New road opens cutting travel time to Al Khor

In brief

GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978TUESDAY Vol. XXXX No. 11155

April 16, 2019Sha’baan 11, 1440 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

Blaze devastates Notre-Dame Cathedral in ParisPage 20

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani meeting with Botswana President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi at the Amiri Diwan yesterday.

Amir, Botswana president hold talks

MoUs on co-operation in defence, youth and sports, culture signed

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani held a session of offi cial talks

with the President of Botswana Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi at the Amiri Diwan yesterday.

The session dealt with bilateral re-lations between the two countries and ways to strengthen and develop them in various fi elds, especially in the fi elds

of investment, minerals, infrastructure and air transport. The two sides also discussed a number of regional and in-ternational issues of common concern.

The Amir and Masisi witnessed the signing of memorandums of under-standing on co-operation in the fi elds of defence, youth and sports, culture, and political consultations. The session and agreement signings were attended

by a number of ministers and members of the offi cial delegation accompanying the Botswana president.

Earlier upon his arrival at the Amiri Diwan, the Botswana president was ac-corded an offi cial reception.

The Amir also hosted a luncheon banquet in honour of the visiting presi-dent and the delegation accompanying him. Page 2

The Public Works Authority (Ash-ghal) yesterday inaugurated the main carriageway and three vital

interchanges of Al Khor Road, which will enable motorists to travel from Al Khor to Doha in around 20 minutes.

The road was opened in the presence of HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, ministers, gov-ernment offi cials, Ashghal representa-tives and project contractors.

The 33-km main carriageway of

Al Khor Road, linking Doha with Al Khor, has been delivered a year ahead of schedule as it was originally set to open in the second quarter of 2020, Ashghal said in a statement. Also, the Simaisma Interchange on Al Majd Road and an interchange on Al Turfa Street are now fully open to traffic.

The road will help enhance north-east and south-west connectivity and also signifi cantly save travel time, ac-cording to Ashghal. To Page 28

New road openscutting traveltime to Al Khor

QATAR | Offi cial

Amir condoles withKuwaiti leaderHis Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani and HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani sent yesterday cables of condolences to the Kuwaiti Amir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, on the death of Sheikh Abdullah Saud al-Malek al-Sabah.

QATAR | Vote

CMC electionsto be held todayQatari voters will head to the polls today to elect their representatives to the sixth Central Municipal Council. Eighty five candidates, including 5 women, are contesting from 25 out of 29 constituencies. Candidates from four districts - 7th, 22nd, 27th and 28th - have been elected unopposed. The polling stations are scheduled to open at 8am today to receive voters. The voting process will continue until 5pm today, followed by the counting of votes and the announcement of the winners. Page 3

HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani and other dignitaries attend the opening ceremony of Al Khor Road.

QATAR

Gulf Times Tuesday, April 16, 20192

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani receiving the President of Botswana Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi at the Amiri Diwan yesterday.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and the President of Botswana Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi at the Amiri Diwan yesterday.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and the President of Botswana Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi witness the signing of an agreement at the Amiri Diwan yesterday.

President of Botswana Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi, accompanied by His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, reviews a guard of honour at the Amiri Diwan yesterday.

Amir receives Botswana president

Sheikha Hind meets First Lady of Botswana

HE Sheikha Hind bint Hamad al-Thani, Vice-chairperson

and CEO of Qatar Founda-tion (QF), yesterday met with the First Lady of Bot-swana, Neo Masisi, at Edu-cation City.

During the meeting, Sheikha Hind discussed QF’s eff orts in the fi elds of education, science and re-search and community de-velopment with Masisi, with whom she exchanged gifts.

Masisi also received a presentation about the or-ganisation’s vision and mission and was given an overview of Education City from the open-air viewing platform at the 2015 build-ing, before concluding her visit by signing QF’s Visitors Book.

Speaking about her im-pressions of QF, Masisi said, “I am very excited by what I have seen, and it motivates me to go back to Botswana and try to do the same for my country.” HE Sheikha Hind with the First Lady of Botswana.

Mena researchcentre mooted to fi ght impunity

By Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

A research centre should be established in the Middle East and North Africa region to allow exchanges of experiences and les-

sons learned in promoting accountability so as to fi ght impunity, it was recommended at an inter-national conference that concluded yesterday in Doha.

The two-day event, titled “National, regional and international mechanisms to combat impu-nity and ensure accountability under interna-tional law,” gathered over 200 governmental and non-governmental organisations and interna-tional experts to discuss mechanisms to combat impunity.

The proposed research centre would bring the knowledge available within the Offi ce of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and for international experts to shape practical and technical recommendations, according to Anis Anani from OHCHR.

“The participants emphasised that the duty of every State under international law to respect and to secure respect for human rights requires taking eff ective measures to combat impunity,” he said.

The conference was organised by the Qatari National Human Rights Committee, in co-oper-ation with OHCHR, the European Parliament and the Global Alliance of National Human Rights In-stitutions. The recommendations were approved by three working groups.

Besides enhancing political accountability by advocating for an end to arms sales (in particu-lar in confl ict contexts), Anani said states have been urged to create joint investigative teams of prosecutors from diff erent countries and enhance international co-operation on evidence sharing, extradition and mutual legal assistance.

As part of the proposed measures, states should join the Rome Statute system and accede to all hu-man rights treaties; incorporate the Rome Statute crimes into their domestic laws and establish absolute jurisdiction for international crimes ir-respective of whether the suspect is in custody or in the territory of the State; and ensure that war crimes investigations remain free and protected from political pressure.

States should also empower victims to access and take part in the truth, justice and reconcilia-tion process; as well as providing support to vic-tims to access justice and remedies in a language

they understand.“The participants stressed that in cases of gross

violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law constituting crimes under international law, States have the duty to investigate and, if there is suffi cient evidence, submit to prosecution the person allegedly responsible for the violations and, if found guilty, to punish her or him,” Anani said.

The recommendations also urge civil society to raise awareness amongst states “the need to compensate victims beyond criminal justice” and “invest a considerable percentage of transitional justice eff orts geared towards funding their or-ganisations, and providing them with direct as-sistance.”

Meanwhile, national, international and regional mechanisms should ensure a victim-centred ap-proach to investigating and prosecuting interna-tional crimes, and focus on redress and reparations.

Ensuring that women and minority groups participate in public consultations to develop, implement and assess reparations programmes, is also included in these procedures.

“All relevant stakeholders are encouraged to implement the recommendations. The partici-pants are also encouraged to utilise these recom-mendations in their work and advocacy eff orts to combat impunity and ensure accountability un-der international law,” Anani added.

OHCHR off icial Anis Anani reads yesterday the recommendations of the three working groups aimed at combating impunity. PICTURE: Shaji Kayamkulam

‘EP imposed several measures on issues connected to Saudi Arabia’By Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

The European Parliament (EP) has implemented several measures on is-

sues connected to Saudi Ara-bia, including a resolution condemning “in the strongest possible terms” the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, EP’s Subcommittee on Human Rights Chair Antonio Panzeri has said.

“Recently we approved a resolution raising the need to free those who have been held by Saudi Arabia such as women activists without a case,” he told a press conference dur-ing the international confer-ence on ‘National, regional and

international mechanisms to combat impunity and ensure accountability under interna-tional law’.

The EP resolution also urged the “Saudi authorities to dis-close the whereabouts of his (Khashoggi) remains; recalls that the systematic practice of enforced disappearances and ex-trajudicial killings constitutes a crime against humanity.”

Panzeri was answering a question on the eff orts of EP to pressure the Saudis to free sev-eral Arabs who are still detained in their country without any prosecution.

He underscored the power of public opinion in the interna-tional level in demanding states to act on such resolutions and in ensuring these crimes be stopped, which can be facilitated

by the activities of the parlia-ment like EP.

“We have to consider all these aspects if we want these mecha-nism to be implemented in the right way,” Panzeri stressed.

About the sale of arms to vio-lators, he said EP called on Euro-pean countries in October 2018 to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia following the brutal kill-ing of Khashoggi.

EP also asked for “an impar-tial, international investigation into his death” to fi nd out what actually happened inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, and for those respon-sible to be brought to justice.”

“In the EU level we approved a resolution, which we are not sure if they will put it in place, but we are asking the states not to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and

this was a very important step,” Panzeri noted.

We need to stress and keep walking on this path, and by do-ing this we can make sure that progress will go on that way,” he added.

Panzeri cited the partnership between Qatar’s National Hu-man Rights Committee and EP, which started a year ago, aimed at launching an initiative to combat impunity.

“This conference is one of the results of this cooperation,” he said, stressing that critical points have been raised and the need to act on a large scale. “If we want to keep fi ghting impu-nity and human rights viola-tions, we need to fi rst to sustain this mechanism and ensure ac-countability, as well as other ele-ments.” 6

QATAR3


HE the Attorney-General Dr Ali bin Fetais al-Marri holding talks with the Deputy Minister of Justice of Turkey, Selahaddin Mentes, in Doha yesterday. They exchanged views on issues of common concern and discussed ways to strengthen co-operation and exchange of legal expertise between Qatar and Turkey.

HE the Chief Executive Off icer of Qatar Media Corporation (QMC) Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad al-Thani met the ambassador of Sweden to Qatar Ewa Polano, in Doha yesterday. During the meeting, they discussed media relations between both countries and ways to develop them.

Attorney-general meets Turkish minister QMC CEO meets Sweden’s envoy

CMC elections to be held todayQNADoha

Qatari voters will head to the polls today to elect their representatives

to the sixth Central Municipal Council (CMC).

In this election, 85 candidates, including 5 women, are contest-ing from 25 out of 29 constituen-cies. Candidates from four dis-tricts – 7th, 22nd, 27th and 28th – have been elected unopposed.

The polling stations are scheduled to open at 8am today to receive voters.

The voting process will con-tinue until 5pm today, followed by the counting of votes and the announcement of the winners.

The Ministry of Interior con-fi rmed the completion of all tech-nical preparations to enable voters to cast their votes in a free, fair and transparent atmosphere. Several volunteers have been trained to help the voters and guide them in the polling stations.

Director of the elections de-partment at the ministry, Ma-jor General Majid al-Khulaifi , who is also head of the election supervisory committee, said the committee has provided all means to facilitate the conduct of the electoral process in a calm and stable atmosphere.

The council operates accord-ing to the provisions of law con-cerning the regulations of the Central Municipal Council, and it expresses its opinions through

making recommendations and issuing decisions.

It is responsible for monitor-ing the implementation of laws, decrees and regulations that fall under the responsibilities of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment and the council, including laws, decrees and reg-ulations related to urban and in-dustrial planning, infrastructure and other public system.

The council is also responsible for overseeing the economic, fi -nancial and administrative man-agement of municipal aff airs and agriculture.

In an earlier statement, the Ministry of Interior called on the voters to exercise their franchise, stressing the importance of par-ticipation of all eligible citizens

in these elections in view of the role played by the council in car-rying out the municipal work.

The ministry pointed out that the voters must carry their ID card and to show it as they enter the electoral hall to receive the ballot paper.

The voters must choose only one candidate.

The ministry said the voting process must be confi dential and the voters must not name the candidate they have chosen loudly.

Voters who are unable to cast their vote themselves should tell the head of the polling station in confi dence the candidate they have chosen and cast the ballot.

The ministry has prohibited campaigning within the elec-

toral headquarters.Election committees should

proceed with the counting of votes and announce the results after the voting.

The winner of the election is the candidate who obtains the largest number of valid votes, and in the event of a tie between more than one candidate, the committee will vote.

Following the announcement of winners, a 15-day appeals period begins the next day dur-ing where each candidate or voter may request the invali-dation of the election in their constituency and submit the request in writing, including reasons for appeal, to the com-mittee for appeals and griev-ances.

Al-Khulaifi said the candi-date or voter should be part of the constituency in the appeal and it shall be submitted within 15 days from the date of the re-sults.

This shall be done by fi lling out the form of the appeal, in-cluding the reasons on which the appeal was based.

He added that the committee for appeals and grievances will investigate the appeals and sub-mit its report, along with its rec-ommendations to the Municipal Council, which will decide on its validity.

If a decision is issued by the municipal council to invalidate the election of a member of a constituency, a new member shall be elected.

On Sunday, the supervisory committee for the elections or-ganised a seminar for the heads and members of the elections committees.

The seminar dealt with ways to manage the polling process, dealing with voters, counting of the votes, announcing the win-ners and other procedures that guarantee transparency in the voting process.

Each committee consists of a head of the judiciary, two members from the Ministry of the Interior and a civilian from the various government de-partments. They must be at the electoral district headquarters at 7:30am on the election day to check the ballot boxes and open them for the candidates.

QATAR


Qatar participates in Arab labour conference in Cairo

Qatar is participating in the Arab Labour Conference being held in Cairo, with a delegation headed by Assistant Undersecretary for Labour Aff airs Mohamed Hassan al-Obaidli.The delegation also participated in the 55th GCC

labour ministers’ meeting.The conference, which will continue until 21 April, will discuss the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) centenary outcome document as well as the topics on the agenda.During the conference,

Hussein Yousef al-Mulla, the former undersecretary of the ministry of labour and social aff airs, was honoured as one of the pioneers of Arab joint action. Director General of the Arab Labour Organisation Fayez al-Mutairi was re-elected for a second term.

New corporation launched to manage business events sector

Qatar Business Events Corporation (QBEC) has convened its fi rst

board meeting in a fi rst step towards activating the cor-poration.

QBEC is an executive arm of Qatar National Tourism Council (QNTC), which was established in November

2018 as part of a new gov-ernance structure that seeks to unify and consolidate ef-forts to develop the tourism sector.

QBEC’s focus is on acti-vating the Next Chapter of the National Tourism Sector Strategy where it concerns business events, a key sub-sector that attracts thou-sands of visitors to Qatar every year, with Qatar host-ing 131 conferences and ex-hibitions in 2018 alone.

QBEC will organise, manage, operate and su-pervise events and venues in the country, in addition

to participating in regional and international exhibi-

tions and conferences to position Qatar as a leading

business events destina-tion.

The board members, appointed by QNTC, in-clude Sheikh Faisal bin Thani al-Thani as Chair-man of the Board; Has-san al-Ibrahim as Deputy Chairman of the Board and Managing Director of the Corporation; Rashed al-Qurese, Abdullah Ab-dulrahman Fakhroo, and Yousuf al-Jaida as Board Members.

“The business events sub-sector, as with much of tourism, is heavily reliant on the private sector to suc-

ceed. QBEC will act as a link between QNTC as a govern-ing, planning and regula-tion body on the one hand and the private sector on the other hand, helping us to unify the vision, the eff orts and the resources needed to cultivate a thriving business events sector,” Sheikh Faisal said.

“We are delighted to wel-come the Board of Direc-tors to this new and exciting venture and thank them for lending their time and expe-rience to eff orts to establish and operationalise QBEC,” he added.

Qatar Business Events Corporation to act as executive arm of QNTC, leveraging venues in Qatar to attract and deliver world-class business events

“The business events sub-sector, as with much of tourism, is heavily reliant on the private sector to succeed. QBEC will act as a link between QNTC as a governing, planning and regulation body on the one hand and the private sector on the other hand”

QBEC first board meeting.

QATAR5Gulf Times

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Qatar gives $100,000 grant

to support children of

El Salvador police offi cersQNASan Salvador

Qatar has provided a $100,000 grant to support sons and

daughters of police offi cers who died during their duty in El Salvador.

In a speech during a cer-emony held by the Minis-try of Foreign Aff airs of El Salvador, in co-ordination with the embassy of Qatar, the Minister of Foreign Af-fairs of El Salvador, Carlos Castaneda, extended thanks and gratitude to Qatar for its donation.

He said that the grant expresses Qatar’s solidarity with El Salvador, especially with the police forces, by supporting a scholarship programme which aims to enable students to complete their university studies.

He noted that about 41 students have benefi ted from the programme in the fi elds of accounting, legal sciences, international re-lations, agricultural engi-neering, mechanics, media, and computer.

Meanwhile, Charge d’Aff aires of the embassy of Qatar in El Salvador, Tariq Othman al-Othman, praised the relations be-tween Qatar and El Salvador and stressed that this grant comes within the frame-work of Qatar’s commit-ment to support friendly countries, and in recogni-tion of the sacrifi ces made by the police offi cers who gave their lives in the course of their national duty in an

attempt to ensure security and tranquillity, protect the Salvadorans, prevent and suppress crime and control the climate of violence ex-perienced by the country.

Al-Othman reiterated

Qatar’s commitment to sup-porting all humanitarian ini-tiatives that will help achieve sustainable development in friendly countries and all countries of the world.

At the end of the cer-

emony, a memorandum of understanding on awarding a sum of $100,000 by Qatar to the sons and daughters of police offi cers who died during their national duty was signed.

Charge d’Aff aires of the embassy of Qatar in El Salvador, Tariq Othman al-Othman, with the Minister of Foreign Aff airs of El Salvador, Carlos Castaneda, at the memorandum signing ceremony in San Salvador.

Tariq Othman al-Othman with Carlos Castaneda, and other off icials at the event.

QATAR


Porsche Cayenne models of 2018-2019 recalledThe Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in collaboration with Al Boraq Automobiles Co - Porsche Centre Doha, has announced the recall of 109 units of Porsche Cayenne models of 2018-2019, over re-programming of instrument cluster and various other control units.

The recall campaign comes within the framework of the ministry’s continuous eff orts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs.The ministry said that it will coordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance

and repair works and will communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out.The ministry urges all customers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department.

Qatar ranks 3rd in region on GlobalCybersecurityIndex 2018Qatar has achieved

high rankings in terms of cybersecu-

rity and ranked third in the Arab world and 17th globally on the Global Cybersecu-rity Index 2018 released re-cently by the UN’s Interna-tional Telecommunication Union (ITU).

This year, Qatar advanced eight positions on the glo-bal landscape and occupied the 17th position from the 25th in 2017. The GCI 2018, which covered 175 countries around the world, placed Qatar with the top three countries in the Arab region.

GCI is an index developed by the ITU aiming to provide insight into the cybersecu-rity engagement of member states. Rooted in the ITU’s Global Cybersecurity Agen-da (GCA), the third version - GCI 2018 - still oversees the level of commitment in fi ve areas: legal measures, technical measures, organi-zational measures, capacity building, and co-operation.

GCI 2018 said, “Qatar ranks third with a strong le-gal framework and a robust organisational structure with a National Cyberse-curity Strategy (NCS) that has a key focus on securing critical information infra-structure and a National

Cybersecurity Committee responsible to implement and drive that Strategy. Their eCrime law inte-grates a large arsenal of procedural measures.”

The GCI Top 10 most committed countries glo-bally in 2018 included the UK, which ranked fi rst; the US, which placed second; and France, third. Positions from four through 10 went to Lithuania, Estonia, Sin-gapore, Spain, Malaysia, Norway, Canada, and Australia, respectively.

The GCI 2018 says that in 2018, the majority of countries reported hav-ing a national cybersecu-rity strategy, which is an increase from last year, and 47% have metrics to measure cybersecurity development at a national level, which is also an im-provement, since in 2017 only 21% had metrics. It says that the overall re-sult shows improvement and strengthening of all fi ve pillars of the cyber-security agenda in various countries in all regions.

The GCI is included under ITU Plenipoten-tiary Resolution 130 on strengthening the role of ITU in building confi dence and security in the use of information and commu-nication technologies. The ultimate goal is to foster a global culture of cyberse-curity and its integration at the core of informa-tion and communication technologies.

HE Dr Ahmed bin Hassan al-Hammadi and Sergiy Korsunsky signing the MoU.

Qatar and Ukrainian offi cials hold political consultations

The ministries of foreign aff airs of Qatar and Ukraine have held a round of political consultations in the

Ukrainian capital, Kiev.The talks were chaired by Ministry of

Foreign Aff airs Secretary-General HE Dr Ahmed bin Hassan al-Hammadi and Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sergiy Kyslytsya.

The two sides discussed the relations

between the two countries and ways of promoting them, as well as issues of mutual concern.

Meanwhile, Qatar and Ukraine yester-day signed a memorandum of understand-ing (MoU) on co-operation in the fi eld of diplomatic training between the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs’ Diplomatic Institute and the Diplomatic Institute of the Minis-try of Foreign Aff airs of Ukraine.

The MoU was signed by Dr Ahmad bin Has-san al-Hammadi, and director of the Dip-lomatic Institute of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Aff airs Sergiy Korsunsky.

QNAKiev

Indian embassy holiday tomorrowThe Indian embassy will remain closed tomorrow on the occasion of Mahavir Jayanti, the embassy announced yesterday.

Diabetes camp for girls

Qatar Diabetes As-sociation (QDA), a member of Qatar

Foundation (QF), organ-ised its fi rst Al-Tahadi Diabetes Girls Camp, tar-geting young females in Qatar who are living with type 1 diabetes.

The camp took place at QF’s Education City, with 22 girls aged 12-15 years participating. It is the latest of a variety of QF-supported initiatives to address immediate social needs in the community by raising awareness of management and preven-tion of diabetes.

The three-day camp in-cluded a number of educa-tional, sports, religious and leisure activities, with a team of experts, dietitians, and educators from QDA being on hand to enhance partici-pants’ skills in self-care and diabetes management.

Dr Abdullah al-Hamaq, executive director at Qa-tar Diabetes Associa-tion, said, “Our aim for the ‘Al-Tahadi Diabetes Girls Camp is to empower young people aff ected by diabetes, help them con-trol the disease through educational and moral support. We want them to understand the impor-tance of their role in so-ciety and encourage them to engage with others, as well as to develop their personalities.”

QATAR7Gulf Times


The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has announced the launch of

a comprehensive educational e-survey on public and private schools and kindergartens.

The announcement was made at a press conference attended by Khalid al-Harqan, assistant undersecretary for Evaluation Aff airs, Mona al-Kuwari, direc-tor of the Schools Evaluation Department, and Hassan al-Mohamedi, director of the Public Relations and Communication Department at the ministry.

Al-Harqan stressed that the

educational survey is among the key tools for evaluation, and it will be conducted electronically through a link to be shared with parents through text messages (SMS).

Parents shall enter their Qatar ID number and fi ll out the ques-tionnaire.

Accordingly, parents, teach-ers, principals and students in all government and private schools will take part in the survey, the ministry said in a press state-ment.

“We look forward to the active participation of parents in this

survey, as the online system pro-vides a greater level of fl exibility and the parents can fi ll out the questionnaire at ease,” al-Har-qan added.

Noting that parents are “part-ners in education”, he said: “We are very keen to ensure a devel-oped education system.

“Therefore, I call upon all par-ents to participate in this ques-tionnaire initiative.

“The indicators extracted from the survey will help promote our education system.

“The online system comes within the framework of the

continuous upgrade of services provided by the ministry to all stakeholders in the educational process.”

Al-Kuwari said that the Schools Evaluation Department had formed a committee com-prising educational experts from the department and other de-partments concerned within the ministry, and experts in the edu-cation fi eld.

It also included teachers, co-ordinators and vice-principals of schools and kindergartens.

Their mission was to revise the content of the survey to meet the

requirements of the evaluation process and measure the reality of the educational process.

She said that the e-survey will continue until the end of April so that more parents, students, teachers and school principals can participate in the survey.

Further, al-Kuwari said the ministry will analyse the results of the survey to identify key indi-cators related to the educational system in the country.

She urged parents to take part after receiving text messages in Arabic and English.

The survey targets 365 schools

– 200 government and 165 pri-vate – and 20,601 parents.

The Schools Evaluation De-partment, in co-operation with relevant authorities at the minis-try, annually conducts the com-prehensive educational survey for all public and private schools to collect data on most aspects of the educational process, to draw a clear and comprehensive picture of education in schools across Qatar to ensure that the strategic goals are being achieved and to take the right decisions for the ongoing development of edu-cation in the country.

The survey is being carried out electronically for the fi rst time.

The benefi ts of conducting an online survey are many, includ-ing ensuring compatibility with the policy of the ministry to shift all transactions onto an online and paperless system, and ensur-ing transparency and privacy for respondents.

Technical support will be pro-vided to parents, students and teachers in the event of any prob-lems.

The survey includes a ques-tionnaire for students (Grades 6 to 12), teachers and parents.

Ministry launchese-survey on schools

Off icials at the press conference.

LuLu Hypermarkets are hosting a South African food festival, ti-tled Awesome South Africa, until

April 20.Aimed at showcasing South Afri-

can food and cuisines, and to promote South African food products, the event was inaugurated on Sunday by ambas-sador Faizel Moosa.

The opening ceremony at LuLu Hy-permarket, Al Gharafa, was attended by embassy offi cials, other dignitaries, and LuLu offi cials.

LuLu Hypermarkets have been or-ganising food-related festivals since 2002.

For the ongoing festival, South Afri-can delicacies such as Chakalaka Salad, Pap, Braai, and other popular dishes are prepared by executive chef Grant Marais from South Africa.

One of the major attractions is that

this year LuLu Hypermarkets have ex-clusively imported various ranges of ostrich meat, for the fi rst time in Qatar, as part of the festival.

An array of South African food prod-ucts ranging from beef and meat prod-ucts, fruits, vegetables, cooked food, Nando’s sauces, Ina Paarman’s sea-soning and masalas, Oryx condiments, Ceres juices, and Bose ice tea are on display.

LuLu set up buying houses many years ago at various locations in the African continent including in Cape Town in South Africa, as well as in Ken-ya and Tanzania; they also have regular bulk import of vast range of food prod-ucts from all African countries.

LuLu Hypermarkets have a world-wide network of export distribution centres, including facilities in the UK, the US, and Spain.

LuLu hosting food festival on Awesome South Africa

Ambassador Moosa with other dignitaries and LuLu Hypermarkets off icials during the opening of the festival. PICTURE: Nasar K Moideen

The Qatar Aeronautical College (QAC) is par-ticipating in the ongoing

Global Higher Education Ex-hibition (Ghedex) 2019 being held in Oman.

The participation “trans-lates the college’s eff ort to ad-vocate its programmes world-wide”, the QAC has said in a statement.

The event is being held un-der the patronage of Dr Ab-

dullah Mohamed al-Sarmi, undersecretary at the Oman ministry of higher education, who visited the QAC booth and listened to a brief on the majors off ered by the college.

Ali bin Fahad al-Hajri, Qa-tar’s ambassador to Oman, also visited the QAC booth and thanked the college for their contributions.

The three-day event con-cludes today.

QAC participatesin Oman highereducation event

The QAC booth at Ghedex 2019.

The Qatar Insurance Company (QIC) Group, a leading insurance conglomerate in the Mena region, recently honoured its employees with long-service award certificates for completing 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 years of dedicated service in the company.The award ceremony was held at the QIC headquarters in West Bay.The long-service award certificates were handed over to the awardees by Salem al-Mannai, deputy group president and chief executive of the QIC Group, in the presence of senior QIC off icials.Expressing gratitude and appreciation during the event, al-Mannai said: “At QIC, we believe that the dedication and collective eff orts of our staff play a significant role in achieving QIC Group’s set targets, growth and development of the company and in taking QIC to where it is today.“We have always recognised the wide spectrum of capabilities and skill sets of our staff and going forward, we will continue to encourage them to sharpen their skill sets through various training and development programmes.”He continued: “We are delighted to organise this employee recognition ceremony. It clearly highlights our way of treating our human capital as the ‘most treasured asset’.”

QIC Group honours staff with long-service awards

Ahmad Mohamed Zebeib receiving his certificate from al-Mannai.

Qatar Airways has an-nounced that it is the global launch partner

of Rolls-Royce’s new Virtual Reality (VR) training tool.

Recognised for its ongoing commitment to innovation, Qatar Airways is the fi rst air-line to trial the new technology as part of its engineering train-ing plan.

The new tool is designed to provide engineers with Rolls-Royce Trent XWB refresher training in a virtual environ-ment without the need for a physical engine to work on.

Qatar Airways engineers will be the fi rst in the industry to experience this cutting-edge technology.

The Trent XWB, which pow-ers the Qatar Airways A350 fl eet, is Rolls-Royce’s largest engine and must be separated before engineers can transport it for maintenance and repair.

Using HTC Vive equipment, engineers will be immersed in the process, using sight, sound, and touch to separate the two parts of the engine in a virtual setting, without the complex-ity and cost of a real engine.

Qatar Airways Group chief executive HE Akbar al-Baker said: “Qatar Airways is an airline of the future, and we constantly strive to deliver innovation in every area of our business.

“Our ultimate goal is to provide our customers with a quality on-board experience every time they travel, and by adopting the latest technol-ogy in our engineering depart-

ment, we aim to ensure that they arrive at their destination smoothly and without disrup-tion.”

Rolls-Royce president (Civil Aerospace) Chris Cholerton said: “At Rolls-Royce, we are designing, testing, and main-taining engines in the digital realm, so it makes sense that we bring cutting-edge technology to our training programmes.

