In brief

GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978WEDNESDAY Vol. XXXX No. 11142

April 3, 2019Rajab 27, 1440 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

Qatar SME sector ‘moremature’ with expandedproduct off erings: offi cial

BUSINESS | Page 1 QATAR | Page 24

All lit up in blue for AutismAwareness Day

QP awards contracts for LNG expansion project

Qatar Petroleum has awarded a number of contracts related to the country’s LNG expansion

project designed to enhance its capa-bilities by increasing LNG production capacity from 77mn to 110mn tonnes a year by 2024.

The contracts were announced by HE the Minister of State for Energy Af-fairs Saad bin Sherida al-Kaabi, who is also President and CEO of QP, during the 19th International Conference & Exhibition on Liquefi ed Natural Gas in Shanghai (LNG2019).

Al-Kaabi announced awarding the fabrication and installation of the off -shore jackets to McDermott; and the contract for early site works required to prepare the site of the four new 8mn tonnes per year (mtpy) LNG mega-

trains in Ras Laff an Industrial City to a joint venture between Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) and Tey-seer Trading and Contracting Company.

In his speech, al-Kaabi said: “We are in the tendering phase for eight rigs for the development drilling. The Front End Engineering and Design of the Onshore Facilities with Chiyoda will be completed in the next few days. The main Invitations to Tenders for the Engineering, Procurement and Con-struction of the Onshore Facilities will be issued before the end of this month.”

“In a few weeks, qualifi ed ship yards will be invited to participate in a ten-der for the provision of LNG ship con-struction slots for the LNG shipping fl eet required for the LNG expansion project,” he added. To Page 7

Blockade a turning point for region’s geopolitics:FM

Siege will serve no purpose Talks the only way forward

QNADoha

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdul-

rahman al-Thani said the unjust block-ade imposed on Qatar has constituted a turning point for the geopolitical situ-ation in the entire region, stressing that the only way forward is the negotiation table.

HE the Minister said this will only happen when these (blockading) coun-tries realise that the blockade will not be the way to achieve their goals, or to remove their fears, regardless of their defi nition.

In an open conversation hosted by Georgetown University yesterday on ‘the priorities of Qatar’s foreign and economic policies, and the future of Qatari relations with the countries of the world’, HE the Foreign Minister addressed the successful strategies adopted by Qatar to ensure national security and alleviate the human suf-fering of the blockade. He said Qatar would not have been able to face and overcome the challenges without the internal support from citizens and

residents, adding that the state appre-ciates the valuable contributions of its diverse society and the role it continues to play in the future development of the country.

HE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs said he was proud of Georgetown University in Qatar, which has graduated more than 440 graduates so far, including 12 graduates working for the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs, who are part of the team that worked during the blockade. HE the Minister praised the diversity of Georgetown campus in Qatar, which currently houses more than 50 diff er-ent nationalities.

In response to the audience’s ques-tions about the future of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), HE Sheikh Mohamed underscored the impor-tance of the council as a framework for regional co-operation and coex-istence.

HE the Foreign Minister answered a number of questions regarding the fu-ture of the energy sector, seeking new security arrangements based on co-operation, and the impact of Georget-own’s international aff airs curriculum on building human capital in Qatar.

To Page 7

HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani and a number of ministers during the meeting with private sector representatives and businessmen.

PM assures private sectorof government supportQNADoha

HE the Prime Minister and Min-ister of Interior Sheikh Abdul-lah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-

Thani held an extensive meeting with a number of representatives of the pri-vate sector and businessmen yesterday evening.

Discussions during the meeting dealt with economic and development issues as well as the role of business-men in supporting the State’s eco-nomic growth.

HE the Prime Minister stressed the government’s keenness to implement the directives of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani on boosting economic growth in the country by providing the appro-priate environment for diversifi cation of the economy, attracting domestic and foreign investments and enhanc-ing partnership with the private sector to support development trends, in the light of Qatar National Vision 2030.

He highlighted the achievements, the initiatives launched to support the private sector and the government measures implemented to enhance the investment environment in gen-eral, in order to open new horizons for the Qatari private sector and attract more foreign investments in various sectors.

HE Sheikh Abdullah also discussed the initiatives launched by the state to attract investments and encourage entrepreneurs to contribute to inno-vative industrial sectors, as well as the nature of the incentives and facilities provided by the government in this regard.

He added that Qatar has been keen to create an attractive investment environment through modernising legislative and legal frameworks, fa-cilitating procedures for investors and enhancing confi dence in the business environment, in addition to providing advanced infrastructure as the basis for the continuation of growth and de-velopment in all sectors, and one of the requirements of comprehensive and

sustainable development.HE the Prime Minister stressed that

the promotion of development and sustainable economic growth, which the state aspires to, is a joint respon-sibility of the government and the pri-vate sector.

He also highlighted the importance of furthering the partnership between the two parties to achieve the eco-nomic aspirations and strategic goals of Qatar National Vision 2030.

For their part, the businessmen raised some issues that would help develop the private sector, drive eco-nomic growth and increase co-ordi-nation and co-operation between the public and private sectors.

HE the Prime Minister concluded by stressing the need to conduct such meetings periodically between the public and private sectors and form a technical committee from some of the entities concerned in the State and businessmen to follow up on the im-plementation of these decisions.

The meeting was attended by a number of ministers.

QATAR | Offi cial

Amir to meet Italianprime minister todayHis Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani will meet Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at the Amiri Diwan today. The Amir will discuss with him the relations of friendship and co-operation between the two countries and ways to develop them, besides discussing issues of common concern. Conte arrived in Doha yesterday evening on an off icial visit to Qatar. He and his accompanying delegation were welcomed upon arrival at the airport among others by HE the Minister of Commerce and Industry Ali bin Ahmed al-Kuwari. Page 4

AFRICA | Diplomacy

Amir sends greetingsto Senegal’s presidentHE the Minister of State Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kuwari represented Qatar at the inauguration ceremony of Senegalese President Macky Sall in Dakar yesterday. He met with President Sall and conveyed to him greetings of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, wishing him success.

HE Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani in open conversation hosted by Georgetown University yesterday.

Over 2,200 to attend IPU Doha meetBy Ayman AdlyStaff Reporter

The upcoming 140th Inter-Par-liamentary Union (IPU) Assem-bly in Doha will see the largest

participation of delegates in the his-tory of its meetings outside the main headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

The 140th IPU Assembly will be held in Doha from April 6-10.

HE the Advisory Council Speaker Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mah-moud yesterday said the number of con-fi rmed participants so far has reached 2,271 from more than 160 countries. Among them are 80 heads of diff erent world parliaments. He said this excellent participation refl ects the confi dence of the world’s parliament leaders in what

they described as the ‘smart diplomacy of Qatar’, under the wise leadership of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.

HE al-Mahmoud said Qatar is a peace-loving country and it wishes the good of all with the various in-ternational initiatives it has launched for education. Accordingly, the main theme of the Doha event ‘Parliaments as platforms to enhance education for peace, security and the rule of law’ was selected in co-ordination with IPU Chairman and its General Secretariat. It reflects the strong will of the country in promoting educa-tion and the rule of law as the main drivers of peace and development in the world.

Regarding the participation of the countries of the blockade (Saudi Ara-bia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt), he said invitations have been sent out but only Egypt has confi rmed its participation with an offi cial delegation. He reiter-

ated the standpoint of His Highness the Amir that Qatar is willing to take any initiative to resolve the GCC crisis, provided the country’s sovereignty and independence are respected.

The Federal Assembly of Russia (Duma) has confi rmed its participa-tion with the attendance of its chair-man, which refl ects the deep ties between Qatar and Russia, he said. Besides, there will be considerable participation from the parliaments of Latin America.

HE al-Mahmoud explained that the event will include both closed and open meetings with various groups, categorised according to the region such as the Latin American Group, the Asian Group, the Arab Group, the Afri-can and European Group, among other interrelated groups. To Page 7

HE the Speaker of the Advisory Council Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud addressing a press conference in Doha yesterday.

QATAR

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 20192

Qatar takes part in GCC panel meeting

Foreign ministryholds workshop

Qatar participated in the 19th meeting of the ministerial committee on follow-up to the implementation of resolutions concerning the joint action of the GCC, held yesterday in Muscat. The delegation of the State of Qatar participating in the meeting, is headed by HE Secretary-General of the Cabinet Hamad bin Ahmed al-Mohannadi.

The Human Rights Department of the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs organised a workshop entitled ‘Qatar’s reporting obligations under its accession to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”. The workshop was held in co-operation with the United Nations Human Rights Training and Documentation Centre for South-West Asia and the Arab Region in Doha.

Mr. Giuseppe ConteHis Excellency the Prime Minister of Italy

and his accompanying Delegation.

We also extend Greetings to the Italian Embassy Doha

at Al Fardan Tower, West Bay.

Hearty Welcome to the State of Qatar

HE the Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi met a delegation from Oman headed by the Acting Undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry for Diplomatic Aff airs, Dr Mohamed bin Awadh al-Hassan, in Doha yesterday. During the meeting, they discussed bilateral relations between the two countries and means of enhancing them and promoting the prospects for mutual co-operation, in addition to matters of common concern.

Qatar-Oman bilateral ties reviewed

Ashghal signs MoU with British instituteQNADoha

The Public Works Author-ity Ashghal has signed a Memorandum of Under-

standing with the Chartered In-stitute of Building (CIOB).

This agreement aims to achieve one of Ashghal’s key corporate objectives, which is to develop the capabilities of its employees, through utilising the services of CIOB towards the ongoing career development of Ashghal employees in the fi eld of construction, engineering and asset management.

The MoU aims to enhance mu-tual co-operation, and benefi t from the resources of both enti-ties by sharing experiences in ed-ucation, training and promotion. This is in addition to focusing on the importance of managing infrastructure projects with the highest professional effi ciency.

The MoU is designed to en-able the Public Works Authority and the Chartered Institute of Building to collaborate for the organisation of events such as

conferences, forums, seminars, publications and educational materials, as well as awareness-raising activities on sustainabil-ity in the built environment.

Infrastructure Aff airs Director at Ashghal Engineer Mohamed Masoud al-Marri said that Ash-ghal is keen on strengthening the co-operation and partner-ship with all professional insti-tutions, both local and inter-national, to implement further capacity building programmes and competencies to enhance

human resources and employee potentials.

He added that he was pleased to sign a memorandum of under-standing with the Chartered In-stitute of Building to enhance the mutual co-operation between the two parties in many fi elds of edu-cation, and joint research projects which contribute to raising the ef-fi ciency of workers in implement-ing high quality projects imple-mented by the authority.

“We are proud to work closely with the Public Works Authority

to promote diverse educational programmes that support their mission and vision,” said Presi-dent of the CIOB Chris Soff e.

He pointed out that the mem-orandum promotes the devel-opment of staff and raises their competencies through special-ised training courses.

The Chartered Institute of Building is a UK-based world-wide professional body that rep-resents construction and prop-erty professionals who work within the built environment.

Off icials of Ashghal, Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) and other dignitaries at the signing ceremony.

Scientists discuss Gulf marine

environment at QU conference

QNADoha

A number of scientists and researchers at Qatar University are discuss-

ing the marine environment in the Gulf region, the threats to endangered marine species and ways to protect and preserve this environment in the light of sus-tainable development plans.

The conference brings together researchers from universities, in-stitutions and companies within Qatar, as well as researchers from Oman, Kuwait, Iran, Britain, Amer-ica and Canada. The conference is organised by the Environmental Science Centre at Qatar University with the support of Qatar National Research Fund, ExxonMobil Re-search Qatar and Total.

The conference aims at shed-ding light on the important ma-rine biomes that characterise

the marine environment in the Arabian Gulf, as well as the risks they face as a result of the human activities resulting from urban development in the region, as well as the exploration of oil re-sources in the Gulf waters.

The conference also seeks to study the extreme climatic con-ditions of high temperatures, low rainfall and sand and dust storms in the region in recent decades, which have aff ected many marine species such as coral reefs, sea-grass, turtles and seabirds, as well as marine micro-organisms that represent the cornerstone of the biological system.

Participants in the three-day research conference will focus on studying the components of the marine environment in the Gulf, the biological and environ-mental specifi cations of locally threatened marine species and the current major threats to local marine biodiversity.

Awqaf ministry organises 17 convoys in April

The Ministry of Endow-ments (Awqaf) and Is-lamic Aff airs yesterday

launched its fi rst religion convoy for April, as part of a programme run by the Religious Calls and Guidance Department. This month will have 17 convoys, four days a week in the evening.

The programme includes the

organisation of religious lec-tures and the distribution of re-ligious leafl ets explaining what the Muslim needs in his daily worship practices. The convoys coincide with the preparation of the programmes for the holy month of Ramadan, when the convoys will address varied and important issues. - QNA The faithful attending a religious lecture in a mosque.

3Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 2019

QFFD workshop shines

light on humanitarian crisesQNADoha

The Qatar Fund for De-velopment (QFFD) yesterday concluded

a two-day knowledge-ex-change workshop in Doha, which focused on develop-ing innovative solutions to address humanitarian crises, and exchange of knowledge and experience in this area.

The Emergency Response Learning Workshop was co-designed by QFFD and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and was at-tended by over 30 repre-sentatives from a selection of charities, educational institutions, and interna-tional organisations based in Doha, including Qatar Charity, Qatar Red Crescent Society, Education Above All; Silatech, Regulatory Authority for Charitable Activities, Ministry of For-eign Aff airs, and other in-ternational institutions.

Offi cials and experts from

several local and interna-tional organisations shared their views on the strategic and programmatic aspects of the humanitarian aid sec-tor, as well as operational experiences from the fi eld and the challenges of al-locating resources between strategic needs and un-planned crises.

Innovation within a hu-manitarian context was the core theme of the workshop, and each organisation pre-sented case studies of suc-cessful implementation of innovation and highlighted areas of existing need. The workshop featured a focus on digital fi nancial services to help empower poor com-munities, as well as innova-tions in water, sanitation, and health programmes.

The Deputy Director General for Development Projects at the Qatar Fund For Development Misfer al-Shahwani said: “Through its Government institutions and NGOs, the State of Qa-tar is a key contributor to

humanitarian work across various geographies, and actively supports popula-tions facing wars, confl icts or natural disasters through cash and in-kind contribu-tions.

“The Qatar Fund For De-velopment seeks to enhance its emergency response capabilities by leveraging innovative humanitarian mechanism and integrat-ing the global humanitar-ian system. This workshop is an excellent opportunity to share experiences and learn-ings in the humanitarian fi eld between Qatari NGOs and institutions, and interna-tional organisations, to share experiences and learn from each other’s experiences, thereby contributing to the enhancement of all our ca-pabilities and enhancing our ability to achieve our mis-sion and noble humanitarian goals”.

Dr Valerie Nkamgang Bemo, who leads the Gates Foundations global human-itarian programme, com-

mented: “Organisations from Qatar have made valu-able contributions to several global health and develop-ment initiatives that focus on improving the quality of life for millions of people around the world, espe-cially in the areas of greatest need. Today’s emergency response learning workshop has been a great way to share strategic and program-matic views within the hu-manitarian system, identify promising areas that could benefi t from innovation, and develop a framework for working together to advance our shared goals.”

This emergency learning workshop is part of an on-going commitment by the Gates Foundation to collab-orate with regional partners to address the humanitar-ian and refugee crises in the world. The foundation is fo-cusing on investing in inno-vative programmes with the potential to catalyse positive change for communities af-fected by displacement.

The Emergency Response Learning Workshop was co-designed by QFFD and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

QATAR

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 20194

Italian premier to meet Amir todayThe Prime Minister of

Italy, Giuseppe Conte, who is on an offi cial

visit to Doha, will meet at the Amiri Diwan today His High-ness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, HE the Prime Minister Sheikh Ab-dullah bin Nasser bin Kha-lifa al-Thani, HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mo-hammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and other members of the government and offi cials.

In a statement, the Italian embassy announced that af-ter the institutional meetings, the prime minister will visit the recently-opened National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ) where he will be welcomed by Qatar Museums acting CEO Dr Ahmad Musa al-Namla, and NMoQ director Sheikha Amna bint Abdulaziz bin Jas-sim al-Thani.

During his visit in Doha, the Italian prime minister will also visit the new DECC Metro Station, built by the Italian company Salini Impregilo along with other Italian enter-prises, including Italiana Cos-truzioni and iGuzzini.

On the occasion of offi cial visit, Conte will inaugurate the new premises of the Italian embassy, located at Alfardan Offi ce Tower, where he will greet the personnel of the em-bassy, representatives of the main Italian companies based in Qatar and the Italian mili-tary personnel in service at Al Udeid Air base.

Thanks to the sponsorship of leading Italian design com-panies the new offi ce of the embassy is intended to be a

permanent showcase of ‘Made in Italy’ products and Italian contemporary art.

In addition, thanks to an agreement with a Qatari com-pany, the embassy of Italy regularly recycles wastepa-per to enhance responsible behaviour in the workplace and implement environmen-tally-friendly procedures in daily activities. The embassy of Italy in Qatar is part of the “green” network of Ital-ian embassies and consulates around the world.

During the opening cer-emony at the embassy of Italy, Dr Alessandro Masi, the secre-tary-general of Società Dante Alighieri - an Italian non-profi t organisation whose goal is to foster the diff usion of the Italian culture and language abroad - will announce, in the presence of Prime Minister Conte, the creation in Qatar of a local committee formed by Italian citizens based in Doha to promote cultural and learn-ing activities.

At the end of his visit to Doha, Conte will go to LuLu Hypermarket in Al Messila, where he will offi cially open the fi rst permanent corner of 100% Italian products by Coldiretti, the main in-stitutional agricultural or-ganisation comprising a large number of associates in Italy and Europe. Thanks to an agreement between LuLu and Coldiretti, 10 more 100% Italian products cor-ners will open in Qatar in all LuLu hypermarkets and in a total of 150 LuLu out-lets across the world, the statement added.

Occupational Safety and Health Conference heldLaunching of Occupational

Safety and Health Con-ference for the month of

March was held yesterday under the title “Working together for occupational safety and health”.

The conference was organised under the patronage of the Min-istry of Public Health (MoPH), and in co-operation with the Ministry of Administrative De-velopment, Labour and Social Aff airs in addition to the sup-port of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The events pertain to the fi eld of occupational health and safety in both governmental and private sectors.

HE the Assistant Minister of Health Aff airs at MoPH, Dr Saleh al-Marri, said that Qatar pays a great attention to employee’s health and safety.

He noted that “healthy and safe employees” have been cho-sen to be one of the seven pri-ority population groups in the National Health Strategy 2018-2022, to develop a better under-standing of occupational health in Qatar and promote healthy lifestyles for employees.

Dr al-Marri stressed the im-portance of acting in a proactive manner to maintain employees’ health at work and delivering the necessary services for employees to maintain their physical and psychological wellness.

He valued the great eff orts on the establishment of a working group which involves key stake-

Off icials at the Occupational Safety and Health Conference.

holders in order to unite their eff orts to improve occupational health and safety in Qatar as well as to take a step forward in im-plementing the plans of the Na-tional Health Strategy related to employees and build health and safety education in workplaces.

Mohammed Hassan al-Obaid-ly, assistant undersecretary at the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Aff airs, confi rmed that celebrat-ing the launching of ‘occupa-tional safety and health month’ and the related activities, con-tribute to raising the employees’ awareness in all sectors towards occupational safety and health and promote prevention of occu-pational accidents and diseases.

He pointed out that the MoPH, and the Ministry of Administra-tive Development, Labour and Social Aff airs have set goals for co-operation between them that include; setting a unifi ed data base for work-related traumatic injuries, fatalities, and occupa-

tional illnesses, in addition to policies, strategies and compre-hensive plans for occupational safety and health in order to re-duce work-related traumatic fatalities and accidents. These procedures will ensure that all institutions will comply with the rules and provisions stipulated in the laws and regulations which regulate occupational safety and health in Qatar.

Dr Asma al-Nuaimi, a Nation-al Leader in the National Health Strategy, made a presentation on the priority of “healthy and safe employees” in the National Health Strategy.

She highlighted the great ef-forts of the task forces to improve the health and safety of employ-ees, some local and international indicators, and main fi ndings of the primary survey of occupa-tional safety and health.

She explained that the prior-ity of “healthy and safe employ-ees” is based on seven initiatives in the National Health Strategy.

The key members will lead each of these initiatives considering the most important elements of health and safety such as data, regulations, awareness of the workforce and tools of workers. She mentioned that they will pay special attention to the most vul-nerable workers like craftsmen.

Houtan Homayounpour, di-rector, ILO offi ce in Qatar, said, “The ILO is happy to support the joint eff orts of the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Aff airs, the Ministry of Public Health, and other national stakeholders to develop a national policy on OSH with the aim to prevent occupa-tional accidents and injuries. It is not only the adoption of a policy that is important, but also the process of its formulation, and its subsequent implementation and periodic review. This collab-oration is the engine driving for-ward eff orts to create a safe and healthy working environment for all workers across Qatar.”

During the conference, a panel discussion took place under the title (A joint eff ort between vari-ous sectors to enhance occupa-tional health and safety in Qatar “healthy and safe employees”) with the participation of con-sultative members from the Na-tional Health Strategy’s priority population group “Healthy and Safe Employees,” from related entities.

The panel discussed several key topics including priority planning “Healthy and Safe em-ployees” and 2022 FIFA World Cup, prevention and well-being, occupational health and safety management system/ policy and guidelines, integrated care of skilled workers and craft work-ers, in addition to engaging em-ployers and their commitment, and furthering the knowledge and behaviour of the workforce.

The celebration of the Oc-cupational Safety and Health month will continue throughout the month. (QNA)

Live show, public events to mark DHFC anniversary celebrations

Doha Festival City (DHFC) is all set to celebrate its second anniversary this Friday with a series of public

activities starting with a live performance by Iraqi singer Rahma Riyad at 7.30pm, followed by a giant cake, confetti cannons, cupcakes for shoppers and giveaways.

The live performance will take place at the Centre Court, free of charge, for eve-ryone to enjoy the performance by Rah-ma, who is famous for her hit song Waed Menni. She will sing a number of her other most-loved songs as well.

In a press statement, DHFC said its management and visitors will mark the celebration with an anniversary cake-cutting, accompanied by glittery confetti showers and a distribution of bespoke cupcakes and goodie bags. A photo booth will also be set up for visi-tors to take pictures and participate in the experience.

The excitement will continue with live parades throughout this month, with the fi rst taking place on April 12 and 13, and the next on April 19 and 20, at 3.30pm, 6.30pm, and 8pm, for the mall’s visitors to enjoy.

“I am very excited to be part of the Doha Festival City celebration. I am looking for-ward to meeting my fans and celebrating the mall’s second-year anniversary. It is defi nitely the best mall in Qatar with the best range of shops,” said Rahma.

“It’s been an amazing two years’ jour-ney. This anniversary celebration is to mark the day and celebrate with the peo-ple of Qatar for being their preferred shop-ping, dining and entertainment mall. We thank them for their support and look for-ward to welcoming everyone to join us this Friday, April 5, at 7.30pm,” said May Mar-zooq, senior marketing manager – Doha Festival City.

Some lanes of Corniche Street, Al Rumaila Area to be closed for one month

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced closure of some lanes of Al Corniche Street and Al Rumaila Area from tomorrow for one month.

The closure is aimed at allowing works of connecting the new Treated Sewage Effl uent line with the old one. The connecting works are initiated as part of the improvement works for roundabouts and junctions in various areas of Greater Doha, a statement by Ashghal said.

A 150m stretch will be closed from one of the lanes that are dedicated for the left turn at the Qatar National Theatre Intersection heading from Al Corniche Street to Moham-med Bin Thani Street.

A 300m stretch of the left lane of Al Bidda Street (Majliss Al Taawon Street) will be also closed. This lane is located after Wadi Al Sail Intersection towards Al Diwan Al Amiri.

In addition to these, 200m of one of the lanes turning left at Wadi Al Sail Intersection from Mohammed Bin Thani Street to Al Bidda Street will be also closed.

Ashghal will install road signs advising motorists of the closure. Ashghal has requested all road users to abide by the speed limit of 50 km/hour and follow the road signs in order to ensure safety.

Palestinian historian delivers talk at QNLRenowned Palestinian historian,

Suhad Kulaibo, yesterday deliv-ered an insightful lecture at Qatar

National Library (QNL), highlighting the history of the ancient city of Jerusalem.

The lecture off ered a panoramic his-torical overview of the emergence of the city, and its foundation over 7,000 years ago by tribes migrating from the Arabian Peninsula.

Mohamed Shaaban, an attendee at the lecture, said: “It was a really informative lecture and the author shared interesting information about the history of Jerusalem. It is always refreshing to gain new information about the region and especially this city. I often attend events at the Library and have borrowed several books about the history of the region.”

The Palestinian historian stated that libraries are very important because they provide access to books and raise aware-ness about important historical causes.

Suhad Kulaibo speaking at QNL.

Thundershowers forecast in some areas

The rainy spell continues in the country as the Met department has

said thundershowers are ex-pected in some places today.

Thundery rain has also been forecast in some off shore areas today along with strong winds and high seas.

Doha and other parts of the country experienced thun-derstorms since last evening, marked by spells of lightning and rain, prompting the au-thorities concerned to issue safety tips to be followed dur-ing rainy weather.

People should avoid going to sea during the warning pe-riod, the advisory said. They should also stay away from water pools, electrical con-nections and elevated places for protection from lightning. “Make sure to know about ex-pected weather conditions in order to take necessary pre-cautions,” the Met depart-ment said. “Reduce your car speed and avoid using mobile phones while driving.”

The Met department tweet-ed around 10.30pm yesterday that scattered thunderstorms continued to be detected across the country. “Please take extra care and avoid go-ing to sea as rain is expected to continue during the coming hours,” it said.

People posted images and videos of the rain - of vary-

ing intensity - on social media channels.

The showers are in line with the earlier forecast by the department that unsettled weather conditions are ex-pected in the country until the weekend due to the deepening of a low-pressure system over the region.

Today’s detailed forecast says the wind speed may go up to 25 knots off shore during thundershowers, with the sea level rising to 8ft.

It will be cloudy in these places today and there is a chance of scattered rain that may become thundery at times. This will be followed by partly cloudy conditions later.

Inshore, too, it will be cloudy today and there is a possibility of rain in some places – which may turn thundery occasionally.

The minimum temperature today is expected to be 20C in Al Khor, Ruwais, Dukhan and Abu Samra, and 21C in Doha, Wakrah and Mesaieed, while the maximum will range from 25C in Ruwais to 29C in Abu Samra, with Doha expected to see a high of 28C.

Yesterday, the minimum temperature was 20C in Shee-haniya, Dukhan, Abu Samra and other places, 21C in Wak-rah, Abu Hamour, Mesaieed, Qatar University area and others, and 22C in Doha.

“I am very proud and thankful to Qa-tar National Library for inviting me to have this lecture here,” she said.

The speaker described the QNL as the best place to deliver lectures and have their thoughts listened to.

“I am proud to see that Qatar has built the best library in the Arab world,” she added.

BMW Z4 Roadster 2018 model recalledThe Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in collaboration with Alfardan Automobiles, has announced the recall of BMW Z4 Roadster model of 2018 over the incorrect installation of the accelerator pedal wiring.The recall campaign comes within the framework of the ministry’s continuous eff orts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs.The ministry said that it will coordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works and will

communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out.The ministry urges all customers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department, which processes complaints, inquires and suggestions through the following channels: Call centre: 16001, e-mail: info@moci.gov.qa, Twitter: @MOCIQATAR, Instagram: MOCIQATAR, Ministry of Commerce and Industry mobile app for android and IOS: MOCIQATAR

QATAR5

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Sidra Medicine to host World Congress of Paediatric Surgery

Sidra Medicine will host the sixth World Con-gress of Paediatric Sur-

gery from November 1-3 with about 1,000 delegates, at the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC).

The congress is organised by the World Federation of Associations of Paediatric Surgeons (WOFAPs). This is the fi rst “World Congress” of WOFAPs in the Middle East.

The event aims to cover the most cutting edge advances in paediatric surgical care in addition to current challenges impeding optimal surgical care for children in high and low income countries.

WOFAPs Qatar will be un-der the leadership of a group of internationally-renowned Sidra Medicine surgeons. These include Prof David Si-galet, the chair of patient services and the current presi-dent of WOFAPs; Dr Mansour Ali, chair of paediatric surgery and the Middle East WOFAPs representative; and Dr Pippi Salle, chief of urology and the chair of urology for the congress.

Prof Sigalet said, “This is our opportunity to show-case Qatar’s commitment to hosting international medi-

cal events aimed at improving the care of children around the world. Together with my col-leagues and peers from around the world, we are looking for-ward to welcoming our dele-gates to Doha. The conference theme will focus on “Collabo-ration, Education and Train-ing: Moving beyond borders to improve the surgical care of children.”

WOFAPs 2019 will include a comprehensive discussion of the ‘classical’ challenges in general and urological pae-diatric surgery. Newsworthy research, surgical techniques and challenges facing the care of children in high and low income countries will frame each interactive learning session.

In addition to the inter-national surgical expertise who will be leading ses-sions, WOFAPs 2019 expects to showcase more than 400 presentations by participants, including oral, video and post-er walks. Selected abstracts will be eligible for publication in a special volume of Paedi-atric Surgery International. A number of pre and post event workshops will also be held in the days leading up to and after the congress.

Dr Mansour Ali, Prof David Sigalet and Dr Pippi Salle to lead WOFAPs in Qatar.

HMC hospitals to deliver medical reports by postPatients requesting cop-

ies of their medical report from Rumailah Hospital,

Heart Hospital, and the National Center for Cancer Care and Re-search (NCCCR) can get them delivered to their doorsteps by Qatar Post for a fee of QR50, it was announced yesterday.

Following the successful pi-lot of the delivery programme at Hamad General Hospital earlier this year, four Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), hospitals will now provide patients the option to use the service, the

fi rst in a set of premium services, HMC plans to off er to patients.

“Under the new service, pa-tients have to visit the hospital once – to request their report – and then HMC and Qatar Post take care of the rest,” said Nasser al-Naimi, deputy chief of quali-ty, Center for Patient Experience and Staff Engagement, HMC.

In 2018, HMC’s Nesma’ak teams responded to more than 46,000 inquiries about pa-tient medical reports. Al-Naimi said the new service simpli-fi es the process of obtaining

medical reports, making it more convenient for patients.

“Currently, obtaining medi-cal reports requires a patient, or their representative, to visit one of our hospitals on multiple oc-casions. The collaboration with Qatar Post removes this extra step,” said al-Naimi.

Under the new system, patients requesting their medical report delivered by Qatar Post, will be asked to provide their Qatar ID number, a mobile phone number, and a delivery address. They will also be asked to choose a delivery

time. Delivery times will vary de-pending on the complexity of the report requested.

Al-Naimi explained that the day before the agreed deliv-ery date, a Qatar Post customer service representative will call the patient to confi rm the de-livery time and location. Then on the agreed date and time, a Qatar Post representative will deliver the report and collect a delivery fee in cash. Al-Naimi said the new delivery system will be rolled out to other HMC hospitals in the coming months.

Nasser al-Naimi, deputy chief of quality, HMC.

QU organises annual health research forumQatar University’s (QU)

Health Cluster organised the “Fourth Annual QU

Health Research Symposium” at the Research Complex, bringing together QU students, research-ers and faculty in the fi eld of health.

The event engaged 150 partic-ipants from QU Health colleges: College of Medicine, College of Health Sciences and College of Pharmacy and the Biomedical Research Center.

External reviewers from Qa-tar Foundation (QF) and Hamad

Medical Corporation (HMC) also attended. A faculty development workshop called “Team Science” took place on the second day, where Professor of Medicine and Director of the Bone Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Dr Mone Zaidi, was a speaker.

