No talk on issues that affect Qatar's sovereignty: FM - Gulf Times

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since 1978FRIDAY Vol. XXXVIII No. 10507

July 7, 2017Shawwal 13, 1438 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

BUSINESS |

Qatar Airways set to buy shares in American Airlines

Ton-up Root turns tide in England’s favour

SPORT | Page 1

QATAR | Diplomacy

Emir holds phone conversation with Guinean president

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani has held a telephone conversation with the President of Guinea, Alpha Conde, the current president of the African Union (AU). The conversation reviewed the latest developments related to the current Gulf crisis. President Conde, who chairs the AU, expressed his support for the mediation eff orts of Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah that aim to resolve the crisis through constructive dialogue among all parties based on diplomatic eff orts.President Conde briefed the Emir on the outcome of the African summit and the declaration, in which AU member-states agreed to back the Kuwaiti mediation eff orts as a solution for the current crisis.For his part, the Emir thanked the Guinean president for his eff orts and his stance on the crisis, expressing his appreciation for the AU declaration that supports diplomatic eff orts.

REGION | Currency

Omani banks askedto exchange Qatari riyals at offi cial rateThe Oman Central Bank has issued a circular urging all banks and money exchange establishments in that country to exchange Qatari riyals at the “off icial exchange rates hitherto prevailing”.“In case licensed banks and money exchanges have surplus stock of Qatari riyal notes, these can be exchanged for OMR (Omani riyals) at the counters of Qatar National Bank, Ruwi. The Central Bank of Oman will also accept Qatari riyals and provide exchange services if needed,” the statement said.All branches of banks and exchanges operating in Oman have been asked to strictly comply with the directive.

QATAR | Sport

Qatar will host ‘Great’ World Cup

Qatar could be hosting the “greatest” ever World Cup when it stages the football showpiece in 2022, Spanish 2010 world champion Sergio Busquets has said in an interview with the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC). The Barcelona midfielder, who is in Doha along with club and country teammates Gerard Pique and Jordi Alba, said he has “very good impressions” of Qatar as it is developing sports, football in particular.“I have great feedback from a former teammate and great friend in Xavi. I had the opportunity to come here to play against Uruguay a few years ago. Now they have advanced even more, they are doing it with a lot of passion, preparing well, so I think it will be a great event. “There are still some years remaining, but they are doing projects and planning in a very good way, always improving and it will for sure be a great World Cup,” Busquets said.The visit is Busquets’ second to Qatar, having featured for Spain in a 3-1 friendly win over Uruguay in Doha four years ago. Sports Page 8

EUROPE | Conference

G20 Summit to discuss key issues

The northern German city of Hamburg will host the G20 Summit today amid a host of economic and political challenges. The agenda of the two-day summit will discuss issues including freedom of trade, combating terrorism, climate change, restricting the market movement between countries, development of the African continent, as well as the situation in Syria, and the nuclear tests by North Korea.

Laptop ban lifted on Qatar Airways fl ights to US

Passengers can nowcarry all personalelectronic devices with them

Qatar Airways has been approved by the US Department of Home-land Security to permit passen-

gers to carry personal electronic items on board US-bound fl ights, departing from its hub Hamad International Air-port (HIA) in Doha.

The World’s Best Airline as voted by Skytrax 2017, said the exemption was given earlier yesterday after US offi cials inspected the security measures in full operation at Qatar’s state-of-the-art Hamad International Airport.

With the lifting of the electronics re-strictions, passengers departing from HIA to all Qatar Airways’ US destina-tions will be able to carry their personal electronic devices on board, and have uninterrupted use of them for business and leisure purposes throughout their fl ight.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive

Akbar al-Baker said: “We are pleased to announce that the electronics ban has been lifted from Qatar Airways fl ights departing to all destinations in the US. Safety and security are always our highest priority. They are expressed throughout all of our corporate values, and must never be compromised.

“The security measures in place in Doha allow us to continue to provide our renowned world-class service for all our passengers travelling to the US. We look forward to providing our passengers an even greater choice of US destinations soon, with the addition of San Francisco to our expanding network, on board the most modern of aircraft including the Airbus A350 and our Qsuite retro-fi tted Boeing 777 aircraft.”

Qatar Airways recently announced its intention to make an initial investment of up to 4.75% in its Oneworld partner American Airlines, crediting the air-line’s fundamentals, while intending to build a passive position within the company. Qatar Airways has long con-sidered American Airlines to be a good Oneworld Alliance partner, and looks forward to continuing this relationship.

Qatar Airways has developed a rep-utation for enhanced co-operation with industry and US regulators over the past 20 years, consistently being at the forefront of implementing new measures to enhance the safety and security of its passengers. Qatar Air-ways was the fi rst airline to achieve 100% compliance with the IATA Op-erational Safety Audit (IOSA) when the programme was fi rst implemented in 2003, and has since maintained its 100% compliance record.

No talk on issuesthat aff ect Qatar’ssovereignty: FM

QATAR

ARAB WORLD

INTERNATIONAL

ISLAM

COMMENT

BUSINESS

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4-12

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QNADoha

Any demand that affects the sovereignty of the State of Qa-tar will not be discussed, HE

the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani has said adding that the siege im-posed on the country was an act of aggression.

In an interview with CNN network, the Minister said that the demands presented to Qatar by Saudi Arabia and its allies included accusations like Qatar was supporting terrorism and maintaining ties with Iran.

“The 13-point list related to shutting free speech, shutting media outlets and expelling opponents, withdrawing Qa-tari nationality from certain individu-als and returning them to their coun-tries of origin as well as other demands are against international law.”

The Foreign Minister said Qatar would not comply with any demand that it considers a violation of interna-tional law and would not agree to any action limited to Qatar alone, and any solution must be applicable to every-one.

“They are accusing Qatar of having special relations with Iran, while they have not taken any action against Iran

itself. Therefore, the measures that were taken against Qatar related to other reasons, not Iran,” he said.

The Minister said the shutting down of Al Jazeera is out of the question.

HE said no money from Qatar is going out to fi nance terrorism, stressing that if any citizen is found to be involved in fi nancing any terrorist organisation, he will be held accountable.

The Foreign Minister said Qatar’s government recognises a group as a terrorist outfi t if it is designated so by the UN Security Council or if there is proof it has committed violence.

Regarding the presence of Hamas leaders in Qatar he said “Hamas repre-sentation in Qatar is a political offi ce. It is not a military representation.”

He explained that Qatar did not sup-port Hamas, but the people of Gaza. Some of its political leaders are in Qatar to participate in national reconciliation talks in which Qatar plays the role of

mediator. “These negotiations are sup-ported by the international community and are in co-ordination with the Unit-ed States.”

On Qatar’s support to the Mus-lim Brotherhood group, the Minis-ter said the Brotherhood is a political group that is active in countries such as Bahrain which is one of the “siege countries”. “Bahrain’s parliament has members of this group and it shows the double standards of the neighbouring countries.”

Regarding Al Nusra Front, Sheikh Mohamed said Qatar did not support the front or its ideas. “We have no di-rect communication with them.”

On the role of US President Don-ald Trump and his administration in the crisis, the Foreign Minister said US-Qatari relations are very strong and the American administration is playing a major role in solving the dispute.

Asked about the real reasons behind the blockade, Sheikh Mohamed said it could be because of the independent policies followed by Qatar, the rapid progress made by the country and a major role played by Doha in interna-tional aff airs.

“We have never sought to target the security of any Gulf country because such a matter would have its conse-quences on Qatar,” he added.

Blockade stirs defi ance, patriotism in residentsReutersDoha

A month of sanctions imposed on Qatar by Egypt and Arab neighbours that have cut ties and accused Doha of support-

ing militants has galvanised patriotic feelings among the country’s residents, notably the citizens.

At dusk, young Qataris gather outside the house of a prominent citizen in Doha to sign a portrait of His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, mounted on a giant billboard.

While Doha denies the charges and there are no signs the standoff will spiral into military con-frontation, the crisis has bolstered nationalist support for His Highness Sheikh Tamim.

“We will go to the streets and fi ght for him [Sheikh Tamim],” said Ahmed al-Kuwari, a 32-year-old engineer.

Local media say that hundreds of men are sign-ing up for the military, as others deliver jibes at Arab rulers on social media and rail against “fake news” they say some Arab media outlets are spreading to divide them.

After an announcement on Wednesday by

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates that their boycott of the Gulf Arab state would continue, playful Qataris shared on Twit-ter photoshopped images ridiculing offi cials from those countries.

Thousands of Qataris are cut off from relatives as well as properties they own in the UAE and Bahrain after the four Arab states announced the boycott and severed land, sea and air links.

Amira, a Moroccan curator at a Doha fashion house that imports designs from the UAE, says the dispute is aff ecting the decisions of her customers.

“People are starting to ask where the fabrics come from,” she said. “Last week a Qatari woman found out a dress was from the UAE. She said ‘get it away from me’.”

There is broad support for Sheikh Tamim among young people who associate their wealth with his family’s rule.

Offi cials from the four countries have also ruled out any plans to try to change the ruler or use force in the crisis.

Haya, a local student at Doha’s Georgetown university said the Emir has legitimacy. “He has treated people with equality.”

But some people fear enmity between Gulf states could linger on, she said.

PM meets British envoy

HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani met the British ambassador to Qatar Ajay Sharma, in Doha yesterday. They reviewed bilateral relations and ways of developing and strengthening them, in addition to developments in the region.

Siege an act of aggression

Any solution must be applicable to everyone

US playing a major role in solving dispute

Qatari citizens as well as expatriates show their love and support for the country and its leadership by writing messages on billboards erected in diff erent parts of Doha. Right: Even children are seen expressing their support.

US briefed on latest developments

HE the Minister of State for De-fence Aff airs Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah held a

telephone conversation with the US Secretary of Defence James Mattis yes-terday.

They reviewed military ties between the two friendly countries and the US secretary of defence was briefed on the latest regional developments, the offi -cial Qatar News Agency (QNA) said.

The Minister of State for Defence ex-pressed Qatar’s appreciation for the US support for regional stability, stressing the depth of co-operation between the two countries in terms of combating and re-jecting terrorism and violent extremism.

The minister discussed the Gulf cri-sis with the senior US offi cial and re-iterated Qatar’s backing for the eff orts of the Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah to reach a resolution for the Gulf crisis through constructive dialogue.

Meanwhile, the US State Department said it was increasingly concerned that a dispute between Qatar and other Arab states was at an impasse and could drag on for a long time or intensify.

Reuters quoting State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said: “We remain very concerned about that ongoing situation between Qatar and GCC (Gulf Co-operation Council) countries.”

“We’ve become increasingly con-cerned that that dispute is at an im-passe at this point. We believe that this could potentially drag on for weeks, it could drag on for months. It could pos-sibly even intensify,” she said.

Khalid al-Attiyah holds talks with James Mattis

Khalid al-Attiyah James Mattis

QATAR

Gulf Times Friday, July 7, 20172

HE the Minister of State for Defence Aff airs Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah met the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Aff airs, Jeff rey Feltman, in Doha yesterday. The meeting reviewed co-operation between Qatar and the UN and ways to strengthen and develop it. They also discussed the latest regional and international developments as well as the Gulf crisis. Meeting HE the Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi separately, Feltman expressed the UN’s concern over the continuation of the Gulf crisis. He also stressed the UN’s support for the Kuwaiti mediation eff orts to solve the crisis.

UN official expresses concern over continuation of Gulf crisis

QCB Governor meets US teamGovernor of Qatar Central Bank (QCB), HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Saoud al-Thani, met here yesterday a delegation of representatives of a number of intellectual institutions in the United States. Talks during the meeting dealt with a number of issues of common interest and means of enhancing co-operation in the future.

Malaysian Dy PM meets Qatar envoyDeputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior of the Kingdom of Malaysia Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has met with ambassador of Qatar to Malaysia Issa bin Mohamed al-Mannai.During the meeting, they discussed bilateral relations and means of enhancing them, in addition to a number of issues of common concern.

Aeronautical College fetes graduating classQNADoha

Qatar Aeronautical College (QAC) yesterday celebrated the graduation of 105 students

from its Class of 2016-2017.The graduating students were di-

vided into several disciplines: Air Traffi c Control, Meteorology, Airport Operations Management, Security Management, Passports, Aircraft En-gineering and Maintenance and Pilot Training.

This years graduates include 52 Qa-tari students of whom 12 were female students.

In a speech delivered on the occa-sion, Minister of Transport and Com-munications, HE Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti, praised His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani’s full support for QAC’s practi-cal course, which paved the way for it to achieve excellence.

The minister also highlighted the continuous follow-up and supervi-sion by HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani.

The State of Qatar has made great eff orts in the development of aviation and air navigation services education programmes and become a major sup-porter of aviation sector by providing competent and responsible cadres, HE al-Sulaiti said, noting that this stems from Qatar’s role and commitment to-ward the world.

Over the past fi ve years, the State of Qatar has been a tributary vein for nearly 1,000 graduating students and 2,000 graduates of short-term cours-es, who are today working in many

countries, the Minister said.In this context, HE al-Sulaiti re-

viewed the great eff orts being exerted by QAC in order to meet the fi erce competition witnessed by the inter-national aviation industry and the changing needs of its benefi ciaries as well as to raise the level of academic specialisations through agreements, memorandums of understanding and appropriations from foreign inter-national universities along with the modernisation and development of its programmes, curricula and train-

ing courses.For his part, Chairman of QAC, HE Sheikh Jabor bin Hamad al-Thani, said in his speech that the graduation ceremony is a culmina-tion of great eff orts and a long journey for the students, which was crowned with success.

He reviewed some of QAC’s achievements during the academic year 2016-2017 after the implementa-tion of its strategic plan aimed at rais-ing the level of its specialties.

In just a year and a few months, QAC’s strategic plan, has produced good re-

sults by raising the level of study and developing its curricula, programmes and training courses, he said.

QAC is currently working on up-grading its fl eet of aircraft and simu-lators, while it has obtained the ap-proval from the General Civil Aviation Authority on the private aviation training manual for private pilot li-cence (PPL). The academic year 2016-2017 was a celebration of promis-ing achievements and academic and training activities for all departments, making QAC a destination and an ad-

vanced educational and training hub, HE Sheikh Jabor bin Hamad al-Thani stressed.

The ceremony also witnessed the graduation of 20 employees of the Ministry of the Interior who received the Diploma of Security Administra-tion and Passports.

TransportMinister: Navigationrules must be respectedQNADoha

HE Minister of Transport and Com-munications Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti stressed the need for

all countries to respect the international conventions governing civil aviation and air and maritime navigation.

Following the Qatar Aeronautical Col-lege graduation ceremony yesterday, the minister said the violations of the safety and security of air and maritime naviga-tion rules by the siege countries contradict all binding conventions, in addition to the serious repercussions they cause.

HE the minister called on the siege countries to respect the international con-ventions, confi rming that Qatar fulfi lled all legal and safety procedures of its inter-national commitments and legal agree-ments, specifi cally regarding air safety.

Qatar also fulfi lled all sea relief requests for all passing ships regardless of the ves-sel’s fl ag in line with international and hu-manitarian law, the minister added.

HE al-Sulaiti added that the technical dossier that Qatar submitted to interna-tional organisations was accepted, which proves its entitlement and commitment to all treaties.

The meetings and discussions held re-garding the dossier at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization are proof of the siege countries’ violations, the minister said.

HE the minister praised the important role and eff orts of the international or-ganisations, stressing the need for deci-sions on Qatar’s technical dossier regard-ing the right to air and maritime passage as Qatar, he said, is on the right side of the dispute.

Minister of Transport and Communications, HE Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti presenting an award at the event.

Siege is last weapon of regimes

aiming to check Qatar: MarzoukiQNADoha

Former Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki believes that besieging Qatar is the last

weapon at the disposal of regimes that have been trying for years to limit Qatar’s role and prevent it from being a political player.

In an interview with Qatari daily Al Sharq published yesterday, Mar-zouki said those who wanted to iso-late Qatar were exposed and have themselves become isolated.

Marzouki said Qatar is on the right side and the whole world sup-ports it and trusts its ability to with-stand the crisis, stressing that the Arab people sympathise with Qatar and the vast majority of countries, particularly African ones, are on Qatar’s side.

He added that the recent African summit rejected Egypt’s request to support the stance of the siege countries.

Qatar has backed Tunisia po-litically and morally, Marzouki said, pointing to the visits of His High-ness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin

Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani to Tunisia. “Qatar has supported us economically and reclaimed our smuggled funds. Qa-tar also played a signifi cant role in backing Tunisia’s eff orts to restore what the deposed president and his family had stolen.”

Marzouki said Qatar never tried to support a certain government or individual in particular, even after the end of the troika phase and his departure from power, adding that this stance “silenced” all voices re-garding the Qatari role.

The former Tunisian president denied that the Muslim Brother-hood is a terrorist group, stressing that despite his “deep ideologi-cal and political diff erences” with them, they are a political movement with no ties to terrorism.

He also noted that Hamas is a pa-triotic resistance movement.

Marzouki said the battle against Qatar won’t be the last, noting that other battles are “on the horizon and no one knows what third or fourth siege will hit any country” where a new Arab political regime rises.

Another vessel carrying food, equipment expectedBy Ramesh Mathew Staff Reporter

Less than a week after the arrival of a major vessel from the Far East Asian region at the Hamad Port,

another large vessel is expected to call on the country’s major harbour today from the same region, which is emerging as a

major trading partner of Qatar.Sources told this newspaper that

Mediterranean Shipping Company’s MSC Vita is scheduled to arrive at the port in the morning hours today.

The vessel with a capacity of more than 9,000TEU had left Shanghai, Chi-na on June 8.

It later called on Ningbo and Shen-zhen, also in China on its way to Qatar.

The ship is also carrying cargoes from Singapore, and Colombo, inquiries found.

The vessel left Colombo on June 24 and reached Umm Qasr in Iraq on July 3.

A spokesperson for MSC said the ship left the Iraq port around noon yes-terday.

Besides considerable quantities of food items, the ship is said to be carrying

heavy equipment for the local construc-tion sector.

The MSC offi cial said that another feeder vessel of their company would arrive at Hamad Port from Salalah on July 10. The vessel, Sea Boxer had called on Hamad Port a week ago, with cargoes from the Sultanate of Oman. This time, the ship has also loaded containers from the port in Sohar.

Local cement production unaff ectedQNAQatar

General Manager of Qatar National Cement Company, Mohamed Ali al-Sulaity, said the siege has not

aff ected the company’s production, con-fi rming the company is self-suffi cient in cement production and is able to secure the local market’s needs.

In an interview with Qatari newspaper Al Sharq, al-Sulaity said all the raw mate-rial necessary for the production are avail-able in the country, and all the simple ma-

terials, such as gypsum and iron oxide, are imported from Sultanate of Oman accord-ing to previously signed agreements.

Regarding paper bags, they are imported from Kuwait, hence the production is not aff ected by the siege as these few materials that are required from abroad are unavail-able in siege countries and the company does not import any materials from them, al-Sulaity added.

Al-Sulaity said the company has a sur-plus in production and is able to meet the country’s needs of cement and sand, add-ing that the company will run furnace number fi ve in September at a capacity of

5,000 tons per day, which will increase its daily production of clinker to 19,000 tons per day and cement to 21,000 tons. He added that the mills are operating now in order for the furnace to function at full ca-pacity in September.

Al-Sulaity also said the cement needed for all government and private projects in Qatar is secured as the company is working around the clock to meet the demand.

In the past, sales dropped during the summer season, while this year sales re-main at the same pace and have not been aff ected, al-Sulaity said.

As for prices, al-Sulaity said the com-

pany reduced its prices and will keep them at the same rate in order to support the lo-cal market and the construction movement in the country.

The company communicated with dif-ferent contractors and ready mix cement companies, which resulted in a discount of QR20 per ton, setting the price of Ordinary Portland Bulk Cement at QR230 instead of QR250 per ton and the price of Sulphate Resistant Portland Bulk Cement at QR250.

As for bags, the price of Ordinary Port-land Cement dropped from QR13 to QR11 per bag and Sulphate Resistant Portland Cement costs QR12 per bag.

Official

Pact to buy aircraft , simulators

Qatar Aeronautical College

(QAC) signed an agreement in

Doha yesterday with the Inter-

national Diamond Company to

purchase a fleet of modern air-

craft comprising 10 D40 single

engine and 4 D42 twin engine

aircraft. The agreement also

includes the purchase of two

flight simulators, one for train-

ing on single engine D40, and

the other for training on twin

engine aircraft. The agreement

notes that these aircraft have

proved their eff iciency and en-

durance in Qatari environment.

The purchase of this modern

fleet of aircraft and adding

them to Qatar Aeronautical

College’s existing aircraft fleet

will work towards enhancing

training eff iciency and readi-

ness and smooth running of

the Pilot Training Division and

will lead to increase in number

of graduates. The agreement

comes in line with QAC’s eff orts

to upgrade its programmes,

training courses and academic

syllabuses and linking them to

practical training for all depart-

ments.

REGION/ARAB WORLD3Gulf Times

Friday, July 7, 2017

A Saudi special forces off icer was killed and three others injured yesterday morning while on duty in eastern Saudi Arabia, Saudi news site Sabq reported. The attack occurred in al-Awamiya, located in the oil-producing al-Qatif province. No further details were immediately available. A rocket-propelled grenade attack in the same old part of the city, al-Musawara, killed a soldier and wounded three others two days ago. Authorities have been bulldozing Al Musawara, a small part of the town with narrow streets which date back more than 200 years, to make way for a new project. Local off icials say wanted militants believed to be behind attacks on security forces have been using the narrow streets to escape arrest.

A fire that broke out at Kuwait’s The Avenues Mall, where construction work is being done to expand the shopping complex, has been brought under control, state news agency KUNA reported yesterday. KUNA quoted General Jamal Al-Blaihees, deputy director of the Kuwait Fire Service, as saying the blaze had been contained and that only material damage had been caused. The Avenues Mall is owned by Kuwait-listed Mabanee, which has interests in real estate, construction and investment. Mabanee said in a statement that the fire aff ected only the storage room where it broke out and would not slow the mall expansion project, which is in its fourth phase. No construction workers were injured.

Egyptian authorities have arrested “dozens” of students from China’s Uighur Muslim ethnic minority “apparently to deport them” following a request from Beijing, Human Rights Watch has said. “The authorities should disclose their whereabouts, on what grounds they are held, and give them access to lawyers,” Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director, said in a statement tweeted late on Wednesday by the organisation. Uighur students and activists said police had raided two restaurants frequented by them in Cairo on Tuesday and arrested at least 30 people. Egyptian police yesterday denied requests for comment.

Aid groups have pulled resources from the fight against malnutrition to battle cholera in Yemen, raising the risk of famine as they struggle to find funds, a UN off icial said yesterday. In April the country was hit by an outbreak of cholera which it has struggled to contain as more than half of its medical facilities have been knocked out by the war. Some 270,000 suspected cases have been registered and more than 1,600 people have died of cholera in just over two months. “Humanitarian organisations have had to reprogramme their resources away from malnutrition and reuse them to control the cholera outbreak,” UN co-ordinator Jamie McGoldrick said in Sanaa yesterday.

Hamas’ Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar visits the border with Egypt in Rafah in southern Gaza Strip yesterday. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said recent talks in Egypt could lead to improving the humanitarian suffering in the impoverished Gaza Strip.

Saudi security off icer killed in domestic attack

Blaze at construction site contained: Kuwait agency

Egypt arrests dozens of Chinese Uighur students

Yemen famine risk rises as cholera diverts resources

AMBUSHED NO CASUALTIESDETAINED EPIDEMIC BLOCKED BORDER

Beirut to probe death of 4 Syrian detaineesAFPBeirut

Lebanon’s government yesterday called for the military to investigate the deaths of four Syrians arrested after Leba-nese army raids last week on a refugee camp in the country’s

northeast.The army announced the deaths this week, saying the four men

had pre-existing medical conditions, but rights groups urged an independent investigation after allegations that the detainees had been tortured to death.

