Kerry says settlements put Mideast peace at risk - Gulf Times

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December 29, 2016Rabia I 30, 1438 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

BUSINESS |

Qatar Airways fl yinghigh with best everoperating profi t

SPORT | Page 1

Ivanchuk, Muzychuk crowned World Rapid champions

QATAR | Transparency

New system forsick leave soonA new system for issuing sick leave will be introduced next year, an off icial source was quoted by local Arabic daily Arrayah. The source told the daily that the new system will include modifications to the current system to guarantee more transparency and accuracy. Besides, there are a number of suggestions and recommendations under study for possible implementation in the new system. The source pointed out that the new system will be in co-operation between the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Aff airs for more control on the issue. There will be specified places for approved sick leave certificates, and the maximum number to be granted at one time. More details on the system will be announced soon, the daily added.

ARAB WORLD | Confl ict

Talks on Syria truce,but ‘still obstacles’Turkey and Russia are discussing a possible nationwide ceasefire in Syria, but obstacles remain to any deal, a rebel off icial said yesterday. Earlier, Turkey’s Anadolu agency reported that Ankara and Moscow had reached a ceasefire deal that would go into eff ect at midnight, but neither capital nor the parties to the conflict confirmed the report.Labib Nahhas, foreign relations head for the powerful Ahrar al-Sham rebel group, reiterated that rebel factions had not been presented with any off icial proposal and said there were still obstacles to a deal. Page 11

WORLD | Timekeeping

5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 1... An extrasecond to see out 2016As if 2016 has not been long enough, the year’s dying minute will last an extra second to make up for time lost to Earth’s slowing rotation, timekeepers say. Countries that use Co-ordinated Universal Time - several West African nations, Britain, Ireland and Iceland - will add the leap second during the midnight countdown to 2017 - making the year’s final minute 61 seconds long. For others, the timing will be determined by the time zone they live in, relative to UTC. The Paris Observatory said in a statement: “The sequence of dates of the UTC second markers will be: 2016 December 31 23h 59m 59s, 2016 December 31 23h 59m 60s, 2017 January 1, 0h 0m 0s.”

ReutersWashington

US Secretary of State John Kerry warned yesterday that Israel’s building of settlements was en-

dangering Middle East peace, express-ing unusually frank frustration with the long-time American ally.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shot back at Kerry and ac-cused him of showing bias against the Jewish state.

In a 70-minute speech just weeks before the Obama administration hands over to President-elect Donald Trump, Kerry said Israel “will never have true peace” with the Arab world if it does not reach an accord based on Israelis and Palestinians living in their own states.

His remarks added to strain in the US-Israeli relationship - characterised by personal acrimony between President Barack Obama and Netanyahu - after the United States cleared the way for a UN resolution last week that demanded an end to Israeli settlement building.

“Despite our best eff orts over the years, the two-state solution is now in serious jeopardy,” Kerry said at the State Department. “We cannot, in good conscience, do nothing, and say noth-ing, when we see the hope of peace slipping away.”

“The truth is that trends on the ground - violence, terrorism, incite-ment, settlement expansion and the seemingly endless occupation - are destroying hopes for peace on both sides and increasingly cementing an irreversible one-state reality that most people do not actually want.”

Kerry condemned Palestinian vio-lence which he said included “hun-dreds of ... attacks in the past year.”

His parting words are unlikely to change anything on the ground between

Israel and the Palestinians or salvage the Obama administration’s record of failed Middle East peace eff orts.

In a statement, Netanyahu said Kerry’s speech “was skewed against Israel.” The Israeli leader said Kerry “obsessively dealt with settlements” and barely touched on “the root of the confl ict - Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries”.

The Israelis are looking past Obama and expect they will receive more fa-vourable treatment from Trump, who takes offi ce on Jan 20.

The Republican used his Twit-ter account yesterday to denounce the Obama administration, including its UN vote and the nuclear accord it reached with Iran last year.

“We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the US, but not anymore,” Trump said in a series of tweets. “Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast ap-proaching!”

Trump had openly lobbied against the UN resolution and would be ex-pected to veto any further ones deemed anti-Israel.

He has vowed to move the US em-bassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and has appointed as ambassador a lawyer who raised money for a major Jewish settlement, has cast doubt on the idea of a two-state solution and even ad-vocated for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, a notion even further to the right than Netanyahu’s own stance.

Kerry’s speech provided some insights into an issue that he personally feels pas-sionate about and had hoped to resolve during his years as secretary of state.

He defended the US decision to al-low the passage of a UN resolution de-manding an end to Israeli settlements, saying it was intended to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution.

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Cabinet go-ahead foralternative medicine

Qatar’s fog due to a ‘once in three years’ phenomenon

The Cabinet has approved the re-quirements and specifi cations for opening complementary

medicine centres in the country.In this regard, the Cabinet gave its

nod to a draft decision of HE the Min-ister of Public Health defi ning the re-quirements and specifi cations at its weekly meeting yesterday.

The draft decision identifi ed com-plementary medicine as an addition of some special practices - involving al-ternative treatment - to modern medi-cine, the offi cial Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.

Alternative medicine treatment is a set of skills and practices based on experience, which is used to diagnose, treat or maintain health as well as pre-vent physical and psychological ail-ments. It is diff erent from the means of treatment used in modern medi-cine, which include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, etc, QNA said.

The Ministry of Public Health (for-merly known as the Supreme Council of Health) had issued a notifi cation in January this year, approving the practice of complementary medicinal treatment such as hijama/wet cup-ping, chiropractic, homoeopathy, ay-

urveda and acupuncture in the coun-try, Gulf Times had reported.

The Qatar Council for Healthcare Practitioners later started an imple-mentation plan to regulate comple-mentary medicine practices in Qatar. The decision to start regulating com-plementary medicine was taken to pro-vide a legal framework to ensure that the benefi ts of these practices could be enjoyed without unnecessary risks.

The regulatory framework stand-ardises the complementary medicine practice so that only licensed and qual-ifi ed practitioners are issued a medical licence and allowed to practice in Qa-tar.

After HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani chaired the meeting at Emiri Diwan yesterday, HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minis-ter of State for Cabinet Aff airs Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud said the Cabinet also approved a draft decision of HE the Minister of Public Health on the conditions and specifi -cations for physical therapy centres.

The meeting also welcomed the UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemns Israeli settlements in

the occupied Palestinian territory, in-cluding East Jerusalem, and demands an immediate and complete cessation of all settlement activities as they are illegal under the international law, ac-cording to the QNA report.

The Cabinet expressed hope that the resolution would constitute a motiva-tion and incentive for the international community to revive the peace process on the basis of international legitimacy and the Arab peace initiative, and the cessation of all Israeli violations and practices against the Palestinian peo-ple.

Further, the Cabinet reaffi rmed Qatar’s fi rm stance in support of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to establish their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet took the necessary measures to ratify an ‘en-couragement and protection of mutual investments’ agreement between the governments of Qatar and Argentina.

It also reviewed some topics and took the appropriate decisions, includ-ing a draft law on the organisation of real estate registration.

The dense fog that blanketed Doha and other parts of Qa-tar during the afternoon earlier

this week was caused by a phenom-enon that happened once in two-three years, a senior offi cial said yesterday.

Besides the morning and evening, thick fog was seen in Doha and other places even in the afternoon on some occasions since the start of the foggy spell on Sunday.

Abdullah Mohamed al-Mannai, di-rector of the Meteorology Department at the Civil Aviation Authority, told the offi cial Qatar News Agency (QNA) that it was highly likely that January would witness similar fog formations, although these would not be as intense as the recent ones.

The coming days, though, will see an improvement, he noted.

The Met department, too, tweeted yesterday that ‘settled weather’ is ex-pected during the weekend, signalling an end to the foggy spell experienced

in the country since Sunday. The conditions resulted in a sharp drop in visibility at a number of places, lead-ing to slow movement of vehicles and prompting the authorities to issue safe-driving tips.

Explaining the intense fog, al-Mannai told QNA that it was the outcome of conditions involving a high-pressure area, easterly winds and lower temperatures. The com-bination led to increased humidity at sea and on the shore, which even-tually caused the fog. He noted that December and January are the two months that see the maximum fog formation, particularly late at night and early in the morning.

As for the fog formation in the after-noon, al-Mannai said it’s a phenom-enon that takes place once every two to three years and is referred to as the ‘marine layer’.

Asked if Qatar will witness a cold wave in the coming period, the offi cial

said this is unlikely. He explained that temperatures will drop in the coming days, but not to the levels where it can be described as a cold wave.

Al-Mannai also forecast that hu-midity will increase in January, noting that this is always the case in winter. However, the lower temperatures will

ease the eff ects of the higher humidity levels, he observed.

On driving safely in foggy weather, he said the Met department and Min-istry of Interior co-operated in issu-ing guidelines on how to do so. These include using low-beam lights, main-taining adequate distance, reducing the speed and using the wipers.

Yesterday, meanwhile, traffi c was slow on many roads in the early hours as Qatar experienced another foggy morning. “Widespread” fog was re-ported from most parts of the country early in the morning along with zero visibility at times, according to the Met department.

The situation improved gradually and, unlike the previous days, the fog did not return in the evening in places like Doha.

Besides aff ecting road traffi c and the movement of luxury boats, the foggy conditions also forced some fi shermen not to venture out in the early hours,

Gulf Times learnt. “No activity has been possible early in the morning in the past few days,” said a veteran fi sh-erman in Al Khor.

Today, strong winds and high seas are expected in some off shore areas. The wind speed may reach a high of 22 knots at times, with the sea level rising to 7ft.

A minimum temperature of 14C is expected in Abu Samra today, while in Doha it will be 19C.

Global warming eff ect

Abdullah Mohamed al-Mannai, director

of the Meteorology Department, yes-

terday told QNA that global warming

has impacted the change witnessed

in Qatar’s weather this year. He noted

that industrial advancements and reli-

ance on fossil fuels such as coal have

increased carbon dioxide levels and

ultimately led to a rise in temperatures.

Fog outside the Hamad International Airport departures terminal around Tuesday midnight: PICTURE: Bonnie James

Kerry sayssettlementsput Mideastpeace at risk

US Secretary of State John Kerry lays out his vision for peace between Israel and the Palestinians yesterday in the Dean Acheson Auditorium at the Department of State in Washington, DC. US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted yesterday that Israel and a future Palestine should live as two states based on the territory they held before the 1967 Six Day War.

Abbas believes peace is achievablePalestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East speech in Washington yesterday by saying he was convinced peace with Israel was achievable, but continuing to demand that Israel halt settlement building

before talks restarted.Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat read out a statement saying Abbas had “reiterated his full commitment to a just peace as a strategic option”. US-backed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in 2014.

QATAR

Gulf Times Thursday, December 29, 20164

The Mada centre at Qatar University.

Mada and QU join hands tohelp students with disabilities

Qatar Assistive Tech-nology Centre (Mada), a non-profi t

organisation dedicated to connecting Persons With Disabilities (PWD) to the world of information and communication technol-ogy, has joined hands with Qatar University (QU) to provide assistive technol-ogy to disabled students on QU campus.

“Education is one of the three key pillars of our mission at Mada, and many of our services re-volve around this area,” said Maha al-Mansouri the CEO of Mada.

“We believe that educa-tion has the potential to positively impact the PWD community in many ways.

It is where the groundwork for social integration is laid, and it makes PWD and their communities aware that disabilities do not subtract from capabilities. We are honoured to have made a meaningful imprint on the campus of Qatar University and to facilitate educational opportunities for students with disabili-ties.”

Hamad al-Marri from QU recalled that since the launch of Mada services, it has become easier for stu-dents with disabilities to access assistive technolo-gies within a shorter time period. This has allowed more people to benefi t from the equipment provided.

Students will benefi t

from Mada’s newly opened station at QU. It is equipped with all of the essential as-sistive technologies neces-sary for the success of stu-dents with disabilities.

Mada is committed to en-

hancing three key areas of education, employment and community. It supports the students with disabilities in Qatar accessing quality mainstream education by

educating both the PWDs and a variety of stakeholders about the ways in which ICT can be used to enhance and access quality education.

Mada aims to increase employable PWDs in lo-cal workforce by off ering tailor made courses and programmes and enable independent living by en-couraging the creation of an accessible community and friendly ecosystem for PWDs.

Mada’s vision of enhanc-ing life of PWDs is brought to life through the use of ICT. Mada is committed to encouraging the develop-ment of assistive technolo-gies in the Arabic language to support the needs of PWDs in Qatar.

We are honoured to have made a meaningful imprint on the campus of Qatar University and to facilitate educational opportunities for students with disabilities”

QATAR


The congress participants.

HMC’s Trauma Centre hosts four-day congress

Hamad Medical Cor-poration’s (HMC) Hamad Trauma Cen-

tre recently hosted delegates, including speakers from the US, the UK, Canada, Europe, India, and the GCC region, for a four-day congress.

The theme of the con-gress was ‘Trauma Team Journey from Inception to Verifi cation’. Around 200 delegates took part. Speak-ers shared their experience and best practices in the development of trauma sys-tems designed to save lives and reduce disabilities.

The congress focused on three main topics, including the trauma system verifi ca-tion and accreditation proc-ess, updated damage control approaches in the manage-ment of trauma patients, and clinical research.

“The event has made a signifi cant contribution to the continuing professional development of all health-care providers who care for trauma patients,” said Dr Hassan al-Thani, the head of Trauma Services at HMC, Hamad Trauma Centre di-

rector and the congress chairman.

He said a thought-pro-voking combination of global and regional perspectives has provided participants with the opportunity to create lo-cal solutions that can be ap-plied to their own patients and healthcare setting.

“Together, we share the ambition of improving the evaluation and management

of critically injured trauma patients in our region. This conference is an important step forward in meeting that important goal,” he added.

Dr Ayman El-Menyar, di-rector of Clinical Research in Trauma and Vascular Surgery and congress co-chair, recalled the event was a perfect opportunity for multi-disciplinary teams of experts involved in the

care of trauma patients to discuss damage control ap-proaches in surgery, one of the hot topics in trauma care nowadays.

“They were able to inter-act on how to limit damage control and save lives with early interventions because most trauma patients usually present with severe injuries.”

He noted that the con-gress highlighted the im-

portance of collaboration between Ambulance Serv-ice teams, intensivists, trauma surgeons, database registries, trauma research offi ces, injury prevention teams, trauma fellowship programmes, nursing staff , radiologists, clinical phar-macists and rehabilitation specialists.

Delegates agreed upon the important role of col-lecting and analysing ac-curate data on the leading causes and risk factors for trauma. They cited that in-vesting in the hardware, the software and the manpower for the creation of trauma registries were essential steps to identifying priority areas for injury prevention and improving the delivery of trauma care.

The Hamad Trauma Cen-tre is the national Level I Trauma Centre of Qatar. Last year, HMC received the Trauma Distinction Award of Excellence from Accredi-tation Canada International, becoming the fi rst trauma organisation in the world to earn the recognition.

Dr Hassan al-Thani, head of Trauma Services at HMC addressing the congress.

QATAR7Gulf Times

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Saudi walkathon adventurer completes Qatar leg

Saudi adventurer Nasser Moham-ed Al Jarallah al-Qahtani, who is on a mission to walk through the

GCC countries, has concluded his Qa-tar leg, which started from Abu Samra Land Post and terminated at Souq Wa-qif, Doha.

He completed the journey over 10 morning and evening sessions.

The objective is raising the awareness of the GCC people on the importance of walking and sport in general, in addition to encouraging them to keep a clean environment.

Al-Qahtani explained that his walk-ing journey through the GCC region has lasted 60 days so far.

He started from Al Khafj i Governo-rate in Saudi Arabia and walked to Ku-wait. The second journey started from

the eastern zone province of Saudi Arabia to Bahrain. The Qatar leg was the third journey on foot.

The fourth journey will start from Al Batha crossing, Saud Arabia to Dubai, then to Muscat, Oman. Al-Qahtani plans to end his journeys at the head-quarters of the GCC at the Saudi capi-tal Riyadh.

He expressed his appreciation for the high development witnessed in Qatar at all fi elds, which he described as a source of pride for all the GCC people.

He also noted the great investment in developing the skills and potentials of Qatari people.

Al-Qahtani thanked the Ministry of Culture and Sports and Qatar Sports Association for their support and gen-erous reception.

Saudi adventurer Nasser Mohamed Al Jarallah al-Qahtani receiving a memento from a Qatari off icial at Souq Waqif in Doha.

Al-Qahtani starts his walking adventure from Qatar’s Abu Samra Land Post.

QATAR


The campaign is rewarding customers for using their Commercial Bank Visa credit card during the months of October, November and December.

Commercial Bank announces fi rst batch of Visa credit card campaign winners

Commercial Bank has announced the fi rst batch of winners

of its ‘Win with Commer-cial Bank Visa Credit Card’ campaign.

The campaign rewards customers for using their Commercial Bank Visa credit card during the months of October, Novem-ber and December.

Fifty customers have won 10,000 Reward Points by spending a minimum of QR7,500 during October on retail purchase transactions using their Commercial Bank Visa credit card. This is the fi rst of three monthly draws

with a total of 150 winners.As an added bonus to

the monthly prize draws, three additional custom-ers will stand the chance to win 100,000, 150,000 and 250,000 Reward Points in a grand prize draw at the end of the campaign if they spend a minimum of QR15,000 in any given month of the promo-tional period.

Roya Khajeh, Commercial Bank AGM, head of cards and payments, said: “We encourage customers to use their Commercial Bank Visa credit card during the campaign period to qualify for the draw by spending

QR7,500 or more. “Customers can also stand

the chance to win three grand prizes totalling 500,000 Re-ward Points through a mini-mum spend of QR15,000 on retail purchases. Now is the best time to use their credit card during the holiday pe-riod when spending at home or abroad.”

Commercial Bank issues a wide range of credit, debit and payroll (WPS) cards to suit all customers’ needs, according to a press state-ment. The bank’s Rewards programme allows custom-ers to earn Reward Points when using their credit

cards for retail purchases that can be instantly re-deemed for fl ights, hotels and discounts from Qatar’s leading stores.

Commercial Bank also is-sues Limited Edition credit cards, a leading ultra-pre-mium card package that provides preferential and personalised services for discerning high net-worth individual customers. This programme allows Limited Edition customers the op-portunity to enjoy “unique lifestyle experiences and an enhanced rewards pro-gramme”, the statement notes.

The weekly Cabinet meeting, presided over by HE the Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, yesterday reviewed a draft law on the organisation of real estate registration.The Cabinet also reviewed a memo of the Minister of Public Health on the outcome of the Third Meeting of the GCC Health Ministers Committee (Riyadh — October 2016).

The National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) concluded a training workshop on mixed migration and asylum seeking, which it organised over two days in co-operation with the GCC regional representative of the Off ice of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).The workshop has recommended that a legal guide be drafted that includes systems of refuge before referring it to the Arab League, with the guide featuring a specific definition for the refugee as well as building mechanisms of co-operation with relevant authorities and activating the role of these partnerships.The workshop discussed on the second day a set of aspects, including registration as a protection method in cases of mixed migration.

Cabinet reviewsdraft law on real estate registration

NHRC workshop on mixed migrationconcludes

QRCS takes part in fi fth‘GCC Inmates Week’Qatar Red Crescent Soci-

ety (QRCS) took part in the activities of the fi fth

‘GCC Inmates Week’ dubbed as “Together to Achieve Reform,” which started last Sunday.

The event was attended by a number of offi cials and rep-resentatives from Ministry of Interior (MoI) departments, charities, and civil society or-ganisations.

The QRCS corner, which has been receiving dozens of guests, aims to promote its humanitar-ian mission and social develop-ment activities for the benefi t of diff erent segments of the so-ciety.

A public exhibition was held to show the production of peniten-tiary inmates as a result of the vocational courses under QRCS’ “Imdad Penitentiary Inmate Re-habilitation” programme.

“The ‘Imdad programme’ addresses a special group by giving them psychological, be-havioural, and vocational guid-

ance to help them adapt to their circumstances, start a new life full of hope and hard work, and become good people who serve their families and society,” QRCS social development di-rector Rashid Saad al-Mohan-nadi said.

He noted that the inmates’ families were also advised on how to treat the inmates posi-tively upon their release.

“This participation manifests our achievements and work to-wards sustainable development by encouraging the inmates to feel independent and attain their potential,” al-Mohannadi said.

“They did a great job in train-ing workshops of metal work, electrical repair, and refrig-erators,” he added. Recently, the programme was expanded to in-clude A/C and solar panels.

The training content is su-pervised by Qatar Independent Technical School, according to al-Mohannadi.

He lauded the contributions of

the Qatar Central Bank’s ‘Social and Sport Contribution Fund’ over three years, which embod-ies their belief in the benefi ts of

training penitentiary inmates.Launched in 2012, the “Im-

dad” programme has so far held 20 courses with a total of 150

graduates. The inmates and their families also received psychoso-cial and behavioural support and incentive bonus.

Director General of Public Security Major General Saad bin Jassim al-Khulaifi visits QRCS’ corner as Secretary-General Ali bin Hassan al-Hammadi looks on.

Gulf delegates attend events to mark ‘GCC Inmates Week’

Several delegates from the GCC countries partici-pated in the events held to

commemorate the ongoing GCC Inmates Week at the Gulf Mall.

The exhibition is held under the theme “Together to achieve reforms”. The delegates vis-ited the Penal and Correctional Institutions Department yes-terday. Penal and Correctional Institutions Department direc-tor Brigadier Mohamed Saud al-Otaibi, accompanied by Dr Mohsin Moaidh al-Arjani, rep-resentative of the General Secre-tariat of the GCC, met the visit-ing delegates.

The guests were delighted to understand the care and rehabilitation facilities pro-vided by the department for

the prison inmates. The Inmates Aff airs Section

head Brigadier Mohamed Abdul-lah al-Ahmad, Ladies Inmates Af-fairs Department head Brigadier Ali Abdul Aziz Murad, Care and

Rehabilitation Section head Lt Col Jassim Mohamed al-Kaabi, and Ft Lt Adel Mirza al-Qasimi also at-tended the meeting.

The delegates witnessed the sport activities of the inmates

including tug of war, table ten-nis, billiards as well as they vis-ited the workshops, welding, electricity and industrial units and play halls of the inmates.

Mohsin Moaidh al-Arjani, di-

rector of the Security Monitor-ing Department of the General Secretariat of GCC countries said the facilities made by Qatar for prisoners helped them create so many amazing products.

The delegates from other GCC countries with the MoI off icials at the GCC Inmates Week celebrations at Gulf Mall yesterday. Artistic talent on show at the event.

Portuguese embassyissuing Schengen visa

MEC recalls Ford Escape,

Mustang and Lincoln MKC

Maid to be jailed, deported

for stealing gold chain

The Portugal embassy in Doha is issuing Schen-gen visa since Novem-

ber 1, 2016, it was announced yesterday.

“This is a very important step that shows the impor-tance Portugal is having in Qatar,” ambassador António Tânger said in a statement.

Portugal follows a simple process for issuing Schengen visa. It is mandatory to fi ll an online form. A check list for the required documents is

available on the embassy web-site.

The visa applicant will re-ceive a date and hour to go to the Portugal embassy in order to collect the biometric and data. All this information can be seen at: https://www.doha.embaixadaportugal.mne.pt/en/consular-section/consu-larservices/visa-information

“Above all, Portugal is seen as a good country to live, visit and even start a business,” the envoy added.