Director of Research and Graduate Studies, Medical and Health Sciences Offi ce, Dr Feras al-Ali said of the symposium, “This forum is becoming the main platform for QU Health faculty, researchers and stu-

Senior representatives of QU attend the forum.

dents to showcase their science, networking and discuss research outcome in an informal way. The themes selected, metabolic syn-drome, infectious diseases, men-tal diseases and health education are aligned with QU Health pri-orities and strengths.”

The College of Health Sciences (CHS) dean and the director of the Biomedical Research Center, Prof Asma Althani spoke of CHS eff orts saying, “The College of Health Sciences has been vigor-ously contributing to various na-tional and international research activities. In 2018, the CHS pub-lished around 75 periodicals in

peer-reviewed journals. In this 4th Annual Research Symposium at QU-Health, the CHS contrib-uted with 41 posters and 10 oral presentations. We are commit-ted to delivering outstanding research outcomes that convey the maximum evolving benefi ts to the healthcare sector of Qatar.”

Dean of College of Pharmacy, Dr Mohamed Diab commented saying, “This is a great opportu-nity for both faculty and students to mingle and share their work with the other colleges. This col-laboration aligns with Qatar Uni-versity strategies in developing research outputs as well as im-

proving the quality of education, which also serves in improving the healthcare system in Qatar.”

Vice President for Medical and Health Sciences and dean of the College of Medicine, Dr Egon Toft said, “QU Health has since its inception a few years ago, developed good collaborative research within the wider range of healthcare. This is refl ected in the many high quality presenta-tions at today’s event. It is an op-portunity to get ideas evaluated and improved in discussion with professors from the wide variety of health care professions being educated at QU Health.”

QATAR

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 20196

Al-Mahmoud meets speaker of Zimbabwe

HE the Speaker of the Ad-visory Council Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-

Mahmoud met Jacob Francis Mu-denda, the Speaker of the National Assembly of Zimbabwe and Chair-person of the African Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, along with his accompanying delega-tion, currently visiting Qatar.

During the meeting, they dis-cussed bilateral relations between Qatar and Zimbabwe and means of supporting and developing them, especially in the parliamentary fi eld.

The meeting also reviewed the issues on the agenda of the 140th Meeting of the General assembly of the IPU which will begins its meetings in Doha on Saturday.

The meeting was attended by Mohamed bin Ali al-Hanzab, Member of the Advisory Council and the Chairman of the Qatari-African friendship group and the members of the group, and the General Secretary of the Advisory Council. – QNA

HE the Speaker of the Advisory Council Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud meeting the delegation headed by Jacob Francis Mudenda, the Speaker of the National Assembly of Zimbabwe.

HE the Speaker of the Advisory Council Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud met the ambassador of Turkey to Qatar Fikret Ozer yesterday. The meeting discussed the bilateral relations and ways of developing them in various fields, especially in the parliamentary field. Topics of common interest were also reviewed during the meeting.

Speaker meets Turkish ambassador

Ministry opens Desert

Garden in SheehaniyaQNADoha

The Ministry of Municipality and Envi-ronment opened yesterday the Desert Garden in the Al Sheehaniya area.

Director of Municipality of Al Sheehaniya, Jaber al-Jaber, stressed that the opening of the Desert Garden is part of the ministry’s eff orts to establish public gardens and parks with the aim of increasing green areas and recreation places to serve as an outlet for the people of the area.

In a press statement, al-Jaber said the

garden is distinctive and serves the Shee-haniya area; it is designed in the form of a desert tree, and it is also characterised by the presence of a number of wild trees and animals from the Qatari environment, and about 8 types of animals.

He explained that one of the goals of the garden is to introduce young people and school students to the Qatari identity and environment by presenting all the types of trees and animals of the desert environment of Qatar, pointing out that the municipality seeks to develop and serve the people in Al Sheehaniya and increase the green areas of gardens and parks in the area.

Off icials of Al Sheehaniya Municipality visiting the Desert Garden.

QRCS offi cials hold talks withDutch diplomatic delegationQNADoha

Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) offi -cials discussed with

a delegation from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Aff airs several issues related to hu-manitarian activities in the local, regional and Middle East areas, focusing on the most important countries benefi ting from the largest share of QRCS aid, and the huge expansion of the vol-ume of this aid to benefi t 13mn people during the past year.

QRCS Chief Executive Director Ibrahim Abdul-lah al-Maliki stated that QRCS worked in accord-ance with a set of rules and laws regulating charity and humanitarian action, un-der the supervision of Qa-tar’s Regulatory Authority for Charitable Activities (RACA).

“Being a member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is another strength and legal capacity that gets us well in place to reach out to disaster zones,” said al-Maliki.

He highlighted some challenges to humanitar-

ian action, particularly the bureaucratic procedures that delay humanitar-ian response. To overcome these challenges, al-Maliki explained, QRCS adopted modern technology and techniques, to ensure a smooth and balanced work-fl ow.

“Other ways to facilitate the work include operating under the umbrella of the Movement and the United Nations, associating with fellow National Societies and local partners, and es-tablishing foreign repre-sentation offi ces,” al-Maliki added.

Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) off icials with a delegation from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Aff airs.

QATAR7Gulf Times

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Al Ahli Hospital opens new clinic in WakrahBy Joseph Varghese Staff Reporter

Al Ahli Hospital has opened a new clinic, ‘Al Wakra Clinics and Urgent Care

Unit’, catering to the healthcare needs of the population in the southern region of the country.

The facility, located near the metro station at Wakrah, was opened yesterday by the chair-man of the hospital’s board, Sheikh Abdullah bin Thani bin Abdulla al-Thani, in the presence of other members of the board, dignitaries, special guests and other invitees.

Dr Abdul Azim Abdul Wahab Hussain, chief of medical staff at Al Ahli Hospital, said it was a major step of expansion of Al Ahli Hospital.

“This is a branch of Al Ahli Hospital in Al Wakrah. It serves about half a million people in the region. We have looked into the feasibility of such a clinic and found that the area needs such a facility,” said Dr Hussain.

“The new facility has clinics

in most specialities. Now, people of the region can avoid travelling to Al Ahli main hospital. We have most of the consultants here and if any patient needs further treatment, they will be referred to Al Ahli Hospital,” explained the chief of medical staff .

“In case of any emergency, the patients will be immediately re-ferred to Al Wakra Hospital. We also have the urgent care unit here which will look into such cases,” added the offi cial.

Dr Hussain described that the facility has clinics in several spe-

cialities such as dentistry, inter-nal medicine, surgery, ophthal-mology among others.

The facility also has about 200 staff including physicians, para-medical staff as well as other ad-ministrative staff .

“We might be able to see around 20 to 25 patients per clinic daily. To begin with, we will start working from 8am to 5pm from Saturday to Thurs-day. We will most probably, start round the clock services within six months,” added Dr Hussain.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Thani bin Abdulla al-Thani opens the facility along with other dignitaries and off icials. PICTURES: Shaji Kayamkulam

The new facility at Al Wakrah.

Intertec releases Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 7 in Qatar

Intertec Group has launched in Qatar Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 7 smartphone which

off ers a ‘fl agship-level experi-ence with a powerful 48MP rear camera and a gorgeous dual-tone gradient glass design’.

Redmi Note 7 continues the series’ tradition of featuring a large display and excellent bat-tery life and pushes smartphone photography to a new level in this price range, according to a statement.

Redmi Note 7 will be available from tomorrow, starting from QR749.

“We are very excited to bring this amazing smartphone to

Qatar with our local distribu-tor Intertec Group,” said Ron-nie Wang, general manager of Xiaomi’s Global Sales Depart-ment for the Middle East re-gion.

“Partnered with Xiaomi from 2016, we have been focusing on cultivating the trust and sat-isfaction of our customers,” added George Thomas, Inter-tec Group CFO and adviser to chairman.

Intertec’s division manager Asraf N K said: “The strong sales of Xiaomi smartphones in Qatar continue to be a key feature of Intertec’s marketing prowess, which facilitated the

rise in Xiaomi’s market share to an enviable 19% in just two years of its foray into Qatar.”

Xiaomi’s Middle East offi cials Morgan Wang (eco system man-ager), Richard Cheung (coun-try manager) and Ema Cheung (commercial manager) were also present.

Starting tomorrow, Redmi Note 7 will be available from Mi Store at Al Nasr Street and all mobile outlets in Qatar.

Redmi Note 7 will be available in Space Black, Neptune Blue, and Nebula Red.

It will retail at QR749 for 4GB+64GB, and QR 849 for 4GB+128GB.

Intertec and Xiaomi off icials at the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 launch event.

Qatar Technical High School pupils visit QNB

QNB Group organised a tour around its IT Division for Qatari students from Qatar Technical High School.

The students were briefed on the functions of the division and had the opportunity to engage with IT staff to further their knowledge of the de-partment and its scope of work.

QNB conducted sessions and organised a tour for the students to take a closer look at the data centre, servers and computer network. The group encour-ages school initiatives to understand QNB and its contribution to Qatar, and support young students in pursuing careers that will serve their country.

QNB said it is keen to “provide scholarships and employment opportunities” in line with Qatar Na-tional Vision 2030 and to contribute to the educa-tional sector and play an active role in the society.

QNB Group, which is the largest fi nancial insti-tution in the Middle East and Africa, has presence through its subsidiaries and associate companies extends in some 31 countries across three con-

tinents providing a comprehensive range of ad-vanced products and services.

QNB Group organised a tour around its IT Division for Qatari students from Qatar Technical High School.

Vodafone Qatar expands off erings, launches mobile satellite services

Vodafone Qatar is further expanding its portfolio of business services with the

launch of mobile satellite serv-ices that provides two-way voice and data communications to us-ers around the globe who are on the go or in remote locations.

Vodafone is the only telecom-munications operator in Qatar that off ers this service with an end-to-end solution including the provision of hand held satel-lite devices, accessories and the service’s operations.

“As part of our commitment to help our customers succeed in an increasingly connected world, we introduced mobile satellite services that ensure your busi-ness and employees are safe and able to operate in remote areas anywhere in the world wheth-er you are in the middle of the

desert or even fl ying and sailing.This is especially crucial dur-

ing the event of crisis manage-ment,” said Vodafone Qatar chief business offi cer, Mahmud Awad.

“Virtually all major industries can benefi t from mobile satellite services. For example oil and gas companies can ensure uninter-rupted access to their data, even during the mining or extracting process and media networks can be the fi rst to communicate and report headline news from all over the world,” Awad added.

Vodafone Qatar ... expansion

HEC Paris in Qatar workshop set for April 10

HEC Paris, is hosting a work-shop on ‘Maximise the ROI ( Return on Investment) on

your Executive Masters’. The session will be held on April

10 at HEC Paris in Qatar and will be led by HEC Paris affi liate professor, Philippe Gaud.

Through this workshop, Prof Gaud will share experiences and of-fer guidelines for professionals so that they can embrace this learning journey and convince the market that they are ready for that next level up.

Participants will walk away with guiding principles and concrete ac-tions aimed at off ering them a com-petitive advantage in taking their ca-reer forward.

“You are engaging in the Special-ised Master’s Degree. This is an im-portant decision and as you begin to embrace the investment you are making in yourself, questions un-doubtedly arise. How am I going to benefi t from this learning experi-

ence, how is it going to transform me and transform my career?” said Prof Gaud.

“The Specialised Master is de-signed to prepare professionals to face new challenges, but they will still have to work to identify how to maximise the value and turn them into their dream job after the pro-gramme. The workshop will also pro-vide participants with some hints on how to sell their Specialised Master to a new employer. I am sure partici-pants will be able to gain immensely by taking up this workshop and to ap-ply the learning in their professional endeavours,” he added.

The HEC Paris in Qatar Specialised Master consists of a core curriculum designed as a practical foundation for professionals and entrepreneurs looking to manage their own busi-ness unit or company in the future. This programme is led by world-class faculty in a part-time format to fi t in the professionals’ busy schedule.

Techno Q to focus on B2B services

Techno Q has announced that it is repositioning its business model to

only focus on Business-to-Business (B2B) services, ac-cording to a statement.

The change, concentrating on major projects in Qatar, has been aligned to contrib-ute towards His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Ha-mad al-Thani’s 2030 vision for sustainable development.

Techno Q managing direc-tor Zeyad al-Jaidah, said: “As many as 24 years in the busi-ness and we are one of the fastest growing system in-tegrators in the Middle East because of our innovation, dedication and sheer hard work of our management and

staff . We believe that it is our responsibility to contribute to the Qatar National Vi-sion 2030 and work towards achieving the four pillars of the Vision, namely economic, environment, social and hu-man development.”

Al-Jaidah stressed on the importance of embracing change and the ability to rise above challenges that help organisations become bigger and better than their compe-tition.

To celebrate this change in the strategy, Techno Q of-fers customers a very special promotion to enjoy one last shopping chance in its show-room at Barwa Commercial Avenue.

Shoppers can get unprec-edented discounts when they visit in Techno Q’s retail shop until May 2.

“At Techno Q, we believe in off ering everyone the very fi nest lighting and audio-visual equipment to fi t their homes or businesses.

We wish all visitors to fi nd special items for themselves, as this is a one-of-a-kind deal, which will conclude the fi nal stage of the strategic move.

From now on, we look for-ward to continue providing our pioneer and world-class System Integrating Services to the businesses of Qatar”, said Abdulla Alansari, execu-tive director of Techno Q.

Money Week Qatar imparts fi nancial know-how to kids

Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE), the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC), QNB and the Dutch embassy

have come together as part of Money Week Qatar 2019, a week-long cam-paign that is designed to promote fi -nancial education among school chil-dren.

The initiative comes as part of Glo-bal Money Week, a project that was originally launched by Queen Maxima of the Netherlands nine years ago, and has grown to become an annual global initiative that reaches 169 countries and has touched the lives of 32mn stu-dents.

The campaign aims to raise aware-

ness among school children of the importance of fi nancial education, inclusion and the principles of good fi nancial management.

The QFC’s corporate social respon-sibility (CSR) and social investment strategy ‘United for Good’ under-scores its long-term commitment to ethical, social and environmental re-sponsibilities and with that it places very high importance on youth and community development, with a spe-cial emphasis on encouraging fi nan-cial literacy within the local commu-nity, a QFC Authority spokesman said.

“It’s great to see how eager children and youth are to learn that money

matters. They are the next genera-tion of change makers. It is therefore so important to empower young peo-ple to be aware of the value of money, know how to spend money wisely, and realise they must save money for their future,” according to Bahia Tahzib-Lie, Netherlands ambassador to Qatar.

Salem al-Naimi, assistant general manager (QNB Public Relations), said the group is always keen to support such initiatives that raise awareness among children in Qatar about the importance of fi nancial education, fi nancial inclusion and the principles of good fi nancial management that

will help them develop their fi nancial future.

“As part of our CSR programme, Mubadarah, we’re committed to rais-ing the fi nancial literacy of young peo-ple in Qatar and making them aware of the many career choices in the fi nance sector,” said Michael G Ryan, chief ex-ecutive, QFC Regulatory Authority.

Hussein al-Abdulla, Director of Marketing and Communications, QSE, said fi nancial education has been on QSE’s agenda since long time and it has its own educational, training and awareness activities in line with the human and economic pillars of Qatar National Vision 2030. Children during Global Money Week Qatar 2019.

Blockade a turning point: FMFrom Page 1

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs spoke of his role as Chairman of Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD), as an institution dedi-cated to improving the lives of people and communities around the world, saying that in 2018, QFFD provided assistance to 71 countries and provided grants of up to $585mn, 30% of which was earmarked for education.

HE the Foreign Minister

opined that achieving stability in the future necessitates invest-ing in tools that enable people to achieve it.

Dean of Georgetown Univer-sity in Washington Dr Robert Groves and Dean of Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service Dr Joel Hellman as well as a large number of Georgetown Univer-sity in Qatar students, faculty and staff members and members of the diplomatic corps attended the discussion.

Commenting on the impor-

tance of the visit of HE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs to the university, Dean of Georgetown University in Qatar Dr Ahmad Dallal said with regard to the international rela-tions students, this was a valuable opportunity for direct dialogue with a distinguished fi gure in the highest decision-making circles of Qatar’s foreign policy and for a direct understanding of the power of diplomacy and its importance in building international multilat-eral relations in today’s world.

QP awards contractsFrom Page 1

HE al-Kaabi said: “The State of Qatar is partnering with many countries around the world to ensure the secu-rity of their energy supplies and the sustainability of their economic growth.

“As the largest LNG pro-ducer we are also expanding our capacity in many parts of the world. This includes adding 16mn tpy from our Golden Pass LNG export project in the United States with our long-term strategic partner ExxonMobil. This project is under construc-tion and should be in op-eration by 2024. It is worth noting that Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil have estab-lished Ocean LNG, which is an international joint venture marketing company that will be responsible for marketing all Golden pass LNG produc-tion.”

Al-Kaabi was speaking at the conference’s opening session on the global LNG outlook, alongside Exxon-Mobil Corporation chairman & CEO Darren Woods, and Chevron Corporation chair-man & CEO Mike Wirth.

The minister stressed that natural gas has the “econom-ic and environmental quali-ties” to make it the energy source of the future, which is a key factor in Qatar Petro-leum’s pushing ahead with its massive LNG expansion project.

“The impact of energy on humankind over the past century is unmeasurable. It has powered homes and in-dustrial plants, and acceler-ated production and innova-tion. In today’s very complex world, we need stable, reli-able, clean and aff ordable sources of energy to keep that momentum. We also need a clean source of reliable ener-gy. Natural gas is that source,” he said.

Over 2,200 delegates to attend IPU meetFrom Page 1

Besides the main agenda and schedule of the assembly, the suggested topics will be dis-cussed by these groups. For instance, the Arab Group will discuss the Palestinian issue, Je-rusalem as the capital of the Pal-estinian State, the issue of the Golan Heights, and other press-ing issues for the Arab world in-

cluding the protection of human rights in diff erent areas such as Yemen and Libya. After the dis-cussion of these issues, a report, comprising the outcomes, will be sent to the United Nations.

HE the Speaker said the main target of IPU is to maintain hu-man dignity and protect hu-man rights, and the event be-ing held in Qatar refl ects the strong position of Qatar in this

area and the eff orts exerted by the country to promote educa-tion, peace and development in diff erent parts of the world. For instance, Qatar has recently donated $20mn to the African Union to help African refugees in Libya go back to their coun-tries and create jobs and better opportunities for them there, so they can settle in better liv-ing conditions.

HE Saad Sherida al-Kaabi speaking at the 19th International Conference & Exhibition on Liquefied Natural Gas in Shanghai (LNG2019) .

REGION/ARAB WORLD

Gulf TimesWednesday, April 3, 20198

Saudi-UAE coalition actively recruits Yemeni child soldiersAl Jazeera has obtained

exclusive footage that proves the presence of

child soldiers in the recruitment camps of the Saudi-UAE-led co-alition fi ghting in Yemen.

The children, desperately poor, are being recruited to fi ght along the Saudi border to de-fend it from the Houthis, a rebel group that overran the capi-tal, Sanaa, and large swathes of Yemen’s northwest in 2014.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) formed a coalition to overthrow the Houthis — plunging Yemen into a ruinous war — supported by forces loyal to the country’s internationally recognised gov-ernment.

The confl ict has created the world’s worst humanitarian cri-sis, pushing Yemen to the brink of famine and leaving about 80% of its population — 24mn people — in need of humanitarian as-sistance.

However, many children face

an even worse reality: being re-cruited by either warring side to fi ght in the confl ict.

According to the United Na-tions, two-thirds of the child soldiers in Yemen fi ght for the Houthis. The others fi ght for the Saudi-UAE-led coalition.

Although Yemen and Saudi Arabia signed the international protocol banning involvement of children in armed confl ict in 2007 and 2011, respectively, at the end of 2018, Saudi Arabia was accused of recruiting Su-danese children from Darfur to fi ght on its behalf in Yemen.

Today, Yemeni children are being recruited using local traf-fi cking networks to defend the Saudi border.

Bereaved families interviewed by Al Jazeera questioned why the coalition would need to recruit children to fi ght in its war.

Al Jazeera investigated these claims.

PAYCHEQUE PROMISES In the southern city of Taiz,

Al Jazeera spoke to 16-year-old Ahmad al-Naqib and his fam-ily at the end of 2018, and the

family of Mohamed Ali Hameed, 15, in February 2019. Both boys left their home, chasing prom-ises of a regular paycheck and non-combatant roles. Ahmad was able to fl ee and tell us his story, but Mohamed never made it home after he was recruited, leaving his father to tell his story.

“He had graduated from high school and started working, but before we knew it they had re-cruited him.

He insisted on going to Al-Bu-qa’,” Mohamed’s father, Ali, told Al Jazeera in an interview in De-cember. “It has been fi ve months since he left. We have not heard anything since; we still don’t know where he is,” he added.

Both teenagers, who came from a poor background, em-barked last year on separate and arduous journeys from their vil-lages near Taiz, in the south of Yemen, towards the Saudi bor-der crossing of Al-Wade’a in the north.

According to Ahmad, Al-Bu-qa’ in Yemen — close to the Saudi border — where Yemeni children are being trained to fi ght, it is

also an area that has seen fre-quent fi ghting between Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coali-tion.

In order to avoid exposure to the Houthis, buses carrying people to Al-Buqa’ were going through the border town of Al-Wade’a into Saudi Arabia.

‘THERE ARE MANY JUST LIKE THEM’

The teenagers were fi rst contacted by recruiters in the south’s poverty-stricken villag-es; they were looking for young boys to take to the Saudi-Yemeni borders.

Ahmad said he and many oth-er boys were recruited ostensibly to work in the kitchens of Yeme-ni military units stationed inside Saudi Arabia.

“We went because we were told we would be working in a kitchen and making SR3,000 ($800)...so we believed them and got on the bus,” Ahmad told Al Jazeera.

Typically, a recruiter would deliver his human cargo to a traf-fi cker at one of the Yemeni cit-ies along the route leading up to

the borders. The traffi cker would then deliver the young recruits to another smuggler who would provide them with identifi cation cards — if they did not have one — so they are able to cross into Saudi Arabia, where they would be placed into a military camp.

Al Jazeera called a traffi cker, posing as a man interested in travelling to a military camp with three boys between 15 and 16 years old.

The trafficker said the boys would be “bought” by someone at Al-Wade’a who would pro-vide them with military iden-tification.

After expressing concern that the boys would be turned away for being obviously un-derage, the trafficker said: “Don’t worry, there are many just like them.”

In a follow-up phone call with the trafficker about the fate of the boys, he said: “Don’t worry, this stuff isn’t impor-tant to us. What is important is that they are good soldiers.

Can they handle guns?”Boys as young as 15 or 16 are

recruited to fight on both sides in Yemen’s war.

Ahmad got to al-Wade’a and went further inland, but did not go all the way to Al-Buqa’. He heard from people in an intermediary camp that they would only be paid half the $800 salaries they were prom-ised every two or three months and that he might not be a cook after all. “They give you your gun and send you to the front lines (to fight the Houthis),” Ahmad was told.

“They take them into bat-tles to defend Saudi Arabia. As if these children are the ones who will defend the kingdom. Where are their weapons, their aeroplanes?” said Mohamed al-Naqeeb, Ahmad’s father.

Ahmad said he and others managed to flee the camp late last year.

Fifteen-year-old Mohamed was not one of them. “His mother is devastated. She has given up. I wish he’d just call to let us know that he’s OK; that’s all we want. We just want to know if he’s alive or dead,”

Mohamed’s father said.“These young and irrational

boys should have never been allowed to be enticed and re-cruited to fight in the war. The government should have sent them back home to go to school, but in a time like this, conscience is dead. Instead, they’re welcomed with open arms,” he added.

Al Jazeera obtained access to a secret list containing the names of Yemeni soldiers captured by the Houthis that Yemen’s gov-ernment submitted during a round of talks between the war-ring sides in Sweden last year. Mohamed’s name was not on the list. His fate is still unknown. Ahmad, on the other hand, man-aged to come home to his an-guished parents after escaping from the camp.

But a terrible fate awaited him. In January, a stray bullet hit the young boy in the head, ending his short life.

Al Jazeera contacted the Saudi Ministry for Foreign Aff airs for comment. They have not re-sponded to the request.

Al Jazeera Exclusive

Palestinian killed in clash with troops: ministry

AFP Ramallah

A Palestinian was killed during a clash with Israeli forces near Jerusalem

overnight, the Palestinian health ministry and residents said yes-terday.

The ministry said Mohamed Adwan, 23, was killed and three others were wounded.

Two residents said soldiers ar-rived in the Qalandiya area early yesterday to carry out arrests and young men threw stones at them. The Israeli army said dur-ing an operation in the nearby Kufr Aqab area, “rocks and ex-plosive devices were hurled at the troops, who responded with fi re”. “A report was received re-garding an injured Palestinian.

The incident will be exam-ined,” the army statement said.

Qufr Aqab is located on the other side of the Israeli separa-tion barrier which divides Jeru-salem from the occupied West Bank, but is still considered part of the city.

Israeli forces often enter Pal-estinian towns in the West Bank to carry out arrests in raids that frequently lead to clashes.

DIES FROM INJURIES Meanwhile, a Palestinian

wounded three days ago during clashes along the Gaza border died yesterday, the health minis-try in the strip said, bringing to fi ve the number of fatalities from the day.

Faris Abu Hajaras, 26, was shot by Israeli fi re in his stom-ach east of Khan Yunis Saturday and succumbed to his wounds

yesterday, the ministry said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of Palestin-ians gathered in diff erent spots along the Gaza border Saturday for the fi rst anniversary of the often violent protests there.

Four other men, including

three 17-year-olds, were killed by Israeli fi re Saturday, accord-ing to the ministry.

At least 263 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fi re since the protests and clashes began a year ago.

Two Israeli soldiers have been

killed over the same period in Gaza-related violence. Israel says its actions are necessary to defend its borders.

A UN probe has said Israeli soldiers intentionally fi red on ci-vilians in what could constitute war crimes.

Mother (right) of 23-year-old Palestinian Mohamed Adwan, who was killed during a clash with troops near Jerusalem overnight, mourns during his funeral, yesterday in the Qalandia refugee camp near Ramallah in the West Bank.

Slain journalist Khashoggi’s children paid by kingdom: report

The children of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi have received multimillion-dollar homes and are being paid thousands of dollars per month by the kingdom’s authorities, The Washington Post reported on Monday. Khashog-gi — a contributor to the Post and a critic of the Saudi government — was killed and dismem-bered in October at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul by a team of 15 agents sent from Riyadh.His body has not been recovered. The payments to his four children — two sons and two daugh-ters — “are part of an eff ort by Saudi Arabia to reach a long-term arrangement with Khashoggi family members, aimed in part at ensuring that they continue to show restraint in their public statements,” the Post said. The houses given to the Khashoggi children are located in the port city of Jeddah and are worth up to $4mn, the

newspaper reported. Salah, the eldest of the children, plans to continue living in the kingdom, while the others, who live in the United States, are expected to sell the homes, the paper said.In addition to the properties, the children are receiving $10,000 or more per month and may also receive larger payments that could amount to tens of millions of dollars each, according to the report.Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, has been accused of orchestrating Khashoggi’s killing, but the kingdom has claimed that the prince was not involved.Saudi Arabia initially said it had no knowledge of Khashoggi’s fate but later blamed rogue agents for his death.Its public prosecutor has charged 11 people over his murder.

Rebels deny UN access to Hodeidah mills for ‘safety reasons’Reuters Aden

Houthi forces denied the United Nations access to a grain storage site in

the Yemeni port of Hodeidah yesterday, sources familiar with the matter said, hindering ef-forts to increase food aid to mil-lions facing severe hunger.

Hodeidah is the entry point for most of Yemen’s humani-tarian aid and commercial im-ports.

World Food Programme (WFP) grain stores there have been cut off in the confl ict zone for six months, putting the con-tents at risk of rotting.

A WFP technical team was scheduled to cross the front line between the Houthi movement forces and the Saudi-backed government on the eastern out-skirts of Hodeidah to fumigate

the wheat stored in the Red Sea Mills.

But Houthi forces told the WFP team they could not leave Houthi-held areas inside Hode-idah city for “security reasons”, asking the United Nations in-stead for a way to investigate

attacks on the mills.“The Houthis argued that

government forces will target the UN and then they will be blamed for it,” one source aware of the discussion said. “(But) if the wheat is not fumigated, it will be lost.”

The WFP regained access to the mills last month, a step hailed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The grain stores there have more than 51,000 tonnes of wheat, enough to feed 3.7mn people.

WFP spokesman Herve Ver-hoosel said a WFP mission to the Red Sea Mills was sched-uled but was postponed due to “safety concerns”. Verhoosel declined to give details.

Houthi offi cials did not im-mediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Yemeni government offi cials accused the Houthis of another violation of the peace agree-ment signed last year which the United Nations has been strug-gling to implement.

The Houthis and the govern-ment of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi agreed at UN-sponsored talks in December to a truce and

troop withdrawal from Hodei-dah.

But talks aimed at securing a mutual military withdrawal from Hodeidah have stalled despite UN eff orts to salvage the deal and nudge both sides to agree on steps towards dis-engagement after four years of war.

Under the deal, the govern-ment retreat would free up ac-cess to the Red Sea Mills and humanitarian corridors would also be reopened.

The warring sides would still need to agree on which road could be used to transport sup-plies from the site to needy re-cipients.

The WFP is now reaching about 10mn Yemenis per month with food aid and hopes to scale up to 12mn this year, but spo-radic clashes make Hodeidah and its province unsafe despite the ceasefi re agreement.

Retired Danish general Michael Lollesgaard (left), the newly-appointed head of the UN observer mission in war-wracked Yemen, meets people in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, yesterday.

Iran fl oods force evacuations as US denies sanctions harming aid eff orts

ReutersDubai/Geneva

Iranian authorities ordered the evacuation of scores of villages yesterday as

the impact of severe fl ooding spread further across the coun-try, while Washington denied Tehran’s claim that US sanc-tions were slowing aid eff orts.

At least 47 people have been killed in the past two weeks from fl ash fl oods after the worst rains in the country in at least a decade.

State television said armed forces had stepped up relief eff orts, airing footage of mili-tary and Red Crescent heli-copters taking part in rescue operations. Flood risks forced authorities to order the evacu-ation of more than 70 villages in the oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan, state

news agency IRNA said. Iran’s top authority, Supreme Lead-er Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, praised rescue eff orts but said offi cials should have antici-pated the disaster better, state TV reported, as a war of words broke out between Tehran and Washington over relief re-sponses.Iranian Foreign Min-ister Mohamed Javad Zarif said on Monday that US sanctions — reimposed after Washington quit a 2015 nuclear deal be-tween Iran and six world pow-ers — were impeding aid eff orts to all aff ected communities.

“Blocked equipment in-cludes relief choppers: This isn’t just economic warfare; it’s economic terrorism,” he said on Twitter. In a response that Zarif described as fake news, US Secretary of State Mike Pom-peo said yesterday that Wash-ington was ready to help via the Red Cross and Red Crescent,

and accused Iran’s clerical es-tablishment of “mismanage-ment in urban planning and in emergency preparedness”.

IRNA said Germany and Britain, both signatories to the nuclear deal, had off ered hu-manitarian aid, including 40 boats. Flooding has aff ected at least 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces since heavy downpours began on March 19. A state of emer-gency was declared in several provinces and tens of thousands of people have been evacuated.

Iranian media said yesterday that electricity and telecom-munications had been cut in aff ected areas, roads had been washed away and people were waiting on rooftops to be res-cued in some villages.

President Hassan Rouhani, accused by critics of mishan-dling the fl ooding crisis, has promised compensation to all those aff ected.