Lebanon’s Human Rights Minister Ayman Chouceir, quoted by the offi cial National News Agency, said an investigation would help to “preserve the image of the army and prevent malicious rumours”.

“We ask the competent military command and judiciary to open a transparent investigation into all the recently circulated photo-graphs and news about the recent detention operation in Arsal and the reasons for the deaths of several detainees,” he said.

“The government’s decision to ask the army to investigate the circumstances of the detainee deaths is only evidence of eff orts to ensure transparency and clarify the matter for the public,” Chou-ceir added.

The men were arrested in the wake of army raids on two refugee camps near Arsal on Friday that were met with a string of suicide attacks and grenades.

The attacks killed a girl and wounded seven Lebanese soldiers and the army subsequently arrested dozens of people, including the four men whose deaths were announced on Tuesday.

The army said the detainees “were found to be suff ering from chronic health problems that were activated as a result of weather conditions.”

The men were transferred to hospitals but their conditions wors-ened and they later died, the army statement added.

Human Rights Watch and Lebanese NGO LIFE called for a full in-vestigation to determine the circumstances behind the four deaths.

“We have previously documented accounts from individuals tor-tured or abused in the custody of army personnel.

We are continuing to urge that these allegations be taken seri-ously,” said Lama Fakih, HRW’s deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa.

Lebanon is home to more than 1mn refugees fl eeing the confl ict in neighbouring Syria, many of whom live in informal tent settle-ments.

In August 2014, the army clashed with militants in the Arsal re-gion and militants kidnapped 30 Lebanese soldiers and policemen as they withdrew back along the border.

After long negotiations, 16 of the kidnapped men were released in December 2015 in exchange for Islamist prisoners held in Leba-nese jails.

The militants executed four of their hostages while a fi fth died of wounds he suff ered in the initial Arsal clashes, leaving nine mem-bers of Lebanon’s security forces still in their hands.

Once tax-free, Saudi starts expat levy

Saudi Arabia said yesterday it had

begun taxing foreigners working

in the private sector as part of fis-

cal reforms aimed at coping with

a drop in oil revenues.

Long a tax-free haven for

expatriates, the Saudi economy

was dealt a serious blow in

2014 when global crude prices

plummeted.

The kingdom, the world’s

largest exporter of oil, has since

launched an economic diversi-

fication plan and slashed state

spending in an attempt to cope

with a hefty deficit.

On July 1, foreigners working

in the private sector began

paying a family tax of 100 riyals

per month for every minor or

unemployed relative living in

the kingdom, the Saudi general

directorate of passports said in

a statement.

An estimated 11mn foreigners

work in the Saudi private sector,

with 2.3mn of their dependents

based in the kingdom, accord-

ing to the Public Authority for

Statistics.

The tax is expected to

increase every year until 2020,

when it will cap at 4,800 riyals

per dependent annually.

Saudi Arabia projects a

government budget balance in

2020.

Saudi Arabia’s ambitious

“Vision 2030” plan, unveiled in

April 2016, aims to broaden its

investment base and diver-

sify the once oil-dependent

economy.

The plan will also see the sale

of nearly 5% of state-owned

Aramco — the world’s largest

oil company reportedly worth

between $2tn and $2.5tn.

Activist who accused Bahrain security forces of sexual assault is rearrestedBy Peter Beaumont Guardian News Service

Bahrain has rearrested a promi-nent human rights advocate who has accused the country’s

security services of torturing and sexually assaulting her during her previous arrest in May.

Ebtisam al-Saegh, who works for Salam for Human Rights and Democracy, was detained during a night-time raid on Monday by about 25 security offi cers after she tweeted criticism of the country’s ruler and security forces, according to Amnes-ty International.

Al-Saegh’s arrest comes amid a re-newed crackdown on dissent in Bah-rain, which is one of four countries be-hind the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar.

Her rearrest has raised concern among human rights groups, including Amnesty, that she is at risk of torture.

Samah Hadid, director for Cam-paigns at Amnesty International in the Middle East, said: “The Bahraini authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Ebtisam al-Saegh, whose only crime is speaking up against a government committed to crushing all forms of dissent.

“We are deeply concerned about Ebtisam’s well-being. When she was arrested in May 2017, she was beaten and sexually assaulted by members of the Bahraini National Security Agen-cy. Bahraini authorities have failed to investigate those claims and we fear that she is at high risk of torture as long as she remains in custody.”

In her account of her previous ar-rest in May, al-Saegh told how she had

been summoned to the National Secu-rity Agency offi ces and on arrival she was immediately blindfolded, before being sexually assaulted and beaten.

“They beat me on my nose and they kicked me in the stomach, knowing that I had undergone surgery on my nose and that I was suff ering from my colon,” she told Amnesty.

“The men told me ‘no one can pro-tect you’. They took away my human-ity, I was weak prey to them.”

During her interrogation, al-Saegh was questioned about Diraz, where security forces clashed with demon-strators on 23 May, killing fi ve peo-ple, and about other human rights defenders she knew, as well as about her participation at the UN human rights council in Geneva last March, where she spoke out about violations in Bahrain.

Tunisian security forces demonstrate outside parliament in Bardo square in Tunis yesterday, calling for the acceleration of the adoption of a law to protect policemen, following the latest attacks against agents.

Protection protest

Over 20,000 civilians still trapped in MosulAFPMosul

Iraqi forces yesterday battled the last remaining Islamic State group fi ghters in Mosul’s Old City, where the UN said

up to 20,000 civilians are trapped and in “extreme danger”.

In neighbouring Syria, US-backed forces are facing fi erce resistance from IS as they wage a parallel off ensive to recap-ture the city of Raqa from the jihadists.

The fi ghting in both cities is taking place in densely populated residential neighbourhoods, posing a major threat to civilians as diehard militants put up a des-perate last stand.

“Our estimate at this stage is that in the fi nal pockets of (Mosul’s) Old City, there could be as many as 15,000 civilians, pos-sibly even as high as 20,000,” UN human-itarian coordinator in Iraq Lise Grande told AFP.

“They’re in extreme danger from bom-bardment, from artillery crossfi re. The (IS) fi ghters that are still there are still directly targeting civilians if they try and leave,” she said.

More than eight months after the start of the operation to retake Mosul from IS,

the militants have gone from fully con-trolling the city to holding a small pocket on the west bank of the River Tigris that fl ows through it.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi congratulated the Iraqi people and the security forces on the “achievement of this major victory in Mosul,” but the battle is not over yet.

Iraqi forces are now between “80m to 100m” from the Tigris River, which marks the eastern boundary of IS-held territory in the Old City, said Staff Lieutenant General Abdulghani al-Assadi, a senior commander in the elite Counter-Terrorism Service.

“But that doesn’t mean, for example, that we will reach the river today or to-morrow, because our movement is very slow,” Assadi said, attributing that pace to eff orts to protect civilians.

The battle for Mosul has pushed 915,000 to fl ee their homes, nearly 700,000 of whom are still displaced.

“We exceeded our worst case scenario more than a month ago. In our very worst-case scenario, we thought that 750,000 people would fl ee,” Grande said.

The damage caused by the fi ghting in west Mosul — and the cost of addressing it — is huge.

There are “44 residential neighbour-

hoods in western Mosul. Six are nearly completely destroyed...Twenty-two neighbourhoods are moderately damaged and 16 are lightly damaged,” Grande said.

Based on a preliminary assessment, the fi rst phase of “stabilisation” in west Mo-sul — which includes basic services, infra-structure, housing, education and police stations — will cost $707mn.

That is nearly double the expected fi gure, “because the level of damage in western Mosul is far higher than what we feared it would be,” she said.

As Iraq fi ghts to retake Mosul, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces — an al-liance of Kurdish and Arab fi ghters — have been battling IS in its de facto Syrian capi-tal Raqa.

The SDF broke into Raqa on June 6 after a months-long operation to encircle the city and earlier this week penetrated its historic heart.

Tens of thousands of civilians are be-lieved to be trapped inside the city, and there are fears the militants are using them as human shields.

The SDF assault has been backed by intense air strikes by the US-led coalition fi ghting IS, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said has exacted a heavy toll on civilians.

At least 224 civilians, including 38 chil-dren, have been killed in air strikes since the SDF entered the city, the Observatory said.

The Britain-based monitor said it did not have a toll for civilians killed in other ways, including by other military opera-tions, mines, or while trying to fl ee the city.

But the coalition pushed back against the report, saying its “critics” were not conducting “detailed assessments”.

The coalition estimates some 2,500 militants are defending Raqa. So far, 311 militants and 106 SDF fi ghters have been killed in the battle for the city, according to the Observatory, which has a wide net-work of sources on the ground.

The Observatory also reported that a large shipment of weapons, ammunition and armoured vehicles was delivered by the coalition to the SDF via Iraq.

The loss of Mosul and Raqa, IS’s two most emblematic strongholds, would be a major blow for the militants, eff ectively ending the cross-border “caliphate” they declared in June 2014.

But they still hold other parts of Iraq and Syria, and are likely to revert to their insurgent roots, mounting hit-and-run and bomb attacks where they no longer hold territory.

A tank of the Emergency Response Division fires at Islamic State militants in the old city of Mosul.

AFRICA


Some 78 people were killed and dozens more were injured when a truck heavily loaded with goods and passengers crashed in Central African Republic. The accident occurred on Tuesday around 10km outside the town of Bambari, around 300km northeast of the capital Bangui, as the truck was travelling to a weekly market day in the village of Maloum. “At the moment, we have counted 78 dead and 72 wounded. Some wounded were taken directly to their homes from the accident scene and died there some time after, but most died here,” said Chamberlain Bama, chief doctor at the university hospital in Bambari.

At least eight people, seven of whom were children, were killed in a stampede in Malawi during the southern African country’s independence day celebrations at a stadium in Lilongwe, police said yesterday. Police said the stampede occurred when spectators forced open the gates at the stadium where a football match was due to take place during celebrations marking 53 years of Malawi’s independence from British rule. At least 40 others were injured, police said. “We can now confirm that eight people have died, that is seven children and one adult, and 40 people are injured,” Inspector General of Police Lexan Kachama told Reuters.

Soldiers in Niger killed 14 unarmed civilians after mistaking them for Boko Haram militants during a patrol in the remote southeast of the country, a senior regional off icial said yesterday. Nigerien soldiers were patrolling a militarily restricted zone around the village of Abadam near Lake Chad on Wednesday afternoon when they opened fire on what turned out to be farmers, according to Yahaya Godi, the Secretary General of the Diff a region of southeast Niger. “Fourteen people are dead. Abadam is a village located in the red zone and has been prohibited for a very long time,” said Godi. “Any individual seen in the area is considered Boko Haram.”

A Democratic Republic of Congo court yesterday convicted seven soldiers for the murder of suspected militia members in the country’s insurrection-ravaged Kasai region. The court in the central Congolese city of Mbuji Mayi sentenced two army majors to 20 years in prison and three other soldiers to 15 years for murder and improperly disposing of weapons, defence lawyer Jimmy Bashile told Reuters. A video of the massacre showed soldiers shooting people, some of them young women, at point blank range and provoked international condemnation when it appeared in February. Two soldiers were sentenced in absentia to capital punishment.

For tourists, Kenya conjures up images of sun-drenched beaches, lazing lions, and sunsets on the savannah, but this week children in the highlands were delighted by a rare visitor to the equatorial country: hail. The heavy ice storms sheathed roads and homes in white, leading many newspapers to mistakenly declare there had been a snowstorm. “Once the hail stopped, people went outside to play with it, excited at the sight outside, and roads were closed,” said elder James Mburu Ngethe, who lives in the central Kenyan village of Limunga. But farmers were less thrilled after precious crops were ruined by the sudden swathes of ice.

78 confirmed killed in Central Africa accident

7 children among dead in Malawi stadium stampede

14 mistaken for militants shot dead by Niger troops

Congo soldiers convicted for Kasai region massacre

Hailstorms cause delight, consternation in Kenya

TRUCK CRASH TRAGEDYID ERROR JUSTICE FREAK WEATHER

Priest recounts horror of Central Africa violenceBy Amaury Hauchard, AFPLibreville

Heavy gunfi re in Zemio. Im-possible to go out. They have cut the phones and we can’t

go out — it’s just too dangerous. So I am posting on Facebook.”

The sense of fear and urgency is palpable as Jean-Alain Zembi, a priest in Zemio, a southeastern par-ish in the Central African Republic (CAR), sends a stream of messages to his Facebook feed recounting the horror of ongoing violence.

“The information simply must get out as we are holed up here and the shooting is continuing”, Father Zembi, 33, told AFP in Libreville via Whatsapp.

His account of the violence in his parish came just hours before Hu-man Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report indicating armed groups had killed hundreds of civilians in a spree of bloodletting in CAR. That report came just ahead of the impending opening of a Special Criminal Court, a new judicial body that will probe rights violations in the country since 2003.

According to HRW, investigators have found evidence of more than 560 civilian deaths and the destruc-tion of more than 4,200 homes by militias since late 2014.

On Sunday, a humanitarian source said at least 15 people died in clashes between UN peacekeep-ers and former rebels in the central market town of Kaga-Bandoro.

Mainly Muslim Seleka rebels briefl y seized power in March 2013 and deposed Christian President Francois Bozize only to be ousted it-

self amid reprisals by Christian anti-Balaka militia.

In Zemio’s case, violence sparked on June 28 as phone links were cut and unidentifi ed armed groups took over the town near the Congolese border some 1,000km from the cap-ital Bangui.

Zembi has reposted on his feed a picture dated Sunday showing a group of people, including a priest, standing over a group of shrouded bodies in a ditch.

“There were six bodies on the ground in the streets around the presbytery. We had to risk going out and recovering them if we wanted to avoid sanitary contamination. Other bodies are still in the streets

— but nobody picks them up.”“We’ve no coffi ns here so we’ve

had to dig a common grave,” Zembi told AFP.

With phone links cut, Wi-Fi is the only means of communication with the outside world for locals, aid workers and UN peacekeepers based in the region.

On June 28, a group of armed men entered Zemio to pillage and then burn down local businesses, forcing residents and more than 3,000 refu-gees from the neighbouring Demo-cratic Republic of Congo to fl ee.

Two days later Father Zembi be-gan posting the scale of the town’s suff ering to his Facebook account.

“Zemio has been ablaze since

Wednesday June 28, 2017. Help us,” read his initial post on unrest which has displaced some 20,000 people, according to the UN’s humanitarian aff airs offi ce OCHA.

“Humanitarian workers are com-pelled to limit temporarily their ac-tivities in Zemio,” the UN’s humani-tarian co-ordinator for the country, Najat Rochdi, said on Tuesday, prompting Father Zembi to lay bare the scale of the crisis.

“There is total insecurity. People have nothing to eat, no drinking wa-ter and lack necessary medical care. Houses have been torched.”

“Almost all the displaced families are without shelter. How will they manage after the crisis?” asked the priest whose posts sparked indigna-tion among those following his Fa-cebook diary of distress.

“The gunfi re means we can’t ven-ture out to pick up bodies” still lying in the streets.

In a post taken two days after the violence fl ared and accompanied by pictures of local children caught up in the unrest, Father Zembi warned that urgent aid was needed.

“Look carefully at the faces of these child victims of the war in Zemio,” he wrote.

“Perhaps they will die in a few days given the situation. These faces ask you a solitary question: If they were your children, what would you do?”

On Monday, he welcomed the ar-rival of a UN aid team bearing “some tarpaulins and some water bottles.”

Another post shows him conduct-ing an open-air mass — “a beautiful celebration” — in the grounds of his church which is now a refuge, he says, for “at least 1,500 people.”

Priest Jean-Alain Zembi leads prayers in Zemio, southeast Central African Republic.

Ethiopia scrambles to protect its forestsBy Elias Gebreselassie, Reuters Chilimo, Ethiopia

Ethiopia is enlisting the co-operation of people in and around its forests to manage woodland better, hoping to protect the country from the eff ects of climate change

while boosting development prospects for its population of 100mn.

The government of Africa’s second most populous country has set an ambitious aim of reducing poverty and becoming a carbon-neutral economy by 2025, in part by transforming the way rural landscapes are managed.

Its Climate Resilient Green Economy strategy aims to meet half of its target reduction in carbon emissions by adding 5mn hectares of forests by 2020 — just three years from now — and restoring 22mn hectares of degraded landscapes by 2030.

The government sees adding forests as a key way to both curb climate change and help the country adapt to and deal with strong climate change impacts, including droughts, said Yitbetu Moges, the national representative for REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degra-dation) at Ethiopia’s Ministry of Forestry, Environment and Climate Change.

With water resources under ever greater stress due to the country’s rising population, forests are important to main-taining stable rainfall and building drought resilience, while the carbon they store reduces emissions to the environment, Moges said.

According to the ministry, the biggest forest conservation programmes are taking place in Oromia, which is home to a third of the country’s population.

The 10-year Oromia Forested Landscape Programme (OFLP), which is getting underway this year, is a community-centred programme for sustainable forest management.

The project, with an initial $18mn of funding from the World Bank, aims to reduce deforestation and lower net greenhouse gas emissions resulting from land use.

The programme’s fi rst pilot project launched in early May in the Chilimo Forest Reserve, one of the last remnants of a dry, mountainous forest that once covered Ethiopia’s central plateau.

Located 90km west of Addis Ababa, the forest currently covers about 5,000 hectares, down from 12,000 hectares in the 1980s, mainly as a result of logging in the early 1990s, of-fi cials say.

Under the programme, local community cooperatives have been given the right to protect and manage the forest, which faces encroaching population pressure and illegal logging, and decide on how to use the benefi ts accrued from it.

The programme encourages co-operative members to har-vest stalks and other crop residue from fi elds for fuel, instead of using wood, and cultivate wild honey and crops like green pepper, onion and potatoes, which can be grown within the forest limits without requiring signifi cant deforestation.

Communities are also urged to plant fast-growing, non-native trees such as eucalyptus to harvest for timber or me-dicinal purposes as a way of generating income.

Degu Woldegiorgis, a local community leader, is a member of one of 12 forest associations, representing 3,000 residents around Chilimo, that will participate in managing the forest.

Lungu blames his rivals for Zambia emergencyBy Obert Simwanza, AFPLusaka

Zambian President Edgar Lungu yesterday justifi ed imposing a state of emer-

gency by alleging that opposition parties were behind a string of arson attacks intended “to create terror and panic”.

Lungu denied he was estab-lishing a dictatorship in Zambia — until recently a relatively stable country — and said his political rivals were trying to overturn last year’s election results.

Several fi res, including one that burnt down the main market in the capital Lusaka on Tuesday, have been at the centre of rising political tensions in Zambia.

The state of emergency — which increases police powers of detention and arrest — is “to curb lawlessness”, Lungu told a press conference at his State House residence.

“The theory (by opposition parties) is that they put pressure so that we begin renegotiating the result of the last elections,” he said.

“There is a deliberate ploy by the opposition...We won the elec-tions and the winner takes it all. Their idea was to create terror and panic.”

Zambia has enjoyed relative stability since its fi rst multi-party election in 1991.

But last year’s election was marked by clashes between rival supporters, and opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema remains in detention on treason charges.

Hichilema was arrested in April after his convoy allegedly refused to give way to the presidential motorcade.

He narrowly lost the elections to Lungu, and has alleged that the result was rigged.

The president, who announced the state of emergency in a tel-evised address late on Wednesday, dismissed accusations of growing authoritarianism.

“Zambia is the most accom-plished democracy in this region or the whole Africa. If this is dic-tatorship, then there is no democ-racy in Africa,” he said.

“I know that people think I am targeting political players, I am not targeting any political player.

I am only trying to bring sanity,” he added.

Parliament has suspended 48 lawmakers from Hichilema’s

United Party for National Devel-opment (UPND), which boycotted an address by Lungu in March.

The government has also in-creased pressure on media outlets that support the opposition.

“I don’t think there is justifi ca-tion for declaring a state of emer-gency,” Lusaka-based analyst Neo Simutanyi told AFP.

“It will inconvenience people and create more tension.”

He said parliament must ap-prove the measure within seven days otherwise it will lapse, and that lawmakers would be required to renew it every 90 days.

Tobias Simbule, a 43-year-old newspaper vendor in Lusaka, said he feared for Zambia’s future.

“We have gone back to the one-party state which we rejected in 1991. Today is really a sad day for this country,” he told AFP.

The UPND has yet to react to the president’s move, but the smaller MMD opposition party said Lungu should have allowed investigators to probe the cause of the market fi re. “He should reverse his deci-sion and allow Zambians lead nor-mal lives,” party president Nevers Mumba told AFP.

Zambian President Edgar Lungu gives a press briefing at the Zambian State House in Lusaka.

17 formally declared dead in Ghana goldmine collapseAFPAccra

Rescuers yesterday called off a search for miners who were trapped underground

after an illegal goldmine collapsed in western Ghana, declaring 17 dead, a local lawmaker told AFP.

Nsuta representative Williams Adomako said teams that were trying to rescue the miners after

the pit caved in on Sunday man-aged to locate the body of one miner and bring it to the surface.

But they were unable to reach 16 others in the stricken mine, which is more than 80m deep.

Government and local offi -cials decided to stop the rescue in agreement with the families, said Adomako. “Seventeen people have died...We cannot bring them up. All those here agree we should cover them,” he added.

Local chiefs are expected to perform burial rituals.

Firefi ghter Ebenezer Yenzu, who was part of the rescue team, said the decision to stop the search was taken because of the risk of further collapses and on health grounds. “As the days are going by the bodies are decaying. It can cause communicable dis-eases too,” he added.

On Wednesday, fi ve bodies were spotted in the mine but they

and others were surrounded by stone debris.

Local resident Francis Eshun said covering the abandoned mine would prevent others from enter-ing in the future.

“If they left it open they would defi nitely go back in to mine there,” he added.

The accident has been blamed on small-scale gold mining, known in Ghana as “galamsey”, which has recently been the target

of a government crackdown on en-vironmental grounds. One of the miners who escaped said he heard “unusual sounds” from the ground that prompted him to call on his colleagues to stop and go to the surface. But as they climbed out, the walls of the mine collapsed.

Ghana is Africa’s second-larg-est gold producer, and exports of the commodity, along with min-erals and oil, drive the country’s economic growth.

A US congressman has apologised for recording a video while visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Clay Higgins, a first-term House Republican and former police off icer, produced an edited, five-minute video of himself touring parts of the Nazi-era camp and narrating in sombre tones, including inside one of the former gas chambers. “The guards would drop zyklon, cyanide gas from above, through hatches,” Higgins said from inside the chamber. The video was criticised by some as being political. The Auschwitz Memorial tweeted a stern objection: “Everyone has the right to personal reflections. However, inside a former gas chamber, there should be mournful silence. It’s not a stage.”

Heavy gun battles between rival gangs in northern Mexico left 14 people dead and another 12 injured, local law enforcement off icials said. The fighting occurred in the village of Las Varas in the state of Chihuahua, Felix Gonzalez, spokesman for the local prosecutor, said. Gonzalez had previously said on Milenio TV that the number of dead was 26, but police at the scene initially counted the 12 injured people among the dead, he explained. Later they realised they were alive. They were taken to hospitals and also placed under arrest. The initial investigation indicates the victims were members of the La Linea criminal gang, the armed branch of the Ciudad Juarez drug cartel.

