UN clears Qatar in expatriate workers' inquiry - Gulf Times

In brief

THURSDAY Vol. XXXVIII No. 10632

November 9, 2017Safar 20, 1439 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals GULF TIMES

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SPORT | Page 1

Qatar win thrilling penalty shootout to qualify

QATAR | Offi cial

Emir sends cables ofcondolences to SaudiHis Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, His Highness the Deputy Emir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani and HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani sent cables of condolences to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Defence Prince Mohamed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz al-Saud on the death of Prince Mansour bin Muqrin bin Abdulaziz al-Saud and off icials who died in a tragic accident, praying to Allah Almighty to bestow his mercy upon them and rest their souls in His Paradise and to give patience and solace to their families.

QATAR | Religion

Emir to performIstisqa prayerHis Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani called yesterday for the performance of Istisqa (rain-seeking) prayer today. The prayer is performed in line with the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) when rainfall is lacking. The Emir will perform Istisqa prayer at Al Wajbah prayer area along with citizens.

QATAR | Conference

Focus on policing andsecurity at sport eventsA host of papers were presented by policing and security experts, based on their real experiences, on the second day of the 1st Major Event Safety and Security Conference yesterday. Former head of the Safety and Security of Euro 2016, Ziad Khoury, focused mainly on planning delivery of safety and security and precautions to be taken in advance for a major sport event. Page 2

QATAR | GCC crisis

Conspiracy againstQatar: al-MuraikhiHE the Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi yesterday said that the GCC crisis showed there was a conspiracy against the modern state model Qatar is following and worked for since the 1990s. He stressed that Qatari diplomacy is dealing with an unprecedented crisis in the history of the GCC and the region. Page 10

BRITAIN | Politics

Aid minister Patel quitsover Israeli meetingsBritish aid minister Priti Patel was forced from off ice yesterday over undisclosed meetings with Israeli off icials after Prime Minister Theresa May sought to reassert her diminished authority as she negotiates Brexit. Patel, a Brexit campaigner who is popular in the ruling Conservative Party, had to abandon a trip to Africa earlier yesterday after being summoned by May to answer questions on more unsanctioned meetings that breached diplomatic protocol. Page 16

FM blames siege nationsfor undermining GCC

His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani met at the Emiri Diwan yesterday with Iraqi Foreign Minister Dr Ibrahim al-Jaafari and his accompanying delegation. The meeting reviewed the bilateral relations and ways to boost them. The Emir confirmed Qatar’s keenness on the unity of Iraq. The meeting also discussed a number of topics of interest to both countries, especially the developments of the region.

QNADoha

HE the Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani blamed the siege coun-

tries for the dissolution of the GCC as a collective security system.

In a joint press conference held in Doha yesterday with his Iraqi counter-part Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the foreign min-ister said the siege countries refuse to start a dialogue after it failed in proving its accusations against Qatar.

The siege countries continue their unfair and illegal actions aff ecting the system of the GCC and Qatar holds them responsible for the dissolution of the GCC as a collective security system.

He revealed that the siege countries’ attempts to undermine the Gulf crisis has failed.

The failure refl ected the siege coun-tries’ inability to see the serious reper-cussions that are beginning to surface, he added.

This was especially clear given the major developments in the region which showed the crisis led to a lack of collec-tive security for the Gulf states.

The foreign minister said the inter-national eff orts to fi ght terrorism and its endeavours to settle the region’s cri-

ses have been impacted with this crisis which put the siege countries in trouble with international diplomacy due to their stubborn behaviour, refusal for di-alogue and their commitment to politi-cal extremism and escalatory language which they continue to adopt.

He said Qatar adopts a language of reason and calls on all to resort to dia-logue and to prove that their fears are based on solid foundation, confi rming their failure to invest political money to demonise Qatar.

The foreign minister said Qatar hopes that wisdom will prevail and that the siege countries will overcome their ag-gressive behaviour and move towards a

prudent approach that relies on dialogue to settle the crisis, but to bypass Qatar by minimising it, ignoring it by media, using hidden and twisted ways and not working on solving it is ineff ective.

He added that Qatar is overcoming the crisis but is not overcoming the vio-lations against the Qatari people, saying if their people are not of importance to them, the Qatari people are of great im-portance to their government.

On the latest Bahraini statements, HE the foreign minister said they are inef-fective because Bahrain’s decisions were not made by it as everyone knows and it joined the siege despite not being in-volved in the matter. To Page 11

UN clearsQatar inexpatriateworkers’ inquiry

Emir meets Iraqi foreign minister

HE the Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and his Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari addressing a joint press conference in Doha yesterday.

ILO, ITUC welcome Doha’s commitment to bolster worker rightsAgenciesGeneva/Doha

The UN’s labour agency yesterday closed a probe into the alleged mistreatment of foreign workers

in Qatar, praising a reform plan agreed by the country.

Activists and leading international labour unions had accused Qatar of mistreating its expatriate workers on jobs that included infrastructure projects for FIFA’s top tournament.

The International Labour Organi-sation (ILO) had opened in 2014 an inquiry into whether Qatar had vio-lated its obligations under conventions aimed at preventing forced labour.

Qatar has since agreed to changes that include the introduction of a min-imum wage, contracts being lodged with the government so they cannot be changed on arrival in Qatar, and employers no longer being able to stop staff from leaving the country.

“The transformation of this com-plaint into a real commitment by the government of Qatar to make positive change on the ground for all workers is a very encouraging development,” Luc Cortebeeck, chairman of the ILO gov-erning body, said in a statement.

“Around 2mn workers in all kinds of sectors will now enjoy better protec-tion, including a dispute settlement system, also accessible for the domes-tic workers,” Cortebeeck told reporters.

Qatar welcomed the decision and called it “an acknowledgement of the important steps the government has taken to develop a modern labour sys-tem and said it was “grateful” to the migrant workers building the country’s infrastructure.

Qatar’s Government Communica-tions Offi ce (GCO) said in a statement: “The government will continue im-proving their living and working con-ditions in the years ahead, as Qatar pursues our goal of setting the highest standard for worker’s rights and human rights in the region.”

The GCO listed an array of steps tak-en by Qatar to better workers’ rights.

They included a sweeping new pro-gramme to upgrade workers’ housing by creating modern accommodations , increased healthcare facilities with the construction of three modern hospitals and four new health centres , a new la-bour contract system and a Wage Pro-tection System.

“Qatar’s 2030 vision recognised the need to improve the living and working conditions of its migrant labour force well before contractors broke ground on World Cup sites,” the GCO state-ment added.

The International Trade Union Con-federation (ITUC), which co-authored the 2014 complaint to the ILO, also backed yesterday’s decision.

“Qatar has set a new standard for the Gulf states, and this must be followed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates where millions of migrant workers are trapped in modern slavery,” ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow said in a statement.

In February 2015, Qatar introduced a Wage Protection System designed to ensure workers receive their salaries electronically, either fortnightly or monthly.

And in December it announced the end of the “kafala” system, under which all foreign workers needed a lo-cal sponsor in order to work, main-tain residency, switch jobs or leave the country.

The ILO’s stamp of approval marks a victory for Qatar, analysts said.

Qatar’s Labour Minister HE Issa Saad al-Jafali al-Nuaimi told the ILO forum yesterday the government was working to achieve decent work condi-tions for domestic and migrant workers and had established committees on la-bour disputes.

“Qatar will remain mindful (about) guaranteeing all rights of workers,” he said, adding Doha was committed to a three-year programme of technical co-operation with the ILO.

The ILO said in a statement the tech-nical co-operation would “support the implementation of numerous measures adopted by the Government of Qatar”. Page 11

The Cabinet has approved a draft law on establishing the National Tourism Council, which is ex-

pected to provide a further boost to Qatar’s tourism sector through a mul-ti-pronged approach.

The weekly meeting of the Cabinet yesterday also gave its nod to a draft law on tourism regulation in the coun-try, the offi cial Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.

The National Tourism Council is to be constituted under the chairman-ship of HE the Prime Minister, the draft law stipulates. The council will

seek to “achieve the best conditions for the implementation of the national strategy for tourism and its subsidi-ary programmes, in order to promote comprehensive development plans for the tourism sector and organise and promote them internally and ex-ternally”, QNA explained, noting that the council will aim to “improve the tourism experience in the country and show the civilisational, cultural, artis-tic and touristic features of the State”.

Under the draft law, the National Tourism Council shall exercise all nec-essary powers and terms of reference

to achieve its objectives, including the “adoption and review of the national strategy for tourism, preparation for and follow-up on the implementation of the projects and programmes that are part of the strategy, as well as the approval of the State’s development, economic and infrastructure plans and programmes that are related to the strategy and following up on its imple-mentation in accordance with Qatar National Vision 2030”.

The Council will also adopt the general policy of the State regarding tourism and supervise all aspects of tourist activity.

In September this year, it was an-nounced that the National Tourism Council would soon replace Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) as part of Qatar’s eff orts to restructure the sec-tor.

The council will guide the overall development of the sector, monitor tourism sector performance and en-sure cross-sector collaboration and focus, QTA had said.

Meanwhile, the draft law on tour-ism regulation defi nes a tourist area as “any area in the territory of the coun-try that has attractive, archaeological,

historical or natural features, and its co-ordinates shall be determined by a decision of the Council of Ministers,” according to QNA.

Besides, any area issued as a tour-ist area by a decision of the Council of Ministers, based on a proposal by the chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Tourism Council, is also defi ned as a tourist area.

The draft law includes provisions concerning the licensing and classifi -cation of hotel and tourist establish-ments, as well as tourism activities, festivals, tourism events and their or-

ganising offi ces, as well as the promo-tion of festivals and tourist events.

After HE the Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani chaired the Cabinet meeting at the Emiri Diwan yesterday, HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Aff airs Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud said the Cabinet yesterday also approved a draft law on organising business events.

The draft legislation defi nes busi-ness events as exhibitions or confer-ences. To Page 11

Cabinet nod for draft law on setting up tourism council

QATAR

Gulf Times Thursday, November 9, 20172

‘Proof of global confidence in Qatar’The First Major Event Safety and Security Conference, hosted by Doha, is proof of global confidence in Qatar, General Director of Project Stadia at Interpol, Captain Falah al-Dosari has said. Speaking exclusively to Qatar News Agency (QNA), al-Dosari said what the conference is a global platform that confirms the partnership between the Interpol and Qatar. What makes the conference important is the participation of more than 70 countries and over 440 individuals, which is proof of the world’s and Interpol’s confidence in Qatar – that it is a safe country. Al-Dosari added that this indicates that Qatar shall host the best World Cup in history.

HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani held separate meetings with the Minister of Foreign Aff airs of Iraq, Dr Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Minister of Interior of Pakistan, Ahsan Iqbal and Minister of Internal Aff airs of Belarus, Igor Shunevich, on the sidelines of the first Major Event Safety and Security Conference, in Doha, yesterday. Ways to strengthen bilateral relations and co-operation between Qatar and the three countries were discussed.

PM meets dignitaries

Experts highlight policing, security at major sport eventsA host of papers were pre-

sented by policing and security experts, based

on their real experiences, on the second day of the 1st Major Event Safety and Security Con-ference yesterday.

Former head of the Safety and Security of Euro 2016, Ziad Khoury, focused mainly on plan-ning delivery of safety and secu-rity and precautions to be taken in advance for a major sport event, especially when threats of diff erent natures are in place for a host country.

Head of Sports Conventions unit at the Council of Europe Sergey Khrychikov explained the safety, security and serv-ices provided during some of the high voltage football matches held in Europe in recent years and how their body could assist their organisers in managing and thwarting security threats.

Head of Security Department -TNP of Turkey and Ist Degree

Chief Superintendent Cuneyt Unal recalled the fatal attacks on December 2016 at Bisitkas Sta-dium in Istanbul and how it was dealt with by authorities. Chile-an Police offi cial Eduardo Cerno Lozano spoke on the security arrangements made during the Copa America 2015.

Federal Police Commissioner

of Brazil Valdecy Junior Ur-quiza, Australian Federal Police Superintendent David Berston, the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia Safety and Security head Alexander Protasov, and French Ministry of Interior Counter Terrorism Unit’s International Aff airs head Jean Pascal Mari-ani spoke on an array of security

concerns at a session on “Miti-gating security threats during major events”.