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned yesterday against growing hatred of Muslims, less than a month after a deadly attack on mosques in New Zea-land killed at least 50 people. His remarks came during a speech at Egypt’s Al-Azhar, where he met Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb.“Around the world, we are seeing ever-rising anti-Muslim hatred, anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia,” the UN secretary general said.He cited the March 15 New Zealand mosque attacks by a white supremacist as well as a 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that killed 11 people and is believed to be the deadliest against Jews in US history. Guterres warned of a surge in hate speech he said was “entering the mainstream, spreading like wildfire through social media”. “We see it spreading in liberal democracies and as well as in authoritarian states.” Guterres is on a two-day trip to Egypt, Following his visit to Al-Azhar, he was scheduled to meet President Abdel Fat-tah al-Sisi. On Sunday, he attended an Arab League summit in Tunisia.

A US-backed force said yesterday it was chasing Islamic State group mili-tants in eastern Syria, as coalition warplanes pound the militants more than a week after their “caliphate” was declared defeated. The Syrian Democratic Forces, supported by warplanes of a US-led coalition, dislodged IS fighters from their last redoubt in the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border on March 23, following a months-long off ensive. The US-backed alliance is now “tracking down remnants of the terrorist group”, SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali said yesterday. “There are groups hiding in caves overlooking Baghouz,” he said. The US-led coalition said it was supporting sweeping operations with air strikes on militant hideouts.

UN chief warns against rising hatred

US-backed force tracks Syria militants

OPINION

CONFLICT

AFRICA9Gulf Times

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Guinean journalists take part in a march in Conakry yesterday to demand the release of arrested journalist Lansana Camara, director of website conakrylive.info, a day after a judge rejected an application by his lawyer for his release. Lansana Camara was arrested over article he wrote in which he revealed the alleged attempt at misappropriation of funds at the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs.

Members of a police squad suspected of killing a Nigerian football fan in Lagos have been detained for questioning, a force spokesman said after an outcry online. Kolade Johnson was watching a match involving English Premier League club Liverpool on Sunday afternoon when he was hit by a stray bullet fired by police. The killing sparked renewed opposition to the police units such as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, which has become synonymous with extra-judicial killings and impunity. “Members of the team suspected to be involved in the shooting have since been arrested and are undergoing interrogation,” Lagos police spokesman Bala Elkana said.

Eight people have died in eastern Burkina Faso in what a minister described as a struggle between traditional chiefs. “A group of gunmen from villages along the border with Burkina and Ghana attacked the home of the traditional chief of Zoaga,” said a statement yesterday by Simeon Sawadogo, minister for territorial administration. The attack occurred on Monday in Zoaga, an area which lies on Burkina’s border with Ghana, about 250km southeast of the capital, Ouagadougou. “This attack unfortunately killed eight people and wounded four,” he added, in the latest “twist in a crisis that has rocked the areas traditional chiefdom for some time.”

Flood-struck Mozambique yesterday received vaccines for a massive cholera immunisation campaign after the number of cases quadrupled to more than 1,000, a World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman said in Geneva. The Health Ministry has so far counted 1,052 cases, up from 271 at the weekend. Nearly three weeks after Cyclone Idai devastated parts of Mozambique, the government and aid organisations are planning to start administering more than 900,000 doses of vaccines against the water-borne disease. Mozambique’s government yesterday confirmed 598 dead from Idai and flooding.

The trial of more than 150 people, accused of involvement in an alleged December 2017 coup which the Malabo authorities say they foiled, has been suspended, a defence lawyer said yesterday. “We don’t know why the trial was suspended” on Monday, 10 days after opening, Ponciano Mbomio Nvo, one of 16 lawyers representing the accused, told AFP. “They don’t tell us anything.” Those in the dock since March 22 are accused of “treason” and trying to overthrow the head of state, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, both charges which could bring the death penalty.

Police team arrested after football fan shot dead

Burkina local power dispute leaves 8 dead

Mozambique to start mass cholera vaccinations

Equatorial Guinea suspends ‘coup’ trial

FREEDOM OF SPEECH OUTCRYTRIBAL TWIST DISEASE FEARS IN THE DOCK

IS-backed Boko faction publishes ‘execution’ videoBy Aminu Abubakar, AFPKano

Boko Haram’s Islamic State-backed faction has claimed to have executed fi ve Nigerian soldiers but security

sources told AFP yesterday that three of those killed were civilian militia members.

The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) video, dated April 1 and said to have been fi lmed in Borno state, northeast Nigeria, was published online by the IS propaganda arm Amaq.

It showed two men in military fatigues and three in red-orange jumpsuits remi-niscent of those worn by IS hostages in Syria and Iraq.

All fi ve are shot in the head at point-blank range.

Nigerian Army spokesman Sagir Musa said only that he had seen the video.

But three senior security sources said at least three of the fi ve were not soldiers.

“We have identifi ed three of them as CJTF (Civilian Joint Taskforce) who were held by ISWAP in Baga in December,” said one of the sources on condition of ano-nymity.

The CJTF assists the military with secu-rity.

ISWAP attacked military bases in and around Baga, on the shores of Lake Chad, in northern Borno, in December last year.

The sources said the militia members were trying to fl ee with civilians when they were detained.

All three had been presumed dead.“The fi rst three from the right are known

to us by name...We are still working to es-tablish the identity of the other two,” said one source.

“What is surprising is that one of them in military uniform was arrested in his ci-vilian clothing and now he was given some military uniform to make him look like a soldier.”

The video comes as Nigerian and re-gional forces have intensifi ed their activi-ties against ISWAP in northern Borno, par-ticularly around the towns of Monguno and Marte.

The Nigerian Army and the Multina-tional Joint Taskforce (MNJFT) compris-ing troops from Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger both claim to have infl icted heavy losses.

The video will fuel speculation about the

direction of ISWAP, which has claimed or been blamed for a spate of attacks against military bases since July last year.

There is also wider concern about an in-crease in jihadist activity in the wider Sahel region, particularly in Burkina Faso, after IS’s Middle East “caliphate” was declared defeated.

ISWAP under Abu Mus’ab al-Barnawi broke away from the group led by Abubakar Shekau in mid-2016 in opposition to his indiscriminate targeting of civilians.

Well-informed sources told AFP last month al-Barnawi had been ousted, some six months after his deputy, Mamman Nur, was killed by more hardline fi ghters.

They had been angry at Nur’s more moderate approach and back-channel talks with the government, which is seeking an end to the confl ict after nearly 10 years and 27,000 deaths.

He was also accused of pocketing a pu-tative ransom payment for the release of more than 100 schoolgirls abducted from a school in Yobe state in February last year.

ISWAP previously published a video on-line showing the execution of an aid worker kidnapped in a raid in the Borno town of Rann last year.

People watch as a young elephant, one of three, is rescued from deep mud on the shores of the seasonal Lake Kapnarok, situated at the base of the Kerio valley, part of the Kenyan Rift Valley’s ecosystem in Baringo County. The three pachyderms ventured deep into the drying lake bed in an effort to reach the receding waters and ended up mired taking scores of villagers and a Kenya Wildlife Services team six-hours to free the land giants.

Rescue in progress

Senegal’s Sall starts second term with ‘constructive’ dialogue vowAFP Diamniadio, Senegal

Macky Sall yesterday em-barked on his second term as Senegal’s presi-

dent pledging “constructive” dia-logue with the opposition and re-forms to spur development.

Sall urged optimism as “it seems new economic perspectives are opening up for our country,” a reference to Senegal’s plans to enter the hydrocarbons sector in 2021-22 via two ambitious oil and gas developments.

Clad in a navy blue suit, the trained geologist swore “before God and before the nation” to serve the people as several visiting African leaders looked on.

Also present was Mark Green, administrator of the US develop-ment agency USAID.

Sall, 57 and a self-declared “so-cial liberal”, chose the new city of Diamniadio, some 32km from

Dakar a product of his Emerging Senegal Plan (PSE) launched in 2014, to make his address.

“In vesting their confi dence in you once again your fellow citi-zens have validated your record and backed your social project, to say the least,” said Constitutional Court president Pape Oumar Sakho.

Sall garnered a 58% vote share, well clear of former prime minis-ter Idrissa Seck on 20%, with the rest of the pack left trailing to win easily in a single round on Febru-ary 24.

Helping to clear Sall’s path to victory was the authorities’ in-validation of several opposition candidacies including those of Karim Wade, the son of presiden-tial predecessor Abdoulaye Wade (2000-12), as well as popular Dakar mayor Khalifa Sall.

Both were disqualifi ed over convictions for misuse of public funds.

The election sidelined the So-cialist Party and the Senegalese

Democratic Party which have dominated politics since inde-pendence from France in 1960.

Although the disqualifi cations outraged the opposition, Sall in-sisted he would rule “for all Sen-egalese, hence “I renew my call for...a constructive dialogue open to all political, economic and so-cial forces.”

The opposition has so far shown no sign of wanting to grasp any ol-ive branch Sall might extend since he was offi cially proclaimed as poll winner on March 5.

Sall, who left the ceremony for the presidential palace in an open-topped saloon with his wife, also said he would particularly look to aid the young, pursuing employ-ment and training policies pro-moting “the entrepreneurial spirit and new technologies.”

He added he would commit to “public policies favouring women and girls,” ensure “decent hous-ing” for all and “safeguard the en-vironment”.

Seeking justice: the long hunt for Rwanda’s killersBy Cyril Belaud, AFPKigali

The houses along the quiet tree-lined street look just like the normal homes

found all across the Rwandan capital.

But behind the walls of the three adjoining villas in Kigali are the headquarters of a global operation involving investigators and prosecutors who are working to track down the very worst kill-ers of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

Inside, French investigators have come to talk to witnesses and to gather evidence. A Nor-wegian team is also on site.

All are supported by Rwanda’s Genocide Fugitive Tracking Unit (GFTU), a special team created in 2007 to prosecute the architects behind the slaughter of some 800,000 mostly Tutsi victims.

“The mandate was to investi-gate and compile case fi les for the fugitives who were still at large,” said Faustin Nkusi, spokesman for the National Public Prosecu-tion Authority, which oversees the unit.

After the bloodshed, many perpetrators escaped.

Some were arrested and taken to the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Tanzania.

That court closed in 2015 after several dozen convictions.

For many of those who carried out the killings, justice has been at a local level through commu-nity tribunals known as “gacaca” courts.

Between 2005 and 2012, these courts put nearly two mn people on trial, with some two-thirds of cases resulting in a conviction.

But the search for justice con-tinues.

A quarter of a century after the genocide, Rwanda is as deter-mined as ever to make sure the key suspects are arrested and put on trial over the killings.

Many are still at large, scat-tered all over the world.

The GFTU has issued 1,012 international arrest warrants for suspects in 32 countries.

Several are in neighbouring nations like Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Tanzania.

Others are further afi eld in places like Kenya, Malawi and Zambia.

And still others fl ed to Europe, North America or even Australia.

Key suspects on the run in-clude Felicien Kabuga, once one of Rwanda’s richest men who is accused of fi nancing the geno-cide. He was reportedly spotted in Kenya.

Another is Augustin Bizimana, a former defence minister be-lieved to be hiding in DR Congo.

The team is having an impact: 19 people who were allegedly in-volved in plotting the genocide

have been arrested and returned to Rwanda for trial, while 22 oth-ers have been tried abroad.

But this is only a drop in the ocean.

When the gacaca process

closed in 2012, the courts handed the GFTU a list of nearly 72,000 fugitives who had been sen-tenced in absentia.

And tracking down all those people along with other remain-ing suspects is tough.

“It’s not easy,” Nkusi said.“We don’t have the upper hand

in investigating and arresting. We have to work together with other institutions from those countries.”

The GFTU team, which in-volves both investigators and prosecutors, works with teams across the world, including their judicial counterparts in countries where suspects are hiding.

It also works with UN experts and the international policing agency, Interpol.

Investigators face many chal-lenges: by now, suspects have grown much older and have had years to perfect their changed iden-tity as well as to slip across borders.

Some have obtained political asylum.

After Rwanda abolished the death penalty in 2007, countries were encouraged to send sus-pects home.

In recent years, suspects have been extradited from United

States, Canada and The Nether-lands.

Other nations, however, argue that they do not have extradition treaties with Rwanda while also demonstrating a reluctance to try suspects themselves.

“We wish they would be brought back to the country, to the scene of the crime,” Nkusi said, but pointed out that some countries were “not politically willing to do that”.

France, which denies Kigali’s accusations of supporting the Hutu regime that planned the genocide, has refused multiple requests from Rwanda to extra-dite suspects.

So far, only one former Rwan-dan army offi cer and two mayors have been sentenced in France.

“They have an obligation to judge these people,” said Nkusi.

With Rwanda set this month to mark a quarter of a century since the genocide, Nkusi hopes the speed of extraditions will in-crease.

“Justice has to be done,” Nkusi said.

“People have to be arrested. People have to be tried — to ei-ther be found innocent or be convicted.”

A May 30, 1994, file photo of Rwandan refugees crossing the Rusumo border to Tanzania, carrying their belongings even goats, mattresses and cows.

Azali confi rmed winner of disputed Comoros vote

AFPMoroni

The Supreme Court in Comoros yes-terday confi rmed Azali Assoumani as the winner of the disputed presi-

dential election held last week in the vola-tile Indian Ocean archipelago.

Azali was declared the winner with 59% of the votes, well ahead of his rivals Ma-hamoudou Ahamada who scored 15.7% and Mouigni Baraka Said Soilihi, who was a dis-tant third with 5.5% of the ballots cast.

“Having obtained the absolute majority, Azali Assoumani is proclaimed president of the republic,” said the country’s judge president Harmia Ahmed.

The results were confi rmed at a heavily guarded court house in Moroni.

The opposition has complained of wide-spread fraud and irregularities in the elec-tions held in the country on March 24.

Observers and community groups have questioned the credibility of the election held on March 24.

Violence broke out last week after one of the defeated presidential candidates Soilihi Mohamed, who came fourth in the vote, was arrested.

Soilihi Mohamed, a widely respected former colonel, had been named head of an opposition transitional authority just be-fore his arrest.

He stands accused of trying to set up a parallel government, according to a gov-ernment source.

The African Union and France have called for restraint in the wake of the po-litical crisis sparked by the disputed vote.

Azali’s campaign director Houmed Msaidie said his camp was available to dia-logue with the opposition “if the opposi-tion asks for it”.

Comoros has had a volatile political his-tory since independence in 1975 and has endured more than 20 attempted coups, four of which were successful.

Azali initially came to power in a coup, then ruled the country between 1999 and 2006, and was re-elected in 2016.

He staged the poll after Comorans voted in a referendum, boycotted by the opposi-tion, to support the extension of presiden-tial mandates from one fi ve-year term to two.

He could theoretically rule until 2029, critics say.

Several opposition fi gures were arrested around the time of the referendum.

AMERICA

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 201910

The US Air Force said yesterday that it again stopped accepting deliveries of Boeing Co’s KC-46 tanker aircraft after finding foreign object debris in the planes. Back in February, deliveries of the aircraft were halted by the US Air Force because of the same issue in one of the aircraft. Deliveries resumed in March after Boeing ramped up the inspection process. “Our inspectors identified additional foreign object debris and areas where Boeing did not meet quality standards,” US Air Force spokesperson Captain Hope Cronin said. The decision to halt acceptance of the planes was made on March 23, the Air Force said.

US Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler said yesterday the Trump administration has more actions “in the works” related to excess vehicle emissions. In January, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV agreed to an $800mn settlement to resolve claims by the US Justice Department and the state of California that it used illegal software to produce false results on diesel-emissions tests after a bringing a record-setting case against Volkswagen AG. “We are moving forward, we have other cases in the works,” Wheeler told a House Appropriations Committee panel yesterday.

Protesting Chicago police off icers on Monday called for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to resign after her off ice dropped felony charges against actor Jussie Smollett last week related to allegations that he staged a phony hate crime. About 300 people, including off -duty Chicago police off icers, gathered at the building where Foxx’s off ice is located in downtown Chicago, wearing “Foxx Must Go!” buttons and carrying signs reading “Resign now” and “Who let the Foxx in the henhouse.” Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police organised the protest, arranging for buses to bring members from the city’s South and North sides, said Kevin Graham, president of a local chapter of the police union.

Nineteen people were injured during a stampede at a memorial service on Monday for slain rapper Nipsey Hussle in Los Angeles, the city’s fire department said. Hundreds had gathered in the southern part of the city outside Hussle’s The Marathon Clothing store where the Grammy-nominated musician was gunned down on Sunday. A stampede started just past 8pm during the service, but it was not clear what triggered it. “Reports of shots fired at the vigil do not appear to be accurate,” the Los Angeles Police Department said on Twitter. The Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement that it transported 19 patients, two of them critical.

People gather on Monday around a makeshift memorial for Grammy-nominated rapper Nipsey Hussle who was shot and killed outside his clothing store in Los Angeles.

USAF again halts deliveries of tainted tanker aircraft

EPA: More actions to curb emissions ‘in the works’

Police demand attorney quits over Smollett fiasco

19 injured in stampede at Nipsey Hussle memorial

DEBRIS CLEAN-UPPROTEST MOURNED

Trump tees up 2020 healthcare battleReutersWashington

Democrats yesterday embraced US President Donald Trump’s call to revive a fi ght over healthcare cov-

erage, ensuring a prominent role for the issue in the 2020 election as Trump seeks a second term in offi ce.

Trump last week stepped up his assault on Democratic predecessor President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 health-care law by directing the Justice Depart-ment to oppose it in court and promising an unspecifi ed Republican alternative.

In a series of late-night posts on Twit-ter on Monday, however, Trump appeared to shift course, saying there would be no vote on any healthcare legislation until after next year’s election.

Republicans are developing “a re-ally great HealthCare Plan with far low-er premiums (cost) & deductibles than Obamacare,” Trump said, referring to the Aff ordable Care Act signed into law by Obama. “Vote will be taken right after the Election when Republicans hold the Sen-ate & win back the House.”

While that timeline would give Repub-licans more time to knit together an al-ternative to the Aff ordable Care Act, it all but guarantees a 2020 battle over an issue that helped Democrats wrest control of the US House of Representatives last year.

Democrats happily joined the health-care battle.

“When the president has instructed his Department of Justice to eliminate the Af-fordable Care Act, them’s fi ghting words,” US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview with Politico yesterday.

“Last night the president tweeted that they will come up with their plan in 2021. Translation: they have no healthcare plan,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said yesterday. “They are for re-peal, they have no replace.”

Trump and his fellow Republicans had

vowed in the 2016 presidential election to “repeal and replace” Obamacare but failed to do so during their fi rst two years in power, despite control of both the Sen-ate and the House of Representatives.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley defended Trump’s tweet, saying it was im-possible to vote now on any Republican plan in the Democratically-controlled House.

“He didn’t punt,” Gidley told MSNBC.At an outdoor rally in front of the

Supreme Court, Pelosi and Schum-er announced they were introducing resolutions condemning the Justice De-partment’s legal assault on the law.

These resolutions will not become law; the Senate version is unlikely to even come up for a vote in the Republican-dominated chamber.

But part of the Democrats’ point in bringing the resolution to a vote in the Democratic-run House is to put Republi-cans from swing districts on the spot over the issue.

Americans “deserve to know exactly where their representatives stand on the Trump administration’s vicious cam-paign to take away their healthcare,” Pelosi said at the rally.

The House vote is expected today.Pelosi said a court decision to toss out

the Aff ordable Care Act would not just harm the 20mn people who have gained healthcare coverage, but also impact over 150mn families who have better benefi ts because of the law, such as a guarantee that no lifetime limits can be placed on coverage.

Democrats made healthcare a signa-ture issue in the 2018 midterm congres-sional election, and are gearing up for a repeat defense next year.

“Healthcare will be front and centre,” Democratic US Representative Ben Ray Lujan told MSNBC yesterday.

Lujan, who is seeking a Senate seat in 2020, cited popular aspects of the law, such as protections for pre-existing con-ditions that could be threatened by Re-publicans, and said Democrats’ protec-tion of the law could help them also win control of the upper chamber next year.

Candidates for the Democratic party’s 2020 presidential nomination, including a number of current US senators, have also hinged their candidacies on the is-sue.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Speaker of the House Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Colin Allred (D-TX) walk towards the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, yesterday.

Chicago set to elect fi rst black female mayorBy Nova Safo, AFPChicago

Chicago residents went to the polls yesterday to elect the US city’s fi rst

black female mayor in a historic vote centred on issues of eco-nomic equality, race and gun violence.

Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preck-winkle, both African-American women, are competing for the top elected post in the city — the former casting herself as an out-sider and reformer, and the latter as an experienced, steady hand.

The election is an infl ection point in America’s third largest city.

Since 1837, Chicago has chosen only one other black mayor and one other female mayor.

Analysts said voters were looking to shake up city politics — fed up with gun violence that claims more lives here than in other major American cities, and years of political corruption in the Democratic stronghold.

“This is one of the most signif-icant elections in Chicago histo-ry,” Evan McKenzie, political sci-ence professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, told AFP.

“Chicago voters seem to be in a ‘throw the bums out’ frame of mind,” he said.

The initial fi eld consisted of 14 contenders, but most moderates and establishment fi gures were sidelined in a February vote.

The two highest vote-getters were competing in yesterday’s run-off election and are running as progressive reformers, prom-ising to clean up city government and reduce economic inequality.

While the two are alike in many ways, they have sought to diff erentiate themselves with their backgrounds. Lightfoot has never held elected offi ce.

She is a former federal pros-ecutor who headed a panel in-vestigating the city’s policing problems.

Preckwinkle is currently the chief executive of Cook County in which Chicago is located, and has held elected offi ce in the city for decades.

Local media reported that Lightfoot appeared to have more support in pre-election polling.

“It’s change versus the status quo,” Lightfoot said at a recent debate.

Voters have left little doubt they want the eventual victor to tackle the major issues vexing the city of 2.7mn people.

“The message is that (voters) want new ideas and cleaner gov-ernment,” McKenzie said.

Community groups have for years complained about dispari-ties in living conditions among the sprawling city’s diverse com-munities.

Gun violence, fuelled by gangs and the drug trade, plagues economically-depressed neigh-bourhoods in the South and West, which are majority Afri-can-American.

The downtown business dis-trict, and areas to the North and along the city’s famed lake shore, have enjoyed an eco-nomic boom even as more than 550 people were murdered last year alone.

Reforming the police depart-ment, which has a sordid history of abusive tactics, and city hall, which currently is mired in a fed-eral corruption probe of one of its members, are also top of mind, McKenzie said.

“(Voters) are tired of corrup-tion, federal investigations of city offi cials, police misconduct, and a budget crisis,” he said.

The two candidates are vying to replace outgoing mayor Rahm Emanuel — once a rising star in the Democratic Party and former president Barack Obama’s fi rst White House chief of staff .

Emanuel sustained political damage for his handling of the Laquan McDonald case and de-clined to run for a third term.

McDonald was a 17-year-old black teenager shot dead by po-lice in a 2014 encounter caught on police dash cam video.

The video — showing offi cer Jason Van Dyke fi ring 16 bullets into the knife-wielding teen even after he fell to the ground — was not released for more than a year.

Emanuel faced accusations of an attempted cover-up.

He fi red the police chief and brought in a reformer who has instituted changes, worked to rebuild public trust, and reduced gun violence.

But as Van Dyke was about to go on trial for murder in Sep-tember, Emanuel announced he would not run for re-election.

Van Dyke was convicted and sentenced to nearly seven years in prison.

White House softens tone on Mexico border closureReutersWashington

The White House yesterday took a step back from its threat to close the southern US border, saying

Mexico has begun to take actions to ad-dress the immigration problem on its end.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the Trump administration

sees Mexico “stepping up and taking a greater sense of responsibility” for deal-ing with the immigration fl ows that US offi cials say are overwhelming ports of entry along the border.

“They have started to do a signifi cant amount more. We’ve seen them take a larger number of individuals” and hold those who have asylum claims in Mexico while they are being processed in the United States, Sanders told reporters at

the White House. “We’ve also seen them stop more people from coming across the border so that they aren’t even enter-ing into the United States. So those two things are certainly helpful and we’d like to see them continue,” Sanders said.

Trump hinted at the shift earlier in a Twitter post earlier yesterday.

“After many years (decades), Mexico is apprehending large numbers of people at their Southern Border, mostly from

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador,” he said.

Trump threatened last Friday to close the border with this week unless Mex-ico took steps to stop immigrants from reaching the United States illegally.

Sanders said the administration was “looking at all options when it comes to closing the diff erent ports of entry, what that looks like and what the impacts would be.”

Disaster aid won’t cover crops drowned by Midwest fl oodsBy Tom Polansek, Reuters Malvern, Iowa

The Black Hawk military helicopter fl ew over Iowa, giving a senior US agri-

culture offi cial and US senator an eyeful of the fl ood damage below, where yellow corn from ruptured metal silos spilled out into the muddy water.

And there’s nothing the US government can do about the millions of bushels of damaged crops here under current laws or disaster-aid programmes, US Agriculture Under Secretary Bill Northey told a Reuters reporter who joined the fl ight.

The USDA has no mechanism to compensate farmers for damaged crops in storage, Northey said, a problem never before seen on this scale. That’s in part because US farmers have never stored so much of their harvests, after years of oversupplied markets, low prices and the latest blow of lost

sales from the US trade war with China — previously their biggest buyer of soybean exports.

The USDA last year made $12bn in aid available to farmers who suf-fered trade-war losses, without needing Congressional approval.

The agency has separate pro-grammes that partially cover losses from cattle killed in natu-ral disasters, compensate farmers who cannot plant crops due to weather, and help them remove debris left in fi elds after fl oods.

But it has no programme to cover the catastrophic and large-ly uninsured stored-crop losses from the widespread fl ooding, triggered by the “bomb cyclone” that hit the region in mid-March.

Congress would have to pass legislation to address the har-vests lost in the storm, according to Northey and a USDA state-ment to Reuters.

“It’s not traditionally been covered,” he said. “But we’ve not usually had as many losses.”

Indigo Ag, an agriculture tech-

nology company, identifi ed 832 on-farm storage bins within fl ooded Midwest areas.

They hold an estimated 5mn to 10mn bushels of corn and soy-beans — worth between $17.3mn to $34.6mn — that could have been damaged in the fl oods, the company told Reuters.

Across the United States, farmers held soybean stocks of 2.716bn bushels as of March 1, the largest on record for the time period, the USDA said last week.

Corn stocks were the third-largest on record.

Some Congress members have expressed interest in pur-suing legislation to provide aid for damaged crops in storage, Northey said.

But passing legislation could re-quire a lengthy political process in the face of an urgent disaster, US Senator Charles Grassley told farm-ers at a meeting in Malvern, Iowa.

“If we have to pass a bill to do it, I hate to tell you how long that takes,” said the senator from

Iowa, who joined Northey on the helicopter tour.

With farm incomes declining for years before the fl ood, many farm-ers had planned to sell their grain in storage for money to live, pay their taxes or fi nance operations, including planting this spring.

From the helicopter, piloted by National Guard members, of-fi cials surveyed miles of fl ooded fi elds in Iowa, littered with lawn chairs, fuel tanks, furniture, tires and other fl ood debris.

Farmers will have to destroy any grains that were contami-nated by fl oodwater, which could also prevent some growers from planting oversaturated fi elds.

Near Crescent, Iowa, farmer Don Rief said the fl ood damaged more than 60,000 bushels of his grain, worth hundreds of thou-sands of dollars.

He tried to move the crops be-fore the fl ood, but dirt roads were too soft from the storm to sup-port trucks.

“We were just hurrying like

hell,” Rief said. “Hopefully USDA will come in and minimize some of the damage.”

The USDA does not have a program that covers fl ood-dam-aged grain because farmers have

typically received more advance notice of rising waters, allow-ing them to move crops and limit losses, said Tom Vilsack, who ran the agency under former presi-dent Barack Obama.

In this case, fl oods inundat-ed fi elds quickly after multiple levees failed when rain and melt-ing snow fi lled the Missouri River and other waterways.

The frozen ground was unable to soak up the water.

Near Percival, Iowa, railroad tracks leading up to a grain facil-ity were fl ooded and broken.

Iowa’s agriculture secretary Mike Naig said the US govern-ment also should help compen-sate farmers for some of the grain that was damaged.

“This is clearly a gap that we think needs to be addressed,” said Naig, who accompanied Grassley and Northey in the chopper.

Time is short for a solution, said Carol Vinton, supervisor of Mills County, Iowa, one of the state’s two most heavily damaged counties. Vinton said she was getting calls from farmers whose grain was damaged and are wor-ried about making good on previ-ously signed contracts to deliver those crops to elevators.

US Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa and USDA Under Secretary Bill Northey speak before boarding a helicopter to view flood damage, in Omaha, Nebraska.

ASIA11

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Thai junta chief calls for action to cut smogThailand’s junta chief gave

the smog-hit northern city of Chiang Mai seven

days to crack down on spiralling pollution yesterday, which has seen the tourist hotspot choke on Asia’s most toxic air this week.

The city has far eclipsed other notorious pollution hotspots since Sunday, with the level of dangerous microscopic particles known as PM2.5 peaking at 480 according to the Air Quality In-dex. Any level over 300 is classed as “hazardous”.

By contrast, the smog-hit In-dian capital New Delhi peaked at 228, while Beijing reached only 161.

The pollution crisis in Chiang Mai has seen residents, street vendors and even monks don-ning surgical face masks and at least two universities have cancelled classes.

Crop burning during the dry season has long been blamed for poor air quality, but the smog has been exacerbated by growing industrialisation and rising numbers of vehicles on the roads.

Prayut Chan-o-cha, on a vis-it to Chiang Mai, demanded a clampdown on crop burning.

“I want to reiterate that the problem of hotspots (crop burn-ing areas) must be solved in seven days,” said the junta leader, who is angling to become the elected civilian prime minister.

“Nobody should ignite fi res in the forest,” he said.

Crop burning is normally re-stricted for two months in the dry season to try to curb pollution, but it remains widespread.

However, Olivier Evrard, a

AFP/ReutersChiang Mai

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, centre, hands a leaf blower to an off icial at an army base in the northern Thai province of Chiang Mai yesterday.

Thailand-based specialist for the Institute of Research for Devel-opment, said crop burning was not the only culprit.

“The government has en-couraged the population to buy more vehicles and coal plants are still running at full speed,” Evrard said.

A total of nine provinces are af-fected by the smog as the north-ern city of Chiang Rai prepares to host a meeting of regional fi nance ministers.

The seasonal duration of the haze, which used to last for about three months, has now increased to six months, accord-

ing to Chaicharn Pothirat, a lung disease specialist at Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Medicine.

The long-term eff ects include an increase in respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, he said, adding that he is sceptical the government has any “long-term plan” good enough to tackle the problem.

“They show reporters, they fl y to Chiang Mai... but... it does not clearly improve the situation,” Chaicharn said.

Earlier this year, the Thai capital Bangkok was also hit by bad smog, which led to school closures for three days.

Authorities are providing del-egates to an Asian fi nance min-ister and central bank summit in Chiang Mai with face masks this week as smoggy air pollution hits alarming levels.

Thailand will host the Asso-ciation of Southeast Asian Na-tions’ (Asean) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ meeting this week.

“Masks were prepared, but (we) have not seen anybody wearing them in the hotel,” Nadhavudh Dhamasiri, a senior fi nance ministry offi cial, said.

Some 300 offi cials are expect-ed for the meeting, with some al-

ready arriving. There are no plans to change the meeting venue or schedules, offi cials said.

“We have not prepared special measures because the dust situ-ation is improving and has not aff ected the meeting schedules,” Nadhavudh added.

The government has already given out nearly 2mn masks to residents in the area, he said.

“The smog problem in nine northern provinces is due to agriculture burning in forests, which happens every year,” Sate Sampattagul, head of the Climate Change Data Centre at Chiang Mai University, said.

Army chief warns against protests after disputed poll

Thailand’s army chief yesterday warned against protests after

a disputed election, invok-ing the revered monarchy and castigating people he said “distort” democracy.