Congressman sorryfor Auschwitz video

Republican lawmakerScalise’s condition worsens

14 dead in gun battle between Mexican gangs

Corruption case againstTemer a ‘fiction’: lawyer

An El Salvadoran woman and her two daughters are challenging a Canadian refugee law that bars their entry by land, the first time a court has heard a legal objection to the law with a real-life case at its centre. The woman, whose lawyers have asked that she be identified only as E, was rebuff ed under the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) when she arrived at the Canada-US border early on Wednesday morning. Her lawyers are arguing in the Toronto federal court in Toronto for a suspension order allowing her and her daughters to remain in Canada while the full challenge is heard.

Trio takes Canada tocourt over refugee law

LEGAL

Top US Republican lawmaker Steve Scalise, recovering from being shot by a gunman angry about President Donald Trump, has been moved back into intensive care because of concerns over infection, doctors said. MedStar Washington Hospital Center said the lawmaker is now listed in serious condition. Scalise and three other people were shot in mid-June at a park in suburban Washington as they practiced for a congressional charity baseball game. The 51-year-old from Louisiana was hit in the left hip by a bullet from a high-velocity rifle. The round fragmented into hundreds of pieces and tore apart bones, internal organs and blood vessels.

PEOPLE CONTROVERSY VIOLENCE PROBE

Brazilian President Michel Temer’s legal team has said that a corruption charge against him was based entirely on an illegally taped recording and plea-bargain testimony from confessed criminals. Temer’s lawyer Antonio Mariz de Oliveira made the arguments in the written defence he delivered to a congressional committee looking into a charge the conservative leader took bribes. “The defence believes that the charge is not based on facts; that it’s a piece of fiction based on hypothesis and assumptions,” Mariz told reporters after delivering the written defence to congress. Temer has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Singer Ed Sheeran performs on NBC’s ‘Today’ at Rockefeller Plaza yesterday.

Sheeran show

Tribune News ServiceAtlanta

Four young children were found dead inside their Gwinnett County home

yesterday morning, a fi fth sibling taken to the hospital in unknown condition. The children’s father was also stabbed to death, police said, and their mother was taken into custody.

Authorities called the kill-ings inside a mobile home near Loganville, Ga., “horrendous” - and the incident may indeed be one of the deadliest involving children and their parents in the country’s recent history.

In South Carolina in 2014, a man named Timothy Ray Jones Jr. allegedly killed his fi ve chil-dren, ages one through eight. He then drove them to Alabama, where he buried them. He re-portedly claimed the children

were planning to kill him.The same year, a Florida man

named Donald C Spirit report-edly killed his daughter and six grandchildren before turning the gun on himself.

In Texas in 2011, Andrea Yat-es, who had a history of men-tal illness and was later found not guilty by reason of insanity, drowned her fi ve children in a bathtub. They ranged in age from six months to 7 years.

In California in 2004, a man named Marcus Wesson shot and killed nine of his children and grandchildren, who ranged in age from one to 25.

Georgia - and Gwinnett Coun-ty itself - have also been home to high-profi le cases involving the deaths of multiple children.

In Douglas county in Febru-ary 2015, Cedric Prather shot six people and himself. Four of the six victims, including a seven-year-old boy and a nine-year-

old girl, were killed. Prather also died.

In January 2015, ex-Marine Kisha Holmes killed her three children inside their Cobb County apartment before tak-ing her own life - and that of the fourth child she was pregnant with.

On February 9, 2011, Elvis Noe Garcia-Nolasco stabbed three of his children inside their Gwin-nett County home, initially blaming the incident on his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. Two of the children, ages one and three, died from their injuries. (Eight days later, a metham-phetamine-fuelled explosion claimed the lives of three more Gwinnett children. They were 21 months, three years and four years old.)

In July of 1999, an Atlanta man named Cyrano Marks shot and killed six people, including four children.

Woman held as fourkids, man found slain AFP

New York

Rap legend Tupac Shakur broke off a hush-hush fl ing with Madonna two

decades ago because he thought dating the white pop star would hurt his image with his fans, a letter reveals.

The brief relationship between the two music icons only emerged two years ago, and now an auction house has put up for sale a 1995 letter from Tupac — who was shot dead just a year later — to Ma-donna in which the rapper breaks off the romance, saying, “I never meant to hurt you.”

“For you to be seen with a black man wouldn’t in any way jeop-ardise your career, if anything it would make you seem that much more open and exciting,” Tupac wrote neatly on lined paper.

“But for me at least in my pre-vious perception I felt due to my ‘image’ I would be letting down half of the people who made me what I thought I was,” he wrote.

Tupac was apparently refer-ring to his newfound status as a leading voice in hip-hop, with his songs frequently taking on police brutality and other issues of con-cern to many African Americans.

In the letter, he told Madonna he had read an interview in which the pop great said “‘I’m off to re-habilitate all the rappers and bas-ketball players’ or something to that eff ect.”

“Those words cut me deep see-ing how I had never known you to be with any rappers besides my-self,” Tupac wrote.

The letter, fi rst reported by the gossip site TMZ, will go on the block later this month at New York auction house Gotta Have Rock and Roll.

Shortly after the split with Madonna, Tupac went to prison on charges, which he denied, of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room.

Tupac, who left prison with an increasingly gangsta image, was killed the following year at age 25 in a still murky shooting in Las Vegas.

Tupac breakup letterto Madonna cites race

Photo sparksnew claims overAmelia EarhartdisappearanceGuardian News and MediaWashington

A newly unearthed picture from the US national ar-chives has given new cre-

dence to a popular theory about the disappearance of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart.

Some experts say the image shows the pilot, her navigator Fred Noonan and her airplane in the Marshall Islands in 1937, when the archipelago was occu-pied by Japan – proving that she died in Japanese custody, rather than during a crash landing in the Pacifi c.

“When you pull out, and when you see the analysis that’s been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that’s Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan,” Shawn Henry told NBC News. Henry is the former executive assistant director for the FBI and an NBC News analyst.

Kent Gibson, a forensic analyst who specialises in facial recogni-tion, told the History Channel that it was “very likely” the indi-viduals pictured are Earhart and Noonan, in a programme on the Earhart mystery scheduled to air this Sunday.

Not everyone is so convinced, however. “There is such an appe-tite for anything related to Amelia Earhart that even something this ridiculous will get everybody talk-ing about it,” said Ric Gillespie, author of Finding Amelia and the executive director of the The In-ternational Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar).

“This is just a picture of a wharf at Jaluit (in the Marshall Islands), with a bunch of people,” Gillespie said. “It’s just silly. And this is coming from a guy who has spent the last 28 years doing genuine research into the Earhart disap-pearance and led 11 expeditions into the South Pacifi c.”

The picture was discovered by retired federal agent Les Kin-ney, who scoured the national archives for records that may have been overlooked in the now 80-year-old mystery of Earhart’s last fl ight.

It was July 2, 1937, toward the end of her history-making fl ight around the world, when the 40-year-old Earhart van-ished somewhere over the Pacifi c Ocean. The crash has long been blamed on poor weather condi-tions and a technical failure with the plane’s radio system. Most historians believe that Earhart ran out of fuel, crashed into the Pacif-ic Ocean and sunk to the ocean’s darkest depths.

But since no trace of Earhart, Noonan or her Lockheed Elec-tra airplane have ever been con-fi rmed, alternate theories have abounded for decades. This past November, another forensic breakthrough supported an al-ternate theory that Earhart may have died a castaway on an island in modern-day Kiribati.

Gillespie is an exponent of this account and believes there is copious evidence to support it, including the timing of radio transmissions received after the plane was no longer airborne, the location of human remains on the then uninhabited island, and items he and his team have recovered – including a popular US women’s moisturizer, a zip-per from a jacket and a makeup case.

The Marshall Island theory, which the photograph is alleged to support, has been around since at least the 1960s and fuelled by accounts from Marshall Islanders who claimed they saw the aircraft land and saw Earhart and Noonan in Japanese custody.

Kinney found the most recent photograph stamped with offi cial Offi ce of Naval Intelligence (ONI) markings reading “Marshall Is-lands, Jaluit Atoll, Jaluit Island, Jaluit Harbor”. The photograph has been credited to a US spy.

In the photo, a ship can be seen towing a barge with an airplane on the back, and on a nearby dock what appears to be a woman with a short haircut can be seen sit-ting, facing away from the cam-era. Gillespie notes, for what it’s worth, that the woman’s hair is far too long to be that of Earhart, of whom pictures exist from just a few days earlier.

AgenciesWashington

Democratic attorneys general in 18 states and the District of Columbia

yesterday fi led a lawsuit against Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s controversial choice for educa-tion secretary, over her deci-sion to suspend rules meant to protect students from abuses by for-profi t colleges.

Massachusetts attorney gen-eral Maura Healey, leading the lawsuit, said DeVos’s decision was “a betrayal of her offi ce’s responsibility and a violation of federal law”.

The lawsuit was fi led in fed-

eral court in Washington DC and demands implementation of borrower defence to repayment rules.

The rules were created under Barack Obama’s administration and were meant to take eff ect on July 1. They aim to make schools fi nancially responsible for fraud and forbid them from forcing students to resolve complaints outside court.

On June 14, DeVos announced the rules would be delayed and rewritten, saying they created “a muddled process that’s unfair to students and schools and puts taxpayers on the hook for sig-nifi cant costs”.

In a statement yesterday, Healey said: “Since day one,

secretary DeVos has sided with for-profi t school executives against students and families drowning in unaff ordable stu-dent loans. Her decision to can-cel vital protections for students and taxpayers is a betrayal of her offi ce’s responsibility and a vio-lation of federal law.”

A spokeswoman for DeVos told media the secretary would not immediately comment.

Also yesterday, two student borrowers sued the education department in the same federal court over the delayed rules.

The students both attended the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Mass., a for-profi t school that stopped enrolling new students in 2015. Its parent

company, Education Manage-ment Corporation, agreed that year to pay $95mn to settle a government lawsuit charging the company with making illegal payments to recruiters.

The Obama administration’s push to streamline and expand the borrower defence process came after hundreds of for-profi t colleges were accused of widespread fraud and collapsed, leaving their enrolled students with huge debts and no degrees. The failure of two mammoth chains, Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute, gave the issue added urgency.

An existing federal law al-lows borrowers to apply for loan forgiveness if they attended

a school that misled them or broke state consumer protection laws. Once rarely used, the sys-tem was overwhelmed by appli-cants after the wave of for-profi t failures. Corinthian’s collapse alone led to more than 15,000 loan discharges, with a balance of $247mn.

Taxpayers get stuck with those losses. The rules that De-Vos froze would have shifted some of that risk back to the industry by requiring schools at risk of closing to put up fi nancial collateral. They would also ban mandatory arbitration agree-ments, which have prevented many aggrieved students from suing schools that they believe have defrauded them.

18 states sue DeVos overstudent loan rules’ delay

Members of the New York City police department embrace at a makeshift memorial for fallen NYPD off icer Miosotis Familia outside the 46th Police Precinct in the Bronx borough of New York City yesterday. Familia, 48, was shot and killed as she sat in a command vehicle in the Bronx in what police are calling an ‘unprovoked attack’.

New York police officer shot dead

AMERICAS5


AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA


Hong Kong customs off icials have seized 7.2 tonnes of ivory hidden under frozen fish, the government announced yesterday. The seizure, made at the Kwai Chung Customhouse Cargo Examination Compound on Tuesday, originated from Malaysia and was the largest seizure in 30 years. It is estimated to be worth some HK$72mn (US$9.2mn). “Customs off icers inspected a 40ft container declared to contain frozen fish arriving from Malaysia. Upon inspection, customs off icers found the ivory tusks beneath the frozen fish cartons inside the container,” the government said in a statement. A man and two women from a trading company were arrested.

Fears rose yesterday about the health of China’s cancer-stricken Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo as the hospital treating him said the liver function of the country’s most prominent democracy advocate had deteriorated. Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December 2009 for “subversion” after calling for democratic reform. He was awarded the Nobel in 2010, with an empty chair representing him at the ceremony in Oslo. China Medical University No 1 Hospital, located in the northeastern city of Shenyang, said on its website that Liu’s liver function “has deteriorated” and it suspects that he has a blood clot in a calf muscle.

A new map that tracks the massacres of indigenous Australians by European settlers over more than 80 years, dating from the 18th century, could prove to be the country’s most comprehensive guide to the strife when it is completed. The exact number of indigenous deaths since Australia’s settlement has long been debated, but the map is the first to detail evidence of more than 150 massacres involving almost every aboriginal clan between 1788 and 1872. That compares with six recorded massacres of colonists during the same period. “It’s a preliminary list, as we expect to find more massacres, as people come forward with more evidence,” historian and project author Lyndall Ryan said.

The siblings of Singapore’s prime minister yesterday off ered a truce in an explosive family feud over the legacy of their late father, founding leader Lee Kuan Yew, saying they wanted to settle the matter privately. The city-state has been captivated by the row over the future of the family bungalow. “For now, we will cease presenting further evidence on social media, provided that we and our father’s wish are not attacked or misrepresented,” said Lee Hsien Yang, 60, and Lee Wei Ling, 62, in a joint statement. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s siblings say their brother is attempting to block the house’s demolition to capitalise on their father’s legacy for his own political agenda.

Counting is under way in Papua New Guinea’s sprawling elections, officials said yesterday, but voting has been marred by claims of rigging, electoral roll flaws and ballot paper shortages. The last polling stations are due to close Saturday after two weeks of voting for the 111-seat parliament across the vast and remote country where previous elections have been tarnished by violence. The Pacific nation’s leader, Peter O’Neill of the People’s National Congress (PNC), has hailed this year’s poll as “calm and peaceful”, even as some voters complained their names had vanished from the electoral roll.

HK makes record-breaking, multi-million ivory seizure

Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo’s health deteriorates

New map to record sites of Australia colonial killings

Singapore PM’s siblings off er truce in family feud

Rigging controversy mars PNG vote, counting starts

SMUGGLING HOSPITALISEDHISTORY POLITICS BALLOT BATTLE

HK activist says will not contest protest chargesReutersHong Kong

Hong Kong student leader Joshua Wong, who helped lead the months-long “Um-brella Movement” in 2014 demanding full

democracy, said yesterday he would not fi ght a charge related to the protests in the spirit of civil disobedience.

The Hong Kong protests that Wong and others helped drive represented one of the biggest popu-list challenges in decades to the leaders of China’s Communist Party since the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement in Beijing.

Wong was one of 20 protesters charged with contempt of court after refusing to obey a court order and leave a protest zone in the working-class district of Mong Kok.

“I choose to plead guilty in this case to show, as an organiser of civil disobedience, I am willing to bear legal responsibility,” the 20-year-old Wong said outside the High Court, fl anked by a few sup-porters.

“Although there’s a chance I might be put in jail, I have no regrets.”

In written statements to the court, Wong and several respondents, including another student leader Lester Shum, “admitted liability”, rather than explicitly pleading guilty, as is the case in a civil, rather than criminal, lawsuit.

The former British colony that marked its 20th anniversary under Chinese rule on July 1 is gov-erned under a “one country, two systems” formula that guarantees it a high degree of autonomy, civil liberties, an independent judiciary and the prom-ise of universal suff rage as an “ultimate” aim.

The movement was triggered in part by Beijing’s longstanding refusal to grant the city of 7.3mn people a direct vote for a new Hong Kong leader that would include pro-democracy, opposition candidates.

Although Beijing had off ered Hong Kong a dem-ocratic reform blueprint for a direct vote, it envis-aged the city’s next leader being drawn only from candidates essentially pre-screened by a small panel packed with pro-Beijing loyalists.

This package was vetoed in 2015 by opposition pro-democracy lawmakers who called it fake, China-style democracy.

Wong’s lawyer, Lawrence Lok, told judge An-drew Chan that Wong acted peacefully through-out the protests.

“This young man had a noble motive in doing what he did,” Lok said, adding that a jail sentence of three months or more would dash Wong’s hopes of running for a seat in the legislature in the future.

Wong has previously been found guilty of un-lawful assembly on a charge also related to the 2014 protests, but he avoided jail time.

He was also arrested for “public nuisance” last week on the eve of Chinese President Xi Jin-ping’s visit to Hong Kong, after he and 25 activists climbed up a symbolic golden fl ower statue that commemorates the handover.

Thailand leads herd for abused tourist elephantsAFPBangkok

Twice as many elephants work in Thailand’s tourism industry as the rest of Asia combined,

with the vast majority kept in “se-verely inadequate conditions”, a new report revealed yesterday.

The world’s largest land mammal is a huge draw for tourists across two continents.

But while Africa’s elephants are more likely to be spotted roaming vast nature reserves, their Asian cousins are less fortunate.

A multi-million dollar industry has fl ourished in recent decades with tourists taking rides on the giant beasts or watching them perform in circus shows.

Researchers from World Animal Protection spent two years visiting 220 venues using elephants across Asia, in what they describe as the most comprehensive survey to date of a rapidly growing, lucrative, but poorly regulated industry.

Their data showed pachyderm wel-fare routinely came in second place to turning a fast profi t, with three-quarters of Asia’s captive elephants kept in conditions that were rated poor or unacceptable.

Thailand stood out as the global epicentre.

Of the 2,923 elephants WAP docu-

mented working within Asia’s tour-ism trade, 2,198 were found in Thai-land alone.

The next largest industry was In-dia, with an estimated 617 elephants, followed by Sri Lanka on 166, Nepal on 147, Laos on 59 and Cambodia with just 36.

All the venues visited, which re-searchers said represented 90 % of the industry, were rated on a scale of 1-10 in terms of conditions with 77% scoring between just one to fi ve — what researchers classifi ed as “poor or unacceptable”.

“When not giving rides or per-forming, the elephants were typi-cally chained day and night, most of the time to chains less than 3m long. They were also fed poor diets, given limited appropriate veterinary care and were frequently kept on concrete fl oors in stressful locations,” the re-port said.

India fared the worst on living con-ditions with an average score of 4.4, followed by Thailand on 4.6, Nepal on 4.8, Sri Lanka on 4.9 and on Laos 5.0.

Cambodia averaged 6.5 but re-searchers noted there were just 36 elephant in four venues, two of which got good marks.

Highest rated venues rarely or nev-er chained their elephants, limited or banned close interactions with tour-ists and allowed the animals to so-cialise in herds.

In Thailand only eight venues were

rated as good, compared to 114 rated poor.

Jan Schmidt-Burbach, a Thailand-based expert with WAP, said tourists had the power to improve captive el-ephant lives by choosing venues that promote observing animals over in-teracting with them.

“As a general rule, if you can ride, hug or have a selfi e with a wild animal it’s cruel and you just shouldn’t do it,” he told AFP.

Researchers added that the 30 % increase in Thailand’s tourist el-ephant population since 2010 was based mostly in poorly rated venues.

Thailand’s elephant entertainment industry took hold in the 1990s af-ter authorities banned the use of el-ephants in commercial logging and owners said they had to fi nd new rev-enue.

Most of that generation of el-ephants have now died out, yet the number of elephants involved in the trade keeps increasing.

The country has more elephants in captivity than living in the wild.

WAP said they were particularly concerned by Thailand’s animal cir-cuses, where elephants can often be seen riding tricycles, walking on tightropes and even playing basket-ball.

“The training required to make elephants perform such tricks is particularly cruel and stressful,” re-searchers said.A World Animal Protection handout photo of an elephant performing during a show for tourists in Thailand.

Unesco keeps Barrier Reef off ‘in danger’ listAFPWarsaw

Unesco said yesterday its World Heritage Committee (WHC) had decided not to

place Australia’s Great Barrier Reef on its list of sites “in danger” despite concern over coral bleaching.

A WHC spokeswoman said the Committee, which is meeting in Poland, had made the decision late Wednesday and expressed “deep concern” over two straight years of mass coral bleaching, which aerial surveys found had aff ected some two-thirds of the World Heritage-listed site.

The bleaching is the result of warming sea temperatures linked to climate change.

In reaching its decision, the Com-mittee noted Australian attempts to preserve the largest living structure on Earth under its Reef 2050 Plan and did not fi nd it necessary to place the site on its danger list, spokes-woman Anika Paliszewska said, de-spite fears on whether conservation targets can be met.

WHC lauded “major eff orts de-ployed by all those involved” in the Australian preservation plan but “strongly encourages (Australia) to step up eff orts to ensure that me-dium- and long-term objectives fi xed by the Plan are met, which is essential for the global resilience” of the reef.

In a draft report to the WHC last month, Unesco said climate change remained the most signifi -cant threat to the future of the coral expanse which stretches for some 2,300 kilometres (1,400 miles) and criticised Australia for slow progress towards achieving water quality targets.

The reef is notably threatened by a proliferation of crown-of-thorns starfi sh, a coral predator which has a devastating impact on coral reef ecosystems.

The Australian government wel-comed Unesco’s decision, saying Canberra will speed up eff orts “to help arrest the fl ow of sediment, nu-trients and pesticide into the Reef”

and tackle the damaging eff ects of the starfi sh outbreaks.

“We agree with the Committee’s assessment that addressing the quality of water entering the Reef remains critically important,” Envi-ronment Minister Josh Frydenberg said.

Prime Minister Malcom Turn-bull’s government “is committed to the preservation and management of the Great Barrier Reef — a com-mitment made all the more impor-tant by the mass coral bleaching,” Frydenberg said.

A Deloitte Access Economics re-port commissioned by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation last month stated that the site is an asset worth

A$56bn ($42bn) supporting 64,000 jobs and as an ecosystem and eco-nomic driver is “too big to fail.”

That report was the fi rst time the economic and social value of the reef — which is bigger than Britain, Switzerland and the Netherlands combined — had been calculated.

As well as the problem posed by starfi sh, the site is also under pres-sure from farming run-off and de-velopment.

The report’s lead author, John O’Mahony, said the study made clear the reef was “priceless and ir-replaceable” both in terms of its biodiversity and its job-creating po-tential.

Australia in May hosted a sum-

mit of more than 70 of the world’s leading marine experts to work on a blueprint on how best to respond to the threats facing the reef.

Options explored included de-veloping coral nurseries, culling of crown-of-thorns starfi sh, expand-ing monitoring systems and identi-fying priority sites for coral restora-tion.

In April, Australia’s independ-ent Climate Council warned further damage to the reef could cut tour-ism by more than 1mn a year, costing up to A$1bn and also around 10,000 jobs.

Canberra has committed more than A$2bn to protect the site over the next decade but has been criti-

cised for backing a huge coal project by Indian mining giant Adani near the reef, which environmentalists warn would harm the natural won-der.

Greenpeace warned yesterday that Australia is not doing enough to save the reef.

“What we should be doing is cutting fossil fuels subsidies, ban-ning new coal mines and off ering the world real climate leadership,” Greenpeace campaigner Alix Foster Vander Elst said.

“Australia must act if it is seri-ous about protecting the Reef. This means we must keep 90% of exist-ing coal reserves in the ground,” Vander Elst said.

Tourists snorkel in an area called the ‘Coral Gardens’ at Lady Elliot Island, located north-east from the town of Bundaberg in Queensland, Australia.

BRITAIN7Gulf Times


One in threenursing homesfailing, warns watchdogGuardian News and MediaLondon

One in three nursing homes has failed its offi cial in-spection in results de-

scribed by the care watchdog as worrying and by the government’s care minister as “completely un-acceptable”.

The Care Quality Commission said that of 4,000 nursing homes, which care for the most vulnerable people at the end of their lives, 32% have been rated inadequate or requires improvement and 37% have been told they must improve safety.

The regulator warned that social care was in a “precarious” state – and according to Age UK the re-sults leave elderly people and their families “playing Russian rou-lette” when they choose a nurs-ing home or other care service. Inspectors making unannounced visits to care homes found medi-cines being administered unsafely, alarm calls going unanswered and residents not getting help to eat or use the toilet. Some residents were found to have been woken up by night-shift care workers, washed and then put back to bed, appar-ently to make life easier for staff .