The Ministry of Econo-my and Commerce, in collaboration with Al-

Mana Motors Company, has announced the recall of Ford Escape, Mustang model year 2013-2015 and Lincoln MKC model year 2015 over a po-tential defect in the side door latch.

The MEC said the recall campaign comes within the framework of its ongoing ef-forts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicle defects and re-pairs.

The MEC will co-ordinate

with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works and communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out.

The MEC has urged all customers to report any violations to its Consum-er Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Depart-ment through the following channels: Hotline: 16001, e-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @MEC_Qatar, In-stagram: MEC_Qatar, MEC mobile app for Android and IOS: MEC_Qatar

The Court of Appeal up-held the ruling of the Court of First Instance

and sentenced an Asian maid to one year in jail and subse-quent deportation for stealing a gold chain worth QR200,000 from her employer.

Local Arabic daily Arrayah reported yesterday that the case started when the victim fi led a complaint at the po-

lice station accusing her maid of stealing her golden chain. When the police searched the room of the maid, they found the chain hidden within her things.

However, the maid claimed she found the chain in the room of another maid and had kept it safe until somebody claimed it, but the court was not convinced.

QATAR9Gulf Times


Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition to open on Feb 20

Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhi-bition (DJWE),

held under the patron-age of HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdul-lah bin Nasser bin Kha-lifa al-Thani, yesterday announced the fi rst de-tails of its 2017 chapter, scheduled to be held from February 20 to 25 at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre.

The event is expected to feature well over 500 brands represented by 40 exhibitors from 10 coun-tries. The exhibition is organised by Qatar Tour-ism Authority (QTA) and delivered by Auditoire. QTA works to facilitate the growth of business events in Qatar by work-ing with, and empower-ing, the private sector to organise and deliver quality exhibitions and events.

Ahmed al-Obaidli, di-rector of exhibitions at QTA, pointed out in a statement that identifi ed in Qatar’s National Tour-ism Sector Strategy as a core sub-sector, business events play an impor-tant role in attracting the seven million annual visi-tors Qatar is targeting by 2030.

“DJWE is truly a suc-cess story in the broad-

er history of business events in Qatar, as its or-ganisers and exhibitors have been witnesses to the sector’s growth year after year, reaching the point now where it set for success on the glo-bal stage, with enhanced facilities, event organi-sation capabilities, and expanded exhibition space spread through world-class venues.”

Al-Obaidli added that a large-scale region-al campaign had been launched two months before the exhibition’s opening date, with the aim of attracting visitors to the event from around the Gulf.

DJWE is the longest-running and one of the most anticipated exhi-bition in Qatar’s annual calendar of events and reinforces the country’s position as a premium business events destina-tion. Plans for the 2017 edition of Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition will give outstanding local talent the chance to shine alongside global luxury brands.

Video Home recently conducted Indesit/Ariston product training programme to enhance the product knowledge of sales staff and extend, through them, the benefits and features to customers. The programme was conducted by Massimo Maggioni, training manager at Indesit Company (Italy), and attended by the sales staff of all Jumbo Electronics showrooms. Also in attendance were merchandisers and sales staff of hypermarkets and major home appliances dealers in Qatar. A group of 30 attended the training programme. Video Home COO Rohit Pandit briefed the attendees on the brand value that Indesit has around the world, especially its association with leading appliances company Whirlpool Corporation. Manoj Kumar, assistant general manager for the multi-brand division of Video Home, also addressed the trainees.

Training programme for Video Home staff

QATAR/REGION


Rota hosts training workshop for teachersReach Out To Asia

(Rota) has hosted an iEARN (Internation-

al Education and Resource Network) teacher training workshop on project based learning methodology.

A group of 124 teachers from 20 independent and private schools attended the workshop. The event pro-vided the opportunity for the participants to collabo-rate with an online network of educators and learners across 140 countries.

iEARN is a non-profi t organisation that connects schools and youth organi-sations worldwide via a virtual network to em-power young teachers and students, encourage inter-scholastic collaboration, and promote debate on world issues in real time.

The programme allows participants to take advan-tage of the collaborative fea-tures of iEARN, which ena-bles them to meet national requirements and enhance personal development.

For the third year running, the train-ing workshop was or-ganised in collabora-tion with the National Centre for Educational Development, College of Education at Qatar

University, and spon-sored by Muntajat.

Shamma al-Dosari, ICT for education specialist at Rota, said the iEARN-Qatar programme equips teachers with the skills to empower students to real-ise their full potential and make positive contribu-tions to their communities.

“The workshop is a truly global initiative that has been specifi cally tailored to meet the needs of teach-ers and students in Qatar. iEARN’s model of global project-based learning al-lows young students to acquire skills in critical thinking and cross-cul-tural awareness while con-necting their learning to real world issues, making learning both challenging and enjoyable,” al-Dosari added.

Since the programme was launched in 2008, more than 670 teach-ers from 110 schools have attended iEARN-Qatar workshops and partici-pated in numerous iEARN projects with their stu-dents.

The programme also off ers educators an op-portunity to join the Rota Knowledge Network for professional development

to enable them to integrate internet technologies and project-based learning into their curriculum.

Marwan Muftah, Ara-bic Language and Islamic Studies Department co-ordinator at Michael E. DeBakey High School who attended the workshop, said: “The programme enabled us to further our professional development and introduced us to an invaluable global learning network. I look forward to incorporating these inno-vative teaching methods into our curriculum, which will enrich my students’ learning experience.”

The iEARN-Qatar pro-gramme builds on the basic principle of project-based Learning by connecting classrooms around the world via an online net-work.

iEARN is the world’s largest non-profi t glo-bal network that enables teachers and students to use the internet and other technologies to collaborate on projects that enhance learning and make a dif-ference in the world. More than 50,000 educators and two million youth across 140 countries make up the global education network.

The first two raff le draw winners of the ongoing campaign ‘Malabar Gold & Diamond Festival’ were announced in the presence of Ministry of Economy and Commerce’s Field Control Department head Ejayan Ali Almarri, Malabar Gold & Diamonds zonal head Naufal Thadathil, deputy branch head Raju T Johny, branch manager Abdulla Shaff i and other off icials. The winners Ragesh C A and Rafeek will receive the prize of 250gm gold each.

Malabar Festival raffle draw winners

Two expats jailed for 7 years for illicit drug tradeA Doha Criminal Court has sentenced two Sri Lankan men to seven years in jail and subsequent deportation for illicit drugs trade and consumption. Local Arabic daily Arrayah reported yesterday that the court also fined both QR200,000 each for the same crime. A third defendant from the same nationality was sentenced to three months in jail, subsequent deportation and QR10,000 fine for illicit

drug consumption.According to the file of the case, the first defendant coincidentally off ered to sell some quantity of the illicit drug marijuana to an undercover policeman for QR1,900 at Doha Industrial Area. So, the Drug Prevention Department of the Ministry of Interior was notified and the necessary legal procedures were taken to conduct surveillance.At the designated time

the policeman and the first defendant met at the Industrial Area and the latter arrested while delivering the illicit drug. A search of his room revealed more amounts of the illicit drug. There were also two other persons in the same room and one of them turned out to be the partner of the first defendant while the other was proven to have consumed the illicit drug hashish.

Healthcare practitioners attend orientation session at QUThe Continuing Profes-

sional Development (CPD) unit at Qatar

University College of Health Sciences (QU-CHS) recently held an orientation session.

The “Orientation to training courses in public health programme at QU: Field experience and health education practicum” ses-sion was delivered by Dr Ghadir Fakhri al-Jayyousi, lecturer and training co-or-dinator at CHS Department of Public Health.

It aimed to highlight the importance of providing training for supervisors who train students in vari-ous health organisations

and prepare them to be-come distinguished health-care providers in multiple health systems. The CPD Unit had been accredited by Qatar Ministry of Public Health.

The event brought to-gether many health educa-tors and healthcare practi-tioners who supervise and train QU Public Health stu-dents during training cours-es at Qatar Cancer Society.

Dr al-Jayyousi gave an introductory presenta-tion on QU Public Health programme followed by a discussion about the main objectives of experience-based learning for students.

She also highlighted the goals of the Field Experi-ence and Health Educa-tion Practicum courses and stressed the importance of realising these goals during the training programmes.

CPD unit co-ordinator Dr

Hiba Bawadi recalled that the College of Health Sci-ences is one of the earliest accredited CPD providers for healthcare practitioners in Qatar.

“The College continues in its eff orts to identify gaps in

professional practice and to provide eff ective Continu-ing Medical Education/CPD programmes to stimulate a positive change in knowl-edge, competence, and performance of healthcare practitioners.”

Some participants at the orientation session.

Excavation works of sewage project begin

Excavation works for the main trunk sewer, a part of the Doha South Sewage Infrastructure

Project, have started.The project comprises the construc-

tion of a 16km main trunk sewer, di-vided into three segments, eastern, northern and western, besides the con-struction of 11 shafts for excavating the main tunnel. The main trunk sewer will convey the sewage that fl ows through pumping stations to the existing Doha south treatment works.

The Doha South Sewage Infrastruc-ture Project is designed to serve areas in the south of Doha.

The project can be linked to future infrastructure projects, and when com-pleted, it will enable the decommis-sioning of more than 20 old pumping stations.

The project will link a number of ar-eas in the south of Doha to the sewage

network. As a result, it will reduce the environmental impacts through the full control of odours in sewage treat-ment works and conveying system, and reduce other environmental problems arising from sewage overfl ow due to ex-cess hydraulic pressure on the existing drainage network, where sewage fl ows exceed its capacity.

The project is expected to be com-pleted by the fi rst quarter of 2019. The Doha South Sewage Infrastructure Project is the fi rst project in the re-gion to implement the CEEQUAL an international evidence-based sustain-ability assessment, rating and awards scheme for civil engineering, infra-structure, landscaping and works in public spaces.

The Joint Venture “Bouygues Travaux Publics” and “UCC” is the project contractor and “CH2M” is the Project Management Consultant.

Work going on as part of the Doha South Sewage Infrastructure Project.

Jordan courtsentences fi ve to death for ‘terror’

A court in Amman yes-terday sentenced to death fi ve Jordanian

members of a cell linked to the Islamic State jihadist group for “terrorism”.

The state security court also handed down jail terms of between three and 15 years to another 16 Jordanians in the same case.

They were found guilty of deadly “acts of terrorism”, the manufacture of explosives and “possession of weapons and ammunition for use in terror-ist acts” and recruiting people for “terrorist organisations”.

The group of 21 were mem-bers of an IS cell that was broken up in March during a large-scale security operation in the northern town of Irbid, near the border with Syria.

Seven suspected jihadists and a member of the Jordani-an security forces were killed during that operation.

The authorities announced

later that they had foiled IS attacks in the kingdom, which had already been hit by deadly attacks over the past year.

On December 18, 10 people including a Canadian were killed in a shooting rampage the popular tourist destina-tion of Karak, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

Two days later, in a raid on a house in Karak province, the authorities arrested a man suspected of funding the at-tack.

Also yesterday, an Alge-rian belonging to “terrorist groups” was killed in Maan governorate in the south of the kingdom, a security statement said.

He refused to surrender and opened fi re before being killed by security forces, it said, add-ing that another man was ar-rested at the scene.

Jordan is part of the US-led military coalition against IS and has carried out air strikes targeting the extremist group. It also hosts coalition troops on its territory.

AFPAmman

Bahrain activist to stay in jail despite bail

Hopes that Bahraini activist Nabeel Rajab would be freed were dashed yesterday af-

ter the prosecution said he will stay in custody pending another case, shortly after he was granted bail.

A court had earlier ordered that Rajab be freed pending trial on charges of spreading false informa-

tion, and banned him from travel-ling abroad, with the case set to resume on January 23.

The decision followed repeated re-quests to release the 52-year-old who has suff ered recurring health prob-lems, and after mounting pressure from international rights groups.

But the prosecution swiftly said Rajab will remain behind bars for fur-ther questioning in a separate case, cutting short celebrations by his sup-porters and relatives on social media.

“He will remain in jail pending the case being handled by the public prosecution, until the investigation is concluded,” prosecution chief Mo-hamed Salah said in a statement car-ried by the state news agency BNA.

Salah said Rajab was being ques-tioned in another cybercrime case on a similar charge of “spreading false news about the situation in the kingdom”.

The prosecution said Rajab was bailed in the case involving accusa-

tions of “spreading false news and ru-mours and inciting propaganda dur-ing wartime which could undermine the war operations by the Bahraini armed forces and weaken the nation”.

Bahrain is part of a Saudi-led coali-tion battling Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Shia activist, who had been pardoned for health reasons last year, was rearrested in June and is on trial on a list of charges, including insult-ing a state institution and Saudi Ara-bia in online postings.

AFPDubai

11Gulf TimesThursday, December 29, 2016

ARAB WORLD

Sudan lawmakers vote to bring backpost of premier

Five dead, many injured as train hits bus near Tunis

Russia, Turkey said toagree Syria ceasefi re

Tunisia to decide on plan againstmilitants

AFPKhartoum

Sudanese law-makers voted yesterday to

bring back the post of prime minister, a position abolished after President Omar al-Bashir came to power in a 1989 coup.

The move to delegate limited powers to a prime minister fits with reforms proposed by a national dia-logue between Ba-shir’s government and some opposi-tion groups.

Bashir scrapped the post after lead-ing a bloodless coup against then-pre-mier Sadiq al-Mahdi with the help of Mahdi’s brother-in-law, Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi.

In October, after a quarter-century in

power, Bashir con-cluded a year-long national dialogue aimed at resolving the insurgencies in Sudan’s border re-gions and healing the country’s crisis-wracked economy.

The talks, launched in October 2015, were boycotted by most mainstream opposition and armed groups.

On October 10, Bashir submitted a “national docu-ment” to serve as a framework for a new Sudanese constitu-tion.

That led to yester-day’s amendment, approved by all 387 MPs present out of a total of 425.

While it gives the prime minister re-sponsibility for “ex-ecutive power in the country”, it still al-lows the president to form a government or sack ministers.

AFPTunis

At least fi ve people were killed and more than 50 injured yes-terday when a train slammed

into a public bus before dawn near Tunis, the Tunisian interior ministry said.

The articulated bus was torn in two when it was struck on the tracks at around 6am near Sidi Fathallah, some 10km south of the capital.

Five people including a child were killed and another 52 were taken to hospital, many with serious injuries, the ministry said.

Among the injured were eight soldiers, Mosaique FM radio station reported.

A local court offi cial said signals and safety gates had been out of service at the time of the crash.

“This failure is at the root of the collision,” Moez Bouraoui, a court spokesman from Ben Arous south of the capital, told Mosaique FM.

The national railway company said it had begun an investigation to deter-mine the cause of the accident.

President Beji Caid Essebsi visited some of the injured at the Ben Arous hospital.

“I have been told that the signals have not been working for more than 15 days,” Essebsi said.

“This is not normal. We must put an end to laziness, it is everyone’s re-sponsibility.”

Transport Minister Anis Ghedira

called for new measures against the destruction and theft of safety barri-ers.

“We must organise awareness campaigns on the importance of this equipment that protects lives,” he said.

Authorities in Tunisia have called for greater caution on the roads fol-lowing accidents including a collision between a bus and a lorry in August that killed 16 people and injured 85.

A 2015 World Health Organisation report said Tunisia had the second worst traffi c death rate per capita in North Africa, behind war-torn Libya.

Tunisia logged 24.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to data from previous years, fewer than Libya’s 73.4 but far more than 2.9 in Britain.

Rebels say details still to be submitted to opposition fighters

AFPIstanbul

Turkey and Russia have agreed a ceasefi re for all of Syria that was expected

to come into force today, Turkish state media said yesterday, but rebel groups said no such offi cial truce had been agreed.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said the plan aims to expand a ceasefi re in the city of Aleppo - brokered by Turkey and Russia earlier this month to al-low the evacuation of civilians - to the whole country.

If successful, the plan would form the basis of upcoming po-litical negotiations between the Damascus regime and the op-position, overseen by Russia and Turkey in the Kazakh capital As-tana, it added.

But in a speech in Ankara af-ter the report was published, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made no reference to the plan, while Kremlin spokesman Dmit-ry Peskov said he could not an-swer on an issue “about which I don’t have enough information”.

A Syrian rebel source, who asked not to be named, said in Beirut that details still had to be submitted to opposition fi ghters and said there was no agreement as yet.

“The armed revolutionary fac-tions have not received any offi cial proposal for a ceasefi re in Syria,” Labib Nahhas, head of foreign relations for the powerful Ahrar al-Sham rebel group added on his offi cial Twitter account.

“News talking about their ap-proval of a ceasefi re is incorrect.”

Anadolu said both sides were working for it to come into force but gave no further details.

Ankara and Moscow have been on opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, with Turkey seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Rus-sia and Iran.

But the two countries have recently started to co-operate more closely on Syria, especially after a deal in the summer to normalise ties battered by Tur-key’s shooting down of a Russian warplane last year.

Turkey remained conspicu-

ously quiet as Assad’s forces, backed by Russia, took control last week of Aleppo in the big-gest defeat so far for the rebels in the civil war.

Ankara has also hosted a suc-cession of closed door talks be-tween Russia and Syrian opposi-tion rebels over the last weeks

Al Jazeera network said a new meeting is planned today in An-kara, this time between military representatives of Syrian rebels and Russia.

No date has yet been set for the Astana talks and Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the meeting was still at the planning stage.

She emphasised that the talks were not intended to replace the peace process based in Geneva which has sought to fi nd a solu-tion for the Syrian confl ict.

But the direct involvement of Turkey and Russia comes as Er-dogan is increasingly express-ing impatience at the role of the United States in Syria.

Previous ceasefi re plans had been brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

They met with only temporary success and failed to lead to a so-lution for the confl ict.

It remains unclear how the latest ceasefi re plan will apply to

Fateh al-Sham, formerly the Al Qaeda affi liate Al Nusra Front, which has worked more closely with the rebels since changing its name.

Erdogan had on Tuesday launched one of his most bitter attacks yet on US and Western policy in Syria, which he said was marked by broken prom-ises.

He accused the West of not just supporting Kurdish militia that Ankara regards as a “terror group” but even Islamic State (IS) militants.

The Turkish leader said the West was failing to back Tur-key’s own incursion inside Syria in support of pro-Ankara fighters to oust IS from the border area, which has taken increasing casualties in recent weeks.

But in an angry statement, the US embassy in Ankara rejected the “considerable misinforma-tion circulating in Turkish me-dia” about US operations against IS in Syria.

“Assertions the United States government is supporting Daesh (IS) are not true,” it added.

In continued bloodshed, air strikes carried out by uniden-tified aircraft killed at least 22 civilians, including 10 chil-dren, in a village held by IS in Deir Ezzor province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syria’s confl ict began in 2011 as an uprising against Assad but quickly morphed into a civil war after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dis-sent.

The war has killed more than 310,000 people and forced mil-lions more to fl ee their homes.

AFPTunis

Tunisian ministers will meet today to decide on an action plan against

militants returning from for-eign battlefi elds, a govern-ment source said, as fears mount they could destabilise the North African country.

The ministerial meeting to be chaired by Prime Minis-ter Youssef Chahed follows a number of gatherings between security and judicial experts on the matter.

“There will be a ministerial meeting tomorrow with a view to launching a strategic action plan,” the source in the prime minister’s said yesterday.

The United Nations esti-mates that more than 5,500 Tunisians are fi ghting along-side extremist groups, includ-ing in Syria, Iraq and Libya where the Islamic State group seized swathes of territory.

Concern about their re-turn has risen since Tunisian Anis Amri was identifi ed as the suspected attacker who mowed down 11 people with a hijacked truck at a Berlin Christmas market last week and also killed the driver.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the “comprehensive strategy” that the government was reviewing had been drawn up in the prime minister’s offi ce last month.

Last week, Interior Minister Hedi Majdoub told Tunisia’s parliament that 800 militants had already returned from the front lines, stressing however that the authorities have them on their radar.

Despite such assurances, Tunisians rallied outside par-liament at the weekend to pro-test against allowing militants back into the country.

Politicians and their parties have expressed similar con-cerns, criticising the authori-ties’ inaction.

The national union of inter-nal security forces has called on the government to strip Tunisian militants of their na-tionality.

President Beji Caid Essebsi said in early December that his country was “taking all the necessary measures” to en-sure that militants returning from Syria and Iraq are “neu-tralised”.

Citing the constitution, he said however that “we can’t prevent a Tunisian from re-turning to his country”.

“We will not put them all in prison because we would not have enough prisons but we will monitor them,” he added.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas (right) meets with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh at the Muqataa, the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday.

Abbas meets Jordan FM

Syrian workers remove rubble from a rooftop as they clean up the water station in Aleppo’s Suleiman al-Halabi neighbourhood. Aleppo’s residents are impatient to end their water shortages, with the main pumping station functioning at a third of its capacity.

“We will not put them all in prison because we would not have enough prisons but we will monitor them”

12 Gulf TimesThursday, December 29, 2016

AFRICA

Dozens of Boko Haram fi ghters surrender in NigerReutersNiamey

Dozens of Boko Haram fi ghters have given themselves up to au-

thorities in southern Niger, the interior minister said, days after the Islamist group suff ered key

losses over the border in Ni-geria.

“Thirty-one young people from Diff a, who were enrolled a few years ago in Boko Haram, decided to surrender,” minis-ter Mohamed Bazoum wrote on Twitter, above pictures of him touring the area near Nigeria’s northeast border.

The fi ghters arrived in the remote desert town of Diff a in groups and were being held by local authorities. “I learned that the fi rst who surrendered were not arrested, and I surrendered,” a former Boko Haram combatant told national television.

“We expect a pardon from the government so that we can par-

ticipate in the development of the country and help us get rid of the trauma.”

In June, tens of thousands of people fled Diffa as Boko Haram swept the region. Five Niger soldiers were killed by the militants near Diffa in Sep-tember. It was not clear what will become of the ex-Boko

Haram fighters, but authorities said there was the possibility of reintegrating them back into society. A security source said a meeting was planned in Diffa to discuss “the conditions of sur-render”, without providing fur-ther details.

Boko Haram has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than

2mn during a seven-year insur-gency aimed at creating an Is-lamic state in Nigeria. In recent years its attacks have spilled into neighbouring Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

Hundreds of Boko Haram fi ghters surrendered in Chad in October and November as the group ceded territory. The group

controlled an area about the size of Belgium in early 2015 but has since been pushed back by inter-national forces including troops from Niger.

Nigeria’s army captured its last enclave in the vast Sambisa forest last week, President Mu-hammadu Buhari said on Satur-day.

Mozambique’s ‘ultimate criminal’ dies in hospitalConvicted murderer, rapist and armed burglar Ananias Mathe was renowned for his many audacious attempts to break out of prison

AFPJohannesburg

A prisoner who es-caped twice from high-security jails

in South Africa died while being treated for an illness that guards reportedly at fi rst suspected was part of another escape plot,

offi cials said yesterday.Convicted murderer,

rapist and armed burglar Ananias Mathe, from Mo-zambique, was renowned from his many audacious attempts to break out of prison.

He died in hospital in Durban on Tuesday “due to complications with digestive issues”, correc-tional services spokesman Thulani Mdluli Kwazulu told the SABC state broad-caster. “We have been giv-ing Ananias Mathe (the) medical attention he de-serves for the past three months,” he said.

In 2006, Mathe achieved notoriety when he became the fi rst person to ever escape from the maximum high-security C-Max Penitentiary in Pretoria. He was reported to have smeared himself in petroleum jelly, squeezed through a tiny window, broken down a wall and used a steel bed bar for a hook to hold a rope made from bed linen and clothes.