“In the same way pilots complete elements of their training in a simulator, certain engineering tasks can be taught through Virtual Reality.

“Qatar Airways was the fi rst customer to take delivery of the Trent XWB, and their for-ward-thinking vision across their business makes them the perfect launch partner for this technology.”

The Rolls-Royce Virtual Reality training platform trial follows Qatar Airways’ fi rst venture into the world of Vir-tual Reality when it became the International Air Transport Association (IATA)’s global launch partner of RampVR in August 2018.

The award-winning system, pioneered by IATA, utilises the latest virtual-reality technol-ogy to simulate real air-side conditions for ground handling and ground service operator training.

Qatar Airways currently op-erates a modern fl eet of more than 250 aircraft via its hub, Hamad International Airport (HIA), to more than 160 desti-nations worldwide.

The new tool is designed to provide engineers with Rolls-Royce Trent XWB refresher training in a virtual environment without the need for a physical engine to work on.

Qatar Airways to trial cutting-edge VR training tool

It’s 8am and Qatar National Library (QNL) is opening its doors to the public. The

muted morning sunlight streams through the windows of a place that Rem Koolhaas – the re-nowned Dutch architect who de-signed the building – describes as “an amphitheater of knowledge that surrounds you the moment you walk in.”

Today, one of the fi rst to sample this immersive experience is Eley-an Saed, an international master’s student. At home, with his fam-ily around him, Eleyan sometimes fi nds it diffi cult to concentrate on his studies, so the library is a ha-ven of serenity when he’s under pressure to meet deadlines.

“I value the space that QNL of-fers me,” he says. “It’s big enough so I can fi nd a quiet corner to get down to work.”

At 45,000sq m, QNL is certain-ly “big enough.”

It has a unique three-tier de-sign for distributing books and other media, and a wide variety of individual study carrels, reading areas and group study rooms.

Eleyan is working at one of the many computer terminals, which are equipped with the latest Fu-jitsu desktops.

“The high-speed internet is a plus, and it’s free, like most of the other library facilities,” he says.

“This is a remarkable kind of support for students like me. I can’t study at home, so I’m grate-ful to those who make it possible for me to work in such a wonderful space for free.”

By 9am, a few more people have joined Eleyan at the computer sta-tions.

A few are starting the day with a cup of coff ee and a home-baked pastry from the Safahat Coff ee Bar & Bakehouse, situated in the cen-tre of QNL’s vast Main Plaza.

QNL keeps long hours, and em-ploys 183 staff .

Jooza al-Marri, QNL’s Collec-tions Development manager, was the fi rst Qatari to be appointed and also the fi rst local to obtain a master’s degree in librarianship.

“I am proud to be part of the team changing the library culture here in Qatar. We are changing perceptions about libraries and I encourage our whole community and especially the youth to be part of this change,” says Jooza.

“I would advise anyone from Qatar who is deciding their future career path, to look to QNL. I’m very proud to have been the fi rst Qatari working at QNL and to be using my master’s degree here.”

QNL welcomed more than 738,000 visitors since its pub-lic opening, and has more than 139,000 registered members.

Patrons come for any number of reasons – to check out books, for a quiet study session, to meet with peers for group work, or to take advantage of the myriad of other off erings, such as the Inno-vation Stations or the Heritage Li-brary. Meanwhile, the events and

QATAR


A day in the life of QNL: A place for everyone

Reading material neatly stacked within the QNL building.

An interactive session for children.

Visitors explore the displays at the Heritage Library.

Visitors using a reading pod at QNL.

activities which run year-round are always well-attended.

In the main plaza, women are gathering for the weekly Knitting and Crochet Circle. Dr Noora is the fi rst to arrive. She came to Qatar in 1976 and has lived here ever since, marrying and raising her family. The other women inch closer to her as she reminisces about a dif-ferent time – a time when neces-sity was the mother of invention.

“My fi rst baby was a premature birth,” she recalls. “Back then it was a struggle to fi nd tiny baby clothes so I was forced to learn to knit or crochet to make clothes for my newborn. My daughters have no interest in handcraft, so this is how I pass on the craft.”

The women in the circle are all of diff erent nationalities and ages, drawn together not only to sew or to knit, but also to enjoy each oth-er’s company.

The newest member has re-cently moved to Qatar with her husband and she has brought along their six-month-old son, who curiously observes his new surroundings from his pushchair.

“I don’t know how to knit or crochet. But that’s not the only reason why I’m here,” she says, suggesting that the opportunity to make new friends and socialise is also a factor in her attendance.

Lara Oliver, the librarian who runs the circle, draws her into the handicraft project.

“What begins as a casual gathering to work on handwork

projects and share skills can be-come a way to fi nd a circle of friends or a personal network,” she says.

By mid-morning, QNL is a hub of activity.

Upstairs, Souley Oumarou and Idris Stokes are ensconced in one of the open work areas. They are both wearing headphones, but exchange a friendly word or two from time to time.

Idris is an American children’s literature author working on fi n-ishing his third book. When he’s not in the library, he tours local schools as part of Qatar’s National Reading Campaign.

“I choose to work in the library because it has access to everything I could possibly need, even a thea-tre,” he says, referring to the Spe-cial Events Area that is often the venue for theatrical productions, lectures and concerts.

“Because my books are present-ed as plays, the theatre is a great place for me to get a visual idea of how I can tell the story.”

Always mindful of the need to meet deadlines, Idris values his time.

“I hate running around from coff ee shop to coff ee shop. That kind of hectic pace reminds me of being back home in New York. The library gives me all the space and time I need. You can be here as long as you want.”

Souley is an independent video producer. He drops his kids at the nearby Swiss International School

in the morning, then comes to QNL – which he jokingly refers to as “my offi ce” – to work on ed-iting video footage for his clients.

“I’d rather be here in this open space than in my little room at home, sad and drinking cof-fee, surrounded by distractions,” he confesses. “QNL is convenient, comfortable and has eve-rything you need – even a restaurant to grab a quick bite or a coff ee. Once you check in, you check in. If I forget my headphones or a charger, the staff give me one. And, of course, they have a million books, too. It’s a positive environ-ment, and you only meet people who share that mindset.”

Souley moves on to the Innovation Station to put together a video using the suite of digital production and audiovisual technologies.

“I have my own 15-inch laptop for work, but the Innovation Station has helped me take my projects to a whole other level,” he reveals.

“Have you seen this place? It has a full range of iMacs and all the latest software, which I don’t have, such as Adobe After Eff ects and other ap-plications from the Creative Cloud. Also, it’s just better to work off the 27-inch displays. The iM-acs have better graphics cards installed, so they are a lot faster and smoother to edit on.”

Souley is also a fan of QNL’s music studio. “Idris and I have worked together in the studio

to produce an audiobook from one of his stories. I often use the green screen room for shooting videos. The library has everything I need, and it’s all free. I even love the breakfast at the res-taurant.”

At the Children’s Library, Mariam al-Thani, a social and economic researcher at Qatar Univer-sity, and her two children are skimming through the shelves fi lled with colourful storybooks.

“I come here often and help my children select their favourites,” says Mariam.

“The Children’s Library is helping my chil-dren develop their reading habits to be informed citizens in the future. Being with my children at QNL also gives me an opportunity to take a break from daily work and get sucked into some of my favourite books.”

Nearby, Imman Rammal, who has a visual im-pairment, is deep in concentration in the Adap-tive Services section.

“Bookshare is an exciting service,” she says. “It’s an online library that lets you listen to a book or read it in braille, and I can access it free as a QNL member.”

QNL’s dedicated assistive technology space supports visitors with disabilities to research, study or read independently, using facilities such as screen readers installed on the comput-ers and braille books in Arabic and English.

Iman is a special education teacher in braille, information technology and English at the Al Noor Institute for the Blind. She loves to read and spends as much time as she can at the li-brary.

“When I discovered that QNL is accessi-ble, I was overjoyed. It opens up tremendous possibilities for the visually impaired, which makes those of us with disabilities feel we are equal and independent. It’s very important for national institutions to be inclusive of people with disabilities and ensure equal access,” says Iman.

“The staff members at the library are so help-ful, and I work with them on our shared plans for the visually disabled.”

By now it’s lunchtime, and the cafeteria is packed—a bustling social place where visitors engage in animated conversations as they eat.

One of them is Anneke, who is originally from Sweden and is visiting the Children’s Library with her two kids.

“We come in about once a month and we usu-ally spend a couple of hours,” says Anneke.

“My nine-year-old benefi ts more than the younger one because he gets a chance to read a few of his favourite books while we are here.”

Her energetic six-year-old, on the other hand, relishes the open spaces and opportuni-ties to explore.

QNL hosts numerous activities for children and their families, such as interactive story time, and early literacy programmes. Addition-ally, programmes and activities for children with special needs are conducted by experts and spe-cialists.

The Children’s Library has a collection of more than 150,000 books, as well as e-books, educational games and toys that develop chil-dren’s sensorimotor skills using fun activities.

“We’ve gone to the interactive story time ac-tivity a few times,” says Anneke.

“It’s great for me because we can read here together, pick out books to take home or they can explore the toys and games. We have good libraries in Sweden, but Qatar National Library is unique.”

The sounds of tiny footsteps and the de-lighted squeals of toddlers provide a life-af-fi rming backdrop to a library that was always intended to be ‘noisy’, in order to encourage socialising in an informal setting.

While ordering his lunch, Ibrahim al-Jailani, who is currently mastering photography as his passion, is fascinated by the Library’s lan-guage-learning resources.

“It’s a relief to have such a wonderful library in our country,” says Ibrahim.

“I’ve improved my English speaking and writing greatly since the library opened. I visit the library every week to borrow English lan-guage learning books to use with the Mango Languages mobile application I’ve download-ed.”

By mid-afternoon, visitors are starting to arrive for ‘Doll Making with Riham al-Kayali’, just one of the more than 750 events that the Library has hosted over the past year. The session is fully booked, and the guests – girls ranging in age from 9 to 11 with their parents – mill excitedly around the auditorium.

Riham, from the Happy Minds initiative, reads from the children’s book My Beauti-ful Mother’s Veil, and participants create their own veiled dolls.

Rashida Ahmed is one of the attendees. “Honestly, I have been looking forward to spending these couple of hours with my daughter,” she says. “I have such a demand-ing schedule and the kids have so many school activities, that it’s rare to be together at an event we can both enjoy. At the same time, I’m glad that she is learning about our culture and understanding why we cover our hair with a scarf or the hijab. Today, QNL has given us a very special mother-daughter bonding time.”

By the time the event concludes, night is falling over Doha, and QNL has been trans-formed into a beacon of light, with its book-shelves illuminated in spectacular fashion.

Marwa has joined other visitors browsing the Heritage Library, which includes rare and valuable texts and manuscripts related to Ara-

bic and Islamic civilisation, as well as historical maps and globes, scientifi c instruments and early photographs. The collection also contains writings by travellers who explored the Arabian Gulf region over the past centuries.

The word Iqra – which means “read” in Arabic – greets visitors at the front door of the Heritage Library, and transcriptions from the Holy Qur’an adorn the walls.

“It’s wonderful to be greeted with these words that are up there for everyone to see; it sets the tone for this space,” says Marwa, an-gling her camera to take a photo.

“I’m here on a short visit from Canada, and I was told QNL is a must-see. Obviously, grow-ing up in Canada, my education has been from books, so I’m eager to experience and interact with the leaves from the Blue Holy Qur’an, for example, and some of the manuscripts that speak about my Muslim heritage.”

As the closing time of 8pm nears, there are still dozens of people throughout the library.

Bushra Amber is the last one to leave, and seems reluctant to go. A busy fi rst-year PhD student in Islamic Finance and Economy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, she has classes four evenings a week and spends the rest of her time in the library.

“Luckily for me, the library has a variety of study areas in diff erent sections, so I can switch my environment if my energy is falling or I need a change. It doesn’t always matter where I work because I’m often using the online re-sources, especially the Qatar Digital Library,” she reveals.

Marwa’s voice drops as she reveals: “The Open Lounge Terrace upstairs is a well-kept secret, by the way, and the view is absolutely remarkable, even at night.”

All members have free access to the Library’s vast online resources, which includes 380,000 e-books, periodicals, newspapers and other materials.

The Qatar Digital Library hosts more than 1.5mn pages of modern history and culture relating to the Gulf and the wider region, in Arabic and English. It is phenomenally popular all over the world, having received over 2.5mn views since its launch.

The community’s sense of shared ownership towards QNL shows in the footfall it receives, with well over a thousand visitors per day.

QNL touches many people’s lives, bring-ing together individuals from diff erent back-grounds and paths of life, all sharing the vast range of resources in their own chosen ways – and all enjoying the opportunity to embrace a life of learning.

“I would advise anyone from Qatar who is deciding their future career path, to look to QNL. I’m very proud to have been the fi rst Qatari working at QNL and to be using my master’s degree here”

Qatar National Library (QNL) today marks the fi rst year an-niversary of its offi cial inau-

guration by His Highness the Amir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, on April 16, 2018.

In this short span of time, the Qa-tar community has embraced QNL as a beacon of knowledge, guiding their individual journeys of personal dis-covery.

QNL has given the community ac-cess to a wealth of resources, includ-ing books, journals, electronic re-sources, and a full programme of over 900 curated events.

“On the auspicious occasion of QNL’s fi rst anniversary, you just need to be here to get the sense of the scale and scope of what is the world’s most beautifully designed national library and the many people using it — expansive yet at the same time personal. People of Qatar voted with their feet on its value when more than 738,000 people came through its doors in its fi rst year of being, and borrowed more than one million

books,” said Dr Sohair Wastawy, ex-ecutive director, QNL.

The growing demand for mem-bership has also contributed to the popularity of QNL’s dynamic pro-grammes, with more than 21, 000 people registering to attend the year’s events.

QNL’s use of online resources is highly valued by the users.

Qatar Digital Library received over 2.5mn views. It makes available more than 1.5mn pages of historical records on Qatar and the Gulf, which were previously housed in the British Library, and thanks to a partnership agreement between the two librar-ies, are now being used by scholars and students from anywhere in the world.

These resources as well as the rich collection of valuable texts and manuscripts, reaching 174, 866 rare items, held at the Heritage Library has made the Library as an institu-tion of reference for Arabic and Is-lamic heritage and civilisation, and one of increasing global importance.

It has also digitised 4,215,652 pages of history.

As part of a series of public events commemorating QNL’s fi rst year, Princess Dana Firas, Unesco Global Ambassador and president of the Petra National Trust, will deliver a lecture at QNL and take part in a panel discussion, ‘Cultural Heritage and its Role in Preserving History, Identity and Cultural Legacy’, today from 5pm.

HE the Minister of State Dr Hamad bin Abdul Aziz al-Kuwari will also address the event.

“This library is a testimony to the vision and wisdom of Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser in pro-pelling learning for all. The library’s powerful environment of learning, sharing and togetherness is trans-forming the society into a deeply en-gaged community. We are grateful to the entire community who have em-braced this public space of discovery and knowledge, and we are motivated to continue to off er new services,” said Dr Wastawy.

QATAR9Gulf Times


QNL celebrates successful fi rst year

An activity taking place at QNL.

More than one million titles lent to knowledge-seekers in fi rst year after opening doorsBy Joseph Varghese Staff Reporter

More than a million books have been borrowed from Qatar National Library

(QNL) since its opening and most of those books were on psychology, economics, engineering and man-agement information systems.

QNL, which today marks the fi rst anniversary of its offi cial open-ing, currently has 139,551 registered members.

“ Over the past year, we welcomed 738,636 visitors and QNL caters to the needs of people of all ages and educational and cultural back-grounds,” Dr Sohair Wastawy, execu-tive director, QNL, told Gulf Times.

“We have organised more than

900 events over the past year and our visitors have explored all aspects of the library, borrowing their favourite books from the main collection and attending one or more of the events,” Dr Wastawy noted.

The Children’s and Young Adults’ Collections were particularly well received by families, children and the young ones.

More than half of the 720,000 books checked out since January 1, 2018, are from the Children’s and Young Adults’ Collections, which is a great testament to QNL’s early lit-eracy eff orts,” explained the offi cial.

According to Dr Wastawy, the Qa-tar Digital Library is a growing online archive with more than 1.5mn pages of archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings and photographs relating to the Gulf and the wider region.

The Digital Library has received more than 2.5mn views so far and is still expanding.

“Innovation within the library is driving engagement as users have the chance to express their creative sides by using the four Innovation Stations, which have musical instruments and record-ing equipment, green screens, 3D printers, photography and videography studios, and other makerspaces,” said the executive director.

The offi cial maintained that QNL has become a vibrant hub of social engagement, education and commu-nication since its opening.

“A signifi cant part of QNL’s serv-ice to community is through its wide-ranging programme of events, from exhibitions and scientifi c lec-

tures to technology training and cre-ative workshops, and members have responded enthusiastically. We had more than 21,000 people register-ing for the events, and engaging on a variety of topics over the year,” she described.

The Qatar Digital Library, which is an important outcome of a partner-ship with the British Library, is pro-viding free access to more than 1.5mn digitised pages of Qatar’s and the re-gion’s history.

The Digital Library will continue to add almost 1mn pages of material from partners in Turkey, France, the Netherlands, India and the UK.

“We will build on the success of QNL and continue to off er our serv-ices to the people of Qatar. We are adding new titles to our existing print and online collections, and will

keep off ering new programmes for everyone in the community to learn and socialise.

“We will also continue to engage our existing partners in Qatar, the region and beyond and forge new partnerships with cultural institu-tions to develop projects to further the preservation of Qatar and the re-gion’s historical heritage,” elaborated the offi cial.

She highlighted that QNL has a collection of more than 1mn books in diff erent genres and there is so much room to grow.

“We always welcome feedback from our community, and if there are any particular books that our users are seeking, we have a system in place to order reading material requested by the partners wherever possible,” she added.Dr Sohair Wastawy

QATAR

11Gulf Times Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Justice ministry partners with UNODC to launch legal training workshopQNADoha

A four-day legal training workshop was launched yesterday within the

partnership programme between the Ministry of Justice and the United Nations Offi ce on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

A number of legal staff in vari-ous fi elds will benefi t from this workshop and provide them with the necessary legal exper-tise to improve the performance of their work not only at the local level, but also at the regional and international level.

This workshop is the fi rst phase of several stages that will witness the presentation of an integrated legal programme for legal researchers in the Ministry of Justice.

During the opening of the workshop, HE the Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Aff airs Dr Issa Saad al-Jafali al-Nuaimi praised the existing partnership with the United Nations represented by the UNODC, which included the exchange of experience and ex-pertise in various fi elds in vari-ous sectors of government, and the work of national commit-tees on the protection of labour rights and combating human traffi cking.The minister urged the participants to take advan-tage of this workshop and the rich legal experience it will pro-vide to Qatari legal practition-ers to develop their skills and to develop their experiences and to prepare them to refl ect the aspi-rations of the good leadership for building Qatari youth.

In his inaugural address, HE the Undersecretary of the Min-istry of Justice Sultan bin Ab-dullah al-Suwaidi said that the training workshop is part of the partnership programmes be-tween the UNODC and the Jus-tice Ministry in its fi rst phase, as well as the objectives of the second national development strategy of the State 2018-2022, which included a strategic goal to protect society through the implementation of various projects in the fi eld of rehabilita-tion and training of personnel in areas related to crime.

He pointed out that the Min-istry of Justice started with an ambitious vision for this work-shop, which is based on the ne-cessity of developing the legal performance of Qatari cadres and in providing them with the latest international experiences and practices.

He noted that the world pro-

gramme for the implementation of the Doha Declaration, im-plemented by UNODC with the support of the State of Qatar and issued at the conclusion of the 13th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Doha in April 2015, has drawn up plans and set goals for strengthening international le-gal and judicial co-operation.

He explained that the pro-gramme aimed at combat-ing crimes in all its forms. The themes of the workshop, include the defi nition of the role of law enforcement offi cials in inter-national judicial co-operation, co-operation in the fi eld of con-fi scation of funds and legal as-sistance.

UNODC Executive Director Hatem Aly praised the partner-ship between UNODC and the State of Qatar in general and the contribution of the Qatari authorities to the development

of their national legal system in accordance with international standards, principles and con-ventions of the United Nations, and its support at the glo-bal level by participating and hosting United Nations pro-grammes with visionary efforts and insights.

Aly added that this partner-ship has now taken a broader approach in which UNODC is trying to evaluate the interna-tional system and standards to help develop national staff specialised in the areas of competence at the Ministry of Justice .

Aly reviewed the nature of work of UNODC, explaining that the office represents the United Nations Secretariat and added that it is working to im-plement all conventions con-cerned with combating crime and for rendering a criminal justice system.

HE the Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Aff airs Dr Issa Saad al-Jafali al-Nuaimi with dignitaries at the workshop.

HE the Minister of Justice and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Aff airs Dr Issa Saad al-Jafali al-Nuaimi met yesterday with the Minister of Justice of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan Bassam Talhouni. During the meeting they reviewed co-operation between the State of Qatar and Jordan and also reviewed ways to boost and develop co-operation in the legal fields, expertise exchange, legal procedures between the ministries, especially in qualification and training and to benefit from the common experience in preparation of a legislation. They also discussed a number of issues of common interest.

Justice minister meets Jordan counterpart

Advisory Council reviews key outcome of IPU meeting

QNA Doha

The Advisory Council held its weekly session yester-day under the chairman-

ship of HE the Speaker of the Advisory Council Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud.

At the outset of the meet-ing, the Speaker of the Advisory Council paid the highest tribute and appreciation to His High-ness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani for his partici-pation in the opening session of the 140th General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and its associated meet-ings, which were held in Doha from April 6 to 10. He also hailed the Amir’s address at the ses-sion that received interest and was welcomed for its inclusion of important contents, values

and principles which expressed the aspirations and hopes of the peoples of the world and which dealt with the topics on the agenda accurately and objec-tively, while highlighting educa-tion as the focus of the debate.

The Speaker of the Advisory Council briefed the council on the important outcome of the 140th IPU General Assembly, which was the most successful in the history of the Union, es-pecially in view of the wide and unprecedented participation, which amounted to 160 coun-tries.

The Speaker highlighted the statements and resolutions is-sued by the IPU General As-sembly, particularly the Doha Declaration on parliaments as platforms for promoting educa-tion for peace, security and the rule of law.

The Speaker of the Advisory

Council also expressed his sin-cere thanks and appreciation to the heads of the parliaments of the world who came to Doha in recognition of the State of Qatar, respect for its leadership, confi -dence in its policy and in honour of its people.

He also thanked the Executive Committee of the Inter-Parlia-mentary Union, the Governing Council, the president, its secre-tary-general and all its subsidi-aries for their valuable eff orts which had the greatest impact in the success of the meetings of the General Assembly and the associated meetings.

The Speaker also expressed his thanks and appreciation to the parliamentarians who par-ticipated in the meetings and expressed their rejection of the illegal blockade against the State of Qatar both at the Gen-eral Assembly and during other

meetings. The Speaker of the Advisory Council and president of the organising committee of the General Assembly of the IPU also thanked the esteemed gov-ernment and all the institutions and agencies of the State which mobilised their potential and provided all the requirements for the success of the international parliamentary event.

He also thanked the mem-bers of the Advisory Council and its staff for their apprecia-tive work before and during the IPU meetings.

He also thanked the organ-ising committee for carrying out the tasks entrusted with competence, as well as the lo-cal and international press and media which reported the dis-cussions and outcomes of the 140th General Assembly, along with the volunteers of the Qa-tari Youth who contributed to

this achievement. The Adviso-ry Council then discussed the report of the Legal and Legis-lative Affairs Committee on a draft law amending some pro-visions of Law No.(21) of 2004 regarding ministers.

The Council approved the draft law and decided to submit its recommendations thereon to the Cabinet.

The Public Services and Utilities Committee of the Advisory Council held yes-terday a meeting of the 47th regular session of the Council under the chairmanship of its Rapporteur HE Mohamed bin Mahdi al-Ahbabi. The com-mittee discussed a draft law amending certain provisions of the law on the prohibition of housing workers within family residential areas, and decided to complete its study at its next meeting.

HE the Speaker of the Advisory Council Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud at the Council’s weekly session yesterday.

Several ministries and other government entities lit up their off ices and premises in green yesterday to mark Family Day in Qatar. These included the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Ministry of Municipality and Environment, Family Consulting Centre (Wifaq) and Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre, among others.

Family Day in Qatar

NHRC signs MoU with Somalia’s ministryQNADoha

National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) signed a memorandum

of understanding (MoU) with Somalia’s Ministry of Women and Human Rights Develop-ment, on the sidelines of the second and fi nal day of the conference titled “National, regional and international mechanisms to combat impu-nity and ensure accountability under the law,” organised by NHRC, in co-operation with the United Nations High Com-missioner for Human Rights and the European Parliament.

The MoU was signed by HE NHRC Chairman, Dr Ali bin Smaikh al-Marri and Soma-lia’s Ministry of Women and Human Rights Development, Deqa Yasin.

The MoU aims to promote close relations between both sides in raising awareness on human rights and its protec-tion, as well as ensuring the communication and informa-tion exchange between both sides on issues related to devel-oping the human rights system.

Under the MoU priority is given to activities aimed at the protection of human rights, the development and implementa-tion of human rights plans and strategies to support capacity-building and exchange of ex-perience in the fi eld of human rights.

HE NHRC Chairman Dr Ali bin Smaikh al-Marri and Somalia’s Ministry of Women and Human Rights Development, Deqa Yasin, shake hands after signing the MoU. PICTURE: Shaji Kayamkulam

REGION/ARAB WORLD

Gulf TimesTuesday, April 16, 201912

French-made tanks and howitzer cannons ‘used in Yemeni war’Reuters Paris

French arms including tanks and laser-guided missile systems sold to Saudi Ara-

bia and the United Arab Emirates are being used in the Yemeni war against civilians, leaked intelli-gence published by investigative website Disclose showed.

Entitled “Yemen: security situation”, a 15-page classifi ed report written by France’s DRM military intelligence agency includes maps that detail the positioning of French-made weapons inside Yemen and on

the Saudi side of the border. It demonstrates that swathes of Yemen’s population lives under the threat of the French-made arms, according to Disclose.

The leaked report will be awk-ward for President Emmanuel Macron and his government, which has said that as far as it knows French-made arms sold to Saudi Arabia are used solely for defensive purposes on the border.

The intelligence document states that Caesar cannons, manufactured by French com-pany Nexter and deployed along the Saudi-Yemeni frontier, conduct defensive shelling of

Houthi forces as well as back up “loyalist troops and Saudi armed forces in their progression into Yemeni territory”.

The intelligence dossier is dated September 25, 2018.

It was presented to Macron and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, as well as France’s de-fence and foreign ministers.

The Disclose report was part of an investigation carried out with Mediapart, Konbini, France Inter radio, Arte television and US-based The Intercept.

France is a signatory of the UN Arms Trade Treaty that regu-lates the international trade of conventional weapons and bans

the sale of weapons that fuel human rights violations or war crimes.

UN experts have said all sides in the Yemeni confl ict may have committed war crimes.

Philippe’s offi ce said in a statement that France adopted rigorous safeguards when is-suing export licences and sup-ported United Nations’ eff orts to broker peace in Yemen.

“As far as we know, French arms possessed by coalition forces are placed for the most part in defensive positions, out-side of Yemeni territory or under coalition control, but not on the front line,” the statement said.

It did not question the au-thenticity of the documents and neither confi rmed nor denied the Disclose report, adding that France was not aware of Yemeni civilians being killed by French arms.

The defence ministry, which oversees the DRM, did not re-spond to a request for comment.

The Saudi and UAE govern-ment communication offi ces and a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen did not respond immediately to a re-quest for comment.

The four-year confl ict in Yem-en has shattered its economy and created one of the world’s worst

humanitarian crises, the UN says. More than 10,000 civilians have been killed and some 10mn people have been driven to the brink of famine.

A second, six-page DRM in-telligence report distributed more widely, according to Dis-close, showed that French-made tanks were deployed in defensive positions in bases including Mo-cha, Aden, al-Khawkhah along the coast and Ma’rib.

Disclose said its study of sat-ellite images, video and pho-tographs taken by civilians revealed some Leclerc tanks bought by the UAE had taken part in coalition off ensives, in-

cluding the campaign for control of the rebel-held port of Hodei-dah.

The six-page report also said that UAE Mirage fi ghter jets were equipped with a laser-guided system made by Thales known as Damocles which it said were possibly being used in Yemen.

Germany has imposed an em-bargo on arms exports to Saudi Arabia over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and amid concerns over Riyadh’s role in the Yemen war, drawing criti-cism from the arms industry and from allies France and Britain, which say the move has put joint projects at risk.

Sudan’s main protest group calls for civilian transitional councilReuters Khartoum

The Sudanese group that led protests against de-posed President Omar

al-Bashir called yesterday for the transitional military council that has taken power to be dis-banded and for a new interim civilian ruling council to be formed.