Andrea Sutcliff e, chief inspec-tor of adult social care at the Care Quality Commission, which car-ried out the inspections, said such practice showed a fundamental lack of dignity and respect. She admitted disappointment that only one in 50 of all care services had managed to achieve the top rating of “outstanding”.

The picture for nursing homes was the most worrying, Sutcliff e said. “Many of these homes are struggling to recruit and retain well-qualifi ed nursing staff and that means that this is having an impact on delivering good services to people who have got very com-plex needs,” she said.

In a separate interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme,

she said the commission would shut down failing homes that re-fused to improve.

Where serious failings had oc-curred, including where staff had been violent towards people in their care, Sutcliff e said the com-mission would be looking at train-ing and recruitment issues.

The report of the full inspection results will pile pressure on min-isters over both the growing crisis in the national nursing workforce – revealed this week to be shrink-ing amid discontent over pay and workloads – and state spending on social care, cut by a cumulative £6bn in England since 2010.

Of all adult 24,000 social care services in England, 21% have been judged “inadequate” or “re-quires improvement” in the fi rst full checks of their kind by the Care Quality Commission – which have taken almost three years to complete. One quarter of those checked have been found wanting on grounds of safety.

Sutcliff e said care was “ap-proaching its tipping point” – as the CQC warned last autumn – despite an emergency injection of £2bn government funding over three years.

Concern has grown because some services have been down-graded after re-inspection. Of more than 1,800 inspected more than once since 2014, 26% were subsequently relegated to “re-quires improvement” or even “in-adequate” after initially gaining a rating of “good”.

Sutcliff e said that while re-inspections were often prompted by concerns raised by staff , other care professionals or users of the services, the number of facilities downgraded nevertheless under-scored the fragility of the sector.

Caroline Abrahams, Age UK’s charity director, said it was trou-bling that a fi fth of all services had been judged to need improvement and “pretty scary” that so many nursing homes had fallen below an acceptable threshold.

People gather in support of continued medical treatment for critically-ill 10-month-old Charlie Gard due to be taken off life support, in London yesterday.

Support for critically ill baby

The government yesterday said it had begun housing extremists in separate prison units to prevent them radicalising other inmates, as it grapples with a mounting terror threat. A new “separation centre” has been opened at Frankland jail near Durham, northeast England, the interior ministry said. It is first of three centres which together will have a capacity of 28 inmates. “The most dangerous and subversive off enders are now being separated from those they seek to influence and convert,” said the Minister for Prisons, Sam Gyimah. The move was recommended by a review into extremism in prisons published last year.

The police have launched a public appeal to find the owner of a human finger, seven years after it was found in London. Police yesterday said the DNA of the severed finger, which came from a male, did not match any missing person or crime reports of the time and they have no other clues. It was found by a dog in the rear courtyard of a London shop in 2010. “We have now exhausted all lines of inquiry and have been unable to find out who the finger belongs to and how the finger became detached in the first place. It is quite the mystery,” said detective constable Tom Boon. “We are now appealing for the public to help us solve the case.”

Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has provoked delight and mirth by naming his newborn son and sixth child Sixtus. Rees-Mogg, MP for northeast Somerset, announced the birth on Instagram. He posted an image of himself cradling Sixtus, with the words: “Helena and I announce with great joy that we have a baby Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher, a brother for Peter, Mary, Thomas, Anselm and Alfred.” One Twitter user responded: “There’s a man in touch with the challenges of modern life.” Another said: “The thing about Jacob Rees-Mogg is that his politics (are) horrendous but I can’t bring myself to hate him because he’s from another time.”

Schools have warned parents about popular social media app Snapchat’s new feature that can share locations and could put their children’s lives at risk. Snap Map lets users share their exact location with people on their “friends” list in real time. The feature allows the users to view the exact location where the friends were. If zoomed well, it could also show the house on the street layout. Schools said that the map raised “serious safeguarding concerns” because children could be tracked on the map, and it could also be used to “build up a picture of home addresses, travel routes, schools and workplaces”, the BBC reported.

Singer Morrisey has reportedly cancelled seven concerts in Italy following an altercation with a police off icer in Rome. The former lead singer of The Smiths was stopped by an off icer on the central Via del Corso street late Tuesday with his nephew Sam Esty Rayner. According to Italian daily La Repubblica, Rayner was driving a car the wrong way at a “crazy speed.” “This was a deliberate act of terror by this off icer. I had not broken the law or acted suspiciously. The off icer unlocked his gun and held it as he screamed into my face,” the artist said. Because of the incident, Morrissey pulled out of seven “proposed live dates” in Italy in September, Rolling Stone magazine reported.

Dangerous extremists locked up in separate jail

Police seek help to solvesevered finger mystery

Tory MP announces birthof sixth child, Sixtus

Schools warn parents over Snapchat Map

Singer cancels Italy gigsafter row with police

LAW AND ORDER INVESTIGATIONOFFBEAT CONCERN ENTERTAINMENT

Manchester bomber didnot act alone, say policeGuardian News and MediaLondon

Terrorism investigators have confi rmed that they believe the Manchester

Arena suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, did not act alone when preparing his attack on an Ari-ana Grande concert that killed 22 people.

Anti-terrorism offi cers said they believed the 22-year-old bomber was not part of a net-work but that others were aware that he was going to carry out the attack on May 22.

Investigators revealed that after the attack explosives were found at various addresses in

the city. It also emerged Abe-di, 22, spent hours “milling around” in the busy city centre before detonating his bomb in the foyer of the arena, killing seven children and 14 adults.

Greater Manchester po-lice (GMP) revealed they were working with authorities in Libya to speak to Abedi’s broth-er, Hashem, who was being held by anti-terror police.

In a briefi ng detective chief inspector Russ Jackson, head of north-west counter-terrorism policing, said that others were involved and there could still be further arrests. He said: “We do believe there are other people potentially involved in this … and further arrests are possible.”

Jackson said: “We are cur-rently engaging with the Crown Prosecution Service and the Libyan authorities,” he said. “This is a live criminal investi-gation where central to it are 22 murdered people with grieving families.”

Police previously said they believed Abedi assembled the device by himself in the days before the attack. They had said it was unclear whether he had acted alone in obtaining materi-als for the bomb, which offi cers believed were stored in a white Nissan Micra found parked in the Rusholme area of the city.

But yesterday they revealed they now believed he had help as he plotted the attack.

Abedi was born in Manches-ter to Libyan parents, who had moved back to Tripoli in recent years, along with his younger siblings. He is believed to have visited Libya shortly before the attack, returning to the UK on May 18.

During the briefi ng at GMP headquarters, Jackson said he had to be careful not to damage any potential future prosecu-tion as he briefed reporters.

The bomber’s younger brother, Hashem, was arrested in Libya shortly after the explo-sion, along with their father, Ramadan.

The family fl ed Libya during Muammar Gaddafi ’s dictator-ship, with the father returning

to fi ght with opposition forces when the uprising began in 2011.

Abedi’s older brother, Ismail, was among more than a dozen people held and questioned by police in the UK before being released without charge.

Jackson said Abedi travelled to Libya a number of times, and police were investigating how he obtained the skills to make a bomb.

Calls Abedi made, reportedly to his mother and others, on the night of the attack were another key line of inquiry, Jackson said, but would not be drawn fur-ther. He said no video or note has been found by police left by Abedi to explain his motivation.

Labour leader blastsgovt for ‘lost decade’AFPLondon

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn yesterday blasted the ruling Conservatives

for a “lost decade”, promising that a Labour Party government would off er free further educa-tion to boost the economy.

“Britain has been living through a lost decade. A decade of lost growth. A decade of stag-nant living standards,” Corbyn said during a speech at the Brit-ish Chamber of Commerce in central London.

“Britain can’t aff ord another lost decade,” he added.

The Labour leader described his party as a “government in waiting” following strong gains in a general election last month in which Prime Minister Theresa May lost her parliamentary ma-jority.

Corbyn, who has promised to scrap tuition fees for university students, also laid out plans for a National Education Service in-spired by the country’s National Health Service (NHS).

“Our National Education

Service will be the key institu-tion of fairness and prosperity in the 21st century, just as the NHS transformed people’s prospects in the 20th century,” he said.

“It is by investing in our edu-cation system that we can end the spread of low-paid, low-skilled, insecure work by providing the skilled workforce that businesses need,” Corbyn argued.

The party’s plan to provide free life-long education would be funded by “a bit more tax” on businesses and more govern-ment funding, including scrap-ping the long-standing public sector pay cap.

In a robust exchange in the House of Commons on Wednes-day, the prime minister insisted the country should “live within our means” after the Labour leader called on the government to raise public sector pay.

Justine Greening, the educa-tion minister, described Labour’s education policies as “shambolic and reckless”.

“Corbyn’s plans for huge tax hikes and reckless borrowing would put us back to square one and leave working families worse off ,” she said in a statement.

Police extend spit hoodtrial across LondonGuardian News and MediaLondon

A trial of the controversial police spit hoods, which came to national atten-

tion after one was used on an in-nocent man during an arrest last year, has been extended across the whole of London, Scotland Yard has said.

Offi cers said an initial smaller pilot in the north-east of the capital had been successful but was too limited.

The police watchdog is in-vestigating British Transport Police’s use of a spit hood on Ik Aihie, who was arrested in Lon-don Bridge station in July 2016.

He was fi lmed screaming as he was held down by offi cers, who put the hood over his head. Aihie said he had been left “bruised and shaken” and a witness said he had been treated “like a dog”.

He was never charged with anything and a caution issued to him was later revoked.

Use of the hoods has been

claimed to breach a suspect’s rights. The Met argues they off er reasonable protection to offi cers against people trying to spit at and bite them.

The force plans to extend the use of the hoods to all custody suites in the capital, though their use was restricted on the streets from the outset. It said it had “discussed these plans with partner organisations, commu-nity representatives and inde-pendent groups, as well as mag-istrates”.

The force yesterday said the initial trial had suggested that the spit guards were an “eff ec-tive, proportionate and neces-sary piece of equipment when deployed correctly and with ap-propriate supervision”. It said the mayor of London had agreed to the extension.

“The Met has a duty of care to its offi cers and staff – the is-sue of spitting and biting is a real problem and a particularly un-pleasant form of assault which rightly generates a lot of concern amongst offi cers. Aside from the

fact that as an employer the Met cannot expect its staff to be spat at, or think this is acceptable, some of the follow-up treatment required after such an assault can be prolonged and unpleasant.

“Over a number of years, the Met has been looking at potential ways of minimising the threat this issue poses to offi cers and staff . One of the options that has been considered is spit guards. Spit guards are a nationally ap-proved piece of police personal safety equipment and are already used by 22 forces across the UK.”

Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty, called the hoods “primi-tive, cruel and dangerous.” She went on: “There have been far too many cases of their use against children and disabled adults, causing huge fear, humiliation and even suff ocation – which makes it all the more disturbing to see the Met quietly roll this extreme measure out across our city, with no public debate and no published evaluation. If the pilot was ‘successful’, why can’t we see the evidence?”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, attends the presentation reception for The Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award holders in the gardens at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh yesterday. The award is a youth awards programme founded in 1956.

Winners feted

EUROPE


The mummified body of a woman in her fifties was found inside her apartment in a town in northern Spain, police and reports said yesterday. Off icers found the “mummified body of a woman inside the apartment she rented in Culleredo”, in the northwestern region of Galicia. “Neighbours had reported that this woman had not been seen for at least four years, that no one collected her mail and that her car was parked in the same spot and was covered in dust,” police added. The body, which was found in the hall of the apartment showed no signs of violence, suggesting the woman died of natural causes, local media quoted a government’s representative in the region as saying.

Russian investigators raided the Moscow election headquarters of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny yesterday and police entered a warehouse, where activists said they confiscated pre-election pamphlets. Navalny, who has organised two big anti-government street protests in recent months, is currently serving out a 25-day jail term for repeatedly violating the law on organising public meetings. He is due out today. Navalny says he wants to run for the presidency in March next year, but the Central Election Commission has said he is ineligible due to an embezzlement conviction. His supporters are planning a series of campaign events for tomorrow.

European scientists said yesterday they have discovered a new subatomic particle containing a never-before-seen combination of quarks — the most basic building blocks of matter. The particle, a baryon dubbed Xicc++, contains two heavy “charm” quarks and one “up” quark, and has about four times the mass of a more familiar baryon — the proton. The particle is predicted in the Standard Model of particle physics, and its discovery was “not a shock”, said Matthew Charles of the LPNHE physics lab in Paris. He is one of about 800 scientists to attach their names to the discovery by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN).

A decision to restore a memorial plaque to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin at a state-run Moscow university has sparked outrage as another sign that off icials are trying to whitewash his crimes. The Moscow State Law University last month reinstated the Soviet-era plaque marking a speech delivered there by Stalin in 1924. It was removed in the 1960s. More than 21,000 people have since signed an online petition on Change.org launched by a former student demanding it be taken down. “We are deeply concerned about the rehabilitation of the Stalinist regime in Russia in general and in this case in particular,” the petition said. The decision saw a prominent rights lawyer and professors of another college break their ties with the university in protest.

Spain police find body of woman missing for years

investigators raid election off ices of Putin critic

Doubly-charmed new particle unveiled

Stalin plaque stirs outcry at Moscow university

SOCIETY HEALTHPOLITICS SCIENCE HISTORY

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron welcome autistic people at the Elysee Palace, prior to the launching of a programme to enhance the diagnosis and treatment of autism, in Paris.

German riot police stand in front of protesters during the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

Trump warns future of the West at stakeAFPWarsaw

US President Donald Trump warned that the future of the West was

at risk and lashed out at Russia and North Korea yesterday at the start of a high-stakes trip to Eu-rope.

In key US ally Poland on the fi rst leg of the trip, he accused Russia of “destabilising” action in Ukraine and warned North Korea it faced “consequences” after an intercontinental ballistic missile test that has alarmed the international community.

On the eve of what is likely to be a prickly G20 summit in Hamburg, Trump — who faces animosity from traditional US allies — used his keynote address in Warsaw to warn that a lack of collective re-solve could doom an alliance that endured through the Cold War.

“The defence of the West ul-timately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail,” he said.

“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”

Seeking to ease allies’ con-cerns about the US commitment to Nato, Trump endorsed its one-for-all-and-all-for-one mutual defence pact.

“The United States has dem-onstrated not merely with words, but with it actions, that we stand fi rmly behind Article Five,” he said, while calling for more de-fence spending on the eastern side of the Atlantic.

“The transatlantic bond be-tween the United States and Europe is as strong as ever, and maybe in many ways, even stronger,” he added.

Speaking in a country alarmed by Moscow’s increasing military assertiveness, Trump hit out at Russia, just a day before his high-ly anticipated fi rst face-to-face talks with President Vladimir Putin at the G20.

“We urge Russia to cease its destabilising activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and Iran — and to instead join the community of respon-sible nations in our fi ght against common enemies and in defence of civilisation itself.”

He also said Moscow “may have” tried to infl uence the 2016 election that brought him to power, but suggested others too may have been involved and

blames his predecessor Barack Obama for failing to act.

Arriving at the G20 host city Hamburg later yesterday, Trump headed in the evening to talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has vowed to defend the 2015 Paris climate accord which the US leader has pledged to withdraw America from.

Trump would then hold a dinner meeting with leaders of South Korea and Japan, when focus will be trained on another crisis that erupted this week when Pyongyang successfully tested an ICBM that could deliver a nuclear payload to Alaska.

In his fi rst public remarks since the test, Trump said in War-saw that Pyongyang’s military sabre-rattling must bring “con-sequences” and warned he was considering a “severe” response to its ‘very, very bad behaviour”. After repeatedly urging Beijing to ratchet up the economic pres-sure on North Korea, Trump will hold what promises to be a testy meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20.

The White House wanted to use Trump’s Warsaw speech — with its echoes of historic ad-dresses overseas by Ronald Rea-gan and John F. Kennedy — to burnish his credentials as a glo-

bal statesman and defl ect sug-gestions he is making the United States a virtual pariah.

Speaking in front of 10,000 people at Krasinski Square — which memorialises the Warsaw uprising against Nazi occupation — Trump pointed to Poland as an example of resolve in the defence of Western traditions.

“The people of Poland, the people of America, and the peo-ple of Europe still cry out ‘We want God’,” Trump said. Refer-ring to the Nazi and Soviet inva-sions of Poland, he said: “That’s tough.”

But he is likely to encounter a cool reception elsewhere.

Thomas Wright from the Brookings Institute said that Trump’s backing of Nato’s Article Five and reference to the Russian threat had done the “bare mini-mum” to repair a speech he made to the alliance earlier this year.

“But its overall thrust was one of nationalism and sovereignty,” he said.

“The great risk is that in his off -the-cuff remarks he will be-gin dividing Europe into old and new — or those who don’t like him and his message and those who do.”

While Trump positions him-self as a leader with the vision to confront an epoch-making cri-

sis, for many US allies in Europe and beyond it is Trump himself who has called the world order — and a century of American global leadership — into doubt.

US President Donald Trump faces being isolated on global warming at the Group of 20 sum-mit of major economic powers, according to the draft communi-que of the G20 meeting seen by DPA.

The leaders attending the summit — several of whom ex-pressed their anger over Trump’s move last month to ditch the Paris climate change accord — want the Hamburg meeting to call for the “rapid implementa-tion” of what they believe to be an “irreversible” agreement.

The draft document does ac-knowledge US eff orts aimed at reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which are seen as causing global warming.

“The United States reaffi rms its strong commitment to a glo-bal approach that lowers emis-sions while supporting growth and improving energy security needs,” the draft reads.

But the summit’s draft com-munique says pointedly: “We take note of the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris Agree-ment.”

Paris takes guns from people on blacklistAgencies Paris

France is confi scating weapons from roughly 100 people on a watchlist

of potential Islamist militants, the interior minister said yes-terday, two weeks after state prosecutors said an assailant inspired by Islamic State had been a gun-club member.

Minister Gerard Collomb was speaking ahead of a par-liamentary vote to extend emergency search-and-arrest powers given to police after Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015.

“We traced about a hun-dred...We’re sizing up the situ-ation and taking the weapons away,” he told TV channel CNews, adding that police had foiled seven attacks in France this year alone.

The issue of weapons came to light last month when public prosecutors confi rmed that a 31-year-old man, who died af-ter ramming his car into a po-lice convoy in Paris, had joined a gun sports club to train as a jihadist fi ghter.

He had built up a large weap-ons arsenal and renewed his gun permit, despite being on an intelligence services list of people who appear to have been radicalised and could commit attacks.

Prosecutors said the man had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State militant group, whose bases in Syria and Iraq are being bombed by jets from a coalition of countries includ-ing France.

They say he appears to have been killed by the thick orange fumes that billowed out of his vehicle after he hit the police van on the Champs Elysees av-enue.

The government of Presi-dent Emmanuel Macron is pro-posing legislation to replace the system of emergency rule in November, including chang-es making it easier for offi cials vetting gun permit requests to cross-check against watchlists of would-be militants.

More than 230 people have been killed in France by Islam-ist assailants in the past two and a half years.

In the most recent operation, police arrested a man in north-ern France this week and four more were arrested in Brussels in a Belgian-led counter-ter-rorism swoop.

After fi nding a weapons de-pot this week and arresting two

terror suspects in the Brus-sels area, Belgian authorities warned that more violent acts may come as they look for more affi liates.

“We fear that they could feel like they have their backs against the wall after the house searches,” prosecution spokes-man Eric Van der Sijpt told broadcaster VTM yesterday. “We’re afraid of the same reac-tion as on March 22.”

On March 22, 2016, a series of terrorist attacks in Brussels left 32 people dead and more than 300 injured.

Ahead of the March 22 at-tacks, police were conducting search activities in the Brussels area, looking for people asso-ciated with another attack in Paris the previous year.

During raids on Tuesday night, Belgian police found three AK47 assault rifl es, pis-tols, ammunition, bulletproof vests, police uniforms and detonators in a garage in the Anderlecht district of Brussels.

Belgian media have specu-lated that a group was planning further terror attacks.

Both of the arrested men, aged 40 and 37, were Belgian citizens, according to authorities.

French police were also in-volved in the anti-terror in-vestigation, the Belgian pros-ecutor said, and one person has been arrested in France.

The current investigation is not directly linked to the previ-ous attacks in Paris and Brus-sels, the prosecution said.

French lawmakers voted for the sixth time to extend the country’s state of emergency yesterday as interior ministry fi gures showed security forces have thwarted more than one terror attack a month on aver-age this year.

The newly elected parlia-ment, dominated by MPs from centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s new party, voted 137 in favour to 13 against to extend the state of emergency until November.

It gives security forces great-er freedom to carry out raids and surveillance and has been in place since November 2015 when a string of jihadist attacks in Paris left 130 people dead

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb argued it was neces-sary to keep French people safe, adding: “Since the start of the year we’ve stopped seven plots which could have caused many deaths.”

Macron, a 39-year-old elected in May, has promised that the state of emergency will expire in November.

Man arrested for shooting policemen

AFPParis

France will end sales of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040 as part of an ambitious plan to meet its

targets under the Paris climate accord, new Ecology Minister Nicolas Hulot announced yesterday.

“We are announcing an end to the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040,” Hulot said, calling it a “veritable revo-lution”.

Hulot acknowledged that reaching

the goal would be “tough”, particularly for automakers, but said that French carmakers Peugeot-Citroen and Re-nault were well equipped to make the switch.

France, home to Europe’s second-biggest car industry, dominates its market for electric vehicles, with the Renault Zoe far outselling other models in 2016.

On Wednesday, Sweden’s Volvo said it planned to phase out production of petrol-only cars from 2019, with all new models to be either electric or hybrids.

The Chinese-owned group is the fi rst

major manufacturer to electrify all of its models. Hulot cited Volvo as an example in making his surprise announcement, part of the government’s new stated plan to make France carbon neutral by 2050.

Hulot, a veteran environmental cam-paigner and TV presenter, was among several political newcomers to whom President Emmanuel Macron gave top jobs in his government.

His nomination was seen as a strong statement of Macron’s commitment to greening the economy.

Within days of being elected, Macron

crossed swords on social media with US President Donald Trump, after Trump announced America’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement on curbing emis-sions.

France is one of several European and Asian countries that have said they want to dramatically reduce the amount of polluting petrol and diesel cars on their roads. India has said it wants all cars sold there to be electric-powered by 2030.

Norway — where electric cars topped the sales charts for the fi rst time last month — aims to end sales of petrol and

diesel cars by 2025 and car giant Ger-many wants to put one mn electric ve-hicles on the road by 2020.

Cyrille Cormier of Greenpeace France expressed disappointment over Hulot’s failure to set out concrete measures. The minister said he would give low-income households a grant to help them replace older cars with a cleaner mod-el, but did not specify how much they would receive.

“We still do not know how we will achieve these objectives and respect these ambitious promises,” Cormier said.

France ‘to end sales of petrol, diesel vehicles by 2040’

President Trump is facing anger from traditional allies in Europe

ReutersMadrid

A man was arrested yester-day in the northeastern Spanish town of Gava in

Barcelona province for shooting two policemen, police said. The incident was not related to ter-rorism, they said.

Both police are seriously in-jured, a spokeswoman for Gava town hall said. The two police approached a suspicious-look-ing car, and the person inside shot at them with a rifl e, she said.

9Gulf TimesFriday, July 7, 2017

INDIA

Man’s body kept inhouse for monthsIANSMalappuram

The Kerala Police are probing a bizarre in-cident where a man’s

body was not buried for three months by his family in the belief that he would come back to life.

The police found the body of V Seyed, 50, in a house in Mal-lapuram.

The police forced open the doors to the house after resi-dents became concerned on not seeing any of the fam-ily members for months. When the doors to the house were broken the police were shocked to find the man’s body, reduced to a skeleton, on the floor and his wife, two sons and a daughter sitting around it.

A local councillor who was present when door was forced open by police said all four were seen praying around the body.