However, it was also suspected that he had in-side help, and six prison wardens were dismissed over his escape. Ananias Mathe

Picnickers have a good time at an amusement park in Ikeja district in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos.

Time to celebrate as the year rolls by

Militant outfi t suspected of

kidnapping French woman

Nigeria gets rid of 50,000

government ‘ghost workers’

Nigeria’s Chibok girls kept from family over Christmas

ReutersBamako

A Malian state prosecutor said yesterday that mili-tant group al Mourabit-

oun is suspected of kidnapping a French-Swiss aid worker from the city of Gao in northern Mali.

Sophie Petronin has not been seen publicly since Saturday, when men snatched her and drove off in a pickup truck. She ran a charity for malnourished children and had lived in Gao for 15 years, authorities said.

“The fi rst indications show that she was certainly taken hostage by a terrorist group, al Mourabitoun,” prosecutor Bou-bacar Sidiki Samake said.

Al Mourabitoun has not claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. The group is led by Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who has been a prominent fi gure in insurgencies across North Africa and the Sa-haran border region.

Mourabitoun, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and Ansar

Dine have all conducted attacks in Mali this year from bases in the desert north.

Samake said he would start proceedings next week for high-profi le attacks last year on the Radisson hotel in Bamako, the Byblos hotel in Sevare and La Ter-rasse restaurant in the capital. In all, about 38 people were killed.

Two Malians and a Maurita-nian suspected of carrying out or planning the attacks would ap-pear before a judge, Samake said.

A rebellion by ethnic Tuaregs in 2012 that sought to create a new state called Azawad was hijacked by militants linked to Al Qaeda who seized northern towns.

French troops drove them out a year later but they still launch attacks and have spread to ar-eas once considered safe, despite eff orts by a 13,000-strong UN force to keep them at bay.

The separatist group, the Co-ordination of Azawad Move-ments (CMA), this week sus-pended its participation in a committee charged with imple-menting a 2015 peace accord.

DPA Lagos

The Nigerian government has removed the names of 50,000 ghost work-

ers from its pay roll, saving as much as 200bn naira ($637mn), a presidential spokesman said. “The ghost names were found in several government establish-ments where they over bloating salaries and the pension bills,” presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said.

“We are trying to recover the huge amount of money that has been illegally collected with the ghost names,” he said, adding that 11 people have been arrested so far, of whom four have already been charged.

All the names that were un-covered from February to date have been deleted from the government’s pay records. President Muhammadu Buhari came to power last year with a pledge to fight corruption which is endemic in the oil-rich country.

A group of 21 Nigerian Chibok girls brought home for Christmas after almost three years in captivity were prevented from celebrating at home with their families, sources said yesterday. The 21 were among more than 200 mostly Christian schoolgirls released in October after being snatched by jihadist Boko Haram gunmen in April 2014 in a kidnapping that sent shockwaves across the world. The group had been brought back to Chibok under heavy escort to spend Christmas at home but family and relatives said that instead they had been kept inside the house of a local

parliamentarian for several days. “What is the point of bringing them home if we as their parents can’t see them?” said one of the fathers, who asked not to be identified. A mother accused the government of “deliberately breaking our hearts in this festive period”. The girls were not given permission either to attend Christmas mass, angering Chibok residents as well as their relatives. “We are a community and we take these girls as ours whether they are related to us or not,” said local resident Ayuba Alamson.

Ivory Coast will build two 350 megawatt (MW) charcoal power stations in the western cocoa town of San Pedro by 2021 to address growing national demand for electricity, the government said yesterday.Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa grower, has emerged from a decade-long political crisis as one of Africa’s

rising economic stars, but rapid growth has strained power supplies. Government spokesman Bruno Kone told reporters in Abidjan that one plant was scheduled for completion in 2020 and the second in 2021.He did not say how much they would cost but did say that the Ivorian firm S Energies would have to raise money for the project.

With electricity demand increasing by about 10% each year, the Ivorian government is pushing for investments to double output to 4,000 MW by 2020.China Energy Engineering Corporation is leading construction of the 500mn euro ($520mn) Songon power station, whose two gas and one steam turbine will produce 372 MW of power.

Ivory Coast signs deal for construction of two power plants

Flooding this week in the Democratic Republic of Congo port city of Boma killed at least 50 people and left another 10,000 homeless, authorities said yesterday.Torrential rain on Monday night caused the Kalamu River to overflow, flooding two districts of the southwestern city,

said Therese-Louise Mambu, health minister for Kongo Central province. “The damage is very serious,” she said. “We continue to look for other bodies.”Resident Jeanne Nzita said: “Everything was taken away – the windows and the doors. All that remains of our house is the walls and the roof.”

Scientific models predict that climate change will bring increased rainfall to central Africa over the course of this century. Central and western parts of the Congo Basin are expected to be worst hit. Dozens died late last year in the capital Kinshasa as it recorded unusually heavy rains during the rainy season.

Nineteen pro-democracy activists arrested during a protest against the Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Joseph Kabila were

released, their organisation and a UN official said. “Lucha confirms that 18 comrades arrested during a sit-in in Goma (in eastern

DR Congo) on December 21 ... were released on Tuesday,” the opposition movement’s Ghislain Muhiwa said.

Floods in southwest Congo kill at least 50

DR Congo opposition activists released

AMERICAS13Gulf Times


Legislatorcharged withpointing gun,punching wifeTribune News ServiceNew York

South Carolina state Rep. Chris Corley was arrested on charges of punching his

wife in the face and pointing a 9mm pistol at her when she ac-cused him of cheating, accord-ing to Aiken County sheriff ’s records.

Corley, an Aiken Republi-can, was charged with first-degree criminal domestic vio-lence, a felony, and pointing and presenting a firearm at his wife of 12 years in the presence of two of their children, ages two and eight, an incident re-port states.

The 36-year-old legislator faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the domestic violence charge, which is the second most serious charge related to domestic vio-lence. The most egregious charge is domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature.

A judge in Aiken released Cor-ley on a total of $20,000 in surety bonds, banned him from going near his wife or holding a fi rearm and told the lawmaker he could travel only to and from his job in Augusta, Ga.

The little-known legislator thrust himself into the national spotlight in 2015 when he sug-gested on the fl oor of the South Carolina House that removing the Confederate fl ag from the State House grounds was tanta-mount to the state’s Republican Party surrendering to political correctness in the wake of the Charleston church shooting massacre.

Corley, wearing a white long-sleeve Southern Tide T-shirt, blue athletic shorts, tennis shoes, handcuffs and shackles, said little during his bond hear-ing. His attorney, who declined to give reporters his name, is believed to be a relative of Cor-ley’s.

Corley’s wife told deputies that her husband threatened to kill her in their Graniteville home and that the only thing that stopped him was the screams of the children, according to the Aiken County Sheriff ’s Offi ce report.

Corley’s wife – who is not be-

ing named by The State news-paper – said the state legislator had grabbed a Smith & Wesson handgun from a vehicle outside their home and pointed it at her, according to the report. That happened after his punch drew blood, she said.

The lawmaker then went into a bedroom, after saying he “was going to kill himself,” his wife, 37, told deputies. As Corley headed for the bed-room, his wife and the chil-dren ran to her mother’s house across the street, the report states.

The report does not mention a third child, who is listed in the current South Carolina Legisla-tive Manual.

Corley told a deputy who ar-rived at the couple’s house that he and his wife got into an ar-gument because she thought he was cheating on her. He said his wife tried to punch him in the face, but he pushed her off . She scratched his forehead, accord-ing to the report.

The arrest warrant does not say if the Smith & Wesson SD9VE 9mm used in the inci-dent belongs to Corley. Investi-gators believe Corley owns the gun; however, it’s unclear if he has a concealed-weapons per-mit, Captain Eric Abdullah, a spokesman for the Sheriff ’s Of-fi ce, said.

Sheriff ’s deputies arrived around and arrested him, ac-cording to the report. Abdullah said Corley is co-operating with law enforcement.

Corley’s next court appear-ance is scheduled for Febru-ary 10, Aiken county magistrate Melanie DuBose told the law-maker.

Because of the seriousness of the charges, Corley could be fac-ing suspension from the South Carolina House of Representa-tives. House Speaker Jay Lucas is monitoring the situation, said his spokeswoman, Caroline Del-leney.

Trump lashes out atObama on TwitterAgenciesWashington

US president-elect Don-ald Trump yesterday ac-cused Barack Obama of

making “infl ammatory” state-ments and complicating the im-pending transfer of power — the latest salvo in an escalating war of words with the current com-mander-in-chief.

The unorthodox personal and public criticism of a sit-ting president comes less than a month before the 70-year-old Trump — who defeated Obama’s preferred successor Hillary Clinton in November’s presi-dential election — takes offi ce.

“Doing my best to disregard the many infl ammatory Presi-dent O statements and road-blocks,” Trump wrote on Twit-ter. “Thought it was going to be a smooth transition — NOT!”

The social media jab is the latest from the 70-year-old real estate mogul aimed at Obama, in what has become a most uncon-ventional transition between the outgoing Democrat and the incoming Republican leader.

Obama said in an interview released earlier this week that he could have been re-elected for a third term if he had been eligible and that the nation still largely embraces his political vision.

“I am confi dent in this vision because I’m confi dent that if I

had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilised a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama told the interviewer, his former sen-ior adviser David Axelrod.

Trump has responded on Twitter numerous times in re-cent days, writing one that there’s “NO WAY” Obama would have beaten him and later adding that the president “campaigned hard (and personally) in the very im-portant swing states, and lost.”

Although Trump didn’t detail his complaints in his morning broadsides on Twitter yester-day, the president-elect has made it clear that it didn’t sit well with him

Trump and his team have until

now been largely complimentary of the way Obama and his people have handled the transition.

Obama made an apparent reference to Trump yesterday when he spoke at Pearl Harbor after his historic meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, telling the US not to “turn inward.”

“It is here that we remember that even when hatred burns hottest, even when the tug of tribalism is at its most primal, we must resist the urge to turn inward, we must resist the urge to demonise those who are dif-ferent,” Obama said.

Early in Obama’s presiden-cy, Trump became one of the leading voices in the “birther”

movement questioning the au-thenticity of the president’s birth certifi cate and suggesting he was not born in the US.

After Obama released his long-form birth certifi cate, Trump bragged that he was the one who forced him to do so and for years continued to claim un-certainty about Obama’s birth-place

Trump frequently attacked Obama on the campaign trail on issues ranging from ObamaCare to the Iran nuclear deal to the fi ght against terrorism.

Obama and fi rst lady Michelle Obama frequently campaigned for Clinton during the presiden-tial election and openly criti-cised Trump.

Uruguay’s last military dictator, General Gregorio “El Goyo” Alvarez, died yesterday at age 91 of heart failure, a defence ministry off icial said. Alva-rez, who played a central role in a 1973 coup that installed a military regime in Uruguay, ruled the country from 1981 to 1985. He was serving a 25-year prison sentence for human rights violations committed during the dictatorship. Suff ering from dementia and respiratory problems, he was trans-ferred two weeks ago to the Montevideo Military Hospital, where he died. Human rights activists called on Uruguayans to remember victims of the regime on the occasion of his death.

There will be no Fidel Castro streets or plazas in Cuba, in keeping with the late revolutionary leader’s wishes, as spelled out in a law Cuban legislators passed on Tuesday. President Raul Castro, 85, said that before dying at the age of 90 on November 25, his brother Fidel had requested that no monuments or statues be erected in his honour, and that no streets or buildings be named after him. Lawmakers adopted the bill implementing his wish. While he was an omni-present figure in the lives of Cubans after taking power in 1959, Fidel Castro always opposed the erection of statues in his likeness.

An independent leftist senator running for president in Chile’s 2017 election is leading in a head-to-head matchup against the right’s front-runner, a poll released yesterday showed, spicing up a race once expected to feature only establishment favourites. The survey by pollster MORI shows Alejandro Guillier, a journalist-turned-politician, winning a potential runoff election by five points against Sebastian Pinera, a conserva-tive, investor-friendly ex-president. When asked who they would vote for in a race between the two, 35% of survey respondents said Guillier and 30% favoured Pinera.

Former Argentine president Cristina Fernandez was indicted on charges she ran a corruption scheme with a public works secretary who was arrested in June while trying to stash millions of dollars in a convent. A federal judge accused them and other off icials of the Fernandez administration of crimes “including the deliberate seizure of funds principally meant for public road works.” Corruption charges have long swirled around Fernandez and her husband and predecessor, the late Nestor Kirchner. She denies wrongdoing and accuses Argentina’s current leader, Mauricio Macri, of using the courts to persecute her.

Food and beverage distribution tycoon Christopher Reyes had asked Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to close a major downtown street with the subject line “street closure for my daughter’s wedding. Reyes, 62 – said by Forbes magazine to be the 206th richest American, with a net worth of $2.9bn has been a ma-jor donor to Emanuel and to Illinois Republicans. The e-mail was among hundreds released by the mayor’s attorney in recent days as part of a settlement of a lawsuit with the Better Government Association. However, Emanuel did not respond to the e-mail, leaving Reyes, his daughter and their guests to slum it by crossing the street like ordinary mortals.

Uruguay’s last dictator,Gregorio Alvarez, dies at 91

Cuba bans naming statues,public places after Castro

Chilean leftist presidentialhopeful in lead in key poll

Ex-Argentine leader indicted in graft scheme

Tycoon asked mayor toshut street for wedding

PEOPLE LAWPOLITICS LEGAL OFFBEAT

Union plans 30% budgetcuts in wake of Trump winGuardian News and MediaLondon

The two-million-member union that was a driving force behind the Fight for

$15 minimum wage protests is planning to cut its internal budg-ets by 30% in anticipation of the Donald Trump administration, according to an internal memo.

The Service Employees In-ternational Union (SEIU) presi-dent, Mary Kay Henry, has told staff that “because the far right will control all three branches of the federal government, we will face serious threats to the ability of working people to join together in unions” and that cuts would start immediately, with a 10% budget reduction by this Saturday. News of the De-cember 14 internal memo was first reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday.

Trump’s triumph shocked the

union. In the memo, obtained by the Guardian, Henry said “the outcome of the November 2016 election results” had made it necessary to “dramatically re-think” the SEIU’s plans for ex-pansion.

In an e-mailed statement, an SEIU spokeswoman, Sahar Wali, told the Guardian that the planned cuts were neces-sary “as we prepare to fight back against the forthcoming attacks on working people and our communities under an ex-tremist-run government”. Wali said that SEIU was looking for “financial refinements to im-plement” that would best allow the SEIU to grow.

“Working families are fed up with not being able to improve their families’ lives no matter how hard or how long they work while greedy corporations and self-interested politicians con-tinue to rig our economy and po-litical system,” Wali wrote.

Last month the SEIU presi-dent joined the New York state attorney general, Eric Schnei-derman, and others in denounc-ing Trump’s nominee for labour secretary, Andy Puzder. Puzder is the CEO of the restaurant group that owns Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr, two fast-food chains; he has broadly criticised minimum wage increases and advocated for automating jobs currently per-formed by low-income workers.

The Fight for $15 campaign has achieved success in California and New York, and it has cut into the margins of the fast-food in-dustry from which Puzder hails. But there are other threats to the union, notably from rightwing legislatures pushing anti-labour laws.

Anti-labour activists man-aged to have a National Right-to-Work bill, sponsored by the Kentucky senator Rand Paul, in-troduced in February last year. It was referred to committee.

Spanish “rejoneador” Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza performs during a bullfight at the Canaveralejo bullring in Cali, department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia.

US president-elect Donald Trump watches as Carlyle Group founder and CEO David Rubenstein departs following their meeting at the Mar-a-lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, yesterday.

Bullfight Amazon snubs policeplea in murder probeGuardian News and MediaSeattle

Amazon has refused to hand over recordings from an Echo smart speaker

to police investigating a murder in Arkansas, according to court records seen by tech industry news site The Information.

Arkansas police issued a war-rant to Amazon to turn over recordings and other informa-tion associated with the device owned by James Andrew Bates.

Bates has been charged with the murder of a man found dead in his hot tub in Novem-ber 2015.

The Seattle-based tech com-pany twice declined to provide the police with the information they requested from the device, although it did provide Bates’s account information and pur-chase history, the report said court records show.

Although the Echo is known

for having “always-on” micro-phones to enable its voice-con-trolled features, the vast major-ity of the recordings it makes are not saved for longer than the few seconds it takes to determine if a pre-set “wake word” (usually “Alexa”) has been said.

Only if that wake word has been heard does the device’s full complement of microphones come on and begin transmitting audio to Amazon.

While that would seem to limit the use of the Echo data in the in-vestigation, the device is also oc-casionally accidentally activated, through similar sounds.

Those snippets of audio could potentially be useful to police in-vestigating a crime, as could the timing information of when they were recorded.

According to the report, the court records show police took the Echo and extracted some data from it. Police also extracted data from a diff erent smart home device, a water meter.

Corley’s wife told deputies that her husband threatened to kill her and the only thing that stopped him was the screams of the children

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA


Korean Air pledges tough measures on unruly passengersAFPSeoul

Korean Air said yesterday it would let its crew use stun guns more aggressively

and put more male staff aboard fl ights to clamp down on vio-lence, after an incident involving an unruly passenger.

South Korea’s fl ag carrier said it was tightening security af-

ter 1980s US pop singer Richard Marx lashed out at the company on social media for its handling of the incident.

Until now, the use of stun guns or tasers has been limited to situations where there was an “imminent threat to the lives of passengers and crew or to safe navigation”, said airline spokes-man Nathan Cho. But “regula-tions on the use of stun guns or tasers will be changed to allow

crew members to use them more aggressively”, he added.

The airline will also put at least one male crew member on every flight, buy new ropes to tie down unruly passengers quickly and step up crew train-ing in mock-up cabins. Korean Air’s 700 male attendants ac-count for only one-tenth of its flight attendants.

Marx said last week he had to step in to help “clueless and ill-

trained” crew restrain a violent passenger on a fl ight from Hanoi to Seoul’s Incheon Airport.

Local television footage showed a male passenger fl ail-ing, punching and spitting as female crew members and other passengers struggled to hold him down and tie him to his seat with a rope. Marx posted photos on Twitter and Facebook taken by his wife, TV host and model Daisy Fuentes which showed

the passenger grabbing a female fl ight attendant by her hair and another crew member pointing a taser.

Fuentes said the all-female crew did not know how to use the taser nor how to secure the rope around the man and “never fully got control of him”.

Marx said the fi asco lasted four hours until he stepped in along with other male passen-gers. South Korean police are

investigating and have sought an arrest warrant for the passen-ger, identifi ed as a 34-year-old heir to a South Korean cosmet-ics company. He consumed two-and-half shots of whisky during the fl ight, Korean Air said, but added they have no information on whether he had drunk alcohol before boarding.

The airline was at the centre of a notorious “nut rage” incident in 2014 that triggered a national

uproar. Korean Air heiress Cho Hyun-ah, who was company vice-president at the time and sitting in fi rst class, became en-raged when a fl ight attendant served her some nuts in a bag rather than on a plate.

She lambasted the chief stew-ard over the behaviour of his cab-in crew and ordered the Seoul-bound fl ight that had just left the gate in New York to turn back so he could be ejected.

Japan hails Pearl Harbor visit, braces for TrumpAFPTokyo

Japanese yesterday hailed a historic visit by Prime Min-ister Shinzo Abe to Pearl

Harbor, praising his message of reconciliation with the United States but wary of the future af-ter Donald Trump takes offi ce.

Interest in Abe’s visit to the site of Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack that drew the US into World War II has been high, with many favourably comparing it to President Barack Obama’s jour-ney this year to Hiroshima.

Both visits were highly chore-ographed and in their remarks – Obama in Hiroshima and Abe in Hawaii – neither apologised or even explicitly said their coun-tries carried out the respective attacks. But despite the careful words, the symbolism of their standing together again, this time at Pearl Harbor, was clear to most in Japan.

National broadcaster NHK provided live coverage of their joint address around 7am (Japan time). It was delivered after the two men visited the memorial to the battleship USS Arizona, sunk in the surprise Japanese attack.

Kuniyoshi Takimoto, 95, a former navy aircraft mechanic on a carrier that took part in the raid, praised Abe’s words. “It was a beautiful message that deeply refl ected the sentiment of both American and Japanese people,” he said. But Takimoto was also critical of Abe’s hawk-ish policy to expand the role of Japan’s constitutionally con-strained military, including en-abling combat missions abroad. “The beautiful message has a catch,” he said.

Abe’s visit was slightly over-shadowed by one of his own

ministers, who visited the con-troversial Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo just hours after Abe went to Pearl Harbor. Masahiro Imamura, minister in charge of the reconstruction of northern Japan after the 2011 tsunami, was quoted by public broad-caster NHK as saying the timing of his visit was “a coincidence”.

But Haruko Satou, professor of international politics at Os-aka University, suggested that while Imamura’s true intention was unknown the timing was suspicious. “It’s natural to think that he chose the same day when Prime Minister Abe visited Pearl Harbor,” Satou said.

Imamura’s action is “likely to have a negative impact on Ja-pan’s diplomacy and off set the positive image of Abe’s historic visit,” she said.

Abe’s visit was also closely watched in China, where it was noted that he stressed ties with the US over Asia. “If Japan really wants to reconcile over histori-cal issues, Abe chose the wrong place,” the nationalist Global Times newspaper commented, saying he should visit Nanjing, the site of a 1937 Japanese mas-sacre, or elsewhere in China.

China’s foreign ministry also weighed in, with spokes-woman Hua Chunying calling

for a “sincere apology” to Asian countries that suff ered from Japanese militarism.

Abe aimed to highlight the signifi cance of close military and economic relations with the US as Trump prepares to assume power amid major questions about his policies, several Japa-nese media outlets said. Trump, during his campaign, accused Japan of not paying its fair share in supporting the military al-liance, and suggested Tokyo could even develop its own nu-clear deterrent.

Abe’s speech also expressed Japan’s appreciation for US re-construction aid after World

War II. Commentator Takashi Ryuzaki said that comment was designed to engage the US pub-lic who supported Trump.

“Rather than off ering an apology, the message of grati-tude for what America did after the war was expressed,” Ryuzaki said on a TBS morning show.

The desire for a continued solid Japan-US relationship is what most Japanese, including Tokyoite Kazuko Masuda, 57, say they want.

“Mr Trump utters all those strong words... but I really hope he as an individual is the kind of person who walks an honour-able path,” she said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Barack Obama depart together after speaking at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Seen in the back-ground is the USS Missouri.

Myanmar men may face jail for not marrying pregnant womenAFPYangon

Myanmar’s government is drafting a law that could see men jailed

for up to seven years for getting a woman pregnant but not mar-rying her, a senior official said yesterday.

The provision is part of tough new legislation designed to strengthen women’s rights as the country opens up after half a century of military rule. Director of the social welfare department Naw Tha Wah said the new law would criminalise domestic violence for the first time and make gang-rape a capital offence.

If passed in parliament, the law would also carry a penalty of up to five years in prison for any man who refuses to mar-ry a woman after they have lived together, and up to sev-en if she is pregnant. “We are now drafting a bill to protect women and prevent violence against them,” Naw Tha Wah said.

“Women can complain if

they are bullied into not getting married after living together. We will give them protection under the law.”

Buddhist-majority Myan-mar is a socially conservative country, where gender stere-otypes are deeply entrenched. While attitudes have started to change since the isolation-ist junta stepped down in 2011, activists say women are still treated like second-class citi-zens. There are currently no laws to prevent domestic vio-lence against women or combat sexual harassment in the work-place.

