece, “but she’s a human being. She’s a child. How can they treat her this way?”

They can unless the public becomes outraged and intervenes, pressuring Congress and the president.

And it did, spurred by constant TV footage and still photos of the chicken-pen-like cages and hot tents the kids were being corralled into at detention centres.

Meanwhile, their parents were confi ned somewhere else trying to explain to border agents that they deserve asylum because they’re fl eeing

crime-ridden, economically depressed Central American countries essentially run by drug cartels.

The mournful sounds and depressing sights quickly ignited a wildfi re of public revulsion.

“Images and sounds are the most eff ective communication,” says Barbara O’Connor, former director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Sacramento State University. “They’re diff erent than words. They connote a much deeper feeling than words ever can. They bring our own feelings and values and experiences to the table.

“Ninety percent of what we take away from communication is

nonverbal. Even the president is vulnerable to it.”

By Monday last week, roughly two-thirds of American voters were opposed to President Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents as part of his “zero tolerance” war against illegal immigration, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

On Wednesday, Trump performed a rare retreat and signed an executive order ending family separations. He acted because of political necessity, not a change of heart.

“We’re going to keep families together,” he announced, without saying where they were going to be kept. “But we still have to maintain toughness or

our country will be overrun by people, by crime, by all the things that we don’t stand for and that we don’t want.”

Same ol’ Trump.Republican politicians – especially

those running for election – already were deserting the president on his family breakup policy. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who’s seeking re-election, proposed legislation to prevent separating children from their parents at the border.

In California, that was a lifeline for retired El Dorado County Judge Steven Bailey, the underdog Republican candidate challenging Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Bailey is a strong supporter of almost

everything Trump, but not separating children from parents. Bailey said on Tuesday he supports Cruz’s legislation.

Becerra joined 20 other state attorneys general across the country in demanding an end to Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. Becerra called it “inhumane and ... a new low for President Trump.”

The dark-horse Republican candidate for California governor, businessman John Cox, also has been a strong backer of virtually every Trump policy – but not on baby snatching from immigrant moms.

“I’m against separating parents and children,” Cox told reporters. “I’m a father. I have four daughters.”

But he didn’t have a solution: “That’s a congressional problem.”

California’s Republican House members had been backing away from Trump’s immigration policies. Republican David Valadao of Hanford urged the administration to knock off the family splitting.

Republican Jeff Denham of Turlock has been bucking the president and party leaders trying to protect so-called Dreamers, young people brought to the country illegally by their parents as children.

In Sacramento, Republican legislators may be forced to take a stand on Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. There’s a resolution by Senator Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) denouncing “the separation of families fl eeing violence and persecution.” But maybe that’s moot by now.

De Leon also sent Governor Jerry Brown a letter asking him to bring back 400 California National Guard troops he sent to the border in April at Trump’s request. Brown decreed they couldn’t help enforce immigration law. He restricted them to fi ghting such crime as drug smuggling.

But De Leon argues that this just frees up federal border agents to carry out Trump’s zero-tolerance programme.

“We shouldn’t be wasting our tax dollars to help agencies that are committing potential human rights violations,” De Leon told me.

Brown probably is a bit irked at De Leon, who’s challenging US Senator Dianne Feinstein for reelection. Feinstein is running far ahead and fi ghting Trump hard on immigration. She’s all over national TV. And De Leon needs attention.

Brown won’t be recalling the troops. He wants to retain some relationship with a president whose help California will need on other issues.

Meanwhile, Trump fi nally did the right thing and stopped tormenting little kids. At least for now.

Live issues

By Lisa RapaportReuters Health

Children who listen to music through headphones may be at greater risk of noise-related hearing loss, a Dutch

study suggests.Researchers examined hearing test

results for 3,316 children ages 9 to 11. They also asked parents about hearing complaints from their children, how often kids used portable music players and how high they typically set the volume.