Later, Q-Cert head and Qatari engineer Dana Yousef al-Abdul-la spoke on the cyber response team’s preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Qatar Infrastructure Devel-opment CEO Dr Fahad al-Jaber highlighted the “Necessity of protecting cyber infrastructure during major events and critical infrastructure resilience”.

Detailed discussions on some of the major terrorist attacks across the world and the secu-rity responses were held later in another session featuring Major General (Retired) Arthur Denaro of the UK Armed Forces; Luis Elias, security adviser to the Prime Minister of Portu-gal; and Kevin Catalina, deputy chief and Commanding Offi cer the Intelligence Operations of the New York Police Depart-ment.

Deputy Director of the Security Committee of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy Major Ali Mohamed al-Ali speaking at one of the sessions yesterday.

Member of the Supreme Committee of the Delivery and Legacy’s Security Committee and Head of the Consultancy Unit Brigadier Ibrahim al-Mohannadi speaking at the conference.

‘Meeting refl ects Qatar’s commitmentto combat threat posed by terrorism’

The First Major Event Safety and Security Con-ference refl ects Qatar’s

commitment to combating ter-rorism in all its forms and the threat it poses to major interna-tional events, Pakistan’s Min-ister of Interior Ahsan Iqbal has said.

Speaking exclusively to Qatar News Agency (QNA), Ahsan Iqbal said that the event clearly showed the very strong commitment of Qatar to combat terrorism.

He praised Qatar’s develop-ment in recent years, which he said was the result of the im-pressive vision of His Highness the Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, adding that the accomplishments made un-der the leadership of His High-ness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani were a con-tinuation of the eff orts to build a modern state.

He also expressed his con-fi dence that Qatar will host a special 2022 World Cup, which will refl ect well on the region as a whole. He added that the event will help counter the nega-

tive propaganda against Islam and Muslims “by showing the hospitality and sports loving traditions in our society so that we can have a positive image of Muslims in the world”.

On bilateral co-operation, he said that they were at a high level already, and expressed his coun-try’s commitment to enhancing them further by sharing exper-tise in the security and manage-ment of international events.

He also praised the Pakistani community members in Qatar, saying they contributed to the development of the country over the past decade.

QNADoha

Capt. Falah al-Dosari addressing the gathering.

QATAR3Gulf Times

Thursday, November 9, 2017

HE the Minister of Development Planning and Statistics Saleh Mohamed Salem al-Nabit holding talks with the Minister of Interior of Pakistan Ahsan Iqbal and his accompanying delegation. They discussed topics of common interest.

Pakistan’s interior minister in Doha meeting

Cabinet nod for Emiri draft decision on health ministry organisational structure

The weekly Cabinet meeting, presided over by HE the Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin

Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, approved the Emiri draft decision on the organi-sational structure of the Ministry of Public Health.

The Ministry of Public Health has prepared the Emiri draft decision with a view to implementing the strategic plan in the health sector in accordance with the new requirements and the tasks to be achieved. The draft decision has in-troduced new administrative units in the ministry’s organisational structure.

The Cabinet also approved a draft decision by HE the Minister of Econ-omy and Commerce amending some provisions of Resolution No 47 of 2005

determining fees for services per-formed by the Ministry of Economy and Commerce.

In addition, the Cabinet approved a draft decision by HE the Minister of Economy and Commerce amending some provisions of Resolution No 410 of 2014 determining fees for services of the protection of intellectual property rights.

Additionally, the Cabinet approved draft air services agreement between the governments of Qatar and Bolivia.

The Cabinet also approved a draft memorandum of understanding be-tween the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs of Qatar and Ukraine on co-operation between the Diplomatic Institute at the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs of Qa-tar and the Diplomatic Academy at the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs of Ukraine.

A draft memorandum of under-standing for co-operation in the fi eld

of exchange of investigations related to money-laundering and the fi nanc-ing of terrorism, between the Financial Information Unit of Qatar and the Fi-nancial Information Processing Unit of Morocco was also approved.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet took the necessary measures to ratify a memo-randum of understanding between Qa-tar Tourism Authority and the Nation-al Tourism Administration of China on facilitating the arrival of Chinese tour-ist groups to Qatar.

Moreover, the Cabinet reviewed the study on regulations of marine fi shing ports.

The Cabinet also reviewed the study prepared by the Ministry of Adminis-trative Development, Labour and So-cial Aff airs on the Qatari families who engage in commercial activities at homes. The cabinet took the appropri-ate decisions in this regard.

QNADoha

QATAR


Rota announces youth training programmeReach Out To Asia (Rota), a

programme of Education Above All (EAA) founda-

tion, has announced its Mena Youth Capacity Building in Humanitarian Action (Mycha) training, taking place in Doha from November 11-13.

Mycha will provide young people, aged 18 – 30, with the knowledge and skills to plan and execute small-scale social and community development projects in crisis-aff ected con-texts.

The details of the programme were announced at a press con-ference yesterday in which Essa al-Mannai,executive direc-tor, Rota; Saeed Hersi, head of United Nations Offi ce for the

Co-ordination of Humanitar-ian Aff airs, Gulf Liaison Offi ce; Khalid Khalifa, GCC regional representative UNHCR; Dr Sul-tan Barakat, director, Centre for Confl ict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and Issa Mo-hmed al- Ishaq, director of com-munications, Qatar Red Cres-cent Society, took part.

During the conference, youth from across the region will at-tend a number of workshops on core humanitarian principles including Humanitarian Land-scape and Stakeholders, Ac-countability and Quality, Project Design and Project Cycle, Con-ducting Needs Assessment, De-fi ning Activities and Goals, and

Challenges and Opportunities.Al-Mannai, said: “Following

on from the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul last year, and the resulting Doha Youth Decla-ration, Mycha is part of a wider commitment to ensure youth are able to play an equal role as policymakers in addressing hu-manitarian challenges across the region.”

“Youth are the leaders of the future and possess unique ca-pacities in humanitarian prepar-edness, response and recovery. Thus, it’s imperative that we continuously work to provide a platform for youth to make their voices heard and assume ac-tive roles in shaping the world around them for a brighter fu-

The off icials at the press conference yesterday.

ture,” al-Mannai added. Mycha will be organised in

partnership with the United Na-tions Offi ce for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Aff airs, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies,

Human Appeal, Qatar Red Cres-cent, Doha Institute, United Na-tions Envoy on Youth, and United Muslims Relief.

Tareq al-Ansari, international collaboration department man-ager, Ministry of Foreign Aff airs in Qatar, will deliver the welcome

address on the opening day of Mycha. It will be followed by an opening panel discussion enti-tled ‘The Role of Youth in Trans-forming Humanitarian Action: How Can Stakeholders Support Youth Capacity?’

Mycha is aligned with Rota’s ef-

forts to equip youth with the skills to play a central role in humani-tarian action across the region. The results-driven initiative will see participants go on to imple-ment their learnings into specifi c youth-led projects in their home countries.

Rota expands activities to North Africa, Philippines

Reach Out To Asia, (Rota) a member of Education Above All (EAA) Founda-

tion, will expand its activities to North Africa and the Philip-pines, a top offi cial has revealed.

“We are expanding our ac-tivities to Sudan and the Philippines, with some pro-grammes lined up as part of the last Gala Dinner projects. We will announce the dates and

will start the activities within a few months,” Essa al-Mannai, executive Officer, Rota told Gulf Times recently.

“We have partnered with Plan International a renowned, inde-pendent development and hu-manitarian organisation which works in 71 countries. Sudan is the farthest we are going and this is part of an initiative we had announced earlier as Reach Out to Arabia. Tunisia is also part of this initiative,” explained al-Mannai.

“As for the Philippines, it is

part of Asia. We are really excited to go there.

The programme in Sudan will have three components which are: building schools, building dormitories and building voca-tional training centres,” said al-Mannai.

The official also noted that Rota is in conversation to ex-pand the services to other countries where EAA partners are working. “At present we are going ahead with all the current projects. Once they are com-pleted, we will start with some

of the EAA projects. We have four volunteer trips every year. We will be more than happy to take our work to any of the countries operated by Educate A Child or Al Fakhoora, pro-grammes of EAA,” noted al-Mannai.

He said, “We will be happy to provide all the support for our partners. Our current pro-grammes will continue to benefi t several countries. Our volunteer trips are a learning experience. Moreover, it has to be safe and has to be logically suitable. We

are open to any such opportuni-ties.”

As for the upcoming Mena Youth Capacity Building in Humanitarian Action (Mycha) conference taking place next week in Doha, al-Mannai, said that it aims to empower the youth and provide them train-ing and opportunities. Mycha is organised and hosted by Rota and a number of countries from the Mena region are participat-ing in it.

“This is the fi rst conference and Mycha will be an annual

event hereafter. We are commit-ted for the conference for three years and will nurture it. There-after, it will be held in other countries in the region,” said al-Mannai.

Rota focuses on youth engage-ment, volunteering and commu-nity service and is the leading non-governmental organisation in Qatar over the last 10 years. It is part of EAA which has several leading organisations such as Educate a Child, Al Fakhoora and Protecting Education in Insecu-rity and Confl ict.

By Joseph VargheseStaff reporter

Essa al-Mannai

QATAR


Qatar ‘ready to join Council of Europe’s Sports Conventions’Qatar is the fi rst country from the

Middle East to express its will-ingness to join the Council of

Europe’s Sports Conventions.This was revealed by the Council of

Europe’s Sports Conventions Division head Sergey Khrychikov while address-ing a session on ‘Responding to Evolving Threat Environment’ at the 1st Major Event Safety and Security Conference yesterday.

Later while speaking to journalists, he expressed the hope that becoming a party to the Convention would be ex-tremely benefi cial to Qatar.

“First of all, it opens the possibility to work with best experience existing in the world these days as far as safety and security of sport venues are concerned. It would also help the country frame appropriate policies and mechanisms while preparing for the 2022 FIFA World Cup,” he observed.

Khrychikov said Europe has suf-fered heavily from football hooliganism. Though it is not completely a European phenomenon, in Europe it has been most acute.

The offi cial remarked Qatar will re-ceive a large number of soccer fans from countries where diff erent practices and traditions are in place. Qatar should be prepared to accept those practices which supporters are used to and should

understand the standards which fans are receiving in their home countries and how they should be treated here.

Besides it is also important for Qatar to develop co-operation with the coun-tries from where supporters are coming in order to make certain that the World Cup is secure and supporters are not spoiling the holiday. All fans and others who are arriving to enjoy the Cup should benefi t from the excellent opportunities provided by Qatar, added Khrychikov.

“I think the Doha Conference shows not only the commitment of Qatar to be a pioneer in the region but also it helps the country to learn from all experienc-

es accumulated in diff erent parts of the world, including in Europe, South Af-rica, America, Australia and where ever sport events are taking place and where there are challenges posed to security and safety of those events.”

The offi cial said it was also important that the conference brought diff erent perspectives together and was allowing people from diff erent regions to learn from each of us who was present here. “So I think this conference is very good and extremely useful, not only to Qa-tar, but also for participants who learnt from each of us and they can go back and use these experiences in their home countries.

The Council of Europe offi cial is heading a division in the forum which is responsible for the sport conventions for all the international legal treaties having a binding on the Council. Basi-cally, there are three main conventions, namely the one to integrate safety and security in football matches, and the other on anti-doping which was started in 1989 and international document in the anti- doping fi eld.

There is also a convention on manip-ulation of sport competitions including the so called match-fi xing convention which deals with how to control match-fi xing and avoid manipulation in the re-sults of competition.

Sergey Khrychikov

A performance in progress on the opening night of the festival.

Katara European Jazz Festival startsKatara – the Cultural Village Foundation, in co-

operation with 11 European embassies in Qatar, yesterday inaugurated the fourth edition of the

Katara European Jazz Festival behind Building 5. The festival will continue until November 12.

The countries participating in the event are Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Romania and Switzerland.

“The festival will not only entail musical and ar-tistic performances, but also include workshops that will be conducted in co-operation with Qatar Music Academy, with the participation of renowned ar-tistes,” Katara general manager Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim al-Sulaiti said at the inauguration ceremony.