The penal code includes some provisions against rape, although that does not cov-er husbands who abuse their wives unless they are under the age of 13.

Last year parliament passed controversial laws backed by hardline Buddhist nationalists, restricting marriage between Buddhist women and men of other faiths.

Naw Tha Wah said the bill is currently in its final draft, but needs cabinet and parliamen-tary approval to become law.

Climber falls to death in NZ’s Southern Alps

A mountaineer fell several hundred metres to his death yesterday at Mount Aspiring in New Zealand’s Southern Alps, police said. The man, believed to be a tourist, fell from the north-west ridge, the most commonly-climbed path to the mountain’s 3,000m peak, and onto a glacier, police said. The climber was a Czech man in his mid-20s, the New Zealand Herald reported. Police, however,

had not yet confirmed the man’s identity.It took the volunteer Wanaka Police Search and Rescue three hours to locate and recover the man’s body. The climber’s death was a tragedy, rescue co-ordi-nator Sergeant Aaron Nicholson said. “The very busy start to the summer outdoor season is a sobering reminder of the inher-ent risks in mountaineering,” Nicholson said.

China fl exes military muscle before power shift in the USAFPBeijing

An aircraft carrier in the Pacifi c and a newly up-graded combat aircraft:

China’s military is showing off its newest equipment less than a month before the swearing-in of US president-elect Donald Trump, who has raised tensions between Beijing and Taipei.

In recent days state media an-nounced that the country’s only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was on its way to the Pacifi c for the fi rst time, while a new fi ghter, the FC-31, had its debut fl ight test.

They are the latest steps in the years-long build-up of China’s military, as Beijing seeks greater global power to match its eco-nomic might and asserts itself more aggressively in its own backyard, but the timing raises questions about its intentions.

The show of strength comes after Trump broke four dec-ades of US policy by accepting a phone call from Taiwanese Pres-ident Tsai Ing-wen, even though China objects to any offi cial con-tact between its foreign partners and leaders of Taiwan.

China views self-ruling Tai-wan as part of its territory await-ing unifi cation, by force if neces-sary, even though the two sides split in 1949 after a civil war.

With its escort warships, the Li-aoning was in the South China Sea earlier this week, according to the Taiwanese defence minis-try which monitored the carrier’s passage off its shores.

The manoeuvres were preced-ed by exercises on “refuelling and confrontation in fl ight”, accord-ing to the offi cial news agency Xinhua.

“The threat from our enemy is increasing day by day,” Taiwan’s defence minister Feng Shih-kuan said during a promotion ceremony for generals. “We need to maintain combat vigilance at any time.”

The demonstration of Chi-na’s naval capacity comes amid mounting concern on the main-land about the momentum of Taiwan’s independence move-ment, worries fuelled by Trump’s suggestion that he would con-sider recognising the self-ruled island as an independent nation.

Nevertheless, it is “impos-sible to say whether the timing is intended to send a signal to Trump”, said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“I’m more inclined to see this as an inevitable development and possibly a long planned exercise.”

Beijing has a long way to go before it can claim military supe-riority over Taiwan’s main pro-

tector Washington, which has 10 aircraft carriers in service and a network of naval bases all around the globe, said David Kelly, re-search director of Beijing-based consulting fi rm China Policy.

For China, the presence of the Liaoning is above all “symbolic” and aimed at its “domestic audi-ence”, Kelly said.

For now, experts say the Peo-ple’s Liberation Army Navy would have little hope of coun-tering the smaller but technolog-ically superior US-backed Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, let alone the US Seventh Fleet. The second-hand, Soviet-built Li-aoning has “almost no strategic signifi cance,” Kelly said. But, he added, “it reminds the US that China can apply pressure on this region.”

In mid-December the Chinese navy announced that the vessel had conducted its fi rst live-fi re exercises, including tests with a dozen missiles.

Beijing says the exercises are routine, but state media have expressed pleasure that the Li-aoning is battle-ready and that another aircraft carrier, entirely Chinese-made, is under con-struction.

“Aircraft carriers are strate-gic tools which should be used to show China’s strength to the world and shape the outside world’s attitude toward China,”

said the often nationalist Global Times.

Although the US spends far more on its military than China does, Beijing’s growing assert-iveness in strategic regions like the South China Sea coupled with the uncertainty surround-ing Trump’s policies has set off jitters among Washington’s allies in Asia. In recent years Beijing has strengthened its claims to the South China Sea and fuelled regional tensions by expanding tiny reefs and islets into artifi cial islands hosting military facili-ties.

Brunei, Malaysia, the Phil-ippines, Vietnam and Taiwan have contested Beijing’s claims while Washington has repeatedly called on China to uphold free-dom of navigation, sending ships and aircraft to pass close to the new islands.

Beijing is also modernising its air force. The China Daily re-ported that it recently tested a new prototype stealth fi ghter, an improved version of the FC-31 Gyrfalcon previously known as the J-31.

Meanwhile, Chinese commen-tators say Beijing must waste no time in building more aircraft carriers, with the Global Times urging the government “to think about setting up navy supply points in South America right now”.

Vietnam’s growth declines in ’16 but remains resilientAFPHanoi

Vietnam’s economic growth eased off in 2016 but remained resilient in

the face of a global trade slow-down and environmental disas-ters, authorities said yesterday.

The communist country’s GDP picked up in the fourth quarter to clock in at 6.2% in annual growth, a dip from last year’s 6.68%, offi cial data showed. “Although there has been no breakthrough in GDP growth in 2016, it was still a success as the fi gure is relatively high and stable,” Nguyen Bich Lam, director of the General Statistics Offi ce, told reporters in Hanoi.

He blamed the tempered

growth on fragile global eco-nomic conditions, a punishing regional drought and a toxic leak in central Vietnam that devastated the local fi shing and tourism industries earlier this year. However robust manufac-turing gains helped the econo-my expand in the fourth quarter to 6.68%, up from 6.4 in Sep-tember.

Foreign investment also shot up 9% year-on-year, with Vietnam attracting a record $15.8bn in 2016. The Southeast Asian nation has increasingly become a regional magnet for private investment, especially in its growing manufacturing and consumer sectors. Analysts have hailed it has a bright spot in the region.

Neighbouring Thailand, once the star of Southeast Asia, has

by contrast seen its economy stagger under a military junta. “Vietnam is in a sweet spot right now,” Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economic re-search at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg News.

“Foreign companies continue to invest in Vietnam to take ad-vantage of its highly competi-tive labour and low cost. The outlook is bright and it is one of the standout economies in Asia.”

An analysis published by the World Bank earlier this month said strong domestic demand and export-oriented manu-facturing gave the country’s economy a favourable outlook. It also hailed low infl ation rates, which the government said were kept below its target 5%.

Workers’ union in Australia told to audit membershipThe Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) has been told to audit its membership numbers after concerns over inaccurate reporting of membership for six years. The Fair Work Commission (FWC) ordered the audit after the union admitted it had published incorrect historic membership numbers in financial reports from June 2009 to 2014.The FWC discovered the problem after reviewing the AWU’s annual returns and financial reports. Chris Enright, the director of the Fair Work Commission’s regulatory compliance branch, has warned the AWU it may have contravened the Registered Organisations Act.

In correspondence seen by ‘Guardian Australia’, Enright told the AWU on November 15 that the “integrity” of AWU historical membership reporting had become an issue. He said that, between 2009 and 2014, the AWU’s financial report for each year cites the exact number of members as the union’s annual report from six months earlier, something he said was “inherently unlikely”. “For example, in the June 2014 financial report, the union reported 120,289 members, the identical number as had been reported in the annual report for December 31, 2013,” he wrote. “This pattern has occurred in each of the years between 2009 and 2014.

BRITAIN15Gulf Times


Child refugees launchaction against govtGuardian News and MediaLondon

Thirty-six child asylum seekers who previously lived in the Calais refugee

camp have issued a legal chal-lenge to the home secretary.

They claim Amber Rudd acted unlawfully in the way she han-dled their applications. It is the fi rst time children from the camp have taken individual legal ac-tion against the government.

The children were dispersed across France after the site was dismantled on October 31. Twenty-eight of those bringing the legal action have had their applications refused, while an-other eight are awaiting deci-sions from the Home Offi ce.

Of the 28 refused, 11 are aged 14, seven are 15, nine are 16 and one is 17. Sixteen are from Erit-rea, 11 are from Afghanistan and one is from Sudan. They have been dispersed to 15 reception centres around France.

In the legal challenge the gov-ernment is accused of reneging on its commitment to bring vulner-able accompanied refugee chil-dren to the UK under Section 67 of the Immigration Act, known as the Dubs amendment. This makes provision for particularly vulner-able children to come to the UK at the discretion of the government.

According to the children’s lawyers, the Home Offi ce has failed to allow the relocation of many of the most vulnerable children to the UK, failed to give proper written decisions in re-

fusing these applications and failed to use its discretion in re-sponse to extreme cases.

The judicial review focuses on the specifi c circumstances of one 14-year-old boy from Afghani-stan as well as on the broader is-sues aff ecting all of the children.

The boy’s father helped Nato troops and was targeted by the Taliban as a result. The boy was shot in the neck by the Taliban when they came to the fam-ily home searching for his father. He was lucky to survive and fl ed his home country and travelled through eight countries to reach France.

Along the way he was buried alive while travelling in a car at-tacked by Iranian military, al-most starved to death when he spent four days and nights in a

Bulgarian forest, was physically and sexually exploited by peo-ple traffi ckers and was shot with rubber bullets and teargas while in the Calais camp.

His wrist was broken there when he was beaten by a French police offi cer wielding a baton. He tried to kill himself on four occasions while in Calais.

His legal team at Duncan Lewis Solicitors wrote to the Home Of-fi ce on November 2 and Decem-ber 5 to raise concerns about the boy’s condition but neither letter received a response.

While social workers have as-sessed him to be suff ering from suicidal ideation and depression, and an independent psychia-trist assessed him to be suff ering from post-traumatic stress dis-order and to be a “traumatised

and vulnerable boy” who needs treatment, a Home Offi ce social worker who assessed him said there was no evidence that he had any particular emotional or psychological needs.

He was one of many children who were informed on Decem-ber 15 and 16 that their appli-cations to come to the UK had been unsuccessful. He has twice expressed a desire to kill himself since being moved to a reception centre in France.

In an initial response to the le-gal action, Home Offi ce offi cials said they could not prioritise cases of children who had legal representatives, and that if the child felt the French authori-ties were not looking after him properly he could seek redress through the French courts.

Best-selling authorRichard Adams diesGuardian News and MediaLondon

Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, has died aged 96.

A statement on the book’s of-fi cial website said: “Richard’s much-loved family announce with sadness that their dear fa-ther, grandfather, and great-grandfather passed away peace-fully at 10pm on Christmas Eve.”

The novel, fi rst published in 1972, became one of the bestsell-ing children’s books of all time, selling tens of millions of copies.

Adams did not begin writing until 1966, when he was 46 and working for the civil service. While on a car trip with his daughters, he began telling them a story about a group of young rabbits escaping from their doomed warren.

In an interview with the Guardian two years ago, the au-thor recalled: “I had been put on the spot and I started off : ‘Once there were two rabbits called Ha-zel and Fiver.’ And I just took it on from there.”

It was made into an animated fi lm in 1978, and the follow-ing year the fi lm’s theme song

Bright Eyes, sung by Art Garfun-kel, topped the UK charts for six weeks.

The book, which critics have credited with redefi ning anthro-pomorphic fi ction with its natu-ralistic depiction of the rabbits’ trials and adventures, won Adams both the Carnegie medal and the Guardian children’s prize.

The statement announcing his death quoted a passage from the end of his best-known work. It read: “It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch his rabbits and to try to get used to the extraor-dinary feeling that strength and speed were fl owing inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek young bodies and healthy senses.

“‘You needn’t worry about them,’ said his companion. ‘They’ll be alright – and thou-sands like them.”’

A spokesman for Oneworld publications, which brought out a new edition of Watership Down with illustrations by Aldo Galli, said: “Very saddened to hear that Richard Adams has passed. His books will be cherished for years to come.”

Dutch womanwith kids told to leave after 24 years in UKGuardian News and MediaLondon

A Dutch woman who has lived in the UK for 24 years, and has two children with

her British husband, has been told by the Home Offi ce that she should make arrangements to leave the country after she ap-plied for citizenship after the EU referendum. The story of Monique Hawkins highlights the practical diffi culties faced by millions of EU citizens concerned that they will not have the right to stay in Britain post-Brexit.

Hawkins had considered ap-plying for citizenship before but decided not to as it did not confer any rights beyond her current EU rights. However, after the referen-dum she changed her mind, fearful that those rights would be dimin-ished after Britain leaves the EU.

European citizens marrying Britons do not automatically qual-ify for UK citizenship under cur-rent rules and Hawkins was con-cerned that if she did not apply she would be forced “to join a US-style two-hour immigration queue” while the rest of her family “sail through the UK passport lane”.

In order to get citizenship, she fi rst had to get a “permanent resi-dency” document, which involves an 85-page application form.

Hawkins said the Home Offi ce had overlooked vital information in her submission – she was un-able to supply an original of her Dutch passport because her father had recently died and she needed her passport to continue to travel to the Netherlands to support her mother.

However, the department not only rejected her application but sent her a letter which took no account of her right to be in the country irrespective of their de-cision. “As you appear to have no alternative basis of stay in the United Kingdom you should now

make arrangements to leave,” the letter said.

When she phoned the Home Offi ce to discuss the decision communicated to her in October, four months after her application, she was told her case could not be discussed on the phone or by e-mail. Hawkins said her treatment by the Home Offi ce was as absurd as a “Monty Python” sketch.

In a written complaint, Hawkins said the worst aspect about the process was the inability to con-tact anyone. She wrote: “I do not believe there is any other business, organisation or even legal process in the world that would treat its customers/clients/applicants in this manner.” She also protested that while the Home Offi ce would not discuss her case with her per-sonally, it was willing to respond to her MP Dominic Raab, who inter-vened on her behalf.

She has now written to appeal, but says in her complaint: “I am now left totally in limbo. I do not know how long to wait for a reply. I do not know whether my applica-tion will be reopened or not.” She added that she did not know if she would get the refund she was en-titled to.

She was told the reason for the rejection was because she had not included her original pass-port, even though she had told the Home Offi ce her father had died in the Netherlands and it was needed by Dutch authorities.

In her complaint, Hawkins points out that she included a solicitor-approved photocopy of her passport plus a covering let-ter to explain why she could not be without her passport for the four to six months it takes to process.

She said the application form included a box for reasons for not including a valid passport as long as it was due to circumstances beyond your control. “Clearly my father dying did not qualify in the Home Offi ce’s eyes as beyond my control,” said Hawkins.

Eight in 10 middle-agedBritons ‘are overweight’Guardian News and MediaLondon

Eight out of 10 of middle-aged people in the UK weigh too much, drink too much or

do not exercise enough, analysis from Public Health England (PHE) shows.

Modern life is harming the health of the nation, accord-ing to the organisation, which has launched a campaign, One You, aimed at the 83% of 40 to 60-year-olds – 87% of men and 79% of women in this age bracket – who are overweight or obese, exceed the chief medical offi cer’s alcohol guidelines or are physically inactive.

Obesity is one of the biggest problems for this group: 77% of men and 63% of women in middle age are overweight or obese. Obes-ity in adults has risen by 16% in the past 20 years. Research shows that many people cannot identify a healthy body, suggesting being overweight has become the new normal.

Prof Sir Muir Gray, a clinical

adviser to One You, said: “The demands of modern day living are taking their toll on the health of the nation and it’s those in middle age that are suff ering the conse-quences most, as their (ill-)health reaches worrying new levels.

“More than 15mn Britons are living with a long-term health condition, and busy lives and desk jobs make it diffi cult to live health-ily. But just making a few small changes will have signifi cant ben-efi ts to people’s health now and in later life.”

Many more middle-aged people are being diagnosed with diabe-tes, with the rate among the 40-60 age group doubling in the past 20 years. Obese adults are more than fi ve times more likely to de-velop type 2 diabetes, which 90% of adults with diabetes have, than those who are a healthy weight – have a body mass index of between 18.5 and 24.9.

Dan Howarth, the head of care at Diabetes UK, said: “We know that people often bury their heads in the sand when it comes to their general health, but the conse-quences of doing nothing can be

catastrophic.“There are an estimated 11.9mn

people at increased risk of devel-oping type 2 diabetes in the UK because of their lifestyle and more than 1mn who already have the condition, but have not yet been diagnosed.

“Type 2 diabetes can lead to se-rious complications such as am-putation, blindness, heart attack, stroke and kidney disease. We know how hard it is to change the habits of a lifetime, but we want people to seek the help they need to lose weight, stop smoking and take more exercise.”

People are being urged to con-sider their health and the simple steps they can take to improve it in the run-up to the new year. The online quiz “how are you?” helps participants assess their health and off ers advice on how they can eat better, be more active, stop smoking and consider their alco-hol consumption.

After receiving an individual’s lifestyle information, the website provides a health score and links to free and personalised information, apps and tools.

A woman died and over a dozen were injured in a pile-up involving around 20 vehicles on a major road in heavy fog near Witney, northwest of London yesterday.

Fatal crash

Two people have been arrested on suspicion of murder after a man was shot dead in West Bromwich. The two men, aged 19 and 24, were arrested on Daggers Lane soon after the shooting in Dartmouth Street at about 14:30 GMT on Tuesday, West Midlands Police said. The 33-year-old male victim was a passenger in a stationary car. He died after being shot in the head. The scene of the incident is cordoned off for forensic investigations. Off icers are appealing for anyone who saw a grey Audi Q5 being driven away from the scene shortly after 14:30 on Tuesday to come forward. The car has been recovered.

Immigration off icers have raided nearly 300 nail salons and arrested 97 people, mostly from Vietnam, for suspected immigration off ences as part of a drive to tackle modern slavery, the Home Off ice said yesterday. “Operation Magnify”, a week-long operation concluded earlier this month, was a cross-government drive to stamp out illegal working by targeting specific “risk” industries, said the Home Off ice in a statement. “This operation sends a strong message to those employers who ruthlessly seek to exploit vulnerable people and wilfully abuse our immigration laws,” Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill, added.

MasterChef judge John Torode has left hospital after a “lucky escape” in a riding accident. A photo posted on Instagram of Torode, 51, in a hospital bed sparked concern for the Australian chef’s well-being. Lisa Faulkner, his partner, wrote that he was “very bruised” and thanked the staff of St Mary’s hospital in Paddington, west London. Faulkner tagged the photo “#luckyescape” and “#blessed”, but the cause of the accident remained a mystery. On Tuesday evening, after the photo prompted messages of support and concern, Faulkner tweeted that Torode was “well and happy and sitting on the sofa and all is good”.

Former England footballer Paul Gascoigne was involved in a fracas in a London hotel, several witnesses said, and taken to hospital after sustaining a head injury. The Metropolitan Police said off icers were called to a disturbance at London’s Ace Hotel in Shoreditch on Tuesday night before a 49-year-old man was taken to hospital. A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: “The man has been taken to an east London hospital where he remains in a stable condition.” Witness Alvin Carpio said Gascoigne, who has faced a long struggle with alcoholism, was kicked down the stairs after an altercation with another guest.

A search is under way for missing crew members of a fishing boat which capsized in the English Channel. It overturned off the Kent coast on Tuesday night, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said. One crew member was rescued from the upturned hull. The search is continuing for the other crew members. A coastguard search and rescue helicopter based at Lydd, two lifeboats from Ramsgate and the coastguard rescue team from Margate are involved. The BBC understands the fishing boat is from Belgium. A spokeswoman for the MCA said she could not confirm the nationality of the vessel or how many people were missing.

Two arrested afterman shot dead in car

97 held in raids on300 nail-salons

MasterChef judge Torodeinjured in riding fall

Ex-footballer Gascoigne in hospital after hotel row

Fishing crew missingas boat capsizes

INVESTIGATION LAW AND ORDERCELEBRITY PEOPLE ACCIDENT

A swan takes off in Hyde Park in London yesterday.

Hyde Park wildlife

EUROPE


Police detain alleged contact of Berlin truck attackerGerman police yesterday

detained a Tunisian they believe “could have been

involved” in the Berlin Christ-mas market attack, with alleged links to Anis Amri, the suspect-ed assailant shot dead in Italy last week.

The arrest was the fi rst in Germany by investigators seek-ing to uncover if Amri had ac-complices in the December 19 attack when he allegedly hi-jacked a truck and drove it into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people.

“The deceased suspect Anis Amri had saved the number of this 40-year-old Tunisian na-tional in his phone. The inves-tigations indicate that he could have been involved in the at-tack,” the federal prosecutor’s offi ce said in a statement.

The suspect was taken into custody early yesterday after federal police offi cers searched his Berlin home and work premises.

“The extent to which the suspicions against the de-tained person can be con-

fi rmed remains subject to further investigation,” the statement added.

Amri, 24, went on the run and was the focus of a four-day manhunt before being shot dead by police in Milan, northern It-aly, after opening fi re fi rst.

German police said they found his fi ngerprints and his temporary residence permit in the cab of the truck used in the Berlin attack, next to the body of its registered Polish driver, who was killed with a gunshot to the head.

The Berlin rampage was claimed by the Islamic State group, which released a video last Friday in which Amri is shown pledging allegiance to IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

More than a week after the attack, investigators were still battling to fi nd out if Amri had help before and after the assault.

Three other men, including Amri’s nephew, were arrested by Tunisian authorities last Friday.

Yesterday, a spokesman at the anti-terrorism unit said that their probe was ongoing, de-clining to give further details.

Separately, investigators

came closer to tracing Amri’s escape route to Milan.

The Tunisian had boarded an overnight bus at the Dutch city of Nijmegen, near the German border, that took him to Lyon in central France, sources close to the investigation said.

Wim de Bruin, spokesman

for the Dutch public prosecu-tion service, said: “We believe he was in Nijmegen, most likely last Wednesday.”

“There are video images and it’s very likely him,” De Bruin said, adding that “it’s most likely here where he received a SIM card,” which Italian police

later found on his body.Amri got off the bus at the

Lyon-Part-Dieu rail station, one of the sources said.

Surveillance cameras fi lmed Amri at the station last Thursday.

From there, he took a train to the French Alpine town of

Chambery before heading to Milan.A train ticket from Lyon to

Milan via Turin was also found on Amri’s body.

But investigators are still try-ing to determine how Amri was able to leave Berlin and cross most of Germany to reach the Netherlands.

Amri was known to Tunisian police as a juvenile delinquent who drank and took drugs.

In 2011, he left his home country for Italy. There he spent four years in prison for starting a fi re in a refugee centre, during which time he was apparently radicalised.

After serving his sentence he made his way to Germany in 2015, taking advantage of Eu-rope’s Schengen system of open borders - as he did on his return to Italy last week.

German security agen-cies began monitoring Amri in March, suspecting he was plan-ning break-ins to raise cash for automatic weapons to carry out an attack.

But the surveillance was halt-ed in September because Amri, who was supposed to have been deported months earlier, was seen primarily as a small-time drug dealer.

AFPBerlin

A handout photo released by the Italian Police allegedly shows Anis Amri, the suspected Berlin truck attacker, in a CCTV frame grab taken at 22.14pm (local time) on December 22 at the Torino Porta Nuova railway station in Turin.

Hollande pardons woman who killed husband

French President Francois Hollande yesterday par-doned a woman who killed

her abusive husband, allowing her to walk free from jail where she was serving a 10-year sentence.