The police then took the family members into custody and sent the body for autopsy

to the Government Medical College at Manjeri near here.

The family, according to locals, never had any contact with the neighbours and al-ways kept to themselves.

A police offi cial attached to the Kolathur Police station said preliminary investigations did not reveal anything suspi-cious about Seyed’s death.

“The family was under the belief that the dead man would come back to life,” said the po-lice offi cial who did not wish to be identifi ed.

After taking down their statements the family mem-bers were allowed to return home by the police.

“We are awaiting the fo-rensic report into the cause of death. If it’s a natural death, then there might not be any-thing else to do in the case,” said an offi cial.

According to police none of the neighbours had any clue about Seyed’s death or the family’s mental health as they did not mingle much.

The police have recom-mended that the family be counselled.

Stalker stabs womanto death in DelhiIANSNew Delhi

A 21-year-old aspiring air-hostess died here yes-terday, a day after she

was stabbed multiple times by a stalker, police said.

Riya Gautam was stabbed barely 100 metres from her house in Ramnagar area of Shahdara in east Delhi around 5.30pm on Wednesday. She had earlier complained to police that the accused, Adil, 22, had been stalking her.

The murderous attack was captured on CCTV.

Gautam had completed her air hostess training and was also pursuing a graduation course from the Delhi Univer-sity.

Deputy commissioner of po-lice, Nupur Sharma, said the ac-cused, who lives in east Delhi’s Shahdara, was absconding. “We are keep a watch on the houses of Adil’s relatives and are exam-ining CCTV footage of railway

stations and bus depots to see if he has fl ed the city,” Sharma said.

Adil has a criminal record and has three to four cases of auto theft registered against him, the police revealed.

The victim’s father, Girwan Singh, 50, said Riya had gone to a nearby store when she was at-tacked.

Singh said Adil stabbed his daughter six or seven times be-fore fl eeing from the spot.

A neighbour, Piyush Sharma, 12, said he saw Adil attacking the woman. “She was returning from the store when he came up from behind and stabbed her in the neck,” said Sharma.

He said the woman ran into a nearby photo studio for help but there was no one inside and Adil followed her into the shop. “We ran to help her and saw the

attacker running past us in the opposite direction,” a neigh-bour said. “He had a big knife and his hands were drenched in blood.”

He said the victim’s fi ngers had been cut as she tried to save herself from the attacker.

Riya was taken to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital where she died early yesterday.

The victim’s father revealed that Adil used to stalk his daugh-ter and they had complained to the police three months ago. Singh said Adil had suddenly disappeared after they com-plained to the police.

“As we didn’t see him for three months we thought he would not harass our daughter anymore,” he said.

Singh said police told in-formed them that Adil had gone to Gujarat after they fi led a com-plaint.

“Police should fi nd him fast and he should get the death sen-tence,” said Singh, who works at the Maulana Azad Medical Col-lege.

“She was returning from the store when he came up from behind and stabbed her in the neck”

Probe orderedas four bodiesrecovered fromcopter crash siteIANSNew Delhi/Itanagar

The wreckage of the In-dian Air Force helicopter that crashed in Arunachal

Pradesh on Tuesday and the bodies of the three crew mem-bers and one policeman on board have been recovered, the IAF said yesterday.

A court of inquiry has been ordered to ascertain the reason for the crash in the northeastern border state’s Papum Pare dis-trict.

Chief Minister Pema Khandu expressed deep shock and grief, saying the confi rmation of the tragic incident has come as a shocker to the people and a pall of gloom has descended over the state, which is struggling to re-turn to normalcy after the fury of nature threw life out of gear.

A defence statement said Arunachal Pradesh Police team spotted the wreckage of the heli-copter on Wednesday evening during the search by joint rescue teams of army, the National Dis-aster Response Force, police and the Indian Air Force.

The wreckage and the bodies were found in Sopho Yuha, near Hostallam village, about 30km from Itanagar.

Yesterday morning, res-cue parties comprising IAF’s Garud commandos and a medi-cal team, army and NDRF were able to reach the crash site along with the Arunachal Pradesh Po-lice team that had sighted the wreckage.

“A court of inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause of the accident,” the IAF said.

A police offi cial said two of the bodies are identifi able but the other two were charred beyond recognition.

The crew comprised wing commander M S Dhillon, flight lieutenant P K Singh and flight engineer sergeant Gujjar. In-dian Reserve Battalion member Nada Umbing had boarded the helicopter from Pilputu Heli-

pad near Sagalee on Tuesday.The Advanced Light Helicop-

ter (ALH) of the IAF, engaged in fl ood rescue mission in the state, went missing at 3.50pm on Tuesday after it took off from Pilputu.

The helicopter was evacuating people stranded in Sagalee and Dambuk due to massive land-slides caused by heavy rains.

Papum Pare district offi cial J Pertin said the helicopter had made fi ve sorties since it ar-rived there at around 10.30am on Tuesday morning.

“In the sixth sortie to Nahar-lagun, for unknown reason, the crew did not take the last batch of nine civilians and took off from Sagalee with just one po-liceman, who was deployed to help the two crew members and then went missing,” Pertin said.

Meanwhile, Khandu paid trib-ute to the killed IAF personnel, saying they were “on a mission to rescue people stranded due to fl oods by airlifting them to safer locations. Hundreds of peo-ple rescued by the IAF couldn’t even thank them as this tragedy struck like a bolt from nowhere. They are shattered by the news and mourn the death of their saviours”.

Khandu said it is a very sad moment for everyone that a res-cue operation ended in such a tragedy and conveyed his heart-felt condolences to the bereaved family members.

Appreciating the search team including security and paramili-tary forces, state police and vil-lage volunteers for spotting the remains of the ill-fated chopper, Khandu hoped that the remains of the departed personnel are safely brought back and given a farewell befi tting those who make the supreme sacrifi ce in the line of duty.

“The people of Arunachal Pradesh and particularly those who were evacuated by IAF will always remember these brave souls and remain ever-grateful to their family members and the Indian Air Force,” he added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talk on Olga Beach in Hadera. Modi concluded his first trip to Israel yesterday with the inaugural meeting of the Israel-India CEOs Forum in Tel Aviv before heading to Hamburg for the G20 summit.

Modi’s Israel visit ends

Trinamool-BJP clash overyouth’s death in BengalIANSKolkata

Life was limping back to normalcy in the com-munal violence-hit areas

of West Bengal’s North 24 Par-ganas district as paramilitary forces marched on the streets, and Internet and Wi-Fi services remained suspended in the af-fected pockets yesterday.

There were no reports of vio-lence from Baduria, Banstala and Tetulia – the worst aff ected areas in Basirhat sub-division, where some roadside shops opened and public transport commenced plying. Train serv-

ices on the Sealdah-Basirhat line, which were disrupted over the past two days due to block-ades, also normalised, a railway spokesman said.

However, a clash broke out between supporters of the rul-ing Trinamool Congress and BJP-RSS activists outside a government-run hospital here following the death of an in-jured patient from Basirhat ear-lier in the day.

The BJP and RSS leadership claimed the deceased – an ac-tive BJP worker – was killed, allegedly during the communal trouble.

A police offi cer said the Ba-sirhat resident died due to

multiple stab injuries, but did not confi rm it was linked to the communal violence.

Some BJP leaders including actor-turned-politician Locket Chatterjee were stopped by a mob from entering the hospital to meet his family.

Later in the day, a mob sur-rounded the cars of state BJP president Dilip Ghosh and par-ty’s national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and de-manded they go back from the place.

Claiming the agitators were “Trinamool backed hooligans”, Ghosh said they were being for-cibly stopped from meeting the deceased’s family and some of

their activists were “severely beaten up”.

Police said a scuffl e had bro-ken out between the Trinamool and BJP-RSS activists. “The car of former BJP MLA Shamik Bhattachary was vandalised. No case has been lodged yet. No one has been detained,” said a police offi cer.

Meanwhile, BJP chief Amit Shah formed a three-member delegation of MPs to look into incidents of communal violence in the state.

The delegation, headed by senior party leader Om Mathur, and comprising New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi and Baghpat MP Satyapal Singh, will visit the

violence-hit areas today to take stock of the ground situation.

The Left and the Congress also decided to send teams to the areas today. The Left dele-gation would be led by politburo member Mohamed Salim, while state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury would spearhead the party delegation.

Amid the hectic political ac-tivity, the two-day old stand-off – in the aftermath of the violence – between Governor Keshri Nath Tripathi and the Mamata Baner-jee government took a fresh twist with a senior state BJP leader call-ing him a “dedicated soldier” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s brigade.

Calling the Goods and Services Tax law a “mockery” and inflationary with multiplicity of rates, former finance minister P Chidambaram demanded a cap of 18% and inclusion of petroleum products, electricity and real estate in its ambit. Addressing a press conference at the Congress party headquarters in Delhi, he said the nation was “underprepared” for the new indirect tax regime.

GST slammed

A teenager sent to live with a much older husband who she married aged just 11 has returned to school after being rescued by her classmates, a children’s charity said. The 16-year-old girl was married off by her family in Rajasthan. In May, relatives forced her to leave school and go to a nearby village to live with her husband. But her classmates tracked her down. “They met the girl who told them that she wanted to continue studies and was not willing to stay with her husband and in-laws,” said Gopal Singh, a teacher. At first police refused to listen to them, but later helped rescue the teen with the help of the district collector.

The Congress party yesterday demanded that Malayalam actor-politician Innocent step down as Lok Sabha MP over his remark about “bad women” as angry Congress workers marched to his home near Thrissur. Leader of the opposition, Ramesh Chennithala, told reporters that Innocent has become a “disgrace” and he should quit as a law maker. On Wednesday at a press conference, in response to a query Innocent said the Malayalam film industry is “clean” of the casting couch, but added that if a “woman is bad” then things are diff erent. Innocent maintains that his statement was taken out of context and reported in pieces.

A week after BJP president Amit Shah’s meeting at Goa’s Dabolim airport triggered a row, a Congress leader pulled off a sarcastic one, by applying to the Airport Authority of India to let him use the airport premises for his wedding. In a letter to airport director, Congress general secretary Janardhan Bhandari said he would adhere to all provisions of law during the wedding as long as he was granted permission to host the wedding at the airport. “I planning to get married soon. It would be nice if you could permit me use of the airport for my wedding reception in September. I will fix the date as per the airport availability,” the letter stated.

A soldier went missing with his service weapon yesterday from Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla district and investigations are on to ascertain if he has joined the militants’ ranks, police said. Zahoor Ahmad Thakur, with the Territorial Army’s 173 Bn, was reported missing from his camp in Gantmulla area along with an AK-47 rifle. “Thakur belongs to Pulwama district. A search operation has been launched,” police sources said. It was to be investigated if the soldier had joined the militant ranks or not, the police said. “A charge-sheet has been registered in the case,” a senior police officer said.

A woman employee of software major Infosys was found hanging in her rented room in a city suburb in Mysuru, the city police said yesterday. Police said the body was decomposed since the death occurred two-three days ago. “Meenakshi, 21, was found hanging by a rope from a ceiling fan in her rented room on the second floor of the house” a Hebbal police station off icer said. Meenakshi, who hailed from Kalaburgi, joined the information technology consulting company three months ago as a trainee after graduating from an engineering college in the city. “No suicide note or evidence of foul play was found in the room,” the off icer said.

Classmates help rescue child bride

Congress seeks Left MPInnocent’s resignation

Congress hits back at Shahwith airport wedding plan

Search on as soldier goes missing in Kashmir

Infosys employee found dead in rented room

PEOPLE CONTROVERSYPOLITICS MYSTERY TRAGEDY

PAKISTAN


New central bank chief to be named: minister

War crimes prosecutors delay Afghan probe amid new info

Pakistan enchanted by robot waitresses

Politician shot dead in Baluchistan

The tumble caught top government off icials off guard

ReutersIslamabad

Pakistan Finance Minister Ishaq Dar clashed with the central bank yesterday

over a 3.1% plunge in the value of the rupee the previous day, denouncing an “artifi cial” move and vowing a new bank governor would be appointed in days.

Pakistan’s rupee had been sta-ble for nearly two years, and the unexpected tumble on Wednes-day caught top government of-fi cials, including Dar, off guard.

Analysts said the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had eff ectively devalued the rupee by not inter-vening to prop it up as it usually does.

Traders say the SBP controls the thinly traded rupee market that works as a managed fl oat, while the bank on Wednesday evening backed a weaker rupee, saying it would ease balance of payments pressures in the

$300bn economy.But Dar said the sharp drop

in the rupee was harmful to na-tional interests and criticised the central bank, saying it was not its job to worry about the current account defi cit.

“The current account defi cit is the work of the fi nance ministry and to alter it, the State Bank is not supposed to do that,” an an-noyed Dar told media.

The rupee regained some ground yesterday, fi rming by 1.5% to trade at about 106.20/50 to the dollar in the late after-noon. A day earlier the rupee tumbled to as low as 108.5.

The central bank governor is appointed by the prime min-ister and is meant to be inde-pendent.

Deputy Governor Riaz Ria-zuddin was in May appointed as acting governor for three months until a permanent new chief was due to be named in late July.

But Dar said that decision would be brought forward in light of the currency volatil-ity and a new permanent gover-nor would be appointed late on

Thursday or on Friday.Dar also said he had ordered

an inquiry into what he called a “communication gap” in the central bank, and between the bank and other intuitions.

“I don’t believe that any indi-vidual has this kind of authority to make such a big decision to make an artifi cial adjustment, and I am calling this artifi cial,” said Dar, who held an emergency meeting with heads of domestic banks and fi nancial institutions yesterday.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had previously said the currency was about 20% over-valued but Dar had rejected that, saying in May the fi gure was no more than 5%.

One analyst said such strong pressure on the State Bank by Dar called into question the in-dependence of the central bank, which is among the most re-spected Pakistani institutions.

“It doesn’t send a good signal,” said the Karachi-based analyst who declined to be identifi ed. “Dar is a dominant personality.”

Following a balance of pay-ments crisis in 2013, improving

security and vast infrastruc-ture investment by China have spurred growth to above 5% for the fi rst time in nearly a decade.

But over the past year the cur-rent account defi cit has ballooned again, and the IMF last month said that eroding macroeconomic sta-bility gains could pose risks to the economic outlook.

The SBP, in a statement late yesterday, said a weaker rupee would shore up growth and “ad-dress the emerging imbalance in the external account”, referring to growing balance of payment pressures.

Raza Jafri, executive director at brokerage Intermarket Secu-rities, said he expected the rupee to consolidate in a range of 105-108 to the dollar.

“The central bank and the fi -nance ministry will fi nd middle ground,” Jafri said.

Revised data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) yesterday showed the current account defi cit for July-May at $10.64bn, which is $1.71bn high-er than the earlier reported fi gure of $8.92bn.

The revision comes at the

conclusion of a long-running reconciliation exercise to ad-dress the gap between import figures reported by the SBP and the Pakistan Bureau of Statis-tics (PBS). The gap became an issue in the summer of last year as some imports from China were being settled outside of Pakistan’s banking channels.

The government is under pres-sure because of the rapidly in-creasing current account defi cit.

The 11-month defi cit is 2.1 times wider than the revised fi g-ure of $4.86bn for 2015-16.

“These transactions are re-lated to the private sector and have affected the imports of goods, imports of services, primary income, secondary income, direct investment in Pakistan, currency and depos-its (assets) of the private sector, disbursements and amortisa-tion of private-sector loans,” said the SBP.

The defi cit is going to be even higher when the fi nal fi gure for the fi scal year is released in com-ing days.

This means the economy des-perately needs higher infl ows.

AFPThe Hague

War crimes prosecutors have delayed a deci-sion on whether to

launch a full-blown probe into crimes committed in war-torn Afghanistan following “sub-stantial” new information from Kabul, their offi ce said yesterday.

The move comes after Ka-bul responded to a call by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutors asking for more in-formation about possible crimes committed by Taliban, Afghan government and US military forces — including the CIA — since the US-led invasion more than 15 years ago.

“The report triggered reac-tion, notably from the govern-ment of Afghanistan, which sub-sequently submitted substantial information to the (prosecutor’s) offi ce earlier this year,” the pros-ecutors said.

“The information requires careful review by the offi ce, which is currently ongoing,” they added in an e-mail sent to AFP.

Once the review is completed, ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Ben-

souda “will make a fi nal deci-sion” on whether to ask judges to authorise a full-blown inves-tigation.

Bensouda said in November her offi ce was “concluding its assessment” and that a deci-sion on whether to ask the ICC’s judges to open a full-blown probe was “imminent”. She said US forces may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan by torturing prisoners in what may have been a deliberate policy.

She stressed the Taliban mi-litia and the affi liated Haqqani network, Afghan government forces and US troops as well as the CIA all appeared to have car-ried out war crimes since the Islamic militia was ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 which followed the September 11 at-tacks that year.

And Bensouda blamed the Taliban and its allies for the deaths of some 17,000 civilians since 2007 to December 2015 in a brutal insurgency with “numer-ous attacks” on schools, hospi-tals and mosques.

However, the prosecutor’s of-fi ce yesterday emphasised that their review of the new informa-tion “will not take longer than is required for a thorough internal

assessment”.“The prosecutor is committed

to arriving at a fi nal determina-tion without further delay fol-lowing this requisite process,” her offi ce said.

Afghanistan is experiencing a wave of intensifi ed violence, with the United States consid-ering sending more US troops to shore up its presence.

The American military in Af-ghanistan says it will delay an-nouncing troop casualties until after next of kin have been noti-fi ed, potentially leaving casual-ties unreported for days.

The change in policy was in-stituted by General John Nichol-son, the senior US commander in Kabul, over fears that families could be left guessing for days after casualties were announced but not identifi ed and before families could be notifi ed, said military spokesman Captain Bill Salvin.

“It’s a balance we’re trying to strike between trying to provide all the support we can to fami-lies, while also informing the public,” he told Reuters.

Previously, the US military command in Kabul issued a ini-tial announcement only stating that a soldier had been killed,

often including a general loca-tion within Afghanistan, but not identifying him.

Once the soldier’s family or next of kin had been notifi ed, the Pentagon would release more details, including names and home units.

The change in policy was re-vealed this week when US Army Private First Class Hansen Kirk-patrick was killed in Afghani-stan’s Helmand province on Monday, but offi cials did not an-nounce that a soldier had been killed until Wednesday, when his death and identity was released.

A Pentagon spokesman con-fi rmed that the policy only ap-plied to Nicholson’s command, leaving other war zones like Iraq or Syria guided by the usual US reporting requirements.

Military spokesmen in Af-ghanistan would continue to re-lease casualty reports, albeit on a more delayed schedule, Salvin said.

“There might be a bit longer period before we report it,” he said.

About 13,000 US and allied troops in a Nato-led force are deployed in Afghanistan to train and advise the security forces fi ghting Taliban insurgents.

More than 3,500 of the coa-lition troops have been killed since the fi ghting began in late 2001.

Several thousand additional

American forces operate in a separate counter-terrorism mis-sion in the country. Kirkpatrick was part of that mission.

Salvin said the US military

would still respond to public reports of casualties, as occa-sionally happens when Afghan offi cials report casualties among foreign troops.

AFPMultan, Pakistan

Pakistan’s fi rst robot waitresses are serving up smiles for customers

at an upscale pizza restaurant in the ancient city of Multan, better known for its centu-ries-old Sufi shrines, mango orchards and handicrafts.

Rabia, Annie and Jennie greet customers and bring them their pies at Pizza.com, where owner Osama Jafari — who built the prototypes him-self — says the response has been a surge of new business.

“We went to a lot of places, but my uncle said that in this restaurant a robot serves and when the robot served us pizza we felt very happy,” customer Osama Ahmed, 12, told AFP.

“It is an innovation,” an-other customer, Hamid Bashir said. “It feels good to be served

like that and it is a good enter-tainment for the children.”

Jafari said he was inspired by videos of robot waiters in China.

The 24-year-old, who stud-ied engineering at Islamabad’s National University of Science and Technology, said he began working on a prototype with the support of his parents.

“The response that we got is actually tremendous. People are loving it. My friends, fam-ily members and all the local people here,” he said.

Jafari said he sourced and fabricated all parts for the ro-bots locally, building them for 600,000 rupees ($6,000). He is already working on the next generation, which he says will be more interactive, able to respond to customer’s ques-tions, and hopes to spread his robot staff to his family’s other restaurant in the southern Pa-kistani city of Hyderabad.

ReutersQuetta, Pakistan

Gunmen yesterday shot and killed a Pakistani regional political party

leader in the city of Quetta, police said, the latest violence in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.

Malik Naveed, 38, and his guard, Mohamed Zareef, 42, died en route to hospital after gunmen riding two motorcy-cles attacked his car shortly after he had left his home, Su-perintendent of Police Ashraf

Jattak said.One of Naveed’s relatives,

who was with him in the car, was wounded.

Naveed is one of the lead-ers of the opposition Balu-chistan National Party, which advocates for more funds from the province’s rich natural resources to go to the indigenous ethnic Baluch people.

No one has claimed respon-sibility for the attack.

Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is the capi-tal, has long been home to an insurgency by the na-tionalist and separatist groups, who accuse the central government of dis-crimination in distribution of revenues from oil, gas and minerals.

Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, as well as Is-lamic State-aligned Sun-ni sectarian groups also operate in the province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

Girls carry cement blocks in a village in the Margalla hills outside Islamabad.

Building the future

A robot waitress delivers food at a pizza restaurant in Multan. Pakistan’s first robot waitresses are serving up smiles for customers at an upscale pizza restaurant in the ancient city of Multan, better known for its centuries-old Sufi shrines, mango orchards and handicrafts.

US Marines keep watch while others attend training with Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

A police off icer is seen next to the damaged car of Malik Naveed.

11Gulf TimesFriday, July 7, 2017

PHILIPPINES

Two dead as quake rocks PhilippinesAFPManila

A 6.5-magnitude earth-quake killed at least two people in the central Phil-

ippines yesterday, with more than fi ve people still trapped inside a collapsed commercial building, offi cials said.

An 18-year-old woman died after being hit by falling debris in Ormoc City on Leyte island, near the epicentre of the quake, police said.

Elsewhere, rescuers pulled out eight survivors and one body from a collapsed three-storey structure in the town of Kananga, also on Leyte island, Kananga vice mayor Elmer Co-dilla said. “Eight people have been rescued. All are in the hospital,” he said, declining to say if their injuries were seri-ous.

Among those rescued were two people who previously sent SMS messages under the rubble, calling for help, he said.

“There are six or seven still inside. Defi nitely more than fi ve but less than ten,” he added.

Among those still trapped are two children who have been reached by rescuers but who still cannot be extricated from the rubble, the vice-mayor said.

“We have given them water,” he added.

Dominico Petilla, the gov-ernor of Leyte province, said rescue personnel, ambulances and heavy equipment have been sent to the mountainous town of about 50,000 people.

“They’re still trying to pull out the injured,” Petilla told local television.

The 10-year-old building housed a small hotel upstairs and shops on the ground fl oor, offi cials said.

The quake hit at a depth of around 6kms, the US Geological Survey said.

There was no warning of a tsunami, the Pacifi c Tsunami Warning Center said.

Large parts of Leyte were devastated by super typhoon Haiyan in November 2013. Huge tsunami-like waves smashed the city of Tacloban and nearby ar-eas, leaving 7,350 people dead or missing.

Tacloban and Ormoc, the is-land’s other main city, largely escaped damage this time, resi-dents contacted by telephone said.

However, the entire island of

Leyte as well as neighbouring islands were still without power after the quake caused geother-mal plants on the island to shut down, an energy department statement said.

While the plants were soon back online, inspectors were still searching for damage to power lines, the department said, add-ing that it could take “one or two weeks” to fully restore power.