“The festival is an opportunity for those interested to live a one-of-a-kind experience jazz experience while discovering the various patterns and genres found in the fi eld,” he added.

The festival kicked off with performances by Ger-

man band Favo and a Bulgarian jazz show by the Hilda Kazasyan Band yesterday.

Today, audiences will have a date with the Italian band, Filomena Campus Quartet, at 7pm. The band is led by Filomena Campus, an internationally re-nowned and award-winning Sardinian jazz vocalist, lyricist and theatre director.

Following the Italian performance, Swiss band Marc Perrenoud Trio is scheduled to play at 8.30pm. Their music includes the best qualities of contemporary jazz, as composer and pianist Marc Perrenoud, bassist Marco Muller and drummer Cyril Ragamey have de-veloped their own “band sound” over the years.

On the same day, visitors can also enjoy some Euro-pean tones from Portugal, by the Lokomotiv band, at 9.30pm. The band aims to explore the fusion between Portuguese traditional rhythms and improvised mu-sic as well as rock elements, African and oriental fl a-vours.

Qatar Airways and all that jazz

Qatar Airways has announced that it has fl own in 40

musicians from 11 coun-tries to take part in the fourth annual Katara Eu-ropean Jazz Festival.

The Doha-based car-rier is the exclusive offi cial airline sponsor of the fes-tival, which is being held at Katara – the Cultural Village in Qatar until No-vember 12.

The event is set to at-tract large crowds of dedi-cated jazz fans and music lovers.

Musicians from Aus-tria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Romania, the Netherlands and Swit-zerland have been fl own to Doha by Qatar Airways to participate in the festival, which takes place over fi ve music-fi lled evenings, the airline has said in a press statement.

Jazz fans will be able to take in the vibe and watch top acts perform in Build-ing 5, Katara. The artistes will be performing every-thing - from bebop, jazz fusion and swing music to trad and smooth jazz, cool jazz and West Coast jazz.

Qatar Airways senior vice-president (Market-ing and Corporate Com-munications) Salam al-Shawa said: “We are delighted to once again support this tremendous-ly popular festival, which attracts musicians and music fans alike. The Ka-tara European Jazz Festival has quickly established itself as a fi rm fi xture on Qatar’s cultural map, and we are pleased to be able to fl y in many of the musi-cians playing over the next fi ve days.”

The festival is free to enter and no advance res-ervations are needed. Two to three groups a day are expected to perform from 7pm to 9.30pm during the

fi ve-day festival, which is taking place thanks to the participation of 11 European embassies working together with Qatar Airways, the statement notes.

Earlier this year, Qa-tar Airways was voted Skytrax ‘Airline of the

Year’ by travellers from around the world. It also won a raft of other major awards at this year’s Sky-trax awards ceremony, including ‘Best Airline in the Middle East’, ‘World’s Best Business Class’ and ‘World’s Best First Class

Airline Lounge’.Qatar Airways operates

a fl eet of 200 aircraft to a network of more than 150 business and leisure des-tinations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacifi c, North Amer-ica and South America.

Dignitaries and off icials attending the fourth Katara European Jazz Festival yesterday.

QATAR7Gulf Times


ICGS Samarth leaves Qatar after 4-day visitIndian Coastguard vessel ICGS Sa-

marth which was on a four-day visit of Qatar left Hamad Port yesterday

morning. The 105m long ship, berthed at the newly built port, was the second Indian coastguard ship to visit Qatar this year.

The commanding offi cer of ICGS Sa-marth, DIG KR Deepak Kumar, called on Qatar Coasts and Border Security Department director, Brigadier Ali A S al-Bedeed, at the Coast Guard Head-quarters. He also met senior Qatari Emiri Naval Forces (QENF) offi cers at the Naval base.

Other highlights of the port call in-cluded cross deck ship visits by QENF

and QCG personnel to ICGS Samarth and by ICGS Samarth’s crew to QENF ships.

In addition, sporting fi xtures be-tween the host Navy and visiting Indi-an ship further strengthened the bonds of friendship between the two coun-tries, according to an Indian embassy communique.

A total of 167 children and 17 teach-ers from various Indian schools in Doha also visited the ship, made in India by Goa Shipyard Limited.

The school children were greeted by a friendly and professional ship’s crew thereby making their visit educative and enjoyable.

A joint passage exercise between In-

dian and Qatar Coast Guard ships was conducted on Tuesday.

Apart from carrying out detailed planning by the operations teams of participating ships, professional ex-changes and briefi ngs were also under-taken to imbibe the best practices being followed by each side.

The sea phase consisted of various maritime drills and manoeuvres at sea as well as SAREX (Search and Rescue Exercise) and Steam Past.

The commanding offi cer of ICGS Samarth expressed his gratitude to the Qatar Coast Guard and QENF for mak-ing ICGS Samarth’s visit successful and professionally enriching.

ICGS Samarth off icers and crew bid goodbye to Qatar off Hamad Port.

8 Gulf TimesThursday, November 9, 2017

QATAR

QU students win undergraduate awards

Qatar University College of Arts and Sciences (QU-CAS) students

won the Regional Winner and Highly Commended awards at the Undergraduate Awards (UA) 2017 programme.

Chemistry and Earth Sci-ences senior student Sandra Das received the Regional Win-ner Award for her paper titled “Endothelial Nitric Oxide Ac-tivity & Bioavailability during Obesity Conditions”, and Eng-

lish Literature and Linguistics senior student Zinnira Shaikh received the Highly Commend-ed Award for her paper titled “Guilty until proven innocent – Media trials of Muslim terror suspects in India”.

The UA received 6,472 pa-pers for its 2017 Programme. The top 10% of papers in each of the 25 categories are Highly Commended, just one paper from each category is named the UA Global Winner and the

top papers from each region are named the Regional Winners.

CAS dean Dr Rashid al-Ku-wari said: “We are proud of our students’ achievement. This is a testament to CAS’ commit-ment to provide its students with an optimal learning en-vironment that ensures their success and with opportunities to excel and develop their po-tential.

“This aligns with QU’s vi-sion to shape a generation of

professionals and leaders who can contribute to fulfilling the national aspirations towards a knowledge-based economy.”

UA executive director Dr Brenda Cullen said: “It is an immense achievement for un-dergraduate students to bench-mark their work globally. To be

recognised for their creativity and innovative approach within their discipline can only propel them to become global thinkers and potential change-makers.”

Sandra Das said: “I am hon-oured to bring recognition to Qatar University and the Col-lege of Arts and Sciences for the quality of research and the supportive mentorship I had from the faculty. It is motivat-ing to represent QU in such an international platform. ” The Qatar University campus.

The UA received 6,472 papers for its 2017 awards programme

Host of activities planned for Doha Learning Week

The World Innovation Summit for Edu-cation (WISE), an

initiative of Qatar Founda-tion (QF), will launch Doha Learning Week, Qatar’s fi rst education festival tomor-row.

The week-long festival is a collaboration of vari-ous local partners and cel-ebrates local education ini-tiatives and resources that are available to all. Doha Learning Week includes a series of workshops, movie screenings, exhibitions, tours, and performances.

Doha Learning Week will conclude with the 2017 WISE Summit, which takes place from November 14-16 at the Qatar National Convention Centre, under the theme: ‘Co-Exist, Co-Create: Learning to Live and Work Together’.

The week starts with ‘Generation Amazing Foot-ball’, an all-day activity from the Supreme Commit-tee for Delivery & Legacy. This is intended to engage all ages of students and

parents to promote foot-ball as a catalyst for social change through fun exer-cises and skills building. It is taking place at Katara, from 2pm–9pm. The next event tomorrow is a career decision-making workshop presented by the Qatar Ca-reer Development Center (QCDC). Participants, in-cluding parents and stu-dents, will use practical tools and direct guidance to help identify potential aca-demic and career paths.

The workshop will be presented in both English and Arabic. QCDC, also an initiative of QF, provides consulting and training ses-sions in coaching and ex-ecutive development. The workshop is taking place in Katara, Building 15, from 4pm - 6pm.

Teach for Qatar will lead a workshop, ‘Teacher, why do we have to study math?’ to improve student and teach-er engagement with math.

The workshop is taking place in Katara, Building 15, from 6:30pm - 8:30pm.

Mercedes-Benz S-Class recall

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce (MEC), in collaboration with Nasser Bin Khaled Automobiles, has announced the recall of Mercedes-Benz S-Class model of 2017 because the software of the ambience light does not correspond to specification and there is a possibility of a defect in the seatbelt of the front passenger.The MEC said the recall campaign comes within the framework of its ongoing eff orts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on vehicles’ defects and repair them. The MEC said that it will co-ordinate 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 MEC has urged all customers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department through the following channels: Call centre: 16001, e-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @MEC_Qatar, Instagram: MEC_Qatar, MEC mobile app for Android and IOS: MEC_Qatar

Entries sought for Mumbai Film Fest

The 15th Mumbai In-ternational Film Fes-tival (MIFF) is sched-

uled from January to 28 to February 3, 2018, the Indian embassy announced in a statement yesterday.

The MIFF, a fl agship fi lm event in India, is a biennial documentary, short fi ction and animation fi lm festival organised by the Films Divi-sion under the Ministry of Information & Broadcast-ing, Government of India.

Documentary fi lms, short fi ction fi lms (up to 45 min-utes) and animation fi lms produced between Septem-ber 1, 2015 and August 31, 2017 are eligible for entry in the relevant category. The last date for submitting

entries is November 15, ac-cording to a communique from the Indian embassy.

The documentaries and animation fi lm-makers from all over the world have been attending the event in past. The Golden Conch, the prestigious top award of MIFF, amounting to approximately Rs6mn (QR320,000), recognises the best talent in docu-mentary and animation fi lm making.

Swati Pandey, Director, Films Division (+91-22-23524095) could be con-tacted for inquiries on the event. Other details includ-ing entry form, rules & reg-ulation are available on the www.miff .in.

PHCC relocates to new headquarters in Old Salata

The Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) has announced that eff ective from last Sunday, its headquarters has been shifted to a new building located in Old Salata area, close to the General Directorate of Qatar Museums Authority. By the end of the month, all staff will have been relocated to the new off ices. The commercial building is designed using operational best practices to promote health and productivity in the workplace; this is an extension of the corporation’s eff orts to create an working environment that will boost primary care developments. Huda al-Wahidi, executive director, Corporate Communications Department, PHCC commented, “We are incredibly delighted to move to our place in the new headquarters, a welcoming off ice space for our staff and visitors.”

QATAR9Gulf Times


The names of 40 winners of QNB’s “ATM Use & Win” campaign have been an-

nounced. The four-month-long cam-

paign, from June 18 to October 18, attracted a large number of participants who were encour-aged to perform transactions at QNB automated teller machines (ATMs) for a chance to win 40,000 Life Rewards points in the form of a voucher that can be

redeemed on QNB Life Rewards website (liferewardsholiday.com).

The QNB Life Rewards Holi-day website is a one-stop shop for all travel needs.

The website off ers goods and services from more than 300 airlines, 300,000 hotels, and 300 car rentals worldwide, without hidden fees or blackout dates.

The campaign is aimed at en-

couraging customers to use QNB ATMs, which are now being up-graded with the ATM cheque deposit service – another solu-tion that is introduced in Qatar by QNB.

Helping to save precious time and avoid hassle, the new serv-ice allows QNB customers to de-posit their QNB and non-QNB cheques without the need to visit a bank branch and having to wait in queues.

Moreover, customers can avail of the service at any time of the day and instantly obtain a re-ceipt.

Deposited cheques are in-stantly scanned and processed under the normal cheque clear-ance turnaround.

The service is currently avail-able at ATMs at QNB branches in Bin Omran, The Mall, and Vil-laggio, but will be extended to other ATMs “in the near future”.

In Qatar, QNB has more than 400 ATMs, through which cus-tomers are not only able to with-draw and deposit cash, but also print cheque books, pay bills, print account statements, and do fund transfers, among other banking operations.

Also, a select number of QNB ATMs are equipped with the Iris scan technology, which uses the biometric authentication sys-tem, allowing secure access to

banking facilities through the biological traits of customers’ irises, so that they can authen-ticate themselves without using their banking card or personal identifi cation number.

The launch of these new tech-nologies is part of QNB’s on-going eff orts and commitment to providing creative and inno-vative fi nancial solutions that exceed the expectations of its customers.