Hollande “considered that Mme (Jacqueline) Sauvage’s place was no longer in prison but with her family,” the president’s offi ce said in a statement.

The case, which has seen many twists and turns since Sauvage, who is in her late 60s, shot her husband Norbert Marot three times in the back a day after their son hanged himself in 2012, is a cause celebre in France.

Hollande accorded Sauvage a partial pardon in January this year for killing Marot, a violent alcoholic who she said raped her and her daughters.

But the pardon reduced her prison sentence rather than commuting it, and in August a French court refused to release Sauvage, who has become a sym-bol of the suff ering of domestic abuse victims in France.

AFPParis

Plane crash linked to possible malfunction of wing fl aps

Investigators believe that a malfunction of wing fl aps could be behind the crash

of the Russian military air-plane into the Black Sea on the coast of the Russian city of Sochi over the weekend, the Interfax news agency reported yesterday.

A fl ight recorder recovered from the aircraft revealed that there could have been a prob-lem with the mechanism con-trolling the wing fl aps. This may have led the plane’s crew to misjudge the seriousness of the situation, the news agency cited an undisclosed source close to the investigation as saying.

The crash, shortly after take-off on Sunday, is believed to have killed all 92 people aboard. Most of the passengers were members of an esteemed military band, the Alexandrov Ensemble, set to perform for troops in Syria, the fl ight’s des-tination.

Investigators have ruled out terrorism as a likely cause. Au-thorities have said no trace of

any explosive has been found on the recovered remains of victims or wreckage.

Russian tabloid Komsomol-skaya Pravda published pur-ported excerpts from a record-ing of the crew from the fi nal moments of the fl ight: “The

fl aps, damn it! Commander, we’re falling.”

At least 15 corpses and hundreds of fragments of bodies and the plane, in-cluding some sections of its fuselage, have been recovered.

A massive search operation across several kilometres is on-going.

Russian authorities have cited the strong current in the Black Seanear Sochi as a rea-son for the fragmentation and spread of the debris.

DPAMoscow

This handout video grab released by Russian Emergency Ministry yesterday, shows a diver looking at a piece of the crashed military plane carrying 92 people, including dozens of members of the Red Army Choir during searches in the underwater area outside Sochi, in the Black Sea.

Spain detains 2; bullets found

Spanish authorities said yesterday they had ar-rested two suspected

jihadists in Madrid and found bullets and weapon magazines while conducting raids linked to the detentions.

According to the Europa Press news agency, the maga-zines were of the type used for assault rifl es such as the AK-47, but a police spokeswoman was unable to confi rm this when contacted by AFP.

The interior ministry said the two men were Spanish and had been detained for “glori-

fying terrorism,” without giv-ing any further details.

The arrests come as Spain strengthens security during the holiday season.

Authorities in Madrid are taking unprecedented meas-ures for New Year’s Eve, when thousands gather in the central Puerta del Sol square for tra-ditional celebrations that see Spaniards swallow 12 grapes for each stroke of midnight.

All those entering the square will be searched.

Bollards will be used on nearby roads alongside police vans to guard against truck at-tacks like those that hit Nice in France in July, and Berlin on December 19.

AFPMadrid

Criminal case opened after bear’s killingcauses outcry

Russian investigators said yesterday they had opened a criminal case into a group of men who filmed themselves crushing a bear to death by repeatedly driving over it in off -road vehicles in the Siberian tundra.A video posted on YouTube on Monday, apparently shot on a mobile phone, showed men in two heavy trucks shouting “Crush him! Crush him!” and poking the bear as it struggled to rise from the snow.The video, which has since been removed from YouTube, was widely circulated by Russian media and caused a public outcry.Investigators in the Sakha Republic, in northeast Siberia, said they had opened a criminal investigation into the incident.They said they were looking at whether the men were guilty of causing the death of an animal by treating it sadistically, a charge that carries a maximum jail term of two years.The men caught on camera were shift workers driving vehicles that belonged to a exploration company prospecting for resources in the mineral-rich region, investigators said.“There should be real jail time for this sort of crime!” Sergei Donskoi, Russia’s minister for natural resources and the environment, wrote on social media.

Man suspected of planning attack heldPolice in southwest France have arrested a man suspected of having planned an attack on New Year’s Eve, a police source said yesterday.Two other people, one of whom is suspected of having planned an attack on police, were arrested in another police raid in south west France, in Toulouse, the police source said.In France, Britain and Germany, which have all been targets of

Islamist militant attacks, police have increased their presence at tourist spots in major cities and other densely populated areas after an attack on a Berlin Christmas market earlier this month.The man arrested in Cugnaux, west of Toulouse, “is known to (police) services, he is suspected of wanting to carry out an attack on December 31,” the police source said.

PSD proposes leftist veteran for PM

Romania’s Social Demo-crat party (PSD), victor of a general election two

weeks ago, yesterday proposed former telecommunications minister Sorin Grindeanu, a veteran leftist politician, for prime minister.

The PSD’s fi rst pick to lead the cabinet was Sevil Shhaideh, a close associate of PSD leader Liviu Dragnea, who was ruled out of the job by his criminal sentence in a 2012 referen-dum-rigging case. Shhaideh’s nomination was rejected by the president.

Grindeanu, a 43-year-old mathematician and former deputy mayor of the western city of Timisoara, currently the head of Timis county governing council, is expected to easily win the presidential seal of approval, political commentators said.

“Sorin Grindeanu goes there (to lead the government) for a full four-year term as prime minister,” Dragnea told report-ers. “We have chosen not to throw the country into political crisis.

“We had to fi nd a solution in a colleague loyal to the govern-ing programme and the party,” he added.

Dragnea said it was unlikely a new leftist government would be in place before the end of the year. He has said he will closely watch over the government’s performance.

The PSD won the Decem-ber 11 election by a wide mar-gin and, with coalition partner and long-time ally ALDE, has 250 of the 465 seats in the two houses of parliament, meaning it would easily get parliamen-tary approval for its govern-ment.

Grindeanu “is a hard pro-posal to refuse”, said Sergiu Miscoiu, political science

professor at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj.

“He is a regional pillar of the PSD, former deputy mayor, former minister, young. He meets the criteria.”

The PSD’s clear election victory has heightened uncer-tainty over Romania’s ability to keep its budget defi cit below the EU’s ceiling of 3 percent of gross domestic product, as their governing programme includes ambitious spending plans.

The PSD and its ALDE jun-ior ally will send the proposal to President Klaus Iohannis later in the day and the presi-dent is expected to endorse a prime minister-designate today.

“It is a great responsi-bility that I feel, not just my colleagues’ vote but that of Romanians for a governing programme that we must enforce,” Grindeanu said.

ReutersBucharest

About 16,000 turkeys culled after bird flu foundAbout 16,000 turkeys have been culled after bird flu of the high risk H5N8 strain was found on another German farm, authorities said yesterday.The case was discovered on a farm in the Kleve area in the central German state of North Rhine Westfalia, the Kleve local government authority said.Around 77,000 turkeys, chickens and ducks were also culled this week after the contagious H5N8 strain was found on four farms in a major poultry-producing region in the north German state of Lower Saxony.The contagious H5N8 strain has been found in over 500 wild birds in Germany in recent weeks. Outbreaks on farms have been relatively rare after the government introduced tough sanitary rules to prevent infection by wild birds including orders to keep poultry indoors in high-risk regions.A series of European countries and Israel have found cases of H5N8 bird flu in the past few weeks and some ordered poultry flocks be kept indoors to prevent the disease spreading. France has widened high risk restrictions to the entire country after several cases of the H5N8 strain were detected.

Number of migrants leaving Germany up

Nearly 55,000 migrants who were not eligible for or were likely to be de-

nied asylum left Germany vol-untarily in 2016, up by 20,000 from the number who left of their own volition in 2015, the government said yesterday.

“That’s a considerable increase from last year,” Interior Ministry spokesman Harald Neymanns told a news conference, saying the 2016 fi gure had climbed to 54,123 through December 27. “The increase is welcome. It’s always preferable when people leave the country voluntarily instead of being deported.”

A Finance Ministry spokes-man said the government would boost funding slightly to 150mn euros in 2017 to support eff orts to encourage people to leave Germany.

Germany has toughened

its stance on immigration in recent months, prompted by concerns about security and integration after admitting more than 1.1mn migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere since early 2015.

Most of those leaving in 2016 returned to their homes in Al-bania, Serbia, Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iran, Sued-deutsche Zeitung newspaper said earlier. Those leaving are eligible for one-off support of up to 3,000 euros that is sup-posed to help support fi nding employment at home.

Separately, German secu-rity offi cials said the number of those deported after their asy-lum requests were rejected rose to almost 23,800 from January to November - up from almost 20,900 in all of 2015.

There has also been a rise in the number of refugees turned away at the borders. A report by the Neue Osnabruecker Zei-tung daily said police had turned

back 19,720 refugees through the fi rst 11 months of 2016 - up from 8,913 in all of 2015. Most were from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Nigeria. They had been registered in other EU countries.

As public support for her pro-refugee policies wanes ahead of September’s federal election, Merkel has said it is vital to focus resources on those fl eeing war, and to keep public support up by deporting foreigners to countries where there is no persecution.

Attacks and security alerts involving refugees and mi-grants have boosted the popu-larity of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose rise above 10% in opinion polls could complicate Merkel’s re-election hopes.

On Tuesday, seven refugees from Syria and Iraq aged 15 to 21 were detained in Berlin on charges of attempted murder for trying to set fi re to a homeless man in an underground station.

ReutersBerlin

17Gulf TimesThursday, December 29, 2016

INDIA

Baijal to succeed Jungas Delhi Lt GovernorIANSNew Delhi

Former top bureaucrat Anil Baijal will succeed Najeeb Jung as the Lt

Governor of Delhi, Home Min-istry sources said.

The ministry had earlier in the day sent the fi le related to his appointment to the president, who is currently in Rashtrapati Nilayam in Se-cunderabad, Telangana, for his southern sojourn.

Later in a tweet, Exter-nal Aff airs Minister Sushma Swaraj congratulated Baijal.

Baijal’s appointment comes a week after Jung resigned last Thursday, taking everyone by surprise.

A 1969-batch IAS offi cer, Ba-ijal was in the executive council of the think-tank Vivekananda International Foundation.

In his career of 37 years, Bai-jal held several eminent posi-tions including that of union home secretary, chairman and managing Director of Indian

Airlines, additional secretary at Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and joint secretary in the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

He also served as vice chair-man of Delhi Development Authority, the development commissioner of Goa and counsellor in-charge of Indian Aid Programme in Nepal.

Baijal started off from the Union Territories Cadre and superannuated in 2006 as sec-retary of Ministry of Urban Development.

He retired in 2006 as the ur-ban development secretary.

While in that ministry, he anchored the designing and rollout of the fl agship pro-gramme of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mis-sion (JNNURM) with a fed-eral grant equivalent of about Rs600bn, for improvement of infrastructure and provision of basic services in the urban ar-eas of India.

He holds master’s degrees in arts from the University of Al-lahabad and the University of East Anglia.

Delhi legislator to contest against Punjab CM in pollIANSLambi, Punjab

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal yester-day announced that the

Aam Aadmi Party’s Delhi legis-lator Jarnail Singh will contest against Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal in Lambi assembly segment in next year’s elections.

Addressing a public rally at Lambi, Badal’s family borough, Kejriwal claimed the Congress and Akali Dal leaders had entered into a tacit understanding and were fi elding weak candidates against each other’s top leaders for the assembly elections to be held early next year.

Jarnail Singh shot into the limelight when he hurled a shoe at then home minister P Chidambaram in New Delhi in April 2009 to protest against the clean chit given to certain Congress leaders by the Cen-tral Bureau of Investigation

(CBI) in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.

AAP’s Sangrur MP and come-dian-turned politician Bhag-want Mann will contest against Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal for Jalala-bad seat.

“This time, we will not let Parkash Singh Badal, Sukh-bir Singh Badal and (Congress state unit president) Amarinder Singh get a walkover in the elec-tions. That is why we are fi eld-ing our strongest candidates against Amarinder, Badal, Su-khbir and (Revenue Minister Bikram Singh) Majithia to give them a taste of the political dust,” Kejriwal said.

“Both Amarinder and Badal not only jointly contest election to facilitate each other’s win but also share business interests in sand and gravel, transport and liquor business,” the Delhi chief minister added.

Addressing the gathering, Jarnail Singh - who represents Rajouri Garden seat in Delhi as-

sembly at present – challenged Badal for an open debate on the development in Punjab.

Earlier, reacting to announce-ment of Jarnail’s name from Lambi, Amrinder Singh said in a tweet that the move reeked of an “underhand deal” between AAP and Shiromani Akali Dal to en-sure Badal’s victory.

Kejriwal responded by asking the Congress leader if he would fi ght against the Badals and Ma-jithia or from a “safe seat”.

Meanwhile, two more Akali Dal leaders joined the Congress.

Former legislator Ramesh Singla and Ashok Bittu were welcomed into the party fold by Amarinder Singh. He said it was their “homecoming”.

Singla, who joined the rul-ing Akali Dal in 2014, is a former Congress MLA from Nabha, as well as former Punjab Congress general secretary and ex-Punjab Youth Congress president.

Bittu is a fi ve-time council-lor from Nabha, who joined the Akali Dal in 2014.

Crackdown on currencycasts shadowover GST billReutersNew Delhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s crackdown on the cash economy has shat-

tered the consensus needed for a new national sales tax, plung-ing his boldest reform into limbo and threatening to entrench an economic slowdown.

Modi’s government already had its work cut out to fi nalise a deal with India’s 29 states to launch a Goods and Services Tax (GST) on April 1 that would transform Asia’s third largest economy into a single market for the fi rst time.

But his decision to scrap 86% of the cash in circulation, in a bid to purge the economy of black mon-ey, has caused huge disruption.

A slump in business activity stemming from the cash crunch has caused the revenue of state governments, which collect val-ue-added tax on goods and other duties, to slump by 25-40%.

The states won’t risk another setback by rushing the sales tax into force.

“The investment and eco-nomic environment in the coun-try is in bad shape,” said West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra, who earlier headed a pan-el tasked with building a consen-sus on the GST.

“How is the country going to absorb the dual shock of GST and demonetisation?”

The GST is India’s biggest tax overhaul since independence in 1947. It would replace a plethora of federal and state levies with one tax, easing compliance, broadening the revenue base and boosting productivity.

It took Modi more than two years to forge a political compro-mise on the tax in August. Now, demonetisation “has created a trust defi cit,” said Kerala Finance Minister T M Thomas Isaac.

“After this, I am not going to

sit and compromise. They don’t deserve it.”

Failure to break the deadlock could tip India into a fi scal crisis: the GST would need to come into eff ect by mid-September, when the old system of indirect taxa-tion is due to lapse.

The lingering uncertainty is worrying companies needing to understand fi nancial implica-tions of the new tax.

“With so many vital details still missing, they are feeling left in the lurch,” said Saloni Roy, a senior director at Deloitte.

Modi’s shock move last month to scrap Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes was aimed at India’s shad-ow economy.

But the ensuing cash crunch has caused job losses, disrupted supply chains and slowed con-struction activity.

With cash shortages show-ing no signs of abating, some economists are calling for emer-gency stimulus to cushion the economy against the impact of demonetisation.

Ambit Capital, a Mumbai bro-kerage, forecasts growth this fi s-cal year will be only half of the roughly 7% level many expect.

The Reserve Bank of India has shaved its growth outlook by half a percentage point to 7.1%.

To make up for their losses, states are seeking compensa-tion. He has already agreed to cover states’ revenue losses for fi ve years after the GST’s launch, but further concessions would narrow his room for manoeuvre in his annual budget presented in February.

One top fi nance ministry of-fi cial dismissed demands for compensation for demonetisa-tion as unreasonable.

But states are adamant.“They have brought it upon

us,” V Narayanasamy, chief min-ister of Puducherry, said.

“Now they must pay for our loss.”

People queue up outside the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) off ice to exchange old notes in Kolkata yesterday.

Keeping banned notes after March 31 off enceCabinet approves ordinance, but mum on jail for violators

IANSNew Delhi

The cabinet yesterday ap-proved an ordinance which makes posses-

sion of demonetised Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes beyond March 31, 2017 illegal, providing for a jail term for violators.

People can deposit old notes in banks until tomorrow and with the Reserve Bank of India up to March 31 next year. Offi -cial sources said “The Specifi ed Bank Notes Cessation of Li-abilities Ordinance” will be sent to President Pranab Mukherjee, currently in Hyderabad, for ap-proval before notifi cation.

The ordinance, approved during a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister

Narendra Modi, seeks to amend the Reserve Bank of India Act, aimed at extinguishing the li-ability of the government to-wards bearers of such notes.

Sources declined comment on whether the ordinance also sought a jail term for violators.

“The ordinance primarily seeks to shield the government against future litigations that may follow for not honouring the promise to pay,” a senior of-fi cial said.

Reacting to the develop-ments, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury said the government has chosen this back door or-dinance method to bring in the law. “We are against this ‘ordi-nance raj’,” he said.

People also took to social media to react. “After the ordi-nance - RBI’s promise: I prom-ise to pay the bearer... (will be-come) Government’s promise:

I promise to arrest the bearer,” said Ashutosh in a tweet.

Vikram Mohan asked friends to arrange for his bail before March 31 since he intended to hold a couple of demonetised notes as souvenirs.

However, the ordinance makes it clear that collection of old notes up to ten in number will not invite prosecution.

Meanwhile, Modi continued to be in the fi ring line of the op-position yesterday 50 days after he announced the scrapping of the high denomination notes.

While the Congress de-manded a White Paper on the November 8 note ban, the CPM said Modi had a lot to hide.

Daring Modi to disclose the amount of black money seized after demonetisation, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi put forth a charter of demands and sought a White Paper on the currency ban. “Modi-ji should

reveal how much black money has been recovered since No-vember 8,” he said.

Gandhi questioned Modi on the economic loss to the nation and put forth a list of posers.

“How many jobs and livelihood have been lost since this policy was announced? How many lives have been lost due to demoneti-sation? Why has the government

not paid any compensation to the families of the deceased?”

On Tuesday, Gandhi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee too the prime minister to task on the issue.

Banerjee wondered if Modi would quit if the cash crunch persisted even after the end of the 50-day deadline he himself had set.

Workers make kites with images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a workshop for the upcoming kite flying festival, locally known as Uttarayan, in Ahmedabad, yesterday.

Modi set to ‘fly’ high

Rise in baby traffi cking cuts adoption numbers, fuels tradeReutersMumbai

An increase in baby traf-fi cking in India is reduc-ing the number of chil-

dren available for adoption and fuelling the lucrative trade as more couples wait to adopt, gov-ernment offi cials said yesterday.

Government fi gures show currently 1,700 children are available for adoption in India, the world’s second most popu-

lous country with 1.25bn people, while some 12,400 families want to adopt. About 3,010 babies were adopted in 2015/16.

Government offi cials oversee-ing adoptions said an increasing-ly long wait to adopt was closely linked to a rise in human traffi ck-ing in the country, with two baby selling rackets busted in India over the past two months..

“There are more such rackets (of baby traffi cking),” said Deep-ak Kumar, chief of the Central Adoption Resource Author-

ity (CARA), India’s main body to monitor and regulate adoptions.

“In India, we expect the pool of children available for adop-tion should outnumber the number of waitlisted parents, but there are touts and in some cases even agencies that sell children to childless couples.”

Under Indian laws children who have been surrendered by their birth parents or brought in by the police are declared legally free for adoption after various legal processes are completed.

This includes giving birth par-ents up to 60 days to reconsider their decision.

To ensure transparency, the adoption process in India went online last year with waitlisted families and the children avail-able for adoption featured on a website.

But Kumar said traffi ckers often tried to get hold of these babies before the parents - often unwed mothers - made it to the government department to sur-render the child.

Last week, police in Mumbai arrested a gang that was con-vincing single mothers - who can face social stigma or ostra-cisation in India - to part with their babies then selling them to childless couples in various states across the country.

In West Bengal, police found babies were being stolen from women who delivered at clinics, with medial staff telling them their child was stillborn.

Some were even given the bod-ies of stillborn babies preserved

by the clinics to dupe them.Offi cials said monitoring the

waiting list for adoptions was one way to try to identify and track down the traffi ckers but they were aware that “bypass mechanisms” were taking root.

One adoption agency owner, who did not wish to be identi-fi ed, said he often received calls from waitlisted families saying they had been off ered a child from an unwed mother at a price and wonder if they should go ahead.

Two agencies in Maharash-tra were recently shut down for selling babies for amounts rang-ing between Rs200,000 and Rs600,000 ($3,000-$9,000), Kumar said.

Adoption experts suggested that problem areas of the coun-try should be identifi ed.

“It would help check the ma-laise if low adoption fi gures in certain states of India are ana-lysed,” said Sunil Arora, presi-dent of the Federation of Adop-tive Agencies.

Bank manager arrested over currency racket

The Enforcement Directorate yesterday arrested a manager of the Kotak Mahindra Bank for his alleged links with hawala trader Parasmal Lodha and Delhi-based lawyer Rohit Tandon. Sources said Ashish Kumar was arrested for allegedly converting over Rs250mn in demonetised notes linked to industrialist J Sekhar Reddy

and lawyer Tandon. On December 23, the Income Tax Department also carried out raids at the bank branch in New Delhi. Lodha, a leading businessman with interests in real estate and mining, was arrested at the Mumbai airport while he was trying to flee to Malaysia. Kotak Mahindra Bank said it had suspended Kumar.

Haryana varsities to have common entrance test

India needs digital payment laws: CMAI

BJP spreading rumours tomalign our image: AAP

SpiceJet yesterday dubbed as “completely false and incorrect” media reports that its aircraft had entered the wrong bay at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi international airport a day earlier. On Tuesday morning, two aircraft of IndiGo and SpiceJet came face to face on the taxiway, which could have led to an accident. “Sections of the media report that the SpiceJet flight SG 123 operating on the Delhi-Hyderabad route entered the wrong bay yesterday... the flight concerned never at any point in time enter the wrong bay, but was following Air Traffic Control (ATC) instructions at all times,” a SpiceJet spokesperson said in a statement. Meanwhile, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has suspended a controller following the incident.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama offered a special prayer at Budha Smriti park in Patna after participating in a tree plantation drive yesterday, officials said. “The Dalai Lama visited the park along with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and offered a special prayer after participating in a function to plant saplings of Bodhi tree,” a district official said. It was the Dalai Lama who inaugurated the 22-acre in the heart of Patna in 2010. Earlier, Nitish Kumar received the spiritual guru at Patna airport and thanked him for visiting the state capital. The DalaiLama later left for Bodh Gaya in a state government airplane to participate in 34th Kalchakra puja, beginning today.

SpiceJet aircraft didn’t enter wrong bay: off icial

Dalai Lama off ersprayers in Patna

AVIATIONRELIGION

All universities in Haryana under the Department of Higher Education will have a Common Admission Entrance Examination from the 2017-18 academic session, a state government off icial said yesterday. The universities included in this are Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra; Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak; Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa; Bhagat Phool Singh Mahila Vishwavidyalaya, Khanpur Kalan; Chaudhary Ranbir Singh University, Jind and Chaudhary Bansi Lal University, Bhiwani. “The admission would be done purely on the basis of marks obtained in the entrance examination. A high-level co-ordination committee has also been set up to monitor the admission process,” the off icial said.