Overall, 443 children, or 14%, had at least some difficulty hearing at high frequencies. High frequency hearing loss, especially in younger people, is often caused by noise exposure.

Regardless of how long they wore headphones or how high they set the volume, kids who used portable music players just one or two days a week were more than twice as likely to have hearing loss as children who didn’t use the devices at all.

“Although we cannot conclude from this study that music players caused these hearing losses, it shows that music exposure might infl uence hearing at a young age,” said lead study author Dr Carlijn le Clercq of Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam.

“This is important, because hearing loss is irreversible and thus has lifelong consequences,” le Clercq said by e-mail.

More than nine in 10 older children

and teens use some type of portable music player – often a smartphone or tablet – for education and recreation, researchers note in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

With noise-related hearing loss, sounds can seem muffl ed or distant and people may hear ringing in their ears. This can sometimes be temporary, happening after a loud concert, but it can become permanent with repeated exposure to noise.

In the current study, 1,244 children, or about 40%, never used portable

music players. Another 19% used portable music players once or twice a week, and about 8% used them at least three times weekly.

Most of the kids didn’t have any hearing-related symptoms. Even among children with high frequency hearing loss, only about 7% reported symptoms “sometimes” or “often.”

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how portable headphone use might directly cause hearing loss in kids. Some younger children may develop high frequency hearing loss as a result

of ear infections, especially when infections are chronic.

Another limitation of the study is that researchers lacked data on portable music player use and hearing-related symptoms for roughly one-third of the study participants.

Still, the results suggest that parents need to be more vigilant about how children use headphones, and how often, said Kevin Franck director of audiology for Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“Parents should limit use of a portable music player,” Franck, who wrote a commentary accompanying the study, said by e-mail. It’s too loud if parents can hear it, he said.

Headphones also are not the only way that children may develop hearing loss, noted Colleen Le Prell, an audiology researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas who wasn’t involved in the study. Live concerts, band practice, hunting, power tools, lawn mowers, dirt bikes, mopeds, and other motorised equipment can also create enough exposure to loud noise to potentially damage kids’ hearing, she said by e-mail.

“Limiting music player use should be considered as part of an overall safe listening strategy,” Le Prell added.

Whenever children may be exposed to loud noise, “hearing protection should be provided, and should include ear plugs marketed for musicians, ear muff s, or conventional ear plugs as appropriate for the sound source,” Le Prell advised.

By Nancy Kaff erWashington, DC

When I read reports that fi rst lady Melania Trump, en route to visit immigrant kids detained

at the border, wore a jacket that read “I REALLY DON’T CARE DO U” I thought it was, like, an implication. Not, you know, literal.

Turns out the fi rst lady is just tone deaf enough to wear a jacket with those exact words in giant letters on the back, which really seems to highlight superfi cial concern for the victims of a humanitarian crisis of her husband’s manufacture.

The fi rst lady’s trip to the border comes one day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending a practice he’d begun about six weeks before, of removing children

brought across the border by their parents to holding facilities, and then to foster care or group homes across the country. (Kids already detained seem to be stuck in limbo, with dim prospects of reunifi cation with their parents any time soon.)

Melania Trump’s spokesperson told a reporter that the jacket, which the fi rst lady did not wear to the actual detention facility, holds no “hidden message”; sure, there’s really nothing hidden about giant letters.

It’s outrageous, tone deaf, nearly unbelievable, and will wrest the next 24 hours of news cycle from substantive questions. If the Trump administration were an item of clothing, it would be this jacket.

And that’s where covering this administration has always been complicated. Trump and his confederates do and say outrageous things constantly, dominating the news.

The rapid and terrifying changes Trump’s administration is making to the structure of the US government, the damage it is dealing to the social safety net, the regulations it’s slashing, the ethics it has abandoned.