QNB names winners of ‘ATM Use & Win’ promo

The access to Al Hedab Street from Al Gharrafa Street would be closed for two years from to-morrow in order to construct a new 3km un-

derpass on the Dukhan Highway East project, Ash-ghal has said.

The diversion will help to construct the new un-derpass, which will extend from Huwar Street to Sheikh Faisal Roundabout and provide free-fl owing movement for road users travelling north from Al Rayyan Al Jadeed Street to Al Shamal Road.

The proposed access change is located at the inter-section of Al Hedab Street and Al Gharrafa Street and has been designed in co-ordination with the General Directorate of Traffi c.

The access change will be in operation until mid-2019.

Motorists who usually use Al Hedab Street to travel to and from the Gharrafa Family Park or Al Gharrafa Elementary Girls School areas are advised to use the intersection of Al Hazm Street and Al Gharrafa Street to travel to Al Shamal Road, Thani Bin Jassim Street or Qatar Foundation.

There will be no reduction in the number of lanes in either direction on Al Gharrafa Street, Al Hazm Street or Umm Al Zubar Street.

Two-year closure of access to Al Hedab Street

The siege of Qatar is not a small matter and it has polarised

the entire region, fi nancial expert Shahid Farid told Qatar Urdu Radio’s live show Haqeeqat yesterday.

“Before the siege on Qa-tar started, the entire GCC region felt like one country, but now the region is polar-ised and thousands of peo-ple are aff ected because of the blockade,” he said.

Farid works for the su-pervisory body of the Qa-tar Financial Centre and spoke in great detail about the rules and regulations implemented in Qatar to combat money laundering and fi nancial terrorism as per the Combating Money Laundering and Terror-ism Financing Law No. 4 of 2010.

“This is a very detailed law as per which Qatar’s National Anti-Money Laundering and Terror-ism Financing Committee functions,” he said. “The law was drafted strictly as per the international standards and Qatar takes great measures to ensure it is eff ectively implemented in the country.”

Haqeeqat, which is aimed at engaging and interacting with the large South Asian expatriate community in Qatar, is a joint venture of the Gulf Times and Qatar Media Corporation Urdu Radio.

It is broadcast from Sun-day to Thursday on FM107.

Log on to Qatar Urdu Ra-dio on Facebook and @Qa-tarUrduRadio on Twitter for feedback and comments about the show.

Siege of Qatar has polarised region’

Shahid Farid

SriLankan starts daily Melbourne service

SriLankan Airlines has ex-tended its route network after launching daily serv-

ices to Melbourne on October 29.“The new service would be

of great convenience to all seg-ments of travellers, including the large number of Sri Lankans domiciled in Australia, the many Australians who love to travel overseas, and people throughout Asia who visit down under,” said SriLankan Airlines chairman Ajith Dias.

Expatriates and students form a large community in Australia and frequently travel back to their native land.

Many reside in Melbourne, and other cities in the state of Victoria and neighbouring New South Wales, with smaller num-bers throughout the rest of Aus-tralia and New Zealand.

SriLankan Airlines chief ex-ecutive Suren Ratwatte said: “We have been extending our route network in a systematic manner throughout Asia – from the Middle East to the Far East – and can now provide Austral-ian travellers excellent options in connectivity, with one-stop journeys to the most popular destinations via Colombo.”

A member of the oneworld global airline alliance, SriLankan off ers convenient connections to 14 cities throughout India, nine in the Middle East and other destinations.

SriLankan also operates one-stop twice-daily services be-tween Sri Lanka and Australia with its codeshare partners Qantas and Malaysia Airlines.

The airline has deployed its modern Airbus A330 aircraft be-tween Melbourne and Colombo.

QATAR


‘GCC crisis unveiled plot against Qatar’s modern state model’HE the Minister of State

for Foreign Aff airs Sul-tan bin Saad al-Muraikhi

yesterday said that the GCC crisis showed there was a con-spiracy against the modern state model Qatar is following and worked for since the 1990s. He stressed that Qatari diplomacy is dealing with an unprecedented crisis in the history of the GCC and the region.

He stressed that Qatar wisely insisted that it will not forego its principles nor its rational sover-eignty but will welcome dialogue and negotiations.

HE Sultan bin Saad al-Mu-raikhi was speaking at a discus-sion on ‘Qatar’s perspective of the GCC crisis’, organised by the Italian Institute for Inter-national Political Studies (ISPI) in co-operation with the Qatari embassy in Rome on Tuesday.

He stressed that dialogue is the shortest way to resolving confl icts and crises, adding that Qatar’s position was clear from the beginning in resolving the crisis through mediations led

QNARome

HE the State Minister for Foreign Aff airs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi

by Kuwait Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah. “Qatar has expressed its appre-ciation of the ongoing mediation eff ort that aims to maintain the greater interests of the GCC and its people.”

He praised the calm and wis-

dom of Qatari political leader-ship in dealing with the siege countries’ provocations and media escalations, all while maintaining the right to re-spond to their claims and clari-fying the facts behind the false accusations.

The minister stressed that the siege countries put themselves in a confl ict with international laws and with the hopes of the GCC people for unity, as well of that of the Arab and Islamic world for co-operation. “They are also facing condemnation from the international public opinion for their actions.”

He said that Qatar was exerting extraordinary eff orts in counter-ing terrorism and is an active member of the international coalition for countering terror-ism. “In fact, Qatar is a founding member in it. Qatar cannot be accused of fi nancing terrorism or supporting it.”

He noted that the principles of Qatari foreign policy focus on committing to the UN Charter led by respecting the sovereignty of countries and avoiding inter-ference in internal aff airs. “The principles also focus on resolving crises peacefully and working on maintaining international peace and stability and encouraging dialogue between civilisations and peoples.

He stressed that countering terrorism is a top priority for Qa-tar and considers it the biggest threat to the world today. “This

requires a joint international ef-fort to face terrorist organisa-tions and their extremist beliefs, in order to maintain security and stability in the world.”

He added that there was no choice for governments but to co-operate in terms of security to counter terrorism eff ectively.

He also pointed out to Qatar’s active role in the international coalition that saw it take all the measures issued by the Security Council in that regard, in addi-tion to ties regionally and bi-laterally with the US and others around the world. He stressed that Qatar will continue its role in that regard.

The minister said Qatar has been actively engaged with the international community to pro-mote the global eff orts to fi ght extremism and terrorism and to build world peace. “Qatar has done this through hosting and organising many international forums and conferences on civi-lisations dialogue, strengthening the idea of religious tolerance, renouncing sectarian or eth-nic discrimination, in addition to adopting the developmental policies in diff erent countries that are in need in order so solve

poverty and unemployment,” he added.

Al-Muraikhi said Qatar is working in compliance with the strategic plans to update local legislations and adopting open policy and media freedom. “Qa-tar is also working on consolidat-ing the concept of accepting oth-ers, respecting cultural diversity and religious variety, providing modern education based on hu-man principles and building a knowledge-based society,” he added.

The minister added that the excuses the siege countries used are void and are an eff ort to jus-tify the unjust siege. “The real purpose behind the siege is an attempt to impose guardian-ship, interfere in Qatar’s foreign policy, undermine its leadership and interfere in its internal af-fairs. Qatar and for that matter any other country that is inde-pendent and sovereign would not accept this.”

He said the Gulf crisis started with void accusations on Qa-tar’s role in fi ghting terrorism and building world peace, where the siege countries fabricated a media campaign based on fake statements from His Highness

the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Ha-mad al-Thani after the hacking of Qatar News Agency (QNA).

“Despite the fact that the Qa-tari authorities revealed the na-ture of QNA’s website, which is considered an illegal and unethi-cal crime, the media campaign managed by the siege countries continued,” he said.

Regarding the Qatari-Italian relations, the minister said they are strategic and Qatar cherishes this relation which has a history of friendship and mutual inter-ests. “The common commitment to this relation is to develop it in various fi elds.”

The minister praised Italy’s stance regarding the Gulf crisis, saying it stood with what’s right from the start and has a clear vision to settle the crisis based on a peace-ful solution and the need to hold ne-gotiation talks under the proposed mediation eff orts and the good of-fi ces of Kuwait Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah.

He said Qatar welcomes and values the support to the Ku-waiti mediation by the European Union, African Union, the US, Italy, Germany, Asian countries, other countries and international organisations.

Airlines form frequent fl yer programme partnershipQatar Airways yesterday

announced the launch of its frequent fl yer pro-

gramme partnership with its longstanding codeshare partner, Bangkok Airways. Qatar Airways Privilege Club members can now earn and redeem Qmiles on all fl ights operated by Bangkok Airways.

Bangkok Airways FlyerBo-nus members can also earn and redeem FlyerBonus points on eligible Qatar Airways fl ights. Both programmes re-quire members to provide their membership card upon reservation or check-in.

Bangkok Airways vice presi-dent Fleet and Network Man-agement, Jirapon Hirunrat, said: “Enhancing reciprocal reward benefi ts for our Flyer-Bonus members will enable us to deliver a seamless experi-ence when fl ying domestically and internationally across the combined networks of Bang-kok Airways and Qatar Airways. We believe that this partnership will bring signifi cant benefi ts to passengers of both Airlines.”

Qatar Airways chief commer-

cial offi cer, Ehab Amin, said: “This reciprocal relationship between Privilege Club and Fly-erBonus is a natural extension of the highly productive rela-tionship that we have enjoyed with Bangkok Airways since our codeshare partnership began in May 2013. We are delighted to be able to extend the range of benefi ts available to our Privi-lege Club members, through our relationship with this trusted partner.”

Qatar Airways will be also adding many more destinations to its network in 2017 and 2018, including Canberra, Australia; St. Petersburg, Russia and Car-diff , UK. The national carrier of Qatar is one of the fastest-growing airlines operating one of the youngest fl eets in the world. Now celebrating its twentieth year of operations, Qatar Air-ways has a modern fl eet of more than 200 aircraft fl ying to busi-ness and leisure destinations across six continents.

To meet increased demand for popular Thailand destinations from holiday-makers, Qatar Airways will be launching direct

fl ights to Chiang Mai and Pattaya on December 12, 2017 and Janu-ary 28, 2018, respectively. The airline already serves Thailand with multiple daily fl ights from Doha to Bangkok and Phuket, with daily fl ights to Krabi commencing December 1.

The award-winning airline has received a number of acco-lades this year, including ‘Air-line of the Year’ by the prestig-ious 2017 Skytrax World Airline

Awards, which was held at the Paris Air Show. This is the fourth time that Qatar Airways has been given this global recognition. In addition to being voted ‘World’s Best Airline’ by travellers from around the world, Qatar’s na-tional carrier also won a raft of other major awards at the cer-emony, including ‘Best Middle East Airline,’ ‘World’s Best Busi-ness Class’ and ‘World’s Best First Class Airline Lounge.’

Qatar Airways has launched a frequent flyer programme partnership with Bangkok Airways.

Qatar Airways to launch service to Thessaloniki

Qatar Airways will launch fl ights to Thes-saloniki, Greece next

year, it was announced yes-terday. The award-winning airline will operate four week-ly fl ights to the Greek city commencing on March 27.

Thessaloniki, the airline’s second destination in Greece, is well-known for its many ar-chaeological sites and historic structures, including its well-preserved Byzantine mosaics and walls. The relatively small city is considered an open-air museum of Byzantine history, and off ers a truly unique cul-tural experience for everyone.

Qatar Airways Group chief executive, Akbar al-Baker, said: “Greece has always been one of our most in-demand destinations, and as such, we are delighted to off er our passengers a direct service to Thessaloniki, our second des-tination in Greece. Our new four-time weekly service to this enchanting city will en-able us to provide a seamless

journey to and from Greece. By adding Thessaloniki to our global network, we are pleased to off er our Greece-based pas-sengers a gateway to more than 150 destinations world-wide through our hub, Hamad International Airport.”

The new service between Doha and Thessaloniki will be operated by an Airbus A320 aircraft, featuring 12 seats in Business Class and 132 seats in Economy Class.

Qatar Airways currently operates three daily fl ights to Athens, Greece’s capital and largest city, and provides more than 4,000 seats to Athens each week. With the addi-tion of Thessaloniki, this will increase to more than 5,000 seats per week.