His words were the latest in a series of signals from the military and royalist estab-lishment against opposition parties loyal to ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

The inconclusive results to the March 24 election, pitting the party of the junta leader against an opposition alliance, have seen both the pro-army Palang Pracharat party and the opposition claim victory. Final results may not be clear for weeks.

General Apirat Kongsom-pong said the military would remain neutral in the election, in which his predecessor as army chief, Prayut Chan-o-cha, is seeking to stay in power as an elected prime minister, fi ve years after he seized power in a coup.

“General Prayut has to be on his own path and the army has to step back,” Apirat said. “We cannot get involved in politics.”

At the same time, Api-rat made clear the military would not allow a repeat of past mass street demonstra-tions in which both support-ers and opponents of Thaksin paralysed Bangkok for months on end.

“I cannot let Thais settle

their diff erences on the streets anymore,” Apirat told re-porters, adding that both the eventual winners and losers in the election must settle their diff erences in parliament.

He also had harsh words for politicians he said “distort” democratic principles to make them incompatible with Thai culture that reveres the king above all else, a clear reference to Thaksin’s party and its allies.

“This is not right,” Api-rat said of such politicians. “Thailand is a democracy with the king as the head of state.”

Thaksin-loyal parties have won every election since 2001, even after he was ousted in a 2006 coup.

Thaksin has remained an infl uential political fi gure despite having lived in self-imposed exile since he fl ed Thailand in 2008 to escape a corruption trial that he said was politically motivated.

Last week, six other parties joined with the pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai party in a “demo-cratic front” alliance, which they claim will gain enough seats in parliament to try to form a government and block Prayut from staying in power.

“People should accept win-ning and losing,” Apirat said. “Instead, they constructed a democratic side and a dic-tatorship side, which is not right. We are all Thais.”

The army chief also alluded to an election-eve statement from King Maha Vajiralongko-rn, telling reporters on Tues-day “we must choose good people to govern so that bad people don’t have power”.

ReutersBangkok

Lankan novelist arrested

A Sri Lankan novelist has been arrested for writing about homosexuality in

the Buddhist clergy and charged with violating international hu-man rights law, offi cials said yesterday, outraging free speech advocates.

Shakthika Sathkumara, 33, was arrested in the north-central town of Polgahawela on Mon-day and remanded in custody for nine days after monks com-plained about his writing.

The short story contained in-direct references to homosexual-ity among the clergy, who hold considerable sway in the Bud-dhist-majority nation of 21mn.

The story was published on Sathkumara’s Facebook page and in local Sinhalese language publications.

“A group of monks com-plained that the reference to homosexual activities among the clergy insulted Buddhism,” a police spokesman said.

Buddhist monks are expected to be celibate. Homosexuality is also outlawed in Sri Lanka under an 1883 colonial-era law, but it is rarely enforced.

The police spokesman said the monks who complained refused to settle the matter out of court and insisted on Sathkumara being prosecuted.

He was taken before a lo-cal magistrate who charged him with inciting “religious hatred” under the United Nation’s inter-national human rights treaty, to which Sri Lanka is a signatory.

Local activists decried what they called abuse of the Inter-national Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to clamp down on free speech.

“The police have abused their powers and carried out an arbitrary arrest,” the Free Me-dia Movement, a local watch-dog, said in a statement. “We condemn this action of the police.”

AFPColombo

Nepal’s storm-hit region receives aid

Thousands of survivors of a devastating storm which struck southern

Nepal over the weekend began receiving aid yesterday.

Relief workers brought dry food, tents, mattresses and other items to the storm-hit villages in the country’s south-ern region bordering India, offi cials said.

The rainstorm left 28 peo-ple dead and injured more than 600 others, with around 343 of the injured still receiving treat-ment at local hospitals, accord-ing to the National Emergency Operation Centre.

Dev Mandal, a government offi cer in Bara district, said they were providing free food and mattresses to around 3,000 people displaced by the storm.

“We still face many prob-lems. We don’t have electric-ity. The farmers have lost their crops such as wheat and maize,” he said.

Nepal’s weather forecast-ing service has come under in-creased criticism over its failure to predict the extreme weather event.

DPAKathmandu

Army soldiers clear debris from damaged homes at Purainiya village in Nepal’s southern Bara district near Birgunj yesterday, following a rare spring storm.

Issuing a statement on Monday, the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology blamed a lack of technology and human resources for the

failure to issue early warnings for the storm.

The government said it was carrying out a study to assess the damage from the disaster.

Rainstorms normally hit the country in spring between April and May, but experts said Sun-day’s disaster was unusually severe.

Vietnam imprisons two former offi cials for ‘abusing power’

A Hanoi court has jailed two former senior oil ex-ecutives on abuse of power

charges, as Vietnam forges ahead with a crackdown on graft.

Dozens of high-fl ying ex-ecutives and former offi cials have been ensnared in the hardline communist govern-ment’s anti-corruption drag-net, captivating a country unused to seeing powerful fi gures punished openly.

The latest to fall worked for Vietsovpetro, a Russia-Vietnam joint venture petroleum fi rm based in the southern port city of Vung Tau, and were arrested last June on charges of “abusing power to appropriate property”.

Former director-general Tu Thanh Nghia and ex-chief accountant Vo Quang Huy were sentenced to 3.5 years and seven years respectively, state-controlled Vietnam News Agency reported, with

both also banned from holding managerial positions in state agencies and enterprises for three years after their release.

Both men were accused of pocketing excessive interest payments from Ocean Bank, a privately-owned lender al-ready embroiled in its own corruption scandal.

Dozens of Ocean Bank em-ployees have been convicted including former director Nguyen Xuan Son, who was sentenced to death for em-bezzlement and economic mismanagement in 2017.

Hanoi has vowed to root out graft at the highest ranks of business and government and said it will also go after day-to-day corruption.

But analysts have said the campaign is also being used to settle scores and sideline political rivals.

Vietnam is ranked 117 out of 180 on Transparency Interna-tional’s Corruption Percep-tions Index, among the lowest in the region.

Cambodia urged to boost funding for ‘bride traffi cking’ pacts

New agreements reached between Phnom Penh and Beijing to combat

the traffi cking of Cambodian ‘brides’ to China will be useless without fresh funding and strict-er enforcement, anti-traffi cking groups warned yesterday.

Cambodia’s Interior Minis-ter Sar Kheng on Sunday an-nounced a series of deals to fi ght transnational crimes, including human traffi cking, however no details were made available.

Chou Bun Eng, deputy head of the ministry’s National Com-mittee to Counter Human Traf-

fi cking, said she had no new funds to address the issue and referred further questions to a ministry spokesman who said he had no information to share.

Over the past decade, tens of thousands of Southeast Asian women have been lured to Chi-na by criminal networks prom-ising lucrative jobs, only to be sold as brides as China grapples with a gender imbalance of tens of millions of men.

“It is happening every day, this bride traffi cking,” said Dy Thehoya, senior programme of-fi cer at the Centre for Alliance of Labour and Human Rights, a Cambodian charity that helps repatriate traffi cking survivors.

“The government cre-

ates mechanisms to address the problem but they are only on paper. In reality, they are ineff ective due to poor implementation,” he said.

In 2016, Phnom Penh said it had identifi ed 7,000 Cam-bodian women living in forced marriages in China but anti-traffi cking groups said the real total could easily be double that.

In recent years, Cambodia has introduced a number of policies

to help address the problem, including heavier screening of Cambodian women who apply for travel visas.

This drove the trend further underground, human rights groups said, with an increasing number of women travelling overland through Vietnam and then across its mountainous northern border to China.

“It seems that the traffi ckers have relationships with offi cials from all sides,” Thehoya said, adding that offi cials at Cam-bodian missions abroad had often been uncooperative when contacted for assistance. “They share the benefi ts.”

Cambodian women who have returned from China often de-

scribe experiences of sexual, physical and psychological abuse, confi nement, torture and forced labour.

Some escaped and made their way home while others have been sold on or discarded after producing a child for the man who bought them, usually for between $10,000 and $20,000, according to researchers.

Five Cambodian charities who work to locate, repatriate and rehabilitate women forced into marriage said that they re-ceived a new call asking for help every other day in 2018.

But fi nding the women and getting them out is almost im-possible, as they do not under-stand the local language or know

where exactly they are, have lit-tle or no access to phones and internet, and usually have their passports withheld.

“Sometimes, we simply can-not help the victims,” said Sa Im, who works on women’s issues at the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, a human rights group.

Im said that her organisation often lost contact with victims while trying to raise funds to bring them home, and called for the government to allocate more funds for repatriation.

“Offi cials and anti-traffi ck-ing police on the ground know and understand the problem but have no budget support,” she said.

Thomson Reuters FoundationPhnom Penh

AFPHanoi

“The government creates mechanisms to address the problem but they are only on paper. In reality, they are ineff ective due to poor implementation”

AFPBeijing

A former chairman of the government of China’s troubled northwest region

of Xinjiang, an ethnic Uighur, has been arrested for graft, national prosecutors said yesterday.

Nur Bekri was the regional government’s chairman for seven

years until 2014 – a period that was marked by a spate of deadly violence in the region, including riots. Bekri later served as head of the National Energy Agency and deputy director of the country’s top economic planning offi ce. His arrest was announced in a short statement by the Supreme Peo-ple’s Procurate (SPP).

It is among the most high-pro-fi le cases in President Xi Jinping’s

sweeping campaign against cor-ruption in the Communist Party, which has ensnared 1.5mn offi -cials. In Xinjiang, authorities have stepped up a security clampdown in the name of combating terror-ism and separatism, detaining as many as 1mn Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in in-ternment camps, according to es-timates cited by a UN panel.

Bekri had last month been been

expelled from the Communist Party for “serious violations”. He had resisted investigators and was untruthful, the country’s graft watchdog said in a March statement. The Central Commis-sion for Disciplinary Inspection (CCDI) said Bekri had used his position to benefi t himself and his family, buying luxury cars and doling out favours to others. “(He) lived extravagantly ... was morally

corrupt, and abused his power for sexual favours,” the CCDI said.

As deputy director of the Na-tional Development and Reform Commission, Bekri was one of the most powerful ethnic minority members of China’s central gov-ernment.

He was a member of the pow-erful Central Committee of the Communist Party until 2017. In a separate statement, the SPP said

three other senior offi cials have been prosecuted for graft.

The former deputy head of the food and drug administration, Wu Zhen; former vice chairman of Beijing, Li Shixiang; and former vice chairman of Henan prov-ince, Jin Suidong, had all abused their positions for their own ben-efi t, prosecutors said. This comes shortly after former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei was expelled from

the Communist Party and his of-fi cial positions, and the public se-curity ministry announcing that it would “completely and thor-oughly eliminate the poisonous infl uence of Meng Hongwei”.

The men are part of a grow-ing group of Communist Party cadres caught in Xi’s anti-graft campaign, which critics say has served as a way to remove the leader’s political enemies.

12 Gulf TimesWednesday, April 3, 2019

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA

Former chairman of China’s Xinjiang region arrested for graft

Singapore carrier grounds twoBoeing jets over engine problem

Singapore Airlines said yesterday it had grounded two of its Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner aircraft after discovering an engine defect during inspections. The decision was taken after the deterioration of some engine blades was detected on the jets’ Rolls-Royce engines, the carrier said. The planes were grounded pending the replacement of engines. “Some flights to destinations served by the 787-10 fleet have been aff ected,” it said, adding “safety is our top priority”. The city-state’s flag carrier was the launch customer for the model —

which has a maximum capacity of 330 passengers — and started operating them last year. It has nine 787-10 aircraft in its fleet, a spokeswoman said. Boeing’s 737 MAX planes were grounded globally last month following the second of two deadly crashes to occur in less than five months. Scrutiny has centred on an anti-stall system developed specifically for the planes that has given pilots problems. Singapore was one of the first countries to ban 737 MAX planes from its airspace following the March crash of one of the models operated by Ethiopian Airlines.

Rights groups hit out at Singapore’s fake news billReutersSingapore

Singapore submitted wide-ranging fake news legisla-tion in parliament yester-

day, stoking fears from Internet fi rms and human rights groups that it may give the government too much power and hinder free-dom of speech.

The law would require social media sites like Facebook to carry warnings on posts the govern-ment deems false and remove comments against “public inter-est”.

The move came two days after Facebook founder Mark Zuck-erberg said governments should play a more active role in regulat-ing the online platform.

But Simon Milner, who works on Facebook’s public policy in Asia, said after the law was ta-bled, the fi rm was “concerned with aspects of the law that grant broad powers to the Singapore executive branch to compel us to remove content they deem to be false and proactively push a gov-ernment notifi cation to users”.

“As the most far-reaching leg-islation of its kind to date, this level of overreach poses signifi -cant risks to freedom of expres-sion and speech, and could have severe ramifi cations both in Sin-gapore and around the world,” said Jeff Paine, managing direc-tor of the Asia Internet Coalition, an industry association of inter-net and technology companies in the region.

Speaking to reporters on Mon-day, Singapore’s Law Minister K Shanmugam said the new leg-islation would not hinder free speech.

“This legislation deals with false statements of facts. It doesn’t deal with opinions, it doesn’t deal with viewpoints. You can have whatever view-points however reasonable or unreasonable,” he said.

Tech giants Facebook, Twit-ter and Google all have their Asia headquarters in the city-state, a low-tax finance hub seen as a island of stability in the middle of the fast-growing but often-turbulent Southeast Asia region.

Singapore, which has been run

by the same political party since independence from Britain more than 50 years ago, says it is vul-nerable to fake news because of its position as a global fi nancial hub, its mixed ethnic and reli-gious population and widespread Internet access.

It is ranked 151 among 180 countries rated in the World Press Freedom Index of Report-ers Without Borders, a non-government group that promotes freedom of information, below the likes of Russia and Myanmar.

The new bill proposes that the government get online platforms to publish warnings or “correc-tions” alongside posts carrying false information, without re-moving them. This would be the “primary response” to counter falsehoods online, the Law Min-istry said.

“That way, in a sense, peo-ple can read whatever they want and make up their minds. That is our preference,” Law Minister K Shanmugam told reporters on Monday.

Under the proposals, which must be approved by parlia-ment, criminal sanctions includ-

ing hefty fi nes and jail terms will be imposed if the falsehoods are spread by “malicious actors” who “undermine society”, the ministry said, without elaborat-ing. It added that it would cut off an online site’s “ability to profi t”, without shutting it down, if the site had published three false-hoods that were “against the public interest” over the previous six months.

It did not say how it would block a site’s profi t streams. The bill came amid talk of a possible general election this year. Law Minister Shanmugam declined to comment when asked if the new legislation was related to a vote. “This draft law will be a disaster for human rights, particularly freedom of expression and media freedom,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director, Asia division, at Human Rights Watch.

“The defi nitions in the law are broad and poorly defi ned, leav-ing maximum regulatory discre-tion to the government offi cers skewed to view as “misleading” or “false” the sorts of news that challenge Singapore’s preferred political narratives.”

Chinese fi refi ghters contain forest fi re after 30 killedAFPBeijing

Firefi ghters in southwest China contained a forest blaze yesterday after it

claimed the lives of 27 fi refi ght-ers and three others, local offi -cials said.

Nearly 700 fi refi ghters were deployed to battle the fi re, which broke out on Saturday on steep, remote terrain at an alti-tude of around 4,000m (13,000 ft) in Muli County, Sichuan province.

The blaze was contained around mid-day yesterday, though some areas are still burning, said Wu Song, coun-ty chief of Muli, according to Xinhua. “Due to complex ter-rain, we need more time to ex-

tinguish the fi re,” Wu added. Five helicopters have also been deployed to help in fi refi ghting eff orts, said Tang Yi, head of safety enforcement at Liang-shan Prefecture at a press con-ference yesterday.

Local authorities had lost contact with the 30 victims Sunday afternoon after a sud-den change in wind direc-tion ignited a “huge fi reball”, authorities previously said. Twenty seven were fi refi ght-ers, two forestry offi cials and one local volunteer. Authori-ties had initially said all 30 were fi refi ghters.

Most of the bodies were taken to a funeral parlour in Xichang city early yesterday, the fi re department said.

Footage posted to their of-fi cial social media page showed

scores of residents lining a road where the hearses passed through, many holding stalks of chrysanthemum — a tra-ditional Chinese symbol of mourning.

Of the dead, a number were from Sichuan province, with the youngest victim just 18 years old, and many in their early 20s.

They have been lauded as heroes who died in the line of duty, with several offi cial web-sites, including the ministry of emergency management, turn-ing their pages monochromatic as a mark of respect.

Chinese authorities on late Monday also issued a red alert — the highest level — warning of forest fi res in the northern areas of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and Shanxi.

People gather at the Xichang funeral parlour in Xichang in China’s southwestern Sichuan province yesterday to mourn the loss of people killed in a forest fire in Muli county.

Singapore minister puts Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande on ‘off ensive’ playlistReutersSingapore

American pop stars Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande are on an “off ensive lyr-

ics” list presented to members of parliament in socially-conserva-tive Singapore as part of a state-ment by the city-state’s home minister on hate speech.

Monday’s statement came nearly a month after Swedish black metal group Watain’s con-cert was banned in Singapore on concerns about its history of

“denigrating religions and pro-moting violence”.

Singapore keeps a tight rein on public speech and the media, especially when it comes to race and religion.

A photo of the ministerial statement on “restricting hate speech” was posted on Facebook by opposition MP Chen Show Mao on Monday with the cap-tion “lesson of the day”. The post had been shared more than 1,000 times and received hundreds of comments by yesterday after-noon.

The list cited Lady’s Gaga’s

‘Judas’ and Ariana Grande’s ‘God is a woman’, alongside songs ‘Heresy’ by Nine Inch Nails and ‘Take me to the Church’ by Hozi-er. Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande have both held concerts in Singa-pore.

K Shanmugam, Singapore’s home aff airs minister, said in a Facebook post yesterday that he gave the list as an illustration of things people may fi nd off ensive. “Doesn’t mean that it can all get banned, just because some peo-ple fi nd it off ensive,” Shanmu-gam, who is also the law minister, posted.

In his speech on Monday, the minister had said the govern-ment’s approach had to be guided by common sense. He added ei-ther banning everything that is deemed insulting or off ensive by anyone, or allowing everything that is insulting or off ensive, was not doable.

The statement came on a day Singapore submitted wide-ranging fake news legislation in parliament, stoking fears among internet fi rms and human rights groups that it may give the gov-ernment too much power and hinder freedom of speech.

Australia govt cuts taxes ahead of polls

AFPCanberra

Australia’s conservative government unveiled a big-spending federal

budget yesterday with tax cuts and new infrastructure invest-ment to win voters ahead of the imminent general election. The budget includes a return to sur-plus for the fi rst time in 12 years — with economic growth bringing a surfeit of A$7.1bn (US$5.02bn) forecast for 2019-20 — allowing the government to tout its eco-nomic credentials.

The election could be held as soon as next month, giving the minority Liberal-National gov-ernment little time to reverse polls which have consistently favoured the Labor centre-left opposition. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has tried to steer the debate away from his unpopular immigration and climate policies and onto the economy, which his party believes is a strong suit.

Federal Treasurer Josh Fryden-

berg told Australia’s parliament the budget was back in the black, “and Australia is back on track”.

He said the fundamentals of the Australian economy were sound, but there were genuine and clear risks emerging at home and abroad. “Global trade ten-sions remain, the Chinese econo-my has slowed, and there has been a loss of momentum in Japan, Eu-rope and other advanced econo-mies,” he said. “Notwithstanding these challenges, it is testament to the strength of the Australian economy that it is in the 28th year of consecutive economic growth. Our economic plan will see this continue.”

The Treasurer said growth was expected to pick up to 2.75% in 2019-20. The $7.1bn budget sur-plus will rise to $11bn in 2020-21, $17.8bn in 2021-22 and $9.2bn in 2022-23. He said the surplus al-lowed the government to start paying off masses of accumu-lated debt, with the objective of eliminating it entirely by 2030 or sooner. In a swipe at the former Labor government’s economic

management, he said the previ-ous coalition government of John Howard paid off Labor’s debt, and now Morrison’s government was setting a path to do it again. “This matters because over the last year the interest bill on the national debt was $18bn. And this was in a low-interest environment,” he said. “This is money that could have built 500 schools or a world-class hospital in each state and territory.”

Frydenberg said the proposed tax cuts would reduce tax paid by 10mn Australians and 3mn small businesses. There are los-ers, however. Budget papers re-veal savings of more than $2bn over four years through reduced welfare payments.

Savings of $77.9mn come from “better targeting of support for refugees”. Frydenberg said a strong economy needed roads, rail, bridges, dams and ports and the government was boosting infrastructure spending to $100 billion over the decade. That will deliver a range of new projects in every state and territory.

A newlywed couple has their photographs taken at the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien mosque in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei.

Just married

Australia to spend $270mn on countering extremism

Australia’s conservative government yesterday said it would boost spending to counter the threat of violent extremism by A$381mn ($270mn) over the next four years, following mass shootings at two mosques in New Zealand last month. “The tragic events in Christchurch last month show the need to remain vigilant to the threat of violent extremism,” Home Aff airs Minister Peter Dutton said in a statement as part of the government’s budget.

MPs preparefor race toreplace SpeakerGuardian News and MediaLondon

Senior MPs are quietly gath-ering support in a race to replace John Bercow as

Speaker of the House of Com-mons if he stands down as ex-pected this summer.

Former Labour ministers Chris Bryant, Harriet Harman, Meg Hillier and Rosie Winterton are being urged by their peers to prepare for the powerful role.

Other candidates include the deputy speakers Sir Lindsay Hoyle and Eleanor Laing. Some Brexiters want the Conserva-tive Sir Henry Bellingham to put himself forward.

Bercow, who has taken a cen-tral role in the Brexit crisis, had pledged to stand down in 2018 after nine years in the chair, but delayed his departure after the 2017 election.

Although friends have sig-nalled he could go this summer, there has been no confi rmation from the Speaker himself.

Bryant, a former shadow lead-er of the house and a self-con-fessed parliamentary nerd, said he would stand as a supporter for the rights of backbenchers.

“When John goes, I will be a candidate. I think people who know me will know I will be ruthlessly impartial and I hope I could diff use any tensions with very, very gentle humour,” the MP for Rhondda said.

He pointed out to Bercow last month that Theresa May’s Brexit deal should not be brought be-fore the house without substan-tial changes.

Friends of Harman, a former solicitor general, said she was almost certain to put herself for-ward whenever Bercow chose to quit. “Parliament needs some-one of national standing at this very diffi cult time,” one said.

A reformer of the house, Har-man set up the backbench busi-ness committee and introduced parliamentary changes known as the Wright reforms in 2009 and proxy voting for women and men

on “baby leave”, friends said.Hillier, the chair of the in-

fl uential public accounts com-mittee and well known “fi xer” of parliamentary problems, and Winterton, a popular former chief whip, are also being urged to stand.

Traditionally, the two main parties have alternated the role of Speaker, but this tradition was broken by Labour in 2000 when Betty Boothroyd was replaced by Michael Martin.

Some Conservative candidates are beginning to emerge. Laing, who has been a deputy for fi ve years, announced in February that she would stand.

“I expect that there will be a great many candidates to replace him and I would expect the dep-uty speakers to be amongst those candidates,” the Conservative MP told The House magazine.

Bercow has been under pres-sure to stand down after being criticised in Dame Laura Cox’s report into bullying and harass-ment of staff last year.

During nine years in the Speaker’s chair he has clashed with prime ministers, survived attempts to oust him and spoken out against US President Donald Trump.

Bercow has also angered many in the government. He was ac-cused of scuppering May’s Brexit deal last month after he stopped her from bringing back exactly the same bill unless the govern-ment asked a diff erent question.

He has been praised for making it easier for MPs to grill ministers, increasing the power of back-benchers to hold the government to account, and has relaxed the dress code in the Commons.

A race for a new Speaker could be one of many elections this summer. The Conservative party could launch a leadership elec-tion, while ministers are openly contemplating a general elec-tion.

A candidate for Speaker must be nominated by 12 MPs and any election would be presided over by the father of the house, Ken Clarke.

May to ask for shortBrexit extensionGuardian News and MediaLondon

Theresa May is to ask for another brief Brexit exten-sion as a means of seeking

a compromise withdrawal plan with the Labour party, she has announced, heralding the likeli-hood of Downing Street backing a softer Brexit.

In a brief TV statement inside No 10 following a seven-hour Cabinet meeting, the prime min-ister said she would hold talks with Jeremy Corbyn to seek a Brexit plan they could agree on and “both could put to the house”.

If agreement with the Labour leader was impossible, May said, the plan would be to put to a vote in parliament a series of Brexit options, with the government committing to enact whatever idea won support.

This would require another extension to Article 50, May said, but added that she aimed for this to not go beyond May 22, thus en-suring the UK would not need to take part in European elections.

“This is a diffi cult time for eve-ryone,” she said. “Passions are running high on all sides of the ar-gument. But we can and must fi nd the compromises to deliver what the British people voted for.”

The prime minister’s move would seem to point inevitably to a softer form of Brexit. Labour has made it plain it will not back any plan without customs union membership, and a runoff vote in parliament could lead to even closer ties in the EU.

It remains to be seen how Leave-minded ministers in May’s Cabinet, and her Brexiter MPs will react. May’s Brexit plan has been rejected by the Commons three times, and two attempts by MPs to fi nd a diff erent preferred option have both ended in deadlock.

The prime minister said the endless delay was “doing dam-age to our politics”, and ruled out

a no-deal departure in the short term.

Any compromise deal with La-bour would need to include the current withdrawal agreement, she said, explaining that the EU has said it cannot be swiftly rene-gotiated. Instead, she said, focus should be on defi ning the future relationship, to be put to next week’s European Council sum-mit.

Failure to agree a consensus plan would, if Labour agreed, see various options put to MPs to de-cide, with the government agree-ing to “abide by the decision of the house”.

Some members of May’s Cabi-

net are now pushing for Britain to leave on April 12 whatever hap-pens, but others fear the econom-ic and legal disruption caused by exiting with no deal.

A government analysis leaked to the Daily Mail suggests a “no deal” scenario would undermine Britain’s security capabilities, cause a recession, and increase the cost of food by up to 10%.

May says it would be “unac-ceptable” to ask British voters to take part in European Parliament elections in May, almost three years after they voted to leave the bloc. And she is expected to try to push her deal to a fourth vote, possibly as soon as today.

Long Article 50 extensionnot guaranteed: MacronFrench president says there is “nothing easy or automatic” about agreeing to Brexit delay

Guardian News and MediaParis

The French president, Em-manuel Macron, has said it should not be taken for

granted that the EU would grant the UK a long extension on its departure from the bloc.

Welcoming Ireland’s Leo Var-adkar to Paris for talks at the Elysee yesterday, Macron said that as the clock ticked down and a no-deal Brexit became more likely, it was far from evident that the EU would agree to a British request for a further Article 50 extension.

“A long extension, implying the UK takes part in European elections and European institu-tions, has nothing easy or auto-matic about it,” Macron said.

“I say that again very strongly. Our priority must be the good functioning of the EU and the single market. The EU can’t be

held hostage long-term by the resolution of a political crisis in the UK.”

He continued: “The three times rejection of the withdrawal agreement by the House of Com-mons and the rejection of all al-ternative plans now puts us on the path of a UK exit without a deal.

“As the European council de-cided in March, it’s now up to the UK to present a credible al-ternative plan backed by a ma-jority before April 10 in order to avoid that. If the UK isn’t capa-ble “almost three years after the referendum” of putting forward a solution that gets a majority, it will have decided itself, de facto, to leave without a deal.

“And we can’t avoid failure for the UK.”

Macron, a pro-European, wants to push forward with his own plans for EU reform and is keen for Brexit not to overshad-ow all other concerns.

Publicly, he has positioned France as the toughest-talking nation in the Brexit saga, stress-ing the need for the UK to present

a way forward. Macron said the EU’s priority was protecting its workings and the single market: “We have a future to build to-gether in the EU and a future re-lationship to build with the UK, which will be an ally, but we can’t spend the next months still try-ing to fi x the rules of our divorce and looking to the past.”

Macron met Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, to discuss no-deal plans for the Irish border as well as how to handle any extension request from Theresa May.

Macron said France and Ire-land, as the UK’s neighbours, were the two countries most aff ected by a potential no-deal exit. Ma-cron said the EU had total “unity and solidarity” with Ireland.

“We’ll never abandon Ireland and the Irish people, because that solidarity is the very sense of the European project,” he said.

Varadkar stressed there was still time for the British prime minister to come to the Euro-pean council before April 10 with “credible” proposals, and he said the EU should be open to such proposals.

Ireland won’t be‘back door’ into EUAFPParis

Ireland does not want to become a “back door” into the EU single market for

Britain in the event of a no-deal Brexit, Irish Prime Min-ister Leo Varadkar said in Paris yesterday.

“We don’t want Ireland to be a back door to the single mar-ket, anymore than anybody wants us to become a back door to the single market,” Varadkar said after a meeting in Paris with French President Em-manuel Macron.

Varadkar said he was com-mitted to preventing goods that do no meet EU norms from entering Ireland or the EU.

“In the unlikely event that we have a no-deal and the UK were to do trade deals with the US or China and we had chlorinated chicken or hor-mone beef, or products made by child labour in Asian coun-tries, the last thing we would want is that coming south of the border into the Republic of Ireland.

“And we certainly wouldn’t want it getting through the Re-public of Ireland into the Euro-pean Union,” he said.

But he again reiterated his opposition to creating a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, for fear that it could jeopardise peace in the British province.

Varadkar said that while physical inspections would be necessary on imports like live animals, they could be done at ports in Northern Ireland rath-er than in the Irish Republic.

“That is the right and best place for them,” he said.

But the British government has refused to envisage car-rying out customs checks on goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Britain, argu-ing that to do so would drive a wedge through the United Kingdom.

The EU’s Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said yesterday that the EU was working with Ireland “on a unilateral basis in the event of no deal, to know where we can do these checks,” but refused to elaborate fur-ther.

BRITAIN/IRELAND

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 2019 13

Short story vending machines to be installed at Tube stationThe machines, made by French company Short Édition, will dispense free one, three and five-minute stories … with the first penned by Anthony Horowitz

Guardian News and MediaLondon

Weary city workers will have a new way of passing the time on

their commute once the UK’s

fi rst short-story vending ma-chines are installed at Canary Wharf this week.

Dispensing one, three and fi ve-minute stories free to pas-sersby at the touch of a button, the vending machines are made by French company Short Edi-tion. They already feature in lo-cations across France, in Hong Kong and the US, where Godfa-ther director Francis Ford Cop-pola was such a fan he invested in the company and had a dispenser installed at his San Francisco res-

taurant, Cafe Zoetrope.The three machines being un-

veiled in Canary Wharf tomor-row are the fi rst in the UK. Cover-ing genres from sci-fi to romance and children’s fi ction, the stories will be by authors including Vir-ginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens – and the ini-tiative launches with a specially commissioned one-minute tale from bestselling novelist An-thony Horowitz. He plumped on writing a whodunnit for the ma-chine, and admitted it had been a

challenge to condense the genre into such a short form.

“It was the challenge of writ-ing a story that could be read between two stations – not just a short story but a very short story,” he said. “Because I love mystery and whodunnits, the question of would it be possible to write a proper whodunnit with a solution which made you smile in such a short amount of space was irresistible. The whole no-tion amused me.”

He said it took three or four

days to write his story, Mr Rob-inson.

The idea of selling books from a machine is not new; in 1937, Penguin founder Allen Lane installed a “Penguincubator” on Charing Cross Road, a slot-machine book-dispenser that biographer Jeremy Lewis wrote: “shocked his more conservative colleagues”.

“What appealed to me was that I travel on the tube every single day and I see everybody buried in apps and games, or looking at old

tweets,” said Horowitz, who is currently working on the televi-sion adaptation of his Alex Rider books. “So the idea of using that little chunk of your day for some-thing that entertains you, some-thing which is, with a very small ‘l’, literature, is appealing.”