Roy Ribo, an offi cial with a farmers’ organisation who was visiting Kananga, said he watched schoolchildren panic as their teachers herded them out of their classrooms for safety af-ter the quake.

“Many children were hysteri-cal. They were frantic, crying,” he added.

Father Romy Salazar, the Catholic parish priest of the Leyte town of Jaro at the quake’s epicentre, said residents rushed

out of their homes as the town shook.

“I was inside the church. I was forced to hold on to the main door,” Salazar said, but added he had not seen any major damage in the town.

In February, a 6.5-magnitude quake killed eight people and left more than 250 injured outside the southern city of Surigao.

The following month a 5.9-magnitude tremor killed one person there in March.

Before the Surigao quakes, the last fatal earthquake to hit the country was a 7.1-magnitude tremor that left more than 220 people dead and destroyed his-toric churches when it struck the central islands in October 2013.

The Philippines lies on the so-called Ring of Fire, a vast Pa-cifi c Ocean region where many quakes and volcanic eruptions occur.

Rescuers carry a rescued resident from the rubble of a destroyed building in Kananga, Leyte province. Right: Rescuers stand next to a destroyed building in Kananga town.

A car lies buried under the rubble of a destroyed building.

Among those still trapped are two children, The quake hit at a

depth of around 6kms Leyte and neighbouring

islands without power

President Duterte insists will never talk to ‘terrorists’ReutersManila

Philippine President Ro-drigo Duterte yesterday said he did not initiate

dialogue with militants occu-pying a southern town because he would never talk to criminals and terrorists.

Reuters reported exclusively on Wednesday that Duterte was preparing to make a deal with the Islamic State-inspired militants in the days after they occupied the town of Marawi, but he aborted the plan without explanation.

“No, I did not,” Duterte said when asked during a media briefing if he had indeed, as Reuters reported, pushed for talks with the Maute group of militants battling govern-ment troops for control of Marawi.

“I have never talked to ter-rorists and I will never talk to criminals and terrorists, but I will talk to revolutionaries who are imbued with principle,” Du-terte said.

The battle for control of Ma-rawi has been the biggest crisis

of Duterte’s year-old presi-dency.

His government has consist-ently ruled out negotiating with “terrorists” so any behind-the-scenes eff orts by either side to get talks going are likely to be scrutinised.

Defence Minister Delfi n Lorenzana, responding to the report from Reuters, said earlier the infl uential mother of two brothers, who with their Maute group of militants seized Mara-wi on May 23, had approached the government for talks.

But Duterte had rejected the off er from the woman, Farhana Maute, as government forces had suff ered too many casual-ties by the time the off er came, Lorenzana said.

More than six weeks after the militants launched their assault in the town on the southern is-land of Mindanao, they are still resisting daily attacks by gov-ernment forces using aircraft and artillery.

More than 400 people have been killed, including 351 mili-tants, 85 members of the secu-rity forces, and 39 civilians.

About 260,000 residents have been displaced.

The fi ghting in the largely Muslim town in the predomi-nantly Christian Philippines has alarmed neighbours, fear-ful that Islamic State is bent on gaining a foothold in the region as it loses ground in the Middle East.

Duterte said members of other separatist groups, some of which are involved in peace talks with the government, may “have started initiatives” to hold talks with the militants in Marawi but it was “impossible” that any attempt was made by him.

“Many of my soldiers and policemen have been killed. If there has to be peace it would really be peace. Don’t play with me. Let us fi nish this once and for all,” Duterte said.

A prominent Muslim leader said earlier that Duterte had been preparing to make a deal with the militants in the days after they began their assault but dropped the plan without explanation.

Agakhan Sharief, an inter-mediary involved in the proc-ess, said he was approached by a senior Duterte aide to use his connections with the Maute

group’s leaders to start back-channel talks.

Lorenzana said he did not know about any back-channel eff orts.

“Talking does not mean ne-gotiating,” he said.

Lorenzana reiterated that the government did not negotiate with terrorists. “Either they surrender, or we go to war,” he said.

Two other sources in Ma-rawi familiar with the mat-ter confi rmed the president had worked behind the scenes to hold talks with the Maute brothers, Omarkhayam and Abdullah.

However, the process was halted when Duterte, in a May 31 speech, declared he “will not talk to terrorists”.

Duterte’s spokesman, Er-nesto Abella, referring to any eff ort by the president on talks, said he had “no verifi ed reports that there were eff orts to initi-ate such actions”.

“Let me be clear that the position of the palace and the president is not to negotiate with terrorists, including these local terrorist groups,” Abella told a media briefi ng.

President Rodrigo Duterte delivers a speech before local officials in the town of Hagonoy, Davao del Sur province, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

Frightened man seeks protection as family slainDexter Carlos Sr., the father of the family massacred in Bulacan recently, applied for the government’s witness protection programme yesterday fearing for his own life after the gruesome murders.Carlos, a security guard who was at work on June 27 when five members of his family were butchered in San Jose del Monte City, went to the department of justice (DoJ) in Manila under tight security to seek state protection a day after burying his wife and three children.Carlos met Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre who assured him of the government’s assistance.“We want Carlos to know that the department of justice is more than willing to extend any assistance that he may need in getting justice for what was done to his family. This is in addition to the legal assistance being off ered by the public attorney’s off ice to him,” Aguirre said in a statement.“If he feels threatened or if he fears for his safety, we will study if he can be placed under the witness protection programme which the DoJ administers during the duration of the trial of the case to be filed against the suspects. If qualified, we will expedite his admission into the programme,” he added.Aguirre earlier ordered the National Bureau of Investigation to conduct an independent parallel probe of the killings.Carlos’ appeal came as the main suspect, Carmelino Ibanes, recanted his testimony and accused the police of torture, despite evidence and eyewitness testimony linking him to the murders.Amid questions on whether Ibanes had accomplices, two “persons of interest” in the murders were killed by unknown assailants one after the other, on Tuesday and Wednesday.The Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) condemned the “vigilante-type” killings of the persons of interest yesterday and called for a swift probe to hasten the delivery of justice to the Carlos family.In a statement, VACC founding chairman Dante Jimenez said

this was indicative of loss of faith in the justice system. He also called anew for the revival of the death penalty on heinous crimes.“The ‘vigilante type’ killings as displayed in the murders of the two ‘persons of interest’ should alarm us. It means only one thing: people are taking the law into their own hands. This was because the victims or their sympathisers believe that the justice system is no longer working. It is the victims’ perception that our justice system is so rotten, slow and corrupt that it is no longer capable of protecting them,” he said.“We call on Congress to re-impose the death penalty. How many more massacres and heinous crimes would Congress like to happen before they are convinced to pass the death penalty law? What can be more horrible that the Bulacan massacre?” he added.“Let us give the death penalty the chance to prove its deterrent eff ect especially in the light of what’s happening. Or would we wish vigilante killings to flourish instead?”Days after admitting to police that he killed Auring Dizon, 58; Estrella Carlos, 28 and her children Donnie, 11; Ella, 7; and Dexter Carlos Jr., 1, Ibanes is now claiming that he was forced to make the admission because police had tortured him.Ibanes’ flip-flop came despite the physical evidence that police found at the scene of the crime – the kitchen knife that was allegedly used in the killings and the blood found on Ibanes’ hands.A witness also testified to seeing a “bloodied” Ibanes running out of the house of the victims shortly after the massacre took place.In yesterday’s interview that was aired on “Failon Ngayon,” a news and public aff airs programme on dzMM, Ibanes said: “I was forced to admit to the crime because I was afraid of the police. I was tortured. They wrapped my head in plastic. They hit my hand with a hammer. I surrendered because I was afraid.” When asked whether he was alone when he committed the crime, Ibanes said: “I don’t know anything because I was drunk.”

Govt set toprobe risein illegaldrugs trade

By Manila TimesManila

The palace yesterday said the government would look into the alleged re-

surgence of the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City under the watch of elite police troopers for nearly a year now.

Speaking to reporters, Palace spokesman Ernesto Abella said Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Ronald de la Rosa had asked President Rodrigo Duterte to allow the pullout of Special Action Force (SAF) men from the national penitentiary.

This came after Monday’s rev-elation by Justice Secretary Vi-taliano Aguire of a report on the supposed revival of the illegal drug trade at the NBP, allegedly involving some SAF troopers.

De la Rosa sought to replace the SAF men with Marines, but this was put on hold because of the May 23 terrorist attack on Marawi City, Abella said during a news conference.

More than 300 SAF men de-ployed to the NBP since July last year were supposed to stay for just six months, and be replaced with Marines, he said. But the Marines are locked in battle with the Mau-te terrorists at the besieged Ma-rawi City in Lanao del Sur.

“Investigation is now under-way to probe drug-related ac-tivities and collusions, if any, by the authorities,” Abella said.

Asked if Duterte granted the request, the palace spokes-man said the pullout of the SAF troopers still depended on the decision of de la Rosa.

“That depends on his call. De la Rosa’s call,” the Palace offi cial said.

Abella reiterated that the Du-terte government’s war against illegal drugs would be relentless.

“The discovery and neu-tralisation of drug syndicates operating in the national peni-tentiary is one of the highlight accomplishments of the govern-ment’s war against illegal drugs,” he said.

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL


Exiled Tibetan Buddhists perform rituals to mark the birthday of spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at Boudhanath Stupa in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu.

Dalai Lama’s birthday

Guardian News and MediaColombo

Three out of four el-ephants surveyed in south-east Asia’s popu-

lar tourist destinations are liv-ing in harsh conditions where they are being used for rides, with mostly steel or wooden saddles, and tied in chains less than three metres long.

The scale of suff ering expe-rienced by elephants is “se-vere”, according to the animal rights NGO which assessed almost 3,000 elephants liv-ing in 220 venues in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and India between mid 2014 and late 2016.

The majority of captive el-ephants are taken from the wild, where just 50,000 remain in Asia.

Animal rights groups say elephants are made to submit to humans by going through a process known as “the crush” — where baby elephants are taken from their mothers and forced into a training process that, at its worst, can include being restrained in a pen and beaten for several weeks.

At least 77% of the captive elephants surveyed in the re-port, which was released on 6 July, are chained day and night when not being used for enter-tainment purposes and experi-enced very little social interac-tion with other elephants.

The animals are fed poor di-ets, have no access to proper

veterinary care and are often exposed to stressful environ-ments with loud music and a large number of tourists. These conditions go against elephants’ most basic needs. Elephants are intelligent, socially developed animals, which form complex hierarchies within herds.

But in captivity elephants are forced to unnaturally sub-mit to humans; they have been found to live shorter lives, ex-perience behavioural prob-lems, are more likely to develop chronic diseases and are less likely to reproduce. The captive elephant population is now thought to make up one-quar-ter to one-third of the remain-ing elephants in the region.

Elephant tourism remains popular because it can be “a hidden form of cruelty”, said Chiara Vitali, a wildlife expert at World Animal Protection.

The process of the crush “will happen before any tourist sees an elephant, so they might see an animal that’s quite chilled out — but it had that beaten into it when it was an infant”, she said.

The organisation believes the best place for captive elephants are genuine sanctuaries, where the animals can roam free, bond and have their herd structure — and where tourists can see the elephants in a respectful way.

“There is an urgent need for tourist education and regu-lation of wildlife tourist at-tractions worldwide,” said Dr Jan Schmidt-Burbach, global wildlife and veterinary adviser at World Animal Protection.

AFPDhaka

An upscale Bangladeshi restaurant has banned foreign guests, fearing a repeat of last year’s deadly terror-

ist attack in a Dhaka cafe, the owner said yesterday.

Lake Terrace, a reputed rooftop bar-beque restaurant in the capital’s northern Uttara neighbourhood, put a notice at its entrance saying no foreigners were wel-come.

Shah Tanzil, the owner of Lake Terrace, said the order had come from his landlord. “We had no choice but to follow the land-lord’s instruction,” he told AFP.

“We are ashamed. But we cannot sud-denly shut down our business as it’s our bread and butter.”

The landlord of the fi ve-storey build-ing told local English newspaper, The Daily Star, he feared foreigners were the primary targets of the extremists.

“Who would take the responsibility if something bad happens?” he told the dai-ly, on condition of anonymity.

Five armed young men entered the Holey Artisan Bakery last year in the city’s diplomatic quarters and killed at least 22 people, mostly foreigners, after taking them hostage.

The Islamic State group claimed the at-tack, although the government blamed a homegrown Islamist extremist organisa-tion.

The move to close the cafe to foreign-ers comes after a fresh warning apparently from an IS operative who said the group was expanding its operations in Bangla-desh.

The US-based monitoring group SITE said Abu Shofi q al-Bengali had posted a message on Wednesday, warning of a “strong trained brigade of thousand brothers” in Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Indian state of West Bengal.

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite force fi ghting militancy in the Mus-lim-majority nation, said they were inves-tigating the authenticity of the post.

“We are verifying the statement, whether it is credible,” RAB spokesman Mufti Mahmud Khan told AFP.

Bangladeshi has seen a spate of fatal at-tacks on foreigners, secular rights activists and religious minorities in recent years.

The Holey Bakery cafe attack led to a major crackdown on Islamist militants, nearly 70 of whom have been shot dead by security forces.

Bangladesh has secretly detained hundreds of people including scores of opposition activists, many of whom have later been killed, a rights group said yes-terday.

The Human Rights Watch report, re-leased days after the alleged abduction of a

high-profi le government critic, said secu-rity agencies were removing people with “no regard” for the rule of law.

Hundreds of people have been detained and held in secret locations since 2013, in-cluding at least 90 last year, it said.

“Bangladesh security forces appear to have a free hand in detaining people, de-ciding on their guilt or innocence, and determining their punishment, including whether they have the right to be alive,” Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director said.

“The disappearances are well-docu-mented and reported, yet the government persists in this abhorrent practice with no regard for the rule of law,” he said.

The New York-based group said in 2016 alone it documented 21 cases of detainees who were killed, and nine others whose whereabouts are unknown.

Among those missing is Sajedul Islam Sumon, 37, a Dhaka neighbourhood chief of the main opposition Bangladesh Na-tionalist Party (BNP).

Sumon’s sister Sanjida Islam said offi c-ers from the country’s elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) detained her brother and fi ve other BNP activists on December 4, 2013.

This was one month before a controver-sial 2014 general election which the BNP boycotted.

“Some 20 construction workers who were on the site told us RAB offi cers picked them up and led them away on a RAB van. They were never returned,” Islam told AFP.

“For the last three years and eight months we’ve knocked on doors, gone to every agency’s offi ce and met the home minister to know my brother’s wherea-bouts,” she said.

Islam said the family was hopeful her brother, a father of two, would be found.

Political tensions are rising in Bangla-desh ahead of a national election due next year.

The BNP and its Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami have said tens of thousands of their activists and supporters have been arrest-ed in recent years.

Bangladesh home minister Asaduzza-man Khan however rejected the allega-tions, saying the detentions were lawful, and accused HRW of spreading “propa-ganda”.

“Since Bangladesh’s inception they are trying to spread a negative propaganda which has no similarity with the reality,” he told reporters.

The mothers of 22 of the missing ac-tivists have set up a group, Mayer’s Daak (Mother’s Call), to seek government an-swers on the cases.

Meanwhile police have fi led a kidnap-ping case over the disappearance of gov-ernment critic Farhad Mazhar, who was found on a coach earlier this week after his wife reported him missing.

Abdul Baten, joint commissioner of de-tective police, quoted Mazhar as saying he had been blindfolded and taken away in a vehicle.

Eatery bans foreigners fearing terror attack

ReutersDhaka

Bangladesh’s plan to start importing liquefi ed natural gas (LNG) next year will likely dampen its demand for oil

used in power generation, government and industry sources said. The South Asian nation typically ships in around 2.5mn tonnes of fuel oil and 3.2mn tonnes of die-sel annually, making it one of the top 10 such importers in the region.

But its push towards cleaner gas is likely to displace some of that appetite for oil, with the country’s fi rst fl oating LNG im-port terminal due to begin accepting car-goes in May next year.

“LNG is considered to be an environ-mentally friendly source of energy and its cost is cheaper than fuel oil,” said Nasrul Hamid, Bangladesh junior energy minis-ter.

He added that the country would grad-ually shift to greener, cheaper sources of energy for electricity generation and in industry.

State-run Petrobangla has signed pre-

liminary deals for two more LNG termi-nals and a memorandum of understand-ing with Swiss commodity merchant AOT Energy for help lining up supplies. It has also said that it is in talks with top LNG producer Qatar.

Of the total 13.3 gigawatts of installed electricity capacity in Bangladesh, about 63% is from gas-fi red plants, 22% from plants powered by fuel oil and 8% from diesel, said Senthil Kumaran, senior oil analyst at energy consultancy FGE.

That translates to consumption of 12,000 to 14,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) of high sulphur fuel oil for power genera-tion and 10,000 to 12,000 bpd of diesel, he added.

While it was not clear how much of the country’s import demand for oil products would be displaced by LNG, it would prob-ably start to happen in 2019, said FGE and an offi cial with state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corp

“At the end of this year, we will get a full picture of our imports of oil products for the next year,” said the offi cial, who de-clined to be identifi ed as he was not au-thorised to speak with media.

LNG is currently about 15 to 20% cheaper than fuel oil, said Kazi Mohamad Anwarul Azim, manager of Petrobangla’s LNG unit.

Bangladesh’s imports of LNG are ex-pected to reach 5mn tonnes in 2020, said FGE’s Kumaran.

Still, with not many dual-feed power plants in the country and new oil-fi red power plants installed over the last few years, Bangladesh will continue to import fuel oil to run those plants, he said.

Bangladesh LNG drive likely to hit its diesel, fuel oil demand

A godown for oil drums by the Buriganga river in Dhaka.

Lankan accused of killing wife deportedAgenciesToronto

A Sri Lankan man ac-cused of killing his wife in Quebec, Canada fi ve

years ago has been deported after the charge against him was stayed because of an un-reasonable delay, Canadian media reported.

Sivaloganathan Thanabalas-ingham, a 32-year-old perma-nent Canadian resident, was set to appear today at a detention review hearing, but it has been cancelled, a spokesperson at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada said yesterday.

Thanabalasingham’s sec-ond-degree murder charge was stayed in April after Su-perior Court Justice Alexandre Boucher ruled it had taken too long to get to trial.

Thanabalasingham was the fi rst Quebecer charged with murder to have his case stayed because of the Jordan ruling, a Supreme Court decision issued last July which imposes strict limits on the waiting time for trials.

He was ordered deported in April because of an earlier conviction on domestic abuse charges involving his wife, Anuja Baskaran.

The assaults predated Baskaran’s killing at the apart-ment she shared with her hus-band in August 2012. Thana-balasingham was charged with second-degree murder but pleaded not guilty

Thanabalasingham, who came to Canada as a refugee, initially appealed the deporta-tion order, but a month later asked to be returned to Sri Lanka as soon as possible.

Quebec’s Director of Penal and Criminal Prosecutions (DCPC) appealed the stay of the murder charge and, last week, Appeal Court Justice Nicole Duval-Hesler agreed to expedite the case and hear ar-guments in September.

Jean-Pascal Boucher, a spokesperson for the DCPC, said yesterday the prosecu-tion plans to continue with the appeal process even though Thanabalasingham has left the country. Canada does not have an extradition agreement with Sri Lanka.

If the appeal is granted, Boucher said the DCPC would work with the federal Justice Ministry “to see what we could do.”

“For now, it’s too soon be-cause we have to respect the Court of Appeal, we have to respect the authority of court, we will do what we have to do in the appeal that is pending right now, and we will see what is happening with the decision at the end,” he said.

Judith Gadbois-St-Cyr, a spokesperson for Canada Bor-der Services Agency, declined to comment directly on the case, citing privacy legislation.

She added, however, that the CBSA is legally bound to enforce removal orders.-Courtesy dailymirror.lk

Elephants in tourist destinations ‘held in harsh conditions’

Thanabalasingham

The fear of extremist violence is all pervasive

THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH13Gulf Times


Remember the rich rewards for virtuous deeds

Modesty is a part of faith

Motivation boosters

Allah The Almighty repeatedly reminds us to perform various virtuous deeds. He Says (what means): {“Race with one an-

other in hastening towards forgiveness from your Lord.”} [Qur’an, 57: 21].

Shaykh ibn As-Sa’di, may Allah have mercy upon him, said, commenting on this, “One who hastens towards virtu-ous deeds during his life will therefore also hasten to enter Paradise in the Hereafter.”

However, forgetfulness is a trait that is inherent in human beings, which leads to neglecting virtuous deeds and weakens their eff ect. Allah The Almighty Says (what means): {“And indeed We made a covenant with Adam before, but he forgot, and We found on his part no fi rm willpower”} [Qur’an, 20: 115]

Remembering the reward for per-forming these deeds is one of the most successful ways of treating laziness and encourages people to perform them. For example, a person is encouraged not to belittle even the smallest good deed, when one reads the saying of the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam (may Allah exalt his mention): “I saw a man enjoying Paradise as a result of a tree he cut, which was in people’s way and harming them.” [Muslim].

Attending the assemblies of knowl-edge with virtuous Muslims also encourages one to perform virtuous deeds, or continue performing them. It reminds the Muslim of his Lord, fosters a sense of competition and keeps the heart occupied with virtuous thoughts. A believer is stronger when he is with a group of virtuous people, and he

becomes more enthused to utilise his time and take advantage of his life, in obedience to Allah The Almighty.

Incentives to perform good deeds1. Visiting charitable and humanitar-

ian organisations encourages a Muslim to perform virtuous deeds.

2. Remembering that competing in performing virtuous deeds is one of the qualities of the true believers, as Allah The Almighty Says (what means): {“So, We answered his call, and We bestowed upon him Yahyaa, and cured his wife (to bear a child) for him. Verily, they used to hasten on to do good deeds, and they used to call on Us with hope and fear.”} [Qur’an, 21: 90]. This is also one of the characteristics of angels, as Allah The Almighty Says (what means): {“And by those that press forward as in a race (angels).”} [Qur’an, 79: 4] Mujaahid, may Allah have mercy upon him, com-mented on this by saying, “This refers to the angels when they defeated the son of Adam in the performance of virtuous deeds.”

3. Learning about how much our pious predecessors would cry whenever they missed out on a chance to perform virtuous deeds. The Prophet, sallallaa-hu ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: “The people of Paradise do not regret anything more than regretting an hour they spent (in this life) without mentioning Allah.” [Tabaraani]

Sa’eed At-Tanookhi, may Allah have mercy upon him, used to cry if for any reason he had missed a congregational prayer. Ibn Mas’ood, may Allah be pleased with him, said: “I never regret-

ted anything more than regretting a day which passed in which I did not increase (upon) my virtuous deeds.

4. Remembering that life is short makes a Muslim exert extra eff ort in performing virtuous deeds; the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: “Rush towards the performance of virtuous deeds before you are af-fl icted with trials as dark as the night.” [Muslim].

5. Reading books that soften the heart, mention virtuous deeds and encourage people to perform them.

6. Knowing that encouraging oth-ers entitles you to the same reward as theirs, as the Prophet, sallallaahu àlaihi wa sallam, said: “He who revives a deed from Islam (which people forgot or abandoned) gets the same reward as the one who (subsequently) performs it.” [Muslim]

7. Loving those who perform virtuous deeds, because the Prophet, sallallaahu àlaihi wa sallam, said: “A person will be (on the Day of Resurrection) with those whom he loves (in life).” [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

8. Knowing how eager our pious predecessors were in performing virtu-ous deeds. Competing in performing virtuous deeds was an intrinsic quality of the Companions of the Prophet, sal-lallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam. ‘Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, said regard-ing Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him: “Whenever we competed to perform virtuous deeds, Abu Bakr would win.”