Representatives of the Su-danese Professionals’ Associa-tion (SPA) piled pressure on the military commanders who have taken over, issuing a long list of demands for deeper and faster change to end repression and a ruinous economic crisis.

If their demands were not met, the group would press on with protests and would not join a future transitional govern-ment, Ahmed al-Rabie, an SPA member, told Reuters.

The SPA held its fi rst news conference since Bashir, was ousted by the military on Thursday following months of street demonstrations.

A new interim civilian body should be given full executive powers, with the armed forces having representation, and the Transitional Military Council (TMC) that took over last week should be dissolved, the SPA said.

“If our demand for the for-mation of a civilian transi-tional council with military representation is not met, we will not be part of the execu-tive authority, the cabinet, and we will continue the mass es-calation and the sit-ins to ful-fil our demands,” Rabie told Reuters.

AU WARNINGIn a communique late yes-

terday, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council called for Sudan’s military to transfer power to a “transi-tional civilian-led political authority” within 15 days or face suspension from the AU.

Lieutenant General Jalal al-Deen al-Sheikh, a member of the TMC, met Ethiopia’s prime

minister in Addis Ababa, where the AU is based, and said, “We are already in the process of choosing a prime minister” for a civilian government, accord-ing to the Sudanese state news agency SUNA.

“So we are initiating this even before having this session with the African Union. This is our conviction and this is also the way forward to peace, but also, we respect it and we are committed to the decision of the Peace and Security Coun-cil.”

The SPA issued its demands hours after protesters blocked an attempt to break up a sit-in outside the Defence Ministry that has continued despite Ba-shir’s exit, a Reuters witness said.

Troops had gathered on three sides of the sit-in and tractors were preparing to re-move stone and metal barriers, but protesters joined hands and formed rings around the sit-in area to prevent them.

Some of the most prominent SPA leaders, most of whom are in their 20s and 30s and were detained until after Bashir’s ouster, spoke at the news con-ference.

SPA representatives also renewed calls for the head of the judiciary and his deputies and public prosecutor to be re-moved.

They demanded the dis-solution of Bashir’s National Congress Party and said they received affirmation from the TMC that the party will not participate in a transitional government.

The SPA also called for the seizure of the party’s assets and the arrest of its prominent figures.

It demanded the dissolu-tion of paramilitary groups that were loyal to the old gov-ernment, and of the National Intelligence and Security Service’s (NISS) operations authority, and called for an end to Sudan’s press law and the public order law, which they have said restricts freedoms.

On Saturday, Salah Abdal-lah Mohamed Saleh, better known as Salah Gosh, resigned as head of NISS. He was once seen as the most powerful per-son in the country after Ba-shir and protesters held him responsible for the killing of demonstrators demanding an end to military rule.

“For us in the SPA, in the first stage, the transitional government stage, we will play a role in the restoration of the civil service and state institu-tions and establishing a dem-ocratic state,” said Gamaria Omar, an SPA member.

“Afterwards, the SPA will be comprised of unions, and will be a guardian of democracy in Sudan,” she added.

Outside the Defence Minis-try yesterday, the protesters, numbering about 5,000 in the

morning with more arriving, chanted “Freedom, freedom” and “Revolution, revolution”, and appealed to the army to protect them.

Some drummed and waved national flags as they mingled in the street, while others took shelter from the sun under parasols and makeshift tents.

The protest outside the compound, which also in-cludes the intelligence head-quarters and the presidential residence, began on April 6, after more than three months of protests triggered by a deepening economic crisis.

Yesterday the military council said it was restructur-ing the joint forces command, appointing a new chief of staff for the army and a deputy.

Britain’s ambassador to Su-dan, Irfan Siddiq, said he had

met the deputy head of the transitional military council, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, and had “asked for clarity on whereabouts of former Presi-dent Bashir and other senior former regime figures”.When

the military announced Ba-shir’s ousting, they said he had been arrested and was being kept at a “safe place”. Sudanese sources told Reuters that Ba-shir was at a presidential resi-dence under “heavy guard”.

Sudanese demonstrators protest outside the Defence Ministry in Khartoum, yesterday.

Mohamed Youssef Ahmed al-Mustafa, leader of the Sudanese Professionals’ Association speaks during a press conference in Khartoum.

Clashes in Darfur displaced camp kill 14AFPKhartoum

Fourteen people have been killed during clashes in a camp for displaced in Su-

dan’s confl ict-wracked region of Darfur, the offi cial news agency SUNA reported yesterday.

The clashes occurred on Sat-urday in South Darfur’s camp Kalma, one of the biggest facili-ties housing thousands of peo-ple displaced by the war in the region.

“Fourteen people have been killed in clashes inside camp Kalma the day before yesterday,” South Darfur’s acting governor General Hashim Khalid said, quoted by SUNA.

He did not say what triggered the violence or reveal details about the groups that clashed, but said the camp has “lot of weapons and groups that dis-turb the state’s security”.

He said camp Kalma also had many rebels from the Sudan Liberation Army-Abdul Wa-hid (SLA-AW) group, one of the groups fi ghting with Khartoum’s forces for years in the region.

The confl ict in Darfur erupted in 2003 when black ethnic rebels took up arms against the gov-ernment of now ousted presi-dent Omar al-Bashir, accusing it of marginalising the region.

Khartoum cracked down on rebels and since then insurgent groups have fragmented, with fi ghting punctuated by periods of relative calm.

In recent years the level of vi-olence has signifi cantly dropped across Darfur, with Khartoum insisting the confl ict has ended in the region.

The United Nations says about 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003 and another 2.5mn people displaced.

Tens of thousands of people continue to live in sprawling camps like Kalma.

Britain urges ‘stronger measures’ at

UN if no progress on Hodeidah dealReuters UN

The United Nations’ Secu-rity Council should con-sider “stronger measures”

if there was no progress in the coming weeks on a deal between Yemen’s warring parties on a key port, Britain said yesterday, as the UN mediator admitted it was “taking longer than we had hoped.”

In an illustration of the delay, UN Yemen envoy Martin Grif-fi ths told the council both sides had accepted a detailed opera-tional plan for step one in a with-drawal of forces from the Red Sea port and city of Hodeidah — two months after the world body an-nounced an initial deal on that measure.

“Let us be clear that when — and I hope it is when, not if — these redeployments happen they will be the fi rst voluntary

withdrawals of forces in this long confl ict,” Griffi ths told the 15-member council. “Of course it has taken longer than we had hoped but that it should happen at all is extremely welcome.”

The Houthi movement and the Saudi-backed government

initially agreed in December to withdraw troops by Jan 7 from Hodeidah — a lifeline for mil-lions facing famine — under a truce aimed at averting a full-scale assault on the port and paving the way for negotiations to end the four-year war.

Although the ceasefi re agreed for Hodeidah largely holds, vio-lence continues elsewhere and has escalated in recent weeks.

Britain’s UN ambassador Karen Pierce said the lack of im-plementation of the deal reached in Sweden is “very worrying.”

“The stakes are too high for us to let that fail and the council in our view should be ready to take stronger measures if there’s no progress by our next meet-ing,” Pierce told the council, which traditionally meets once a month on Yemen. Griffi ths did not say when the fi rst stage of troop withdrawals from Hodei-dah could start, adding that talks would continue on phase two of a redeployment and the status of local security forces.

Acting US ambassador to the United Nations Jonathan Co-hen warned the Houthis that Washington would be “watching closely to see if they make good on that agreement” to phase one.

A Houthi fighter gestures as he secures the site of a protest by staff ers of the Yemen’s state oil company outside the United Nations’ off ices to demand easing restrictions on oil shipments to Houthi-held ports, in Sanaa, yesterday.

UN Libya envoy says Haftar made coup attempt with advanceReuters Tripoli

Eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar tried to stage a coup by issuing an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj,

UN envoy Ghassan Salame said yesterday with Libya’s top rivals locked in military confrontation over the capital Tripoli.

Haftar’s eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) advanced to the outskirts of Tripoli almost two weeks ago, predicting defections and victory within two days.

However, Serraj’s internationally-recognised government has managed to bog them down in

southern suburbs, thanks largely to armed groups who have rushed to aid them from various west-ern Libyan factions.

Haftar, a 75-year-old former general in the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi ’s army, has been building up troop numbers and intensifying air strikes in a campaign he is selling as necessary to restore order and eradicate jihadists.

But Salame, speaking to BBC radio, said Haftar’s decision to issue in the course of his campaign arrest warrants for Serraj and other top Tripoli offi cials “sounded more like a coup than counter-terrorism”.

Haftar’s side confi rmed the warrant had been issued and Serraj’s government said it had been immediately rejected.

Arab ministers to hold emergency meet to discuss Palestinian issue

Arab foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting next Sunday to discuss the latest developments regarding Palestinian issue in the presence of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Arab League announced yesterday.“The meeting will be held on the 21st of this month at the request of the Palestine State and support from the State of Qatar, Jordan, Somalia

and Algeria to discuss the Palestinian issue in light of recent Israeli election results and the ongoing measures against the Palestinian people, said Assistant Secretary-General of the Arab League Ambassador Hossam Zaki, QNA reported.The meeting is also scheduled to discuss the subject of the Arab financial security network for Palestine.

AFRICA13


Boko Haram raids village near ChibokBoko Haram militants

raided a village near the northeastern Nigerian

town of Chibok just as locals marked the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls fi ve years earlier, vigilantes and residents said yesterday.

The militants late Sunday stormed into Kwarangulum village, 16km (10 miles) from Chibok Town, looting food and destroying property.

The gunmen, who ar-rived aboard four trucks, were “shooting indiscriminately and setting homes on fi re,” local vigilante David Bitrus said.

The militants, believed to be from a Boko Haram faction loy-al to longtime leader Abubakar Shekau, “burned the whole vil-lage after taking what the trucks

could carry” in terms of food, he said.

A Chibok community leader, Ayuba Alamson, said village residents had fl ed hours before the jihadists’ arrival after re-ceiving tip-off s from local peo-

ple who had seen the gunmen heading in their direction.

The attack came just hours after hundreds of Chibok resi-dents rallied at the girls board-ing school in the nearby town to commemorate the April

14, 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls.

Their disappearance sparked outrage and calls for their release from around the world.

Fifty-seven girls escaped shortly after the kidnap, 107

were released after negotiations and 112 remain in captivity.

Recently re-elected Presi-dent Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday promised to rescue the remaining girls.

“We will not rest until all the remaining girls are back and reunited with their families”, he said in a statement released on his Twitter account.

He also promised to secure the rescue of Leah Sharibu, the last remaining captive of the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Dapchi Town, Yobe State, last February.

Boko Haram’s decade-long confl ict has killed 27,000 peo-ple and displaced around two million from their homes in northeast Nigeria.

The violence has spread to nearby Niger, Chad and Cam-eroon, with the aff ected coun-ties forming a regional military coalition to fi ght the group.

AFPKano

Dozens dead in fi ghting between Chad soldiers and Boko Haram militants

Fighting between Chad soldiers and Boko Haram militants killed dozens, including 63 “terrorists”, in an overnight attack on a military base, an army spokesman said yesterday.Seven soldiers were killed and 15 wounded when “the terrorists attacked our forces at midnight in Bouhama... in the Lake Chad region,” Colonel Azem Bermandoa said.He added “63 terrorists were

killed” and the search for other attackers continued.Chad’s Defence Minister Daoud Yaya Brahim and army chief of staff Taher Erda were on their way to the scene of the fighting yesterday to “evaluate the situation,” said Azem.Last month, 23 soldiers were killed in the Lake Chad region in the deadliest attack yet on the Chadian army by Boko Haram, which launched an insurgency in Nigeria a decade ago.

The unrest has spread to neighbouring Niger and Chad with the Boko Haram revolt claiming more than 27,000 lives and uprooting more than 1.7mn people.Troops from Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria have been grouped into a mixed, multi-national force to fight Boko Haram.Since June last year, Boko Haram has struck inside Chad at least seven times. (DPA)

Call for arrests in South Africa after attacks on foreigners

Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged South Af-rican authorities yester-

day to prosecute the perpetrators of deadly xenophobic violence that displaced some 300 Malawi migrants three weeks ago but has yielded no arrests.

From March 25 to 27, mobs armed with metal rods and ma-chetes broke into the homes of foreigners in Durban on South Africa’s east coast, chasing them out and looting their belongings, HRW said.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said at least six foreign nationals were killed and several injured, raising fears of a resurgence of xenophobic bloodshed in a country where poor, jobless peo-ple accuse migrants of taking their work and benefi ts.

About 88 survivors of the Dur-ban attacks asked to be sent back to Malawi as they felt unsafe, ac-cording to representatives of the Malawi High Commission.

Others had no choice but to return to the same informal set-tlement they had been violently chased out of.

“Re-integration of foreign nationals into communities without justice and account-ability for past xenophobic at-tacks is a recipe for disaster,” said HRW’s southern Africa

director Dewa Mavhinga. “To deter those who attack

foreign nationals, there is an ur-gent need for eff ective policing, arrests, and prosecutions.”

The lack of arrests showed “impunity for xenopho-bic crimes,” said the rights watchdog.

Widespread condemnation of the violence prompted emer-gency talks between South Af-rica’s foreign and police minis-ters, Lindiwe Sisulu and Bheki Cele, and diplomats of African countries.

HRW also urged politicians to refrain from statements that “scapegoat migrants and feed anti-foreigner violence,” ahead of May 8 general elections.

It cited remarks by President Cyril Ramaphosa at a party rally in March, when he “blamed un-documented migrants for prob-lems and promised a crackdown”.

The country hosts mil-lions of foreigners, most from African countries and many undocumented.

Immigrants bear much of the anger about chronic unemploy-ment and limited economic gains made by poor black people since white-minority rule ended in 1994.

Violence erupts sporadically, targeting foreign-owned shops and migrants themselves. Sixty-two people were killed in a wave of xenophobic violence in 2008, and at least seven in a fresh outburst in 2015.

AFPJohannesburg

167 rhino horns seized in SA; two arrested South African police have intercepted 167 rhino horns believed to be destined for Southeast Asia, in one of the biggest such hauls ever in the country.Two suspects, aged 57 and 61, were arrested with the horns on Saturday, police said on Sunday. They had been tipped off about the suspects’ vehicle.“The value has not been determined - it’s one of the biggest hauls in the country,” Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi, a police spokesman, said by text message on Monday. The case was still being investigated, he said.Nearly 80% of the world’s rhinos live in South Africa. More than 1,000 rhinos were killed in the

country each year from 2013 to 2017, according to conservation group Save the Rhino.That figure fell below 1,000 in 2018, but it still means more than two rhinos were killed each day of the year. Two rhino species have fewer than 80 animals left in the wild.Poaching is driven by demand for rhino horn - consisting mostly of keratin, found in human nails and hair - in countries like China and Vietnam, where it is used in traditional medicine and also increasingly seen as a symbol of success and wealth.The government and international donors have poured money into anti-poaching measures and securing national parks. (Reuters)

Ivanka Trumpbacks women’s land rights on African trip

Ivanka Trump said she would campaign for women’s right to own and inherit land in

Africa as she visited Ethiopia yesterday to promote a $50mn US development project.

U S President Donald Trump’s daughter, who works as his adviser, told report-ers at the headquarters of the UN Economic Commission for Africa that women made up just 15% of land owners on the continent.

“Eighteen countries in the

world still have laws that al-low husbands to legally pre-vent their wives from work-ing. Half of these countries are in Africa. We can and we must address these barri-ers to women’s equality and countries’ prosperity,” she added.

She did not spell out how she would tackle the problems.

But she was promoting the Women’s Global Develop-ment and Prosperity initiative, which offi cials have said aims to economically empower 50mn women by 2025.

Ivanka Trump met Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and was due to wrap up her

Reuters/DPAAddis Ababa

US Senior White House adviser Ivanka Trump, left, and Ethiopia’s President Sahle-Work Zewde attend a meeting as part of the African Women’s Empowerment Dialogue in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa yesterday.

four-day African trip with a visit to Ivory Coast.

She also visited a church in Addis Ababa to pay her re-spects to the victims of the recent Ethiopian Airlines crash, as her father, US Presi-dent Donald Trump, fi red off a sarcastic tweet about the company that made the aircraft, Boeing.

Ivanka met with religious

leaders representing the di-verse faiths of those killed in the crash, laid a wreath and ob-served a moment of silence at the Holy Trinity Church.

“My heartfelt sympathies to all the victims’ families and loved ones,” she tweeted after the visit.

She announced $350mn to-wards a programme “support-ing women-owned, women-

led and women-supporting projects in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

On her fi rst day of the visit on Sunday, “the fi rst daughter of US” as she is sometimes jok-ingly called, met with Ethiopian businesswomen and partici-pated in a traditional coff ee-drinking ceremony.

Today, she heads to Ivory Coast in West Africa, for the second leg of the trip.

Shipwrecks in Lagos watersbecome a haven of crime

The two men in the mo-torised wooden canoe look around warily as

they leave a towering shipwreck in the Lagos lagoon, with the barrels of oil on board barely concealed under rags.

The rusting hulk of iron and peeling paint has been battered by the elements and is half sub-merged in the water. Sprouts of green shoots on deck indicate how long it has been abandoned.

But on closer inspection, the wreck is a working storage fa-cility for stolen or “bunkered” oil, as it is known in Nigeria.

“Oladele”, a 30-year-old who did not want to publicise his real name, has plied the wa-ters on his boat since he was 15.

He says it’s not the only wreck that stores illegally im-ported oil brought into the port by the huge tankers delivering petrol and gas, then sold on in neighbouring Benin and Togo.

“Every ship does it. They will declare 10 tonnes but bring in 12,” he said.

“We will store them in the tanks, deep inside the wrecks, then at night usually, it will be picked up.”

Middle men could typically make at least $80 to $200 (70 to 180 euros) a trip for several years. “It’s big business,” he said.

Scores of shipwrecks in La-gos’ waterways, coastal waters and on the shores of its beaches have turned parts of its shore-line into a marine cemetery.

In Kiri-Kiri, the lagoon cor-ridor, scores of wrecks and discarded ship scrap provide useful cover to hide illicit goods and barrels of oil and gas.

From there, the waters of-fer an easy route up the Lagos coast to Benin and beyond. Ex-pensive scrap metal culled from unmanned wrecks can be sold for thousands of dollars.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer, churning out about two million barrels a day.

But a lack of fully function-ing refi neries means crude is exported, processed and then imported for use.

Much of it is shipped through the narrow marine corridor into Lagos. Hundreds of ships wait for days on the horizon of the Gulf of Guinea to get into the port and discharge their goods.

On the way in and out they pass the skeletons of scuttled and abandoned ships, some of which have capsized because of the eff ects on the tides of the wrecks.

Yet there are also suspicions that amidst lax marine regula-tion, companies treat Lagos’ waters as a ship refuse site, avoiding incurring the expense of disposing of old vessels.

Experts say the wrecks

act as groynes, halting the fl ow of sand downshore and accelerating erosion.

Lack of regulation on the waters has also helped illicit activity thrive, turning the ghost ships into hideouts for sea criminals.

Small groups of former crew lounge on several of the wrecks, lodging in dim, disused cabins, keeping watch for anyone seek-ing to strip the ships of valuable scrap.

One crew member, who asked not to be identifi ed, said he and three others had worked shifts to stay in the cabin all day and night for 15 months since the ship capsized.

Copper and bronze and the brass from the ship’s propel-ler could be sold for as much as 20,000,000 naira ($55,000), he said.

“People will come and steal valuables that are still here,” he added.

The Nigerian Maritime Ad-ministration and Safety Agen-cy, which polices the country’s waterways, says it is proactive in removing the likely hundreds of wrecks but concede that re-moving them is expensive.

Taibat Lawanson, a profes-sor of urban planning at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), said the price of removal was prohibitive.

“Because removing them is so costly, neither the state

government nor the federal government takes enough re-sponsibility for their removal,” he said.

Small groups of naval of-fi cials, some with uniformed t-shirts, others topless in the sun, bask on the upper decks of confi scated ships.

Tunji Adejumo, a landscape architect and ecologist at UNI-LAG, says the navy has become the main monitoring agency on the coastline.

“Yet even still, many of these shipping companies are able to avoid culpability for leav-ing their wrecks in the water,” he said.

“These shipwrecks hurt the aesthetics of the coast-line. They degrade over time, dumped there but rarely dealt with. And they have serious environmental eff ects.”

In Lighthouse Beach, a most-ly quiet get-away lined by large beach houses, a wreck at the very end of the shore has been a landmark for visitors for years.

In parts of the waterways, scuba-diving and spearfi shing capitalise on the wrecks aes-thetics and the aquatic life it attracts.

Yet many of the wrecks, be-low sea level and invisible above it, present numerous dangers.

A 6:00 pm curfew exists for commercial boats, which is imposed in part to prevent accidents.

AFPLagos

Ivory Coast rains set to improve mid-crop cocoa quality: farmers

Mixed rains fell over Ivory Coast’s cocoa-grow-ing regions last week,

farmers said yesterday, with more showers needed in some areas to boost the April-to-September mid-crop.

The rainy season in the world’s biggest cocoa producer runs from mid-March to late October, with heavy showers expected to begin this month.

Farmers said their harvests had so far been more abundant than last year and that a mix of showers and sunshine would yield a healthier mid-crop than the previous season.

In the western region of Sou-bre, at the heart of the cocoa belt, farmers said the weather would allow them to harvest twice a month until at least July.

“The mid-crop is good, we have already harvested many more beans than last year,” said Julien Beda, who farms near Soubre.

“Sunshine will be very im-portant for the next stage (of the mid-crop).”

Rainfall in Soubre, which in-cludes the regions of Sassandra and San Pedro, was at 27.5mm

ReutersAbidjan

last week, 8mm above the fi ve-year average.

Rainfall was also above aver-age in the southern regions of Agboville and Divo, in the cen-tral region of Bongouanou, and in eastern region of Abengourou, and farmers said they expected large and high-quality beans if the weather remained constant.

But in the centre-western region of Daloa, which produces a quarter of the country’s output, farmers said more downpours were needed to boost the mid-crop.

“Buyers are complaining about the small (sized) beans com-

ing from the bush,” said Albert N’Zue, who farms near Daloa.

“The weather is getting darker and darker. If it starts raining well soon, the mid-crop will fi n-ish beautifully,” N’Zue added.

Data collected by Reuters showed that rainfall in Daloa, including the region of Bouafl e, was at 10.3mm last week, 11.6mm below the fi ve-year average.

Rainfall was also below average in central region of Yamoussoukro and the western region of Man.

Average temperatures ranged between 27.6 and 30.9 degrees Celsius.

A man cuts a cocoa pod from a tree on a plantation in Toumodi, Ivory Coast.

AMERICAS


United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney makes an election campaign visit to members of the Sikh community in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Actress Lori Loughlin said yesterday she will plead not guilty to charges that she participated in what prosecutors say was the largest college admissions scandal uncovered in US history. Loughlin and her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli filed papers in federal court in Boston seeking to waive their personal appearances at an arraignment hearing and have ‘not guilty’ pleas entered on their behalf. They are among 50 people accused of participating in a scheme that allowed wealthy parents to use cheating and bribes to help their children secure spots at universities like Yale, Georgetown and the University of Southern California.

The US Commerce Department has submitted to the White House the results of a national security investigation into uranium imports, a spokesman for the department said yesterday. The ‘Section 232’ probe was prompted by a petition filed by two US uranium mining companies, Ur-Energy Inc and Energy Fuels Inc, complaining that subsidised foreign competitors have caused them to cut capacity and lay off workers. US nuclear power generators oppose the federal government taking action and have argued tariff s or quotas would increase costs for the struggling industry and possibly cause some reactors to shut.

President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign raised more than $30mn in the first quarter of 2019, his campaign said on Sunday, far outpacing the total raised by individual Democratic candidates during that period. Trump’s first-quarter haul, leaving his 2020 re-election effort with $40.8mn in cash, showed Republican donors were willing to invest in him as he girds for what is likely to be a difficult bid for a second term. Senators Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris have led the field of Democratic contenders in fundraising so far in 2019, raising $18.2mn and $12mn respectively in the first quarter.

A Chinese woman, charged with bluff ing her way into US President Donald Trump’s Florida resort last month, yesterday entered a not guilty plea in federal court. Yujing Zhang was formally indicted on Friday with making false statements to a federal off icer and entering or remaining in a restricted area, charges that carry a sentence of up to five years in prison. She entered a not guilty plea during an arraignment yesterday in US District Court in West Palm Beach, Florida. The FBI is examining whether Zhang has any links to intelligence agencies in China or political influence operations, two US government sources have told Reuters. The indictment does not include espionage charges.

Loughlin pleads not guilty in college admissions case

Uranium import probe report sent to W House

Trump 2020 campaign has raised over $30mn

Woman held at Trump resort pleads not guilty

POLITICS FRAUDINVESTIGATION MONEY MATTERS FALSE CLAIM

Trump says Ilhan Omar is ‘out of control’ in fresh attackBy Susan Cornwell, Reuters Washington

President Donald Trump yesterday attacked Democratic

US Representative Ilhan Omar as an “out of control”

purveyor of “hate” speech before leaving for a visit to

the state the Muslim-American represents in Congress.

Writing on Twitter, Trump blasted both Omar and

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for defending Omar after

he tweeted a video on Friday suggesting Omar had been

dismissive of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“Before Nancy, who has lost all control of Congress

and is getting nothing done, decides to defend her

leader, Rep. Omar, she should look at the anti-Semitic,

anti-Israel and ungrateful US HATE statements Omar has

made,” Trump said.

“She is out of control, except for her control of

Nancy!”

Omar’s and Pelosi’s off ices had no comment yester-

day.

The Minnesota congresswoman said on Sunday

evening that she had experienced “an increase in direct

threats on my life — many directly referencing or reply-

ing to the president’s video.”

“Violent rhetoric and all forms of hate speech have

no place in our society, much less from our country’s

Commander in Chief. We are all Americans. This is en-

dangering lives. It has to stop,” Omar wrote in a tweeted

statement.

Marc Lotter, an adviser to Trump’s 2020 re-election

campaign, denied Trump was inciting violence.

“I don’t think it is the president who’s putting her in

danger. I think it’s her ill-thought-out words that she

used to describe the greatest terror attack on the his-

tory of United States soil,” Lotter told CNN yesterday.

The video tweeted by Trump spliced news footage

of 9/11 with a clip from a speech Omar gave last month

in which she said “some people did something” in refer-

ence to the attacks.

Lawmakers from Trump’s Republican Party have

accused Omar of minimizing the September 11 attacks,

while critics of the president say he took Omar’s words

out of context in order to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment.

Later yesterday, Trump was to visit a trucking

company in Burnsville, Minnesota, about 24km outside

Minneapolis.

The venue is in the state’s second congressional dis-

trict, which is south of and partially adjacent to the fifth

congressional district represented by Omar.

The Minnesota branch of the Council on American-

Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and

advocacy group, has said it would hold a rally in support

of Omar outside the company.

Omar was speaking at a CAIR banquet in California in

March when she made her controversial remarks about

9/11.

Omar also said Muslims had “lived with the discom-

fort of being a second-class citizen and, frankly, I’m tired

of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be

tired of it.”

The White House said Sunday that Trump did not

wish any harm in his Twitter post about Omar.

The House of Representatives approved a broad

resolution condemning bigotry last month after remarks

by Omar that some members of both parties viewed as

anti-Semitic.

Redacted Mueller report coming out on ThursdayReuters Washington

Attorney General William Barr plans to release a re-dacted version of Special

Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 US election and contacts between Moscow and President Donald Trump’s campaign on Thursday morning, the Justice Department said yesterday.

Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec did not provide a precise time, but said the report, which Barr has described as nearly 400 pages long, will be released both to Congress and the public.

Moments after the department announced its plans for releasing the report, the Republican presi-dent went to Twitter to make an-other attack on Mueller’s team and derided the “Russia Hoax.”

The Mueller investigation has cast a cloud over the presidency of Trump, who has often called it a

politically motivated “witch hunt.”Mueller turned over a copy of

his confi dential report to Barr on March 22, ending his 22-month-long inquiry. Two days later, Barr released a four-page letter summa-rizing what he said were Mueller’s primary conclusions.

In that letter to Congress, Barr said Mueller’s investigation did not estab-lish that members of Trump’s elec-

tion campaign conspired with Russia.Barr also wrote that Mueller pre-

sented evidence “on both sides” about whether Trump obstructed justice, but he did not draw a con-clusion one way or the other.

Barr said that he reviewed Mu-eller’s evidence and made his own determination that Trump did not commit the crime of obstruction of justice.

Barr has been under pressure from Democrats to release the full report without redactions.

Barr, a Trump appointee, has pledged to be as transparent as possible.

But he has said he will redact some sensitive information, in-cluding grand jury information and information about US intelligence-gathering.