The Canary Wharf Group said it had been prompted to install the machines after new research found that members of the pub-lic were not fi nding time to fi n-ish books. The research, which polled 2,000 UK adults, found

that 36% had given up on at least one book in the last year due to lack of time, and 30% had not fi nished a book in over six months.

Head of arts and events Lucie Moore said: “We’re all guilty of saying we’re too busy, but our research found that a staggering 70% of us would rather get lost in a good book than get lost down the rabbit hole of social media. Our short story stations provide the perfect digital antidote – a return to analogue scrolling.”

Pro-EU demonstrators brave the rain near the Houses of Parliament in central London yesterday.

French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a joint press conference with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, in the courtyard of the Elysee Palace, in Paris, yesterday following their meeting.

BRITAIN

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 201914

BMA launches urgent inquiry into sexual harassment claimsGuardian News and MediaLondon

Allegations by some of the UK’s most senior female doctors of widespread

sexual harassment at the top of the medical profession have forced the British Medical As-sociation to launch an urgent in-vestigation.

Dr Zoe Norris and Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer, who are mem-bers of the general practice com-

mittee (GPC), the body which represents all GPs, have chosen to blow the whistle on misogy-nistic behaviour of some mem-bers and the sexist culture of the male-dominated committee.

Hundreds of colleagues have contacted them after Bramall-Stainer complained last month about being called a “naughty girl” by a member of the committee be-fore giving a speech in Belfast.

Norris is stepping down in pro-test from the GPC and says her ex-periences have “taken a signifi cant

toll on her mental health”.In an article for GPonline.com

aimed at blowing the lid on the “dinosaur-infested depths of GP politics”, they say they and others were subject to ongoing belittling and tiresome innuendo. This is based on their own experience and 420 replies from others.

One of their colleagues was sent an unsolicited lewd picture by a committee member, they claim. It adds that another lo-cal medical committee chief ex-ecutive faced a sexually explicit

proposition after giving a speech.The article alleges that a

former GPC member, Dr Steph-anie deGiorgio, was patted on the knee and, like Bramall-Stainer, was called a “naughty girl” by a fellow committee member.

The BMA issued an apology to the women involved and promised an inquiry. In a statement its chair, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, also thanked the whistleblowers involved.

He said: “Sexist, disrespect-ful, discriminatory and abusive behaviour will not be tolerated

in this association and must be stamped out.” He added: “We will be launching an urgent in-vestigation … and we are reach-ing out to aff ected members to invite them to be an integral part of this. We would also ask that any member who feels they have experienced discriminatory or abusive behaviour to contact us”.

Bramall-Stainer said the BMA’s response did not go far enough be-cause it failed to guarantee that the inquiry would be independent.

She said: “Saying we will not

tolerate something isn’t good enough, because it is happen-ing. We need to see an external professional organisation com-missioned that would be wholly independent. Those involved in these behaviours cannot be in-volved in its investigation.”

She also called for member-ship of the GPC to refl ect the current gender balance among GPs. Women are currently out-numbered by two to one on the 77-strong committee, but make up 58% of GPs.

Bramall-Stainer refused to identify the men involved but said she would consider giving details to an investigation if it was genuinely independent.

She said: “I have experienced explicit behaviour from perhaps half a dozen men but I don’t want to get drawn into numbers because it is more about the wider context. Naming names makes it a personal issue, and you can then get rid of those people, but the problem still persists.”

Police probe possible links between stabbingsGuardian News and MediaLondon

Detectives are investi-gating whether an early morning stabbing in

north London is linked to four others they suspect may have been carried out by a serial at-tacker.

The latest incident happened shortly after 5am yesterday in Enfield, close to where the first attack happened on Saturday.

Four people were attacked in the area between 7pm on Sat-urday and 9.45am on Sunday, leading to a large search and two arrests. After the latest attack, police are trying to establish whether the attacker involved in the first stabbings is still at large or if the latest one is un-related.

The Metropolitan police said that in the latest incident the male victim, who is in his 30s, had life-threatening injuries.

They said he was walking with a companion, who escaped

unharmed, whereas in the pre-vious attacks the victims were apparently targeted at random while walking on their own.

Officers were tracking down local CCTV systems and study-ing the footage to compare the suspect in the latest stabbing with the one in the first four at-tacks.

The description of yester-day’s suspect broadly matches that of a person police want to find in connection with the first four attacks.

The former is described as “a tall, skinny black man, wearing a hoody”, while the latter is “a black man, approximately 6ft 3ins tall, of skinny build and wearing dark clothing, possibly a hooded top”.

The Met said the man was attacked in Fairfield Road and made his way to Aberdeen Road, where he was found by officers.

The first victim, a woman, 45, was stabbed in the back by a lone man on Aberdeen Road just after 7pm.

The two men arrested af-

ter the four earlier attacks were being held in custody on suspicion of grievous bodily harm.

Police had previously said the four attacks over the weekend were linked and believed they were the work of a sole male suspect, who may have mental health problems.

Detective superintendent Luke Marks said: “I am aware that events from the weekend have caused a huge amount of worry and concern among the community, and that this inci-dent will cause further alarm.

“While at this stage the inci-dent has not yet been formally linked, the location and manner of this attack will be of concern to the public.

“Our advice continues that the public remain vigilant, and to contact police regarding an-yone acting suspiciously. You will see additional uniformed patrols in the Edmonton area; if you have any concerns, please speak with my officers immedi-ately.”

London backs plans for ‘Tulip’ towerReutersLondon

Plans to build a glass view-ing tower perched 1,000 feet above London on a

slender tower shaped like a tulip have been approved by the local authority.

The building is expected to be western Europe’s second-tallest tower when it is complete, beat-en only by the nearby “Shard” building.

Britain’s vote to leave the Eu-ropean Union in 2016 initially cast a pall over London’s prop-erty market but the plans to build the Tulip have been seen as vote of confi dence in the city.

Planning authorities in the City of London’s fi nance district recommended the building — which gets its nickname because it has a thin stalk topped by a glass bulb — should be granted planning permission at a meet-ing yesterday.

The approval came despite crit-icism that the building, designed by Foster and Partners, would in-terrupt views of the Tower of Lon-

don, and concerns from London City airport that it would interfere with radar coverage.

“After a lengthy and robust debate, the committee agreed to approve this truly unique visitor attraction,” said planning com-mittee chairman Chris Hayward.

Financed by the Brazilian bil-lionaire Jacob Safra, the building comprises a glass viewing plat-form, rotating pods on the out-side and an education centre.

Construction is likely to begin next year and fi nish in 2025. For centuries, St. Paul’s cathedral, rebuilt by architect Sir Chris-topher Wren in the 17th cen-tury, was the tallest structure in London but the skyline now is changing fast.

There are more than 541 build-ings of 20 storeys or more in the pipeline in London, according to a survey earlier this year by New London Architecture, an inde-pendent organisation.

Critics say the City is becom-ing increasingly cluttered by glass-and-metal towers that have little architectural interest and that dwarf historic land-marks.

Unis ‘spendingmillions onmarketing tolure students’Guardian News and MediaLondon

Universities are spending millions of pounds on marketing in a battle to

recruit students as competition intensifi es in the higher educa-tion sector, a Guardian investi-gation revealed.

Data obtained from freedom of information (FoI) requests shows universities spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on digital advertising and social media in a direct appeal to 18-year-olds, as well as adverts on billboards, buses and the London under-ground.

The highest spending univer-sities are those in the lower and middle ranks of the UK league tables, who invest huge sums to attract suffi cient students to fi ll their courses and bring in vital income with their £9,250 annual tuition fees in an increasingly cut-throat recruitment climate.

Among the big spenders was the University of Central Lan-cashire with a total marketing spend of £3.4mn for 2017-2018. The University of the West of England’s annual marketing budget was £3mn while Mid-dlesex was not far behind with £2.6mn, followed by Gloucester-shire with a £1.9mn overall mar-keting spend.

Of the universities who broke down their marketing budgets to detail specifi cally their spend on recruiting new undergraduates, the highest spending institution was the University of East Lon-don, which invested more than £1.3mn on marketing and adver-tising, not including expenditure on open days and publications.

Anglia Ruskin University was the next highest, spending just under £1.19mn targeting pro-spective undergraduates in the UK, of which £515,000 went on advertising on search engines, £352,000 on social media and just £6,000 on print.

The University of Bedford-shire was not far behind, with a £1.08mn marketing spend to at-tract new undergraduates, which equates to £432 for every under-graduate enrolled.

The Guardian’s FoI requests revealed some universities em-ploying large numbers of staff in their marketing teams. An-glia Ruskin said it employed 120 full-time equivalent members of staff ; Warwick University, a member of the prestigious Rus-sell group, said it employed 106 staff in a range of marketing roles across the institution.

The University and College Union, which represents higher education staff , accused univer-sities of favouring style over sub-stance. “It is clearly important that universities make potential students aware of the benefi ts of higher education,” said the union’s acting general secretary, Paul Cottrell, “but the spiralling growth in spending on market-ing stands in direct contrast to the way the pay and conditions of those who deliver to students has been held down.

“Students pay record levels of fees, staff are not paid enough, yet millions are being spent on marketing as institutions appear to favour style over substance. This approach is at odds at what students actually say they want.”

Many of the 134 universities that were approached refused to divulge fi nancial informa-

tion, citing commercial sensitiv-ity. Among them was Warwick, which said: “Sharing any in-formation with regard to the university’s marketing strategy, budget and spend would allow key competitors to have access to highly sensitive data and result in a competitive advantage.”

In England, the lifting of the cap on the number of students universities can recruit, to-gether with a demographic fall in the number of 18-year-olds, has resulted in an aggressive new market in higher education. Higher-ranking universities are hoovering up students who would once have gone to mid and lower-ranking institutions.

Many universities are facing fi nancial pressures, with nearly one in four in defi cit in England last year and warnings of redun-dancies. Brexit and the looming Augar review into higher educa-tion funding, with the possibil-ity of a cut in tuition fees, is also adding to the uncertainty engulf-ing universities.

Nicola Dandridge, chief execu-tive of the higher education sector regulator, the Offi ce for Students, said: “It’s for universities to decide how they allocate their resources and it is, of course, understandable that they will want to market their courses to students.”

In Scotland, which does not have the same higher education market – there is still a cap on student numbers and no tuition fees – universities are spending signifi cantly less on advertising than most of their English coun-terparts. Glasgow Caledonian University spent just £47,504 and the University of Strathclyde spent £117,028 (which amounts to £8.22 for every undergraduate enrolled).

Royal exhibition to open

A Buckingham Palace staff member poses with Queen Victoria’s Stuart Ball costume at the press preview of Queen Victoria’s Palace which goes on public display from July 20.

MI6 chief ’sson killed in car accident

Daily MailLondon

The son of MI6 chief Alex Younger has been killed in a crash on a private estate.

Sam Younger, 22, described as a “fun-loving” young man, died in the early hours of Saturday.

Friends said he was in a car crash but police described it only as a “motor vehicle accident”.

His parents paid tribute to their “wonderful son”, who was studying at the University of Ed-inburgh, and asked for space so they could “remember and cel-ebrate” him.

Police are investigating the “unexplained” death but said it did not appear suspicious.

The tragedy took place on an estate in Stirlingshire, Scotland, which police refused to name.

Before going to Edinburgh, Sam studied at Dulwich College, one of the country’s top private schools, which described him as “selfl ess, big-hearted and fun-loving”.

His tutor at Edinburgh said he had been left “devastated” by the news of Sam’s death, adding that the student had been “con-fi dent and excited about the fu-ture”.

Sam was a keen rugby player and played for Dulwich College in the Under-18s Schools Cup at Twickenham.

After leaving the south Lon-don school in 2015, he visited In-dia with friends on a motorbike tour and rode over Khardung La, one of the highest drivable mountain passes in the world.

His family has released a pho-tograph of him enjoying the trip, sporting a rugged beard and wearing a Dulwich College T-shirt.

The student also enjoyed ski-ing and scuba diving. He was a member of the university sail-ing society and was regularly pictured exploring the Scottish countryside.

Sam’s father Younger, 55, took on the role of MI6 head – also known by the code letter ‘C’ – in 2014.

Cambridge University’s “Blue boat” crew train on the river Thames in west London yesterday ahead of the The Boat Race 2019.

Gearing up

EUROPE15Gulf Times

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

President Recep Tayyip Er-dogan’s AK Party has sub-mitted objections to local

election results in all districts of Istanbul and Ankara, party offi -cials said yesterday, after results showed the opposition earned narrow victories in both cities.

The AK Party (AKP) is on track to lose control of what are Turkey’s two biggest cities, its commercial hub of Istanbul and the capital Ankara, in a surprise election setback that may com-plicate Erdogan’s plans to com-bat recession.

In Istanbul, the mayoral candidate of the main opposi-tion Republican People’s Party (CHP), Ekrem Imamoglu, and his AKP rival, former prime minister Binali Yildirim, both said on Monday that Imamoglu was around 25,000 votes ahead.

Istanbul has an estimated to-tal population of 15mn.

The AKP had previously said that it would use its right to ob-ject to the results where there are voting irregularities, adding that the errors at the ballots had af-fected the outcome.

Yesterday, Bayram Senocak, the AKP’s Istanbul head, said objections had been submitted by the 3pm deadline for appeals, and added that legal action would be taken against electoral offi cials who made the errors.

“We have submitted all our appeals to the district electoral councils,” Senocak said, as he waved ballot records in which he said vote count irregularities could be seen.

An AKP deputy chairman later said that the diff erence be-tween Imamoglu and Yildirim was down to 20,509 votes and

would keep falling as a result of their appeals.

He said that the local elec-tions were “the biggest blemish

in Turkish democratic history”.The CHP’s Istanbul head Ca-

nan Kaftancioglu said her party submitted objections in 22 dis-

tricts, adding they expected to receive 4,960 more votes after the appeals were resolved.

“They are trying to steal the

will of the people as it was re-fl ected in the ballots,” she told reporters in Istanbul.

The CHP’s Imamoglu said yesterday that he was saddened by the AKP failure to congratu-late him after the election board count put him ahead.

“I’m watching Mr Binali Yildirim with regret. You were a minister of this nation, the parliament speaker and a prime minister,” Imamoglu said in Is-tanbul, adding: “What could be more noble than congratulat-ing?”

“The world is watching us with shame right now. We are ready to manage the big city of Istanbul. Let go and congratu-late us with honour, so we can do our job,” he said.

Ahead of the elections, the CHP had formed an electoral al-liance with the Iyi (Good) Party to rival that of the AKP and their nationalist MHP partners.

The alliances nominated joint candidates in certain cities, in-cluding Ankara and Istanbul.

Imamoglu, who laid a wreath at the mausoleum of modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Ke-mal Ataturk, in Ankara, later went to CHP headquarters to meet Mansur Yavas, the opposi-tion’s candidate in the capital.

Speaking at the CHP build-ing, Imamoglu said the elections marked a “moment of begin-ning” for Turkey.

In Ankara, Yavas won 50.9% of votes, ahead of his AKP rival and former minister Mehmet Ozhaseki in Sunday’s elections by nearly four percentage points.

The AKP said it had also sub-mitted objections to results across Ankara.

Turkey’s ruling party challenges poll resultsReutersIstanbul/Ankara

People go about with their daily life in Istanbul. In the background is a billboard reading ‘Thank You Istanbul’, portraying AKP ruling party mayor candidate Binali Yildirim and President Erdogan.

Ukraine’s former prime minister Yulia Tymosh-enko has denounced the

results of a “rigged” vote that eliminated her from the presi-dential race, but said that she would not urge street protests.

Tymoshenko, an internation-ally-recognised political fi gure, came third in Sunday’s fi rst-round vote in what was also her third bid for the presidency.

That means she will take no part in the second-round run-off on April 21, in which actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice, will face Presi-dent Petro Poroshenko.

With 99% of the ballots counted, Zelenskiy was ahead with more than 30% of the fi rst-round vote, nearly twice that of Poroshenko, on almost 16%.

Tymoshenko, Poroshenko’s long-time rival, took 13% of the vote.

“These elections were rigged by Petro Poroshenko,” the 58-year-old political veteran told reporters.

She had no plans however, to challenge the result of the vote either in court or by calling street protests.

“The current president has privatised the judicial system,” she said. “We would simply be wasting time.”

Any street violence would play into Russia’s hands, said Ty-moshenko, who came to interna-tional prominence as a face of the 2004 “Orange Revolution”.

“I respect the people’s choice,” she added.

Ties between Kyiv and Mos-cow have never recovered after the 2014 popular uprising in Kyiv that ousted a Kremlin-backed regime.

Since those bloody street pro-tests, Russia has annexed Crimea and supported a separatist up-rising in eastern Ukraine, a con-fl ict that has so far claimed some 13,000 lives.

Tymoshenko said that neither political novice Zelenskiy, nor the pro-Western Poroshenko, would be able “to cope with the challenges” or “stop the war”.

Tymoshenko called on her supporters to mobilise and back her Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party in parliamentary polls in October.

“Our fi ght is not over yet,” she said.

Tymoshenko served three years as prime minister and spent another three years in prison for abuse of power, charges the West denounced as politically moti-vated.

A monitoring mission by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said the fi rst-round vote had in general been “well-organised, smooth, transparent and effi cient”.

Tymoshenko claims vote rigging, but will respect people’s willAFPKyiv

Tymoshenko: I respect the people’s choice.Comedian Volodymyr Zel-

enskiy is leading the race to become Ukraine’s next

president thanks to an insurgent campaign that rails against cor-rupt politicians infl uenced by rich oligarchs.

Yet it is his own relation-ship with one of the country’s wealthiest tycoons that could prove an Achilles’ heel.

One of Ukraine’s most popu-lar TV channels, 1+1, owned by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, has given Zelenskiy a powerful plat-form in recent months during his meteoric rise to the brink of the presidency.

On Saturday, a day before Ze-lenskiy won the fi rst round of the presidential contest and set up a run-off with the incumbent Petro Poroshenko, 1+1 fi lled its schedule with back-to-back shows by the comedian and ac-tor.

The fact that Zelenskiy is a major star on the channel has stoked worries among some investors and voters, and accu-sations from his political oppo-nents, that he is in the pocket of Kolomoisky.

Both Zelenskiy and Kolo-moisky say their relationship is strictly professional, and cen-tred on the comedian’s TV work.

Both say no undue infl uence is being exerted by the oligarch, whose businesses range from banking and energy to aviation.

“I’m more his puppet than he

is mine,” Kolomoisky said last year.

“It is impossible to infl uence me,” Zelenskiy told the news website Gordon in December. “Neither Kolomoisky, nor any other oligarch, no one will infl u-ence me.”

Zelenskiy said last month that he was in the process of exiting all his businesses, which in-cludes the production company whose shows run on 1+1.

Asked whether the relation-ship was a weak spot for him, Zelenskiy told Reuters: “We are working according to TV con-tracts and it is fi ne.

It is business.”However, President Porosh-

enko has sought to make po-litical capital out of the connec-tion between the two men as he fi ghts to make up ground to the comedian before the run-off vote on April 21.

“In the past few weeks my opponents have poured on me rivers of shameless lies. The main source of these lies in re-cent months – deplorable as it may be – has been 1+1. 1+1 has turned into the obedient imple-menter of the political assign-ments of its owner,” Poroshenko said.

“Though the latter may have fl ed abroad, he still plays the pre-election political chess-board, sometimes moving the Ze (Zelenskiy) pieces, sometimes the Yu (former prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko) pieces.

“Kolomoisky is motivated by a desire for revenge against the state,” he wrote on Twitter.

Kolomoisky has lived abroad

since clashing with Poroshenko over Ukraine’s largest bank, which he used to own.

In a November interview to Ukrainian news site lb.ua, he worried Ukraine’s judicial sys-tem would stop him from leav-ing the country if he came back.

Zelenskiy announced he was running for president on De-cember 31 on 1+1, upstaging Po-roshenko, who was giving a tra-ditional New Year’s Eve address to the nation at the same time.

On Saturday, the channel’s Zelenskiy-themed schedule included shows where he and fellow actors performed jokes, sketches and songs, and a docu-mentary voiced by Zelenskiy about Ronald Reagan, a popular actor who became US president.

Poroshenko is part of the same wealthy elite as Kolo-moisky, having made a fortune from confectionery that earned him the sobriquet of “Chocolate King”.

“The strategic dilemma will be what do you prefer, an oligarch or someone possibly controlled by an oligarch, the puppet or a puppeteer?” said regional analyst and political consultant Radu Magdin.

Kolomoisky makes no secret of his dislike for Poroshenko, and the two have clashed re-peatedly over issues that threat-ened Kolomoisky’s businesses.

No hard evidence has been presented by any of Zelenskiy’s opponents that Kolomoisky is indeed pulling the strings be-hind the campaign.

However, the ties between the two men have led some political analysts and Western diplomats to question how zealously Zel-enskiy would try to implement reforms needed to speed up economic growth and keep for-eign aid fl owing if they clashed with Kolomoisky’s interests.

In particular, the relationship puts the spotlight on the fate of PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest lender, which the government wrested from Kolomoisky in 2016 in a clean-up of the bank-ing system under an Interna-tional Monetary Fund bailout programme.

The government pumped bil-

lions of dollars into shoring up PrivatBank’s fi nances, saying money had been fraudulently siphoned off from the lender while Kolomoisky owned it.

Kolomoisky denied any wrongdoing and has challenged the nationalisation in court.

Asked if there were concerns about Zelenskiy’s ties to Kolo-moisky, Edwin Gutierrez, head of Emerging Market Sovereign Debt at Aberdeen Standard In-vestments, said: “That is there, but at the end of the day the oli-garchs always rule the roost in Ukraine.”

“Maybe this will be another Yanukovych moment where everyone gets excited but then in the end Ukraine disappoints,” he added, referring to former president Viktor Yanukovych, who fl ed to Russia after the 2014 Maidan street protests.

Asked in a Reuters interview whether he would hand Pri-vatBank back to Kolomoisky if elected, Zelenskiy said in Febru-ary: “Am I that crazy? Do I want to lose my life, reputation?”

Accusations from Porosh-enko and his allies that Zelen-skiy is being controlled by an oligarch has lent an ironic twist to the presidential race.

Zelenskiy’s campaign has been propelled by his TV show, Servant of the People, where he plays a scrupulously honest history schoolteacher who be-comes president by accident.

He challenges the old way of doing things, outwitting oli-garchs and corrupt politicians.

The series blurs the line be-tween fi ction and reality, be-tween the make-believe presi-dent and the real-life challenger.

In the fi rst scene of the fi rst series, three shadowy power-brokers are surveying Kyiv’s Maidan square from a rooftop balcony at night while sipping drinks and talking about how they spend money to bring their puppet politicians to power.

“It’s one week before the election. We worked hard for our candidates. They’re almost neck and neck, now let the best man win,” says one.

“What good will that bring me?” asks another.

Comedian faces scrutiny over oligarch ties in election raceBy Matthias Williams and Natalia Zinets, ReutersKyiv

Zelenskiy: It is impossible to influence me ... neither Kolomoisky, nor any other oligarch, no one will influence me.

Blast at Russian military academyAFPSaint Petersburg

A blast caused by an uni-dentifi ed explosive device wounded four yesterday

at a military academy in Russia’s northwestern city of Saint Pe-tersburg, the country’s Investi-gative Committee said.

“According to preliminary in-formation, four servicemen re-ceived various injuries,” it said in a statement, adding that the injuries are not life-threatening.

Earlier, the Russian defence ministry said three people were wounded in the blast.

“An explosion of an unidenti-fi ed explosive device took place around 1.30pm (1030 GMT), in Saint Petersburg in staff premis-es of an administrative build-ing at the Mozhaisky academy,” the ministry said in a statement cited by agencies.

It described the device as lacking casing, meaning that it was not a military device such as a mortar shell.

“Everyone is alive,” Saint Pe-tersburg’s acting governor Alex-ander Belov told the media.

“Three people are injured, one is lightly injured,” Belov said, without clarifying whether that made the total number of wounded three or four.

The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case into the incident, saying that it is work-ing to establish “the origin of the detonated object”.

Police had sealed off the area around the academy, an AFP journalist saw, and cadets and staff were leaving the grounds.

Fire engines were also driving out of the gates.

The Tass news agency re-ported that military prosecutors were inspecting the site.

A cadet who gave her name only as Natalya told AFP that “everyone is being evacuated”.

She added that “it looked like something exploded on the fi rst fl oor” but said she did not have any more information.

An emergency services of-fi cial told RIA Novosti that the blast reverberated in a fi rst-fl oor classroom, causing a staircase to collapse and trapping around 20 people.

Local independent news site Fontanka reported that mine clearing specialists were also at the scene.

There was no visible damage to the building.

The academy, one of Russia’s largest, is overseen by the de-fence ministry and trains offi cers to serve in air and space defence and other branches of the armed forces.

It is located in the centre of Saint Petersburg, the former imperial capital of Russia whose palaces are a major draw for tourists.

In April 2017, a bomb went off on a train in the city’s metro, killing 15 people and injuring al-most 70 more.

The alleged perpetrator also died in the attack.

French shop chain apologises over swastika beltsFrench supermarket chain Auchan admitted yesterday that it had sold money belts bearing the Nazi swastika at its Polish stores.“Our 2018 product off erings did indeed include these money belts from a Polish manufacturer, though our chain wasn’t aware of it,” Auchan Poland spokeswoman Dorota Patejko told AFP.“It was an oversight on our part, a situation that we regret,” she said, adding that the group was currently checking stores nationwide and would recall any of the belts left in stock.“Only one money belt with the Nazi symbol has been located so far. It’s been pulled from shelves.”The Gazeta Krakowska regional daily on Monday reported the case of a woman who bought one of the belts in an Auchan store in the southern city of Krakow.“It’s sewn out of camouflage fabric and has various bits of text,” the client said, adding that she only recently realised there was a swastika.Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II and its current laws forbid the reproducing of the Nazi swastika.

EUROPE

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 201916

Greece’s prime minister was greeted with hugs and “wefi es” yesterday

during his landmark visit to new-ly-renamed North Macedonia, where the neighbours celebrated a new start after resolving their decades-long identity row.

Upon arrival, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and North Macedonian counterpart Zoran Zaev snapped “wefi es”, while the Greek leader’s wife was presented with fl owers.

“We are writing history,” Zaev said. “You are looking at two neighbours, friendly people who have shown Europe and the en-tire world that with brave deci-sions and good wishes for to-getherness, something that was impossible yesterday has become reality today.”

Calling Zaev his “dearest friend”, Tsipras said it is time to make up for nearly three “lost” decades.

“For years, every time I would go to Europe with the govern-

ment aircraft ... I noticed that the pilot made a deviation so it wouldn’t enter the airspace of FYROM (Former Yugoslav Re-public Macedonia),” he said. “This silly behaviour now stops. Not only won’t we make devia-tions, but we might also take a stroll to say hello.”

The one-day trip came a little more than a month after Tsipras and Zaev fi nalised a deal that added “North” to Macedonia’s name to distinguish it from a bordering province in Greece.

“We are starting to cover lost ground to build a deep friend-ship, not only between our gov-ernments, but especially be-tween our people,” Tsipras said.

It was the fi rst offi cial visit by a Greek prime minister since the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia declared independ-ence in 1991.

In the end, Skopje agreed to the change in exchange for as-surance that Athens would stop thwarting its eff orts to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisa-tion (Nato) and the EU.

“Today our republic for the fi rst time in its history is a host-

ing an offi cial visit of a Greek Prime Minister,” Zaev noted during a joint press conference, after he welcomed Tsipras with a warm embrace outside the gov-ernment building and raised his mobile phone for a picture.

With the name issue behind them, the two countries are now exploring the potential of stronger economic ties, with both leaders to attend a business forum later in the day.

Tsipras, who brought 10 min-isters and dozens of business

leaders with him, said he be-lieved critics of the deal would be swayed once new fi nancial, infrastructure and tourism links kick in.

“Gradually everyone will start to understand, both the Greek people and the citizens of North Macedonia, the damage that has been done over the past years when we were unable to sit to-gether and try to solve our dis-putes,” he said.

After the initial name accord was inked in June 2018, congrat-

ulations poured in from around the globe for the two young pre-miers, who fought risky domestic political battles to push the deal through, enraging nationalists on both sides of the border.

Even before the deal was fi nal-ised, they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by 2015 winner Wided Bouchamaoui of Tunisia.

However, there is still opposi-tion to the deal among national-ist groups in both countries.

In Greece, some are angry that the deal allows its northern neighbour to continue referring to its people and language as Macedonian.

Disgruntlement is also palpa-ble in Skopje among those who feel the name-change is an em-barrassing concession and that the end-goal – entry into the EU – may never materialise.

In his own protest, the Balkan state’s President Gjorge Ivanov has been refusing to sign bills from parliament ever since North Macedonia became the offi cial name.

The two-term president is to be replaced following elections later this month.

Premiers hail historic North Macedonia visitAFP/Reuters/DPASkopje

Zaev takes a ‘wefie’ with Tsipras prior to their meeting in Skopje.

Pope Francis said yesterday that the Catholic Church had to acknowledge a his-

tory of male domination and sex-ual abuse of women and children, and repair its reputation among young people or risk becoming “a museum”.

However, in a major document in which he mentioned an array of scandals and again admitted signifi cant failings by clergy, he also said that the church “could not agree with everything some feminist groups propose”, a clear reference to the church’s ban on a female priesthood.

The Pope is grappling with

criticism over the Catholic Church’s response to a decades-long clerical sexual abuse cri-sis that has gravely damaged its standing around the globe and

seen it pay out billions of dollars in compensation.

Francis made his comment in a 50-page Apostolic Exhortation about a month-long meeting of

bishops in October on the role of young people in the 1.3bn-mem-ber church.

The Pope, 82, urged young people not to be disillusioned by the sexual abuse scandal, but to work with the overwhelm-ing majority of priests and other clergy faithful to their vocation.

He said that clergy sexual abuse is “a tragedy” and asked young people to help the church in “this dark moment”.

“A living church can look back on history and acknowledge a fair share of male authoritarian-ism, domination, various forms of enslavement, abuse and sexist violence,” the Pontiff said.

“With this outlook, she can support the call to respect wom-en’s rights, and off er convinced

support for greater reciproc-ity between males and females, while not agreeing with every-thing some feminist groups pro-pose,” he said.

Some women’s groups seek a female priesthood.

The church has ruled this out, arguing that Jesus chose only men as his apostles.

In the fi nal document of their synod last year, bishops recom-mended “that everyone be made more aware of the urgency of an inevitable change” in the role of women in the church, but the Pope did not directly address that yesterday.

His document also did not ad-dress demands by women par-ticipants at the synod that they be allowed to vote during such

meetings in the future.Francis acknowledged that the

church had to win back many young people who see it as in-signifi cant in their lives or a nui-sance.

He said such a view of the church can “have serious and understandable reasons: sexual and fi nancial scandals; a clergy ill-prepared to engage eff ec-tively with the sensitivities of the young”.

The church had to keep and at-tract young people by better ex-plaining its doctrine, he said.

“A church always on the de-fensive, which loses her humil-ity and stops listening to others, which leaves no room for ques-tions, loses her youth and turns into a museum,” he said.

And while he said that the church should be “attentive to the legitimate claims of those women who seek greater justice and equality” and that young people had complained of a “lack of leading female role models”, he off ered no new ideas.

Only a handful of women hold positions of authority in the Vatican.

This month the all-female staff of the Vatican newspaper’s monthly magazine on women’s issues resigned, saying that a new editor sought to put them “under direct male control”.

Recent stories in the magazine include one on sexual abuse of nuns by priests.

The editor has denied their ac-cusations.

Church should admit history of abuse, says PopeReutersVatican City

Pope Francis: A church always on the defensive, which loses her humility and stops listening to others, which leaves no room for questions, loses her youth and turns into a museum.