One should always supplicate to Allah The Almighty to enable him to perform good deeds and facilitate them for him,

because performing virtuous deeds is a gift from Allah The Almighty which He grants to whomever He wishes from amongst His slaves. Humaam ibn al-Haarith, may Allah have mercy upon him, used to supplicate saying, “O Al-lah! Make me satisfi ed with little sleep and grant me (the ability of) staying up during the night performing acts of obedience to you” and he would sleep very little, while sitting down.

Performing virtuous deeds is one of the main duties for Muslims in this life, as Allah commands by saying what means: {“O you who have believed! Bow down, and prostrate yourselves, and worship your Lord and do good, that you may be successful.”} [Qur’an, 24: 77]

Performing virtuous deeds is also included in the saying of Allah The Almighty (which means): {“…Help you one another in virtue, righteousness and piety; but do not help one another in sin and transgression…”} [Qur’an, 5: 2]

Performing virtuous deeds is an important component of the propaga-tion of Islam, which is not restricted to delivering lectures or talks, or publish-ing books. Behaving virtuously and helping others endears one to people and opens the hearts and minds of oth-ers, who would then listen attentively to what one says.

Similarly, there are many Ahadith (narrations) from the Prophet, sallal-laahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, addressing this issue, such as the following:

“Rush towards the performance of virtuous deeds.” [Muslim].

“He who leads others to virtue gets the same reward as the one performing it.” [Muslim].

“O people! Spread (the greeting of) Salaam, feed the needy, and pray at night while people are sleeping, and you will (therefore) enter into Paradise peacefully.” [At-Tirmithi].

“He who calls others to guidance will get the same reward as those who follow guidance.” [Muslim].

Incentives to performing good deeds

1. Having your mind and heart constantly occupied with these deeds and having a sincere intention, because, with sincerity, a slave reaches high ranks, and it also acts as an encouraging factor to perform the deed.

2. Knowing that the Prophet, sal-lallaahu àlaihi wa sallam, used to ask Allah The Almighty to enable him to perform virtuous deeds saying: “O Allah! I ask You to enable me to perform virtuous deeds and (for) the abandonment of sins.” [At-Tirmithi]. It is known that the Prophet, sal-lallaahu àlaihi wa sallam, would only supplicate with what Allah The Almighty loves.

3. Remembering Paradise and its pleasures, and what has been prepared for the people of virtue there. Al-lah The Almighty Says (what means): {“And march forth in the way (leading to) forgiveness from your Lord, and for Paradise as wide as the heavens and the earth.”} [Qur’an, 3: 133]

4. Knowing that performing virtuous deeds results in other people loving him, even after his death. The believ-

ers are witnesses on earth as Anas, may Allah be pleased with him, said: “A funeral passed by us and people praised the deceased, so the Prophet, sallal-laahau ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: ‘It has become mandatory.’ Then another one passed and people spoke of how bad the deceased was, so the Prophet said: ‘It has become mandatory.’ So ‘Umar asked about his comments on the two funerals, and the Prophet replied: ‘You praised the fi rst one so Paradise became mandatory for him, and you dispraised the second one so Hell became manda-tory for him; you are the witnesses of Allah on earth.’” [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

5. Realising that the longer virtu-ous people live, the more beloved to Allah The Almighty they become, as the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sal-lam, said when he was asked about the best people in the sight of Allah The Almighty: “He who lives long and per-forms virtuous deeds.” [At-Tirmithi], because such a person utilised his life in virtuous deeds and was obedient to Allah The Almighty.

6. Knowing that being steadfast in performing virtuous deeds is beloved to Allah The Almighty even if the deeds are little in number, as the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: “The most beloved deeds to Allah are those which are persistent, even if they are little (in number).”

Article source: http://www.is-lamweb.net/emainpage/

It was related on the authority of Abu Mas’ood al-Badri, may Allah be pleased with him, that: “The Messenger of Allah, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: “One of the admonitions of the previous prophets

which has been conveyed to people is that if you have no shame, you can do whatever you wish.” [Al-Bukhari]

Explanation of the Hadith:The saying of the Messenger: “…If you feel no shame,

you can do whatever you wish” is in the command form, and can be looked at from two angles, each conveying a distinct meaning:

(1) The fi rst is that it is a form of threat and a challenge thrown down against those who engage in inappropriate behaviour. Such people have no shame in front of Allah and therefore, no matter what course they take, it would not make any real diff erence. In this case, it would be as if the Hadith is stating: “If you do not feel any shame from doing these prohibited acts, then do whatever you wish…” Modesty is the quality that prevents one from immodest behaviour, and the lack of it will only cause one to increase in distancing himself from Allah and make him indiff erent to creed or deed.

(2) The second meaning pertains to doing that which is lawful. That is, if the action that one is about to do is not within the category of the unlawful, and we are not ashamed of doing the act in front of Allah or the people, then we are free to do it. However, if we are ashamed to do it, then we should not. The Hadeeth gives a measuring stick by which we can evaluate actions, both privately and publicly.

Thus, the fi rst explanation relates to a lack of conscious-ness regarding Allah and the second is regarding the oppo-site, which is to be conscious of Allah and of His watching over a person and his actions.

The former explanation relates to an unbridled Nafs (base desires and lower self), whereas the latter implies observance of due constraint over it, so that it does not embark on the road to destruction.

Modesty is of two types:Modesty is either natural or acquired. Natural modesty

means that the individual has this quality by nature and does not need to exert any eff ort to acquire it. Acquired modesty, on the other hand, is attained by those who possess knowl-edge concerning Allah, being cognisant concerning His Greatness, Proximity and His Inspection of all that they do.

Points related to modesty:1. Modesty is one of the most honourable attributes and

is a consistent virtue found in all the various laws sent down to each prophet and messenger.

2. It is one of the most perfect and desirable characteris-tics to possess and an excellent state to be in.

3. Modesty only brings good to individuals and is an indication of faith.

4. Bashfulness and shame is in direct opposition to indecency and shamelessness.

5. Modesty is an element of faith, and indecency has no relation to it.

6. Modesty adorns one’s nature and personality and is indicative of his being Islamically cultured and refi ned.

7. Indecency, on the other hand, shows that one lacks virtues and is uncouth, dishonourable and uncultured.

8. We are obligated to guard ourselves against indecency and from acting indecently or uncultured, as qualifi ed by Islam.

9. We must never misconstrue bashfulness or shyness with cowardice - Islamically they are far from synony-mous.

10. Modesty, as mentioned, is a root virtue. One of the fruits of modesty is chastity.

11. There is no modesty when it comes to teaching the laws of Islam or searching for the truth.

Article source: http://www.islamweb.net/emainpage/

In an article during the blessed month of Ramadan, we mentioned some motivation boosters. Following are some more:

1. Seeking perfection and rising above inadequacy

The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam (may Allah exalt his mention) said: “Allah likes what is noble and dislikes what is petty”, meaning every act that is bad and inferior. The Qur’an urges us to strive for excellence, as that act diff erentiates between good and bad, those who are knowledgeable and those who are not, those who fi ght and those who abstain, and between pioneers and loiterers.

In various verses, it favours those who are more esteemed in terms of perfection. For instance, Allah The Almighty Says (what means):

{Is one who is devoutly obedient during periods of the night, prostrating and standing [in prayer], fearing the Hereafter and hoping for the mercy of his Lord, [like one who does not]? Say, “Are those who know equal to those who do not know?” Only they will remember [who are] people of understanding.} [Qur’an 39:9]

{Not equal are those believers remaining [at home] - other than the disabled - and the mujaahidoon, [who strive and fi ght] in the cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred the mujaahidoon through their wealth and their lives over those who remain [behind], by degrees. And to both Allah has promised the best [reward]. But Allah has preferred the mujaahidoon over those who remain [behind] with a great reward.} [Qur’an 4:95]

Likewise, the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, urged his Ummah toward attaining perfection and rising above shortcomings. He said: “The strong believer is better and dearer to Allah than the weak believer and in each one there is goodness. Be eager to [do] what is benefi cial and seek the Help of Allah and never be weak.”

Moreover, the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: “The one who does not work hard will not be saved by his honourable lineage.” Thus, whoever desires to be highly motivated should aspire to perfection and overcome trivial matters.

2. Abandoning worldly pleasuresIn other words, despising life and being

wary of its domination and control over the heart is signifi cant. Once, ‘Umar ibn ‘Abdul-‘Aziz sought the advice of Al-Hasan, may Allah have mercy upon them, who wrote to him, saying, “The most important factor in becoming virtuous and guiding others to righteousness is forsaking worldly pleasures. This is achieved by conviction, which, in turn, is attained through contemplation that stems from being heedful. If you think carefully about life, you will fi nd it unworthy of your selling yourself for its sake; and, you will discover that you merit being honoured by caring little about this world, for it is only a place of trials and is transitory.”

Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqaas, may Allah be pleased with him, narrates: “A man came to the Prophet, sallallaahu àlaihi wa sallam, and asked him to off er him concise advice. He said, ‘Give up hope in [possessing] what others have and be cautious of greed, which is ongoing poverty. If you pray, do so as if it were your last prayer; and beware of doing what obliges you to off er apologies.’”

Indeed, the one who renounces worldly pleasures will end up having a taste of the bliss of Paradise and the status of being close

to Allah The Almighty.3. Being concerned with one’s own

aff airsOccupying oneself with matters related

to others, which have no eff ect on the individual, is a bad habit that wastes time. And, time is a person’s capital, so squandering it without doing anything useful for one’s life or religion is indeed unfavourable. Hence, the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: “It is of a man’s goodness in faith that he leaves what does not concern him.”

4. Refraining from wasting one’s timeAgain, time is life and the lucky person

is the one who makes optimum use of it by capitalising on its every moment. Those with high motivation invest every second wisely; they are always keen on making the best use of their time, so much so that even personal tragedies do not prevent them from that.

Ibn al-Katheer may Allah have mercy upon him, for example, wrote his great books, like Jaami’ Al-‘Usool and An-Nihaayah fi Ghareeb Al-Hadith, when he was physically impaired. As-Sarakhsi ,may Allah have mercy upon him, penned his famous treatise Al-Mabsoot, which consists of 15 volumes, while he was imprisoned. Also, Ibn Al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy upon, him wrote Zaad Al-Ma‘aad while he was travelling and Al-Qurtubi, may Allah have mercy upon, him wrote an explanation of Sahih Muslim while on board a ship.

5. Striving against vain desiresThere are people who exert great eff orts

for the sake of a whim or worthless desires. However, a highly motivated person expends much energy on behalf of his or her beliefs and propagation of Islam. The worshipper does not rest except in Paradise, which spans an area as wide as the heavens and the earth. The path is easy only for those who know [what they would like to be] their destination. Thus, strive against your own vain desires to win the greatest honour.

It was also said that a man reaches perfection only when he gives precedence to his religion over his desires, and if he instead prioritises fulfi lling his whims, he will be destroyed.

That is why the strictly devout would train themselves to contradict their personal wants, even if they may be lawful, so as to habituate themselves to the concept of abandoning fancies altogether. Hence, whoever strives against his or her vain desires and demonstrates diligence in that will certainly reap what he or she sows; and, indeed acquiring virtues requires great eff orts.

6. Refraining from hope in a long life and frequent remembrance of death

The one who indulges in this becomes highly motivated and consequently, increases in good deeds. Maajidah al-Qurashiyyah, may Allah have mercy upon her, used to say, “The sunrise and sunset have put an end to my hopes; and I expect death in every single movement that I hear.” Of the careless in this regard, she remarked, “They have prolonged their hopes and thus wasted their time. If only they had thought of death and forgotten about these [fanciful] notions, they would have found work to be easier for them.”

The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, held ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, and advised: “Be in life as if you were a stranger or a wayfarer, and count yourself among the people of the graves.” [Al-Bukhari] He, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, would also awake [for worship]

after a third of the night had passed; he would then counsel: “O people! Remember Allah; remember [Him]. The blast [of the Horn that will convulse the creation] has [nearly] arrived; there will follow it a subsequent [one]. Death is imminent; death has come.” [Ahmad]

Mutarrif ibn ‘Abdullah used to say, “Death

has spoilt the fortune of the fortunate. Hence, seek prosperity that has no death.”

In conclusion, bear in mind that the most intelligent people are those who remember death frequently and prepare themselves for it.

Article source: http://www.islamweb.net/emainpage/

President Emmanuel Macron has thrown France’s weight behind a new West African military force, which is widely seen as an attempt to lay the basis for an exit strategy for French troops stationed in the region since 2013.

On July 3, leaders of the G5 Sahel bloc — Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad — meeting in the Malian capital Bamako for a summit, formally established the new force, which will operate in co-ordination with French troops and MINUSMA, Mali’s struggling UN peacekeeping mission.

The new multinational military force, with its military headquarters in the northern Mali town of Sevare, will focus on three border zones — one along the frontier between Niger and Mali, another between Mali and Mauritania, and a third straddling the borders between Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali.

The countries of the G5 Sahel bloc began fl oating the idea of a regional force as early as 2015, but the plan gained momentum in recent months with Macron’s backing.

President Macron, addressing the Bamako summit on July 3, said that the force, which is expected to consist of around 5,000 troops, should be fully operational by the autumn.

The Sahel task force also has the blessing of the United Nations. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has welcomed the deployment of the joint force to tackle the threat of terrorism and organised crime in the region. In a statement issued by his spokesman, the secretary-general welcomed the recent adoption of Security Council resolution 2359 (2017), which created the joint task force.

However, the United States supports the force “only in principle.” A US offi cial is reported to have said: “We fi nd the mandate of the force way too broad, lacking precision; and would set a dangerous precedent by providing authorisation for lethal force for a broad spectrum of activities including operations to ‘eradicate’ undefi ned criminal networks.”

The force aims to initially establish specially-trained units by the end of the year, which would work with French forces where jihadist groups are known to operate.

But it faces problems before it even becomes operational, with questions over fi nancing,

manpower and equipment.The European Union has pledged around 50mn euros

($57mn) for the operations, and Macron said France would contribute around 8mn euros by the end of the year. However, Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has said it required a total budget of 423mn euros.

But the real concern is that there will not be enough appetite to fi nance another regional military operation in an area that already sees a plethora of military operations. As it is the G5 Sahel nations — among the world’s poorest — are overstretched. Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger have deployed around 4,100 soldiers within MINUSMA. Niger and Chad also contribute troops to a similar regional force fi ghting Nigeria’s Boko Haram militants.

France intervened to chase out jihadists linked to Al Qaeda who had overtaken key northern cities in Mali in 2013.

That mission evolved into the current Barkhane deployment launched in 2014 with an expanded mandate for counter-terror operations across the Sahel.

“France had an exit strategy in mind when it spearheaded the new force,” said Vincent Rouget, West Africa analyst at Control Risks.

But it’s hard to see how France could begin drawing down soon. The real aim behind the new Sahel task force is to reduce the exposure of French troops. Said a senior French diplomat: “We need a long-term multilateral strategy so that we’re less exposed. The time of doing everything alone in West Africa is over.”

Paris considers the Sahel region a breeding ground for militants who pose a threat to Europe. Only time will tell whether the new force will in any way mitigate the terror threat faced by the continent.


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“The time of doing everything alone in West Africa is over”

Trump and the truth about climate change

Sahel task force:New bid to tackleterror in W Africa

Investing in Africa’s educatorsBy Samantha Williams Johannesburg

Improving education is a slow, arduous, long-term undertaking everywhere, and nowhere more so than in Africa, where tight

economic constraints often prevent sustained investment in human capital.

Those who work in the education sector on the continent have to seek solutions that are faster, cheaper, and can be scaled up.

Too often, though, expedient approaches prove shortsighted, and fail to engage local leaders who hold the keys to economic and social progress.

Too often, grassroots-level voices, refl ecting fi rsthand experience addressing their communities’ problems, are ignored.

When global leaders gather in Hamburg this week for the G20 summit, the new G20-Africa Partnership will take centre stage.

But those committed to helping Africa should focus squarely on the nuts and bolts of aid and development – and that means investing in local leadership.

Sadly, the best-funded aid organisations in Africa are often run by Westerners, or by Africans who have extensive ties to the West.

I recently spoke to several entrepreneurs who shared anecdotal evidence that organisations in Africa with a Western co-founder raise more than twice the funds of African-run organisations.

This fi nancial prejudice is visible

elsewhere, too, and it is perpetuating the dearth of local talent.

The pro-Western bias should worry everyone working to build better communities for our children.

When it comes to addressing social issues – whether it’s educational inequity, poverty, or discrimination – the most committed advocates are those who have first-hand knowledge of the problem they seek to solve.

Personal experience is the best way to create agents for change, because it underpins people’s long-term, personal investment in dismantling systems that exacerbate inequity and injustice.

What would it look like if the leaders overhauling such systems were cultivated from the very communities that needed them most? Some organisations are answering that question already.

More than 12,000 people have applied to join Teach For Nigeria, a national organisation that recruits, trains, and places young teachers in high-need schools.

The programme, designed as a fellowship, will choose fewer than 60 of Nigeria’s brightest university graduates and professionals, not only to develop excellent classroom teachers, but also to empower the next generation of social entrepreneurs committed to tackling inequity and deeply connected to local eff orts already underway in communities across their country.

After their two-year teaching commitment, which begins in September, these up-and-coming leaders will join a worldwide

movement of over 55,000 people who have completed the fellowship in over 40 countries, including the 30 fellows already hard at work next door at Teach for Ghana.

We call this powerful grouping of change-agents “collective leadership,” and we believe it is the only way to ensure positive, lasting change.

Inadequate investment in locally led initiatives is one of the two ways in which we fail to ensure that those who are most aff ected by inequity have pathways to address it.

The second is the failure to invest in children.

In Uganda, 70% of children do not complete primary school.

Basic education is the foundation for our lifelong ability to analyse information, present ideas and opinions, and challenge the world around us.

And yet, in too many African communities, we are failing to invest in laying those foundations.

Across the continent, educational attainment is sharply stratifi ed: while 82% of children from the wealthiest families complete primary school, only 28% of children from the poorest families do.

If the future of the continent is to be shaped by, or with, those who have most acutely experienced its challenges, programmes like Teach for Nigeria and Teach for Ghana are essential.

Imagine what could be accomplished if eff orts to place local recruits in low-income schools were expanded.

Imagine how many opportunities to address the challenges facing

children and families could be created, potentially reaching hundreds of thousands of children who are also inspired and encouraged to think critically and resolve the problems affecting the world around them.

Some argue that education is meaningless if graduates cannot fi nd work; in fact, job creation in Africa will be a major topic of discussion at the G20 summit.

But while investment in business development and job creation is crucial for economic vitality and growth, it won’t happen without an educated workforce.

A robust job market presupposes a suffi cient number of skilled workers to fi ll available jobs.

But in Sub-Saharan Africa, only 58% of children complete primary school.

This is why, when G20 leaders discuss new economic development strategies for Africa, they should focus on investment in education.

But, more important, they should seek to ensure that resources make it to those who rely on local leadership and innovation.

Sustainable Development Goal 4 – to ensure equitable and inclusive education for all by 2030 – is attainable, but only if solutions come from the ground up, which means from the Africans most committed to them. – Project Syndicate

Samantha Williams is the head of the Africa region at Teach For All, a global network of educational organisations that works to improve teaching quality in high-need schools and communities.

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By Joseph E StiglitzBrussels

Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, the United States took another major step toward

establishing itself as a rogue state on June 1, when it withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. For years, Trump has indulged the strange conspiracy theory that, as he put it in 2012, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.” But this was not the reason Trump advanced for withdrawing the US from the Paris accord. Rather, the agreement, he alleged, was bad for the US and implicitly unfair to it.

While fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, Trump’s claim is diffi cult to justify. On the contrary, the Paris accord is very good for America, and it is the US that continues to impose an unfair burden on others.

Historically, the US has added disproportionately to the rising concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and among large countries it remains the biggest per capita emitter of carbon dioxide by far – more than twice China’s rate and nearly 2.5 times more than Europe in 2013 (the latest year for which the World Bank has reported complete data). With its high income, the US is in a far better position to adapt to the challenges of climate change than

poor countries like India and China, let alone a low-income country in Africa.

In fact, the major fl aw in Trump’s reasoning is that combating climate change would strengthen the US, not weaken it. Trump is looking toward the past – a past that, ironically, was not that great. His promise to restore coal-mining jobs (which now number 51,000, less than 0.04% of the country’s nonfarm employment) overlooks the harsh conditions and health risks endemic in that industry, not to mention the technological advances that would continue to reduce employment in the industry even if coal production were revived.

In fact, far more jobs are being created in solar panel installation than are being lost in coal. More generally, moving to a green economy would increase US income today and economic growth in the future. In this, as in so many things, Trump is hopelessly mired in the past.

Just a few weeks before Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord, the global High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices, which I co-chaired with Nicholas Stern, highlighted the potential of a green transition. The Commission’s report, released at the end of May, argues that reducing CO2 emissions could result in an even stronger economy.

The logic is straightforward. A key problem holding back the global economy today is defi cient aggregate demand. At the same time, many countries’ governments face revenue

shortfalls. But we can address both issues simultaneously and reduce emissions by imposing a charge (a tax) for CO2 emissions.

It is always better to tax bad things than good things. By taxing CO2, fi rms and households would have an incentive to retrofi t for the world of the future. The tax would also provide fi rms with incentives to innovate in ways that reduce energy usage and emissions – giving them a dynamic competitive advantage.

The Commission analysed the level of carbon price that would be required to achieve the goals set forth in the Paris climate agreement – a far higher price than in most of Europe today, but still manageable. The commissioners pointed out that the appropriate price may diff er across countries. In particular, they noted, a better regulatory system – one that restrains coal-fi red power generation, for example – reduces the burden that must be placed on the tax system.

Interestingly, one of the world’s best-performing economies, Sweden, has already adopted a carbon tax at a rate substantially higher than that discussed in our report. And the Swedes have simultaneously sustained their strong growth without US-level emissions.

America under Trump has gone from being a world leader to an object of derision. In the aftermath of Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris accord, a large sign was hung over Rome’s city hall: “The Planet First.” Likewise, France’s new

president, Emmanuel Macron, poked fun at Trump’s campaign slogan, declaring “Make Our Planet Great Again.”

But the consequences of Trump’s actions are no laughing matter. If the US continues to emit as it has, it will continue to impose enormous costs on the rest of the world, including on much poorer countries. Those who are being harmed by America’s recklessness are justifi ably angry.

Fortunately, large parts of the US, including the most economically dynamic regions, have shown that Trump is, if not irrelevant, at least less relevant than he would like to believe. Large numbers of states and corporations have announced that they will proceed with their commitments – and perhaps go even further, off setting the failures of other parts of the US.

In the meantime, the world must protect itself against rogue states. Climate change poses an existential threat to the planet that is no less dire than that posed by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. In both cases, the world cannot escape the inevitable question: what is to be done about countries that refuse to do their part in preserving our planet? – Project Syndicate

Joseph E Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University professor at Columbia University and Chief Economist at the Roosevelt Institute. His most recent book is The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe.

Production Editor: Amjad Khan

COMMENT

India-China: Dangerous brinkmanship

Proper tools may help prevent medicine errorsBy Shereen LehmanReuters Health

Providing parents with picture-based instructions – and with dosing tools that closely match the amount of

medication needed – may help reduce cases of medication overdoses in children, researchers say.

Poorly designed medication labels and dosing tools lead to dosing errors, especially when parents are given large cups for small doses, the study team writes in Pediatrics, on June 27.

“Parents frequently make errors in dosing medications for their children. We did this study because we wanted to fi nd out how to redesign medication labels and dosing tools to help parents understand dosing instructions better,” lead author Dr Shonna Yin told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

It is very easy to get confused when dosing liquid medications for a child, said Yin, a pediatrician at NYU Langone Medical Centre in New York City.

“To help make sure they give the right dose, parents should ask their

doctor or pharmacist which dosing tool is best to use,” she said.