Qatar Airways flights to Thessaloniki in Greece will begin on March 27.

QPM takes part in Doha conferenceAs part of Qatar Sustainability Week, a delegation from Qatar Project Management (QPM) participated in the fourth annual Future Landscape and Public Realm Conference in Doha recently.The conference aimed at stimulating and encouraging investment in green infrastructure and providing solutions and opportunities to achieve green landscapes in urban environment.The conference witnessed case studies and interactive panel discussions, as well as highlighting Qatar’s commitment to the sustainable growth of green spaces.On the other hand, the event provided an opportunity for design professionals, city planners, urban designers and decision makers to meet and discuss innovations, new technologies, major challenges, latest projects and future opportunities.QPM participated in Qatar Sustainability Week through an internal awareness campaign for the company’s employees to promote the importance of sustainability and conservation of natural resources that are of great value to the environment, it said in a statement.

Ooredoo sponsors ‘Lifestyle Festival’ at Medina Centrale

Ooredoo announced yesterday that it is the offi cial sponsor of the

‘Lifestyle Festival’ at Medina Centrale set to take place this winter.

Set in the Pearl, the ‘Life-style Festival’ at Medina Cen-trale will provide an alterna-tive destination for families and friends, to play, eat, and shop.

Starting from November and ending on January 2018, shops, food outlets, entrain-ment, games, competitions, and more will be available in a 25,000sqm area every weekend.

To ensure a truly magi-cal event, each month Me-dina Centrale Festival will change its theme, starting with the ‘global lifestyle’ in November, ‘Qatar Na-tional Day’ in December, and a ‘Spanish Festival’ inJanuary.

Ooredoo Qatar director of PR and Corporate Commu-nications Manar Khalifa al-

Muraikhi said: “The ‘Lifestyle Festival’ at Medina Centrale is the perfect community ac-tivity where everyone can go along to shop, eat, and ex-plore the beautiful setting on The Pearl. Ooredoo is proud to support family-friendly events and we hope to see you all there.”

Street entertainment will also be provided during the festival, including a jazz band, human statues, bubble-blow-ing artists, glass blowing, and more bringing street art to the Medina Centrale.

Aura Lifestyle CEO Char-bel Mhanna said: “The festival is created to sup-port community entertain-ment and attract tourism to this unique destination. We will continue to devel-op the festival by creating many attractive and creative activities for families.”

Doha Bank supports Heba project of QRCSDoha Bank has donated

cash to Qatar Red Cres-cent Society (QRCS) to

support its ‘Heba project’, which provides healthcare for Syrian and Yemeni residents in Qatar.

Ahmed al-Henzab, head of administration and proper-ties at Doha Bank, handed over a cheque to Saad Shaheen al-Kaabi, director of resource mo-bilisation department, and Ha-mid Moharrar, head of corporate relations at QRCS, a volunteer humanitarian organisation rec-

ognised by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Geneva.

Al-Henzab highlighted the importance of supporting QRCS humanitarian activities, par-ticularly initiatives like the Heba Project, which provides Syrian and Yemeni residents medical care at hospitals of Hamad Med-ical Corporation (HMC) in Qatar.

“Doha Bank is pleased to assist and support the noble humani-tarian eff orts undertaken by

QRCS, which has been working tirelessly to support a number of good causes in the Middle East and beyond. We are also proud to take part in the ‘Heba Project’ by addressing the medical needs of Syrian and Yemeni residents, who are in dire need of assist-ance and support.

“Our aid is part of our CSR programme, launched with the aim of making a positive impact on the lives of marginalised and vulnerable groups by extend-ing fi nancial assistance to QRCS

Ahmed al-Henzab handing over the cheque to Saad Shaheen al-Kaabi as Hamid Moharrar looks on.

every year. As a CSR leader, we remain committed to serving our community and addressing the pressing issues of each stake-holder and to create a more pros-perous country and a better world for everyone,” al-Henzab said.

Al-Kaabi thanked Doha Bank offi cials and said: “This refl ects their awareness of the causes and needs of society, as well as their

fi rm belief in the value of partner-ship as a catalyst of humanitarian and social work towards the wel-fare and well-being of vulnerable people around the world.”

He also invited all individual and institutional donors in Qatar “to follow suit,” enabling QRCS to further promote its humanitarian and development mission of sav-ing lives and preserving dignity.

US embassy to hold ‘Open Mic Night’ at Katara on Saturday

The US embassy in Qatar is calling on spoken word performers, musicians,

poets and writers of all levels and ages to share their work at an ‘Open Mic Night’ on November 11, at Katara, under the theme of ‘Transforming Obstacles into Opportunities’.

The event takes place in Katara building number 15, Main Hall,

on from 6-8 pm. The evening is one of many special events organised for the US embassy’s Discover America Festival.

Open Mic Night is an oppor-tunity for amateur performers, professionals, and just about everyone else who wants to ex-press themselves, or try out new material and share their work with other members of the au-

dience. Artists and audience members both benefi t.

Prizes will be awarded for the best performances of the night. Those who like to participate, can provide their name at the door, and will be given a slot for performance.

The ‘Open Mic Night’ is be-ing organised by the youth outreach initiative, the Young

Writer’s Programme, a joint partnership between the US embassy Qatar and the Min-istry of Education and Higher Education. The mission of the programme is to encourage Qatar’s youth to read, write, and think critically about important topics in society. Since the programme’s incep-tion in 2014, students from 122

Ministry schools have participated. The event also forms part of

Doha Learning Week, the fl ag-ship education festival of the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) taking place in Doha, November 10-16.

The Discover America Festival will be on-going until Novem-ber 18 with various activities held across the country.

QATAR11Gulf Times


ILO decision heralds new era for workers’ rights in Qatar Saudi Arabia and

the UAE must fol-low Doha’s lead: Sharan Burrow

The International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) deci-sion to close the complaint

against Qatar, following the gov-ernment’s commitments to dis-mantle the kafala system , signals a new era for workers’ rights in the country.

“Qatar has set a new stand-ard for the Gulf States, and this must be followed by Saudi Ara-bia and the UAE where millions

of migrant workers are trapped in modern slavery,” said Labour Reform, General Secretary, In-ternational Trade Union Confed-eration (ITUC). The complaint was lodged by the ITUC in 2014.

“New commitments made by Qatar to the ITUC and the ILO will normalise industrial rela-tions in the country and have opened the way for international businesses operating in Qatar to sign agreements on workers’ rights and decent work with glo-bal union federations,” said Sha-ran Burrow.

Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) will sign a union agreement with French based multinational construc-

tion company VINCI and its joint venture partner QDVC at the end

of the month, covering all their workers in Qatar.

BWI general secretary Am-bet Yuson said: “This agreement with QDVC and VINCI, which complements and builds on our productive cooperation with the Qatar’s Supreme Committee on Delivery & Legacy, is a major step towards the full respect of workers’ rights in Qatar. We look forward to working with both parties in our ongoing eff orts to improve the working and living conditions of migrant construc-tion workers in Qatar. As the text of the agreement indicates, it is ‘founded on the shared be-lief that all construction workers should be treated with dignity, and live and work in decent and safe conditions.”

“For the International Trans-port Workers’ Federation (ITF) this means a sea change for transport workers, in aviation, in ports, and in public transport. We look forward to working with companies to build protection for workers, with good, sus-tainable jobs, recognising in-ternational standards and best practice,” said Stephen Cotton, General Secretary of the Inter-national Transport Workers’ Federation ITF.

A new technical co-opera-tion programme between the ILO and Qatar will support the transition to a modern indus-trial relations system, with the UN body establishing an office

in the country for the first time. Migrant workers in submitting complaints to the national dis-putes mechanisms will receive support along with an exten-sive technical and training pro-gramme for officials.

“Putting these new guide-lines into practice will be done with the support of a signed technical agreement, an ILO of-fice, the ITUC, and agreements between global union federa-tions and companies. Govern-ment, unions and companies working together opens a new era for employment rights in Qatar, with workers’ lives and livelihoods being protected,” said Burrow.

Commitments made by Qatar

Dismantling the kafala system;

Employment contracts will

be lodged with a government

authority to prevent contract

substitution;

Employers will no longer be

able to stop their employees

from leaving the country and the

contentious issue of workers’

rights to change employers will

be cleared up;

Identification papers will be

issued directly by the State of

Qatar;

A minimum wage will be pre-

scribed as a base rate covering all

workers;

Improvements to the exist-

ing Wage Protection System to

ensure that wage arrears are

systematically settled;

Workers’ committees will be

established in each workplace,

with workers electing their own

representatives;

A special disputes resolution

committee with a timeframe for

dealing with grievances.

Qatar welcomes ILO decision Government

has taken many measures to improve rights of workers

Qatar has welcomed the an-nouncement by the Inter-national Labour Organisa-

tion (ILO) that it will close its 2014 complaint against the country.

“Their announcement is an acknowledgement of the impor-tant steps our government has taken to develop a modern labour system that is fair to employers and employees alike,” a state-ment issued by the Government Communication Offi ce said.

“Qatar’s 2030 vision recog-nised the need to improve the living and working conditions of its migrant labour force well be-fore contractors broke ground on World Cup sites.

“In recent years, Qatar’s Min-istry of Administrative Devel-opment, Labour and Social Af-fairs initiated a sweeping new programme to upgrade workers’

housing by creating modern ac-commodations for the nation’s migrant labourers.

“Nine new labour accom-modations that will house more than 340,000 guest workers are already nearing completion at sites throughout the country.

“Qatar’s government has also increased health care facilities with the construction of three modern hospitals and four new health centres for the nation’s migrant workers.

“In addition, a new labour contract system has been inau-gurated, and a Wage Protection System put in place to facilitate electronic transfer of workers’ pay,” it said.

Detailing other steps taken to ensure workers’ welfare, the statement said: “The govern-ment has also engaged with NGOs like Amnesty Internation-al, Human Rights Watch and the International Trade Union Con-federation to establish best prac-tices for labour policies and has pledged to implement the high-est standards for migrant labour in the region.

“We are appreciative of the

insights all of those who have provided their international ex-pertise and helped shape Qatar’s legal and procedural develop-ments.

“Qatar will continue to work closely with them to ensure that workers’ rights are not only guar-anteed but developed in parallel with international standards and best practices.

“In light of the ILO complaint, Qatar developed a comprehensive programme of technical coopera-tion to ensure our reforms aligned with ILO best practice. In October of this year Qatar committed to the next stage of these reforms, and is developing a timeline for their full implementation.

“Qatar is enormously grateful to the millions of workers who have helped build the country’s infrastructure and who staff Qa-tar’s service industries.

The government will con-tinue improving their living and working conditions in the years ahead, as Qatar pursues our goal of setting the highest standard for worker’s rights, and human rights in the region,” the state-ment added.

Nod for draft law on setting up tourism council

From Page 1The draft law includes provi-

sions concerning the licensing and classifi cation of hotel and tourist establishments, as well as tourism activities, festivals, tourism events and their organ-ising offi ces, as well as the pro-motion of festivals and tourist events.

After HE the Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani chaired the Cabinet meeting at the Emiri Diwan yesterday, HE the Dep-uty Prime Minister and Minis-ter of State for Cabinet Aff airs Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid al-Mahmoud said the Cabinet yesterday also approved a draft law on organising business events.

The draft legislation defi nes business events as exhibitions or conferences. “It also defi nes an exhibition as an event that is held to display samples, goods, machines, models or services related to the commercial, in-dustrial, banking, agricultural, tourism, real estate, profes-sional, artistic, sports or other sectors, and whether they are national or foreign products for the purpose of advertising, marketing or promoting them - the main purpose of which is to attract tourists from abroad to participate or visit,” QNA said, adding that these do not include any event whose pri-mary purpose is the direct sale of goods to the public.

QM to celebrate traditions from around the world at MIA Park

Qatar Museums’ (QM), under the leadership of chairperson HE Sheikha

Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, is getting ready to host a colourful event this weekend to celebrate tradi-tions and cultures from all over the world at the MIA Park.

International schools and communities have been invit-ed to take part in this festival, which celebrates the rich and varied heritage of people resid-ing in Qatar.