Five residents at a retirement home in southern France have died and more than

a dozen others are in a serious condition after a suspected case of mass food poisoning, offi cials said.

Twenty-two people at the pri-vately-operated Cheneraie resi-dence in Lherm, a town south of Toulouse, began showing symp-toms including vomiting after dinner on Sunday, police said.

Four deaths were initially an-nounced by offi cials, and a source close to the investigation later told AFP that a fi fth person had died.

The victims – four women and a man – were aged between 72 and 95.

Toulouse prosecutor Domin-ique Alzeari said that 19 of the 82 residents remained under super-vision, 16 of whom were in very poor condition, although their lives were not thought to be in danger.

He said that investigations into apparent cases of “involuntary homicide and unintentional in-jury” would be lengthy, and un-derscored the “serious” nature of the aff air.

The meals involved have been kept for analysis, the regional health agency said, and residents were being questioned about what they ate.

The management company Korian, which runs the home that opened in 2006 under li-cence from the French govern-ment, said in a statement that it “produces meals onsite with its own kitchen teams”.

However, the son of one of the women who died told report-ers that he had learned from the home’s doctor that the meal con-cerned had been delivered from elsewhere.

“I am very angry. It is unac-ceptable,” said Alain Lepeyre, noting his family paid “close to €3,000 ($3,360) a month” for the home to look after his mother, who suff ered from Alzheimer’s.

Marie, who rushed to check on her father, who was not aff ected,

choked up as she recounted how “he was in shock, he collapsed when he saw me”.

“He was crying,” she added, explaining that he became aware of what happened after watching television in his room.

Korian says it runs the largest network of retirement homes in Europe, with more than 800 sites in fi ve countries, representing 78,000 beds.

On the Paris stock market, Ko-rian shares slumped more than 7.0% at one stage on Monday be-fore recovering slightly.

In January, the company an-nounced its acquisition of the retirement home from Omega, a French group that operates 12 homes in France.

“We learned yesterday of these four deaths and illnesses, and that there is suspected food poisoning, with an investigation and analyses under way, and we won’t have any comment while awaiting the results,” Korian said in a statement on Monday.

“If food poisoning is deter-mined, this situation nonethe-less remains quite rare in a sector

that is subject to strict oversight in terms of food security,” the AD-PA association of retirement home directors said.

“We suspect food poisoning because these events occurred after the meal,” deputy pros-ecutor Marie-Paule Demiguel told BFM television, adding that kitchens at the residence would also be investigated.

The granddaughter of one woman who died, aged 95, said she had been served a Perigord salad, a regional speciality that includes duck, ham and foie gras, a duck liver pate.

“I still have the menu in my handbag and I know they had

Perigord salad last night. What could that mean? Could it be the foie gras? They’re going to do an autopsy in any case,” the woman told the Depeche du Midi news-paper.

The daughter of two other residents, who gave her name as Chantal, told journalists outside the home that “apparently the problem was with meals pre-pared specially for palliative care patients”.

The deaths come as the gov-ernment prepares a bill on re-tirement fi nancing for an ageing population of baby boomers that is expected to add €9bn to the national health budget by 2030.

Five dead from suspected food poisoning at retirement homeAFPToulouse

A gendarme stands yesterday in Lhern, southwestern France, at the entrance of the ‘La Cheneraie’ EHPAD (Housing Establishment for Elderly Dependant People), where five residents died in a suspected case of mass food poisoning.

German authorities have identifi ed hundreds of trucks “manipulated”

to save their operators money by shutting off exhaust treat-ment systems, saying many more cheating vehicles could be at large on Europe’s roads.

Of around 13,000 trucks whose “AdBlue” fi lter system was checked on German roads last year, 300 were “defective”, a government answer to a par-liamentary question from the Greens party seen yesterday by AFP showed.

Of 132 such defects spot-ted since August last year, 84 could be traced back to delib-erate manipulation rather than a technical fault, the govern-ment added – a distinction not drawn in statistics collected before then.

Electronic devices available for around €100 ($112) allow users to deactivate the exhaust treatment system, allowing some trucking fi rms to make massive savings, daily Sued-deutsche Zeitung (SZ) reported after revealing the scheme.

With their catalytic convert-ers switched off , the trucks spew far more harmful pollut-ants.

“The fact that we are fi nd-ing more manipulated systems than faulty ones is an alarm signal,” Greens MP Stephan Kuehn said.

With time, “the parts needed for the cheating are becoming smaller and smaller and more sophisticated, and therefore

more diffi cult to fi nd” during spot checks, the government added.

The SZ reported that opera-tors can save up to one-third of the costs of running a truck supposedly meeting the Euro 5 or 6 emissions standard by installing one of the boxes or modifying software – an even harder-to-detect option.

Devices or software chang-es can enable cheating in a number of ways.

Some fool the engine control software into thinking the cat-alytic converter is still working, preventing a warning to the driver or an automatic reduc-tion in performance.

Others produce fake read-ings for the outside tempera-ture, triggering a system that deactivates exhaust treatment at below -11° Celsius (12.2° Fahrenheit).

Clusters of similar rule-breaking have been identifi ed elsewhere in Europe, especially in Spain.

Without exhaust treatment, trucks emit far more nitrogen oxides (NOx), which studies have shown is linked to various respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

Since Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to cheating emissions tests on 11mn vehicles world-wide, alarm has spread in Ger-many about levels of the gas in city air.

Federal, state and local gov-ernments are battling to pre-vent drivers of older diesel ve-hicles being banned from city centres as the courts order a growing number of exclusion zones.

Germany fi nds truckers cheating to hide emissionsAFPFrankfurt

The weekly protests held by school pupils against global warming are pro-

viding a boost to eff orts to halt climate change, German Chan-cellor Angela Merkel said dur-ing a discussion with students at a Berlin school yesterday.

“It’s right that you are putting us under pressure,” Merkel told pupils at the Tho-mas Mann School. “The fact that this signal is being sent out – that there is concern, that’s good for us.”

With respect to missed

school time, Merkel said that not every Friday could be given off .

“But your teachers will dis-cuss that with you,” she added.

Weekly demonstrations, dubbed “Fridays for Future” rallies, have been held on Fri-days over recent weeks in re-sponse to a campaign led by 16-year-old Swedish pupil Greta Thunberg, who initiated protests in front of parliament in Stockholm in August.

Thunberg was given the op-portunity to address the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, where she said “pan-ic” was required in the face of climate change.

Merkel hails pupils for climate protestsDPABerlin

Merkel gestures while speaking with pupils during her visit to a secondary school in Berlin.

Changes to legislation protecting minors with reference to online com-

munication and religious radi-calisation in particular will be introduced this year, German Family Minister Franziska Giff ey said in Berlin yesterday.

The legal framework needed urgent updating in the light of new challenges and risks, Giff ey said on presenting a report enti-tled Islamism on the Net 2018.

The changes would include secure default settings for online chat services, systems for report-ing abuse and seeking assistance and clear age categories, she said.

The report revealed how Is-lamists had successfully uti-

lised an alleged headscarf ban in public areas and the withdrawal of Mesut Ozil from the national football team to establish con-tacts with young people.

Ozil, who is of Turkish origin and currently plays for the Lon-don team Arsenal, withdrew from further appearances for Germany after a controversy involving his being photographed with Turk-ish President Recep Tayyip Er-

dogan ahead of an election.Teachers and social workers

needed to recognise radical sym-bols in order to identify problems at an early stage, Giff ey said.

“I’ve often seen all the symbols we’re talking about,” the former mayor of the Berlin district of Neukoelln, which is home to a large immigrant population, said.

An agency called jugends-chutz.net set up by the govern-

ment to protect minors using the Internet recorded 872 infringe-ments with respect to Islamist propaganda last year.

YouTube deleted 99% of the infringements reported to it, In-stagram 98% and Facebook 82%.

But the messenger service Telegram, seen as “an extremely relevant platform for Islamist propaganda” deleted just 58% of the infringements reported.

German minister seeks law changes to protect minorsDPABerlin

INDIA17Gulf Times

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

WhatsApp’s ‘tipline’ aimsto fi ght fakeinformationAgenciesNew Delhi

WhatsApp launched a hotline yesterday al-lowing Indians to fl ag

rumours circulating ahead of the upcoming election, a major concern in a country where fake news has fuelled violence.

It comes a day after What-sApp’s parent company Facebook removed hundreds of pages pro-moting India’s ruling and oppo-sition parties for violating rules around spam and “co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour” online.

The spread of viral fake vid-eos and messages on social media platforms has proved incendi-ary in India, where half a billion people are online but limited dig-ital literacy has helped rumours spread like wildfi re.

As hundreds of millions of people prepare to vote this month and next, experts say the biggest election in history will also prove an immense misinformation challenge.

Less than two weeks before voting starts, WhatsApp has launched a “tipline” in partner-ship with local startup Proto that it says will allow voters to submit uncertain or suspicious content for verifi cation.

Pictures, video links and texts will be analysed and debunked if untrue in English and four re-gional languages, the company said in a statement.

“This combined eff ort by WhatsApp and industry organi-sations will help contribute to the safety of the elections, by giving people means to know if the in-formation is verifi ed and deter people from sharing rumors that have no basis in fact,” it said.

It follows a major purge of Fa-cebook accounts on Monday by the social media giant, with hun-dreds of political pages spam-ming content supportive of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Con-gress taken down.

Facebook said nearly 700 of these were associated with Con-gress. The party said it was in-vestigating the claims.

Another 15 pages shut down for spamming were promoting, among other themes, the BJP and the alleged misconduct of its op-ponents, Facebook said.

One belonged to a news organ-isation, MyNation, owned by BJP lawmaker Rajeev Chandrasekhar, media reports said.

These pages were followed by 2.6mn users and “linked to indi-viduals associated with an Indian IT fi rm, Silver Touch”, Facebook said.

The company based in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat developed the premier’s personal mobile app and other government projects, Indian media reported.

Major political parties have accused each other of propagat-ing fake news on WhatsApp while

denying they do so themselves.In February, a senior What-

sApp executive said parties were trying to use the app in “ways for which it was not intended”.

“The goal of this project is to study the misinformation phenomenon at scale,” Proto’s founders Ritvvij Parrikh and Nasr ul Hadi said in a statement.

“As more data fl ows in, we will be able to identify the most sus-ceptible or aff ected issues, loca-tions, languages, regions, and more.”

WhatsApp said Proto would be helped by two other organisa-tions with experience working on misinformation-related projects.

“The challenge of viral mis-information requires more col-laborative eff orts and cannot be solved by any one organisation alone,” WhatsApp said.

The WhatsApp tipline follows other security measures taken by the fi rm in India, its largest global market with 200mn users.

WhatsApp restricted message forwarding in India last year and ran newspaper adverts to coun-ter fake news after a spate of mob killings sparked by hoaxes spread on its messaging service.

In the lead up to the election, YouTube last month said it would start fl agging dubious content in news-related videos in India.

Its parent company Google is training Indian journalists in verifi cation techniques and boosting stringency over election advertising.

Facebook has also said it was running its biggest ever election monitoring campaign, with ad-verts and announcements to help people spot misinformation.

It is also working with Indian newsrooms to make false posts less visible.

Don’t worry about my family, says Pawar after Modi’s attackIANSKolhapur, Maharashtra

A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi attacked the Pawar political clan

in Maharashtra, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar yesterday advised him to “not to worry about my family”.

In a restrained but hard-hit-ting counter to Modi’s tirade, the 78-year-old Maratha strongman reminded him that “the PM’s of-fi ce is like an institution” and he must be extremely careful while speaking about other people.

“Wherever he goes, Modi fi rst launches personal attacks on the Gandhi family. He must not for-get that the late prime minister Indira Gandhi created not only history but geography also,” Pa-war told an election rally, refer-ring to the creation of Bangla-desh.

“After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassi-

nation, his widow Sonia Gandhi did not leave the country but car-ried on her duties and responsi-bilities to the country. Does it be-hove a person of the PM’s stature to keep insulting the Gandhis like this?” Pawar asked.

The former federal minister and three-time Maharashtra chief minister also accused Modi of not accepting responsibility or exercising caution by making such utterances.

Pawar pointed out that in his fi ve-decade-long political ca-reer, he had listened to speeches by all prime ministers including Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narasimha Rao and others but “there was nothing in Modi’s speech” on Monday.

“There are so many burning issues at the national and state levels concerning the common-ers, farmers, youth, unemployed, women, but Modi did not discuss these. Instead he chose to launch direct personal attacks against

the opposition leaders. No other leader in the past has ever done this,” Pawar said.

“My mother is from Kolhapur and she has imbibed very good culture in me. Modi has no need to worry about my family. Ajit Pawar is also an excellent admin-istrator,” Pawar said in defence of his nephew.

The Maratha strongman’s response came in response to a sharp onslaught by Modi in Wardha on Monday in which he singled out Pawar, his family and the NCP and asked the people of the state to defeat the Congress-NCP in all the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

In other developments, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thack-ery yesterday demanded that the Congress be derecognised and banned from fi ghting the 2019 elections as it was propagating “an anti-national agenda”.

Reacting to the Congress elec-tion manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ally asked: “What

kind of government doe they (Congress) want - those of trai-tors and anti-nationals, or of pa-triots and nationalists?”

He said that such a party had no right to contest the elections and the Election Commission must derecognise and bar the Congress from the electoral battle.

Terming the Congress mani-festo promising to end poverty in India within a decade as “full of lies”, Thackeray said even Con-gress president Rahul Gandhi’s grandmother, the late prime minister Indira Gandhi, had promised ‘garibi hatai’ but noth-ing happened all these years.

Thackeray also countered the Congress arguments on the need to hold talks with Kashmiri sepa-ratists to resolve the Jammu and Kashmir problems.

“There cannot be any talks with such separatists. We have always been against negotiations with them,” he said at an election rally for the BJP-Sena candidate in Palghar constituency.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures while being garlanded during a public rally in Jamui, Bihar, yesterday.

Indian satellite test endangering ISS, says NasaAgenciesWashington

The head of Nasa yesterday branded India’s destruc-tion of one of its satellites a

“terrible thing” that had created 400 pieces of orbital debris and led to new dangers for astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Jim Bridenstine was address-ing employees of the National Aeronautics and Space Admin-istration fi ve days after India shot down a low-orbiting satellite in a

missile test to prove it was among the world’s advanced space pow-ers.

Not all of the pieces were big enough to track, Bridenstine ex-plained.

“What we are tracking right now, objects big enough to track - we’re talking about 10cm or bigger - about 60 pieces have been tracked.”

The Indian satellite was de-stroyed at a relatively low al-titude of 300km, well below the ISS and most satellites in orbit.

But 24 of the pieces “are going

above the apogee of the Interna-tional Space Station,” said Bri-denstine.

“That is a terrible, terrible thing to create an event that sends debris at an apogee that goes above the International Space Station,” he continued, adding: “That kind of activity is not compatible with the future of human spacefl ight.”

“It’s unacceptable and Nasa needs to be very clear about what its impact to us is.”

The US military tracks objects in space to predict the collision risk for the ISS and for satellites.

They are currently tracking 23,000 objects larger than 10cm.

That includes about 10,000 pieces of space debris, of which nearly 3,000 were created by a single event: a Chinese anti-sat-ellite test in 2007 at 840km from the surface.

As a result of the Indian test, the risk of collision with the ISS has increased by 44% over 10 days, Bridenstine said.

But the risk will dissipate over time as much of the debris will burn up as it enters the atmos-phere.

Bridenstine emphasised that,

despite the increased risk, the six people currently on the station are not in danger.

“While the risk went up 44%, our astronauts are still safe. The International Space Station is still safe,” he said.

“If we need to manoeuvre it, we will. The probability of that, I think, is low.”

He suggested, though, that last week’s test was irresponsible and set a bad precedent.

“When one country does it, then other countries have to feel like they have to do it as well,” he said.

Bridenstine’s statements rep-resent the strongest criticism to date of the test by a US govern-ment offi cial.

While Air Force offi cials con-fi rmed they monitored the test and tracked debris from it, nei-ther they nor the State Depart-ment spoke out as forcefully against the Indian test.

A State Department spokes-person off ered only mild criti-cism of the test.

“The United States recognises, and encourages other nations to recognise, that orbital debris represents a growing threat to the

space operations of all nations. We took note of Indian govern-ment statements that the test was conducted at a low altitude to limit the orbital lifetime of re-sulting debris,” the spokesperson said.

The lack of response from the US government, until Bridens-tine’s remarks, stood in contrast to criticism from a number of companies that operate in low Earth orbit.

Those companies worry about how such tests could increase or-bital debris and adversely aff ect their operations.

Mayawati says statues of herself refl ect popular willAgenciesNew Delhi

Dalit leader and former Ut-tar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati yesterday told

the Supreme Court that setting up dozens of statues of herself refl ect-ed the will of the people to honour her and others at the bottom of the rigid Hindu caste hierarchy.

Mayawati, an icon of the Dalits and a four-time chief minister of the northern state, has been an aggressive campaigner for the rights of the oppressed, vowing to shake the stranglehold of In-dia’s upper castes on politics.

As leader of the state, she spent billions of rupees on me-morial parks featuring life-sized marble and sandstone statues of elephants, her party symbol, Dalit icons and herself, evoking fi gures from history who built

monuments as their legacies.Mayawati, who ended her last

term in offi ce in 2012 but is bid-ding to play a key national role in general elections this month, said the statues were built with the support of lawmakers who wanted to respect a low-caste woman leader.

“Certainly I could not go con-trary to the wishes of the state leg-islators,” she said in a signed state-ment to the court that is weighing a request from her critics for per-mission to demolish the statues as a waste of public funds.

Whether the money should have been spent on education or hospitals “is a debatable ques-tion and can’t be decided by a court,” Mayawati said.

In February, Chief Justice Ran-jan Gogoi had said he was of the tentative view that the BSP chief has to reimburse the taxpayer all the money used in the statues.

But he stopped short of pass-ing an order to hear what Maya-wati had to say.

She also claimed that the stat-ues of elephants were “mere ar-chitectural design” and not rep-resentative of her party’s symbol.

Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party has forged an alliance with the state’s Samajwadi Party to pose a challenge to Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in general elections that start on April 11.

She called the case against her politically motivated and “gross abuse” of the court proc-ess, and asked why other parties’ expenditure of public funds for similar causes had not prompted questions from her critics.

She cited the example of a $400mn statue of Vallabhbhai Patel that Modi inaugurated last year and which is nearly twice the height of New York’s Statue of Liberty.

SC nixes Hardik’selection planIANSNew Delhi

The Supreme Court yes-terday rejected Congress leader Hardik Patel’s plea

for an urgent hearing against his conviction for rioting during the 2015 Patidar agitation, all but ending his chances of contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

A bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra said that the case would be taken up as and when the registry lists it before the court.

The Patidar leader, who joined the Congress on March 12, had sought the stay to enable him to contest the general elections that kick off on April 11. The last date for fi ling nominations for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat, where polling will be held in the fi rst phase itself, is tomorrow.

Patel had challenged the March 29 Gujarat High Court or-

der which rejected his plea that “an irreparable loss” would be caused to him if he was not able to contest the polls.

He had sought the stay on a lower court’s July 2018 decision convicting him for involvement in rioting and arson in Mehsana during the Patidar stir in 2015 and sentencing him to two years in jail.

Although Patel had got his prison term suspended from the Gujarat High Court, it did not stay his conviction.

As long as he remains con-victed, Patel stands barred from contesting polls. According to a Supreme Court ruling, a person sentenced to two years or more is disqualifi ed from contesting elections for the next six years.

The Patidar leader joined the Congress during its president Rahul Gandhi’s public rally in Gandhinagar and aspired to con-test the Lok Sabha elections from the Jamnagar constituency.

People attend an election campaign rally of Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati in Lucknow on October 9, 2016 (file photo). Mayawati spent billions of rupees on memorial parks featuring life-sized marble and sandstone statues of elephants, her party symbol, Dalit icons and herself.

“As more data fl ows in, we will be able to identify the most susceptible or aff ected issues, locations, languages, regions, and more”

18 Gulf TimesWednesday, April 3, 2019

INDIA

I have no desire to become PM: KCRIANSWarangal, Telangana

Telangana Chief Minis-ter K Chandrashekhar Rao yesterday said he

had no desire to become the prime minister.

Addressing an election rally, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president said he wants to see a non-Congress, non-Bharatiya Janata Party gov-ernment to address the real problems of the country which both the national par-ties have failed to solve in the last 70 years.

KCR, as Rao is widely known, said he would like to contribute to bringing a quali-tative change in the national politics.

Urging people to elect 16 TRS Lok Sabha candidates

(leaving Hyderabad for its ally MIM), he said only TRS can work to safeguard the state’s interests and get the state’s rights.

KCR demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologise to the peo-ple of Telangana for speak-ing lies.

He was referring to Modi’s claim at a BJP rally in Hy-derabad on Monday that the Centre had given Rs35,000 crore to Telangana for various projects.

The TRS chief dared Modi to prove this.

He said Telangana was contributing Rs1 lakh crore to the Centre’s share in taxes every year while the Centre was giving only Rs24,000 crore to the state. “The state is giving you Rs76,000 crore,” he said.

BJP president invokes MGR’s name, pledges pro-poor govtIANSThoothukudi, Tamil Nadu

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah yes-terday said the National

Democratic Alliance (NDA) will form a poor-friendly govern-ment like the ones formed by former Tamil Nadu chief minis-ters M G Ramachandran (MGR) and J Jayalalithaa.

Campaigning for BJP Lok Sab-ha candidate Tamilisai Sounda-rarajan, Shah told a rally here: “In 2014, the BJP did not have a big alliance in Tamil Nadu. But we won and gave ministerial berths to two MPs from Tamil Nadu – Pon Radhakrishnan and Nirmala Sitharaman, daughter of the soil.” Stressing that the BJP had a big electoral alliance this time with parties like the All

India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Pattali Makkal Katchi and the DMDK, Shah said a survey had predicted the NDA winning over 30 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu.

From Kashmir to Kanyaku-mari, people wanted Narendra Modi to become the prime min-ister again, he said, and added, “The NDA will not only win the Lok Sabha elections but also the assembly polls”.

Taking a dig at the DMK-Congress alliance, the BJP chief said it had people like Karti Chidambaram, Kanimozhi and A Raja against whom there were corruption charges.

According to Shah, the 13th Finance Commission had given the state just Rs94,000 crore, but the 14th Finance Commis-sion under the Modi government allocated Rs5.45 lakh crore.

The BJP chief said the new government headed by Modi would provide more funds to Tamil Nadu to implement more developmental projects.

Shah also brought up the issue of Kashmir and said it was a part of India and the Modi govern-ment would not give it away to anyone.

Meanwhile in Hyderabad, Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi said his party stood by Hindu women who were aban-doned by their husbands.

“Majlis stood by our Hindu sisters who are victim to the cruel social evil of abandonment without divorce,” tweeted Ow-aisi.

His comments came a day after Modi raked up the issue of triple talaq at an election rally in Hyderabad.

‘Dangerous’promises,says JaitleyIANSNew Delhi

The Bharatiya Janata Party yesterday hit out at Con-gress over its poll prom-

ises over Jammu and Kashmir and amending the sedition law and Armed Forces (Special Powers) Acts (AFSPA), saying these were “dangerous” and will break the country.

Addressing a press confer-ence soon after Congress man-ifesto was released, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said Con-gress president Rahul Gandhi was makings “unimplementa-ble and dangerous promises,” out of ignorance.

“I am sure the nation would not be in a mood to oblige him for implementing the kind of promises which are contained in this manifesto,” he said.

The senior BJP leader claimed that some ideas in the manifesto are “positively dan-gerous” and agenda for ‘bal-kanisation’ of the country.

“Even though there was a drafting panel, it appears some of the points have been draft-ed by Congress president’s ‘tukde-tukde’ friends when it deals with Jammu and Kash-mir and national security. The Nehru-Gandhi family commit-ted a historic mistake regarding Jammu and Kashmir and the nation can’t forgive them for that. The Congress manifesto takes ahead that agenda dan-gerously,” Jaitley said.

“Their mistakes have dragged Jammu and Kashmir to a situation where it is today. We are establishing the rule of law-the , Congress wants to estab-lish the rules of terrorists and insurgents,” he said.

Jaitley also slammed the Congress over the displace-ment of Kashmiri Pandits find-ing no place in the manifesto

and said the biggest failure in independent India was the eth-nic cleansing of Kashmiri Pun-dits.

On Congress’s promise of amending the sedition law and the Armed Forces (Spe-cial Powers) Act, he said it was that party’s tradition that they withdrew laws like The Preven-tion of Terrorism Act (POTA) and the Terrorist and Disrup-tive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA).

“No nation over the last 72 years has dealt with terrorism like India. Our fight against terror didn’t start after 9/11 Mumbai terror attacks. (In) Punjab and northeast, we have seen many struggles. We lost a part of Jammu and Kashmir.

“A provision that Nehru, Indira, Rajiv Gandhi and even Manmohan Singh didn’t dare touch, they say sedition would be done away with, that treason won’t be a crime anymore; such a party doesn’t deserve a single vote,” Jaitley said.

He said the AFSPA was es-sentially a sanctioning law for disturbed or insurgency-hit areas and deals with internal subversion.

“Those who laid down lives for the nation, you want them to be prosecuted at the behest of relatives of terrorists, or their friends. Ingratitude is the biggest sin a party can com-mit,” the finance minister said.

In Bengaluru, Karnataka BJP’s Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the Congress will ruin the economy, raise taxes, widen fiscal deficit and fuel high in-flation.

“Congress president Rahul Gandhi is desperate and wants to shift the poll narrative from the real issues to avoid com-paring the UPA government’s performance for over a decade (2004-14) with the NDA rule from 2014-19,” Chandrasekhar said in a statement.

“Instead of making false and empty promises, Gandhi should debate with us or the people on the performance of the UPA and the NDA govern-ments on all fronts, including governance and rebuilding the economy,” he said.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi, his mother and United Progressive Alliance chief Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh display copies of the party’s election manifesto in New Delhi yesterday.

Congress vows war onpoverty, hits out at PMAgenciesNew Delhi

The Congress Party vowed yesterday to end abject poverty by 2030, hand

cash to 50mn families and tackle the “emergency” of air pollution as it unveiled its election mani-festo.

Recent opinion polls, although notoriously unreliable, suggest Congress is trailing Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of In-dia’s almost six-week mega-election beginning April 11.

In its 55-page manifesto, Con-gress chief Rahul Gandhi said Modi has off ered only “grandiose promises, empty slogans, failed programmes, false statistics and an overall climate of fear, intimi-dation and hatred”.

“The manifesto is the voice of the people,” Gandhi said at the launch of the “Congress will De-liver” programme at party head-quarters in New Delhi.

“I do not want a single thing in this manifesto that is a lie be-cause we have been hearing large

number of lies spoken every day by our PM,” the 48-year-old said.

Describing unemployment as “the gravest challenge to our country”, the party promised to give the “highest priority to pro-tecting existing jobs and creating new jobs”, helped by the creation of a new Ministry of Industry, Services and Employment.

It also pledged an “ambitious programme” of cash transfers of Rs72,000 to India’s poorest 50mn families, while still bring-ing the fi scal defi cit to under 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020-21.

The manifesto promised a separate budget to focus on the welfare of more than 260mn farmers who have been under severe distress due to falling crop prices, poor yields and crippling loans.

The Congress also promised to fi ll 2.2mn government vacancies and accused Modi of wrecking the economy.

Gandhi also challenged Modi, who he said was scared, to en-gage in a debate with him on is-sues such as corruption, foreign policy and national security.

“The fi ve main themes of our manifesto (are) NYAY scheme... Garibi par waar, 72,000 (war on poverty with Rs72,000 cash support), employment to youth by fi lling 22 lakh government vacancies and employment to 10 lakh youth in gram panchayats, guaranteeing jobs for 150 days under MGNREGA instead of 100 days, 6% GDP will be used in education and no permis-sion required for starting a new business(for three years),” he said.

Accusing the prime minister of wrecking the economy, Gan-dhi that there was an “economic emergency” in the country.

Blaming demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) for what he said was an economic mess, Gandhi said his party was determined to set right the situation.

To repeated questions, Gan-dhi said the narrative for the Lok Sabha election had already been set – and it was all about eco-nomic issues and misery.

Hitting out at the prime min-ister, Gandhi said that Modi made fun of the MGNREGA

scheme dubbing it bogus and useless.

“Today everyone knows how much it helped the country. So now we want to guarantee jobs for 150 days, instead of 100 days, under the scheme.”

Gandhi said the Congress government will allow anyone to start business without permits or clearances with tax holiday for the fi rst three years to en-courage entrepreneurship and create thousands of jobs across the country.

The Congress president said that he had told the members of the Manifesto Committee a year ago that it should not be drafted in closed rooms but should re-fl ect the wishes of the people of India.

On the environment, the manifesto said it recognised air pollution – 22 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities are in India, according to Greenpeace – to be a “national public health emer-gency”.

“We will signifi cantly strengthen the National Clean Air Programme in order to ur-gently tackle the problem of

pollution. All major sources of emission will be targeted, miti-gated and reduced to acceptable levels,” it said.

Asked why he was also con-testing from Wayanad in Ker-ala apart from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, Gandhi said: “South India feels hostility from Naren-dra Modi. They feel they have not been included in decision making.”

He said his candidature would send out a message that “we are with you, I am with you.”

The Congress also promised to review the Armed Forces Spe-cial Powers Act that gives special powers to armed forces battling insurgency in Kashmir and the northeast, in a bid to balance se-curity needs and human rights concerns.

The BJP, which decimated Congress as it swept to power in 2014, is yet to publish its own manifesto.

Modi, 68, has sought in the campaign so far to project him-self as India’s “chowkidar” (watchman) protecting the country against terrorism, while also depicting Gandhi as weak.

A worker washes textile materials dedicated to the Communist Party of India (CPI) on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

Opposition promise of unity not visible in LS pollsIANSNew Delhi

Congress president Ra-hul Gandhi’s decision to contest from a second

constituency has created further fi ssures in the opposition ranks ahead of the fi rst phase of Lok Sabha elections on April 11.

The main opposition party on Monday announced that Gandhi would contest from Wayanad in Left-ruled Kerala apart from his traditional Amethi constituency in Uttar Pradesh.

While there were sugges-

tions earlier of opposition par-ties fi elding common candidates against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, the idea has failed to materialise.

In some states, opposition parties are fi ghting the BJP and also among themselves.

Gandhi’s decision to pick the Wayanad Lok Sabha constitu-ency has drawn strong reac-tions from the Left. Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Prakash Karat said the Congress had “lost the plot” by deciding to contest against the Left instead of the BJP.

Kerala is now the only state where the Congress’ main op-ponent is the Left. Gandhi’s de-cision to also fi ght from Kerala has invited scorn from the BJP, which is determined to defeat the Congress president in Am-ethi.

The Congress is also battling the stridently anti-BJP Trina-mool Congress and also the in-creasingly also-ran Left in West Bengal. The Congress and the Left failed to shake hands in the state that was once a Left bas-tion.

And in Delhi, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party

(AAP) could not shed their an-tagonism and jointly take on the BJP for the city’s seven Lok Sabha seats.

The Congress has, how-ever, sewed up alliances in Bi-har with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and smaller parties, with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Maharashtra, with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and others in Jharkhand, with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, with the Janata Dal-Secular in Karnataka and with the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir.

In Kashmir, however, the

Congress and the National Conference will be engaged in “friendly contests” on two seats in the Kashmir Valley.

But while the NCP is a friend in Maharashtra, it will contest all the seats in Gujarat, a decision likely to queer the pitch for the Congress.

The worst is the Uttar Pradesh story. The Congress is contesting all 80 Lok Sabha seats largely on its own and in the process tak-ing on both the BJP as well as the Samajwadi Part-Bahujan Samaj Party combine – something that has angered BSP chief Mayawati more than anyone else.