EDUCATION APPEAL POLITICS

Responding to allegations of irregularities in its funds, the Aam Aadmi Party yesterday said canards are being spread by the Bharatiya Janata Party to tarnish the party’s image ahead of Punjab and Goa elections. The AAP claimed that most of its funds come through banking channels and it is the only truly cashless party in the country. “False allegations are being made about donations received by our party. Similar tactics have been used by the BJP for the last three years,” AAP leader Dilip Pandey said in New Delhi. “Our 92% of funds come through banking channels. The rest 8% we receive in cash is also deposited in the banks. The BJP is spreading rumours to misguide people.”

As digital payments go up after demonetisation, the country needs separate digital payment laws and digital payment courts should be established across India along with an appropriate legal framework, the CMAI Association of India (CMAI) said yesterday. “All cases of money lost in digital payments may not fall in the category of cyber thefts or breaches. With proliferation of digital payments across India in big and small towns, there may be widespread cases of small amounts here and there throughout the country. There is also need for legal framework for data storage and data protection,” N K Goyal, president of CMAI said in New Delhi.


INDIA18

Latest crash raises concern over rail safety

AgenciesLucknow

A train derailed in India yesterday injuring 61 people, police and rail

officials said, the third signifi-cant accident in recent months that have raised concern about the safety of the ageing rail network.

The train came off the tracks and crashed near the northern city of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh early in the morning.

“Our latest assessment is that 61 people got injured in the accident,” said Anil Kumar Saxena, spokesman for Indian Railways.

The train had just pulled out of the station and its speed was “rather slow”, he said.

Television footage from the scene showed mangled, toppled carriages.

Two coaches had fallen off a bridge into a small canal while some passengers were seen

picking up their luggage from near the tracks.

Local government offi cials at the accident site said some coaches had crashed into each other and turned sideways after coming off the tracks.

“We can confi rm two deaths and injuries to at least 61 per-sons, who are admitted at dif-ferent hospitals around Kan-pur,” Zaki Ahmad, inspector general of Kanpur police said.

“The incident happened around 5.30am. There were pas-sengers, other than the 61, who’d received minor injuries and left after receiving fi rst aid,” he added.

Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu said senior department offi cials had already rushed to the accident spot.

“Immediate medical help be-ing provided to the injured. Mo-bilized resources, directed all concerned to ensure rescue and relief,” Prabhu said on Twitter.

“Thorough investigation will be carried out to ascertain the cause,” he added.

The train was travelling to Ajmer in Rajasthan from Seal-dah in Kolkata.

Following the accident, routes of at least 32 trains had to be diverted, North Central Rail-way offi cial Amit Malviya said.

The railways has also ar-ranged 12 buses to bring passen-gers to Kanpur and fi ve buses to take passengers to Agra.

The reason for the derailment is yet to be ascertained.

The railways minister and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav have separately announced compensation of Rs50,000 each to the seri-ously injured passengers and Rs25,000 to those with minor injuries.

The chief minister has also directed offi cials to ensure prompt and proper treatment to the injured and warned there should be no carelessness in the treatment and relief to the acci-dent victims.

Yadav also instructed district offi cials to extend all help to and co-operate with the railways authorities in carrying out res-cue and relief operations.

India’s creaking railway sys-tem is the world’s fourth largest. It runs 11,000 trains a day, in-

cluding 7,000 passenger trains carrying more than 20mn peo-ple.

But it has a poor safety record, with thousands of people dying every year in derailments, colli-sions and other accidents.

This was the third accident signifi cant in recent months.

On November 20, at least 146 people were killed when a train derailed near the same city.

A train rammed into a van taking children to school at a level crossing in north India in July, killing eight of them.

Prabhu has promised to re-place old tracks and upgrade safety systems.

The government spends more than 90% of the railways’ revenues on operational costs, leaving little for upgrades of the colonial-era system.

Some analysts estimate the railways need Rs20tn ($293.21bn) of investment by 2020, and India is turning to partnerships with private com-panies and seeking loans from other countries to upgrade the network.

Expelled MP’s husband hurt inclashes outside AIADMK offi ceAgenciesChennai

Several people were in-jured in a clash between All India Anna Dravida

Munnetra Kazhagam workers and supporters of Rajya Sabha member Sasikala Pushpa out-side the ruling party’s office in Chennai.

One of the injured was Push-pa’s husband Lingeswara Thila-gan.

Pushpa was expelled from the AIADMK sometime back but she did not resign from the upper house of parliament.

The general council meeting of AIADMK is to be held near here today and Pushpa had an-nounced that she would contest for the party’s top post of general secretary which fell vacant fol-

lowing the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa.

Several party offi cials had pleaded with Jayalalithaa’s close aide V K Sasikala to take over as the party’s general secretary which was opposed by Pushpa.

Police were deployed outside the AIADMK offi ce in the morn-ing, anticipating the arrival of Pushpa to fi le the nomination form to contest the top party post.

Hell broke out when Pushpa’s husband and others entered the offi ce to submit the nomination papers. The staff refused to ac-cept the papers saying the senior staff were not present.

“Sasikala Pushpa, her hus-band and a general council member, K S Mani, from Mum-bai wanted to fi le the nomination papers,” according to sources.

Soon the crowd pounced on

Pushpa’s husband and support-ers and assaulted them.

The sources Pushpa was sit-ting in a car outside the offi ce when the clashes erupted.

Reacting to the violence, Mu-nicipal Administration Minister S P Velumani told a Tamil televi-sion channel that Pushpa had no right to stake a claim to the AI-ADMK leadership.

“Who is she? She has no links with the party. She was expelled by Amma (former chief minister Jayalalithaa). There is no doubt that Chinnamma (V K Sasikala) will take over as party general secretary. This is a unanimous demand of partymen and the de-sire of 1.5crore partymen.”

AIADMK spokesman Avadi Kumar said: “The violence was instigated to deliberately create a ruckus on the eve of the party general council meeting.”

Tyagi like family member, but no sympathy ifguilty: IAF chief

40kg goldlooted fromMuthootFinance inHyderabad

High command warns Kerala Congress leaders

IANSNew Delhi

Indian Air Force Chief, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha yesterday said his scam-

tainted predecessor S P Tyagi was like a “family member” but if corruption charges in the AgustaWestland helicopter deal were proven against him the IAF would have no sympa-thy for its former chief.

Addressing a press confer-ence days before he retires as the IAF chief and chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, Raha said the law of the land must be followed in the scam that has rattled the force with Tyagi’s arrest on December 9 for allegedly accepting bribes in clearing the procurement of 12 AW-101 VVIP helicop-ters from Britain-based Agus-taWestland.

Tyagi, the fi rst chief of any wing of the armed forces to be arrested in the country, was given bail by a New Delhi court on Monday.

“Such issues have come up from time to time. Be it Bofors or be it some other acquisi-tions, there have been prob-lems,” Raha said.

He, however, admitted that if the corruption charges were proved it would be “bad for the armed forces, or whoever is in-volved.

“It is not only the armed forces that are involved in pro-curement. There are so many agencies involved. Can’t pin the blame on one particular organisation or service. To my mind many of the issues that have sprung up in recent times have their origin some time back, a decade back. These are being investigated. It is premature for me to say any-thing,” he said.

Raha said he didn’t know about the evidence the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI), which is probing the case, has against Tyagi.

“The Air Force believes the law of the land has to be fol-lowed... Let the investigation be complete. Whatever the decision of the court, we will abide by that.”

He said Tyagi, as long as is

not convicted, should be given his due credit being a former IAF chief.

“A former air chief is like an extended family. If anyone in my family goes through a rough patch I think we should stand by them... If charges are proved, then of course we have no sympathy.”

The CBI has alleged that Ty-agi and other accused received bribes from AgustaWestland for helping the manufacturer win the $556.262mn contract to purchase the helicopters for the Communication Squadron of the Indian Air Force to carry the president prime minister and other VVIPs.

The accused had allegedly hatched a conspiracy to re-duce the service ceiling of the helicopters from 6,000m to 4,500m to make AgustaWest-land eligible for the contract.

The CBI claimed that Ty-agi and his brothers received €126,000 after May 2004 and €200,000 after February 2005 in the form of consultancy fee from Gordian Services.

It added that Tyagi also re-ceived cash from Guido Ralph Haschke and Carlo Valentino Ferdinando Gerosa, who were linked with Gordian Services.

Tyagi, the Indian Air Force chief from 2004 to 2007, has denied the charges saying the deal was executed after his tenure.

Meanwhile, Raha said 200 to 250 more fi ghter aircraft were required to be inducted in the next 10 years to meet the air force’s operational requirement.

India has suffi cient number of aircraft in the heavy cat-egory in Sukhoi-30s, whereas gaps in the medium and light-weight categories needed to be fi lled, he said.

The IAF chief said that 36 Rafale jets being bought by India from France were not enough.

“We are still inducting Sukhoi-30s; it will last us for another 40 years. The Light Combat Aircraft (Tejas) will fi ll some void in the lightweight category... Rafale is an excel-lent aircraft. But we have just 36 aircraft; we require more aircraft in the medium-weight category,” Raha said.

IANSHyderabad

Five men, posing as Central Bureau of Investigation offi cials, allegedly looted

40kg gold from a Muthoot Fi-nance offi cer in Hyderabad yes-terday, police said.

The suspects escaped with gold ornaments valued at about Rs100mn after fi rst convincing the staff they were CBI offi c-ers and then threatening them with weapons at the Ramachan-drapuram offi ce of the company on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

Police Commissioner Sand-eep Shandilya said the suspects also looted Rs100,000 in cash.

Earlier the police had said 46 kg gold was looted.

According to the police, the fi ve men came to the Muthoot Finance branch in the morning and told the staff that they were CBI offi c-ers and wanted to check records and gold in the lockers as they were investigating a case of theft.

When the branch manager said he was not in a position to show the lockers without per-mission from top offi cials, the unidentifi ed men threatened ac-tion against him for disobeying the orders of CBI offi cials.

When the lockers were opened, the intruders started collecting the gold ornaments in their bags. As the employees raised objec-tion, one of the men whipped out a gun, threatened the branch manager and other employees and locked them in a bathroom.

The robbers also took away the hard disk of CCTV cameras with them. Police have launched a massive hunt for the robbers, who escaped in an SUV.

The police commissioner said 16 teams have been formed to track down the culprits. The po-lice were trying to identify the suspects by analysing the foot-age from CCTV cameras around Muthoot Finance branch.

Meanwhile, dozens of account holders who had kept their gold in Muthoot Finance branch gathered outside and wanted to know from the offi cials when would they get back their gold.

The offi cials told the people that their gold was complete-ly insured. They said nobody should be worried as Muthoot Finance has 160 tonnes of gold at 4,500 branches spread across the country.

IANSThiruvananthapuram

Taking a serious note of the infi ghting in the Congress’ Kerala unit,

the party high command yes-terday asked its members not to speak in public about party issues.

“It has been directed to all in Kerala that henceforth none should speak in public about party issues. They can do it in party forums only and anyone violating this would have to face strong action,” Congress general secretary Mukul Was-nik told reporters in Delhi.

Wasnik’s directives came soon after a tiff broke out at the Kollam district Congress committee offi ce when senior leader Rajmohan Unnithan was roughed up by angry Congress workers suspected to be close

to K Muraleedharan, party leg-islator and son of former chief minister K Karunakaran.

“I was attacked by anti-so-cial elements. I was informed by many journalists that I should not attend the meeting as the atmosphere is charged and I would be taken to task. But I decided to come and take part in the meeting and was roughed up by ‘paid’ people,” said Unnithan.

“I am deeply pained at what has happened in my party in Kerala and I wish that it is re-solved at the earliest,” veteran Congress leader A K Antony told reporters in Delhi.

Ever since the defeat in the May assembly polls, the party has been divided with former chief minister Oommen Chan-dy, state party president V M Sudheeran and leader of op-position Ramesh Chennithala heading their own factions.

Rescuers and railway off icials stand next to damaged coaches of a passenger train after it derailed near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh yesterday.

Police escort Rajya Sabha member Sasikala Pushpa’s husband Lingeswara Thilagan after he was prevented from entering the off ice of the All India Anna Dravida Munnertra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in Chennai yesterday.

61 injured in UP train derailment

PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN19Gulf Times


Pakistan switches onfourth nuclear plantPakistan’s fourth nuclear

power plant went online yesterday, a joint collabo-

ration with China that adds 340 megawatts to the national grid as part of the government’s eff orts to end a growth-sapping energy defi cit.

Pakistan is one of the few de-veloping countries pursuing atomic energy in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, as it seeks to close an electricity shortfall that can stretch up to 7,000 MW in peak summer months, or around 32 % of total demand.

The Chashma-III reactor, lo-cated some 250km southwest of capital Islamabad, is the third built as part of a collaboration between the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and China National Nuclear Corpo-ration (CNNC).

The country’s fi rst nuclear plant was supplied by Canada in 1972, with an installed capacity of 137MW.

“Today we have crossed an important milestone in the journey to free the nation from scheduled power cuts.

I am thankful to Allah and congratulate the entire nation,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told an inaugural ceremony at-tended by Chinese and Pakistani offi cials.

He added a fourth Chashma plant was expected to be com-missioned by April 2017.

Two more reactors would fol-low at an unspecifi ed date in central Pakistan, as well as two giant 2,200 MW power stations in southern Karachi.

Islamabad is aiming to pro-duce 8,800 MW from atomic energy by 2030.

Pakistan has been struggling to provide enough power to its nearly 200mn citizens for years, and Sharif has vowed to solve the crisis by 2018.

The energy sector has tradi-tionally struggled to cover the cost of producing electricity, leading the government to divert $2bn annually as a subsidy, ac-

cording to a recent report com-missioned by the British govern-ment.

China meanwhile is ramp-ing up investment in its South Asian neighbour as part of a $46bn project unveiled last year that will link its far-west-ern Xinjiang region to Paki-stan’s Gwadar port with a se-ries of infrastructure, power and transport upgrades.

Last week Pakistan’s main bourse announced that a Chi-nese consortium was set to ac-quire a 40 % stake in the stock exchange in a deal estimated at $84mn.

Shanghai Electric announced in August it would buy a ma-jority stake in the utility that supplies energy to Karachi for $1.7bn, in the country’s biggest ever private-sector acquisi-tion.

AFPIslamabad

Slim chances for Pakistani expatriates to vote

Even three years after the Supreme Court directed the election authorities to

ensure voting rights for millions of Pakistanis living abroad, no viable mechanism has been de-veloped to introduce the facility for expatriates by the 2018 elec-tions.

The Parliamentary Commit-tee on Electoral Reforms tabled its interim report in the parlia-ment this week.

The panel kept the issue of voting rights for overseas Paki-stanis open for discussion.

The Supreme Court’s bench,

headed by then Chief Justice If-tikhar Mohamed Chaudhry, had issued a decree to this eff ect on May 9, 2013.

The ruling was passed just days before the general elections held on May 13 of the same year, because of which the judgment could not be implemented.

On its part, the Election Com-mission of Pakistan (ECP) initi-ated work on various options but failed to arrive at a workable solution.

The ECP sent some proposals to the parliamentary committee on electoral reforms, which was formed in August, 2014.

This parliamentary panel was tasked to formulate a comprehensive package on

election reforms.The panel, which received

more than 1,200 proposals from various stakeholders, proposed some options for allowing the expatriates to take part in the general elections.

Subsequently, the main com-mittee formed a sub-committee headed by Law Minister Zahid Hamid to vet the proposals.

This sub-committee later cre-ated yet another smaller panel that was headed by PTI legisla-tor Dr Arif Alvi.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who heads the main parliamentary committee, said that the discussion for devising a voting mechanism for expatriates would con-

tinue, but he was unsure if any tangible method could be worked out.

A proposal suggested setting up polling stations in Pakistani embassies and consulates.

This option is workable in a few countries where a limited number of Pakistanis are resid-ing.

It emerged that Pakistani con-sulates cannot set up those fa-

cilities in countries where large number of Pakistanis live.

The distance between cities and towns where these Pakista-nis live and where consulates are located was also an important issue.

It is necessary that the Elec-tion Day in Pakistan falls on a public holiday in that country.

In some Middle Eastern coun-tries, where a majority of over-seas Pakistanis work, democ-racy, elections and voting are largely alien concepts.

The ECP had asked the For-eign Offi ce to check with gov-ernments of these countries if they would allow setting up polling stations for the Pakistani community.

The Foreign Offi ce kept mum, indirectly indicating that this would not be possible.

Use of postal ballots was also considered as an option in coun-tries such as the United States.

Given the size of the Pakistani community abroad, this option was also considered unworkable.

To use postal ballots, a voter should fi rst apply for a ballot pa-per, once he/she receives it, they tick the candidate of their choice and post it back.

In Pakistan’s context, the authorities were unsure if this method could escape misuse.

Electronic voting, using In-ternet, was another option dis-cussed.

But it was rejected for a

number of reasons.Many Pakistanis living abroad

are not computer literate.Chances of misuse of technol-

ogy could not be ruled out.Another option initially con-

sidered by the ECP was allocat-ing a few reserved seats for over-seas Pakistan in the parliament on the pattern of seats in the Azad Kashmir legislative assem-bly where member of assembly elect a representative outside the country.

But this option too would not enable overseas Pakistanis to vote in a direct manner.

Similarly, the use of electronic voting machines for voting is unlikely to materialise in the next elections.

InternewsIslamabad

The ECP had asked the Foreign Offi ce to check with governments of these countries if they would allow setting up polling stations for the Pakistani community

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif inaugurates along with off icials of The Chashma-III reactor in Chashma, some 250km southwest of capital Islamabad.

Prime Minister Sharif speaks during the inaugural ceremony of The Chashma-III reactor.

Toxic liquor: three suspects arrested

Pakistani police yester-day caught three men accused of preparing

home-made liquor mixed with aftershave that killed 39 people including a fourth sus-pect after they consumed the toxic brew on Christmas Eve.

More than a hundred peo-ple were also sickened in the incident, one of the country’s deadliest cases of mass al-cohol poisoning, which hap-pened in a Christian neigh-bourhood in the town of Toba Tek Singh some 340km south of Islamabad.

“Four people have been identifi ed who prepared and distributed the toxic liquor,” senior police offi cial Atif Im-ran, who is investigating the case, told AFP, adding the group had also consumed the alcohol themselves.

“One of them died because of the liquor, two others are in critical condition while the

fourth is in police custody,” he added.

The suspect in police custo-dy had confessed to preparing the brew by mixing it with 20 litres of aftershave and other chemicals.

The development was con-fi rmed by another senior po-lice offi cial Usman Akram Gondal.

Though legal breweries ex-ist in Pakistan, alcohol sales and consumption are banned for Muslims and tightly regu-lated for minorities and for-eigners.

While wealthy Pakistanis buy foreign alcohol on the black market at heavily in-fl ated prices, the poor often resort to home brews that can contain methanol, commonly used in anti-freeze and fuel.

Eleven Christians died in October after consuming tox-ic liquor at a party in Punjab province.

In October 2014, 29 drinkers were killed after consuming methanol-tainted liquor over the Eid public holidays.

AFPIslamabad

Chinese presidentgreets PM Sharif

US adds LeT student wing

to list of ‘foreign terrorists’

While extending his heartfelt fe-licitation on the

birthday to Prime Minis-ter Nawaz Sharif, Chinese President Xi Jinping has assured Pakistan that he wants to transform the pro-found political friendship between Pakistan and China into tangible development dividend, so as to bring real benefits to the peoples of the two countries.

President Xi has pledged that he is willing to work with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to push forward the continu-ous progress of the all-round pragmatic cooperation fo-

cusing on the construction of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). According to the Prime Minister House, Chinese president has ex-tended his sincere greet-ings and good wishes on the birthday of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

In his letter, the president has said China attaches great importance to the develop-ment of China- Pakistan co-operative partnership.

The diplomatic observers are attaching significance to the communication by the Chinese leader since it has come in the wake of criti-cism about the CPEC in the country by the detractors of the government and external opposition of the gigantic projects.

The United States yes-terday announced it was adding the student

wing of the Pakistan-based organisation, Lashkar-e-Taiba, to its list of “foreign terrorist organisations.”

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Army of the Pure, has been accused of orchestrating nu-merous attacks, including a 2008 assault in Mumbai that killed 166 people, six of them Americans.

The State Department move against the student group, Al-Muhammadia Students, came as the Treasury Department added

two Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders to the US list of “specially designat-ed global terrorists,” subjecting them to US sanctions.

LeT was banned by the Pa-kistani government in 2002 but it has continued operating through front organisations, according to US offi cials, and their leaders conduct public rallies and interviews.

The State Department an-nounced that it amended the designation of LeT as a “foreign terrorist organisation” to in-clude what it called the group’s student wing. “Since the origi-nal designation occurred, LeT has repeatedly changed its name and created front organisations in an eff ort to avoid sanctions,” the State Department said.

InternewsIslamabad

ReutersWashington

Blast in Kabul hits Afghan MP’s vehicle, three wounded

An Afghan MP was among at least three people wounded when a road-

side bomb struck his vehicle in Kabul yesterday, offi cials said, in the latest in a series of attacks on lawmakers.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the blast tar-geting Fakuri Behishti, an MP from central Bamiyan province, who was on his way to parlia-ment.

“The bomb was placed un-der a bridge and it detonated when the MP’s vehicle was pass-ing through,” interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish told AFP.

“Three people including the MP were wounded.”

But parliament speaker Abdul Raouf Ibrahimi told lawmakers that a relative of the MP had also been killed.

“I heard a big explosion that shook nearby shops. I saw rescu-ers pulling out several wounded people from the destroyed vehi-cle,” said Abdul Manan, a a bak-ery shop owner near the scene of the attack.

The attack comes as Taliban insurgents are pressing ahead with a nationwide off ensive.

Last Wednesday at least eight people were killed when Taliban suicide bombers stormed the residence of an Afghan lawmak-er in Kabul, an attack that lasted nearly 10 hours.

Helmand MP Mir Wali sur-vived the assault with injuries, but two of his grandsons and bodyguards were among those killed.

AFPKabul

Afghan security forces inspect the site of a blast in Kabul, Afghanistan yesterday.

20 Gulf TimesThursday, December 29, 2016

PHILIPPINES

Typhoon causes P4bndamage to farm sectorBy Manila TimesManila

Damage caused by Typhoon “Nina” to the farm sector has reached over P4bn,

aff ecting 65,247 hectares in two regions, the department of agri-culture (DA) reported yesterday.

In a report, Christopher Mo-rales, head of the DA’s fi eld pro-grammes operational planning division, estimated production losses at 268,355 metric tonnes (MT) of rice, corn and high-val-ue crops. A total of 66,963 farm-ers were aff ected in Calabarzon and Bicol regions.

The report said 168,581mt of palay were lost, amounting to P2.36bn, while corn post-ed 24,071mt of losses worth P312.91mn. Damage to high-val-ue crops amounted to P1.25mn.

Morales said drones were de-ployed to take photos of agri-cultural areas damaged by Nina. “This is to picture the magnitude of damage using unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, and to validate damage and losses,” he said.

The national irrigation ad-ministration reported that ir-

rigation covering 3,540 hectares of land and 3,818 farmers in Calabarzon, Mimaropa and Bicol were aff ected.

Also, P83.5mn worth of dam-age to infrastructure (road and river control facilities) were re-ported in Marinduque and Ori-ental Mindoro.

In its update yesterday, the National Disaster Risk Reduc-tion and Management Council (NDRRMC) said 132,908 families or 602,770 persons were aff ected by the severe weather conditions brought by Nina during its on-slaught on December 25 and 26.