But those very excesses, the frivolous ones that seem like distraction, inform the administration’s policy moves. That Trump has been willing to damage thousands of children and parents in what was seemingly a game of political chicken aimed at coercing his political opponents to accede to his demands for an unforgiving immigration policy is all of a piece with his petulant tweets. The constant thrum of low-grade lies and the media’s earnest scramble to debunk and disprove the most signifi cant, which register not at all with the president’s Fox News-dependent base (that network

still places the entirety of the blame for child separation on Democrats) begins to seem like a tedious exercise, schoolmarm preaching about minutiae whose moment has past.

What’s signal and what’s noise? No one knows anymore.

But while it pains me to rebut a jacket, I think Melania Trump’s is wrong.

Trump ended the child removal policy because Americans cared a lot about this child separation crisis. They expressed their care publicly and loudly; diligent journalists on the border and in DC exposed the conditions children were placed in and held the administration accountable. Constituents showed lawmakers that this was not the time to capitulate to the administration’s draconian immigration policy.

When we care, we win. – Tribune News Service

Trump with US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Vice-President Mike Pence.

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20 Gulf TimesMonday, June 25, 2018

QATAR

German ambassador Hans-Udo Muzel visited the Khalifa International Stadium Fan Zone to watch the German national team’s second group match against Sweden in the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. The game which took place at 9pm on June 23 was broadcast at the Khalifa International Stadium Fan Zone, organised by Aspire Zone Foundation (AZF) in collaboration with the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC). Thanks to a stunning goal in the last minute of extra time by star midfielder Tony Kroos, the German team were able to keep their hopes alive of reaching the second round of the tournament with a 2-1 victory. “I’d like to extend my thanks to AZF for organising this great Fan Zone at Khalifa International Stadium. It’s great to see so many people here watching and enjoying football, because sport brings people together. I look forward to the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar,” Muzel said. Earlier that same day, Tunisian ambassador Salah al-Salhi, who was with Omani ambassador Najeeb bin Yahya al-Balushi, also visited the fan zone to watch the afternoon match between Tunisia and Belgium in a game that started at 3pm. This year’s fan zone is sponsored by (main partner) and Ooredoo (main sponsor), as well as Al Attiya Motors and Trading Co, Mannai Trading CO WLL (CISCO), Witr Jewellery, Royal Air Maroc and Pepsi. The fan zone is the ideal location for the country’s football fans to celebrate the most anticipated sporting event in the world, to follow World Cup games and keep up-to-date with all the action. Games will be screened at the fan zone every day throughout the tournament.

German ambassador Hans-Udo Muzel and dignitaries at the Khalifa International Stadium Fan Zone.

Tunisian ambassador Salah al-Salhi and Omani ambassador Najeeb bin Yahya al-Balushi at the event. Fans at Germany vs Sweden match.

Football fans at the Khalifa International Stadium during the Tunisia vs Belgium match.

German, Tunisian and Omani envoys watch matches at the Khalifa Stadium Fan Zone

‘7 Saias’ continues to enthral crowd at Mall of QatarBy Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

Internationally-renowned Portuguese folk group, ‘7 Saias’ (seven skirts), contin-

ues to enthral shoppers at Mall of Qatar’s (MoQ) Portugal Week, which concludes today.

“This is our fi rst visit to the Middle East and we are fasci-nated with Qatar. The public re-ceived our music and image very well. Speaking to us the people show they like our clothes and rhythms,” the group’s public re-lations offi cer Carla Alves told Gulf Times.

She stressed that they were impressed how the public inter-acts with them despite the lan-

guage barrier. During the group’s performance on stage, children were fascinated not only with the show but also with the perform-ers’ colourful dress. Compared to other audiences in Portugal and other countries where they previously performed, she noted that Qatar’s culture is “very dif-ferent.”

“People (in Qatar) look very enthusiastic to see seven ladies dancing and singing with very colourful and long dresses,” Alves said. She added that they usually perform for Portuguese communities around the world that know most of their songs as they are based on Portuguese traditional lyrics.