The Congress made the move after the SP and BSP divided Uttar Pradesh mostly among themselves, leaving only two seats – Rae Bareli and Amethi – for the Congress.

The Congress and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) had joined hands for assembly polls in Te-langana but are now fi ghting the assembly and Lok Sabha elections separately in Andhra Pradesh.

Political analyst Subrata Mukherjee, who taught at Delhi University, said that “much better performance was expected” from the op-

position on forging alliances.“The election is much more

important for the Congress than it is for the BJP as it has to present itself as a viable alterna-tive. The BJP has shown better skills at political accommoda-tion. They (opposition) should have sorted out the alliances six months earlier,” Mukherjee told IANS.

Like most political pundits, he felt that while the opposi-tion parties may be interested in protecting their own turfs, there should have been “better give and take” to present a united picture against the BJP.

“Their mistakes have dragged Jammu and Kashmir to a situation where it is today. We are establishing the rule of lawthe , Congress wants to establish the rules of terrorists and insurgents,”

Argentina‘will notgive upclaim overFalklands’AFPBuenos Aires

Argentina’s historic claim on the Falkland Islands is “legitimate and irrevoca-

ble,” President Mauricio Macri said yesterday at a ceremony marking the 37th anniversary of the 1982 war with Britain.

Commemorative events were being held throughout Argen-tina to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of the war, when Argentina’s then-ruling mili-tary dictatorship sent troops to the South Atlantic archipela-go, known to Argentina as the Malvinas, occupied by Britain since 1833.

“The claim to the sovereignty of the Malvinas islands is a le-gitimate and irrevocable claim, which unites all Argentines be-yond our diff erences,” Macri said in a speech to veterans in Buenos Aires.

The centre-right president, who has forged a more moder-ate approach to Britain than his predecessors, said Argentina intended to push its claim by us-ing “the tools of dialogue, con-fi dence building and trust and respect for international law.”

The 74-day confl ict claimed the lives of 649 Argentine troops and 255 British forces.

It ended with Argentina’s sur-render on June 14, 1982.

Some 500 Argentine ex-com-batants have committed suicide in the years since, according to a support group, the Malvinas Combatants Association for Hu-man Rights.

Among the events in Argen-tina, a “Malvinas Vigil” was held in Rio Grande, a strategic stag-ing centre for Argentine forces, 2,800km south of Buenos Aires and 360 miles west of the Falk-lands.

Players in Argentina’s Superli-ga held a minute’s silence before their matches at the weekend.

Venezuela’sapex courttightens nooseon GuaidoAFPCaracas

Venezuela’s Supreme Court has called for Juan Guaido to be stripped of his legis-

lative immunity, tightening the noose on the opposition chief just days after authorities an-nounced a ban on him holding public offi ce.

Guaido — recognised as Ven-ezuela’s interim president by some 50 countries — is locked in a power struggle with President Nicolas Maduro that has drawn in neighbouring states as well as superpowers such as the US and Russia.

As the political battle plays out, the country has been hit by a series of devastating blackouts that have left millions without water, prompting the govern-ment to replace the country’s en-ergy minister and institute power rationing in a bid to address the outages.

The decision by the Supreme Court — which is controlled by Maduro loyalists — to call on the ruling Constituent Assembly legislature to strip Guaido of his immunity could open the way for the opposition chief to be pros-ecuted.

The court ruling cited Guaido’s violation of a ban on his travel outside Venezuela when he vis-ited Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Paraguay from late February to early March.

The move came after Ven-ezuela’s auditor general’s offi ce announced on Thursday that it

had stripped Guaido of the right to hold public offi ce for 15 years, a decision he rejected as invalid.

Three major blackouts hit Vene-zuela in March, worsening already dire living and economic condi-tions in the country, and prompt-ing authorities to take steps aimed at curbing the outages.

Maduro — whose government has blamed “terrorists” for al-leged attacks that have damaged the country’s main hydroelectric power plant — announced that he was appointing Igor Gavidia Leon to replace retired general Luis Motta Dominguez as energy minister.

The new minister “is an elec-trical industry worker with 25 years of experience, an engineer who had many responsibilities,” Maduro said.

On Sunday, Maduro an-nounced 30 days of electricity rationing, after his government said it was shortening the work-day and keeping schools closed due to blackouts.

The measures are a stark ad-mission by the government that there is not enough electricity to go around, and that the power crisis is here to stay.

With no electricity, pump-ing stations can’t work, so water service is limited.

Street lights and traffi c lights go dark, pumps at fuel stations stand idle, and cell phone and internet service is non-existent.

But people try to fi nd water wherever they can: from springs, leaky pipes, gutters, govern-ment-provided tankers and the little that fl ows through the

Guiare River in Caracas.“We fi ll up from a well near

here but we don’t know if its drinkable. But we’re using it,” said Erimar Vale, who lives in the capital.

Angel Velazquez said he bathed at work because he did not have water at home.

Crippled infrastructure, little investment in the power grid and poor maintenance have all con-tributed to the country’s elec-tricity woes.

A “brain drain” of qualifi ed personnel has also hit the indus-try, with about 25,000 people in the electricity sector among the 2.7mn Venezuelans who have emigrated since 2015.

Guaido has asked his support-ers to protest each time there is a blackout.

“This is going to continue. The situation is very serious, there will be more blackouts and ra-tioning,” said Winton Cabas, president of the Venezuelan As-sociation of Electrical and Me-chanical Engineering.

Jose Aguilar, a Venezuelan consultant living in the US, said the problems with the power grid run deep.

“Over the past 20 years, the infrastructure has been abused due to a lack of maintenance and the postponing of upgrade plans,” he said.

Another problem was the “de-professionalisation” of the sec-tor when Chavez nationalised the power company in 2007 — a move that led to pro-government loyalists taking positions as managers and engineers.

Uruguay minister,army chief sackedAFPMontevideo

Uruguay’s President Tab-are Vazquez sacked his defence minister and the

chief of the army yesterday over links to a scandal dating from the Latin American country’s 1970s dictatorship, local media reported.

Vazquez dismissed Defence Minister Jorge Menendez and army chief General Jose Gonzalez after a newspaper detailed the evidence of a former intelligence offi cer given before a secret mili-tary tribunal.

Convicted torturer Jose Gavazzo acknowledged to the tribunal last year that in 1973 he threw the body of a dissident, Roberto Gomensoro, into Uru-guay’s Rio Negro.

The government is facing in-tense criticism for failing to pass on the tribunal’s fi ndings to the judiciary, so that Gavazzo could be tried in open court and the full circumstances of Gomensoro’s murder made public.

Uruguay was ruled by a mili-tary dictatorship from 1973 to

1985 during which many mainly leftist opponents of the regime, like Gomensoro, were impris-oned and tortured.

Some were forcibly “disap-peared”. The government made no offi cial announcement about the dismissals, but two members of Vazquez’s governing coalition confi rmed the sackings.

Also dismissed yesterday were deputy defence minister Daniel Montiel, and two army generals.

Uruguay’s state prosecutor Jorge Diaz said on Twitter that he had passed on to prosecutors “the open source information about the failure to report the facts and the circumstances of the murder of Roberto Gomen-soro Josman reported to the army court martial by the prisoner Jose Gavazzo.”

Vazquez appointed Gonzalez head of the army only two weeks ago. He replaced the previous army chief, Guido Manini Rios, af-ter he had criticised the judiciary.

Around 180 people are known to have been killed by the regime, and many were never found.

Commemorated annually in Uruguay, they are referred to as the “disappeared.”

Peru mayor under probefor racist commentsReutersLima

Prosecutors in Peru have opened a preliminary probe into the mayor of an An-

dean city who promised to “free” his city of Venezuelan immigrants and force companies to hire more locals, the attorney general’s offi ce said yesterday.

The investigation will seek to determine if Henry Lopez, the mayor of Huancayo — a commer-cial hub of about 500,000 people in Peru’s central highlands — com-mitted discrimination and incite-ment to discrimination, the offi ce said on Twitter.

Peru’s constitution bans dis-crimination on the basis of origin, race, sex, language, religion, opin-ion or economic status.

Lopez was not immediately available for comment but one of his advisors said by telephone that prosecutors cannot start an inves-tigation for comments that were “taken out of context.”

In a statement published by his offi ce on Wednesday, Lopez

blamed Venezuelans for what he claimed was a spike in crime and street hawking in Huancayo, and promised to pass a municipal or-dinance requiring companies to ensure locals made up at least 80% of their workforce.

He also suggested a Venezuelan immigrant who had been working as a security guard plotted to kill a local man whose death is still un-der investigation.

“I was elected to bring order to the city. They’ll call me xenopho-bic but I don’t mind,” Lopez said in the statement. “Today I declare ‘Huancayo free of Venezuelans.’”

Lopez’ comments are part of a recent fl are-up in xenophobia in South America since a fl ood of poor and desperate Venezuelan migrants entered the region in re-cent years, fl eeing an acute eco-nomic and political crisis under President Nicolas Maduro.

Peru has been one of the most welcoming countries for Venezue-lan immigrants, granting them special residency cards that allow them to work and access public healthcare as well as education services.

The Andean nation is now home to 700,000 Venezuelans, the larg-est population of Venezuelan im-migrants outside of Colombia, which shares a border with Ven-ezuela. But the government of President Martin Vizcarra tight-ened entry requirements for Ven-ezuelans last year.

Earlier yesterday, Peru Foreign Minister Nestor Popolizio said the government was evaluating whether to require Venezuelans to obtain a “humanitarian visa” from its consulate in Caracas before migrating, similar to a measure Chile implemented that has made it harder for Venezuelans to enter the country legally.

“Venezuelan migration has im-pacted the labour market and our health and education systems. It’s a reality that our country’s capabili-ties are overwhelmed,” Popolizio told in televised comments.

Still, Lopez’ comments trig-gered a wave of criticism in Peru last week, including condemna-tion from the culture ministry, which deemed them “unaccept-able in a democratic state that re-spects fundamental rights.”

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognised as the country’s rightful interim ruler, arrives at the National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, yesterday.

Wooing voters

Panamanian independent presidential candidate Ricardo Lombana, of the “Otro Camino Panama” (Another Path Panama) party, walks with his wife Aileen de Lombana as he campaigns in Panama City. Panama holds presidential elections on May 5, 2019.

LATIN AMERICA

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 2019

19

Mexico rocker dies in apparent suicide, citing #MeToo chargesAFPMexico City

A Mexican rock star was found dead yesterday after tweeting that he planned

to kill himself in a “radical decla-ration of innocence” after being accused of sexual harassment by the country’s #MeToo move-ment.

Armando Vega Gil, 63, the bassist for veteran rock band Bo-tellita de Jerez (Little Bottle of Sherry), died early yesterday, the group said on Twitter.

A prosecution source con-

fi rmed Vega had been found dead at his Mexico City home, speak-ing on condition of anonymity because she was not authorised to discuss the investigation.

Vega’s death poured new fuel on a fi ery debate over #MeToo in Mexico.

The movement has triggered a fl ood of sexual assault accusa-tions against journalists, aca-demics, writers and others in the cultural sphere in recent weeks.

Vega posted a note on Twitter shortly before his death saying he was taking his own life in reaction to an anonymous accusation that he sexually assaulted a 13-year-

old girl more than a decade ago.The accusation was made the

previous night on the Twitter ac-count @MeTooMusicaMX, part of Mexico’s nascent but increasingly powerful #MeToo movement.

“I categorically deny this ac-cusation,” tweeted Vega, who was also an award-winning poet and writer.

He wrote that he feared the accusation would end his career, and that he would not be able to defend himself on social media, where “anything I say will be used against me.”

He added that he wanted to spare his eight-year-old son

from “suff ering the eff ects of this false accusation against me.”

“I must clarify that my death is not a confession of guilt. On the contrary, it is a radical declara-tion of innocence,” he said.

Vega was a founding mem-ber of Botellita de Jerez, a band formed in the 1980s that fused rock with traditional Mexican sounds and slang.

His accuser said he befriended her some 13 years ago, when she was a 13-year-old aspiring musi-cian and he was 50.

She said he invited her to his home and made a series of un-wanted advances. She ultimate-

ly severed ties with him.“I’m sure I’m not the only one.

It terrifi es me to know that other people probably weren’t as lucky as me and fell into his perverse trap,” she wrote.

The #MeToo movement gained little traction in Mexico when it burst onto the interna-tional scene in 2017 with a se-ries of sexual assault accusations against powerful Hollywood mo-gul Harvey Weinstein.

But in recent weeks, the move-ment has made major waves in the worlds of Mexican music, journalism, publishing and uni-versities.

The list of #MeToo Mexico profi les on Twitter also includes accounts where photographers, writers, journalists, creative pro-fessionals and academics can accuse powerful fi gures in their fi elds of sexual harassment and assault.

The ability to do so anony-mously has caused a raging de-bate.

Opponents say anyone with access to Twitter can make po-tentially false accusations ca-pable of destroying someone’s career and even life. Advocates say victims have little choice in a country where machismo runs

deep, accusers often face hateful backlash and the justice system rarely produces convictions.

Vega’s death is not the fi rst time the #MeToo movement has been linked to the suicide of someone accused.

Other cases include prominent Swedish theatre director Benny Fredriksson, who took his own life in March 2018 after being ac-cused of sexual misconduct and bullying.

His widow, the opera singer Anne Sofi e von Otter, said he was the victim of “character assas-sination” that drove him into a deep depression.

PAKISTAN

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 201920

The Imran Khan govern-ment is expected to an-nounce a scheme later

this month to attract non-fi lers into the tax net and incentivise “whitening” of untaxed money planted at home or abroad.

The work on the package has been fast-tracked in order to pro-vide ample time for individuals to avail the scheme before an Inter-national Monetary Fund (IMF) programme is implemented, as it will be diffi cult for the govern-ment to provide such incentive-laden scheme after securing bail-out package from the fund.

An offi cial, familiar with the

proposed package, said that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is considering various options, including ease of fi ling returns, incentivising fi ling of tax returns, and sending out e-mails to po-tential taxpayers about the exact amount of tax and assets details they will have to deposit.

“We have fi nancial transac-tions data and other material collected from National Data-base and Registration Authority (NADRA),” he explained.

The FBR has collected data from various sources – banks, utility corporations, immigration department and car manufac-turers, etc – to identify wealthy individuals whose names are ab-sent from tax rolls.

The tax authority has already sent out notices to high-net-worth individuals whose names do not appear on tax rolls.

Individuals, who possess un-taxed wealth and live in posh lo-calities, but are not registered on tax rolls, i.e., they have not ob-tained national tax numbers, will be targeted.

The offi cial said that in case a taxpayer fails to comply with the notice, a provisional assessment will be fi nalised.

However, the individual will have the option to fi le a return, accompanied by a wealth state-ment and reconciliation, within 60 days, whereby the provisional assessment order will be auto-matically initiated.

If the taxpayer fails to fi le re-turns and the required docu-ments within 60 days, the tax li-ability will become fi nal and will be recoverable.

Moreover, penal and prosecu-tion proceedings, which may re-sult in imprisonment and fi nes,

will also be initiated in selected cases to create credible deter-rence.

The incentives package also includes early refunds to more than 4,000 over-taxed small sal-aried taxpayers.

An offi cial source said that top FBR offi cials are expected to meet Prime Minister Imran Khan and Finance Minister Asad Umar shortly.

“The meeting will set the tone of proposed scheme,” the offi cial said, adding that the FBR is look-ing for the prime minister’s input on the assets declaration scheme.

The FBR has set a target to raise the number taxpayers in the country to 5mn by June 2021, and tax-to-GDP ratio to 12.5% at the end of next fi scal year, from the current 11.2%.

The tax authority, for the year 2018, received 1.73mn returns –

the highest ever in the country’s history.

“We have a target of 2mn for the tax year 2018,” the offi cial said, while adding that around 40,000 returns are being fi led on daily basis.

Meanwhile, a minister has said that the government will launch a crackdown against non-tax fi l-ers next month.

Speaking with a private news channel, Minister of State for Revenue Hammad Azhar said the government has received in-formation about 5mn non-fi lers across the country.

The minister said: “The tax evaders will have to face action as the department concerned will check the non-fi lers across the country.”

Azhar said that another opera-tion against fake accounts would also be launched.

Tax amnesty schemeexpected this monthPakistan to launch crackdown against non-tax filers in May

InternewsIslamabad

In a bid to make the educa-tion imparted in schools relevant to the job market,

the Pakistan government is working on introducing tech-nical and professional training programmes at the school level so that students who gradu-ate at the matriculation level come out with some market-able skills.

This was stated by Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood, while addressing the fi rst Inter-Provincial Min-isterial Conference on Techni-cal and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) this week.

The conference had been or-ganised by the National Voca-tional and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC).

The minister added that the government is planning re-forms to bring the education and vocational training system in line with the requirements of the labour market.

In this regard, Mahmood disclosed that the federal gov-ernment has constituted a task force representing all stake-holders in the sector in order to identify the challenges in the TVET sector of the country, and to devise a roadmap to ad-dress systemic issues.

The education minister fur-ther said that he believes edu-cation and skill development are beyond politics, and urged all political parties to put dif-ferences aside and work collec-tively in the national interest to promote skill development and empower young people.

“We are working in close collaboration with the over-seas ministry, the chambers of industries, the private sector and the key stakeholders, to identify the skills required in the domestic market and over-seas,” he said.

Mahmood reiterated the government’s plan to soon es-tablish the fi rst National Skill University in Islamabad, apart from fi ve Centres of Excel-lence.

He emphasised working in close collaboration with the

provincial governments, in-cluding those of Pakistan-ad-ministered Kashmir and Gilg-it-Baltistan, so that a uniform TVET system can be launched across the country.

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Youth Aff airs Us-man Dar added that apart from enhancing the sector, he said they are also looking to bring in reforms in the TVET sector.

“The government will soon launch the National Youth De-velopment Framework which will help in synchronising training with job placement,” Dar disclosed, adding that they are also working on a National Employment Exchange Por-tal with the NAVTTC, which will facilitate youth by match-ing skills with demands of the market.

“With the help of the NAVTTC, we are focusing on enhancing innovation-driv-en entrepreneurship skills of youth and promote blue col-lared and white collared jobs,” Dar said.

NAVTTC chairman Javed Hassan said that skill devel-opment is critical to provide employment opportunities to the youth and increase foreign remittances.

“Right now, our capacity is limited to imparting skills to just 400,000 people in the formal sector. That needs to be increased considerably apart from enhancing the quality of training,” he said.

NAVTTC executive direc-tor Dr Nasir Khan gave a de-tailed presentation on the eight major areas for intervention, which included cleansing gov-ernance structure from frag-mentation, increasing capac-ity of TVET system, improving quality, ensuring meaningful involvement of industry, de-livering equal access (skills for all), producing skilled work-force to meet international job requirements, and building a positive image of TVET to at-tract more youth towards the skill sector.

Minister Mahmood gave as-surances that all suggestions put forward by the participants will be incorporated into the TVET roadmap ‘Skills for All”.

Pakistan working to add technicaltraining in schoolsInternewsIslamabad

Pegging for record

This photograph taken on March 27 shows horse riders with lances used to pick up pegs during an attempt in Punjab’s Khanewal district for a Guinness World Record for tent pegging. Traditional drumbeats and melodious shahnai are drowned out by thundering hoofs in the small city of Tulamba, as riders pound down a dusty track seeking world record glory in the ancient sport of tent-pegging.

The Capital Development Authority (CDA) of Is-lamabad has decided to

revamp, reform, and revitalise its planning wing.

For this purpose, qualifi ed technical experts and town planners will be inducted into the authority at incentivised packages for better service de-livery.

This was disclosed at a re-cent briefi ng on reforms in the CDA, which was given to the Prime Minister’s Special As-sistant on the Capital Develop-ment Authority (CDA) Aff airs Ali Awan, offi cials here said.

The planning wing is con-sidered to be the backbone of the CDA, but of late it has faced staffi ng issues, impacting its performance.

Realising the importance of the issue, the incumbent man-agement of the authority has decided to introduce reforms in the planning wing.

For this purpose, a compre-hensive plan has been formu-lated to strengthen the plan-ning wing of the authority.

The proposed reform and re-vamp plan will see the creation of a pyramid structure in the CDA planning wing.

This will mean that the wing

will move away from its previ-ous top-heavy organisational structure, where multiple of-fi cers were present at the senior level while there was an acute shortage of offi cers at the op-erational levels.

The proposed plan suggests a reduction in redundant di-rectorates and expansion at the town planner and technical ex-pert levels.

The proposal also envisages focusing on building control and enforcement.

There is also a recommen-dation to have three sections of building control, which would have a set-up that would streamline the disposal of pending applications.

Similarly, a monitoring and evaluation directorate will be set up which will perform the role of an enforcer.

The proposal also includes incentivised salaries for plan-ning staff to encourage quali-fi ed technical experts to work for the CDA.

Additional salary cou-pled with a more decentral-ised working environment is planned, where the planning wing will be taking care of its own fi nancial and human re-source matters.

A detailed plan with posts and organogram has been pre-pared, and fi nancial impacts have also been calculated.

Islamabad planning wing to be revampedInternewsIslamabad

Pakistani social media cam-paigner Hanzala Tayyab leads about 300 ultra-na-

tionalist “cyber-warriors” fi ght-ing an Internet war with India, in a battle that is increasingly suck-ing in global tech giants such as Twitter and Facebook.

Tayyab, 24, spends his days on Facebook and encrypted What-sApp chatrooms, organising members of his Pakistan Cyber Force group to promote anti-In-dia content and make it go viral, including on Twitter where he has more than 50,000 followers.

That ranges from highlight-ing alleged Indian human rights abuses to lionising insurgents battling Indian security forces in Kashmir, a disputed Himalayan region at the heart of historic tensions between Pakistan and India.

Tayyab’s job became harder on Monday when the Pakistan Cyber Force’s Facebook account was taken down, one of 103 Pa-kistani accounts that the social media giant said it had deleted because of “inauthentic behav-iour” and spamming.

Some Indian nationalist ac-counts have also been suspended in recent weeks.

Portraying himself as an online combatant defending Pakistan from India’s attempts to desta-bilise his country, Tayyab plans to continue playing his role in

the broader information war be-ing fought between the nuclear-armed foes.

“We are countering the Indian narrative through social media, we are countering the enemies of Pakistan,” Tayyab told Reuters in Islamabad.

With a combined population of 1.5bn, India and Pakistan are hot growth markets for Facebook and Twitter, say analysts.

However, with many rival ultra-nationalist and extremist groups in the region using Face-book and Twitter platforms to advance their political agenda, both companies face accusations of bias whenever they suspend accounts.

Facebook has been buff eted by controversies across the globe in recent years, including for not stopping the use of fake accounts to try to sway public opinion in the 2016 US presidential election and Britain’s vote to leave the Eu-ropean Union, and for not acting to stamp out hate speech on its platform that was fuelling ethnic violence in Myanmar.

Four Facebook and more than 20 Twitter accounts belonging to members of the Pakistan Cy-ber Force have been shuttered in the past two months, accord-ing to Tayyab, who is still angry at Twitter for shutting down his previous personal account in 2016.

A Twitter spokeswoman said: “We believe in impartiality and do not take any actions based on political viewpoints.”

A Facebook spokesperson told

Reuters that the company did not remove the Pakistani accounts because of Indian government pressure, but because people be-hind them co-ordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves.

“When we disrupt these net-works for co-ordinated inau-thentic behaviour, it’s because of their deceptive behaviour, and not because of the content they’re sharing, or the ideology or political leanings of the people behind them,” Facebook said.

Pakistan and India fl irted with war in February, when the na-tions carried out aerial bombing missions against each other’s territory for the fi rst time since the 1971 war and fought a brief

dogfi ght over the Kashmir skies.That fl are-up was accompa-

nied by a fi erce propaganda war on social media.

This online battle of political and ideological narratives is one that Pakistan’s military believes it must win at all costs, analysts say.

Military spokesmen often warn unconventional “fi fth gen-eration warfare” is being waged against Pakistan.

Facebook said on Monday that the 103 accounts removed were part of a network linked to employees of the Pakistani mili-tary’s public relations arm.

Tayyab denies the Pakistan Cyber Force is linked to Paki-stan’s military, saying that the

group is made up of volunteers.However, analysts say such cy-

ber-armies work directly either for Pakistan’s military or civil-ian state organisations, acting as de facto proxies or militias in the online battlefi elds.

“These groups who are being resourced and organised are ac-tually a kind of a line of defence for this fi fth generation warfare,” said Shahzad Ahmed, from Pa-kistani digital rights group Bytes for All.

Pakistan’s military did not re-spond to a Reuters request for comment.

In India, similar nationalist groups are popping up and push-ing to purge and punish those who they perceive to be critical of India – or supportive of Pakistan – on social media.

One such group, Clean the Na-tion, says its actions have result-ed in more than 50 people – who had posted what it called anti-India comments and remarks critical of India’s armed forces – being arrested or suspended from work or education.

“This is our motherland and if someone is abusing people who are protecting our motherland, actually fi ghting on the ground, I don’t believe they should be al-lowed to work here or allowed to live here,” Rahul Kaushik, one of co-founders the group, told Reu-ters. “This is a clear case of trea-son, in our view.”

Facebook said on Monday that it had taken down 549 accounts and 138 pages linked to India’s opposition Congress Party.

Social media giants sucked into nations’ information warBy Drazen Jorgic and Alasdair Pal, ReutersIslamabad

Tayyab, 24, a social media campaigner and cyber analyst, is seen working on computer at a local cafe in Islamabad.

E-passport issued from next monthThe National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Interior has been informed that the Directorate General of Immigration and Passport will introduce an “e-passport system” next month.“The system has been developed at a cost of Rs534mn, and can be described as clean, secure, and fully automated,” Passport and Immigration director general Ishrat Ali informed the parliamentary body meeting that was chaired by Khurram Nawaz, off icials here said.

Pakistan launches its fi rst InternationalInformation Tourist Corner in Brussels

Pakistan has opened its first International Information Tourist

Corner in Belgium to off er Europeans a sample of Pakistani culture,

stunning scenic view of northern areas, and the traditional lifestyle

of mountain people.

Launched jointly in collaboration with the Pakistan embassy and

Tribes, a Dutch company established in Brussels, the tourist corner

is the first-ever initiative by the Pakistani mission in Belgium to

promote tourism in Pakistan.

Speaking at the inauguration of the information corner, Belgian

mountaineer Paul Hegge shared his experience and said that he

was greatly impressed with the beauty of K-2.

Hegge, who climbed the world’s second highest peak K-2 last year,

said: “Mountain lovers will have great and unique opportunity to

climb the chain of Pakistani mountains.”

Belgian photographer Benoit Sneessens also shared his work and

experience in Pakistan through his documentary on the northern

areas of Pakistan.

Sneessens, who has visited Hunza six times and has spent con-

siderable time with local people, said they have inspired him with

their great hospitality and culture.

Addressing the gathering, Pakistan Minister for Human Rights Dr

Shireen Mazari said: “Europeans must come to Pakistan and see

the stunning beauty of north. Pakistan has mountain peaks.

“If you explore Pakistan, you will find beautiful beaches and lush

green landscape.”

Meanwhile, a special tourism police force has been established in

Gilgit-Baltistan region to provide the best security to the foreign

and domestic tourists in Pakistan’s mountainous region, it was

revealed.

Inspector General of Police (Gilgit-Baltistan) Sanaullah Abbasi told

media in Skardu that for now, 150 personnel have been recruited

for the purpose.

Punjab to launch youth loan schemeThe Punjab government is gearing up to launch a youth business loan scheme in the next few days, off icials here say.Under the scheme, skilled youth will be provided with short-term loans for starting their own business, Punjab Minister for Industries, Commerce and Investment Aslam Iqbal said at an IT-focused seminar arranged by the Punjab Board of Investment and Trade (PBIT).The state minister added that the loans would be capped at Rs3mn.

PHILIPPINES

21Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Duterte seeks review of government contractsBy Catherine S ValenteManila Times

President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered a review of all government contracts

to remove any “onerous” pro-visions detrimental to public interest, Malacanang said yes-terday.

The president, who met with his Cabinet on Monday, di-rected Solicitor General Jose Calida and Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra to study, among others, the arbitration case involving Maynilad Water Services Inc. and the Philip-pine government, according to Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo.

“He (Duterte) directed the Solicitor General, the Depart-ment of Justice secretary, and all legal departments to review, evaluate, scrutinise every con-tract entered by the government and/or each agency with private corporations and/or countries, and determine whether there are onerous provisions in the contract that will put the Filipi-no people in disadvantage or in violation of the Constitution,” Panelo told reporters.

“He reiterated his vow to pro-tect the people of the Republic of the Philippines,” he added.

Panelo said Duterte found out

that the contract with Mayni-lad prohibited the government from interfering or intruding into the terms of the contract.

“That’s why we lost in the ar-bitration tribunal. And I think we were made to pay P3.5bn because according to the ruling,

the government intervened. And by reason of the interven-tion, Maynilad suff ered dam-ages,” Panelo said.

In October 2018, Mayni-lad scored a victory at the High Court in Singapore over the P3.44bn compensation it

sought from the Philippine gov-ernment for revenue losses as a result of the unimplemented water rate adjustment.

The water company said the decision became fi nal after the Philippine government opted not to take the case to the Court

of Appeals, the upper division of Singapore’s Supreme Court.

Panelo said the Duterte ad-ministration would prosecute those behind the “onerous” contracts between the Ramos government and Maynilad.

“We can prosecute. That contract was entered into by the government and drafted by lawyers of the government. That could be collusion be-tween the lawyers of the gov-ernment and the lawyers of the private company. We have to prosecute them,” he said.

“That is a very onerous pro-vision when you prohibit your own government from interfer-ing with the terms of the con-tract. You cannot even do any-thing when there are losses.”

Guevarra said the review would focus on “certain provi-sions of the concession agree-ment that unduly tie the hands of the Republic.”

Duterte’s order came weeks after parts of Metro Manila and Rizal province were hit with water crisis.

The president’s order to re-view all contracts came on the heels of Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio’s warning that the country could lose gas in Reed Bank if the Philippine gov-ernment failed to pay the loan it got from China for the Chico River pump irrigation project.

Carpio said the Kaliwa Dam project also followed a template that sets patrimonial assets as collateral.

Panelo said the review would also include the government’s loan agreements with China.

“Yes, because even if it’s ex-ecuted, even if it’s in violation of the Constitution, you can re-scind it, you can strike it down. Ask the court to rescind,” he told reporters.

“In other words, the presi-dent is warning all and sun-dry that for as long as he is the president, he will not allow an-ything that will go against the interest of the Filipino people. He will use the Constitution, all the powers given him to protect the Filipino people and to serve them faithfully,” the Palace of-fi cial added.

Panelo expressed confi dence that the review of government contracts would have no impact on potential investors.

“As I have said some time ago, the considerations being looked at by potential investors are one, the peace and order sit-uation; the lack of bureaucracy or bureaucratic red tape; and the business climate,” he said.

“On the contrary, in fact, it will forewarn them that they cannot enter into any agree-ment that is in violation of the Constitution or public policy.”

Duterte: priority for public interest

Police chief orders probe into killing of 14 farmersDPA Manila

The Philippines national police chief yesterday or-dered the suspension of

four police offi cials following the killing of 14 farmers during a series of police operations in a central province over the week-end.

National police chief Oscar Albayalde said the suspension of the police officials in Negros Oriental province was aimed at ensuring an impartial investi-gation into the killings.

The suspensions were “not a punitive measure” but were to “ensure that they will not be able to exert any influence in the ongoing investigation,” he said. The suspended officials headed provincial police com-mand and were chiefs of police stations in Canlaon City and the towns of Santa Catalina and Manjuyod, where the kill-ings took place.