These individuals came from 785 villages in Calabarzon, Mi-maropa, Bicol and Eastern Visa-yas, NDRRMC executive director Ricardo Jalad said.

Nine road sections and three bridges were still impassable due to debris and fl ooding in Cagay-an Valley, Calabarzon, Mima-ropa, Bicol and Eastern Visayas.

Agriculture Secretary Em-manuel Pinol announced that President Rodrigo Duterte had approved the allocation of an ini-tial P500mn for the rehabilitation of the agriculture and fi sheries sectors in typhoon-hit areas.

Vice President Robredo’sapproval rating dropsBy Manila TimesManila

Vice President Maria Le-onor “Leni” Robredo saw a 12-point decline in her

net satisfaction rating in the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, along with other top government offi cials.

The SWS poll found that 58% of respondents were satisfi ed with Robredo’s performance. Twenty-one percent were dissatisfi ed and 20% were undecided.

This translated to a +37 net satisfaction rating in December, down from +49 in September.

The survey, conducted on De-cember 3 to 6 among 1,500 adult respondents nationwide, had a sampling error margin of three percentage points. Results were fi rst published in the newspaper BusinessWorld.

Robredo resigned from the Cabinet as chairwoman of the Housing and Urban Develop-ment Co-ordinating Council last December 4. Robredo left her post after Cabinet Secretary

Leoncio Evasco Jr., on the orders of President Rodrigo Duterte, barred Robredo from attending Cabinet meetings.

The vice president said she was determined to improve her performance following the rat-ings drop.

“Through the Angat Buhay, the Offi ce of the vice president’s poverty alleviation programme, we are determined to continue our mission to uplift the lives of the poor and the marginalised,” Robredo said in a statement.

“We thank the Filipino peo-ple for their continued trust and support. We assure you that we are listening to your voice so we can serve you better,” Robredo added.

Robredo drew fl ak from Duterte supporters this week for going on vacation in the US with her three daughters as Typhoon “Nina” hit her native Bicol region.

Her supporters, however, defended her by citing that re-lief operations led by Robredo’s Naga City offi ce were in place even before the typhoon struck on Christmas Day.

The vice president’s support-ers also pointed out that there was no outcry when Philippine National Police chief Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa went to Las Vegas to watch the boxing fi ght of senator Emmanuel “Man-ny” Pacquiao, and when Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos and brother Ferdinand “Bong-bong” Marcos went with Presi-dent Duterte to China when Typhoon “Lawin” struck Ilocos Norte.

The same SWS poll also saw the net satisfaction rating of senate president Aquilino Pi-mentel decline by seven points to +30 in December from +37 in September.

House Speaker Pantaleon Al-varez had +10 net satisfaction rating, down 13 points from Sep-tember’s +22. Chief justice Mar-ia Lourdes Sereno recorded a net rating of +16 in December, down from +26 in September.

The SWS earlier reported or a net satisfaction rating of +63 for President Duterte, with 77% of 1,500 respondents satisfi ed and 13% dissatisfi ed.

Duterte imposeshis formula onthe PhilippinesReutersDavao

Rodrigo Duterte has kept his word. “Forget the laws on human rights,” he de-

clared in May at his fi nal presi-dential campaign rally in Manila. “If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just as I did as mayor. You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out. Because, I’d kill you.”

More than seven months af-ter winning the presidency, Du-terte is rolling out on a national scale the model of government he honed over 22 years and seven terms as mayor of this city on the southern island of Mindanao.

Just as in Davao, blood is now fl owing in the capital Manila and surrounding areas as the police and vigilantes, inspired by the president, conduct a wave of killings.

A Davao-based human rights group, the Coalition Against Summary Execution (CASE), has compiled fi gures showing that death squads in the city were re-sponsible for at least 1,400 doc-umented killings between 1998 and 2015.

Scaled up, Duterte’s war on drugs is now well under way across the nation, and the body count is setting records.

Police have killed more than 2,000 people since he was in-augurated on June 30, and are investigating about 3,000 more deaths.

Human rights monitors be-lieve many of these were carried out by vigilantes with offi cial sanction, a charge the govern-ment denies.

In Davao, Duterte built a per-sonality cult around his crack-down on crime.

Part Mao, part Castro, part gun-toting Filipino warlord, the avowedly socialist mayor ruled his city as a lethal enemy of wrongdoers and a champion of the poor.

His salute was a clenched fi st — a symbol now emblazoned on souvenir mugs and other Duterte memorabilia.

But there is another ingre-

dient in Duterte’s appeal that makes him a more complex lead-er, and a potentially more potent one, than is appreciated abroad: The people of Davao say he gets things done.

Residents laud his handling of city services. Businesses praise his pro-growth policy.

A top offi cial at the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines applauds his team of economic advisers.

Samuel R Matunog, a Davao lawyer, businessman and human rights worker, strongly rejects Duterte’s support for violence and killing.

But he acknowledges there are elements of his administration worthy of support. “There are so many things that he does that I like,” he says. “Most important to him is the basic welfare of working people.”

With the national levers of power in his grasp, Duterte is trying to apply to the Philip-pines, a nation of 101mn peo-ple, the same recipe of fear and populism that he employed in his eff orts to tame Davao, a city of 1.6mn.

To advance the drug war, his political allies have introduced legislation to bring back the death penalty — and to lower the age at which people can be pros-ecuted for crimes to just nine.

Meanwhile, he is promising a raft of measures certain to please wage earners and the poor — in-cluding free tuition at state uni-versities and colleges, and free irrigation for rice farmers.

He also wants to replicate fea-tures of the Cuban health system. The task of managing the more than $300bn national economy dwarfs any challenge Duterte faced in Davao, to be sure.

While his war on drugs is well advanced, his promised econom-ic reforms have barely started.

“He wants to make the Philip-pines a bigger Davao City,” Jesus Dureza, one of Duterte’s closest advisers, said in an interview on the president’s plan to boost the economy by eliminating crime and drugs. “But the work is much tougher as corruption and crime are well-entrenched in Manila, at the national level.”

A number of houses were destroyed after a fire raged through a squatter colony, in Quezon city, Metro Manila, Philippines, yesterday.

Fire destroys homes

Speaker seeks probe into ‘Goldberg plot’By Manila TimesManila

House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez has called for a congressional investi-

gation into the “blueprint” al-legedly drawn up by former US ambassador Philip Goldberg to undermine and oust President Rodrigo Duterte, calling the supposed plot “anathema” to democracy and a “subversion” of the people’s will.

Alvarez said the Congress could invite members of the intelligence community and US Embassy staff to a probe in Jan-uary to dig deeper into the sup-posed plot, fi rst reported by The Manila Times on Tuesday.

“Of course we cannot force them (US embassy staff ) but we will extend the invitation,” the speaker said.

Alvarez, as well as Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr., said they were not surprised that the US would be involved in such a plot.

“I was not surprised. The US always meddles…if it has no hold over a country’s presi-dent,” Alvarez said in Filipino.

Yasay told radio station dzRH he had been hearing of “serious threats” against Duterte from overseas, and that he wouldn’t put such activity past Goldberg, who was expelled by Bolivia in 2008 for allegedly fomenting civil unrest against the govern-ment of Evo Morales.

“It is not new for ambassador Goldberg to be accused of such a plot,” Yasay said. “He should be a very important and infl uential person,” he said.

Yasay said The Manila Times report involved “a serious mat-ter that we have to dig deeper into.” “I would not take this threat lightly,” Yasay said.

Goldberg, according to The Manila Times, said “political ac-tors (the opposition) would need all the political weapons in their arsenal to replace the Duterte administration with something more to the opposition’s liking.”

Goldberg allegedly urged the US government to employ a combination of “socio-eco-nomic-political-diplomatic moves against Duterte to bring

him to his knees and eventually remove him from offi ce.”

Duterte and Goldberg had a rift before the latter ended his stint in Manila in October. Du-terte badmouthed Goldberg for the envoy’s criticism of his joke during the election campaign about the 1989 rape of an Aus-tralian missionary.

In a statement on Tuesday, Alvarez said of the ouster plot: “If true, this has serious conse-quences not only on our coun-try’s political stability but also on the economic and social fab-ric of our nation. It would also have grave repercussions on our relationship with the US.

“In view of this serious al-legation I am calling for a con-gressional investigation to fi nd

out if there is basis to this re-ported ouster plot against Pres-ident Rodrigo Duterte.”

The plan, if carried out, would constitute a violation of Philippine sovereignty and would be tantamount to sub-version of the Filipino voters’ will, Alvarez said.

Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Rodel Batocabe, a Duterte ally, said there might be diffi culty in inviting witnesses. “Such probe might face a blank wall since we cannot invite US embassy offi -cials and/or operatives as wit-nesses just like Jaybee Sebas-tian, or in the event that they snubbed us, we cannot arrest them just like what Congress did to (Ronnie) Dayan,” Bato-cabe told The Manila Times.

Maria Leonor: satisfaction rating falls

A homemade bomb exploded during celebrations in a town in the Philippines yesterday, wounding at least 23 people, a military spokeswoman said. The explosion occurred while the people were watching a boxing match at a plaza in the town of Hilongos in the province of Leyte, 620 kilometres south-east of Manila, according to First Lieutenant Cherry Junia, the army spokeswoman. The bombing comes days after 12 people were injured by a grenade explosion outside a Catholic church in the southern Philippines during a Christmas Eve service. One police off icer was wounded during the explosion.

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian yesterday said the popularity of transport network vehicle services (TNVS) was enough reason for the government to fully legitimise and regulate their operations. The lawmaker made the statement after popular ride-hailing apps Uber and Grab came under fire for excessive “surge pricing” during the holidays. This prompted the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) to cap the surge fares of Uber and Grab to twice the fare. The senator has filed Senate Bill 1001 or the Transport Network Service Act that seeks to legitimise the operation of Uber, Grab and other app-based transport services under the regulatory powers of the LTFRB.

Japanese gambling tycoon Kazuo Okada, who is opening a new $2.4bn casino resort in Manila, yesterday said he hoped to make the Philippines “the next Hawaii” as he looks to expand his business there. In addition to Manila, Okada said he was also exploring the possibility of operating resorts on the Philippine islands of Palawan and Boracay, both major tourist attractions, in a bid to tap the lucrative Chinese market. “I would like to make the Philippines the next Hawaii, given that there are a lot of great beaches here,” he told ABS-CBN television in an interview aired late yesterday.

Two private properties in Quezon City and a government property in Makati City will be opened to motorists as alternate routes to further ease traff ic congestion Metro Manila. Thomas Orbos general manager, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, said Ayala Land has agreed to open Vertis North in Quezon City for light vehicles passing through the northbound leg of EDSA going to North Avenue and Balintawak. He said the scheme can potentially decongest the portion of EDSA in Quezon City by allowing motorists to pass through Vertis North. Also, Orbos said an access road will be opened between the Quezon Avenue and North Avenue stations.

Health secretary Paulyn Jean Ubial yesterday said the number of Zika cases in the country has reached 52, with the latest case involving a pregnant woman from Quezon City. The woman from Quezon City is the fourth pregnant female to contract the Zika virus in the country. One from the four women infected with the Zika virus, a 16-year-old from Las Pinas, gave birth to a healthy baby this month. Ubial said the department of health (DOH) would continue to monitor the health of the pregnant women who had contracted the Zika virus. A DOH off icial said earlier manifestations of abnormalities in children born from Zika-infected mothers can be seen as late as two years of age.

23 injured in blast attown celebration

‘Legitimise and regulateUber, Grab,’ says senator

Tycoon keen to makePhilippines ‘next Hawaii’

More private roads to beopened to motorists

Number of Zikacases climbs to 52

CRIME PROPOSALPLANS TRAVEL OUTBREAK

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL21


Five held for ‘plotting attack’ in BangladeshPolice in Bangladesh have

arrested fi ve suspected Islamist militants be-

lieved to be plotting to attack New Year celebrations, a coun-ter-terrorism police chief said yesterday.

The fi ve were believed to be members of a faction of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bang-ladesh (JMB) group, which was blamed for an attack on a cafe in Dhaka in July in which 22 peo-ple were killed, most of them foreigners.

“They planned to attack on New Year’s Eve,” Monirul Is-lam, head of the counter-ter-rorism police unit, told a news conference.

Islam declined to elaborate when asked about the militants’ target and how they planned to attack but said police had also seized 60kg (132 lb) of explo-sives, when the fi ve were de-tained in overnight raids in the capital.

The fi ve were paraded before the media but did not speak to reporters.

Authorities have already banned all outdoor gatherings in Dhaka from dusk on Decem-ber 31 to dawn on January 1 on security grounds.

Militant attacks have in-creased in mostly Muslim Bang-ladesh, a country of 160mn people, over the past few years with several prominent liberal writers and members of religious minorities killed.

The JMB has pledged alle-

giance to Islamic State, which police believe was involved in organising the attack on the cafe in Dhaka’s diplomatic quarter on July 1.

Islamic State claimed re-sponsibility for what was the worst militant attack in Bangladesh.

Police have killed more than 40 suspected militants in raids since the cafe attack, includ-ing the man police said was the mastermind, Bangladesh-born Canadian citizen Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury.

According to police sources, several women militants are active in the country.

Most of them are members of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bang-ladesh (JMB), Hizb ut-Tahrir, and Nobbo (New) JMB. These militant outfi ts now have in

their ranks privileged, educated young men and women.

Although law enforcement agency members have so far failed to determine the number of women involved in militancy, recent operations in diff erent parts of the country have ex-posed the increasing number of women militants in Bangladesh.

During the operations con-ducted at Dakkhinkhan, Kaly-anpur, Narayanganj and Gazipur, law enforcement agencies found evidence of women suicide bombers being present in these organisations. At least 20 wom-en militants have so far been de-tained from diff erent parts of the country.

Abdul Baten, joint commis-sioner of Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told newsmen last week that

most of the women militants detained so far were relatives of male militant leaders.

According to sources, militant outfi ts use their female members as a distraction.

An intelligence offi cial ex-plained that this technique is known as the ‘couple module’. The militant groups pair up a female and a male member who identify themselves as husband and wife.

“It’s usual that male militants will try to attract female in or-der to implement their couple module technique… accord-ingly male militants infl uence their wives to get involved into militancy. We are trying to know why women, who are not paired, are increasingly getting involved with militancy,” said another intelligence offi cial.

AgenciesDhaka

Four injured as Myanmar navy opens fi ring on fi shermen

Four Bangladeshi fi sher-men were injured when Myanmar’s navy alleg-

edly opened fi re on them while they were fi shing along the countries’ troubled border in the Bay of Bengal, an offi cial said yesterday.

A group of 14 fi shermen, four of whom have been hos-pitalised with bullet wounds, told coastguard offi cials that a Myanmar navy ship had en-tered Bangladeshi waters and opened fi re on their trawler on Tuesday.

“They said the navy ship started fi ring on them with-out any warning,” coastguard offi cer Saiful Absar said over phone from southern Saint Martin’s Island, which is close to where the alleged incident happened.

“Four fi shermen were injured. They had bullet wounds all over their hands and feet,” he said, adding they had been taken to a hospital in the coastal district of Cox’s Bazar.

The coast guard is investi-gating whether the Myanmar Navy had intruded into Bang-ladesh’s territorial waters, he added.

The incident comes as ten-sions along Bangladesh’s southeastern border with Myanmar’s Rakhine state run high, after Myanmar’s military launched a massive crack-down on Rohingya Muslims in October.

Myanmar’s army says it is hunting militants behind deadly raids on police posts.

But Rohingya survivors have described rape, mur-

der and arson at the hands of soldiers - accounts that have raised global alarm and galvanised protests around Southeast Asia.

More than 34,000 Rohing-yas have since fl ed to Bangla-desh, which has deployed ex-tra border guards to prevent a large-scale infl ux of refugees.

Thousands of the fl eeing refugees have been sent back to Myanmar by Bangladeshi border guards.

More than 230,000 Ro-hingyas already live in Bang-ladesh, most of them illegally, although around 32,000 are formally registered as refugees.

But Dhaka is wary of ac-cepting more Rohingyas fear-ing it would encourage the Buddhist-majority country to push more of the stateless mi-nority into densely populated Bangladesh, amid growing lo-cal resentment over the new arrivals.

Amnesty International has said Myanmar’s military has committed atrocities against the minority group which are tantamount to “crimes against humanity”, while Human Rights Watch published satel-lite images showing hundreds of burned down houses in Rohingya villages.

AFPDhaka

The incident comes as tensions along Bangladesh’s southeastern border with Myanmar’s Rakhine state run high, aft er Myanmar’s military launched a massive crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in October

List of sacked workers sent for review

More than 1,600 garment workers have been sacked in Bangladesh

after labour unrest forced many factories to suspend production for more than a week in an in-dustrial district near the capital Dhaka, police said yesterday.

A list with the names of 1,611 sacked workers was sent to the labour ministry for review, dis-trict police chief Shah Mijan Shafi ur Rahman said over phone.

“Maybe not all of them are troublemakers. Those who are innocent will be reinstated to their jobs,” said Rahman, who is responsible for keeping order in the industrial district.

Workers returned to the fac-tories on Monday as owners reo-pened their units fi ve days after they decided to shutter 59 facto-ries fearing unrest as a group of workers demand a pay hike.

Several thousand employees went on strike in those facto-ries on December 13 to demand a minimum wage of 16,000 taka ($204) instead of the existing 5,300 taka per month for an

entry-level worker.Security agencies have

launched an investigation into the recent unrest as the factory owners accused more than 150 people of inciting violence, at-tacks on factories, looting and theft.

The monthly minimum wage for textile workers was raised in 2013 as Bangladesh faced severe criticism after the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building that killed more than 1,100 people.

Nearly 4,000 clothing fac-tories are in operation in Bang-ladesh, the second largest after China.

Annual trade is worth $28bn.

DPADhaka

Sri Lanka’s former president, Mahinda Rajapakse, centre, and Sri Lankan Parliament Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, right, assist in transporting the coff in of former prime minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake during his funeral at the national parliament in Colombo yesterday. Wickremanayake, who served twice as the Island nation’s prime minister, first from 2000 to 2001 and then from 2005 to 2010, died of an unspecified illness on December 27 at the age of 83.

Leaders at ex-PM’s funeral

Wild elephant kills woman, injures 2 men

A wild elephant killed a 31-year-old woman and injured two men

early yesterday in a vil-lage near a national park in south-western Nepal, local police said.

A herd of three elephants ventured into the village of Manau in Bardiya district and went on a rampage, said senior police offi cer Netra Mani Giri.

“One of them killed the 31-year-old woman and wounded a 14-year-old boy

and 56-year-old man,” he said.

The wild elephants also destroyed four houses before returning to the Berdiya Na-tional Park when police shot into the air, Giri added.

The injured people were taken to a hospital in Nepa-lgunj, the nearest town.

A four-year-old girl was killed on Sunday when a one-horned rhinoceros attacked villagers in Nawalparasi dis-trict in south-central Nepal.

Frequent attacks by wild animals in Nepal have raised concerns about the safety of people living near protected areas.

DPAKathmandu

Lanka faces threat of power crisis in 2017

Sri Lanka’s electricity regu-lator has informed the power and energy ministry

that urgent steps must be made to buy new power plants, post-pone maintenance work at the available power plants and in-crease rooftop solar generation to avoid a power crisis in the fi rst quarter of 2017.

The Public Utilities Com-mission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) said that a successive failure of monsoon had caused very low hydro reservoir storage, less than 500 GWh, and the commission’s recommendations were made to mitigate the impact of power shortages during the period from January to April 2017, Xinhua reported.

The PUCSL said that the full availability of Lakvijaya coal plant, the country’s only coal

power plant, was a key factor in January 2017.

The PUCSL suggested to look-ing into the possibility of shifting any maintenance at the available power plants to avoid shutting down during the critical period January to April.

The commission further suggested the state owned Ceylon Petroleum Corpora-tion to improve the fuel quality in order to get the maximum output from the plant. It was

further suggested that CPC should supply fuel as per the requirement.

The Ceylon Electricity Board was also suggested to take im-mediate action to purchase shortage in generation from available plants and the CEB and the Sustainable Energy Authori-ty should “expedite connection” to start commercial operations under small scale generation on Standardised Power Purchase Agreements.

IANSColombo

People watch elephants playing football during the 13th Elephant Festival in Sauraha, a tourism hub in southwest Nepal’s Chitwan district, yesterday. The five-day Elephant Festival is organised by the Regional Hotel Association of Sauraha to promote tourism and raise awareness about wildlife protection.

Jumbo soccer

Nepal court to hear plea on local polls

The Supreme Court in Ne-pal is set to hear from the amicus curiae whether

the local level elections should be held under the existing set-up or under a new one.

Lawyers Shailendra Kumar Dahal, Purna Man Shakya and Bishwa Kant Mainali from the Supreme Court Bar Associa-tion (SCBA) and lawyers Sushil Panta, Bipulendra Chakrabarti and Prem Bahadur Khadka from Nepal Bar Association (NBA) will off er their opin-ions on the case, reports the Kathamndu Post.

Last week, a division bench of Justices Cholendra Sum-sher Rana and Hari Krishna Karki had taken the decision to seek amicus briefs from the NBA and the SCBA. An amicus curiae is a party that is not in-volved in a particular litigation but that is allowed by the court to advise it on a matter of law or policy directly aff ecting the litigation.

The court will hear from the plaintiff and the govern-ment attorney fi rst. After hearing arguments on both sides, the amicus curiae will off er its opinion on the matter.

Debate over whether to hold the local elections under

the existing structure or a new set-up is raging, especially af-ter the government registered a constitution amendment bill, polarising the political parties.

According to the constitu-tion, the country must hold three levels of elections - local, provincial and federal, by Janu-ary 2018. Local elections have not been held in the country for more than 16 years.

A commission formed to determine the number and boundaries of the local units (village and municipal councils) under the federal set-up has fi nalised its report and is wait-ing for Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to receive it.

AgenciesKathmandu

Why does India, with its 1.3bn strong population, win so few medals at the Olympics and other global sporting events?

Almost every Indian working abroad is forced to look for the nearest hiding place when he is inevitably asked this question every time the Olympics are on.

While even countries with much lesser resources like Kenya and Ethiopia have plenty to shout about during the Games, thanks to their mighty distance runners, India with its galloping economy and super power dreams, just about manages to register on the medal table, thanks to one or two fl ash-in-the-pan performances.

Well, if there are still people out there mystifi ed by the whole India-at-the-Olympics conundrum, they only need to look at a recent bit of news emerging out of the country.

The Indian Olympic association (IOA) at its annual general meeting on Tuesday decided to honour two of its former presidents by making them “presidents for life.”

While the idea itself is ridiculous in this day and age where democratic norms govern sports bodies in most countries with even the tenures of offi ce-bearers limited to two or three terms, what takes the cake in this case is the display of brazen disregard for ethics and morals by the IOA.

The offi cials in question, Suresh Kalmadi and Abhay Singh Chautala, have been under the scanner

for a long time for corruption related to the Commonwealth Games which India hosted in 2010 in New Delhi.

They are accused of scamming the country to the tune of millions of dollars, and Kalmadi, who was IOA president

from 1996 to 2011, even spent 10 months in jail where he came up with the classically lame explanation that he was suff ering from dementia to put off investigators.

However, India’s notoriously slow and complicated legal process ensured he got out of jail, and in 2012 he was allowed by a Delhi court to attend the London Olympic Games.

But Kalmadi’s desire to attend the opening ceremony was scuttled by the Delhi High Court which said his participation in the function would be an “embarrassment for the nation.”