The best tool depends on the amount of medication the parent needs to give the child, Yin said. “Using a tool that is too large or too small makes it more likely that a parent will make a mistake.”

The researchers recruited 491 English- and Spanish-speaking parents of children age 8 years or younger, and randomly assigned them to one of four groups, each with a diff erent combination of medication labels and dosing tools including assorted cups and syringes.

Parents were given a medication label with instructions in text only, or both text and pictograms, plus

dose measuring tools marked only in millilitres (mL) or in both mL and teaspoons.

Participants were asked to demonstrate how they’d use the labels and to measure three diff erent dosage amounts using three diff erent tools.

About 84% of parents made at least one error and almost 30% made at least one large error such as doubling the correct dose.

There were fewer errors, however, when labels contained both text and pictograms and when dosing cups or syringes were close to and at least as large as the amount of medication needed.

For a 2-mL dose, for example, the fewest errors were seen with the 5-mL syringe and for the 7.5-mL dose, the fewest errors were with the 10-mL syringe.

In addition, parents were about 30% more likely to make mistakes when they used tools marked in mL and teaspoons compared to mL only.

“It is important for parents to use a tool that has markings on it to help them measure out the right amount. This could be an oral syringe, a dropper, a dosing spoon, dosing cup,

or even a measuring spoon that is usually used for cooking,” Yin said.

When using any of these tools, parents should carefully check to see that the number and the units used on the tool match what they are trying to give, she added.

“Mixing up millilitres and teaspoons can lead to a parent giving 5 times the dose. If there is no dosing tool at home that has markings on it, I would recommend going to the store to get one or trying to get one from the doctor or pharmacist,” Yin said.

“The study makes it clear that it’s easy to make mistakes with liquid medicine and that using the right syringe can help and that instructions with pictures help as well,” said Dr Kathleen Walsh, director of patient safety research at the James M Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio.

“There are certain medicines that people tend to think of as safe but actually if you make a big dosing error can be very dangerous, for example, Tylenol or Benadryl are medicines you really want to be careful to give the right dose,” she said.

By Tarun BasuIANS

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said very proudly during a visit to Russia last month that not a single bullet had been fi red

along the border between India and China for 40 years.

“It is true that we have a border dispute with China. But in the last 40 years, not a single bullet has been fi red because of border dispute,” Modi said in a panel discussion at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Modi spoke in the context of an “inter-connected and inter-dependent world” where, he said, countries may have some disputes but that should not stop them from moving ahead in “areas of collaboration”, like India and China were doing.

In December 1996, when then state President and Communist Party of China (CPC) General Secretary Jiang Zemin visited Pakistan after a trip to India, he made a very signifi cant statement before the Pakistan National Assembly. Speaking to Pakistani lawmakers, Jiang advised Pakistan to adopt the India-China template in their dealings with New Delhi and not let contentious issues

come in the way of the development of their relationship on other fronts, particularly trade and business, and people-to-people ties.

“If certain issues cannot be resolved for the time being, they may be shelved temporarily so that they will not aff ect the normal state-to-state relations,” Jiang said.

With peace and tranquility being maintained on the border through a series of agreements, China and India had managed to keep the peace between them, despite a disputed border of over 4,000km. Indian offi cials have often called it a “managed relationship” where border disputes and diff erences over Tibet or Arunachal Pradesh were kept on a slow track of protracted negotiations while the two neighbours fast-tracked their trade and economic relationships to a level that made them critical elements of each other’s growth story.

But the inexorable rise of Xi Jinping coincided with muscular projections of Chinese authority and power on issues that it considered were “core” to its strategic and foundational principles, whether it be the South China Sea, Tibet, or the Belt and Road project that stood to seal China’s role as a global mercantile power.

As Xi moves to establish complete authority over all organs of party,

government and military to become one of the strongest leaders of the People’s Republic in recent times, it is clear that China has moved much beyond previous supremo Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of “Lie low, bide your time”.

China thinks its time is now and whatever it does will be in consonance and pursuit of this “Chinese dream” to become one of the world’s pre-eminent economic, military and political powers in what Xi terms “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.

In line with this political philosophy, China is fl exing its muscle, reasserting sovereignty and expanding its arc of infl uence much beyond the South China Sea, to South Asia, Africa and even to Latin America. But even as its Belt and Road connectivity project becomes a tool to project Chinese economic and cultural power, it has become uncompromising on issues that it earlier preferred to “lie low” on, with the latest being the row with India over disputed Bhutanese territory north of Sikkim.

China’s bellicose position, coupled with a sharp escalation of threatening rhetoric, is consistent with its recent posturing over territorial and geostrategic issues.

Suddenly, says Shivshankar Menon,

former Indian National Security Adviser and former envoy to Beijing, the old modus vivendi in India-China ties, that worked to enhance areas of common interest while seeking to balance rival sensitivities on their strategic concerns, has broken down and there is an urgent need to fi nd a new modus vivendi.

There is little doubt that China’s aim is to contain India’s rising power through strategic linkages with the country’s neighbours, particularly Pakistan. It seeks to browbeat New Delhi in the hope that the latter will back down and defer to Beijing’s growing might.

But India too has been unusually tough and unrelenting in its stances, whether on the CPEC, Arunachal Pradesh or Sikkim, and both have ended up staring down at each other, while underlining that they were a “diff erent” country from the one that fought a war in 1962. Who ends up blinking fi rst will determine how this regional rivalry between the world’s two most populous and aspirational nations plays out. But there is also a danger of the situation spiralling out of control if the brinkmanship continues. The position an unpredictable US takes might determine strategic equations in Asia in the coming years.

15

By Zaki LaidiParis

French President Emmanuel Macron invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to Paris as his fi rst foreign guest,

while US President Donald Trump will attend this year’s Bastille Day celebrations. By reaching out to two world leaders who made no secret of their hope that he would never make it to the Elysee Palace, Macron has set the stage for a new and ambitious French foreign policy.

The message Macron is sending is that he will remain open to new opportunities for compromise – talking to anyone who is willing, but without glossing over disagreements. His foreign policy seeks to restore France’s central position on the world stage, while remaining fi rmly committed to Europe.

Macron’s foreign-policy eff ectiveness will depend on his ability to bring about a domestic economic turnaround – a lesson learned from Macron’s predecessor Francois Hollande. Beyond a military intervention against militants in Mali, Hollande achieved little on the international stage, precisely because he lacked credibility at home, owing to France’s economic weakness.

It is too early to tell whether Macron will succeed where Hollande failed. But it is already clear that Macron possesses some valuable skills and attributes that his predecessor lacked: undeniable charisma, an ability to connect with foreign leaders (thanks partly to his fl uent English), a solid grasp of global issues, and a drive to implement economic reform.

Macron will also benefi t from external factors. For starters, the economic situation not only in France, but throughout Europe, has

recently improved substantially. Moreover, France and Germany seem to be converging on a large number of global issues. Add to that the United Kingdom’s self-isolation and Trump’s erratic “America fi rst” polices, and Macron is in a strong position to establish himself as a key champion of multilateralism.

Of course, even if Macron does guide an economic turnaround, France will have neither the means nor the ambition to supplant the US on the world stage. But Macron does want France to exercise more influence over the international system – an ambition that is underscored by the way he addresses Putin and Trump.

Just a couple of weeks after his election, Macron slammed Russian state-owned media for employing “lying propaganda” to smear him during the campaign – while standing right next to Putin himself. No French leader since Charles de Gaulle would have dared to stand up to Russia in such a public way. From Macron’s perspective, however, the disagreements that will shape the bilateral relationship had to be laid out, and a clear power dynamic established, before dialogue could occur.

The major test of the Russia-France relationship lies in Syria – an issue that, so far, Macron has handled skillfully. He intentionally set aside the question of whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would remain in power (as Putin wants) or be deposed (as the US and others desire), but also made it clear that France would intervene militarily if Assad were to use chemical weapons again. It is not yet clear whether Macron’s approach will succeed; but France has re-established itself, at least for now, as a player in Syria.

As for Trump, Macron’s

disagreement with him mostly concerns multilateral issues. France and Europe place much stock in multilateralism, which supports burden sharing. The Trump administration’s tendency toward trade protectionism – not to mention fi nancial deregulation – is therefore a source of serious concern.

But it is Trump’s commitment to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement that is most problematic

to Macron, who plans to work with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to bring about a US reversal. If this eff ort succeeds, Macron will have established France as an eff ective advocate and practitioner of multilateralism.

Macron has another objective with regard to Trump: to prevent disagreements from undermining their ability to pursue shared interests, especially in the fi ght against

terrorism. In Syria, for example, the French and US positions are rather closely aligned, and Trump has already shown more willingness than his predecessor, Barack Obama, to enforce a “red line” on the use of chemical weapons. But Trump’s Syria policy remains confused, with few clear lines having really been drawn and signifi cant discrepancies between the claims of Trump and his own cabinet.

Of course, Trump’s threats of

disengagement from Nato also worry France. But France has always sought to maintain a capacity for strategic autonomy, and Macron hopes that the weakening of the US strategic guarantee will convince Europeans, who have long lagged on the establishment of a stronger common defence posture, to do the same.

Considerable economic, strategic, and cultural obstacles to the emergence of a European defence posture no doubt remain, including among those within some French industrial circles who oppose open tenders for defence contracts. But there are signs of progress. Most notably, the European Commission has for the fi rst time decided to off er European funding for key military programs, especially in research and development.

It will take time to marshal not just the money, but also (and more challenging) the political will. But rising uncertainty over America’s reliability – together with the departure of the UK, which has long opposed European defence, from the European Union – has already spurred Germany to acknowledge the need for progress. And, of course, progress for Europe is progress for France, as Europe acts as a multiplier of its national power.

There is not yet a “Macron Doctrine.” But Macron’s foreign policy goals are coming into focus: increase France’s credibility by reversing its economic decline; bolster the Franco-German axis in Europe; strengthen Europe’s role in the world; and engage with everyone. It is a realist approach – but certainly not a cynical one. – Project Syndicate

Zaki Laidi is Professor of International Relations at L’Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po).

The Macron doctrine?

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Macron has set the stage for a new and ambitious French foreign policy.


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QATAR


Employees of the Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC) have expressed their love and loyalty to Qatar and its leader His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani by writing messages on a billboard carrying a portrait of the Emir. In their messages on the panel, the staff conveyed love, loyalty, patriotism, solidarity and appreciation to the nation and the leader. Some of the messages read “All of us are Qatar,” “All of us Tamim”, “All the love for the Qatar of glory and dignity”, “We are all for you, Tamim”.

Expressions of love and loyalty

Fahad bin Mohamed al-AttiyaNew York

My country, Qatar, is a nation under

siege. For the past month, its borders

and airline routes have been closed

off by a regional bloc consisting of

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emir-

ates, Bahrain and Egypt.

The authorities in the neighbor-

ing Gulf states have forced the

repatriation of Qatari citizens,

regardless of age and health.

The bloc has issued a list of wild

accusations against Qatar.

They include the hosting of Iran’s

Revolutionary Guard Corps in our capital, Doha; the

funding of the pro-Iranian Lebanese militia organiza-

tion Hezbollah; and support for the Islamic State

terrorist group.

This hardly makes sense since Hezbollah and the

Islamic State are sworn enemies, at war with each

other in Syria.

Other claims are equally spurious. Qatar stands

accused of supporting the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Yet, until this blockade started, my country partici-

pated in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and lost

soldiers fighting the Houthi rebels. This accusation is

an insult to their memory.

The Gulf bloc also came up with a list of pur-

ported terrorist groups and individuals whom Qatar

supposedly hosts or sponsors.

One of them is, in fact, a Yemeni Salafist leader

who lives in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

Others named do not live in Qatar and have no

connection to Doha.

Just as in 1914, when the Austro-Hungarian govern-

ment came up with a list of impossible and unjustifi-

able demands as a pretext to attack Serbia, so Saudi

Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain have given my

country a demeaning and insulting list of conditions

to be met to get this unwarranted siege lifted.

Qatar received no previous notice of these

demands.

Despite our membership in the Gulf Cooperation

Council, we were never even asked to discuss them.

With the expiry of the bloc’s ultimatum, the Saudi

alliance is threatening additional sanctions.

Thousands of Qatari citizens have been aff ected.

My own mother was making the pilgrimage in

Makkah, Saudi Arabia, when the blockade began;

she was forced to return to Doha in a humiliating,

inconvenient way.

Given the kingdom’s claim to protect Islam’s

holy sites and the visitors to them, this exclusion of

pilgrims is an off ense to the Islamic world.

Among the conditions the bloc is attempting to im-

pose on Qatar is that we close down a number of Qatari

news organizations, including the award-winning satellite

channel Al Jazeera, as well as other London-based outlets.

Qatar’s stand is clear: We support the freedom of

the press — these outlets have been free to publish

content critical of Qatar itself, including about this

blockade — and the bloc’s demand that these outlets

be closed is unacceptable.

Al Jazeera has achieved international recogni-

tion for its reporting in the Middle East, where most

other media groups are either slavishly pro-regime

or heavily censored.

During the Arab Spring, media

outlets in the bloc countries typi-

cally showed serene and peaceful

scenes in cities where, in reality,

demonstrators were being mowed

down by security forces.

These countries operated a

virtual news blackout against their

pro-democracy movements; now

they cannot forgive us because

their citizens could tune in to Al

Jazeera and know the truth.

Today, the talk shows and social

media platforms of the state-supported

media in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the

Emirates do their masters’ bidding and

call for regime change in Qatar. Some

talk-show hosts and their guests have even called for

terrorists attacks on Qatari soil. Senior Qatari off icials have

been subjected to character assassinations and insults.

In Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, dissent has been

criminalized, and anyone speaking up online for Qatar

faces prosecution and up to 15 years in prison.

This campaign has been orchestrated from the

top. A Saudi state minister and media adviser to the

new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, said on

Twitter that he hoped the Qataris “don’t accept” the

demands, and “we’ve only just begun.”

Deliberately escalating the tension into an implied

threat against our very sovereignty, the Dubai

deputy chief of police and general security tweeted,

“Qatar has always been a part of the UAE that can-

not be taken from it.”

Let’s be clear: Qatar is being punished because

conservative actors in the bloc, emboldened by

changes in the geopolitical balance in the region,

see an opportunity to show people in the Arab world

that if you dare to dream of change, the autocratic

regimes will mow you down.

But Qatar will not back down from this unpro-

voked attack.

Qatar is a sovereign state proud to be at the fore-

front of development in the Arab world.

It embraces change, encourages debate and sup-

ports those who need help, whatever their ethnic or

religious background.

When the Arab Spring came, it did not do so for

one religion or sect but for all citizens in the region.

Besides Qatar’s participation in the Saudi-led

coalition in Yemen, we are also an active member

of the American-led multinational alliance against

terrorism. United States Air Force strikes against the

Islamic State in Syria, and against terrorist groups in

Afghanistan, take off from Al Udeid Air Base.

Qatar is a key logistics hub in the international

fight against terrorism, and we have given it major

financial and political support.

We take satisfaction in this record. In contrast to

many regimes in the region, Qatar has championed

American values, including constitutional govern-

ment, freedom of speech and human rights.

The Trump administration should advise its Gulf

allies to change course. If the United States contin-

ues to stand by and acquiesce to the bloc’s hostile

action against Qatar, which can drag our region

only deeper into division and instability, American

interests in the Middle East will be imperiled.

Fahad bin Mohamed al-Attiya is Qatar’s ambassador to Russia.

Qatar will stand up to neighbourhood bullies

Qatar well placed to weather sanctions: expertsWReutersDubai/Doha

A month after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed

diplomatic, trade and transport ties with Qatar, it is nowhere near an economic crisis.

The alliance against it, mean-while, may not have options to infl ict further damage.

As the world’s top liquefi ed

natural gas exporter, Qatar is rich — at $127,660, its gross domestic product per capita in purchasing power terms is the highest of any country, according to the Inter-national Monetary Fund — it can deploy money to counter almost any type of sanction.

In the past month it has ar-ranged new shipping routes to off set the closure of its border with Saudi Arabia, deposited bil-lions of dollars of state money in local banks to shore them up,

and drawn the interest of some of the West’s biggest energy fi rms by announcing a plan to raise its LNG output 30%.

The success of these initiatives suggests Qatar could weather months or years of the current sanctions — and that further sanctions being contemplated by the alliance may not prove deci-sive.

Saudi media reported this week that the new sanctions would in-clude a pull-out of deposits and

loans from Qatar by banks in al-liance states, and a “secondary boycott” in which the alliance would refuse to do business with fi rms that traded with Qatar.

Those steps would not reach a point of destabilising its fi nancial system or breaking the peg of its riyal currency to the US dollar, senior Qatari businessmen and foreign economists said.

Qatar may face higher import costs as it would have to use less convenient shipping routes, but

not to the point of having to cancel big state-led economic projects.

“An outright recession looks very unlikely to us, even if the sanctions continue into next year,” Jason Tuvey, Middle East economist at London-based Capital Economic, said.

The Qatar Central Bank had $34.8bn of reserves in May and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is estimated to have around $320bn of assets, of which over $200bn may be liquid foreign assets.

A secondary boycott against Qatar might prove less eff ec-tive than pulling money from its banks.

It is not clear the alliance could maintain such a measure for long because it might break World Trade Organisation rules speci-fying equal treatment of coun-tries.

A “national security excep-tion” might be invoked to justify a boycott, but foreign fi rms and governments — including Qatar’s

big LNG customers in Asia — could oppose it strongly, fearing a precedent might be sent.

In the mid-1990s, GCC states abandoned an attempt to main-tain a secondary boycott against Israel.

Capital Economic’s Tuvey said any interruption to Qatar’s LNG exports could be devastating, but there appeared to be little pros-pect of it. “For one thing, it could be damaging to all the oil export-ers in the Gulf,” he said.

‘Any threat to region is a threat to Qatar’QNA London

HE the Minister of Foreign Aff airs, Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, has underlined that Qatar

has never undermined the collective security of the region, as “we believe that any threat to the region is a threat to Qatar”.

Qatar continues to call for dialogue, de-spite the violations of international laws and regulations, despite the separation of 12 thousand families, despite the siege that is a clear aggression and an insult to all interna-tional treaties, bodies and jurisdiction, HE the Foreign Minister noted.

He said that offi cials from the blockading countries were not merely criticising Qatar’s pol-icies — something “we have always welcomed” but they were calling for a regime change in Qatar, a coup, and inciting hate and violence.

In a speech he delivered at the British Royal Institute of International Aff airs, Chatham House, the minister said that offi cials from the besieged countries were not only criticising Qa-tar’s policies but also demand a change of regime in Qatar, by a coup, inciting hatred and violence.

He said: “I am sure most of you are following the latest developments, and know that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have imposed a political, economic and social blockade against our country.

“Some of the audience here who follow Arabic media outlets would have noticed the double narrative that the blockading coun-tries have been using; one for Western audi-ences, and one for their own people.”

The Foreign Minister added that the one for their own people comes as they failed to justi-fy their unjust measures against a neighbour-ing country in the holy month of Ramadan.

“As you know sympathy with Qatar is now criminalised in some of these countries; an indicator of how unpopular this escalation has been in the countries that caused it,” he noted.

“What distinguishes Qatar in the region is not its wealth nor its natural resources, nor is it in its high rise buildings. It is the fact that development is at the core of both its domes-tic and foreign policy.

“Today, Qatar has a distinct economic sit-uation and the highest level of transparency and most importantly, the highest level of security and stability in the Middle East and North Africa region.

“Qatar ranks fi rst in the world in most ef-fi cient government, according to the world economic forum. Regionally, Qatar ranks fi rst in countering administrative corruption and the adoption of judicial procedures to protect the rule of law. In regards to human potential, Qatar also ranks fi rst.”

He added that this development emanates from the principles of good governance, as Qatar

ranks fi rst in the world in terms of confi dence in political decision making and second in the level of effi ciency of the legislative system.

Qatari women have been partners in this development, with their participation in the labour force and access to education reaching unprecedented heights.

Qatar today is home to the highest pro-portion of employed women in the GCC and women outnumber men in university educa-tion, HE the Minister said.

HE the Foreign Minister further said that this development was witnessed also through freedom of worship in Qatar, with donations from His Highness the Father Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, towards the con-struction of the largest church in the GCC.

HE the Minister noted that media broad-casters hosted by Qatar have completely transformed the Arab world, with the Al Jazeera network giving air time, without prejudice, to social and cultural topics, as well as political movements whether leftist, liberal or Islamist which were otherwise sti-fl ed across the region.

“The need for a free, non-partisan media which addressed the concerns of Arab citi-zens was badly felt, and Qatar’s willingness to host an institution such as Al Jazeera un-doubtedly endeared the country to the wider Arab public,” HE the Foreign Minister said.

He added that Qatar’s media policies were warmly received by the Arab public as well as in the United States and in Europe.

“In contrast, they created resentment among the forces which had previously been able to control the fl ow of information throughout the Middle East. This resent-ment intensifi ed following the popular revo-lutions known as the “Arab Spring” of 2011.

“Arab regimes, surprised by the scale of popular protest, chose to avoid accountabil-ity by blaming the media.

“Today, Qatar has one of the most highly educated population in the region, the high-est per capita GDP in the world; a thriving, diversifi ed economy; some of the fi nest edu-cational institutions in the Middle East, if not the world — and, of course, a World Cup to look forward to in 2022.

“Above all, and unlike many states in the Mid-dle East, Qatar was not built on oppression, fear, and censorship. And through it all, we have con-

tinued to chart our own course, and take an in-dependent view on global and regional events.”

His Excellency also touched on some recent events, saying: “Beginning in April, Qatar was subjected to a carefully orchestrated and unprecedented smear campaign designed to misrepresent our policies and our positions on key issues aff ecting our region.

“The climax of that campaign came on May 24, when the website of our offi cial news agen-cy was hacked, and fake quotes, attributed to His Highness the Emir were posted on line.

“Some fake quotes with my name on them were also sent out on our Twitter feed.

“Once we sorted out the technical details, we sent urgent messages to all of the news organisations in the region, alerting them to the false statements that had been posted on our website.

“Almost all of them immediately issued corrections and alerted their readers and viewers that the fabricated “statements” were actually “fake news”, lies.

“Except, that is, for the news outlets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Bahrain and Egypt, which continued to report the fake news as fact. “It is worthy to note that Qatar news outlets were censored in these blockad-ing countries two hours before the fabricated news was published. Furthermore, offi cials from the blockading countries were not merely criticising Qatar’s policies — some-thing we have always welcomed — but they were calling for a regime change in Qatar, a coup, and inciting hate and violence.

“Though the hacking incident was quickly exposed, Saudi Arabia and the UAE used it as the pretext for launching an unprovoked, unwarrant-ed and unjustifi ed blockade of Qatar on June 5.

“For almost three weeks, after June 5, we have been asking for specifi c demands as our neighbours decided to put the cart before the horse. And only under international and es-pecially American pressure did they, on June 23, present us with a list of 13 “demands” that they said we had to meet by July 3.

“It was immediately apparent to us that they did not represent “reasonable and ac-tionable” grievances against Qatar, as the US Secretary of State had hoped, and they were not “measured and realistic “as the UK’s For-eign Secretary said they should be.

“Instead, Qatar was asked to (1) curtail free expression, (2) hand over individuals at risk of torture and arbitration, (3) reduce its defence capabilities, (4) go against international law, (5) outsource its foreign policy to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and (6) literally sign an open cheque to the blockading countries to pay unlimited amounts of money, described as compensation.”

“Reading between the lines, the blockad-ing countries were demanding that we must surrender our sovereignty as the price for ending the siege — something they knew Qa-tar would never do.”

HE the Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani speaking in London earlier this week.

Fahad bin Mohamed al-Attiya

No talk on issues that affect Qatar's sovereignty: FM - Gulf Times

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