Police allege the victims were suspected communist rebels who resisted officers serving search warrants for their homes in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday.

But human rights activ-ists said that the victims were farmers and included some lo-cal community leaders.

“While we maintain the reg-ularity of these police opera-

tions, we find it prudent on our part to initiate an investigation if only to discount any doubts and satisfy the requirements of fair and judicious investigation in fairness to our personnel also,” Albayalde said.

According to the politi-cal leftist group Kabataan, the killings in Negros Oriental province raise the number of farmers killed, during the ad-ministration of President Rod-rigo Duterte, to 180.

Oscar Albayalde: focus on impartial investigation

Paredes admits to leaked private videoBy Aric John Sy CuaManila Times

Singer-songwriter Jim Paredes ad-mitted to being in a private video that had gone viral on social me-

dia after initially denying it.In a statement released on his per-

sonal blog, Paredes said that while the video was real, it was not supposed to be distributed publicly.

“The video was real,” he wrote. “It was private, and not meant for public consumption. I do not know how it be-came public. I can only surmise that in this ugly season of toxic politics, muck-rakers determined to neutralise my infl uence by violating my privacy and digging up dirt on me are at work.”

Initially, Paredes dismissed the viral video as “fake”, when it was shared on social media.

“When I saw it on social media, I was in a quandary how to respond. But after mulling and praying over it, I decided to come clean,” Paredes wrote. “There are already too many lies and liars in this world. I do not wish to be a part of that cabal. I have chosen to be truthful because I know that painful as the truth can be, it will eventually set me free.”

He later apologised for the video.“I am not saying this to excuse what,

I regret, was broadcast on social me-dia,” he wrote. “I have always expressed my feelings freely. Today, I wish to ex-press my truth. I am a fl awed person, a human being, much like everyone else. I made a mistake, I was irresponsible. And I am truly sorry.”

Paredes’ friends and supporters came to his defence on Twitter.

“Laughing at my friend Jim Paredes and his predicament doesn’t make you, video thieves and sharers, any better

than him,” tweeted singer Leah Nav-arro. “The lengths you went through to reveal his private data are criminal and you should be charged. You violated his privacy. Karma boomerangs big time.”

“The real scandal here is that some-one took his *private* video and up-loaded it without his permission,” tweeted lawyer Jego Ragragio. “Will the uploader admit? Also, what are they trying to distract us from this time? What other issues does Duterte have now?”

Paredes is a known critic of the ad-ministration of President Rodrigo Du-terte.

The viral video, which showed Pare-des allegedly doing lewd acts, have been making the rounds on social media since Sunday. This video came, amidst the removal of over 200 Facebook and Instagram pages and accounts that were supportive of Duterte administration. Jim Paredes: courting controversy

Court seeks release of police reports on anti-drug warThe Philippine Supreme

Court yesterday ordered the

government’s top lawyer to

release all police reports of

killings related to a crack-

down on illegal drugs, which

has left thousands dead since

2016, DPA reported.

The release of the reports

were sought by human rights

groups and lawyer organisa-

tions helping victims of the

anti-illegal drug campaign

launched by President Rod-

rigo Duterte.

“The court just ordered the

Solicitor General to submit

the police report to the

Supreme Court,” and send

copies to the petitioners, the

tribunal’s spokesman Brian

Keith Hosaka said.

The documents were request-

ed as part of a petition filed

by the Center for Internation-

al Law on behalf of residents

of a district in Manila seeking

protection from the anti-drug

war. A group of human rights

lawyers also filed a petition

questioning the constitution-

ality of the campaign against

illegal drugs and seeking the

release of more than 20,000

police reports.

More than 5,000 people have

been killed in police opera-

tions under the government’s

crackdown against illegal

drugs since 2016, according

to official police statistics.

The New York-based watch-

dog Human Rights Watch said

the true death toll in the drug

crackdown, including victims

of hired or vigilante killers,

could be higher than 12,000,

based on estimates by local

rights and church groups.

Govt crafts roadmap to address El Nino challengeBy Catherine S Valente & Eireene J GomezManila Times

The government has come up with a roadmap to mitigate the eff ects of a

prolonged El Nino and ensure ample supply of water in the country, Malacanang said yes-terday.

Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said the roadmap, which was presented when Presi-dent Rodrigo Duterte met with his Cabinet in Malacanang on Monday, included the proposal to create the Department of Water and Department of Dis-aster Resilience.

“We had a serious and pro-ductive April Fools’ Day as President Rodrigo Duterte presided a fruitful 36th Cabi-net meeting,” Panelo said in a statement.

“The Cabinet discussed the fi rst item on the agenda, which is mitigating the eff ects of El Nino and water shortage. A roadmap was presented, which included immediate, medium and long-term interventions, such as making an intensive campaign for the conservation of water and energy, creating a Department of Water and a Department of Disaster Resil-ience,” he added.

The roadmap also involved

“dredging of waterways, re-placing tunnels and aqueducts, installing water tank systems in all Department of Health hos-pitals and providing funding for the establishment of water treatment plants.”

The Department of Agricul-ture (DA) has said damage to agriculture caused by drought had reached P5bn.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration said El Nino had peaked and would start weakening in the next few months.

Several parts of Metro Ma-nila have also been hit by water shortage. Panelo said National Economic and Development Authority Undersecretary Adoracion Navarro presented a

proposed Executive Order (EO) on transforming and strength-ening the National Water Re-sources Board (NWRB).

“The EO will merge the NWRB and the River Basin Control Offi ce into the National Water Management Council,” Panelo said. “This will stream-line and consolidate planning and regulation of all water and river basins in the country. It will also draft a National Water Management Framework Plan,” he added.

The DA, however, is optimis-tic that the agriculture sector would still be able to hit its pro-duction target for rice and corn despite El Nino.

Agriculture Secretary Em-manuel Piñol said that while the total damage and losses

from El Nino have reached P5bn, the drought would not cut down the national produc-tion for this year.

“In fact, the records will show that our losses in relation to our national production pro-jection for rice would only be

0.63%. We are still keep-ing our (still record-high) pro-duction target of 20mn metric tonnes (MT), lower by about 500,000 MT than our previous target,” he added.

Last year, the country’s total rice output hit 19.07mn MT, which was 1.1% lower from 19.28mn MT recorded in 2017 caused by monthly tropical disturbances. For the corn sec-tor, Pinol said the DA estimated that the total damage would reach a rate of 1.2%.

Meanwhile, he sought an “in-stitutional change” in the way the country handles calamities like El Nino, saying the govern-ment should stop its “post-dis-aster intervention mindset.”

“The only way we can miti-gate the damage of drought, dry spell and El Nino is to come up with a viable national irrigation programme that would prepare the funds for calamities like this. Unless we do that, we will always be picking up the pieces after every disaster and we will be spending a lot to rehabilitate and assist our farmers,” Pinol said.

Palace hopes for Chinese vessels’ exit

Chinese vessels on Pagasa Island

should immediately leave the

area now that the Philippines had

decided to file a diplomatic protest,

Malacanang said yesterday.

Palace spokesman Salvador

Panelo said the protest was a

testament that the government is

against the presence of the ships

there, Manila Times reported.

“We are already complaining, why

are they there? Then, eff ectively,

you are asking them to leave,” Pan-

elo said, adding that the Chinese

vessels should leave as soon as

possible. The Palace off icial said he

took the issue up with President

Rodrigo Duterte during Monday

evening’s Cabinet meeting.

He said the president “just listened.”

“That is what the president does,

when you make a report, he lis-

tens, he observes. If he will tell you

anything later, he will say it. He is

not risky with his words,” he said.

The roadmap to mitigate eff ects of El Nino involve dredging of waterways, replacing tunnels and aqueducts, as well as installing water tank systems in all Department of Health hospitals.

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 2019

COMMENT22

To Advertise advr@gulf-times.com

Display 44466621 44418811

Classified 44466609 44418811

Subscription circulation@gulf-times.com

© 2019 Gulf Times. All rights reserved

GULF TIMES

P.O.Box 2888, Doha, Qatar

editor@gulf-times.com

44350478 (News),

44466404 (Sport),

44466636 (Home delivery)

44350474

facebook.com/gulftimes

twitter.com/gulftimes_Qatar

CHAIRMANAbdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing EditorK T Chacko

Europe currentlythe weakest pointin global economy

After a dismal 2018 and a poor start to 2019, the economic outlook for Europe is going from bad to worse.

Europe’s position as the weak link in the global economy is now becoming more entrenched amid an intensifying factory slump. A German manufacturing gauge fell further than initially estimated on Monday to the worst in almost seven years; Italy’s industrial contraction deepened, and a eurozone wide measure put confidence and demand at factories at a multi-year low.

The gloomy European picture contrasts with the improvement in Asia, where Purchasing Managers’ Indexes were led higher in March by China returning to expansion.

Such diverging fortunes indicate that Europe is suffering the most from both the global slowdown and trade-war crossfire between the US and China.

“Europe is currently the weakest point in the global economy,” said Christopher Dembik, global head of macroeconomic research at Saxo Bank. “We got a horrible set of new data for the euro area that confirms the risk of lower growth than expected by consensus.”

The European Commission said in February that an Italian economy close to stagnation and significantly weaker momentum in Germany would weigh on growth in the euro area this year. The commission predicted the economy

will expand 1.3% this year, down from 1.9% projected in November. For 2020, it sees growth at 1.6%.

The euro-area economy grew at the weakest pace in four years in 2018 as Italy slipped into recession. A further slowdown is likely this year as the currency area faces growing political tensions and the threat of weaker demand for its exports from China and the UK.

To be sure, Europe’s pains are also partly home-grown with prolonged disruption in the auto industry and the threat of a disorderly Brexit hurting confidence.

Some of the poor PMI results may be an overreaction to Brexit and trade worries, and won’t be reflected in hard data on the economy. In Germany, the closely watched Ifo business confidence index rose in March, as did a measure of expectations.

Still, the figures will prove disappointing at the European Central Bank, where there’s hope that the slowdown will soon bottom out, setting up an improvement later this year.

The warning signs have already forced the ECB to redraw its plans for exiting stimulus measures.

Eurozone confi dence has also been weakened by political tensions. Elections for the European Parliament are expected to produce gains for anti-establishment parties, increasing uncertainty about future economic policy.

Despite the ECB’s upbeat projections, there’s a danger the slowdown might turn into a recession, Europe’s third in a decade. But the central bank could play a crucial part in preventing a disaster.

Across the world, forward leaning policy signals paint a more optimistic picture for the global economy. The US Federal Reserve is on hold and financial conditions have eased; China’s credit growth is accelerating and more fiscal firepower is promised; the trade truce appears to be holding; and 2019 will be a year of slower, bumpier growth, according to Bloomberg Economics.

Forward-leaning policy signals paint a more optimistic picture for global economy

By Amrit DhillonKochi

Run by an army of women and equipped with solar power and dedicated breastfeeding pods, Kochi Metro is altering the

status quo in Kerala.Down on the platform, where the air

is intensely muggy in the March heat, a train glides in.

The driver is a woman.The ticket offi ce is run by a woman.A transgender woman helps

customers at the inquiry desk.On four of the metro’s stations,

passengers can go into a special cubicle to breastfeed their babies.

At the station, Rejitha, dressed in a turquoise and pink uniform, is on hand to help the hundreds of people who use the Kochi Metro every day. “See, you place it fl at like this on the sensor to get through,” she tells a customer struggling to get through the ticket barrier.

An army of women make up about 80% of the 1,300-strong metro workforce.

“It’s a safe and clean environment for me. The money I get makes a big diff erence to our budget and to what I can do for my family,” says Rejitha, who goes by a single name.

The predominance of women explains the decision to install the breastfeeding pods, equipped with a seat, fan, and phone charging point.

The pods are located in parts of stations that can be accessed without a ticket so that any passing woman who needs it can walk in off the street and use it.

“We realised that breastfeeding

rates were coming down in Kerala and wondered if we could help. If demand goes up, we will install more of them,” says Sumi Nadarajan, senior deputy general manager for planning and sustainability.

This sensitivity typifi es many of the state-owned metro’s policies.

It was an unusual infrastructure project from the outset.

In a country where projects routinely run over budget and break deadlines, the metro was completed within the agreed cost and time constraints.

It uses solar power for 35% of its energy needs, and more than 200 of the pillars dotted around the station have been turned into vertical gardens with the use of compost made from municipal waste.

One key decision was to train and appoint female drivers: seven out of the 39 drivers are women.

Another was hiring 60 transgender women, the fi rst time any company in India has formally decided to hire along such lines.

As former metro managing director Elias George said at the time, “society’s mindset will change only by direct interaction with” transgender people.

In a move to give further jobs to women, the metro joined up with a women’s collective called Kudumbashree to supply meals.

Women cook lunches in their homes and, travelling on the metro, deliver the meals in steel “tiffi n” boxes (to avoid plastic) to metro employees at various stations.

They earn money and metro employees enjoy home-cooked food.

“From day one, we believed the policies that shape this institution

must be progressive and innovative and aimed at social inclusion and women’s empowerment,” says Kochi Metro managing director Mohamed Hanish.

Bringing Kerala’s transgender people into the public eye has not been easy.

Unlike in other parts of India, transgender people here live hidden away. “In north India, transgenders live in communities called hamams but in Kerala they are solitary and isolated,” says Sumi Mohan, board member of human rights organisation Sahayatrika.

The attrition rate among transgender employees has been high.

Finding aff ordable accommodation near the station where they work was a problem for many. “It was a challenge keeping them employed. Many took lots of medical leave.

They need surgery or they have issues with their hormone treatment. And they wanted a daily wage. They live from hand to mouth and can’t wait for a month before being paid. But we couldn’t change the rules for just one section of employees,” says Natarajan.

As a result, only a dozen remain.One of them is Karthika Raghavan,

36, who gave up her job as a biochemist in a laboratory, because it was too solitary, to work as a customer assistant on the metro.

Raghavan’s parents accepted her and she continues to live with them, something of a rarity among transgender people in Kerala.

“My job in the lab was with non-living things. Being out and meeting all kinds of people on the metro makes me feel happy,” she says in fluent English. “Whenever I used to look for jobs, the ad specified male or female. The Kochi Metro has smashed all the

old rules by giving us work.”The metro’s policies stem from a

wider progressive ethos that is perhaps unique to Kerala.

Although the state has been in the news recently for the campaign by women to win the right to pray at the Sabarimala temple, where women have been denied entry for decades, this is something of an aberration.

The state has a high female literacy rate, low maternal and infant mortality, and a healthy sex ratio compared with other Indian states.

Nevertheless, few women, despite being educated, feature in the labour force.

According to the latest offi cial data for 2011-12, 22% of women work in the formal sector in rural areas, compared with 56% of men, lower than the 25% fi gure for India as a whole.

This is why the Kochi Metro made a conscious eff ort to give jobs to women.

There has been no shortage of takers.Women even work the night shift,

which is notable in a society where you rarely see women out after sunset in rural areas.

Hima C, as she is known, is a 27-year-old driver – an assistant “loco-pilot”, as it is called.

The shifts don’t bother her because she loves her job. “The metro is elevated, so it soars over the city. I love that sense of space – and the way people on the platform, when they see the train rolling in, smile and wave at me,” she says.

Raghavan also has no problem with shift work. “I want to be trained as a driver. That’s the next logical step and that’s my new ambition,” she says. – Guardian News and Media

Indian women drive change – and trains

Kochi Metro train driver Hima C. PICTURE: Sivaram V/The Guardian

COMMENT

Gulf Times Wednesday, April 3, 2019 23

Was the stock-market boom predictable?By Robert J ShillerNew Haven

Should we have known in March 2009 that the United States’ S&P 500 stock index would quadruple in value in the

next ten years, or that Japan’s Nikkei 225 would triple, followed closely by Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index? The conventional wisdom is that it is never possible to “time the market.” But moves as big as these, it might seem, must have been at least partly foreseeable.

The problem is that no one can prove why a boom happened, even after the fact, let alone show how it could have been predicted. The US boom since 2009 is a case in point.

In looking at the US stock market, it is important to bear in mind that its participants are overwhelmingly US investors. According to a US government study published last year, despite some growth between 2009 and 2017, the share of the US stock market owned by foreigners was still only about one-seventh in 2017. But if all people heeded fi nancial advisers’ counsel and were completely diversifi ed, people outside the US, who held more than two-thirds of the world’s wealth as of last year, would own over two-thirds of the US stock market as well. Home-country bias, or patriotism, is a big factor in the stock market. So, to understand the US stock market’s strength, we need to consider the thinking of its participants.

There seems to have been an overreaction in the US to a temporary drop in earnings. S&P 500 earnings per share had been negative (a very rare event) in the fourth quarter of 2008, both for “reported earnings” and for “operating earnings,” and those numbers were just coming in around March 2009, when the index reached its nadir.

You might think that an intelligent observer in the US in 2009 would have recognised that the decline was temporary, and would have expected earnings – which are relevant to forecasting long-term growth of stock prices – to recover. But the real question is whether the observer could have based a very optimistic forecast for long-term earnings growth on the rebound from that negative earnings moment. We now know that long-term measures of earnings growth did not change a lot. Ten-year average S&P 500 earnings per share from 2009 to 2019 were up only 71% from the previous decade. The quadrupling in the S&P 500 price index was thus driven not by higher earnings but by much higher valuations of earnings.

It is true that real interest rates are down since 2009, with the ten-year US Treasury Infl ation-Protected Security yielding 0.8% in February, down from 1.71% in March 2009. But all of that decline occurred by 2010 and could not justify any of the strong uptrend in stock prices since then.

In 2009, some people in the US were using very strong language to express their fear. One heard that a “fi nancial supernova” was coming. A ProQuest News & Newspapers search for “derivatives” and “fi nancial weapons of mass destruction” (a phrase attributed to Warren Buff ett) shows that these two terms fi rst appeared together in 2003 and gained intense popularity by 2009, only to fade to near nothing by 2018.

Those who were prescient enough to know that derivatives markets weren’t going to blow up the economy might have known that any drag on the market from the fear that they would could not be sustained for ten years. But a forecast based on such prescience is hard to quantify or defend publicly.

The fact that economists on the whole had not predicted the 2008 fi nancial crisis was much emphasised

at the time and led to some lost faith. Many people were worrying in March 2009 that stocks had a lot further to fall.

Under my direction, the Yale School of Management has been collecting data on the opinions of both institutional and individual investors in the US since 1989. One of

the questions is: What do you think is the probability of a catastrophic US stock-market crash, like that of October 28, 1929 or October 19, 1987, in the next six months, including a crash caused by fi nancial contagion from other countries? In early 2009, the percentage of people who gave a probability greater than 10% reached a

record high (since 1994).Likewise, ProQuest News &

Newspapers counts of the frequency of the phrase “Great Depression” soared to unprecedented heights. There were more mentions of “Great Depression” in 2009 than there were during the Great Depression.

But then, with no stock-market

crash and no extreme depression in sight, these fears were replaced by their opposite: deeper admiration of business success. A new narrative emerged, featuring a new wave of billionaire geniuses whose appearance in the 1990s was interrupted only briefl y by the fi nancial crisis. The publication in 2011 of the number-one best seller Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s biography of the Apple founder, is one example. Elon Musk has stirred excitement with futuristic companies such as aerospace manufacturer SpaceX and Neuralink, which is developing implantable brain-computer interfaces.

The accession of a fl amboyant businessman, Donald Trump, to the US presidency is evidence of the strength of many Americans’ identifi cation with business heroes. Starting in 2004, Trump spent much of his time developing his business persona as the star of the reality TV show The Apprentice, and then, from 2008, The Celebrity Apprentice. His campaign marshalled this enthusiasm, and his claim that he would “Make America Great Again” appealed to the optimism of US investors.

The quadrupling of US stock prices since 2009, as well as Trump’s election, thus appears to refl ect, at least in part, a process of fear abatement and re-enchantment with American business culture. But it is hard to forecast such trends – even the biggest – in the stock market, not only because forecasting is a highly competitive business, but also because spontaneity plays such an important role in human behaviour. – Project Syndicate

Robert J Shiller, a 2013 Nobel laureate in economics and Professor of Economics at Yale University, is co-author, with George Akerlof, of Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York, US, yesterday.

Pancreatic cancer odds tied to weight before 50

Mueller report not the end of the world

Live issues

QNAWashington

New American research found that Pancreatic cancer is more deadly in patients who were

overweight before the age of 50.Scientific director at the American

Cancer Society, Dr Eric Jacobs discovered that a BMI of 30 or higher raises the risks that pancreatic cancer will kill a patient by 25%,

current theories suggest that the inflammation that comes with excess weight may encourage cells to mutate and become cancerous.

The researchers stressed that people who are overweight or obese are 150% more likely to develop pancreatic cancer at some point in their life than those who have normal weights.

They are not only a major factor in cancer, but a risk indicator for the health of many diseases, and many types of cancers, namely the uterus,

oesophagus, stomach, kidneys and liver, and some brain tumours and cancers of the pancreas, colon and rectum and multiple myeloma.

The study concluded that although pancreatic cancer is a rare form of the disease, it has seen a significant increase in recent years, scientists became puzzled by the risk, smoking was one of the risk factors of the disease and began to decline gradually that factor, while obesity Excess weights are among the most common causes of pancreatic cancer.

By Bill PressTribune News Service

For 17 years, starting in the 1970s, Southern California woke up to the lively morning-drive radio show

“The Ken and Bob Company.” Day in, day out, hosts Ken Minyard and Bob Arthur had one theme: Don’t worry, EGBOK. “Everything’s going to be OK.” Thousands of listeners, including me, wore EGBOK buttons to work.

So here’s my message to Democrats who’ve spent every day since release of the Mueller report weeping and gnashing their teeth: EGBOK. This is not the end of the world. Everything’s going to be OK. In fact, this may turn out to be a big advantage.

Of course it was disappointing to see Robert Mueller prematurely wrap things up in a way that seemed to, but did not, clear Donald Trump of any wrongdoing. Mueller did not say there was no collusion; he just said he couldn’t find enough evidence to charge Trump with a criminal conspiracy. Same on obstruction of justice. Yes, Trump tried to interfere with the FBI investigation, but Mueller cowardly concluded he wouldn’t be able to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump did so with criminal intent.

Still, at least according to Attorney General Bill Barr’s four-page summary of the Mueller report – which is all one has seen so far – it was neutral enough to allow Trump to gloat: No collusion. No obstruction. Exoneration. And soft enough to drive many Democrats to despair.

Again, EGBOK. It’s not time to

despair, it’s time to move ahead. On two fronts. First, by recognising that it was a mistake to put so much faith in Mueller in the first place. Indeed, expectations for Mueller’s final report had soared so high that anything less than slapping handcuffs on Trump and frog-marching him off the golf course would be considered a big letdown. As a result, for months Democrats held off figuring out how to dump Trump in 2020 because they counted on Mueller, swooping down some like deus ex machina, to knock him out of the box before the campaign even got underway.

Now Americans know that’s not going to happen, so on to the second priority for Democrats: building a strong case against Trump based not on suspicion of collusion with Russia but on the severe damage he’s done since taking office, including: gutting environmental protection, inciting white nationalism, fanning the flames of racism, junking the Paris climate accord and the Iran

nuclear deal, stealing money from schools for children of soldiers to pay for his wall, and bloating the national debt.

On that front, Trump did even more damage this week. For 10 years, Republicans had vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and replace it with “something” – even though they never came up with any plan of their own. As late as last week, the Trump White House insisted it wanted to preserve the good parts of Obamacare while trashing all the rest. Now even that fig leaf is gone. The Trump administration suddenly reversed course, joining a lawsuit brought by several red states to junk the Affordable Care Act in its entirety.

That means Trump and the Republican Party are now full square for getting rid of all the provisions of Obamacare Americans have come to love. Yes, protection for pre-existing conditions. But also free preventive care, mammograms and checkups; lower premiums and co-

pays for Medicare; allowing children to remain on their parents’ health plan until they turn 26; no limits on lifetime benefits. All gone, if Republicans have their way.

Which is a political bonanza for Democrats. In 2018, they won 40 seats in the House, in both liberal and more conservative districts, promising to protect people’s healthcare. Now, thanks to Trump, they can again run on healthcare in 2020. On healthcare, the most important issue in the country, the difference could not be more clear: Democrats are for it; Republicans are against it.

Meanwhile, Trump’s not out of the woods on the criminal front, either. More than a dozen investigations are underway by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the New York Attorney General, the District of Columbia Attorney General and other jurisdictions – enough to keep prosecutors busy, and Trump nervous, for the next two years.

Bottom line: Democrats can forget about Robert Mueller and forget about impeachment. They’re now free to focus on building a case to beat Donald Trump the old-fashioned way: by clobbering him at the ballot box in November 2020. EGBOK.

Bill Press is host of a nationally-syndicated radio show, CNN political analyst and the author of the new book, Trump Must Go: The 100 Top Reasons to Dump Trump (And One to Keep Him), which is available in bookstores now. You can hear “The Bill Press Show” at his website: billpressshow.com His e-mail address is: bill@billpress.com Readers may also follow him on Twitter at @bpshow.

People who are overweight or obese are 150% more likely to develop pancreatic cancer at some point in their life than those who have normal weights

WARNINGInshore : Expected thundery rain

at placesOffshore : Expected thunder rain

at some places associ-ated with strong wind & high sea

WEATHERInshore : P cloudy to cloudy at

times with c of rain at some places maybe thundery at times

Offshore : Cloudy with c of sctd rain maybe thundery at times, becomes p cloudy later

WINDInshore : Northwesterly-North-

easterly 05-15/22 KTOffshrore : Northwesterly-North-

easterly 05-15/25 KT Visibility : 4-8 KMOffshore : 2-4/8 FT

TODAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

Maximum Temperature : 280c

Minimum Temperature : 210c

Maximum Temperature : 290c

Minimum Temperature : 220c

Maximum Temperature : 310c

Minimum Temperature : 230c

BaghdadKuwait City ManamaMuscat Tehran

AthensBeirut BangkokBerlinCairoCape TownColomboDhakaHong KongIstanbulJakartaKarachiLondonManilaMoscowNew DelhiNew YorkParisSao PauloSeoulSingaporeSydneyTokyo

Weather

today

P Cloudy

Sunny

M Sunny

P Cloudy

P Cloudy

Max/min

24/13

27/17

27/21

30/26

17/11

Weather

tomorrow

P Cloudy

M Sunny

M Sunny

M Sunny

P Cloudy

Max/min

27/16

28/18

28/21

31/27

18/11

Around the region

Around the world

Max/min

18/07

18/13

34/28

18/09

27/13

22/16

31/26

32/23

25/20

12/06

32/25

33/23

08/01

34/26

09/-2

37/21

18/07

10/01

30/18

13/01

31/26

24/17

12/03

Weather

today

M Cloudy

Sunny

P Cloudy

S Showers

M Sunny

P Cloudy

M Sunny

P Cloudy

P Cloudy

M Cloudy

T Storm

P Cloudy

S T Storms

P Cloudy

P Cloudy

Sunny

Cloudy

Showers

P Cloudy

Sunny

S T Storms

P Cloudy

Clear

Max/min

18/09

20/14

34/28

19/08

27/13

18/13

31/25

32/24

24/22

12/05

32/25

34/24

11/06

34/26

09/-1

39/23

14/04

12/03

32/21

14/07

31/26

22/17

17/03

Weather

tomorrow

P Cloudy

M Sunny

P Cloudy

P Cloudy

P Cloudy

Rain

M Sunny

S T Storms

P Cloudy

M Cloudy

S T Storms

M Sunny

Showers

P Cloudy

Cloudy

P Cloudy

M Cloudy

P Cloudy

P Cloudy

Sunny

T Storm

Showers

Clear

Fisherman's forecast

Three-day forecast

Robert Mueller

24 Gulf TimesWednesday, April 3, 2019

QATAR

Aspire Wonderland Fest attracts over 70,000 visitorsAspire Zone Foundation

(AZF) yesterday said the inaugural Aspire Wonder-

land Festival received more than 70,000 visitors over seven days.

The festival, thought to be the “fi rst of its kind” in Qatar, con-cluded on Monday. Visitors who fl ocked to Aspire Park entered an imaginary gateway to the world of fantasy and folk tales, AZF said in a statement.

They also had the chance to witness a “spectacular dancing water fountain on Aspire Lake that moved to the sounds of ma-jestic melodies and featured ad-vanced laser techniques”.

During the seven-day fes-tival, AZF said it used more than 400,000 LED light-bulbs, 3,000m of electrical wires and 20 projector systems to design 310 characters. The festival was aided by facilitation processes that AZF provided for adults, children and

persons with special needs to reach the event site.

Nasser Abdullah al-Hajri, di-rector of PR and Communication at AZF, said: “We are proud to have welcomed such vast num-

bers of visitors to AZF, and for the successful use of our resources and world-class facilities to serve the community in new and excit-ing ways. “Over the past week, we succeeded in adding new and dis-

tinctive activities to Qatar’s cal-endar and plan to provide more in the coming period. I would like to extend my appreciation and grati-tude to the sponsors, partners and AZF’s team for their unceasing eff orts in making the event a suc-cess.”

The festival was sponsored by Vodafone Qatar and Katara — the Cultural Village Foundation.

A snapshot from the Aspire Wonderland Festival.

A view of the Aspire Zone during the festival.

One of the installations at the festival.

The festival in numbers

70,000 visitors

400,000 LED light-bulbs

310 characters/designs

designed exclusively for the

festival

3,000m of electrical wires

20 projectors

38 hours of the dancing foun-

tain show on Aspire Lake

Ooredoo is offi cial telecom sponsor for World Autism Day events

Ooredoo has announced that it is the offi cial com-munications sponsor of a

series of events commemorating World Autism Awareness Day.

In collaboration with Best Buddies Qatar and Qatar In-stitute for Speech and Hearing (QISH), three fun events were organised around Doha to mark the occasion, which falls on April 2 every year.

The fi rst, which took place on Monday, was a science-based event for children aged 7-14 years, led by experienced scien-tists from Qatar-based organisa-tion Science Made Fun.

The event allowed them to explore science in a safe yet fun environment. The hands-on sci-ence programme saw children undertake a series of practical experiments that taught them about the science that surrounds them every day in their natu-ral environment, including the ocean, composition of the earth,

volcanoes and more. At the event, Ooredoo gave away MyKi watches for all kids with autism, for their safety.

The second event on the cal-endar was the lighting up of Ooredoo’s headquarters in West Bay with a blue projection light yesterday, along with other buildings on the Doha Corniche. To wrap up the occasion, QISH will host a walkathon to spread awareness of this special day in collaboration with Ooredoo. The event will have a dedicated play area suitable for children with autism.

World Autism Awareness Day aims to highlight the hurdles people living with autism — and those living with them — face on a daily basis, to increase awareness and understanding of the condi-tion. Best Buddies focuses on en-suring social inclusion for peo-ple with diff erent or additional needs, including those with au-tism, through organising events

and programmes throughout the year. Manar Khalifa al-Muraikhi, director of PR and Corporate Communications at Ooredoo, said of the events: “At Ooredoo, we’re completely committed to supporting events that promote

understanding, inclusion and cohesion, as part of our corporate social responsibility strategy.

Acting as the telecommunica-tions sponsor of these worth-while events is the perfect way for us to provide practical support to

our community here in Doha.” More information on World Au-tism Awareness Day can be found at autismspeaks.org, about Best Buddies Qatar at bestbuddies.org.qa and about QISH at www.qish.info.

The Ooredoo Tower turned blue to commemorate World Autism Awareness Day.

Children participating in an event held to mark the occasion.

Ministries and various organisations around the country observed World Autism Awareness Day by lighting up off ices and premises in blue yesterday. These included Advisory Council, Ministry of Foreign Aff airs, Ministry of Municipality and Environment, Ministry of Transport and Communications, Qatar Foundation, Public Works Authority (Ashghal) and others.

Lit up in blue for World Autism Awareness Day