Countries represented by ei-ther the country’s Embassies, community groups, or schools, include Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Palestine, Morocco, Bangladesh, Philip-pines, India, China, Tanzania, the US, Canada, Turkey, Af-ghanistan and Sudan.

During the event tomorrow and on Saturday, communities will give a glimpse into their cultures by showcasing tradi-tional clothing items, music, games, books and much more.

In addition, a selection of de-licious food and beverages rep-resenting each country will be on off er.

Salem al-Aswad, deputy di-rector, Learning & Outreach at MIA said: “We’re proud to cel-ebrate and recognise cultures from all over the world at MIA this weekend. It is wonderful to

see individuals from all over the world come together to connect over music, books, children’s activities and delicious food. We hope that visitors take this op-portunity to experience and en-gage with the diff erent cultures that are available right here in Doha.”

The event at MIA compli-ments QM’s commitment to promote understanding, recog-nition and appreciation of dif-ferent cultures, traditions and people in Qatar.

QM believes that culture is one of the most eff ective tools

for bringing people closer to-gether, encouraging dialogue and deepening understanding between people.

This is evident in its Years of Culture initiative, which was developed and designed to deepen understanding be-tween nations and their people through mutual exchanges of arts, culture, heritage and sport.

Now in its sixth year, the Years of Culture programme has creat-ed sustainable platforms for col-laboration and exchange between cultures, lasting long beyond the Years of Culture themselves.

MIA Park is getting ready to host a colourful event this weekend.

FM blames siege nationsfor undermining GCCFrom Page 1

With regards to reopening the Qatari embassy in Iraq, the foreign minister said there is a clear directive from His High-ness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to urgently reopen and assign an ambassa-dor in Iraq for the Qatar-Iraqi relations to have a fresh start.

He confi rmed Qatar’s support to Iraq’s fi ght against terrorism and encourages it to continue its post-liberation eff orts, express-ing Qatar’s commitment to ef-fectively participation in the re-building operation.

The foreign minister also praised the victories achieved in facing ISIS and liberating the cities.

He confi rmed Qatar’s steady stance for Iraq’s unity and the solving of disputes through dialogue and setting a national reconciliation programme that includes all parties, noting that Iraq has a history of co-exist-ence between all ethnicities and sects and a prominent posi-tion among Arab countries and worldwide.

HE the foreign minister sa-luted the Iraqi government for starting a dialogue with the Kurdistan Regional Govern-ment in eff ort to avoid Iraq’s dissolution, expressing his

hope that the dialogue includes all the Iraqi parties including the people of Kurdistan and that these eff orts succeed so Iraq can be as before.

For his part, Iraqi foreign minister al-Jaafari said that his country does not support iso-lating or besieging any country, stressing that dialogue was in-dispensable.

He added that dialogue is the only way to move the region from isolation to unity.

He added that his country called for maintaining broth-erly relations ever since the outbreak of the GCC crisis, as Iraq rejects the presence of such sensitivities between brothers.

He expressed hope that his visit to Qatar will represent a positive turn in ties politically, economically, and in terms of security as well.

He also hoped that the visit will help enhance Arab ties; es-pecially that it carries strategic dimensions far beyond the tac-tical and security issues.

His Excellency said that the State of Qatar and the Repub-lic of Iraq are united by politics, economy, and security.

He noted that Iraq now is not only focused on geograph-ic proximity, but is looking to enhance cooperation with all

countries in the region led by Qatar.

Al Jaafari said that Iraqi-Ira-nian ties are based on joint in-terest and were not established at the expense of other coun-tries.

He also said that the ties fo-cus on facing joint threats such as ISIS terrorism.

The minister of foreign aff airs called on putting aside regional diff erences to face that threat.

He stressed that Iraq is al-ways looking to put its ties to benefi cial use for its brothers.

He said that Iraq is concerned with bringing the GCC and Iran closer.

On the role of Iraq in me-diating between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Iraqi Minister of Foreign Aff airs said that ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran were important for Iraq.

He added that they were do-ing their best to boost that rela-tionship, similar to their eff orts in enhancing Turkish-Syrian ties.

He stressed that Iraq is play-ing a large role in bringer Saudi Arabia and Iran closer.

He added that he is playing a similar role with many coun-tries, expressing his hope that these eff orts are rewarded with success to benefi t the region.

REGION/ARAB WORLD


EU and US affi rm Lebanon supportafter Hariri quitsReutersBeirut

The European Union and the United States yester-day reaffi rmed support for

Lebanon after the resignation of its prime minister, striking a sharp contrast to Saudi Arabia, which accuses Beirut of declaring war because of the Shia group Hezbol-lah.

Statements of support from EU ambassadors to Lebanon and the United States have set a diff erent tone to their Gulf ally Saudi Ara-bia, which has lumped Lebanon together with the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah as par-ties hostile to it.

Lebanon has been pitched into deep crisis since the Saudi-allied Saad al-Hariri resigned on Sat-urday in a speech delivered from Saudi Arabia in which he accused Hezbollah and Iran of sowing strife in the Arab world and cited fear of assassination.

The circumstances surround-ing Hariri’s sudden resignation have given rise to wide speculation that he had been caught up in a high-level anti-corruption purge in Saudi Arabia, where his family made their fortune, and coerced into resigning.

Saudi Arabia has denied this along with reports that it has put Hariri under house arrest.

It says he quit because Hezbol-lah was calling the shots in the government.

The move has pulled Lebanon back to the forefront of a regional struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a rivalry which has also swept through Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen.

It has plunged Lebanon into political crisis and hit market con-fi dence in the heavily indebted Lebanese state.

A selloff of Lebanese bonds continued for a third day yester-day, with some of them hitting their lowest ever levels.

The US ambassador to Lebanon said yesterday the United States

remained “committed to a stable, secure, democratic, and prosper-ous Lebanon” during a meeting with Lebanese army commander General Joseph Aoun, a US em-bassy statement said.

The meeting was to announce a US government reimbursement of $42.9mn for border operations conducted by the Lebanese army, a major recipient of US military aid.

The United States classifi es Hezbollah as a terrorist group even as it supports the weak Lebanese state, drawing a line between the two in a long-standing policy.

On Tuesday, the US State De-partment said Lebanon was a strong US partner.

“The United States strongly sup-ports the legitimate institutions in the Lebanese state,” spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

“We expect all members of the international community to re-spect fully those institutions and the sovereignty and political in-dependence of Lebanon,” she said.

In a statement, EU ambassadors to Lebanon said they reaffi rmed “their strong support for the con-tinued unity, stability, sovereignty, and security of Lebanon and its people”.

Lebanon has also received sig-nifi cant Western aid to help it cope with the strain of hosting 1.5mn Syrian refugees, equivalent to around a quarter of the popula-tion.

Hezbollah, set up by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in 1982, is the most powerful group in Leba-non, with major sway in govern-ment and a guerrilla army that outguns the national military.

The group’s role has grown be-yond Lebanon in recent years, and its fi ghters have provided critical support to President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war.

President Michel Aoun, a Hez-bollah ally who took offi ce last year, has refused to accept Hariri’s resignation, saying he fi rst wants him to return to Lebanon so he can meet him in person to understand the reasons.

Hamas must disarm: Palestine police chiefAFPRamallah, Palestinian Territories

The head of the Palestin-ian police said yesterday that Hamas must disarm

to allow a landmark reconcilia-tion deal signed last month with rivals Fatah to succeed.

Hazem Atallah’s comments came as cracks began to show in the Palestinian reconciliation deal mediated by Egypt over the issue of security control of the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is due to retake control of the Gaza Strip, currently still run by Hamas, by December 1.

“We are talking about one authority, one law, one gun,” Atallah told journalists in Ram-allah in the occupied West Bank, echoing a line from Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.

Asked whether he could allow Hamas’s armed wing to main-tain their weapons while being in charge of police in Gaza, he said: “No way”.

“It is impossible. How can I do security when there are all these rockets and guns and whatever? Is this possible? It doesn’t work.

“Otherwise how can I be in charge? Who is going to be standing and saying ‘I am the chief of police, I am in charge,’ if I am not controlling every-thing?”

He said the 8,000-9,000 Palestinian police who worked in Gaza before Hamas took over in 2007 would return to their posts, rejecting the idea of merging with the existing Ha-mas-led police.

This, he added, would need major fi nancial support as the police’s budget would eff ective-ly double.

Hamas seized Gaza in 2007 following a near civil war with Fatah, which currently domi-nates the PA.

Last month the two political parties signed a reconciliation agreement under which Hamas is meant to hand over control of Gaza by December 1.

The agreement does not specify the future for Hamas’s vast armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

Hamas has so far refused to disarm.

On November 1, Hamas handed over control of border crossings in a fi rst key test.

But in a sign of tension, Pal-estinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said on Tuesday the PA still did not have full control of the crossings, with Hamas dominating the police and secu-rity inside Gaza.

Hamas rejected that, with a

statement saying it had fully transferred power.

Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union, has fought three wars with Israel since 2008.

Israel has maintained a crip-pling blockade on Gaza for a decade, while Egypt has also kept its border largely closed in recent years.

Multiple previous reconcilia-tion attempts have failed.

The police chief also said Ab-bas’s administration had re-sumed security co-ordination with Israel in the occupied West Bank, frozen in July.

Attallah said the suspension of ties had ended two weeks ago.

“Security co-ordination be-tween Palestinian and Israeli services have resumed as it used to be before it stopped,” Attallah said, adding that he was refer-

ring to joint eff orts to prevent militant attacks, as crime-fi ght-ing police co-operation between the sides had never stopped.

In other developments, Israeli authorities yesterday approved building permits for 240 new homes in settlement neigh-bourhoods in Jerusalem’s east-ern sector, Deputy Mayor Meir Turjeman said.

A city planning committee approved 90 units in Gilo and another 150 in Ramat Shlomo, Turjeman said, the latest in a se-ries of moves to enhance Jewish presence in the contested Israe-li-annexed Palestinian sector of the city.

Turjeman noted the commit-tee also approved 44 units for Palestinians in their neighbour-hood of Beit Hanina.

Jerusalem’s status is ultra-sensitive and central to the Is-raeli-Palestinian confl ict.

Millions of Yemenis suff er as closed borders halt aidReutersLondon

Hardship is intensifying for millions in Yemen, reeling from war, starvation and a

major cholera epidemic, after its bor-ders were closed, blocking vital food and medical deliveries, an aid worker said yesterday.

The Saudi-led coalition fi ghting the Houthi movement in Yemen said on Monday that it was closing all air, land and sea ports to stem the fl ow of arms to the Houthis from Iran.

“People have adapted to the situa-tion but they can’t take it anymore,” Adnan Hizam, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red

Cross (ICRC), told the Thomson Reu-ters Foundation by phone from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

“They need the nightmare of the confl ict to stop.”

The ICRC and the United Nations (UN) have urged the Saudi-led coali-tion to re-open the border to allow life-saving aid in.

A quarter of Yemen’s 28mn people are starving, while half a million children under the age of fi ve are suff ering life-threatening malnutrition, the UN says.

The Arabian Peninsula nation is also battling one of the world’s worst cholera outbreaks, which has infect-ed about 900,000 people and killed more than 2,100 since April, accord-ing to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The ICRC said on Tuesday that a shipment of chlorine tablets to pre-vent cholera did not get border clear-ance and voiced fears for 50,000 vials of insulin for diabetics due to be de-livered by next week, which require constant refrigeration.

“People are fed up,” Hizam said.“They are just trying to survive.

Every morning people are looking for water, waiting in line to get gas, and trying to work,” he added.

The UN Offi ce for the Co-ordina-tion for Humanitarian Aff airs (OCHA) said on Tuesday that the price of fuel jumped 60% “overnight” and the price of cooking gas doubled.

Hizam said this is a major problem for hospitals, which rely on fuel to run generators.

A general view of construction work in Gilo, a Jewish settlement in the mainly Palestinian eastern sector of Jerusalem. Israeli authorities yesterday approved building permits for 240 new homes in settlement neighbourhoods in Jerusalem’s eastern sector.

Iraq needs ‘Marshall Plan’, says Kirkuk archbishopAFPLourdes, France

A top Catholic cleric from Iraq says his country has “lost all confi dence” de-

spite the rout of the Islamic State group, and needs an economic and cultural “Marshall Plan”.