After Barr released his four-page letter, Trump claimed “complete and total exoneration,” condemned “an illegal takedown that failed” and accused unnamed political en-emies of treasonous acts.

The redactions in the report will be colour-coded by category, ac-cording to Barr, explaining the rea-sons that parts are blacked out.

Since Barr released his letter, Trump has set his sights on the FBI, and accused the Justice Depart-ment of improperly targeting his campaign.

Last week, Barr told a US Senate panel he believed that “spying” did occur on Trump’s campaign, and he plans to investigate whether it was properly authorized.

“I think spying did occur,” Barr, the top US law enforcement offi cer, told the lawmakers. “But the ques-tion is whether it was adequately predicated.”

Barr’s comments were criticised by Democrats, who are already sceptical of how the attorney gen-eral has handled the report’s release.

Trump, Barr and Mueller ... diff erent strokes

A woman poses for a picture in front of blooming trees at Central Park New York City.

Walk in the parkThunderstorms strike East Coast, leave thousands without powerReutersNew York

Severe thunderstorms blasted the US East Coast with gusts of

wind up to 80kph yesterday morning, knocking out power in thousands of homes and putting several states on fl ood watch, the National Weather Service said.

More than 54,000 homes and businesses were without power in Pennsylvania, ac-cording to the tracking site PowerOutage, with 139,000 more outages reported across New York, Rhode Island, Vir-ginia, North Carolina, Mary-land and New Jersey.

The National Weather Service forecast heavy rains and fl ash fl ooding for the Northeast till late yesterday.

“This is an ongoing threat,” said Brian Hurley, from the center. “There are short spin-

ups, pockets of heavy rain and damaging winds that can still hit before this pushes off shore.”

The storm system picked up strength in the US South over the weekend, where it spurred tornadoes that killed at least fi ve people, including three children, offi cials said.

The massive storm sys-tem sped from Texas east-ward with dozens of twisters reported as touching down across the South from Texas through Georgia into Penn-sylvania.

The storm’s cold front brought snow to Chicago on Sunday, with 2.5cm to 7.6cm reported in central Illinois.

Two children, siblings aged three and eight, were killed on Saturday when a tree fell on the car in which they were sitting in Pollok, Texas, a spokeswoman for the Ange-lina County Sheriff ’s Depart-ment said.

A third child, Sebastian Omar Martinez, 13, drowned late on Saturday when he fell into a drainage ditch fi lled with fl ash fl oodwaters near Monroe, Louisiana, Deputy Glenn Springfi eld of the Oua-chita Parish Sheriff ’s Offi ce said.

In another storm death nearby, an unidentifi ed vic-tim’s body was trapped in a vehicle submerged in fl ood-waters in Calhoun, Louisiana, Springfi eld said.

In Mississippi, Governor Phil Bryant said one person was killed and 11 injured over the weekend as tornadoes ripped through 17 counties and left 26,000 homes and businesses without electric-ity.

In addition, three people were killed when a private jet crashed in Mississippi on Sat-urday, although Bryant said it was unclear whether it was caused by the weather.

Measles cases surged nearly 20% in a week

AFPNew York

Measles cases in the United States surged nearly 20% over the past week to 555,

even as authorities in New York, site of the two biggest outbreaks, faced court challenges over their attempts to compel vaccinations.

The new fi gures released yester-day by the Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention showed there were 90 additional confi rmed cases as of April 11 from the previous week, bringing the total for the year to 555.

The latest US tally came as the World Health Organization reported a 300 % increase in measles cases worldwide in the fi rst three months of 2019.

Driven by a spreading US move-ment against vaccinations, the US fl areup is the second worst since the highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease was offi cially declared eradicated in 2000.

Detected in 20 US states, the big-gest measles hotspots are in New York City, with 285 cases in a popu-

lation of 8.5mn people, and New York’s Rockland County, with 184 confi rmed cases out of 300,000 in-habitants.

To stem the epidemic, both Rock-land County and the New York mayor’s offi ce have declared health emergencies and taken extraordinary measures, to the great displeasure of opponents of vaccines.

On April 9, New York City ordered the vaccination of every person liv-ing or working in the four most heavily aff ected areas in the Wil-liamsburg sector of Brooklyn, under penalty of criminal prosecution and a $1,000 fi ne.

In Rockland County, which lies about 40 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River, authori-ties last month barred all unvacci-nated minors from public places.

Those actions have been chal-lenged in court, refl ecting the in-tensity of emotions surrounding the issue.

In Rockland, a judge granted a temporary injunction on the ban af-ter parents charged that it was dis-proportionate since the measles out-break has not claimed any lives yet.

In New York City, fi ve parents fi led suit yesterday with the state Su-preme Court, seeking to overturn the mayor’s vaccination order.

“There is insufficient evidence of a measles epidemic or dangerous outbreak to justify the respond-ents’ extraordinary measures, in-cluding forced vaccination,” the suit argues.

New York state requires school age children to receive a series of vaccinations before being inte-grated in the school system, but the law authorizes waivers for religious reasons, which are now being chal-lenged.

Besides the infl uence of the anti-vaccination movement, the con-troversy has a religious dimension because most of the New York cases have occurred in areas with large Or-thodox Jewish populations.

The lawyer for the parents who brought yesterday’s suit, Robert Krakow, stressed, however, that two of them were not Jewish.

And a number of leaders of the Or-thodox Jewish community have said there is nothing in the religion that prohibits vaccination.

Mnuchin ‘analysing law’ on Trump tax return request

ReutersWashington

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said yesterday he will follow the law regarding Congress’ request for President Donald Trump’s tax returns but reiterated his concerns

about lawmakers’ demands for the documents.“We’re analysing the law, we’re consulting with the Depart-

ment of Justice,” Mnuchin said in an interview on Fox Business Network.

Congressional Democrats and the Trump administration are headed for a legal showdown after House Ways and Means Com-mittee Chairman Richard Neal imposed an April 23 deadline for the documents.

“I will follow the law,” Mnuchin told the cable network, add-ing that he would also review related “constitutional issues” carefully. He is involved in the decision since the department has oversight of the IRS.

Mnuchin reiterated his concern that Democrats’ demand could lead the federal tax agency to become a tool for political disputes.

Trump bucked decades of tradition by not releasing his tax re-turns when he ran for the White House in 2016 and won.

The president last week said people do not care about his tax returns and repeated that he would release them except that they are being audited by the IRS, but off ered no evidence of the agen-cy’s review.

Tax experts have said an IRS audit would not prevent an indi-vidual from making their returns public.

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA17Gulf Times


Malaysia former PM Najib’s 1MDB corruption trial resumesAFPKuala Lumpur

Toppled Malaysian leader Najib Razak returned to court for the second day

of his high-profi le corruption trial yesterday, with the former premier accused of plunder-ing large sums from scandal-hit state fund 1MDB.

The 65-year-old fi nally went on trial this month over his al-leged role in looting the invest-ment vehicle, the fi rst of several

court cases he is expected to face over the controversy.

The ex-prime minister and his cronies are accused of steal-ing billions of dollars from 1MDB and spending it on everything from high-end real estate to art-works and a luxury yacht.

The allegations played a large part in prompting voters to oust his corruption-plagued coali-tion, which had been in power for six decades, at historic elec-tions last year. Since then, Najib has been arrested and hit with dozens of charges over the scan-

dal. The ex-leader’s highly-an-ticipated trial began on April 3, with Najib denying seven charg-es related to the theft of 42mn ringgit ($10.2mn) from SRC In-ternational, a former 1MDB unit.

It is just a fraction of the money Najib is accused of steal-ing – he has also been charged in a separate case over the alleged transfer of $681mn to his bank account.

He arrived at the High Court in Kuala Lumpur yesterday for the second day of proceed-ings, wearing a dark suit and tie,

and passed through a scrum of journalists before entering the courtroom and taking his seat in the dock.

The main witness called yes-terday was Azizul Adzani Abdul Ghafar, an investigating offi cer from the central bank, who was part of a team that raided the branch of a local lender, Am-Bank. The offi cers seized docu-ments related to accounts held by Najib at the bank, accounts belonging to SRC International, and accounts held by another company. The stolen money

from SRC was allegedly sent to Najib’s accounts at AmBank.

Earlier Najib’s defence team cross-examined Companies Commission of Malaysia offi cial Muhamad Akmaluddin Abdul-lah, who had testifi ed when the trial opened, on matters related to SRC’s records.

After the trial was adjourned for the day, Najib’s chief lawyer Muhamad Shafee Abdullah said the prosecution would have to prove the ex-leader knew the money fl ows were illicit to con-vict him.

“There can be many transac-tions. The issue is does (Najib) know the exact thing that is go-ing on, does he know in fact it is from illegal sources?” he told reporters outside court.

“The prosecution need to show that he is complicit, that he is part of the conspiracy.”

Najib has consistently denied any wrongdoing over the loot-ing of 1MDB. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who came out of retirement to lead an alli-ance to a shock election victory against Najib’s government last

year, has pledged to bring Najib to justice and recoup the huge sums of cash stolen from 1MDB. The US Department of Justice, which is investigating the 1MDB controversy as money was al-legedly laundered through the American fi nancial system, be-lieves $4.5bn in total was looted from the fund.

Malaysia has also charged Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs over the scandal, alleging the bank and its former employ-ees stole billions of dollars from 1MDB.

Moon pushes for North Korea talks despite standoff ReutersSeoul

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said yester-day he will pursue “in ear-

nest” another summit with Kim Jong-un despite the North Korean leader’s recent criticism of Seoul’s self-proclaimed role as a mediator in stalled nuclear talks.

Moon has been eager to regain momentum in talks with North Korea since Kim’s second sum-mit with US President Donald Trump, in Vietnam in February, failed due to confl icting demands by Pyongyang for sanctions relief and by Washington for sweeping North Korean measures to aban-don its nuclear programme.

Kim said in a speech on Friday that he was willing to hold an-other summit with Trump if the United States changed its calcu-lation and off ered a “proper atti-tude and a methodology”, setting a year-end deadline.

While North Korea and the United States have been discuss-ing the North’s denuclearisation, US ally South Korea has been tak-ing steps to improve its ties with its old rival. Moon and Kim have held three meetings over the past year, and Moon’s administration has been keen for a fourth, pos-sibly to mark the anniversary of the fi rst one on April 27. Moon,

who visited Washington to meet Trump last week, said Kim’s lat-est address “set the stage” for a fourth inter-Korean summit, which could be a “stepping stone for an even bigger opportunity and a more signifi cant outcome”.

“Now is the time to begin the preparations in earnest,” Moon told a meeting with senior secre-

taries, noting that as soon as the North Koreans were ready, he was willing to meet Kim “regardless of venue and form”.

In his fi rst public remarks since Kim’s address, Moon said he “very much welcomed” that speech, saying it showed Kim’s “unwa-vering” commitment toward de-nuclearisation and the reopening

of negotiations. But Moon did not specifi cally respond to Kim’s criticism that South Korea was too subservient to the “anachro-nistic arrogance and hostile policy of the United States”, and that the South’s military persisted in “veiled hostility” by conducting exercises with US forces.

Kim said South Korea should

not “pose as a meddlesome ‘me-diator’ and ‘facilitator’” between the North and the United States. North Korea’s state media on Saturday issued a commentary criticising South Korea’s purchase of fi ghter jets, including two re-cently delivered F-35A jets from the United States, calling it a “se-rious provocative act” that could

intensify tension on the Korean peninsula. However, Kim said he remained committed to improv-ing relations with South Korea if it showed its “sincerity by practical action, not by words”.

Any signifi cant improvement in ties between the two Koreas could depend on progress between North Korea and the United States

on the North’s denuclearisation and that looks doubtful, with neither side showing willingness to make concessions. Trump em-phasised during last week’s talks with Moon that he was willing to meet Kim again but would not lift sanctions until the North took meaningful steps to dismantle its nuclear programmes.

Kim Jong-un, Moon Jae-in in North Korea in a file picture.

Students participate in a mass dance performance as part of celebrations marking the anniversary of the birth of late North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, known as the ‘Day of the Sun’, at the Monument to the Worker’s Party Founding, in Pyongyang yesterday.

New Zealand nurse kidnapped by IS fi ve years ago may be alive: Red CrossAFPGeneva

A New Zealand nurse be-lieved abducted with two drivers by Islamic State

militants in Syria in 2013 may still be alive, the International Com-mittee of the Red Cross has re-vealed for the fi rst time in an ap-peal for news of her whereabouts.

Louisa Akavi was snatched along with Syrian drivers Alaa Rajab and Nabil Bakdounes while travelling in a Red Cross convoy delivering supplies to Idlib, in the northwest of the country. Armed men stopped their convoy on October 13, 2013, and abducted seven people, four of whom were released the following day.

The ICRC said it believed they were abducted by the Is-lamic State group (IS). “Our lat-est credible information indi-cates that Louisa was alive in late 2018,” the group said Sunday in a statement from Geneva. “The ICRC has never been able to learn more details about Alaa and Na-bil, and their fate is not known.”

New Zealand said it disa-greed with making the abduc-tion public but did confi rm it had dispatched a special forces unit to Syria to search for Akavi. “This has involved members of the NZDF (New Zealand defence force) drawn from the Special Operations Force, and personnel have visited Syria from time to time as required,” New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Win-ston Peters said yesterday. “This

non-combat team was specifi -cally focused on locating Louisa and identifying opportunities to recover her.

“The eff orts to locate and re-cover Louisa are ongoing, and there are a number of operational or intelligence matters the gov-ernment won’t be commenting on,” he said.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern expressed disap-pointment at the information re-leased by the ICRC and refused to answer questions at her weekly press conference yesterday.

“It absolutely remains the government’s view that it would be preferable if this case was not in the public domain,” she said. Peters said information about the kidnapping had not been

previously released for fear that any publicity would place the hostages at greater risk, and New Zealand media outlets which knew Akavi had been taken hos-tage agreed not to publish the story.

“In these situations the pri-ority must be the safety of the hostage and we received clear advice that any publicity would place Louisa at even greater risk,” Peters said. “The government is very grateful for the co-opera-tion of media outlets over many years in respecting this advice and undertaking not to publish ... and we thank them for their principled approach.”

ICRC operations director Dominik Stillhart said it was an “extremely diffi cult time” for

the families of the three. “Louisa is a true and compassionate hu-manitarian. Alaa and Nabil were committed colleagues and an in-tegral part of our aid deliveries.

“We call on anyone with infor-mation to please come forward. If our colleagues are still being held, we call for their immediate and unconditional release.”

Akavi had carried out 17 fi eld missions with the ICRC and the New Zealand Red Cross, the statement said. Rajab and Bak-dounes were “dedicated hus-bands and caring fathers”, it added. A spokesman for Akavi’s family, Tuaine Robati, said she knew the dangers she faced.

“She’s been through tough times in her job before but she’s stuck at it because she loves it,” he said. “Louisa is an incredibly experienced nurse and aid work-er who knew the risks of her job. Our family misses her very much and is concerned for her safety.”

The war in Syria, which began in 2011, has claimed more than 370,000 lives and forced millions of people to fl ee their homes. The Kurdish-led SDF, backed by a US-led coalition, captured the last IS bastion in eastern Syria on March 23, and had detained thousands of suspected IS fi ght-ers. But this could make it more diffi cult to fi nd Akavi.

The New York Times has re-ported the Red Cross has reason to believe she is alive, because at least two people described see-ing her in December at a clinic in Sousa, one of the fi nal villages to be held by IS militants.

Ardern’s approval rating rises

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who was praised at home and abroad for her handling of the Christch-urch mosques shooting last month, received her highest approval rating since taking off ice in a widely watched poll yesterday. The 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton political survey showed 51% of respondents said Ardern was their preferred prime minister, climbing seven percentage points from the last poll in February. Its the first political survey since a lone gunman killed 50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch on March 15.

Ratings for Ardern’s rival, op-position National Party leader Simon Bridges, dropped one percentage point to 5%. Party vote results also showed Ard-ern’s Labour Party rising three percentage points to 48% while the National’s rating dropping to its lowest since September 2017, at 40%. “All I know is that I’m doing my job to the best of my ability,” Ardern told 1News when asked about the poll result. Since coming to power in 2017, Ardern’s coalition government has faced several challenges including weak busi-ness confidence, emboldened unions and a slowing economy.

China says Japan should do more to seek co-operation, not competitionReutersBeijing

China urged Japan yester-day to do more to follow through on its intention of

seeking co-operation with China rather than competition, warn-ing that there was still weakness in their relationship. China and Japan have sparred frequently about their painful history, with Beijing often accusing Tokyo of not properly atoning for Japan’s invasion of China before and during World War II.

Ties between China and Japan, the world’s second and third-largest economies, have also been plagued by a long-running territorial dispute over a cluster of East China Sea islets and sus-picion in China about Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ef-

forts to amend Japan’s pacifi st constitution.

But they have sought to im-prove relations more recently, with Abe visiting Beijing in October, when both countries pledged to forge closer ties and signed a broad range of agree-ments including a $30bn cur-rency swap pact.

The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, told Japanese Foreign Minis-ter Taro Kono in Beijing that the improvement in relations was in an initial phase.

“There are major opportuni-ties, and there are also sensi-tivities and weaknesses,” China’s foreign ministry cited Wang as saying.

“The Japanese side has said many times that China and Japan should turn competition into co-ordination, and (we) hope that

Japan can take even more actual steps in this regard.” The two countries should constructively manage and control their diff er-ences through dialogue, and pro-mote the long-term, healthy and steady development of relations, Wang added.

Japan’s foreign ministry spokesman, Takeshi Osuga, told reporters in Beijing that the talks, which included Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, had covered a wide variety of topics, including the East China Sea and North Korea. While Japan is keen for closer economic ties with its biggest trading partner, it must man-age that rapprochement without upsetting its key security ally, the United States.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is likely to visit Japan this year, as it is the host nation for the G20 summit.

Scribes facing contempt charges over Pell trial defend their work

Three dozen Australian journalists and media outlets facing contempt of court allegations over their coverage of Cardinal George Pell’s child sexual abuse trial defended their position yesterday, saying the case could have a “chilling” eff ect on open justice and democracy. The legal battle over their coverage is unprecedented in Australian history. The first, purely administrative, direc-tions hearing took place yesterday before the state’s Supreme Court in Melbourne. Ex-Vatican treasurer Pell was sentenced in March to six years in prison for sexually assaulting two choirboys. Reporting on his legal

proceedings in any format acces-sible in Australia was banned under a court suppression order last year to prevent a second trial — which was later dropped — from being influenced by the first trial.State prosecutors hold that the journalists did not fully follow the court suppression order and allege that the media outlets and journal-ists prejudiced and interfered with “due administration of justice.” The journalists face prison or a fine for contempt of court, aiding and abetting overseas media, breaching a suppression order, and for publish-ing materials that “had the eff ect of

scandalising the court.” The state of Victoria’s director of public prosecu-tions has named 23 journalists, news editors, radio and television hosts and 13 media outlets. None of those facing the allegations appeared at the court. They were represented jointly by two lawyers. “The proceed-ings raise very serious allegations against 13 media organisations. It is as significant as it gets in terms of convictions,” lawyer Matthew Collins, who is representing the media, told the court yesterday, according to The Age newspaper. The paper’s news editor is among those facing charges.

BRITAIN


Appointmentshortage forceswomen to delaycancer tests: pollDaily MailLondon

Almost half of women have delayed life-saving cervi-cal cancer tests because

they could not get an appoint-ment at their GP surgery, a poll revealed yesterday.

Experts said the procedure was becoming increasing “in-accessible” due to a shortage of available slots at under-pressure surgeries.

More than a quarter of women say they have missed their smear test altogether because they were unable to make a consultation. For a fi fth, this had happened “multiple” times, with some admitting they had waited fi ve years before eventually being screened.

Cervical screening attendance is at its worst level in two dec-ades and just 71% of the eligible population are up-to-date on their tests.

Campaigners said women who had fi nally plucked up the cour-age to pick up the phone were then put off by the long waits and lack of appointments.

Cervical cancer is the most common form of cancer in the under-35s and there are 3,200 new cases in the UK each year, and 1,000 deaths.

But this mortality rate would be signifi cantly higher were it not for the NHS’s screening pro-gramme, which detects abnor-mal cells before they develop into tumours.

Women are invited to have smear tests every three years from the ages of 25 to 49, and then every fi ve years up to the age of 65.

But many GP surgeries are understaff ed and struggling to meet the needs of their patients, particularly in areas where the population is rising.

Some can only off er smear test clinics on one day a week or only have one nurse to carry them out,

who may be on holiday or off sick.

Many GP practices have long waiting lists and consultations are frequently cancelled at the last minute, when women have already booked time off work.

The survey of 2,037 women, conducted by Jo’s Cervical Can-cer Trust on behalf of the Daily Mail, found that 43% of women had been forced to delay their test at least once because they could not get an appointment.

Another 27% said they had missed that year’s smear test completely because they were unable to make a slot. Among the women who had missed or de-layed the procedure, 41% report-ed waiting a year or more before fi nally having it done.

This included 9% who said they had waited fi ve years or more and 3% who waited more than ten years.

Without screening, cervical cancer is extremely diffi cult to diagnose and there aren’t usu-ally any symptoms in the early stages.

Often by the time the signs do appear, tumours have spread to other organs. Robert Music, chief executive of Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, said: “Women who have taken a long time to pluck up the courage to pick up the phone are then told it’s four weeks, eight weeks or call back.

“There’s a worry that they’ll get disenchanted, lose confi dence and they may not book again. That’s our biggest concern.

“We’ve got this amazing pro-gramme which saves 5,000 lives every year but it’s becoming more and more inaccessible.”

Caroline Lucas, the Green Par-ty MP for Brighton said: “There are very serious concerns that women are fi nding it very dif-fi cult to get an appointment for a smear test and that ministers aren’t properly addressing this.

“Smear tests save lives and ministers cannot ignore this vital question of access.”

London leads global climate protestsAFPLondon

Climate change protest-ers brought a bridge in London to a standstill

and choked off central streets at the start of a civil disobedi-ence campaign that also saw action in other parts of Europe.

The so-called “Extinction Rebellion” is being organ-ised to attract attention to the slow response of govern-ments around the world to ris-ing temperatures and sea lev-els caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The grassroots group was established last year in Brit-

ain by academics and has used social media to gain followers and become one of the fastest-growing environmental move-ments in the world.

More than a thousand peo-ple blocked off central Lon-don’s Waterloo Bridge and potted plants along its length as yesterday’s largely peaceful events kicked off.

Evening saw some start to set up camps in Hyde Park in the shadow of the famed Mar-ble Arch in preparation for more rallies over the coming two days.

“I’m here because our gen-eration is going to be affected by this,” said 22-year-old Ruby Brookman. “Our generation is

getting more open, there is a vibe,” she said.

Campaigners also daubed graffiti and smashed a window at the UK offices of energy gi-ant Royal Dutch Shell.

“Shell knows!”, said one sign spray painted on the building. “Crime scene,” said another.

Police officers detained suspects at the building while demonstrators held up a ban-ner reading “fossil fuels are killing us”.

The group’s goals include reducing greenhouse gas emis-sions to net zero by 2025 and to halt biodiversity loss.

“The plan is disruption and that disruption escalates un-til you get the attention of the

people you are persuading to change,” movement spokes-man Larch Maxey said.

About 100 activists in Berlin organised a sit-in that blocked a major bridge for two hours.

A couple of dozen people also blocked one of the entrances of the entrance of Spain’s Repsol energy company in Madrid with a sign reading: “THERE IS NO PLANet B”. But the most colour-ful — and disruptive — protests saw people set up vegetarian food stalls and roll out wheel-barrows to renowned London street intersections such as Pic-cadilly and Oxford Circus.

Many families with children took part.

Oliver Paines was part of a

group of people who protested in the public gallery of parlia-ment’s House of Commons on April 1. “We are farmers. Twenty years ago we saw the way farming was industrial-ised, destroying and damaging human life with pesticides,” the 68-year-old Cornwall res-ident said.

“Every day, we see evi-dence of the planet in crisis.” Fellow Cronwall native Sally Hole agreed. “We’ve been ig-noring scientist reports,” the 34-year-old said. “Our house is on fire,” she said. “Weather becomes more and more un-predictable, I believe that is going to continue. What do we do when we run out of food?”

Environmental activists erect tents near Marble Arch during a demonstration by the Extinction Rebellion group in London yesterday.

Ex-soldier to face trial for 1972 Derry boy’s killingGuardian News and MediaLondon

The veteran, identifi ed as “Soldier B”, will face the charge of murdering

15-year-old Daniel Hegarty in the Creggan area of Derry, pros-ecutors have announced.

He will also be charged with wounding with intent in the case of the teenager’s cousin, Chris-topher Hegarty, then aged 17, who was shot and injured in the incident.

The shootings occurred on July 31, 1972, during Operation Motorman, when thousands of troops were deployed into Derry and Belfast to break into so-called no-go areas – republican districts where the security forc-es could not previously enter.

The Hegarty family, who have been campaigning for decades for the soldier to be prosecuted for the killing, last year won the right to seek his prosecution after

the high court quashed a Public Prosecution Service (PPS) deci-sion not to bring criminal charges against him.

Members of the family were informed of the decision to launch the prosecution at a pri-vate meeting yesterday with Stephen Herron, the director of public prosecutions for Northern Ireland.

Herron said in a statement that he had conducted a review of the case based on all available evidence and had given particu-lar consideration to Soldier B’s ill health, after seeing an updated medical report.

The review included mate-rial obtained in the course of the initial investigation and by a later investigation carried out by the Historical Enquiries Team, a po-lice unit set up to investigate un-solved murders during Northern Ireland’s Troubles. It also drew on material generated by inquest proceedings and a number of ex-pert forensic reports, including

one provided after the court rul-ing in 2018.

“I have concluded that the evidence which can be presented at court is suffi cient to provide a reasonable prospect of convic-tion and that the evidential test for prosecution is met,” Herron added.

“As with all cases, I have also carefully considered whether the public interest requires prosecu-tion through the courts.

“In line with our Code for Prosecutors, I have concluded, given the seriousness of the charges, that the public interest test for prosecution is also met.” The British government apolo-gised in 2007 to the Hegarty family for previously describing the teenager as a terrorist.

A ministry of defence spokes-person said: “We note the deci-sion taken by the Northern Ire-land Public Prosecution Service, and we will off er full legal and pastoral support to the individual aff ected.”

One in fi ve post offi ces‘could close in next year’

Guardian News and MediaLondon

More than one in fi ve post offi ces could disappear over the next 12 months

as the often self-employed post-masters struggle to earn a living amid lower wages and falling customer demand.

A survey of 1,000 post offi ce workers by the National Federa-tion of SubPostmasters (NFSP) found that 22% are planning to close, hand on their business, or downsize over the next year as they go without holidays and take on extra jobs to make ends meet.

There are about 11,500 post offi ces in the UK, having almost halved in number over the last 30 years. Major retailers such as WHSmith and Ryman feature post offi ce counters in some of their stores, but the majority of postmasters are self-employed small business owners, often op-erating a neighbourhood post of-fi ce inside a shop.

Postmasters are unhappy with the amount they are paid by the Post Offi ce for the individual transactions they process, and about three quarters (76%) of those surveyed said they earned less than the hourly national minimum wage per hour for the work they do.

Their biggest concerns in-clude falling incomes and high-er costs, low transaction rates for banking services, more cus-tomers using Royal Mail servic-es directly via the Internet, and fewer using a Post Office card account.

Calum Greenhow, chief ex-ecutive of the NFSP, himself a subpostmaster for 23 years, said it was easy to understand why so many wanted to give it up.

“We can see how easy it would be for subpostmasters to lose faith and feel disenfranchised, to feel the system is working against them.

“For many of you, your feet are going to do the talking,” he said.

People walk on the beach at New Brighton, north west England at sunset, with the Burbo Bank wind farm on the Irish Sea in the background.

Walk on the beach

Downing Street under pressure to end Labour talks on BrexitGuardian News and MediaLondon

No 10 is feeling the pres-sure to pull the plug on Brexit talks with Labour

and move to an alternative plan, amid warnings that the opposi-tion is in no hurry for a deal be-fore the European elections.

With talks deadlocked and no sign of the government mov-ing on its red lines, neither the Conservatives or Labour want to appear responsible for the break-down in discussions.

However, government sources acknowledge Theresa May is under much greater time pres-sure than Labour, which has little incentive to do a deal before the European and local elections that are likely to result in the Con-servatives suff ering heavy losses to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party.

Ministers and their opposition counterparts are taking part in working groups on some issues this week, but there will be no discussion before Easter on the big issues of a customs union or a confi rmatory referendum, mak-ing it easy for Labour to reject the

prime minister’s overtures so far.The government’s alternative

plan is for MPs to thrash out an acceptable version of May’s deal through a series of votes or by amending the withdrawal bill, but experts said there was barely enough time to do this in the fi ve weeks before the European elec-tions.