Founded eight years ago by the seven ladies and their producer,

Paquito Rebelo, ‘7 Saias’ want to mix the tradition side of the Portuguese music with a mod-ern touch. Throughout its eight years of existence and after hav-ing released six CD’s, the group enchanted Portugal and several countries. Alves said that with their traditional instruments and their joy, “each show is a small sample of the Portuguese cul-ture.”

“We love representing our country and songs especially be-cause we feel the acceptance of the public. Portuguese music is very rich,” she added. “Each re-gion has a diff erent sonority that attracts people.”

“We would love to come (to Doha) to make a show for the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar.

We can make one music for the World Cup Qatar,” Alves said. The group also thanked the Por-tuguese embassy, MoQ and Al Tawfeeq Travel for inviting them to perform in Doha as a highlight of the Portugal Week.

‘7 Saias’ will perform live for the last time at MoQ’s Ooredoo Oasis stage at 2.30pm, 5.30pm and 8.30pm today.

The Portugal Week, organised by the Portuguese embassy in Doha, in partnership with MoQ and Al Tawfeeq Travel, features a series of activities and unique live performances. The festival give shoppers and mallgoers, es-pecially families and children, an opportunity to experience and take part in a number of fun-fi lled activities at the mall.

‘7 Saias’ performs live on MoQ’s Ooredoo Oasis stage as a highlight of the Portugal Week. PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil

QU Health students take part in interprofessional education initiative

A total of 148 students and 16 faculty from Qatar University (QU) Health

(colleges of Health Sciences, Medicine, and Pharmacy (CPH) ) recently participated in Inter-professional Education (IPE) activity on ‘Antimicrobial Stew-ardship’.

Organised by QU Health Interprofessional Education Committee (IPEC), the event is aimed to introduce students to the concept of antimicrobial stewardship.

The event’s programme fea-tured discussions focused on the issue of antimicrobial resist-ance to highlight the ongoing problem of antibiotics no longer being active against certain in-fections.

The theory and ideal model on an eff ective antimicrobial stewardship team were then summarised to show to stu-dents how diff erent healthcare professionals can work together for a common goal. This con-cept also got students thinking about teamwork before they were presented with a patient case. The main activity was go-ing through a patient case about a 51-year-old previously healthy

male, who was admitted to the emergency department of Ha-mad General Hospital with fe-ver, chills, shortness of breath and productive cough.

The patient was diagnosed with pneumonia and the stu-dents had to follow him during his three-day admission in the hospital by sharing the diff erent healthcare perspective on the case and making a shared deci-sion together.

QU Health IPEC chair and CPH assistant dean, Student Aff airs Dr Alla El-Awaisi said, “We are proud of having an-other successful academic year for IPE with a total of seven IPE events related to the cur-ricula engaging 831 students and over 100 facilitators and two extra curricula IPE event. “I greatly appreciate the great support and commitment from IPEC members and all the fa-cilitators who were and still in-strumental to the programme

success and passionate to graduate health care students who are equipped with the skills and professional attitude and worked collaboratively to help advance clinical practice and patient care in the State of Qatar.”

CPH assistant professor and lead facilitator for the event Dr Shane Pawluk said, “The impor-tance of proper antimicrobial use and stewardship IPE event was a collaborative endeavour achieved through the interpro-fessional work of several diff er-ent colleges and faculty within QU. Students gained an appre-ciation from their fellow col-leagues that will no doubt have a positive impact on their careers as health care professionals in the future.”

Third-year human nutri-tion student Shayma al-Bakri said, “This IPE activity was a very benefi cial opportunity to work with students from other healthcare professions.

It showed us how our future profession would be and that we need co-operation with each other in order to come up with the best appropriate treatment for patients.”

The event featured discussions on the issue of antimicrobial resistance to highlight the ongoing problem of antibiotics no longer being active against certain infections.

“This IPE activity was a very benefi cial opportunity to work with students from other healthcare professions”