“It’s much deeper than simply giving money,” Yousef Thomas Mirkis told AFP after address-ing a meeting of French bishops in the southwestern French pil-grimage town of Lourdes.

Mirkis, the Chaldean arch-bishop of the northern diocese of Kirkuk, said the US-led inva-sion of Iraq in 2003 had “opened a Pandora’s box, and today we see the consequences of the destabi-lisation of the entire region.”

Iraq will long struggle with “many diffi culties,” said Mirkis.

“We know that sectarian-ism has failed, American-style democracy has failed. The only thing that will succeed is a rebirth arising from the grassroots.”

He said that if young people under 30, who make up some

60% of the population, “do not rise to the occasion, nothing can be done.”

The 68-year-old cleric, who received some of his training in France, thanked the French Catholic Church in a speech on Tuesday for its support to hun-dreds of Iraqi students who fl ed to Kirkuk from areas that fell to IS during a sweeping 2014 of-fensive, especially the militants’ Iraqi bastion Mosul.

He urged the bishops to fur-ther their support for Iraq, say-ing: “One could think of a new

Marshal Plan. The survival of our communities depends at least in part on economics, which demands a comprehensive ap-proach in the short, medium and long term.”

Mirkis noted that Iraq has lost more than half of its Christian population in recent years.

Today, they number fewer than 350,000.

“One of the world’s oldest Christian communities is disap-pearing in Iraq before our eyes amid widespread indiff erence,” he said.

Chaldean Christians are the most numerous in Iraq.

Before the fall of Saddam Hus-sein in 2003 they numbered more than 1mn, including more than 600,000 in Baghdad.

The prelate said IS at its peak had many people in its thrall, even if they were “not won over to the ideology”.

He added: “The media talk about the defeat of Daesh (an Ar-abic acronym for IS)... but there is the mentality that Daesh cre-ated.”

The human, socioeconomic and

political situation “must be taken into consideration,” he said.

“You cannot ignore the (need for) stability in a country that has lost all confi dence in the future, so there’s really a lot of work to do,” added Mirkis, who is also archbishop of Sulaimaniyah, in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The “yes” vote in an inde-pendence referendum in Sep-tember in the Kurdish region – opposed not just by Baghdad but also Iran, Turkey and the Kurds’ Western allies – im-peded the return of Christians

to Mosul and nearby Qaraqosh, he said.

Mirkis said investing in students in Iraq was cheaper than providing scholarships in France, adding: “Emigration is not the answer, it’s an uprooting, a loss of identity.”

He added: “A Marshall Plan is much, much better than spend-ing $2,300 to put a student through a year of university.”

Mirkis said Iraqi universities “need the experience of a coun-try like France, which also once needed to rebuild its country” – in the aftermath of World War II.

Rights watchdog criticises Saudi purgeHuman Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday criticised mass arrests in Saudi Arabia over alleged cor-ruption and called on the kingdom to reveal the legal basis for each person’s detention.Dozens of prominent political and business figures were arrested in the crackdown at the weekend on orders from an anti-corruption

committee led by Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman.“While Saudi media are framing these measures as Mohamed bin Salman’s move against corruption, the mass arrests suggest this may be more about internal power politics,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the HRW Middle East director, said in a statement.

AFRICA13Gulf Times


Unknown attackers have killed three gendarmes within a week in Cameroon’s English-speaking region, where residents have been protesting inequality. Two gendarmes were killed when assailants attacked the town of Bamenda in Cameroon’s North-West region early yesterday, regional governor Lele Lafrique Adolf told DPA. Five days earlier, masked gunmen had killed a gendarme in the Anglophone town of Jakiri. English speakers in the West African nation have long complained that they are treated like second-class citizens and that the government makes less money available to them.

An 8-year-old boy died yesterday after the ambulance he was travelling in was held up at gunpoint and robbed in Cape Town, one of the world’s most violent cities, local media reported. The child had received head injuries in a road accident Tuesday night and was being transported to hospital, when the ambulance was ambushed and the medical staff on board held up at gunpoint and robbed. The delay meant the boy died of his injuries yesterday, the African News Agency reported. “The ambulance personnel were threatened with firearms and robbed and their vehicle disabled,” said Robert Daniels, spokesman for the provincial Emergency Medical and Forensic Pathology Services.

Gunmen have killed at least 11 traders in central Nigeria, police said yesterday, in the latest violence in the region, which has been hit by decades of ethnic and sectarian strife. The traders were returning from a rural market in the Riyom district of Plateau state when they were ambushed by “unknown assailants” on Tuesday, said police spokesman Tyopev Terna. “Eleven people who were returning from a weekly village market in Makera village were shot dead at about 7.30pm yesterday”, he told AFP. Four other traders were injured in the attack, which happened some 30km south of the state capital, Jos, he added.

Deadlock over the allocation of leadership posts has forced Kenya’s parliament into an unscheduled three-week recess, lawmakers said yesterday, indicating a protracted political crisis could reverberate beyond the October election. Lawmakers said that opposition leader Raila Odinga’s coalition wanted more time to negotiate the distribution of parliamentary leadership posts to its constituent parties. The coalition have asked for time until the end of November to fill leadership positions in the house, including minority chiefs, whips and committee heads.

The Democratic Republic of Congo said yesterday foreign “greed” for its cobalt lay behind the “malicious” pressures weighing on the country’s electoral process. The DRC is in the grip of a crisis over plans to hold presidential elections, which were delayed by President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down on the expiry of his second and final term last December. Under a compromise deal, the vote was scheduled to take place this year. Government spokesman Lambert Mende said: “After rubber, copper and coltan respectively, it is now our reserves in cobalt which are the cause of these malicious intrusions,” without elaborating.

Cameroon cops murdered in Anglophone regions

Hurt boy dies after S Africa ambulance held up, robbed

11 traders shot dead in central Nigeria: police

Kenya opposition seeks time for coalition positions

Kinshasa: Vote pressure due to foreign ‘greed’ for cobalt

LANGUAGE BARRIER CRIMECIVIL STRIFE POLITICS BALLOT BATTLE

Anger seethes on margins of historic clean-up in Nigeria’s DeltaBy Libby George, Reuters Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Nearly a decade after two catastrophic oil spills in the Niger Delta, a com-

prehensive clean-up has fi nally been launched in the southern Nigerian region.

Oil companies and activists hope it will be a blueprint for wider rehabilitation but other badly polluted communities are unhappy not to be included.

Earlier this month, crews of young men equipped with high pressure hoses began to attack the crude oil that has blighted the creeks and mangrove swamps in the area where they live.

The workers from Bodo in Riv-ers State are beginning a three-year project that claims to mark a new approach to cleaning up the delta, the vast polluted swamp-land that pumps the oil vital to Africa’s largest economy.

Four hundred workers will clear dead foliage and spilled oil before planting new mangroves.

The site where they are work-ing is small but organisers hope the anti-pollution drive can be repeated elsewhere in the delta.

Unlike clean-up operations run routinely by oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, this one is backed by local communities and teams of sci-entists who will take samples of water, mud and soil in each area to

measure progress and determine the best cleaning method.

Funded by Shell and its joint venture partners, the clean-up is the culmination of years of le-gal wrangling and international

pressure to overcome animosity and mutual suspicion that have divided locals, the government and oil companies.

Shell declined to say how much it was spending on the eff ort,

whose leaders see it as a glimmer of hope in a benighted land where many wells are not safe to drink from and fi shing and farming have been devastated.

“The Niger Delta is at a cross-roads,” said Inemo Samiama, chairman of the Bodo Mediation Initiative (BMI), which is manag-ing the clean-up.

“We have a lot of polluted sites. We need something that we can refer to, some shining example.”

The work of the BMI covers 10sq km, a tiny fraction of the 70,000sq km Delta.

As the workers walk through gnarled, dead mangrove roots in their protective gear and masks, oil seeps into their footprints — remnants of 2008 spills for which Royal Dutch Shell admitted re-sponsibility.

Despite the optimism, en-vironmentalists point out that at BMI’s work rate, it will take 21,000 years to clean the entire delta, and that’s not including the 10 years of legal battles it took to make it happen.

Communities in the other eight Delta states are also un-happy they have no clean-up plan, fuelling the resentment that underpinned the militant

movements that hit production last year and helped tip Niger-ia into its first recession in 25 years.

Already one group, the Niger Delta Avengers, has threatened a return to violence.

They say the government is not keeping its promises to clean up the delta and provide more jobs, money and infrastructure.

Other groups who do not ad-vocate violence are also frus-trated.

“No clean-up whatsoever has taken place,” said Deinbo Owa-naemi Emmanuel, attorney for the Bille kingdom, also in Rivers but outside the clean-up area.

“People are dying. People are being denied justice.”

Bodo received support from British law fi rm Leigh Day, which negotiated a £55mn pollution settlement with Shell in 2015.

Leigh Day said it agreed to freeze a separate case to force a clean-up via British courts in or-der to give the BMI a chance.

Ogoni, the wider area in which Bodo sits, was the subject of a 2011 UN Environment Pro-gramme report warning of cata-strophic pollution in the soil and water.

King Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi of the Ogale commu-nity is on the board of a wider Ogoni clean-up effort, and is optimistic its own clean-up, due to start next year, will work.

But he fears it will not repli-cated elsewhere without another marathon battle in the London courts.

“The only place you can get legal success is the international courts,” he said.

Under Nigerian law, oil com-panies must begin cleaning up any spill within 24 hours.

But the remoteness of spills and lax enforcement mean this rarely happens.

Ferdinand Giadom, a lecturer at the University of Port Harcourt and technical adviser to the Bodo cleanup, said communities often block clean-ups in the hopes of cash settlements.

Even in Bodo, works were de-layed by two years due to local infi ghting.

Shell said most oil spilled last year was due to sabotage or theft for illegal refi ning.

It also said that communi-ties block access to sites, making cleaning more diffi cult.

Workers flush the crude oil polluted creek shoreline at the Bodo clean-up site in Rivers State, Nigeria.

Mugabe warns his potential successors of ‘pitfalls, death’ReutersHarare

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe said yesterday the route to leadership was long

and full of “pitfalls and death”, as he accused his fi red deputy and former protege of showing impatience in his bid to succeed him.

Addressing supporters at the headquarters of his ZANU-PF party in Harare, 93-year-old Mugabe ac-cused Emmerson Mnangagwa of consulting witchdoctors and proph-ets as part of a campaign to secure the presidency.

Mnangagwa said he had fl ed Zim-babwe because of death threats and was safe.

“My sudden departure was caused by incessant threats on my person, life and family by those who have attempted before through vari-ous forms of elimination including

poisoning,” he said in a statement yesterday.

The head of the infl uential war veterans association, Chris Mutsvangwa, said that Mnangagwa, who was sacked on Monday, would travel to Johannesburg in neigh-bouring South Africa “very soon”.

Mugabe said Mnangagwa, nick-named ‘Crocodile’, had made the same mistakes as Joice Mujuru, who was the president’s deputy for 10 years until she was fi red in 2014.

“You should not try to say because the journey is long, then I should take a short cut to arrive quickly. The road has lions. There are pitfalls. There is death, beware,” he said.

“There is no short cut to being the leader of the people. Just as there was no short cut to our independ-ence.”

ZANU-PF would move to disci-pline Mnangagwa’s “co-conspira-tors”, Mugabe added.

ZANU-PF’s executive politburo

is expected to decide at a meeting whether to fi re Mnangagwa and his allies from the party.

Mnangagwa has not been seen in public since his dismissal from gov-ernment but his ally Mutsvangwa said he was “safe and beyond the reach of the assassins”.

Mutsvangwa ruled out trying to remove Mugabe by force and said war veterans, who had publicly backed Mnangagwa and broke ranks with the president last year, would form a broad front with the opposi-tion in elections next year.

“We don’t want to abuse the military to resolve a political prob-lem. We don’t want them to be-come the arbiter of political power,” Mutsvangwa said.

He was critical of Mugabe’s wife Grace, who looks set to become vice president after a special ZANU-PF congress in December. “This is a coup by marriage certifi cate....and it will be resisted,” he said.