Nikki da Costa, formerly the legislative aff airs director in No 10, suggested getting the with-drawal bill passed by May 22 would “require a level of legisla-tive aggression from government not seen in this parliament”.

There is also concern in No 10 that Labour may not get behind the plan to let MPs amend the withdrawal bill to fi nd a way for-ward. Downing Street is worried that if the withdrawal bill were to be voted down before the stage of amendments, May would have to prorogue parliament and start again by bringing it forward with a new session and Queen’s speech, a move also fraught with diffi culties given the government’s weakened relationship with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

However, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, warned yes-

terday that a failure to fi nd some way of getting agreement for a deal before the European elec-tions would be “highly, extreme-ly, very, very challenging” for May, suggesting she may struggle to cling on longer as prime minis-ter if that were the case.

“That would be a very seri-ous situation – I don’t pretend otherwise – but we aren’t at that point,” he said, during a visit to Ja-pan. Asked if fi ghting the elections would be a disaster for the Tories, he told the BBC: “In terms of poll-ing, it certainly looks that way”.

He even suggested the Con-

servatives may have to go back into talks with the DUP, which has repeatedly rejected May’s withdrawal agreement on ac-count of the backstop that could keep Northern Ireland in a cus-toms union. “We don’t know if they are going to work and it may be that we need to fi nd a way to rebuild the Conservative-DUP coalition,” Hunt said.

Other Conservatives believe the European elections are now all but inevitable, despite May’s claims that they are avoidable. One Con-servative MEP told the Guardian that it was “cloud cuckoo land” to

think European elections can be avoided at this stage.

Conservative party offi cials are privately acknowledging the party will lose around half of their MEPs. The party is so con-cerned about defections to the Brexit party and Change UK that all candidates are being asked to sign legal undertakings that they would resign as MEPs if they were to jump ship for another party.

“They are worried about losing MEPs on both ends of the spec-trum. It could be a major embar-rassment,” one candidate to be-come an MEP said.

Liverpoolfalls silentto markHillsboroughdisaster

AFPLiverpool

The English city of Liverpool fell silent yesterday to mark the 30th anniversary of the

Hillsborough football stadium disaster, which claimed the lives of 96 Reds supporters.

Mourners lit a lantern for each of the fans who were crushed to death at the FA Cup semi-fi nal held at the stadium in Sheffi eld on April 15, 1989.

Banners spelling out the letters “never forgotten” were hung from the city’s St George’s Hall, above the lanterns, fl owers and pictures of the victims.

“The support this city, and the people of Liverpool have shown us, all of us families has been tre-mendous,” said Louise Brookes, whose brother Andrew died in the disaster. “They’ve never let us down. They’ve never failed us. They continue to support us.”

Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson, who laid a wreath on behalf of the people of the city, said it was “a day for the people to remember and support the families.

“For 30 years the city is united behind their families and gave them as much support as they possibly could do, emotionally and standing shoulder to shoulder with them. That’s all we can do.”

The city fell silent at 3.06pm (1406GMT), the time the match between Liverpool and Notting-ham Forest was stopped, in hon-our of the victims, while fl ags on civil buildings were fl own at half mast. Fans also placed fl owers and balloons at the memorial at Liver-pool’s Anfi eld Stadium.

The police commander at the disaster faces a retrial after a jury earlier this month failed to reach a verdict over his role in the deaths.

Dozens of relatives of the vic-tims who had gathered in Liver-pool — 40kms away — gasped as the jury foreman told the court they could not reach a unanimous decision on charges of gross neg-ligence manslaughter against re-tired chief superintendent David Duckenfi eld.

Corbyn backsIS bride’s rightto legal aid incitizenship fi ghtGuardian News and MediaLondon

Jeremy Corbyn has joined lawyers and human rights groups in defending the right

of Shamima Begum to be granted legal aid so that the east London teenager can challenge the deci-sion to remove her UK citizenship.

The Labour leader said that, whatever crimes Begum was ac-cused of after she left the UK to join Islamic State in Syria, she was entitled to proper legal represen-tation.

“She is a British national and therefore she has that right, like any of us do, to apply for legal aid if she has a problem. She has legal rights, just like anybody else does,” he told reporters yesterday.

“The whole point of legal aid is that if you’re facing a prosecution then you’re entitled to be repre-sented and that’s a fundamental rule of law, a fundamental point in any democratic society.”

The Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said the idea Begum could receive taxpayer funding to chal-lenge the decision to remove her citizenship made him “very un-comfortable”.

“She knew the choices she was making, so I think we made deci-sions about her future based on those choices,” he said.

The row over Begum’s enti-tlement to publicly funded legal support grew further yesterday as the solicitor representing her family accused the government of breaching the Offi cial Secrets Act by selectively leaking intelligence reports to sympathetic media, damaging her reputation.

Tasnime Akunjee, who repre-sents the family, also revealed he

was acting on behalf of others held in Syrian camps who had been stripped of their nationality rights. He said the number of such cases was likely to grow.

Akunjee is representing Be-gum’s family pro bono; they have not applied for legal aid. Begum’s case, however, has been trans-ferred to the fi rm of Birnberg Peirce, which holds a legal aid cer-tifi cate and has applied on her be-half for the fi nancial support. The fi rm did not immediately confi rm whether it had yet been awarded.

A Legal Aid Agency spokes-person said: “We are unable to comment on individual cases. Anybody applying for legal aid in a Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) case is subject to strict eligibility tests.”

Begum, now 19, should be al-lowed to appeal against the deci-sion of the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, to deprive her of her citizen-ship, Akunjee told the Guardian.

“(Javid) initiated a legal proc-ess and under that she’s entitled to appeal,” Akunjee said. “Legal aid enables her to fund that appli-cation with the help of solicitors. Those accused of serious crimes, such as rape, murder or terrorism, are regularly granted legal aid in the context of legal proceedings.”

He said he expected there to be a legal challenge, arguing that Be-gum should be able to return to the UK to fi ght the case in order to have a fair hearing.

Several newspapers at the weekend carried reports, which Akunjee said were based on intel-ligence sent to the Home Offi ce and Downing Street, alleging that Begum was an enforcer working with the ISIS morality police and had supposedly sewed up suicide bombers’ vests.

“I would question how that has come into the public arena and whether the Offi cial Secrets Act has been breached,” Akunjee said. He described the reports as “mere hearsay” and said that “the leak appears to have come from gov-ernment sources”.

Many senior fi gures accept Be-gum is entitled to legal aid. Hunt acknowledged that the UK was a country that believed “people with limited means should have access to the resources of the state if they want to challenge the deci-sions the state has made about them”.

The Law Society, which rep-resents solicitors across England and Wales, also backed Begum’s entitlement to legal aid. In a de-tailed blog, the anonymous Se-cret Barrister urged the govern-ment to ensure “equal treatment before the law” by granting legal aid.

“The removal of a person’s citi-zenship – a government telling a British-born citizen ‘You have no right to exist within our borders’ – is one of the most far-reaching decisions the state can make. We do not want to live in a country where politicians can act with unchecked power,” the Secret Barrister argued. “The rule of law requires that those aff ected have a route to challenge a decision and have an independent court review the evidence and decide whether that decision was taken in ac-cordance with the law.”

Dal Babu, a former chief super-intendent in the Metropolitan po-lice and a friend of the family, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Begum was “groomed” by ISIS and should be given legal aid, which is a “principle of the British legal justice system”.

Michelle Obama charmscrowd on book tourReutersLondon

Former US fi rst lady Michelle Obama charmed thousands of Britons, telling anecdotes

about meeting the “wonderfully warm and funny” Queen Eliza-beth and praising London’s diver-sity at an event in the capital.

Obama, the wife of Barack Obama, who was president from 2009 to 2017, was in London to promote her best-selling auto-biography Becoming. She had the sellout audience — many of whom had travelled hours to at-tend — laughing along within minutes of taking the stage, re-counting the furore she caused in 2009 when she breached royal protocol by putting her arm around the Queen.

“Yikes! Sorry guys,” she joked, explaining she later learned to keep her hands clasped or behind her back to curb her natural in-stincts.

Nevertheless, she had no re-grets when it came to the Queen: “I don’t know that I could have done anything diff erently because it was a natural human reaction.”

She said she had been touched

by the Queen’s decision to wear a small pin badge the presidential couple had given her as a gift, and described Britain’s 92-year-old monarch in glowing terms:

“That was my experience, that has been my experience: that kind of warmth and graciousness and intelligence and wit — I like her.”

Obama’s book tour has so far taken her across North America and Scandinavia.

After London, she will go to Paris and Amsterdam.

Last month, the book’s German publisher said Becoming could become the biggest-selling auto-biography ever.

“It’s absolutely surreal. I think it’s like a once-in-a-lifetime op-portunity. I can’t believe she’s in England as well, I can’t be-lieve we’re going,” said Aisha Chipampe, a 26-year-old cor-porate fi nance worker who drove four hours from Leeds for the show.

Michelle, asked by host Stephen Colbert what advice she had for people in Britain about how to stay calm in a time of tur-moil — a likely reference to po-litical divisions over Brexit — said London was unique and should treasure its diversity.

Couple wins apology oversham marriage claimsDaily MailLondon

A Home Offi ce minister has apologised to a couple wrongly accused of enter-

ing a sham marriage, amid con-demnation by politicians and hu-man rights campaigners over the treatment of genuine couples.

A Guardian investigation found couples were being prevented from getting married and subject-ed to “insulting” and “gruelling” checks as part of a Home Offi ce crackdown on sham marriages.

Couples and lawyers described wedding ceremonies being inter-rupted so the Home Offi ce could question them about their per-sonal lives.

The latest case to emerge is that of Jeff and Julie Rose, both 55 and Canadian and British respectively, who have been together for more than a decade. He entered the UK on an ancestry visa in 2011 and the couple married in 2014.

When it came to renewing his visa, Jeff Rose was given incor-rect advice from a Home Offi ce

helpline, resulting in him being threatened with forcible removal from the UK. The Home Offi ce took 20 months to reject the ap-plication, 14 months longer than its target.

In its rejection, the Home Offi ce accused the couple of entering a sham marriage and said they had failed to prove their relationship was “genuine and subsisting”.

The couple lost tens of thou-sands of pounds in legal fees and visa applications as well as more than a year of Jeff ’s salary as the Home Offi ce prevented him from working.

The Immigration Minister, Caroline Nokes, apologised to the couple in a letter to their MP Tony Lloyd. Referring to a bail notice wrongly issued to Jeff Rose, Nokes said: “It was not the Home Offi ce’s intention to cause any distress in this regard and an apology was of-fered.”

She also apologised for the delay in processing the application.

After a protracted legal battle the couple won their case in an immigration tribunal last month. Judge Andrew Davies condemned

the actions of the Home Offi ce, saying Jeff Rose had been given “dubious advice” by the offi cial advice line. He added: “The way in which the Home Offi ce has dealt with this matter is, to put it neu-trally, far from satisfactory.”

Jeff Rose had worked for more than four years as a key worker supporting vulnerable young peo-ple but lost his job due to the Home Offi ce’s actions. The couple care for Julie’s elderly mother but, ac-cording to Davies, the Home Of-fi ce suggested that if Jeff were no longer in the UK to help care for his mother-in-law she “could avail herself of care from the local au-thorities or NHS”.

Lloyd condemned the Home Offi ce for its actions towards the couple.

“The incorrect advice and sub-sequent mishandling of the case by the Home Offi ce has been utterly devastating for Jeff and his wife Ju-lie. Not only did the couple have to endure a bureaucratic nightmare which has aff ected their mental well-being, Jeff also lost his career and a substantial loss of earnings,” the MP said.

BRITAIN


19

Crackdown launched on landlords who evict at short noticeDaily MailLondon

Landlords will no longer be able to evict tenants at short notice without good reason

under a major housing shake-up announced yesterday.

Prime Minister Theresa May said the move would end the threat of so-called ‘no-fault’ evictions which give renters as lit-tle as eight weeks’ notice to leave if their fi xed-term contracts have

ended. But landlords have warned that the move could create “in-defi nite tenancies by the back door” leading to fewer homes be-ing available in the rental sector.

Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary James Brokenshire, who yester-day launched a consultation, said the government was taking action because of evidence that the end of tenancies through the Section 21 process is one of the biggest causes of family homelessness.

May said: “Everyone renting

in the private sector has the right to feel secure in their home, set-tled in their community and able to plan for the future with confi -dence. But millions of responsible tenants could still be uprooted by their landlord with little notice, and often little justifi cation. This is wrong – and we’re now acting by preventing these unfair evic-tions.”

At present landlords can evict tenants if they are still occupy-ing their property after the fi xed-term contract has come to an end

– without specifying a reason.The proposals would see land-

lords having to provide a “con-crete, evidenced reason already specifi ed in law” for ending ten-ancies.

Brokenshire said that the move to abolish these particular kinds of evictions will be “balanced by ensuring responsible landlords can get their property back where they have proper reason to do so.”

But David Smith, from the Res-idential Landlords Association, warned there was a “serious dan-

ger” the proposed reforms could lead to a reduction in the supply of rental properties.

He said: “With the demand for private rented homes continuing to increase, we need the majority of good landlords to have confi -dence to invest in new homes.

“This means ensuring they can swiftly repossess properties for legitimate reasons such as rent arrears, tenant anti-social behav-iour or wanting to sell them.

“For all the talk of greater secu-rity for tenants, that will be noth-

ing if the homes to rent are not there in the fi rst place. We call on the government to act with cau-tion.”

The plans come after buy-to-let landlords were hit by a rise in stamp duty for those buying a second home.

Richard Lambert, from the National Landlords Association, said: “Landlords currently have little choice but to use Section 21. They have no confi dence in the ability or the capacity of the courts to deal with possession

claims quickly and surely, regard-less of the strength of the land-lord’s case.

“This change makes the fi xed-term meaningless, and so creates a new system of indefi nite tenan-cies by the back door.”

A ministry of housing spokes-man said: “Court processes will be expedited so landlords are able to swiftly and smoothly regain their property in the rare event of tenants falling into rent arrears or damaging the prop-erty.”

People observe a minute’s silence at 3.06pm in Liverpool, north-west England, yesterday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in which 96 Liverpool football fans were killed.

Michelle Obama: praises Queen

EUROPE


Measles cases rose 300% worldwide through the fi rst three months of

2019 compared to the same pe-riod last year, the UN said yes-terday, as concern grows over the impact of anti-vaccination stigma.

Measles, which is highly con-tagious, can be entirely prevent-ed through a two-dose vaccine, but the World Health Organi-sation (WHO) has in recent months sounded the alarm over slipping vaccination rates.

“Preliminary global data shows that reported cases rose by 300% in the fi rst three

months of 2019, compared to the same period in 2018. This fol-lows consecutive increases over the past two years,” it said in a statement.

“While this data is provisional and not yet complete, it indicates a clear trend. Many countries are in the midst of sizeable measles outbreaks, with all regions of the world experiencing sustained rises in cases,” it added.

The agency noted that only about one in 10 actual measles cases are reported, meaning the early trends for 2019 likely un-derestimate the severity of the outbreaks.

So far this year, 170 countries have reported 112,163 measles cases to the WHO.

At this time last year, 163

countries had reported 28,124 cases.

Measles – an airborne infec-tion causing fever, coughing and rashes that can be deadly in rare cases – had been offi cially elimi-nated in many countries with advanced healthcare systems.

But the so-called anti-vax movement – driven by fraudu-lent claims linking the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella, and a risk of autism in children – has gained traction.

Repeated studies – the most recent involving more than 650,000 children monitored for more than a decade – have shown that there is no such link.

However, according to the WHO, global coverage for the fi rst vaccine dose has been

“stalled” at 85%, while 67% of people have received the second dose.

The provisional 2019 data shows cases have spiked “in countries with high overall vac-cination coverage, including the US”, the WHO warned.

“The disease has spread fast among clusters of unvaccinated people,” it added.

New York’s mayor declared a public health emergency in parts of Brooklyn last week, af-ter a measles outbreak emerged in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where some had resisted vaccination on religious grounds.

Calls have mounted in several countries to make measles vac-cinations mandatory.

Australia earlier this month launched a major education campaign to encourage residents to get vaccinated.

Turning the tide against measles will require “eff ective public-facing communication and engagement on the critical importance of vaccination, and the dangers of the diseases they prevent”, the WHO said.

While the WHO has identifi ed the junk science behind anti-vax propaganda as a public health threat, the data highlighted that measles still hits hardest in unstable countries with weak health systems.

The most dramatic increase in the number of cases through the early part of the year was report-ed in Africa, which has weaker

vaccination coverage than other regions.

Africa saw a 700% increase compared to last year.

At least 800 children have died from measles since Sep-tember in Madagascar, where malnutrition and a historically poor vaccine rate are driving the world’s worse current outbreak.

In confl ict-scarred Yemen cases shot up more than 300% in 2018 compared to 2017.

Venezuela, where the disease was once contained, has also seen tens of thousands of cases as the country’s economic and political crises continue to push the healthcare system to the brink of collapse.

See also Page 16

‘Global measles cases up 300% year-on-year’By Ben Simon, AFPGeneva

Turkey’s High Election Board has overturned a local decision to order a

second recount of votes in an Istanbul district, rejecting the latest appeal by President Re-cep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party (AKP) against results showing it lost city hall.

Initial results of the March 31 nationwide local elections showed the main opposition CHP narrowly won control of Turkey’s largest city, a stunning setback for Erdogan who had campaigned hard for his AKP in the city where he launched his own career.

Repeated AKP challenges have led to growing frustration among CHP supporters, which spilled over onto the football terraces at the weekend when Istanbul’s top teams played two derby matches.

“Give the mandate, give Ima-moglu the mandate now,” fans of Besiktas and Fenerbahce chant-ed, as their teams played league leaders Basaksehir and runners-up Galatasaray.

Initial results give secular-ist Republican People’s Party (CHP) mayoral candidate Ekrem Imamoglu, who attended both

matches, a lead of around 0.2 percentage points over his AK Party rival, former prime minis-ter Binali Yildirim.

The loss of Ankara ended 25 years of control over the capital by the AK Party and its Islamist predecessors.

Defeat in Istanbul, where Er-dogan was mayor in the 1990s, would be an even greater blow to the president who has domi-

nated Turkish politics through a decade and half of repeated election triumphs.

Yesterday electoral offi cials in the Maltepe district of Istan-bul, where a recount of votes in 1,089 ballot boxes had already been underway for nearly a week, ruled that nearly half of them would need to be counted for a third time.

However, later in the day, the High Election Board (YSK) over-turned this decision, meaning all that remains is to fi nish the earlier recount.

The AKP and its nationalist MHP allies have already fi led several other objections across Istanbul and have appealed to annul the elections in another district, Buyukcekmece.

Yildirim, the ruling party’s mayoral candidate, became yes-terday the latest AKP fi gure to issue a call for a repeat of the election.

“This is an election that has become messed up from top to bottom,” he told a news confer-ence.

The YSK has said it would wait for all recounts across the city to be completed before rul-ing on an AKP appeal to annul results in Buyukcekmece.

After that it may have to rule on a call by Erdogan – not yet formally submitted by the AKP

– for the entire Istanbul election to be annulled.

CHP lawmaker Baris Yarkdas said his party has asked the YSK to consider previous recounts as valid and to speed up recounts across Istanbul by forming 100 new counting teams.

“The AKP-MHP was plan-ning to get diff erent results by having the ballot boxes in Maltepe recounted. When the results did not come out as they wished, they are now not sign-ing the record sheets of the judges (offi cials) so the count can’t be fi nished,” Yarkdas said on Twitter.

He said the AKP and MHP were driving the process into an impasse, and putting public servants under pressure.

“The party state is crushing the law,” he said.

MHP leader Devlet Bahceli appeared to criticise Imamoglu for mixing sport with politics by attending the weekend matches.

“Carrying the mandate to the stadium is a seed planted to turn the competition between the sides into animosity. He can’t be mayor,” he said.

Imamoglu responded: “I told my friends I would attend these games before the elections. Are Galatasaray, Fenerbahce and Besiktas not teams of this city? I will go.”

Istanbul vote count enters third weekReutersAnkara

Yildirim: This is an election that has become messed up from top to bottom.

The Notre-Dame Cathedral went up in fl ames yester-day in a roaring blaze that

devastated the Parisian land-mark, a searing loss for the city and for France.

“Like all our compatriots, I am sad this evening to see this part of all of us burn,” President Em-manuel Macron tweeted.

Flames that began in the early evening burst through the roof of the centuries-old cathedral and engulfed the spire, which col-lapsed, quickly followed by the entire roof.

A huge plume of smoke wafted across the city and ash fell over a large area.

Crowds of stunned Parisians and tourists – some crying, oth-ers off ering prayers – watched as fl ames engulfed the cathedral.

Gasps and cries of “Oh my god” erupted at 7.50pm (1750 GMT) when the top portion of the church’s spire came crash-ing down into an inferno that has spread to the entire roof.

More gasps came a few sec-onds later when the rest of the spire collapsed, caught on the cameras of thousands of mobile phones.

“Paris is disfi gured. The city will never be like it was before,” said Philippe, a communications worker in his mid-30s, who had biked over after being alerted of the fi re by a friend.

“It’s a tragedy,” he lamented. “If you pray, now is the time to pray.”

Police were attempting to clear pedestrians away from the two

islands in the river Seine, includ-ing the Ile de la Cite which houses the soaring Gothic church, one of Europe’s best known landmarks.

But throngs of onlookers kept trying to approach, snarling traf-fi c as they massed on the stone bridges leading to the islands.

Another woman passed by, tears running from behind her glasses, too overwhelmed to speak to reporters.

“It’s fi nished, we’ll never be able to see it again,” said Jerome Fautrey, a 37-year-old who had come to watch.

“Now we need to know how this happened – with everything that’s going on in the world, why Notre-Dame? Maybe it’s a mes-sage from on high,” he said.

One police offi cer, arriving on one of the bridges, turned up to gape, saying “Oh my god.”

“It’s incredible, our history is going up in smoke,” said Benoit, 42, who arrived on the scene by bike.

“Basically the whole rooftop is gone. I see no hope for the build-ing,” said witness Jacek Poltorak, watching the fi re from a fi fth-fl oor balcony two blocks from the southern facade of the cathe-dral, one of France’s most visited places.

Firefi ghters tried to contain the blaze with water hoses and cleared the area around Notre-Dame, which sits on an island in the River Seine and marks the very centre of Paris.

Buildings around were evacu-ated.

Nobody was injured, junior interior minister Laurent Nunez said at the scene, adding: “It’s too early to determine the causes of the fi re.”

France 2 television reported that police were treating it as an accident.

President Macron cancelled an address to the nation that he had been due to give later in the evening.

A presidential offi cial said Macron went to the scene of the blaze and talked to offi cials trying to contain it.

The French Civil Security service, possibly responding to US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that fi refi ghters “act quickly” and employ fl ying water tankers, said that was not an op-tion.

“Helicopter or plane, the weight of the water and the in-tensity of dropping it at low alti-tude could weaken the structure of Notre-Dame and cause col-lateral damage to surrounding buildings,” it tweeted.

The cathedral, which dates back to the 12th century, features in Victor Hugo’s classic novel The

Hunchback of Notre-Dame.It is a Unesco World Heritage

site that attracts millions of tour-ists every year.

The Gothic cathedral is famed for its many carved stone gar-goyles, stunning stained glass windows and the fl ying buttress-es that hold up its walls.

“There are a lot of art works inside ... it’s a real tragedy,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told report-ers at the scene.

The cathedral was in the midst of renovations, with some sec-tions under scaff olding and bronze statues were removed last week for works.

The wood and lead spire was built during a restoration in the mid-19th century, according to the cathedral’s website.

The United Nations’ cultural agency Unesco said yesterday that it “stood at France’s side to save and restore” Notre-Dame Cathedral, deeming it “a price-less heritage”.

Firefi ghters battle to save Notre-Dame CathedralReuters/AFPParis

Smoke billows as fire engulfs the spire of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

A woman is seen with a stunned expression as she watches the flames engulf the roof of the Notre-Dame Cathedral.

The strong performance of the far-right in Finland’s elections has shown the

strength of anti-immigrant par-ties across the continent, just over a month before the Euro-pean parliament elections.

The Finns Party more than doubled its seats under the lead-ership of hardline nationalist Jussi Halla-aho in Sunday’s vote.

It took 17.5% of the ballots, just behind the Social Democrats who came in fi rst with 17.7% – which could make it tricky for Social Democrat leader Antti Rinne to form a government that excludes the far-right.

The far-right has made new gains recently in EU countries ranging from Estonia to Spain, on top of its strong bases in nations like France, Germany and Italy.

European voters are due to choose a new parliament in elec-tions from May 23-26, and gains for the far-right would be a new blow for the bloc’s established leaders after the crisis caused by Brexit.

Identity and immigration are the “motor force” behind the populist vote in Europe, French researcher Jean-Yves Camus, a specialist on the far-right, said.

“There is a real crisis of rep-resentative democracy which is being challenged through direct democracy,” he told AFP.

He said Hallo-aho had driven his party in a much more radi-cal direction than his predeces-sor Timo Soini, who conformed more to the model of a European national conservative.

“There was radicalisation within the Finns Party,” Camus said.

Goran Djupsund, a professor of political science at the Abo Akademi University in Finland, noted that no party in the elec-tion had passed the 20% mark: a sign of growing fragmentation in politics.

The party of outgoing prime minister Juha Sipila was relegat-ed to fourth place.

“It is a phenomenon that we are sharing with the rest of Eu-rope,” Djupsund said.

After March’s inconclusive elections in Estonia, prime min-ister Juri Ratas is in coalition talks with the far-right, anti-EU EKRE party and the Isamaa con-servatives to cling to power.

And the anti-immigrant Vox party stunned observers in Spain last year with a strong perform-ance in regional elections in An-dalusia, helping to push the So-cialists from offi ce in the region.

Halla-aho, a softly spoken fi g-

ure whose calm public persona belies his written works harshly critical of Islam and migration, echoed his far-right counter-parts across Europe during his campaign.

He played up the importance of Finland’s particular identity, railed against immigration and denounced “climate hysteria”, saying that the pressure to halt global warming was “destroying the economy and Finnish indus-try”.

Such themes are straight out of the book of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which repeatedly denounces the price of halting global warming.

The Finns Party could become close allies of Europe’s best-known far-right leaders like Matteo Salvini in Italy and Ma-rine Le Pen in France, potentially creating a powerful bloc in the new EU parliament.

Le Pen’s National Front (FN) was quick to hail the Finns Par-ty’s strong showing.

“After the recent success of the patriotic parties in Esto-nia and in Spain, the very good results of the Finns Party have confi rmed the dynamic on a con-tinental level in favour of sup-porters of a Europe of free and proud nations,” said Nicolas Bay, a National Front lawmaker in the European parliament.

Far-right surge ahead of EU pollsBy Valérie Leroux, AFPParis

‘Bone-breaking’ insurance fraud gang bustedItalian police have dismantled two “bone-breaking” gangs in Sicily which had been smashing victims’ limbs in order to stage road accidents and defraud car insurance companies.More than 40 people were arrested in Palermo after investigators discovered hard-up victims were having their arms or legs broken in exchange for a small part of the pay-out from insurers, police said.Those in on the fraud included false witnesses to the accidents, doctors providing fake medical reports, physiotherapy centres certifying care that was never provided, and a lawyer filing the claims, police said.The victims were “people on the margins of society ... drug addicts, alcoholics and the mentally ill”.They were promised a cut of the insurance pay-out, but took home as little as €300 ($340).The gang broke upper or lower limbs – referred to in code as the “first floor” and “ground floor” – by throwing cast-iron body-building weights at their victims or beating them with iron bars, police said.

Belgian charged with taking part in terror activitiesA young Belgian man has been charged with participating in the activities of a terrorist group, after his arrest on suspicion of having contacts with Islamist extremists, judicial sources said yesterday.Belgian federal prosecutors said the suspect, identified as Jimmy K, was formally charged on Sunday following reports of his arrest south of the capital Brussels on Saturday.“He was charged by the investigating judge with participation in the activities of a terrorist group,” the prosecutor’s off ice said in a statement.It said searches were carried out in Wavre, Comines and Ottignies, all in the southern French-speaking parts of Belgium.It said no weapons or explosives were found following the 22-year-old’s arrest, which local media said took place in Wavre, 30km (18 miles) southeast of the capital Brussels.

Germany plans network of female peacekeepersGermany is setting up a global peacekeeping network composed entirely of women, Berlin’s Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said last week.“Women are no better peacekeepers than men, but they are diff erent, and this diversity is a strength,” von der Leyen told the UN Security Council in New York. “In empowering women in all walks of life, visibility is key. We need role models to stir the imagination, successful female mentors who tell their stories to younger women and share their experience.”