The furore caused by the IOA’s decision forced Kalmadi to reject the post yesterday, but it nevertheless established the body’s reputation as an organisation which feels confi dent about getting away with anything.

“The (sports) ministry will never accept such tainted people in the Indian Olympic Association and that is why we have expressed our reservations right after they were appointed last evening,” Indian sports minister Vijay Goel said.

“This move is against the constitution of IOA and is not acceptable to the Sports Ministry. I am disappointed by the decision because both are facing cases of corruption.”

Goel reiterated his stance on Twitter: “Transparency and accountability is vital in sports; until Kalmadi and Chautala resign or are removed, we will not deal with IOA in any form.”

It is no secret that self-serving offi cials have been the bane of Indian sports for decades. It is a pity that this still continues to be the case, inevitably leading to the country’s embarrassing performances at the Olympics.

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Self-serving offi cials continue to be the bane of Indian sports

As 2016 draws to an end, Qatar looks back at its achievements during the year

QNADoha

The year 2016 has witnessed many diff erent successes and milestones in Qatar adding to its overall development under

the leadership of HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and the guidance of HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani.

HH the Emir’s foreign visits during the year played a major role in Qatar’s politics granting the country prosperity in all perspectives, including its partnership agreements with other countries, and issues pertaining the GCC and the region.

During the year, HH the Emir visited Russia, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, Argentine, and Colombia to strengthen bilateral relations and

sign agreements for the benefi t of Qatar and its counterparts in various fi elds. In addition, HH the Emir’s determination to the success of the GCC union led to his keenness to visit various GCC states to attend diff erent events, conferences and activities.

On the Darfur peace agreement which was led by Qatar’s mediation, HH the Emir visited the North Darfur to celebrate the successes of ending the war in the province and inaugurating the era of construction and development.

During his opening speech in the United Nations last September HH the Emir presented called on the world to honour its commitments and shoulder responsibilities towards the regional issues without selectivity saying: “It is not possible for us to ignore the weakness of the legal and institutional system of the United Nations and its inability in many situations to apply justice”.

Meanwhile, HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani visited Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and India to strengthen the ties of friendship between Qatar and its counterparts.

HH the Emir presented the “Sheikh

Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani Anti-Corruption Excellence Award” to its awardees in Vienna this year to appreciate the contribution of entities and personnel towards fi ghting corruption.

Qatar has hosted many diff erent delegations and public workers from around the world, marked by the historic visit of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia to enhance the relations between the two nations.

In terms of Qatar’s rankings in diff erent fi elds, it held the 14th place in the latest world competitiveness report (2015-2016) by the World Economic Forum and ranked fi rst in the Middle East in competition with 140 countries worldwide, and the second and 12th rankings in the Middle East and the world respectively in the index of Economic Freedom issued in 2016, and the fi rst in the Middle East for information and communications technology digital economy.

In the infrastructure fi elds, Qatar achieved high rankings for Hamad International Airport, road infrastructures, marine ports, governmental electronic services, information technology, digital

technology, which covered the sectors of sustainability, intelligence and eco-friendliness. All these advances qualifi ed Qatar to consider space and satellite fi elds where in 2016 it fi nalised the design of Es’hailSat 2 and planned to launch it in 2017.

All these achievements are supported by the strong foundation of higher education and scientifi c research which is recognised by major international institutions in the fi eld, by placing Qatar University in the 49th ranking worldwide based on the QS World University Rankings and based on Time Magazine rankings, Qatar University ranked fi rst due to its fast-paced growth where it increased its publications by 246% during the past fi ve years.

This year Qatar also ranked the top among GCC states in terms of the number of tourists visiting the country. It has proved not only a family destination but also a cultural one with the help of Qatar Museums and its enrolment of Al Zubarah Archaeological Site as part of the Unesco World Heritage List. In addition, sports tourism has contributed to the overall growth of tourism led by the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Qatar’s successes andmilestones in 2016

Sustainability reporting good for businessBy Dana HaidanHead of Corporate Responsibility at Vodafone Qatar

Ask business executives in the Middle

East for their views on sustainability reporting, and you’re likely to get a mixed response. Some might consider that their time and resources are better spent on corporate responsibility branding initiatives. Or else they might think that such reporting activity has little direct relevance to their business objectives, most important of which is generating revenue and profi t. Moreover, others might consider that sustainability reporting involves disclosing more information publicly than is entirely necessary.

But the fact is, such views overlook the true value that sustainability reporting can deliver to businesses. And as our experience at Vodafone Qatar has demonstrated, a focus on sustainability reporting not only helps a business manage its social and environmental impacts but it can help strengthen its operations, increase effi ciency and improve how resources are managed. It can also play a major role in building and strengthening relationships with shareholders, employees, and stakeholders through

aligning business and stakeholder objectives.

Our leadership passionately believes that the Information and Communication Technologies industry plays a crucial role in achieving sustainable living and improving livelihoods. It is this belief that has driven us to deepen our understanding of sustainability and its impact on our long-term success and to focus so closely on our sustainability approach in recent years.

As a result, we have benefi ted directly from the way that such reporting can enhance our company’s accountability for its impacts, build trust and facilitate the sharing of values on which to build a more cohesive society. We live in a world where the public expects greater transparency from the organisations and entities that play such an important role in our lives. Sustainability reporting is one piece of the puzzle towards increasing levels of trust between society and business.

Aligning with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), whose standards we adhere to, we believe that sustainability reporting is a vital step towards achieving a sustainable global economy. The GRI actively promotes some key advantages that sustainability reporting delivers.

The first benefit highlighted by GRI is the way that transparency about non-financial performance can help build an organisation’s reputation, open up dialogue with

stakeholders such as customers, communities and investors, and demonstrate leadership, openness and accountability. In our case, the process by which we developed our reporting approach led us to engage with more than 1,820 key business stakeholders, helping to strengthen and deepen ties with a range of organisations and individuals who are critical to our success.

Sustainability reporting can also lead to improved processes and systems. Examining internal management and decision-making processes can reduce costs by measuring and monitoring issues such as energy consumption, materials use and waste. Again in our case, reporting has helped us identify how investments in hybrid power systems can help cut diesel consumption across our operation, enabling us to achieve an expected 64% reduction by the end of next year. We have also cut water consumption by 27%. As an area of focus that we identifi ed in our 2014 report, water conservation is particularly signifi cant in Qatar where supplies are limited.

It is also true that sustainability reporting can help progress an organisation’s vision and strategy. Comprehensive analysis of strengths and weaknesses and engagement with stakeholders can lead to more robust and wide-ranging organisational visions and strategies. In our business, it has enabled us to follow a more systematic way to implement our strategy and measure performance.

Finally, sustainability reporting can help strengthen the brand and market positioning of a business. Those companies that are perceived to be leaders and innovators benefi t from a stronger position when it comes to attracting investment, initiating new activities or entering new markets. Monitoring and measuring activities focused on supporting our diff erent customer segments, for example, has enabled us to identify greater opportunities to create shared value through programmes and initiatives that directly contribute to these segments’ development. In this way, we have partnered with organisations and led projects focused on youth empowerment working with the likes of the Youth Company, supporting education and community development whilst also promoting Vodafone products and services customised for young people.

Happily, it seems that growing numbers of businesses are waking up to the benefi ts that we have experienced ourselves, and recognising a role for better sustainability reporting in their organisations. In 2015, 166 sustainability reports were published in the Middle East, increasing by a rate of 40%, and it seems this trend is set to continue.

The hope is that growing numbers of businesses will discover that sustainability reporting is not just a cornerstone of what it means to be a good business, but it is most certainly good for business too.

The reason why India is not a sporting power

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani greeting the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia during his historic visit to Qatar early this month.

COMMENT

Airline passenger details easy prey for hackers

LettersBenazir lives in hersupporters’ heartsDear Sir,

Charismatic, striking and a canny political operator, Benazir Bhutto, was reared amid the privileges of Pakistan’s aristocracy and the ordeals of its turbulent politics. Smart, ambitious and resilient, she endured her father’s execution and her own imprisonment at the hands of a military dictator to become the country’s – and the Muslim world’s – fi rst female leader.

A woman of grand aspirations with a taste for complex political movements, Bhutto was fi rst elected prime minister in 1988 at the age of 35. The daughter of one of Pakistan’s most intelligent and democratically inclined prime ministers, Zulfi qar Ali Bhutto, she inherited the mantle of the populist People’s Party that he founded, and which she came to personify.

Despite numerous accusations of corruption and being removed as prime minister twice for the same charges, she

staged a high-profi le return to her home city of Karachi in October 2007, drawing millions of supporters to an 11-hour rally. Foreshadowing of the attack that killed her, the triumphal return parade was bombed, killing at least 134 of her supporters and wounding more than 400, Bhutto herself narrowly escaped harm and shouted at later rallies, “Bhutto is alive!” and yes she’s truly living in hearts of her supporters and followers.

(Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on December 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi, while campaigning ahead of elections scheduled for January 2008.)

Waqar QadeerDoha

Confusion overwinter holidays

Dear Sir,

This year there was no winter vacation for certain Indian schools whereas some schools have given one

week and some two weeks of holidays in December.

The Supreme Council of Education (SEC) had advised schools to revise their holiday schedules to bring in uniformity among all schools but this has not been correctly implemented by all the schools. It seems some schools are still confused over the winter holidays. The earlier system of bi-annual vacation had given room for parents to schedule their annual leave in such a way that it did not clash with the leave plan of their colleagues.

For most parents now, the only option is to travel during the summer vacation. As a result, air fares soar during July-August. By January itself, tickets are overbooked for the summer holidays.

Earlier, parents had the option to go on vacation along with their children either in winter or in summer but the new system has reduced it to summer only. It is understandable that employees who have their families in Qatar want to go on vacation during school holidays.

Though some schools give holidays in January, February and March they are not useful for either the students

or the parents. Having a week’s holiday in January and another week in February is not benefi cial even for the school staff .

I request the authorities concerned to look into this and do the needful.

Sadique K P [email protected]

Guardian News and MediaLondon

The worldwide system used to co-ordinate travel bookings between airlines, travel agents, and price comparison

websites is hopelessly insecure, according to researchers.

The lack of modern security features, both in the design of the system itself and of the many sites and services that control access to it, makes it easy for an attacker to harvest personal information from bookings, steal fl ights by altering ticketing details, or earn millions of air miles by attaching new frequent-fl yer numbers to pre-booked fl ights, according to German security fi rm SR Labs.

Known as Global Distribution Systems (GDS), the technology dates back to the 1960s, when one of the fi rst companies in the fi eld, Sabre, was founded. To most travellers, the technology is most obviously associated with the six-character Passenger Name Record (PNR) frequently used to enable online check-in and ticket retrieval.

The PNR system was also the route for many of the weaknesses demonstrated by Karsten Nohl and Nemanja Nikodijevic, the researchers who revealed the fl aws at this year’s

Chaos Communication Congress hacker convention in Hamburg. While it was presented at a hacker convention, “much less hacking was actually needed to exploit” the booking system, Nohl said.

At the core of many of the weaknesses was the standard use of just two pieces of information to authenticate a booking: the six-character PNR, combined with the user’s last name.

“If the PNR is supposed to be a secure password, then it should be treated like one,” Nohl said. “But they don’t keep it secret: it is printed on every piece of luggage. It used to be printed on boarding passes, until it disappeared and they replaced it with a barcode.”

However, the barcode is also easy to read using a number of apps, meaning many of the 80,000 travellers who have posted pictures on the #boardingpass tag on Instagram are at risk of information theft, as Nikodijevic demonstrated.

“This is supposed to be the only way of authenticating users,” Nohl said, “and it’s printed on pieces of paper you just throw away at the end of the journey.”

A bigger problem for most users, though, is that the six-character code is easy to guess. Each GDS provider (there are several, but the biggest

two are Sabre, founded in 1960, and Amadeus, founded in 1987) uses a diff erent system for generating them, but all have multiple problems that make them weaker than a simple six-character password.

For instance, some providers iterate the fi rst two characters sequentially, meaning all the PNRs generated in one day will have the same opening characters. Others reserve some codes for specifi c airlines, again narrowing the range of guesses an attacker has to make.

Many of the portals into the GDS system also have minimal security features – or at least had minimal security features until Kohl and Nikodijevic notifi ed them.

Some websites that have access to the system and allow you to use your PNR and last name to check the status of your fl ight off er no defences at all against an attacker guessing thousands of combinations a minute. The researchers were able to access multiple records. Looking for bookings under the name “Smith”, for example, and using a thousand randomly generated booking codes, fi ve came back with active bookings.

Attackers could use that access to cancel a fl ight in exchange for airline credit and then use that to book new tickets. Or they could add your frequent fl yer number to hundreds of

fl ights and chalk up the air miles.Even more damage could be done

with the information contained in the booking. There is enough personal and flight data in them to craft convincing phishing e-mails purporting to report problems with the flights or bookings.

The PNR weaknesses are just scratching the surface of the problems with the GDS in general, the researchers said: there appears to be no good logging for who has accessed data and why, and access controls in general are almost non-existent, allowing anyone from any company involved in your booking to see the whole thing.

One saving grace, they said, was that the whole system might end up being rewritten anyway. As the “Smith” example shows, the namespace for booking codes is slowly fi lling up. Simply running out of characters for new bookings could force a rewrite of the system long before security fears do.

If not, Nohl suggested that a rise in cybercrime could do the same job. “Airlines sometimes notice this, but only when it becomes excessive,” he said. “I just hope it becomes so excessive that it can’t be ignored so that it gets fi xed, because then the privacy issues get fi xed as well. Privacy is never enough on its own.”

Live issues

Gulf Times Thursday, December 29, 2016 23

Walls can’t prevent hunger and poverty. They can’t stop radicalism or violence. They can’t prevent wars. They can’t barricade helpless refugees

By Harun YahyaIstanbul

John Carpenter’s fi lm Escape From

New York made quite an impact when it was released in 1981. The movie takes place in a dark future where Manhattan Island had been transformed into a massive, maximum-security open-air prison surrounded by 15-m high walls. The people’s struggle for life trapped behind the walls created horror and fear in the audience.

Open-air prisons represented a scary and heartless future portrayal for the people of 1980s. They were dystopian punishments that could be seen only in a dark future apt for horror movies. Yet within just 35 years, these walls have become a part of everyday life across the entire world. Today, in 65 countries, people are separated by high walls. There is also an important diff erence between the imaginary walls of Carpenter’s dystopian action fi lm and the actual walls of today: The people of the 21st century often confi ne innocent people behind walls rather than criminals. Today, walls are no longer a way to punish criminals. Instead, they have turned into huge blocks meant to keep people from seeing the ugliness that lies beyond.

Today, walls have been built on the

borders between the US and Mexico and between India and Bangladesh. The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza – along with hundreds of thousands of refugees in Europe – are living their lives surrounded by walls. In the Western Sahara, in Algeria and Morocco, immense deserts are separated by walls. The cities of Belfast, Sao Paolo and Homs have been divided in two by walls. Indeed, each country’s desire to protect its own security is very natural, but these precautions will never produce results. Walls can’t prevent hunger and poverty. They can’t stop radicalism or violence. They can’t prevent wars. They can’t barricade helpless refugees.

Walls cannot solve problems. People driven to desperation will feel even lonelier behind these walls. The lovelessness and hatred resulting from this state of mind will create an angry generation, fuel radicalism and some people will resort to violence for their problems.

The world has lived with the Palestine refugee camp experience for the past 70 years. This issue, which could have been easily resolved with a simple population exchange, escalated into Arab-Israeli wars. Three large-scale wars have taken place and became the basis of many ideologies that currently cause bloodshed across the Middle East. Three generations of Palestinians currently reside in these camps. PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Abu Nidal, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and many other groups were born and developed in these camps. Refugee camps surrounded by weapons have created only more violence.

People outside the walls often have a false sense of security. It is because it is impossible to build a wall of enough height to stop ideologies. It becomes easier for people who are humiliated and rendered as outcasts

behind walls to gravitate towards radicalism. Therefore, the measures that are necessary to be taken against radicalism are not to build new walls, but to intellectually counter and disprove radicalism.

The immigrants risk journeying thousands of kilometres over dangerous high seas to reach security. With their children and their whole families, they are trying to reach European coasts on scrappy boats. It

is not possible for walls to stop this deadly desperation. The solution for the tragedies refugees experience doesn’t lie in building walls. The problems which cause millions of people to abandon their homes should be fought with knowledge. While a large part of the world lives below the hunger threshold, losing their lives due to poor nutrition, the other part shouldn’t waste their resources.

Our world has enough resources

for 7bn people. The duty of conscientious and sincere people is to share these resources fairly and correctly. Poverty, hunger, destitution, and violence are common problems of the world and humanity needs to act with a collective conscience. Trying to confine these problems within walls is nothing but burying heads in the sand. Unless an intellectual path is followed to solve these problems,

evil will continue to exist. Moreover, as the collective conscience of the world seems to have vanished, evil will continue to get stronger to become an overwhelming force.

Today, 66mn people have been forced to leave their homeland. The majority of these people are innocent women, children and old people who are trying to escape from death. They have nothing left to lose other than their own lives. These innocent people are waiting for us to open our doors and extend our help to them, to provide a cure for their desperation. The refugee problem is not an issue that humanity can ignore or simply try to hide behind walls. The most urgent necessity of the current situation is to carry out a comprehensive mobilisation of aid.

Humanity lived with the shame of slavery for 300 years. South America, Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia were heavily exploited due to the ravenous hunger of imperialist powers, and tyranny continued in the 20th century with world wars and close to 200mn people were massacred in a matter of a few decades. Today Germans live with the shame of having the Nazis as a part of their past, the British of having exploitative rulers, Americans for their ancestors that massacred Indians, Spanish for their soldiers who ended the civilisations of the Inca and the Maya for a couple of trunks of gold, and Russians for their communist leaders that condemned millions to starvation. Being remembered by future generations for having condemned innocent people to death behind walls will be the shame of today’s people.

Harun Yahya has authored more than 300 books on politics, religion and science, translated in 73 languages. He may be followed at @Harun_Yahya and www.harunyahya.com

Trapped behind the walls

The Israeli separation wall.

Please send usyour letters

By e-mail [email protected] 44350474Or Post Letters to the EditorGulf TimesP O Box 2888Doha, Qatar

All letters, which are subject to ed-iting, should have the name of the writer, address and phone number. The writer’s name and address may be withheld by request.

Three-day forecast

TODAY

SATURDAY

High: 26 C

Low : 19 C

High: 29 C

Low: 17 C

Weather report

Around the region

Abu DhabiBaghdadDubaiKuwait CityManamaMuscatRiyadhTehran

Weather todaySunnyP CloudyP CloudySunnySunnySunnySunnyM Sunny

Around the world

Athens BeirutBangkok BerlinCairoCape Town ColomboDhakaHong KongIstanbulJakartaKarachiLondonManilaMoscowNew DelhiNew York ParisSao PauloSeoulSingaporeSydney Tokyo Clear

Max/min07/0117/1231/2104/-219/0832/1932/2327/1716/1305/0131/2529/1608/0132/25-3/-724/1009/0205/-433/21-1/-932/2438/2414/02

Weather todayRainShowersSunnyM CloudyP CloudyM SunnyS T StormsSunnyCloudyRainS T StormsP CloudySunnyP CloudyCloudySunnyRainSunnyS T StormsSunnyS ShowersP Cloudy

Fishermen’s forecast

OFFSHORE DOHAWind: NW 08-18/ 22 KTWaves: 3-5/7 Feet

INSHORE DOHAWind: NW 08-15/18 KTWaves: 1-3/4 Feet

High: 28 C

Low: 17 C

FRIDAY

Expected strong wind and high seas at places

Sunny

Sunny

Max/min26/1916/0719/1220/0923/1629/1923/1111/03

Weather tomorrowSunnyM SunnyP CloudySunnySunnySunnySunnyP Cloudy

Max/min26/1919/0722/1319/1125/1629/2027/12

Max/min06/0216/1131/2303/-218/0728/1833/2428/1720/1603/0131/2430/1408/0632/24-2/-323/1006/-102/-333/2103/-933/2435/2409/02

Weather tomorrowM CloudyP CloudyP CloudySunnySunnyP CloudyS T StormsSunnyP CloudyRain&SnowS T StormsP CloudyFogM SunnyCloudySunnyM CloudyP CloudyS T StormsM SunnyT StormsM CloudyClear

13/07

QATAR

Gulf Times Thursday, December 29 , 201624

Quality Mall in Al Khor to be opened on New Year’s DayDoha’s Quality Group

International is opening their seventh

retail outlet in the country at Al Khor on January 1 at 11am, it was announced yesterday.

Quality Group chairman Shamsudheen Olakara ex-plained that the new three-storey Quality Mall, spread over more than 140,000 sq ft, would feature a number of franchises, outlets and independent kiosks, deal-ing in fashion accessories, apparels, home appliances, electronic goods and many more.

The Quality Mall is sur-rounded by a parking area which could easily accom-modate nearly 300 cars, he said. The Quality Hyper-market at the mall would sell

a wide range of food items, provisions and household wares, said Olakara, while adding that the place would also house money exchang-es, beauty salons, confec-tioneries, laundry, phar-macy and an extensive food court. There are about 50 independent retail outlets at the complex.

The Quality Mall would also feature an 18,000 sq ft entertainment zone, which includes a bowling alley, virtual cricket and football centre, gaming zone, and a conceptual snow house, which the operators termed as a new attraction in the country.

A host of attractive off ers and discounts are given to customers to mark the open-

ing, according to Olakara who also announced their company has already ac-quired retail space to launch another hypermarket in Wakrah. It is expected to be commissioned in the middle of 2017.

The Quality Group’s fi rst hypermarket in Malaysia will be ready for opening in March-April 2017. It is lo-cated about 75km, south of Kuala Lumpur, he said. In Abu Dhabi too, the group is entering the retail market.

Quality Group Interna-tional is also running a hy-permarket in India’s Ben-galuru. Besides Olakara, the group offi cials Shahid, Ram-shad Hassan, Mins Mathew and Rayees Ahamed were also present. Shamsudheen Olakara (centre) announcing the business plans of Quality Group International yesterday as other off icials look on. PICTURE: Jayan Orma

Katara hosts innovative painting exhibitionKatara-the Cultural Vil-

lage has inaugurated a painting exhibition ti-

tled ‘Salam’, which aims to pro-mote cultural innovation and connecting people through the

channels of peace. The opening of the exhibition, which show-cases 25 works by Qatari artist Jamila al-Ansari was attended by Katara general manager Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim al-Sulaiti,

a number of diplomats, and re-nowned artists.

Al-Ansari uses mixed media in her unique paintings to high-light the atrocities happening in the region.

“The fi ne paintings created by al-Ansari employ a highly tech-nical style to convey the neces-sity of peace in the region. The exhibition comes at a time when Katara has been deeply involved

in supporting the humanitarian campaign for Aleppo,” said Dr al-Sulaiti.

Al-Ansari, a graduate in Arts from Qatar University, said, “the paintings are expressions of the

relentless call for peace, dignity and freedom from the ruthless injustice and persecution cur-rently prevalent in the region.”

The artist is popular both na-tionally and internationally and

has exhibited her works on nu-merous occasions on a range of themes.

The exhibition will be open to the public until January 12 at Building 18 at Katara.

Qatari artist Jamila al-Ansari briefs Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim al-Sulaiti and other dignitaries about her paintings at the exhibition.

Some of the paintings by al-Ansari at the exhibition. The exhibition revolves around the theme of peace.

Kerry says settlements put Mideast peace at risk - Gulf Times

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