SC seeks Rahul explanation on ‘chowkidar chorhai’ commentIANSNew Delhi

The Supreme Court yes-terday observed that the “chowkidar chor hai” (the

watchman is a thief) comment made by Congress president Rahul Gandhi in the context of Rafale fi ghter jet issue had been “incorrectly attributed” to it and demanded an explanation from him by April 22.

A bench of Chief Justice Ran-jan Gogoi, Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice Sanjiv Khanna posted the matter for hearing on April 23.

“We make it clear that this court had no occasion to record any view or fi nding or make any observation as allegedly attrib-uted to the court by the respond-ent (Gandhi) inasmuch as what was decided by this court was a purely legal question of admis-sibility of certain documents to which objections were raised by the learned attorney general,” Gogoi said in the order.

“Having clarifi ed the mat-ter, we deem it proper to ask the respondent for his explanation which will be laid before us on or before 22.04.2019.

“We further observe that no views, observations or fi ndings should be attributed to the court in political address to the media and in public speeches, unless such views, observations or fi nd-ings are recorded by the court,” the judges said.

The Supreme Court’s direc-tive came on a contempt plea fi led by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Meenakshi Lekhi against Gandhi, who had said over a week back that the top court had “accepted” that there was some form of corruption in the Rafale fi ghter jet deal and that “chowki-dar chor hai”, a veiled reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Gandhi had made the com-ments after the court agreed to hear afresh a case related to the Rafale deal, rejecting the govern-ment’s contention that the se-cret documents concerning the agreement had been stolen and published in some newspapers without authorisation.

The court yesterday clarifi ed that its decision on April 10 to

hear the points raised over the documents was solely on a legal question regarding admissibil-ity of certain documents as evi-dence, which was objected to by the attorney general.

It clarifi ed that its recent order “had no occasion” which might have indicated to Gandhi to make any such comments.

On April 10, the Supreme Court had said the petitions fi led by former ministers Arun Shou-rie and Yashwant Sinha, along with activist and lawyer Prashant Bhushan, seeking review of its December 14 judgment in the Rafale matter, would be heard on merits and that it would look into the documents published.

After Gandhi’s comments, De-fence Minister Nirmala Sithara-man had attacked him and said he was on the “verge” of con-tempt of court by claiming that the top court had said “chowki-dar chor hai”.

The prime minister slammed the Congress after the Supreme Court observation, and said it was worrying that the opposition party had reached a level where it has to “depend on lies”.

Modi said Gandhi was rak-ing up the Rafale issue in an at-tempt to “clear” the name of his late father Rajiv Gandhi in the Bofors scandal even when “the truth” about the Rafale is already in public.

Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Ja-nata Party has asked the Election Commission (EC) to take “se-rious cognisance” of Gandhi’s comments.

Addressing a press conference here, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad accused Gandhi of lying and said while the constitution gives every citizen the freedom to speak, it does not give freedom to “lie and abuse”.

“Please explain to the country why you lied and why you at-tributed that lie to the Supreme Court. When will Rahul Gandhi stop shameless showering of abuses on our leaders?” he said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also slammed Gandhi, saying that he had hit a “new low” as he “manufactured” a court order for his political propaganda.

He said that Indian democracy does not permit “dynasts” to “rewrite” court orders.

Yogi, Mayawati bannedfrom election campaignAgenciesNew Delhi

The Election Commission yesterday banned Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister

Yogi Adityanath and Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati from election campaign for 72 hours over hate speech targeting Muslims.

Also banned were Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan for sexist comments and Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Women and Child Development Minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet Maneka Gandhi after video emerged showing her telling Muslim voters in her electorate that if she won offi ce without their votes, “then when a Muslim comes to me for work, I will think, let it be, how does it matter?”

The Election Commission, which manages the polls and is considered one of the country’s most upstanding institutions, had received strong criticism for not acting to curb the rhetoric being traded by candidates in recent days.

Adityanath told a crowd last week that if the BJP opponents had “Ali, we have Bajrang Bali”.

After the election regulator fl agged the remarks, Adityanath said they were in retaliation to those of the Dalit leader Mayawati, who in a speech days earlier had urged “especially Muslims” not to split their anti-BJP votes.

The poll panel also asked Adityanath to explain his remark calling the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) a “virus” and saying the Congress was infected with this “green virus”.

The Election Commission ruled yesterday that both leaders had made comments that could “aggravate existing difference or create mutual hatred between religious communities”, and temporarily banned them from the election trail from 6am today.

The commission banned Azam Khan from the campaign trail for 72 hours, calling his comments against actress-turned-politician Jaya Prada, his BJP opponent in Rampur, “not only indecent but also derogatory and totally uncalled for”.

Gandhi meanwhile said her comments were taken out of context.

The BJP has been playing to its nationalist base and painting its rivals as soft on terrorism and eager to appease Muslims.

A BJP spokesman said the

party was inclusive towards all communities. “The party believes in all-together development for all, and we don’t believe in any polarisation,” spokesman Harish Srivastava said.

Indian law bans political candidates from appealing to voters based on egregious remarks about religion or the caste system. But in practice, these social categories are still defi ning faultlines in Indian life and are frequently referenced in political speeches.

The six-week election season that started last week has been rife with incendiary religious appeals, particularly from the BJP, whose overarching political goal is to forge a cohesive political identity out of the country’s extraordinarily diverse community of about 1bn Hindus.

Adityanath, who spent

time in jail in 2007 on charges of fomenting anti-Muslim riots, had already received a warning from the authorities for referring to India’s armed forces as “Modi’s army”, in breach of guidelines against casting political aspersions on the

institution.On Thursday, the BJP president

Amit Shah told supporters at a rally in Assam that if re-elected the party would rid India of unauthorised migrants - except for Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs. The government is proposing a bill to fast-track asylum requests for refugees who follow those three religions, but not for Muslims.

The Supreme Court said yesterday it would examine whether election authorities had enough power to clamp down on hate speech.

Federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP MP and the party’s Lok Sabha candidate from Mathura, Hema Malini, and other party leaders wave at supporters during an election rally in Mathura yesterday.

BJP and Congress workers clash at Matondkar’s rallyIANSMumbai

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress workers clashed at a rally being ad-

dressed by Congress Mumbai North candidate and Bollywood actress Urmila Matondkar yes-terday morning.

According to witnesses, the incident occurred when Ma-tondkar was addressing a large crowd of people outside Borivali West station when some alleged BJP activists attempted to barge into the venue.

Raising slogans of ‘Modi, Modi’ they engaged in a verbal duel with Congress activists.

As Matondkar attempted to speak, some of the BJP and Con-gress workers pushed, punched and kicked each other in a free for all.

Police who were present man-

aged to bring the situation un-der control and later Matondkar went to the local police station to lodge a complaint.

She said in her speech that “women are not safe in the coun-try and today’s incident was a proof of this” but vowed she would not be cowed down by the strong-arm tactics of the BJP.

Matondkar, who has been ag-gressively campaigning in Mum-bai North, has caught public attention with her interactive style, mingling with the common masses, singing with youngsters and playing cricket with youth.

In the constituency, she is pitted against BJP’s sitting MP Gopal Shetty, who had defeated Congress’ Sanjay Nirupam in 2014.

In other election-related news, Congress leader and former fed-eral minister Shakeel Ahmad said he will contest the Lok Sabha elec-tions as an independent candidate

from Bihar’s Madhubani seat.Ahmad, who was unhappy af-

ter his traditional seat of Madhu-bani went to ally VIP under a seat sharing formula of the Grand Al-liance, said he will fi le his nomi-nation papers today.

“I have demanded the sup-port of the party. If the party high command does not extend sup-port, I will contest as an inde-pendent,” Ahmad told reporters.

Ahmad pointed out that a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-sup-ported candidate was contesting against Congress nominee Ranjit Ranjan in Supaul. “If the RJD can support a candidate against an offi cial Congress candidate, then why can’t the Congress do the same in Madhubani?”

Ranjan is the Congress sitting MP from Supaul.

Ahmad said that the Grand Al-liance candidate in Madhubani cannot defeat the BJP candidate in Madhubani.

Court asks poll panelfor report on PM fi lmIANSNew Delhi

The Supreme Court yes-terday asked the Election Commission to watch a

biopic on Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi, and submit its report in a sealed cover by the end of this week.

A bench of Chief Justice Ran-jan Gogoi, and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna, has scheduled the hearing of the writ petition fi led by fi lm producer Sandeep Ssingh on April 22.

When the court asked the law-yer for the Commission whether the poll body had seen the PM Narendra Modi, senior advocate Mukul Rohtagi, appearing for the producer said it had barred the fi lm’s release without even watching it.

The bench then asked the EC lawyer to watch the movie and submit its report to the court.

The fi lmmakers had moved the

court challenging the EC’s order delaying its release date.

The petitioners contended that the poll body order vio-lated the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expres-sion guaranteed by the consti-tution.

Last week, the EC issued an order barring the screening of political fi lms during polls.

The fi lm starring Vivek Oberoi was slated to release on April 11, the fi rst day of polling for the Lok Sabha elections.

“Any biopic material in the nature of biography/hagiogra-phy sub-serving the purposes of any political entity or any individual entity connected to it, which is intended to, or which has the potential to dis-turb the level playing field dur-ing the elections, should not be displayed in electronic media, including cinematograph dur-ing the operation of the MCC (Model Code of Conduct),” the EC said in its order.

INDIA21Gulf Times


Actress and Congress’ Lok Sabha candidate from Mumbai North Urmila Matondkar attends a rally in Mumbai yesterday.

Pawar is lying about my father, says Parrikar’s sonIANSPanaji

A day after Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar claimed

that Manohar Parrikar quit as defence minister because of disagreements over the Rafale fighter jet deal, the late Goa chief minister’s son accused him of lying for political gain.

Parrikar’s eldest son Utpal Parrikar, who has taken the plunge into active politics, also said that his father was an “up-right individual” and was the “chief architect” of the Rafale aircraft acquisition deal.

“Today, he is not among us, which is why perhaps you are taking the liberty to use his name and speak lies. This is a new low in the Indian political discourse. Being a senior and

respected politician, the people of India did not expect such a statement from you, Pawar sa-heb,” he said in a letter to Pawar, which was released to the media yesterday.

Pawar, in a statement on Sun-day, alleged that the Rafale deal was “not acceptable” to Par-rikar, as a result of which he resigned from the post of de-fence minister. Parrikar served as defence minister from 2014

to 17, when the fighter jet deal was being negotiated between the Indian and French govern-ments.

Utpal Parrikar, however, termed Pawar’s comments an “unfortunate and insensitive attempt to invoke my father’s name to push blatant falsehoods for political gains”. He also ob-liquely referred to a courtesy visit by Congress president Ra-hul Gandhi to meet Parrikar in

Goa earlier this year, which the late chief minister’s son claims, was also used later for “petty gains”.

“Many historic decisions were taken by him for which he will be remembered forever. One of them was the Rafale fighter aircraft acquisition deal of which he was one of the chief architects,” Utpal Parrikar said, while commenting on his fa-ther’s achievements as a minis-

ter in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Utpal Parrikar, who is being tipped to contest from the Panaji assembly seat, formerly repre-sented by his father since 1994, also said that Pawar’s comments were part of a “malicious misin-formation campaign that seems to hinder the strengthening our armed forces”.

This is not the first time that Parrikar’s reference in a Rafale

deal-related development has triggered controversy.

Earlier this year, Goa Health Minister Vishwajit Rane cre-ated a stir after a purported conversation between him and local journalists was released by the Congress, in which Rane claims that Parrikar in a cabinet meeting in December 2018 had claimed that files related to the Rafale deal were stored in his bedroom.

EC cracks whip on Azam Khan and Maneka too

Extreme povertyfalling, to endby 2031: JaitleyAgenciesNew Delhi

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said yesterday fast econom-ic growth and rapid urbani-

sation would slash the number of people in extreme poverty by 2021 and end it completely in the dec-ade after that.

More than 21% of India’s 1.3bn people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2011, when the last census was taken, according to the World Bank.

The economy is a major issue in a staggered general election that began on Thursday and will end on May 19, with the main op-position Congress Party reject-ing a rosy picture Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been presenting.

Jaitley, who heads the BJP’s publicity department in the elec-tion, said the number of people who live in poverty would drop to below 15% in the next three years and to a negligible level in the 10 years after that.

“Urbanisation will increase, the size of the middle-class will grow and the economy will ex-pand manifolds,” Jaitley said in a Facebook post.

“These will add to the number of jobs, and as the experience of the past three decades have shown in the liberalised economy, every section of citizens will ben-efi t.”

Economic growth in recent years had generated enough rev-enue for states to work more on poverty alleviation, job creation and improving healthcare and education, he said.

But the Congress has taken issue with such assertions, in particular, pointing to leaked government data that showed unemployment rose to its highest level in 45 years in 2017/18.

Jaitley said economic problems could be addressed as India re-mained the world’s fastest grow-ing major economy.

But he said restoring peace in the insurgency-hit state of Jam-mu and Kashmir was the most important issue facing the coun-try. “The issue of Jammu and Kashmir and terror continues to

remain the biggest challenge be-fore India,” he said.

“It relates to our sovereignty, integrity and security.”

Jaitley said it cannot be solved until the “failed obso-lete thought” of Article 370 as a “loose constitutional connect” between the state and the rest of the country is rejected.

He said the challenge needs a fresh approach and only a strong government and a leader with clarity alone was capable of re-solving the Kashmir issue.

Referring to the past Congress governments, he said the chal-lenge cannot be resolved by those who created the problem and who believe that a “loose constitu-tional connect” will lead to inte-gration.

He added that it could only be done through a fresh approach “which is uncompromising on terror” and “committed to total integration” and through “re-versal of the historical blunders”.

Targeting the Congress, Jait-ley said it was identifi ed with the creation of the problem itself by “wishing the issue away” when Pakistan did not reconcile to Kashmir being a part of India.

“Instead of working for total integration, the party wanted a loose and liberal constitutional connect between rest of the na-tion and the state under an er-roneous impression that such an arrangement would further the cause of integration,” he said.

“Article 370 was disastrously thought out as a constitution-al connect between rest of the country and the state. Article 35A was surreptitiously introduced in 1954. It catered to a separatist psyche and legitimised discrimi-nation,” he added.

Jaitley said terror supported from across the border “can’t be fought either with velvet gloves or a policy of appeasement”.

“This challenge can obviously be resolved with a fresh approach which is uncompromising on ter-ror, uncompromising in its de-termination to enforce the rule of law and committed to total integration. A strong government and a leader with clarity alone is capable of resolving the Kashmir issue,” he said.

Jet extends suspension of international fl ightsAFPMumbai

Stricken Jet Airways ap-peared to be edging closer to collapse yesterday after

lenders failed to take a decision on whether to release crucial funds to keep the debt-laden carrier fl ying.

Thousands of passengers have been stranded in recent days af-ter the airline, which has debts of more than $1bn, cancelled all international fl ights as it cannot pay its bills.

Jet CEO Vinay Dube said in an e-mail to staff yesterday that the cancellation of all international fl ights was being extended to Thursday because an emergency

cash injection had not yet been made available.

“As you are aware, we have been working with the lenders to secure interim funding for our operations. The interim funding has not been forthcoming thus far...” he wrote.

Dube added that the board of Jet would meet today to discuss “the next steps forward”.

The airline has only seven jets left after dozens of others were seized by creditors in recent weeks.

Pilots, engineers, and ground staff who have not been paid for three months have said they will strike if the banks do not inject emergency funds.

They had planned to strike from yesterday but postponed

the action until after the bank-ers’ meeting.

The State Bank of India-led lenders took control of Jet last month, pledging to give $218mn of “immediate funding support” as part of a debt resolution plan.

But most of the funds have not been released and Jet, which is now operating a skeleton serv-ice, needs the money desperately or could go bust within days, media reports say.

The lenders met for several hours yesterday but failed to agree on how to proceed.

SBI said in a statement that “necessary support to facilitate the (debt resolution) process is being extended by the banks in the consortium”.

“Co-operation by and support

from all the other stakeholders will be the key to the success of the process,” it added.

Jet has been in a tailspin for months.

All of its international fl ights have been suspended since late Thursday, with Europe and North America particularly bad-ly hit.

Hundreds of staff protested in New Delhi and Mumbai over the weekend demanding to be paid and calling for the company to be rescued.

The Mumbai-based fi rm has defaulted on loans and repeated-ly failed to pay staff and lessors in recent months.

The SBI-led consortium is trying to fi nd a buyer for Jet, which was until recently India’s

second-biggest airline by market share.

A deadline passed on Friday for prospective bidders to ex-press an interest in acquiring a 75% stake in the carrier.

Etihad Airways, which owns a 24% stake, has submitted an expression of interest to buy a controlling stake of up to 75%, according to media reports.

Naresh Goyal, who founded the airline but quit as chairman last month, has also lodged a bid, as have several private equity groups, newspapers said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, for whom a collapse of Jet would be a blow as it seeks a second term in a na-tional election, convened a crisis meeting on Friday evening.

India set to see averagemonsoon rain this yearAgenciesNew Delhi

India is likely to see average monsoon rains this year, the state-run weather offi ce said

yesterday, which should support agricultural production and eco-nomic growth in Asia’s third-big-gest economy, where half of the farmland lacks irrigation.

Monsoon rainfall is expected to be 96% of the long-term aver-age, M Rajeevan, secretary at the Ministry of Earth Sciences, told a news conference.

The India Meteorological De-partment (IMD) defi nes average, or normal, rainfall as between 96% and 104% of a 50-year aver-age of 89cm for the entire four-month season beginning June.

“Overall, the country is ex-pected to have well distributed rainfall scenario during the 2019 monsoon season, which will be benefi cial to farmers in the coun-try during the ensuing Kharif

(summer-planting) season,” the IMD said in its forecast.

Skymet, the country’s only pri-vate weather forecasting agency, earlier this month forecast rainfall could be below normal this year.

Monsoon rains, the lifeblood for India’s farm-dependent $2.6tn economy, arrive on the southern tip of Kerala around June 1 and retreat from the desert state of Rajasthan by September.

After a wet spell, sowing of summer crops gets off to a strong start, boosting crop yields and output which in turn raises rural incomes and usually lifts con-sumer spending in India.

If plentiful monsoon rains lift agricultural production this year, that could keep food prices under control.

Subdued overall infl ation could also add to pressure on India’s central bank to cut interest rates.

“IMD’s prelim forecast, show-ing near-normal and well dis-tributed rainfall, will bode well for near-term food infl ation,” said

Madhavi Arora, lead economist at Edelweiss Securities, FX and Rates.

The next policy review by the Reserve Bank of India is sched-uled for June 6, after the country’s election.

Millions of Indians are casting their votes in a mammoth general election, spread over seven weeks.

On the downside, higher pro-duction could mean farmers con-tinue to get hit by low crop prices, a major cause for concern in rural India, where most people live, in the past two years.

After falling for fi ve straight months, retail food prices in India rose 0.30% in March from a year earlier. Last month, a senior IMD offi cial said that this year’s mon-soon was likely to be robust and healthy provided there wasn’t a surprise El Nino phenomenon.

“El Nino is weakening and we expect that El Nino will get weak-ened further. There is no reason to be worried about El Nino,” Ra-jeevan said.

India, UK renewdefence accordIANSNew Delhi

India’s defence co-operation with the UK is set to receive a boost with the two coun-

tries renewing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) amid their keenness to identify mutual ca-pability needs and collaborate in the areas of defence and security.

The Defence Equipment Co-operation MoU renews the one signed on April 1, 1997, which was subsequently renewed on April 2007.

“The signing of this memo-randum of understanding un-derpins the collaboration be-tween our two nations, building on our defence ties, and ensuring our nations are able to combat emerging threats for generations to come,” said UK Defence Min-ister Stuart Andrew.

By collaborating and exploit-ing procurement opportunities together, both nations will be able to benefi t from technologi-cal and manufacturing capabili-ties and support long-term co-

operation between their defence and security industries, a state-ment issued by the British High Commission said yesterday.

The pact was signed by Air Marshal Richard Knighton on behalf of the UK Ministry of De-fence, and Barun Mitra, Addi-tional Secretary in the Ministry of Defence on behalf of the Indi-an government, the High Com-mission statement said.

“As major world economies, Britain and India both have a proud global maritime history, with impressive futures ahead,” Andrew said, according to the statement.

At bilateral defence and secu-rity equipment talks in London last week, the two nations agreed to re-double eff orts to identify mutual defence and security ca-pability needs and collaborate on solutions, it said.

The agreement, which marks a change in India and the United Kingdom’s defence relationship, comes after a visit by India’s Chief of Naval Staff , Admiral Su-nil Lanba, to Queen Elizabeth in Portsmouth last month.

Former Jharkhand minister and Congress leader Yogendra Sao yesterday surrendered before the court of Additional District Judge S S Prasad in Ranchi following a Supreme Court order in a case of mob instigation. The Congress leader had been granted conditional bail by the Supreme Court and was asked to stay in Bhopal along with his legislator wife Nirmala Devi. The court had cancelled Sao’s bail on April 4 and on April 12 asked him to surrender by April 15. The Jharkhand government had moved the top court seeking cancellation of Sao’s bail, citing his involvement in political activities and regular visits to Jharkhand and New Delhi. Sao is accused of instigating a mob against the administration in 2016 in the Hazaribagh district that led to firing in which four people died.

The Supreme Court yesterday refused to interfere with a Madras High Court’s order banning Chinese video app TikTok, and set April 22 as the next date for hearing the issue. The decision by a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna, came on an appeal by the Chinese company ByteDance, which developed the app. Expressing concern over the “pornographic and inappropriate” contents of the TikTok, the high court on April 3 directed the central government to ban the app. It had also restrained visual and social media from telecasting through the app. The ban order came after court noted that children were being exposed to pornographic and inappropriate material.

Once plain and bland, the walls of a school in the Nathupur Pahari slum in Gurugram are now sporting vibrant wall art murals on key social issues like environmental conservation, girl child literacy and the importance of hygiene. On the occasion of the ‘World Art Day’ yesterday, the school walls got an artistic makeover by children from NGO Ritinjali, along with around 25 employees of leading publisher Oxford University Press India. The Ritinjali Learning Centre now has colourful motifs like clouds, human figures, plants and even numbers from 1-10. It also boasts of wall art with the slogan ‘School Chale Hum’ (let’s go to school). The creative initiative is part of the publisher’s support to the learning needs of the Centre’s children.

A Delhi court yesterday reserved the order on the bail plea of Sushen Mohan Gupta, an alleged middleman in the Rs3,600-crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal case. Special Judge Arvind Kumar said he will deliver the order on April 20. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has opposed Sushen’s bail plea. He was arrested on March 26, a day after the court allowed Rajiv Saxena, a Dubai-based businessman and another alleged middleman in the deal, to turn an approver. The court also listed the plea of British national Christian Michel, the key middleman accused in the case, seeking a “free and fair” trial, for further hearing on April 12. He has alleged that the fresh supplementary charge-sheet filed in the case was accessed by some media outlets.

A Haryana court has sentenced a man to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs1 lakh for raping a minor girl, police said yesterday. The case was decided by the court in Haryana’s Hisar town in just over five months of the incident. Bijender, a resident of Mirchpur village in Hisar district, was sentenced by the court after the Haryana police completed their investigation and submitted their report within five days, a police spokesman said. “The prompt action and speedy trial resulted in severe punishment to the accused in a short span of time, besides justice to the victim and family,” the spokesman said. The incident took place on November 9 last year in Hansi town in Haryana.

Ex-minister surrendersin Ranchi court

SC refuses to interfere inMadras HC ban on TikTok

Slum school now sportsinspiring wall art

Order reserved on bail pleain AgustaWestland case

Man gets life term forraping minor in Haryana

POLITICSJUDICIARY INITIATIVE INVESTIGATIONVERDICT

22 Gulf TimesTuesday, April 16, 2019

INDIA

Ministry of Earth Sciences Secretary M Rajeevan (right) and Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) director general K J Ramesh address a press conference in New Delhi yesterday.

Jet Airways pilots gather at its head off ice in Mumbai yesterday.

Crisis deepens as lenders fail to release funds

BeijingaccusesPompeoof slanderGuardian News and Media Beijing

China has rejected US claims that it is partly to blame for the disin-

tegration of Venezuela, accus-ing Washington of slandering Beijing and “spreading chaos” in Latin America.

During a four-nation tour of South America last week, the US Secretary of State, Mike Pom-peo, pilloried Beijing for contin-uing to back Venezuela’s embat-tled president, Nicolas Maduro.

“China’s bankrolling of the Maduro regime helped precipi-tate and prolong the crisis in that country,” said Pompeo, who described Maduro as “a power-hungry tyrant who has brought ruin to his country and to his people”.

“I think there’s a lesson … to be learned for all of us: China and others are being hypocriti-cal calling for non-intervention in Venezuela’s aff airs. Their own fi nancial interventions have helped destroy that country,” Pompeo added, claiming Chi-nese money had been used to pay off Maduro’s cronies, crush pro-democracy activists and fund ineff ective social programmes.

China, which is Venezuela’s biggest foreign creditor and is estimated to have provided up to $62bn of loans since 2007, re-acted angrily.

The foreign ministry spokes-person, Lu Kang, slammed Pompeo’s “groundless allega-tions” and “attempts to slander China and sow discord between China and Latin American countries”.

“The US has long been treat-ing Latin America as its back-yard, where it would resort to wilful use of pressure, threat or even subversion. People can tell right from wrong. I am sure Lat-in American countries are fully capable of telling a true friend from a false one who is ignoring rules and spreading chaos,” Lu told a press conference in Beijing yesterday, according to an offi -cial transcript.

No timelinefor change inVenezuelagovt, says USReutersBogota

The US has no timeline for a change in government in Venezuela, a US top offi -

cial said, but is certain embattled President Nicolas Maduro will not remain in power.

Washington has imposed a raft of sanctions against Maduro’s government in an attempt to pres-sure him out of power and allow opposition leader Juan Guaido to take control.

“There’s no timeline on a return to democracy but it is coming, of that I’m certain,” James Story, the US charge d’aff aires for Venezuela, said in an interview. “This was never going to be something that was quite easy.”

Maduro blames US sanctions for the country’s economic prob-lems and dismisses Guaido as a US puppet.

More than 3mn Venezuelans have fl ed hyperinfl ation, food and medicine shortages and political crisis.

Guaido in January invoked the country’s constitution to assume an interim presidency, arguing Maduro’s 2018 re-election was il-legitimate, and while most western nations have recognised Guaido as head of state, Russia, China and Cuba have stood by Maduro.

Maduro broke off diplomatic relations with the US after it rec-ognised Guaido.

The US state department said last month it would withdraw all diplomatic personnel from the Opec nation, arguing they had be-come a “constraint on US policy.”

Arguments that US sanctions caused Venezuela’s problems “don’t hold water” said Story, who visited Colombia to accompany US Secretary of State Mike Pom-peo on a Sunday trip to the border city of Cucuta.

“The sanctions that have hit the big parts of the economy are very recent,” he said. “We have multi-ple options when it comes to how we engage on economic sanctions, how we deploy them, how we use general licenses, how we make sure that we’re trying to have a mini-mum impact on people.” Corrupt offi cials are to blame for shortages, he added. “These were people who weren’t focused on doing the right thing for their citizens but rather people who were focused on self-enrichment.

“We’re trying to bring in food-stuff s and other types of medicine in order to support the Venezuelan people who are suff ering.

“And the Cubans import intel-ligence offi cers who are only fo-

cused on repressing dissent and making certain that the military doesn’t oust Maduro,” said Story.

But humanitarian aid, largely rejected by Maduro, may be able to enter Venezuela because of indi-viduals, Story said.

“I think you’ll see more aid come in because you’ll see more desper-ate people attempting to help their fellow Venezuelans,” Story added.

Earlier Pompeo said the US will continue to use all economic and political tools at its disposal to hold Maduro accountable for a worsen-ing crisis in the country.

“The US will continue to uti-lise every economic and political means at our disposal to help the Venezuelan people,” Pompeo said after visiting with migrants at a Cucuta shelter.

“Using sanctions, visa revoca-tions and other means, we pledge to hold the regime and those prop-ping it up accountable for their corruption and their repression of democracy,” he said.

French team in Chileto grill murder suspectAFPBesancon, France

French investigators arrived in Chile yesterday to ques-tion a man suspected of

killing his former Japanese girl-friend, who was last seen at her university residence in France in 2016, a source close to the inquiry said.

Nicolas Zepeda is the sole suspect in the disappearance of Narumi Kurosaki, 21, who went missing in the eastern French city of Besancon on the night of De-cember 4, 2016, after having din-ner with her ex-boyfriend.

Her body has not been found despite extensive searches of a nearby forested area.

Authorities in France believe she was suff ocated by Zepeda in a jealous rage.

He has denied any role in her disappearance.

Zepeda returned to Chile be-fore French police issued an ar-rest warrant but a Chilean judge rejected France’s request to have him arrested and extradited, cit-ing insuffi cient evidence.

French authorities later asked if they could visit the country to

interview Zepeda, a request that was granted last month.

The Besancon prosecutor Etienne Manteaux, along with a judge overseeing the case and two police investigators, are expected to participate in the questioning of Zepeda this week, the source said.

But the questions themselves will be posed by a Chilean pros-ecutor who will then decide whether or not to charge Zepeda and arrest him, in which case France would again request his extradition.

Zepeda, a teaching assistant in his mid-twenties, was seen at a restaurant outside Besancon with Kurosaki the night she disap-peared.

He has admitted going to her room afterwards.

Fellow students at her dormi-tory said they heard terrifi ed cries and banging noises in the resi-dence on that night but no traces of blood were found in her room.

Manteaux, the prosecutor, said last November that Zepeda had bought fi ve litres of fl ammable liquid and matches at a super-market days before Kurosaki dis-appeared, and that his hire car was returned covered in mud.

Art frenzy in Havanaas biennial kicks off ReutersHavana

Cones of white paper sprout from the seasalt-eroded pillars of one co-

lonial building along Havana’s seafront, elaborately painted curtains cascade from another while out front children play with an installation of multicol-oured hoses.

Havana’s 13th Biennial kicked off this weekend with works by more than 300 con-temporary artists from 52 countries taking over the city’s museums, galleries and open-air spaces, and many more col-lateral exhibits.

“They turned my home into an artwork,” said Silvia Perez, smiling at the paper sprouting from the colonnade of her home, a piece by Cuban artist Elio Je-sus Fonseca. “The artist said it meant peace.”

The transformation of the Ma-lecon seafront boulevard into an open-air, interactive gallery, has become one of the most popular

venues of Cuba’s most important arts event.

Along the sidewalk this year are smooth boulders encased in volcanic slabs by Mexican artist Jose Davila, while a swirling light installation by Peruvian art-ist Grimanesa Amoros protudes from a building.

Cuba’s Communist govern-ment, which has heavily promot-ed the arts since the country’s 1959 leftist revolution, created the Havana Biennial in 1984 to promote artists from the devel-oping world, especially Cuban ones.

This year, 80 Cubans will ex-hibit their work, including a performance by Manuel Men-dive, considered the Caribbean island’s top living artist.

Still, it also includes a large contingent of European and US artists including Cuban-Amer-icans like Enrique Martinez Ce-laya and Emilio Perez.

Biennial director Jorge Alfonso said it had been a challenge to stage the biennial given Cuba’s diffi cult economic situation — authorities postponed it half a

year — but that it had succeeded underscored the importance Cuba placed on culture.

“Not even in the most diffi cult moments have we ever given up on staging one of these kind of events,” he said.

“The slogan of this year’s edi-tion, ‘the construction of the possible’, is related to our ideal that a better world is possible.”

Some artists who are critical of the government however have subverted that slogan.

In one piece on the Malecon called “Potemkin Village”, Cu-ban-born artist Juan Andres Mi-lanes Benito who lives in Norway has propped what appears to be the perfect facade of a building on another that is falling into disrepair.

“It fi ts a lot with the Cuban government these days and how the system is working — there is a lot of facade,” he said. “Inside it is not so perfect.”

Originally he had wanted to replicate the facade of a reno-vated government building but authorities would not allow him, he said.

Heading to America

Central American migrants heading in caravan to the US reach Tapachula, state of Chiapas, Mexico, yesterday. A group of 350 Central American migrants forced their way into Mexico on Friday, authorities said, as a new caravan of around 2,500 people arrived — news sure to draw the attention of US President Donald Trump.

LATIN AMERICA


23

Assange used embassy as ‘centre for spying’: MorenoDPALondon

Ecuadorian President Len-in Moreno has accused WikiLeaks founder Julian

Assange of using the country’s London embassy as a “centre for spying” while he was given refuge there for seven years.

Moreno said Ecuador termi-nated Assange’s asylum because he repeatedly violated interna-tional conventions, and WikiLe-

aks had threatened Quito.“It is unfortunate that, from

our territory and with the permis-sion of authorities of the previous government, facilities have been provided within the Ecuadorian embassy in London to interfere in processes of other states,” he said in an e-mail interview with the Guardian newspaper yesterday.

“We cannot allow our house, the house that opened its doors, to become a centre for spying,” Moreno added. “This activity vi-olates asylum conditions.”

Embassy offi cials allowed police to enter the building on Thursday to arrest Assange for breach of British bail conditions linked to a Swedish extradition request.

Police later said the 47-year-old Australian citizen was “fur-ther arrested on behalf of the US authorities.”

The US justice department said it has charged Assange for con-spiring with former US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Man-ning to leak a trove of classifi ed

material in 2010.Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer

who said she regularly visited Assange at the embassy, told Sky News on Sunday that Ecuador was “making some pretty out-rageous allegations to justify an unlawful and extraordinary act to allow British police to come inside an embassy.”

“The politics of the case, with respect to Ecuador, changed with the change of government, with Moreno coming to power (in May 2017),” Robinson said. “And ever

since then, inside the embassy, it’s become more and more diffi cult.”

Two lawmakers of the German party Die Linke and a Spanish MEP yesterday protested outside London’s Belmarsh prison, where Assange is being held until his next scheduled court appearance on May 2.

Die Linke’s Sevim Dagdelen and Heike Haensel and MEP Ana Miranda condemned the Ecua-dorian government for “fl agrant violation of international law by rescinding Assange’s asylum.”

“The Ecuadorian government is now trying to divert attention from its breach of the law by en-gaging in a disinformation and slander campaign against As-sange to poison public opinion on Assange,” the trio said in a state-ment. They said their “primary objective...is now to prevent the extradition of Julian Assange to the US.”

“Extradition to Sweden should also be avoided, because there, too, a transfer to the US cannot be ruled out,” they added. The trio

also urged the German and Span-ish governments to grant political asylum to Assange and to “work within the EU and the European Council to grant protection and hinder the extradition.”

Moreno insisted that his gov-ernment’s decision was “based on international law.” He told the Guardian that Britain had given “written guarantees” that As-sange will not be extradited to “third countries where he could suff er torture, ill-treatment or the death penalty.”

Canada targets Maduro with more sanctions

Canada announced a fourth round of sanctions against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s regime yesterday in response to what it described as its continued “anti-democratic actions.” The 43 people targeted by the new measures — which include asset freezes and dealings prohibitions — are “responsible for the deteriorating situation in Venezuela,” Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a

statement. The measures target high-ranking off icials of the regime, regional governors and others accused of undermining Venezuela’s democratic institutions, adding to 70 individuals that have already been sanctioned. The move comes as 13 Latin American states and Canada, which form the Lima Group, meeting yesterday in Chile to discuss the Venezuela political and economic crisis.

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera poses at La Moneda Presidential Palace in Santiago yesterday with the foreign ministers of nations of the Lima Group who are meeting over the Venezuelan crisis in the Chilean capital.

PAKISTAN


The posts of chairmen of at least four committees of the National Assembly

(NA), the lower house of parlia-ment, are still vacant as their se-lection has not so far been made.

These forums are concerned with the ministries of commu-nications, energy, and statistics, and the China-Pakistan Eco-nomic Corridor (CPEC).

The offi cial data, however, shows that these committees have been constituted, incor-porating members of the ruling coalition and opposition parties.

In the absence of their chair-men, these bodies are unable to hold meetings, and thus mat-ters pertaining to the concerned

ministries coming up in the Na-tional Assembly are not being referred to them for considera-tion, debate, and scrutiny.

After a long time, the gov-ernment and opposition parties reached consensus on constitut-ing the NA committees.

However, no election of any chairman has been held, and only selections as agreed be-tween the two sides were made.

The share decided for them is being strictly implemented to avoid any controversy.

It is evident that despite dif-ferences on every issue, the ruling alliance and opposition parties arrived at an agreement to have the chairmen of the par-liamentary committees elected on the basis of their respective strength in the National Assem-bly.

The committee on the CPEC has been formed in the National Assembly on the pattern of the Senate, where it is led by Paki-stan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Sherry Rehman.

The chairmen of all the re-maining 43 committees of the lower house of Parliament have been named from both sides of the isles.

Some of these bodies have started functioning, while many have yet to hold even inaugural meetings.

Parliamentary observers say that the forums, completed in all respects, will be activated to give their input on the proposed leg-islation as the government in-troduces its legislative business in the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, the standing committee on rules of procedure

and privileges meets on April 17 to take up the question of privi-lege raised by a Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) law-maker regarding his entangle-ment in a “false, politically-mo-tivated case” in Kakarali police station, Gujrat, by the registra-tion of a “fabricated” fi rst infor-mation report (FIR) against him and an alleged attempt by Mian Tahir Bashir, the superintend-ent of police at headquarters, and Mian Mohamed Arshad, the deputy superintendent of police, along with police personnel, to forcibly occupy his property.

The committee will also con-sider the question of privilege raised by Ali Nawaz Shah, an independent MP from Sindh, regarding “non-attending” of his telephone calls by the Sindh local government secretary and

alleged harassment of his vot-ers by Deputy Commissioner of Mirpurkhas Mehdi Shah and superintendent of police Abid Baloch.

On May 2, the standing com-mittee on parliamentary aff airs will hold a session for a briefi ng from the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), with refer-ence to polls for the general seats of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly in the merged areas of the former Federally Adminis-tered Tribal Areas (Fata).

It will also be briefed on the Prime Minister Grievances Cell of the Parliamentary Aff airs Di-vision, covering the details of funds utilised with region-wise breakup and revival of the fatal disease programme.

A sub-body of the Public Ac-counts Committee has been

convened on April 23, to take into consideration matters re-lating to the aviation division.

The department has been asked to be represented by its principal accounting offi cer during the review of audit paras, relating to it.

The special committee on agriculture products meets on April 17 and will get a briefi ng on agriculture policy and institu-tional framework for agriculture development in each province, and key constraints and emerg-ing challenges to agriculture sector.

The standing committee on maritime also assembles the same day to get an update on the maritime laws and contempo-rary challenges to the maritime sector, with special reference to legal implications.

Key lower house panels still without chairmenInternewsIslamabad

Living PakistanA health worker (above) gestures at a rally in Peshawar yesterday to demand permanent staff positions and an increase in allowances and benefits.

Young Sikh devotees participate in the Baisakhi festival at Panja Sahib shrine in Hasanabdal on Sunday.

Brides smile during their mass wedding ceremony in Karachi over the weekend. Dozens of couples who could not aff ord wedding expenses took part in the ceremony organised by the Al Ghousia Welfare Organisation.

A Hazara child taking part in a protest in Quetta yesterday.

The government of Paki-stan remains undecided on whether to impose a

“sin tax” on cigarettes, as sug-gested by a special Senate com-mittee, due to opposition by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

The Special Committee on Causes of Decline in Tax Collec-tion of Tobacco Sector, headed by Senator Kalsoom Parveen, has recommended a systematic increase in federal excise duty (FED) on cigarettes every year to comply with the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Frame-work Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and increase

government revenues.According to Parveen: “There

is some room for the govern-ment to raise the FED without disturbing the fi scal infl ows, as the two multinational tobacco companies produced a gross turnover of Rs173bn in the year 2018; that is 22% higher com-pared to the 2017.”

The committee also suggested a comprehensive strategy to stop the smuggling of international brands and the production of non-duty paid and counterfeit cigarettes within the country.

In the report, Parveen said that all the stakeholders – the Pakistan National Heart As-sociation, tobacco growers, multinational companies, local manufacturers, the ministries of

commerce and national health services (NHS), and commer-cial dealers – should be taken on board by the FBR in revising taxes on the tobacco sector.

In the Federal Health Levy Bill presented to the cabinet for approval, the ministry of NHS also suggested a “sin tax” on cigarettes, on the grounds that cigarettes cause some 108,800 fatalities every year in Pakistan – almost 300 deaths per day.

An offi cial from the ministry said that similar taxes and lev-ies are called a “sin tax”, and have been imposed in around 45 countries, including the US, where $1.50 is charged on every pack of cigarettes.

The UK charges 40p per litre on sugary beverages in the form

of “sin tax”, and Thailand and India also have similar taxes ear-marked for healthcare services.

A spokesperson from the FBR, meanwhile said that higher taxes

would increase illicit trade.The FBR’s Hamid Ateq said:

“A sin tax would eventually lead to rise in smuggling, and growth in the sale of cheap, non-tax

paying cigarette sector in the country.”

He said higher taxes would lead to a decline in sales of le-gitimate cigarettes.

Govt undecided on ‘sin tax’ on cigarettesInternewsIslamabad

Campaign launched to make Islamabad a smoke-free city

The Pakistan government has launched a campaign

in order to make federal capital Islamabad a smoke-

free city.

In the first phase, Shakarparian and Pakistan Monu-

ment have been declared smoke-free areas.

Speaking with the media persons on the occa-

sion, Minister for National Health Services Aamir

Mehmood Kiani said that the smoke-free campaign

had been launched with a view to make Islamabad a

model city, not only for Pakistan but also the region

and the world.

Referring to the adverse impact of smoking on the

lives of the people, he said that more than 100,000

lives are lost annually in Pakistan due to smoking.

He said that there is a law prohibiting smoking in pub-

lic places, but this was never implemented.

Kiani said that smoking will now be banned at all

public places, including the premises of National As-

sembly and the Senate.

The minister said that the Capital Development

Authority has also been directed to promote healthy

activities in the capital.

Kiani regretted that the health sector never remained

a priority for past administrations, and said that the

present government is striving to make progress on

this aspect.

Imran’s aides visit Quetta as Hazaras protestInternewsIslamabad

Members of the Hazara community continued their sit-in yesterday

for the fourth consecutive day against the Hazar Ganji suicide bombing, which claimed 20 lives in Quetta on Friday.

Despite rainfall, members of the Hazara community con-tinued their sit-in on Quetta’s Western Bypass, which links the city with highways.

Women and children are also part of the sit-in demanding ac-tion against the perpetrators of Hazara killings.

The protesters have set up camps and burnt wood to keep warm at night.

The protesters have been chanting slogans, asking for an end to terrorism and to Hazara killings.

“Prime Minister Imran Khan should come and console us,” Mohamed Raza, a protester, said. “This time the government should go beyond words and do something practical for our pro-tection.”

The premier has yet to visit the bereaved.

State Minister for Interior, Sheharyar Afridi, arrived in Quetta yesterday to review the security situation.

He was accompanied by Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Zulfi qar Bukhari.

Afridi visited the Imam Bar-gah located in Hazara town to condole with the bereaved fam-ily members.

Speaking to the media, he said that the federal government stands with the Hazara com-munity and that concrete steps will be taken to end the crimes against its members.

“The question is, who is it that wants to create these diff erences between Pakistanis? Who wants to create a situation of confl ict within Pakistan?

“I am saying these things and asking these questions because Pakistan’s enemies want that this country be added to the [Financial Action Task Force] blacklist.

“They want that, at every lev-el, including the economic level, such blows be dealt that Pakistan – God forbid – breaks apart.”

Afridi and Bukhari also called on Baluchistan Chief Minis-ter Jam Kamal Khan and other political leaders to discuss the means to improve security and end the ongoing protest by the Hazara community.

The protesters have refused to call off the sit-in despite re-peated requests by the district administration and appeals of provincial ministers.

“We strongly condemn the terrorist incident but (the) blockade of road needs to end in view of troubles for people,” Rahim Agha, the president An-juman-e-Tajaran, said.

A report released by the Na-tional Commission for Human Rights last year stated that 509 members of the Hazara commu-nity were killed and 627 injured in various incidents of terrorism in Quetta from January 2012 to December 2017.

Senate chairman can serve as acting president: courtThe Islamabad High Court (IHC) has declared that Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani is eligible to serve as acting president of Pakistan.The decision, reserved by the court on February 14, was announced by Islamabad High Court judge Justice Aamir Farooq.Petitioner Afzal Shinwari had filed the plea through Advocate Iftikhar Bashir in June 2018, contesting that appointing 41-year-old Sanjrani as acting president would be in violation of Article 49 of the Constitution.The petition stated according to the Constitution, a person below the age of 45 years is not eligible to become the acting president of Pakistan.Opposing the petition, Deputy Attorney General Raja Khalid Mehmood had contended that the age limit was applicable for candidates contesting the presidential election.

NAB drops notices to Shehbaz’s wife and daughtersNational Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman Justice (retired) Javed Iqbal has cancelled the summons issued for Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) president Shehbaz Sharif’s wife and daughters.The NAB chairman visited the bureau’s Lahore off ice yesterday and was briefed on the cases ongoing against the Sharif family, a notification issued by the accountability watchdog stated.Iqbal will directly oversee all cases against the Sharif family himself, the notification added.Further, the NAB chairman cancelled the notices issued summoning Shehbaz’s wife, Nusrat Shehbaz, and his daughters Rabia Imran and Javeria Ali.

New foreignsecretary takes charge todayForeign Secretary-designate Sohail Mahmood will assume the off ice this evening, replacing Tehmina Janjua, who will be retiring the same day.Janjua will be completing 35 years of her association with the ministry of foreign aff airs.Mahmood, who reached Islamabad by road from India, was high commissioner in New Delhi.He relinquished the charge on Saturday.Deputy High Commissioner Syed Haider Shah will become the acting high commissioner of Pakistan to India.

Senate Chairman Sanjrani

PHILIPPINES

25Gulf Times Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Court rejects Rappler chief’s plea to junk cyber-libel caseBy Catherine A ModestoManila Times

A Manila court has reject-ed an appeal of Rappler chief and Executive Edi-

tor Maria Ressa and former re-searcher Reynaldo Santos Jr to junk a cyber-libel case against them for lack of merit.

Judge Rainelda Estacio Montesa of the Manila Re-gional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 46 on April 12 ruled that there were enough ele-ments of libel claimed by the Department of Justice (DoJ) on its charge sheet, as provided under Section 4(C)(4) of Re-public Act (RA) 10175, that the prescription period for cyber-libel is 12 years, not one year, as provided under RA 3326.

Section 2 of RA 3326 states that: “Prescription shall be-gin to run from the day of the commission of the violation of the law, and if the same be not known at the time, from the discovery thereof and the insti-tution of judicial proceeding for its investigation and punish-ment.”

Ressa and her co-accused, through Free Legal Assistance Group’s Theodore Te, their le-

gal counsel, used as reference to challenge the DoJ’s position a Supreme Court decision in

2014, which said cyberlibel was “not a new crime, but is one al-ready punishable under Article

353 (of the Revised Penal Code or RPC).”

Article 353 of the RPC pro-

vides that libel or other similar off ences shall be prescribed in one year, which means one can-not be sued for the off ence one year after a purportedly libel-lous story is published. Montesa dismissed this argument.

“The instant case was fi led in court on February 5, 2019, which is well within the period of 12 years, negating the asser-tion raised by the accused that the off ence already prescribed,” she said. The charge stemmed from a resurrected complaint of businessman Wilfredo Keng in connection with a supposedly libellous article by Rappler on May 29, 2012, titled “CJ using SUVs of ‘controversial’ busi-nessman,” posted four months before the law was enacted.

Keng fi led the complaint in 2017, which was dismissed, but revived less than a week later by the National Bureau of Investi-gation.

Montesa also rejected the ar-gument in the motion to quash, which said the law was under temporary restraining order (TRO) from Oct 9, 2012 con-tinuously until April 22, 2014, thus “there was eff ectively no Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012,” meaning no statute could be applied retroactively.

The DoJ used “republished” to apply the Cybercrime Pre-vention Act on the article, but Te said minor corrections did not equate to “republication,” because “to treat the changes as republication would be inap-propriate and defeat the pur-pose of the single publication rule,” citing court decisions from the United States.

The alleged republication was done on Feb 19, 2014, when the TRO was still in eff ect, the ap-peal said.

The judge said the TRO “merely suspends the imple-mentation and enforcement of RA 10175 so that crimes com-mitted during the said period cannot be prosecuted. However, it did not suspend its eff ectiv-ity.” “So, while crimes commit-ted during the said period can-not be prosecuted during the eff ectivity of the TRO, they may be prosecuted after the lifting of the same just like what is done in this case,” she added.

Montesa said Rappler’s cor-porate liability could be proven in court.

Because of the dismissed plea, Rappler, Ressa and San-tos’ arraignment is set to push through today at 8.30am at RTC Branch 46.

Maria Ressa: appeal rejection

Global task force tackles child traffi cking in PhilippinesThomson Reuters Foundation Manila

The tip-off came from the FBI: details of an arrest in the United States, the

accused’s social media profi les, and a host of photographs show-ing young Filipina girls engaged in lewd acts.

Led by police in the Philip-pines, a new global anti-child sex abuse task force started dis-secting the US citizen’s digital footprint in order to track down the exploited girls.

“Those images were very ex-plicit...disturbing,” said William Macavinta, the Filipino police general heading the unit that launched this year to combat cybersex traffi cking — a form of modern slavery where children are abused over webcam.

“It was clear that we had to move fast to extract the chil-dren,” said Macavinta, whose country is considered by cam-paigners to be the epicentre of the fast-growing trade.

Three weeks later, British and

Australian cops assembled with their local counterparts one evening just before dusk, and raided a slum located on fi shing docks in the capital, Manila.

The task force did not fi nd the alleged local off ender but res-cued fi ve girls — aged 10 to 13 — who had been groomed and di-rected to perform lewd acts over livestream by the American.

Tens of thousands of girls in the Philippines are estimated by charities to be trapped in the ex-ploitative trade, with a growing number abused online for glo-bal clients due to the country’s cheap Internet, high standard of English and widespread poverty.

The Southeast Asian nation received about 60,000 reports of online child sexual exploitation last year — up a third on 2017 — said a US investigator working in the Philippines with the Inter-national Justice Mission (IJM) — an anti-traffi cking group.

From Australia and the United States to Britain, major nations are boosting eff orts to stop their citizens fuelling an illicit busi-ness believed to be spreading

across Southeast Asia.But obstacles are aplenty.Many victims are exploited by

their own families and unable or afraid to speak out, while the en-crypted nature of modern tech-nology from messaging to video call apps makes criminals tough to track, according to police.

“This hidden crime is very diffi cult to shut down,” said Macavinta, citing strict privacy laws that make it tough for police to monitor suspects and make arrests without a warrant.

“Referrals from foreign law enforcement — that’s how we know these things (online child abuse cases) are happening.”

The Philippine Internet Crimes Against Child Center (PICACC) was launched in Feb-ruary and is home to offi cials from the Australian Federal Po-lice (AFP) and Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA), as well as

representatives from the IJM.The task force has also forged

links with authorities in the United States, Canada, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.

“Historically, there hadn’t been a lot of co-operation,” said Richard Stanford, a police detec-tive heading up the Australian contingent, adding that diff erent nations and local agencies had previously been working on cas-es “in ignorance of each other”. Every report of online child sex abuse — raised in the Philippines or abroad — now goes to the task force, where experts in online forensics, criminal investigation and child protection work hand-in-hand to track down off enders and their victims.

Stanford said Australia had a moral and legal responsibility to tackle the crime in the Philip-pines, having provided a “dis-proportionate number of paedo-philes to Southeast Asia”. And a 2017 Australian law preventing the country’s more than 23,000 convicted paedophiles from travelling abroad could in fact accelerate the rise of cybersex

child traffi cking, he said.“Good intention (with the

law) — but it means there’ll be a corresponding increase in online sexual abuse,” Stanford added.

“We are looking at predators...very, very cunning...extremely clever, desperate...who go to great lengths to achieve their ends,” he told the Thomson Reu-ters Foundation.

Britain this month said it would give 3mn pounds in aid funding to the NCA to investi-gative British paedophiles who travel to “high risk” foreign countries such as the Philip-pines. Filipina senator Loren Legarda has urged other nations to get tougher on predators who watch abuse online by amending their laws to enact harsher pun-ishments.

The Philippines’ anti-traf-fi cking legislation carries the threat of life in prison.

No data exists on the number of child victims of cybersex traf-fi cking, but at least 784,000 people in the Philippines — or one in 130 — are estimated to be trapped in modern-day slavery,

found the Global Slavery Index by the Walk Free Foundation.

Police say the crime is growing and has been fuelled by factors ranging from well-established money wiring services to aff ord-able, high-speed Internet cover-age across the country.

At least half of the population had Internet access as of 2016, up from a quarter in 2010, ac-cording to World Bank data.

Abusers can earn up to $100 per show in a country where about a fi fth of its 105mn peo-ple live in poverty — earning less than $2,000 a year — govern-ment fi gures show.

All but a few cybersex traf-fi cking cases involve children being abused by their relatives or family friends, and half of the victims are aged 12 or younger, police and the IJM said.

“Reporting on them is not natural, culturally” said the US investigator, a former SWAT team member who declined to be identifi ed due to his involvement in ongoing operations. “Some of the children, they don’t even un-derstand that this is wrong.”

The trade has grown quickly in communities rife with crime, where it is seen as less risky than selling drugs, he added.

The international command centre took on 33 new cases during its fi rst month in action, adding to a backlog of hundreds of investigations brought to the table by the various agencies.

But police say they are often hamstrung by laws stating that abusers must be caught in the act to justify an arrest, or be no-tifi ed when an arrest warrant is issued during investigations.

While most operations to res-cue children are a success, their exploiters often escape, as was the case with the recent opera-tion in the fi shing dock slum, ac-cording to investigators.

The alleged off ender — a 17-year-old girl — was not found during the raid and is likely abusing others, offi cers said.

“The most eff ective method is to catch them in the act of com-mitting the crime,” said the US investigator with the IJM. “But that’s not always possible. It’s very challenging.”

“The most eff ective method is to catch them in the act of committing the crime”

Militant group leader’s death confi rmedReutersManila

Philippine offi cials has con-fi rmed that a leader of an alliance of pro-Islamic

State militants was one of four insurgents killed in a clash with the military last month.

Defence Secretary Delfi n Lorenzana confi rmed Abu Dar’s death based on the fi ndings of a DNA test. “It is confi rmed, it’s Abu Dar’s remains,” he said.

Security forces believe Abu Dar had led Dawla Islamiya, an alliance of pro-ISIS fi ghters in southern Philippines that in-clude foreigners. The four rebels were killed in a clash in Lanao del Sur province in March.

Major-General Roberto An-can, commander of the army’s 1st Infantry Division, also con-fi rmed Dar’s death.

He called it a “signifi cant ac-complishment of the govern-ment and the people of Lanao del Sur who worked together to rid their beloved province of ter-rorists”.

Dawla Islamiya carried out the siege of southern Marawi City for fi ve months in 2017 before some leaders were re-ported killed by the military in air strikes and street battles, among them Isnilon Hapilon, Is-lamic State’s anointed “chief” in Southeast Asia.Domestic worker fi red

in HK awarded damagesMore police offi cers deployed

across region for Holy WeekAgenciesHong Kong

A domestic worker sacked after a cancer diagnosis was awarded damages

by a Hong Kong court yester-day, in a case that highlighted exploitation of foreign women toiling as maids in the wealthy fi nancial hub.

Baby Jane Allas of the Philip-pines was diagnosed with stage three cervical cancer in Janu-ary and was fi red the following month by her employer, who cited the illness as the reason for termination.

The 38-year-old single mother of fi ve instantly lost the right to healthcare and has had to regularly apply for visa ex-tensions as she navigated Hong Kong’s legal and immigration systems while battling cancer.

She has been undergoing radiation therapy fi ve days a week, along with chemothera-py once a week.

Allas and her former em-ployer — who was absent from yesterday’s proceedings — reached a settlement of 30,000 Hong Kong dollars ($3,800) at the country’s labour tribunal for sickness allowance, medi-cal fees and wages in lieu of notice.

“I am standing here right now to encourage more work-ers to come out if they have these kinds of cases,” Allas said.

Allas added that she hopes to fi nd another employer “who can really understand my situ-ation and treat me well.”

She has separately fi led claims with the Equal Op-portunities Commission for wrongful termination and loss of earnings, which could be brought to the city’s District Court. Allas was accompanied to yesterday’s hearing by sup-

porters and family, including her eight-year-old daughter, who clung to her waist.

Her plight has generated widespread sympathy in Hong Kong and a fundraising cam-paign organised by her sister’s employer, Jessica Cutrera, has so far raised more than 900,000 Hong Kong dollars for her treatment.

A large part of Allas’ medical bills had been covered by hos-pital charities, but expensive surgery would likely be needed to operate on her tumours, said Cutrera.

By Divine De La CruzManila Times

The Philippine National Police has heightened alert in Metro Manila,

deploying 11,600 police offi c-ers across the region during Holy Week.

Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar, National Capital Region (Metro Manila) Police director, yes-terday said the move aims to ensure the safety of passengers in bus terminals and other vi-tal installations as they travel to their provinces for the long holiday season.

Eleazar added that police of-fi cers would also be deployed to churches, where people con-verge in observance of Holy Week. He said other members of the force would still con-tinue with anti-criminality operations during the holiday.

Eleazar and Quezon City Po-lice Director Joselito Esquivel Jr conducted on-site inspections at the Araneta Bus Terminal in Cubao, Quezon City on Friday to ensure that security meas-ures are properly rolled out while on heightened alert and in preparation for the full alert status to be declared tomorrow, when more passengers are ex-pected to leave Metro Manila.

K9 units were also deployed by the police and the Philip-pine Drug Enforcement Agen-cy (PDEA) to detect explosives and illegal drugs.

The PDEA rolled out sur-prise drug tests for drivers and conductors in bus terminals to ensure the safety of passen-gers. PDEA spokesman Derrick Carreon said fi ve drivers and one bus conductor tested posi-tive for drug use.

He said drug users would be prevented from making trips and would be referred to the Land Transportation Offi ce for proper intervention.

Most ships are now fully booked because of an infl ux of passengers exiting Metro Manila for the observance of the Holy Week and the start of summer vacation of students.

The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) said chance passengers were still entertained by ship-ping companies and they were expecting more passengers in all ports nationwide until Maundy Thursday.

PCG spokesman Capt. Ar-mand Balilo said most of the ships were fully booked and that they had monitored more than 97,000 passengers con-verging in all ports as of 12 noon yesterday. According to the latest monitoring of the

PCG and the Department of Transportation’s Oplan Biya-heng Ayos: Semana Santa 2019, 97,233 passengers crowded all ports.

Balilo said they are expecting more passengers until Maundy Thursday, when most of gov-ernment and private offi ces stop their operations.

The PCG, the Maritime In-dustry Authority (Marina) and the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) have been on heightened alert status since April 8.

PCG Commandant and Ad-miral Elson Hermogino last week directed all PCG units to tighten security and adopt safety measures in all ports and ferry terminals during Holy Week and the summer season.

All PCG districts nationwide have K9 teams, special opera-tions forces, harbour patrollers and ship inspectors stationed in ports, who are all directed to exercise extra vigilance in inspecting passengers and lug-gage to ascertain travel safety and security, with medical teams ready to provide assist-ance in emergency cases.

Marina inspected at random a Batangas and Calapan Roll-on/Roll-off (RoRo) vessel at the Batangas Port on April 14 to strengthen maritime safety measures.

Duterte signs $71bn national budget, aft er months of delay

Philippines President Rodrigo

Duterte yesterday signed a

3.7tn peso ($71.5bn) budget for

this year, its largest ever, ending

months of impasse that forced

the Southeast Asian country to

cuts its growth target.

The Philippines last month cut its

2019 growth target to 6-7% from

7-8%, reflecting the absence of a

new budget and the impact of

the US-China trade dispute.

In signing the budget, the

president vetoed $1.8bn worth

of appropriations, Executive

Secretary Salvador Medialdea

told reporters.

Vetoed items include non-priority

public works, he said.

Months of squabbling between

the upper and lower chambers of

the house delayed the transmis-

sion of this year’s national budget

to the president.

For next year, economic manag-

ers will propose a 4.1tn peso

($79.35bn) national budget.

The Philippines, among the fast-

est growing economies in Asia, is

aiming for growth of 6.5-7.5% in

2020, and 7-8% in 2021 and 2022,

mainly through an extensive

infrastructure overhaul.

The Philippine economy grew

6.2% in 2018, the slowest in three

years, because of weak exports,

manufacturing and farm output.

Filipina domestic worker Baby Jane Allas, a 38-year-old mother of five who was sacked after she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, cries during an interview in Hong Kong.


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CHAIRMANAbdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing EditorK T Chacko

The Woods story just grew larger with fi fth Masters win

A fi fth Masters title for Tiger Woods, 22 years after his fi rst and 14 years after his last, and a 15th major triumph, following an 11-year hiatus, raises the question: What next?

At 43, Woods has a new lease of life after spinal fusion surgery helped rescue a career also aff ected by personal troubles including a sex scandal, the break-up of his marriage and a reckless driving case.

Sunday’s victory was one of perseverance through adversity and means he is one short of the six Masters titles won by Jack Nicklaus and three shy of the all-time record of 18 majors won by the Golden Bear.

Nicklaus was 46 when he won the last of his Masters in 1986. There was a six-year gap between that and his previous major win at the PGA Championship in 1980.

Woods has gone five years longer between major titles, and only Nicklaus is older as a Masters champions.

But Woods could go on playing longer. He may have shed some of the sheer driving power of younger years but he can still hit the ball nearly 300 yards from the tee – his average driving distance of 297.5 yards after the opening three rounds was longer than many.

He takes care of his body. Providing his back holds up and he does not have to deal with other injuries, Woods can still win majors.

That much is now clear.The Nicklaus record is

not on his radar. For now.“I’m sure that I’ll probably think of it going down the

road. Maybe, maybe not. But right now, it’s a little soon, and I’m just enjoying 15,” he said.

Woods is choosing his tournaments carefully to conserve fi tness, and has trimmed his schedule after feeling he did too much too soon last year.

Players can extend their careers with the right nutrition and training. And Woods, always the perfect physical specimen, was a groundbreaker in working on his physique when he emerged on the scene.

The younger players now on the tour are getting bigger, stronger, faster, more athletic. They are recovering better. They are hitting the ball prodigious distances.

“A little bit of that’s probably attributed to what I did,” Woods said.

When Woods first turned professional he often found himself in the gym with only Vijay Singh for company.

Now everybody trains – “and they, even Phil’s working out,” he quipped in reference to veteran Phil Mickelson.

Woods winning majors can only be good for the business and marketing of golf and to inspire once again others to take up the game.

It does no harm either for the bank balance of the player himself who earned 2.07mn dollars for his one-shot victory and, according to Forbes business magazine, has cumulative career earnings of 1.5 billion dollars.

And as sporting comebacks go, it’s up there with the best.

“Americans love to see their brightest stars fall, and few have fallen from a higher point than Woods, who was the most marketable athlete on the planet for a decade-plus,” Forbes wrote.

“But the one thing Americans seem to love even more is the redemption story.”

Sunday’s victory was one of perseverance through adversity

16 - 04 -2019

QNADoha

Chairman of the Human Rights Sub-Committee of the European Parliament (EP), Pier Antonio Panzeri,

has affi rmed that Qatar has become a reference for human rights, praising its hosting of the “International Conference on National, Regional and International Mechanisms to Combat Impunity and Ensure Accountability under International Law.”

He added that this conference opens a new chapter in strengthening the rule of law at the level of the international community.

Speaking at a press conference, Panzeri lauded the Qatari initiative to host this conference, saying that Qatar is on the right track of reform in a number of areas, and the country can be considered as a reference for human rights and this conference is the best indication that it is on the right track.

During the conference, he thanked Qatar for taking this initiative by hosting the conference on issues related to impunity and accountability, praising the concrete co-operation of the National Human Rights Committee, headed by HE the Chairman of the Committee, Dr Ali bin Smaikh al-Marri, with the European Parliament and the Sub-Committee on Human Rights.

He described Qatar’s hosting of the conference as a good start for the future course of action.

“It is a project led by Qatar at the international level, and it is a very important one and these are commendable eff orts”, he said, expecting that it would succeed in the future.

The success of the conference, he said, will open a new path in endeavours to combat impunity.

“By opening new horizons at this enormous international level, we seek to combat impunity and promote accountability”, he said.

Panzeri stressed that Qatar has started a positive path, especially after a number of developments and events faced under the unjust blockade imposed on it, pointing out that the country seeks to shed light on this issue at the international level.

He recalled that when the Human Rights Sub-Commission of the European Parliament and the National Human Rights Committee initiated co-operation almost a year ago, they signed a protocol of co-operation and this conference was organised as a result of that.

He stressed the need for a large-scale body to combat impunity and to co-operate with existing institutions and serve as a monitoring and follow-up mechanism to help achieve the desired goals.

The chairman of the Human Rights Sub-Committee of the European Parliament pointed out that during the two-day conference, a number of key points were highlighted, including the need for a large-scale action in the fi ght against impunity, and that many countries are required to do so.

“There is an urgent need to support the accountability mechanism if we want to continue to fi ght impunity in cases of gross human rights violations”, he said.

He pointed out that the conference also addressed the need to recognise the importance of enhancing accountability, especially with regard to cases of some violations and some crimes where impunity exists, stressing the importance of working to activate existing mechanisms at the local, regional and international levels, and the integration of these mechanisms because each supports the other.

Responding to a question about the position of the European Parliament’s Human Rights Sub-Committee towards a number of Qatari nationals detained in Saudi prisons without trial, and how the international parliament could pressure Riyadh to release them, Pier

Antonio Panzeri said: “The parliament has done a lot, as a resolution related to human rights issues in Saudi Arabia has recently been approved, and has raised the issue and the need to release of those behind bars, not only them but also women who were imprisoned for taking part in demonstrations or for wanting to drive a car”.

On the mechanisms that were discussed during the conference and how to activate them, he explained that during the conference two tracks were identifi ed, the fi rst emphasised the importance of recognising that there are existing mechanisms and that they do not start from scratch, especially since there are many who object to these mechanisms or seek to disapply them if they are incompatible with them, he said, calling on all countries to abide by these mechanisms.

Under to the second track, international law should not be considered the only reference, as there is a need for pressure from the local public opinion within these countries, indicating that the European Parliament is working on these mechanisms, which need to be activated.

On the solution of the Gulf crisis, he pointed out that the crisis can be solved in two ways: fi rst, to draw a framework for balance and stability that allows an end to the confl ict, and second, to fi nd a way to resolve the crisis that is not related only to the region.

On the role of the European Parliament Sub-Committee on Human Rights in stopping the EU governments from selling arms to Saudi Arabia and following up the human rights fi le and releasing the detainees there, Panzeri said that they had ratifi ed a resolution under which they called on countries at the European level not to sell arms to Saudi Arabia and it had been approved, stressing that this is a very important.

He added that they cannot save the world, but they can make recommendations, continue demanding in a sustained manner and maintain their rightful positions, hoping that these eff orts would lead to positive results to mobilise public opinion to press their governments to achieve the desired goals.

He stressed, at the same time, the importance of maintaining relations between States to promote respect for human rights and combat impunity.

Regarding the president of the European Parliament’s call on the European countries to intervene to resolve the confl ict in Libya, he stressed the importance of avoiding the repetition of the Syrian scenario in Libya, indicating that there is a very complicated situation in Libya, while stressing the importance of recognising that there are diff erences within the European Union itself, with regard to the Libyan issue, and these eff orts should lead to a transition process towards democracy and peace.

Qatar has become a referencefor human rights: EP head

A section of the audience at the conference. PICTURE: Shaji Kayamkulam

Chairman of the Human Rights Sub-Committee of the European Parliament (EP), Pier Antonio Panzeri.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Tuesday, April 16, 2019 27

Toward a global Green New DealBy Richard Kozul-Wright and Kevin P GallagherGeneva

The “Green New Deal” (GND) proposed by progressives in the United States cannot be achieved in isolation. To

tackle climate change and inequality together, all countries will need to agree to new rules for international co-operation.

The start of such a rethinking began a decade ago.

In April 2009, the G20 met in London and promised to deliver a co-ordinated response to the global fi nancial crisis, followed by a future of more robust growth. Then, in December of that year, world leaders meeting in Copenhagen under the auspices of the United Nations promised big cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, to limit global warming to 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The fi rst conference ended with British prime minister Gordon Brown announcing a “new world order” founded on “a new progressive era of international co-operation”; the second ended in disarray. Yet, looking back, the false dawn of that “new progressive era” has proved to be the bigger obstacle to a secure and stable future.

For a decade now, the post-crisis recovery has oscillated between anaemic growth spurts and recurrent bouts of fi nancial instability, owing partly to advanced economies’ discordant mix of aggressively loose monetary policies and dogged fi scal austerity. And this has all been supported by massive build-up of debt, which has increased by more than $70tn worldwide since the crisis.

But the recovery’s sluggishness also owes something to the intertwining of corporate and political power under financialised

capitalism. As economic power has become increasingly concentrated, inequality – both within and among countries – has reached grotesque heights. With financial speculation now commonplace, so, too, are fraud and instability. Meanwhile, investment in public goods – globally and nationally – has stagnated, and growth has become dependent on resource extraction and energy consumption, both of which are proceeding at such a pace as to threaten human civilisation itself.

For all the ambitious talk in London a decade ago, little has changed. Debates about improving global governance still revolve around ideas like “corporate social responsibility,” “public-private partnerships,” and “free-trade agreements,” none of which will bring about a fairer and more stable economic order.

Complicating matters further, global environmental conditions have become increasingly fragile since 2009. And even before US President Donald Trump’s truculent decision to abandon the 2015 Paris climate agreement, there was no clear path to keeping global temperatures below a level that scientists deem safe, let alone to preventing a more catastrophic breakdown.

Against this dismal backdrop, bold proposals for a GND have been gaining political traction, notably in the US, where the idea is to transform the economy through a harmonious marriage of economic justice, social solidarity, and environmental rehabilitation. The GND has already triggered a rich debate on policy options, and provoked a predictable response from vested interests and their political retainers.

But the marriage Green New Dealers envision cannot be left to the benefaction of a global hegemon. Capital is mobile, and carbon-heavy growth is no longer the preserve of

the advanced economies. For the GND to work, it must also be globalised through international co-operation.

The problem is that multilateral rulemaking in recent decades has been subject to the same political pressures as domestic policymaking. It is not a coincidence that the current framework for governing the global economy primarily benefi ts fi nancial entities and large multinational corporations. The original goal of post-war multilateralism was to protect

the weak from the strong so that they could grow. Yet its current version encourages strong countries to impose their preferred development model on the weak, thereby promulgating a world of “winner-takes-most” outcomes.

Under these conditions, fi ne-tuning existing arrangements simply will not do. To make a global GND work, many of the multilateral programs that have accumulated over decades will have to be culled, and a new generation

of smarter institutions will have to be established. Still, the multilateral landscape itself would continue to resemble what US President Franklin D Roosevelt envisioned when he called for a mutual understanding that would “secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world.”

What we need, then, is a new set of principles to replace those that have underpinned rulemaking in the age of hyper-globalisation.

Looking ahead, global rules must be recalibrated toward the overarching goals of social and economic stability, shared prosperity, and environmental sustainability, and rulemaking bodies must be protected from capture by the most powerful.

Moreover, the international community must decide upon common but diff erentiated responsibilities for collective action, in order to ensure an adequate supply of global public goods and protect the commons across diff erent domains. At the same time, individual countries should still be aff orded the space to pursue national development strategies within the framework of global rules and norms. Embedded in that framework should be regulations to strengthen the international division of labour, and to prevent countries from pursuing destructive unilateral actions that prevent others from realising common goals.

Finally, global public institutions will have to be more accountable to their full membership, and, to achieve that end, should maintain balanced dispute-resolution systems. They also must be open to a greater diversity of viewpoints, and at least cognizant of new voices when they emerge in global debates.

For a decade, the international community has failed to heed Winston Churchill’s advice “to never let a good crisis go to waste.” Unless that changes in the coming decade, those looking back at the current period in 2029 won’t get another chance. - Project Syndicate

Richard Kozul-Wright is Director of the Division on Globalisation and Development Strategy, UNCTAD, Geneva.

Kevin P Gallagher is professor of Global Development Policy at Boston University’s Frederick S Pardee School of Global Studies.

File picture of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) holding a news conference for their proposed “Green New Deal” to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years, at the US Capitol in Washington, on February 7, 2019.

Chocolate may help to slow down hearing loss: study

Parents urged to monitor children during Ramadan fast

Live issues

QNAWashington

We so often hear the negative aspects of eating too much chocolate. However, a

new study shows that it may prevent us from hearing loss in middle age.

Doctors in the South Korean capital Seoul found the rate of hearing loss among people aged from 40 to 64 was much lower in those who ate chocolate than among abstainers.

In a study in the scientific journal Nutrients, they report that chemicals called polyphenols found in cocoa have strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that may protect against hearing damage.

They studied 3,575 middle-aged men and women, giving them hearing tests before they were interviewed about their chocolate consumption.

Researchers found the rate of hearing loss was signifi cantly lower in those who ate chocolate, at 26.8%, than in those who did not, at 36%.

A general practitioner from the Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) and a dietitian from Hamad

Medical Corporation (HMC) have said it is generally safe for most children to fast during Ramadan.

However, they urge parents to monitor their children and watch for signs of distress, noting that children are at an increased risk for dehydration and may also experience low blood sugar as a result of fasting.

“While children are not obligated to fast until they reach puberty, many children wish to observe the practice during Ramadan,” said Fatma Souikey, clinical dietitian supervisor at Hamad General Hospital.

Parents can support their children by encouraging them to get plenty of sleep and serving healthy, nutrient-dense foods during Suhoor and Iftar, she explained.

“For parents whose children will be fasting for the first time, we recommend they delay the Suhoor meal for as long as possible. This will ensure the fasting hours are not unnecessarily prolonged and help prevent undue stress on the child’s young body. For younger children, parents can encourage shorter fasts, allowing the child to abstain for a few hours each day and gradually introducing all-day fasting as the child ages,” Souikey suggested.

She recommends serving slow-digesting, fibre-rich foods such as wholegrain cereals, fruits, and vegetables during Suhoor. It is important for parents to encourage their children to drink plenty of water and limit stimulants such as coffee, tea, and soft drinks.

“Children are at high risk for dehydration so it is important for parents to monitor their activity level, particularly when Ramadan

falls during the hotter months. It is also important for parents to monitor their child’s diet, ensuring they eat sufficiently but do not overeat, especially on foods that contain high amounts of fat and sugar. Encourage your child to eat slowly and to enjoy their meal. This will also help prevent overeating, which can cause bloating, indigestion, and an upset stomach,” added Souikey.

Dr Attia Ibrahim, a General Practitioner at the PHCC, said Ramadan is a great time to teach younger children the basics of fasting. He recommends parents use the early years to slowly build their child’s love for the month of Ramadan so that when they are able to fast, they will look forward to the month with a good understanding of some of the fundamental principles. He also recommends parents start building good habits for their children while they are young, encouraging them to eat healthy foods during the month and to avoid

highly processed, convenience foods like many of those sold at fast food restaurants.

“Provided the child is in good health and has no existing medical conditions, such as anaemia, diabetes, or nutritional defi cits, encourage them to gradually abstain from food and drink during the month, gradually increasing the length of time they are abstaining. For example, have them start by skipping breakfast and let them practice breaking their fast during lunch. Younger children may not be able to physically fast during Ramadan, so let them observe the routine you follow during the month and encourage them to get involved however they can. Be patient and let your children make their own decisions about how long they can fast. Encourage and reward their eff orts,” said Dr Ibrahim.

Good nutrition is especially important for children who fast and they should consume dairy products, protein, fresh fruits and vegetables,

and a variety of important vitamins and minerals.

“Eating whole grains, protein, and complex carbohydrates, such as fruits and vegetables, beans, and lentils will provide children with a long-lasting source of energy throughout the day. Offer them low-fat dairy products and try to incorporate healthy unsaturated fats like avocado and olive oil. Limit the number of sweets they eat during the Suhoor meal as simple carbohydrates will be quickly digested and your child will soon feel hungry again. Children who fast should be encouraged to avoid high-intensity exercise and to drink lots of fluids, especially water, during non-fasting hours. It is important to ensure your child stays hydrated, as not having enough fluid in the body will lead to constipation and can irritate the bladder,” said Dr Ibrahim.

Both Dr Ibrahim and Souikey note there may be health benefits associated with fasting for children who are overweight or obese; however, they recommend parents consult their family doctor before making any changes to the child’s diet, particularly if the child has an existing medical condition.

The Ministry of Public Health, HMC, and Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) have reminded members of the public about the Ramadan Health website and companion smartphone and tablet app. The Ramadan Health website is Qatar’s first online resource devoted to health and wellness during the Holy Month. Visit the Ramadan Health website at www.hamad.qa/ramadanhealth, or download the app to a smartphone or tablet by searching for ‘Qatar Health’ (available for iOS and Android operating systems).

WARNINGInshore : Nil

Offshore : Nil

WEATHERInshore : Relatively hot daytime

with some clouds, mild by night.

Offshore : Fine to some clouds

laterWINDInshore : Northwesterly-North-

easterly 05-15 KT

Offshrore : Mainly Southwesterly-Southeasterly 03-12 KT

Visibility : 4 - 8 KM

Offshore : 1 -3 FT

TODAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

Maximum Temperature : 350c

Minimum Temperature : 220c





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Dr Attia Ibrahim, a family medicine physician at the PHCC.

Fatma Souikey, clinical dietitian at Hamad General Hospital.

From Page 1

The Al Khor Road main car-riageway will serve as an alterna-tive to Al Shamal Road and allow road users coming from Al Khor to reach their desired destina-tions by saving the travel time by up to 65% compared to the same journey via Al Shamal Road.

The main carriageway was opened after completing up-grading works that transformed the old road into an expressway extending from Al Khor Road in Al Khor to Qatar University Street in Doha.

The old road layout had up to two lanes in each direction, which is now upgraded to fi ve in each direction in addition to two emergency lanes. The new road layout will considerably upgrade the vehicular capacity from 8,000 to 20,000 vehicles per hour in both directions, improve traffi c movement and enhance road safety.

Also, the project’s special de-sign allows for a wide central median that will accommodate the railway line, connecting Al Khor to Doha with two main sta-tions.

The newly opened road is stra-tegically linked with major ex-pressways such as Al Majd Road, which will provide connectivity with several major highways and allow free-fl owing navigation across the western and southern areas of Qatar.

Primarily, Al Khor Road di-rectly serves more than 20 resi-dential areas along its carriage-

way in addition to a number of economic, commercial and pub-lic establishments in surround-ing areas.

In addition to being an alter-native and parallel road to Al Shamal Road and the main link between the north and east of Qatar, Al Khor Road will cre-ate new demographic and urban areas extending along the east coast of Doha to Al Khor and Ras Laff an.

“The road will become the centre of development to en-courage the population of Doha to move outside the city and re-construct the eastern areas of Qatar to Al Khor, so Lusail be-comes an ideal city to live in,” Ashghal said, adding that the project will open the doors for more investments in business, real estate and agriculture.

Al Khor Road is composed of 10 multi-level interchanges, six of which provide free fl ow con-nection to main roads such as Simaisma Road, Al Majd Road and Al Turfa Street and facili-tate access to Al Shamal Road and Lusail Expressway. These interchanges comprise of eight bridges, 22 underpasses and a camel crossing to connect Lu-sail’s Reserves.

After having partially opened three interchanges on Al Khor Road in November 2018, Ash-ghal has now announced their full opening - Simaisma Inter-change, Al Khor Road’s intersec-tion with Al Majd Road, and Al Khor Road’s intersection with Al Turfa Street.

Located on the intersection of Al Khor Road with Simaisma Road, the Simaisma Interchange includes a main bridge, four loops and four right exits to pro-vide free-fl owing connectivity in all directions for road users com-ing from Al Shamal Road and Al Khor Road.

It is considered the main ac-cess to the city of Simaisma and provides a direct link to the Umm Qarn area. It also serves several leisure facilities such as the Si-maisma beach, Youth Centre and Resort.

Al Khor Road’s intersection with Al Majd Road is a two-level interchange consisting of a main bridge that connects Lusail City with Al Majd Road and Al Shamal Road via the Al Mazrooah In-terchange. It also includes four loops and four exits to connect

Lusail City, Rawdat Al Hamama, Al Kheesa, Al Sakhama, Umm Slal and Al Mazrooah areas and facilitate access to several sports facilities and educational in-stitutions such as Lusail Sports Complex and Community Col-lege of Qatar.

Besides its signifi cant role in linking multiple residential ar-eas, this interchange will make it easy for road users coming from Doha and Al Khor to reach Lusail and Al Bayt Stadium in record time to attend football matches at the 2022 FIFA World Cup sta-diums, Ashghal said.

Considered as the two-level main entrance to Lusail City, the interchange at Al Khor Road’s intersection with Al Turfa Street will facilitate access for traffi c coming from Al Shamal Road via the Izghawa Interchange and

Al Turfa Street and heading to-wards Lusail and Doha. Its spe-cial design, also known as partial cloverleaf, is composed of two loops and four right exits and de-livers free-fl owing traffi c move-ment between Lusail, Al Ebb, Leabib, Al Turfa and Izghawa. The interchange also includes a main bridge to allow traffi c com-ing from Al Turfa Street to con-tinue north on Al Khor Road.

This interchange will signifi -cantly enhance access to Qatar University, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies as well as Doha Golf Club.

Meanwhile, HE the Minister of Transport and Communications Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti said Al Khor Road is one of the most important arterial roads that will make a diff erence in land trans-portation, which is expected to

be signifi cantly enhanced in the northern and eastern regions.

The road will connect Al Khor with Doha in approximately 20 minutes, and it also involves the highest levels of road safety with its provision of fi ve lanes in each direction, in addition to the fact that it is considered the most adequate alternative to Al Shamal Road. HE the Minister said the special design of Al Khor Road allows for the wide central median to accommodate the rail line, which would provide addi-tional means of transportation to residents in the areas it traverses.

He also emphasised that dur-ing the construction phase, all future infrastructure construc-tion projects were taken into consideration, especially tel-ecommunications, in addition to rainwater and drainage sys-

tems without having to perform any additional excavation anew, highlighting the fact that this fu-turistic approach will be used in all State development projects.

HE the Minister of Municipal-ity and Environment Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki al-Sub-aie noted that Qatar has made outstanding achievements in the development of infrastructure projects, which have been deliv-ered according to plan.

He said Al Khor Road provides access to multiple regions from the north to Doha, especially as it serves more than 20 residential areas such as Al Khor, Lusail and The Pearl-Qatar as well as areas located to the east of Al Shamal Road like Al Kheesa, Al Ebb and Leabaib.

He also noted that Al Khor Road is a key factor in sustain-ing the east coast’s development - creating new communities and a favourable environment for in-vestments in real estate, indus-trial and many other sectors that will encourage people to settle along the surrounding areas of Al Khor Road.

Dr Saad bin Ahmed al-Mo-hannadi, president of Ashghal, expressed gratitude for the wise leadership whose vision and direction have been pivotal in delivering state-of-the-art in-frastructure. He also expressed pride in opening Al Khor Road one year ahead of schedule and three years and a half before the 2022 FIFA World Cup, especially as it links Al Bayt Stadium with Lusail Stadium.

28 Gulf TimesTuesday, April 16, 2019

QATAR

Tarsheed helps Qatar save QR1.75bn by reducing electricity, water consumptionBy Shafeeq AlingalStaff Reporter

The prestigious National Programme for Conserva-tion and Energy Effi ciency

(Tarsheed) by General Electric-ity and Water Corporation (Kah-ramaa) has helped Qatar save QR1.75bn in 2018 through re-duction of electricity and water consumption.

The achievements were high-lighted at the seventh annual celebration of Tarsheed yester-day in the presence of HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, HE the Minister of State for Energy Aff airs Saad bin Sherida al-Kaa-bi and other dignitaries.

Addressing the event organ-ised under the title ‘Towards Sustainability,’ Kahramaa presi-dent Essa bin Hilal al-Kuwari explained that Tarsheed also resulted in reduction of natural gas consumption and carbon di-oxide emission.

According to statistics, Qatar marked a savings of QR1,470mn and QR283mn by reducing electricity consumption by

6295gwh and water consump-tion by 33.22mm3, respectively. In 2018, natural gas consump-tion was reduced by 60642mcf due to intervention and aware-ness by Tarsheed. The year also witnessed reduction of 3.66

tonnes of carbon emission. The achievements were gained by Kahramaa after it launched a slew of measures including in-tervention, awareness and en-forcement through Tarsheed. The ambitious programme was

launched in April 2012 as part of Qatar National Vision 2030.

According to Tarsheed sta-tistics, Hotels Consumption Reduction Initiative resulted in reducing 4670mwh electric-ity. Enhancing Minimum Energy

Performance Standards (MEPS) standard and labelling for air conditioners helped the coun-try save 405,000mwh electric-ity while phasing out of incan-descent lamps led to saving of 570,4000mwh electricity.

The function also marked award distribution for winners in contests and felicitation of children who participated in raising awareness about Tar-sheed.

HE Sheikh Abdullah hon-

oured the winners. The celebra-tion also witnessed the felicita-tion of the winners of Tarsheed 2022 project which is being run by Kahramaa and the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Leg-acy.

HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani and other dignitaries at the seventh annual celebration of Tarsheed yesterday.

Some of the winners with HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani and other dignitaries.

A view of Al Khor Road. PICTURE: Ram Chand

HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani with other dignitaries and off icials at a ceremony marking the opening of Al Khor Road’s main carriageway yesterday.

New road links Doha-Al Khor in 20 minutes

New road opens cutting travel time to Al Khor

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