Short on boots and backing,

Sahel force faces uphill battleBy Aaron Ross, Reuters Sevare, Mali

Snipers from a new West Afri-can force lie prone on a rooftop in central Mali, scanning the hori-

zon for militants who have infi ltrated this sparsely populated region south of the Sahara and made it a launchpad for deadly attacks.

Thousands of UN peacekeepers, French troops and US military trainers and drone operators have failed to stem a growing wave of militant violence, leading international powers to pin their hopes on a new regional force.

But the so-called G5 Sahel initiative faces immense challenges if it is to do any better at bringing security to the arid Sahel region than its countries Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger have managed so far.

Security sources and analysts say too strong an emphasis on military might over tackling the underlying causes of strife, logistical shortfalls and a lack of co-operation from regional powerhouse Algeria all raise doubts over whether the G5 can succeed where years of Western intervention has not.

“There is a long way to go to reach full

operational capacity, even though the timeframe is relatively short,” G5 force commander General Didier Dacko told visiting UN Security Council envoys last month, citing a range of needs from aer-ial support to communications equip-ment to intelligence gathering.

The United Nations, France and the United States have poured billions of dollars into stabilising the region over the past 15 years but have failed to mean-ingfully address the many local griev-ances driving confl ict, analysts say.

Political and social tensions, such as a stalled peace process between the gov-ernment and armed groups in Mali, are pushing youths to militancy, as are grow-ing rivalries between farmers and cattle herders and rights abuses by national armies.

In northern Burkina Faso, for exam-ple, preacher Malam Ibrahim Dicko has gained adherents to his militant Ansarul Islam movement by railing against the privileges of traditional elites in a region scarred by widespread poverty.

Some local groups have affi liated themselves with global franchises such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State, whose dwindling presence in the Middle East has led Western governments to zero in on the vast lawless tracts of North and

West Africa to prevent them fi nding new footholds.

But the militant groups in the Sahel draw more on frustrations with central governments and the Western forces that back them than a global militant agen-da, making security-heavy approaches risky, analysts say.

“I think local communities in Mali and Niger feel alienated and confused by the actions of those entities,” said Alexander Thurston, an assistant professor at Geor-getown University who specialises in Is-lam and politics in West Africa.

“The problems require political solu-tions, ultimately, and the G5 is a small and underfunded force.”

The G5’s backers say they recognise the need for longer-term economic de-velopment, not just a beefed-up security presence. In Mali last month, France’s UN envoy Francois Delattre called the two “absolutely inseparable”. But when it comes to coughing up, development of-ten gets short-changed.

Initially sceptical of the force, the United States pledged up to $60mn last week.

Even so, commitments from the G5 countries and donors stand at only a third of the estimated $490mn the force needs in its fi rst year.

An NH 90 Caiman military helicopter takes-off during the regional anti-insurgent Operation Barkhane in Inaloglog, Mali.

Cows, chickens cause diplomatic spatAFPNairobi

A diplomatic spat over cows and chickens has worsened already frosty ties between Kenya and

Tanzania, with Nairobi lodging a for-mal protest against its neighbour, the foreign minister said yesterday.

The latest impasse between the two east African nations began last month when Tanzania seized and auctioned off 1,300 cattle which had wandered across the border to graze in a region where herders typically

pay little heed to frontiers. Then, last week, Tanzania seized and burnt alive 6,500 chicks that had been brought into the country by a trader, fearing they would spread disease.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said the country’s repre-sentative at the East African Com-munity (EAC) bloc had sent a “note of protest” to Tanzania.

A series of diplomatic and trade squabbles have soured relations between the neighbours in recent months. Kenyan traders have com-plained of mistreatment by Tanza-nian immigration agents, which has

sparked protests at the border, and tit-for-tat trade jabs have seen the two nations blocking the import of various goods from either country.

In March last year Kenya’s energy minister and his delegation were blocked from entering Tanzania, while their Ugandan counterparts were allowed in unhindered.

Mohamed said the herders had “not committed any crime because they had done what they always did, which is cross the border to look for pasture, and that is the normal be-haviour that we all have,” referring to grazing practices around the region.

AMERICAS


New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, flanked by son Dante de Blasio and wife Chirlane McCray, addresses supporters after his re-election in New York City.

De Blasio re-elected

Democrats win bitter poll race in VirginiaReutersWashington

Democrat Ralph North-am won a bitter race for Virginia governor on

Tuesday, dealing a setback to President Donald Trump with a decisive victory over a Republi-can who had adopted some of the president’s combative tactics and issues.

Northam, the state’s lieuten-ant governor, overcame a barrage of attack ads by Republican Ed Gillespie that hit the soft-spoken Democrat on divisive issues such as immigration, gang crime and Confederate statues.

Trump, who endorsed Gillespie but did not campaign with him, had taken a break from his Asia trip to send tweets and record messages on Tuesday supporting the former chairman of the Republican National Com-mittee.

But after the outcome, Trump quickly distanced himself from Gillespie.

“Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,” Trump tweeted.”With the economy doing record num-bers, we will continue to win,

even bigger than before!”At his victory party, Northam

told supporters the sweeping Democratic win in Virginia sent a message to the country.

“Virginia has told us to end the divisiveness, that we will not condone hatred and bigotry, and to end the politics that have torn this country apart,” Northam said.

The Virginia race highlighted a slate of state and local elec-tions that also included a gover-nor’s race in New Jersey, where Democrat Phil Murphy, a former

investment banker and ambassa-dor to Germany, defeated Repub-lican Kim Guadagno for the right to succeed Republican Chris Christie.

Murphy had promised to be a check on Trump in Democratic-leaning New Jersey.

Guadagno, the lieutenant governor, was hampered by her association with the unpopular Christie.

Murphy’s win and the North-am victory in Virginia, a state Democrat Hillary Clinton won by 5 percentage points in the 2016

presidential election, provided a much-needed boost for national Democrats who were desperate to turn grassroots resistance to Trump into election victories.

Democrats had already lost four special congressional elec-tions earlier this year.

But a strong turnout in the Democratic-leaning northern Virginia suburbs of Washington helped propel Northam, who in the end won relatively easily. With nearly all precincts report-ing, he led by a 53 % to 45 % mar-gin.

Exit polls in Cirginia showed that one-third of the voters went to the polls to oppose Trump, and only 17% went to support him.

Democrats also swept the oth-er top statewide Virginia races, winning the offi ces of lieutenant governor and attorney general, and gained seats in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Democrat Danica Roem beat a long-time Republican incum-bent to become the fi rst trans-gender person to win a state leg-islative race.

“This is a comprehensive po-litical victory from statehouse to courthouse. Thank you Donald Trump!” Democratic US Rep-resentative Gerald Connolly of Virginia told Northam’s support-ers at a victory party in northern Virginia.

In Virginia, Democrats had worried that if Gillespie won, Re-publicans would see it as a green light to emphasise divisive cul-tural issues in their campaigns for next year’s elections, when all 435 seats in the US

House of Representatives and 33 of the US Senate’s 100 seats come up for election. Republi-cans now control both chambers.

Gillespie, speaking to crest-fallen supporters in Richmond, Virginia, said he had run a “very policy-focused campaign.”

But voters in Arlington Coun-ty — a suburban Democratic stronghold bordering Washing-ton — said national politics were important to their votes.

“Trump talks about draining the swamp, but Gillespie kind of is the swamp,” said Nick Peace-maker, who works in marketing and considered himself a Repub-lican until Trump won the party’s presidential nomination.

Peacemaker said Gillespie seemed to shift closer to Trump’s policies after securing the Re-publican gubernatorial nomina-tion.

In local races across the coun-try, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York and Marty Walsh in Boston both easily won re-election.

Voters were also picking may-ors in Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Governor elect Ralph Northam (R) and Lt. Gov.-elect Justin Fairfax greet supporters at an election night rally in Fairfax, Virginia.

In hinterland Arkansas, President Trump’s base stand by their manAFPClinton, Etats-Unis

For rancher Dan Eoff , who raises cattle on his property in rural Arkansas, President

Donald Trump’s eff orts to loosen environmental regulations are a weight off his shoulders.

Residents of the small Clinton area community in Arkansas who backed Trump in last year’s presi-dential vote have varied reasons for supporting him, but most cen-tre around the idea that the New York billionaire is understanding of their concerns instead of dis-missing them and their demo-graphic.

And while Trump’s national approval ratings are at historic lows, the Republican president’s base, by-and-large, are standing by their man and praising his poli-cies.

Eoff , a 68-year-old with a lux-uriant white mustache, ran into

various legal issues over a creek running through his property, but now says he no longer worries that the government is keeping watch.

“I cross the river with my cat-tle, with my truck, every day, and I am not afraid of the government keeping eyes on me,” Eoff said.

Shortly after taking offi ce, Trump removed regulations on waterways put in place under his predecessor.

“The people he picked to run his cabinet are hard...knowledge-able people that know what is go-ing on, that understand our way of life,” Eoff said.

Mike Fox, who also raises cat-tle, agreed, saying: “We needed a change.”

Fox was at a cattle sale held in an auditorium-like room through which a parade of calves, cows and bulls passed to the rhythm of the auctioneer’s voice.

“He has made things better for people in the cattle business,” said Fox. “The economy is getting

better and more people are eating beef.”

Fox welcomed what he termed the “new mindset” instilled by the president.

Arkansas is, along with West Virginia and Mississippi, is one of the poorest states in the country.

In Clinton, a small town of 2,600 residents spread along a wide road, the main employers are schools and the local hospital.

Two large factories closed in the late 2000s and a tornado ravaged a boat factory in 2008.

Gas exploration brought a fi -nancial windfall for a time but has since dried up.

In an attempt to attract new business, Mayor Richard McCor-mac launched an overhaul of the wastewater system, but is dis-missive of government interven-tion.

“Entrepreneurs and small busi-nesses drive the economy. Any-thing the government starts, it never ends,” said McCormac, who

enthusiastically backed Trump.Peggy Eoff , who organises an-

nual chuck wagon races — the area’s most well-known event — along with her husband Dan, said that Trump “has his pulse on the heartland”.

“People here that have to go to work, everybody is sick of what goes on in Washington; they think we are dumb little people that don’t know anything, and they underestimated the little country people across the US,” she said.

Voting for Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was not an option for Peggy Eoff .

Clinton was for years fi rst lady of Arkansas when her husband Bill was governor, a tenure that left a memory here of a cold person dis-tant from the concerns of the rural world.

While he has many support-ers, Trump also has detractors in Clinton.

“He is not looking (out) for the average man, he is just looking af-

ter a lot of money and for the big people,” said Brad Mohr, a veteran who was attending a concert in honour of former members of the military.

Trump says he supports the military, but “he is putting a lot of money into something when we really need to put money else-where, like the average person’s healthcare, getting jobs”, said Mohr.

Ashton Pruitt, who helps her husband run the offi ce at Pruitt’s Mid-State Stockyards in addition to working two other jobs, voted for Clinton in 2016.

The bubbly 29-year-old, who hosts a country music show on lo-cal KVOM radio from 6 to 10 am before opening her clothing store, said she has not seen much change since the election.

“I got up and I went to work like nothing had happened,” she said.

“We want to provide... for our children, so we work hard, no matter who is president.”

US tightens Cuba travel regulationsAFPWashington

Tighter restrictions on US travellers to Cuba will go into eff ect today, of-

fi cials said, almost fi ve months after President Donald Trump vowed to crack down.

The US Treasury said the measures are designed to steer American travellers away from Cuban fi rms tied to the mili-tary and towards the commu-nist island’s fl edgling private sector.

Much of the half-cen-tury-old US economic embargo against Cuba re-mains entrenched in law, but under former president Barack Obama federal au-thorities began to loosen some rules.

Ties had begun to warm, and in 2015 the countries’ ex-changed ambassadors for the fi rst time since 1961.

But in June Trump appeared in Miami before a cheering crowd of Cuban-Americans, including veterans of the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs inva-sion, to vow to reverse Obama’s measures.

That promise fi nally bore fruit yesterday, when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin laid out the new or revived rules.

“We have strengthened our Cuba policies to channel eco-

nomic activity away from the Cuban military and to encour-age the government to move toward greater political and economic freedom for the Cu-ban people,” he said.

Under the directives, Amer-icans will be forbidden from doing business with entities on a State Department list headed by the Cuban defence and in-terior ministries.

Also on the list are fi ve major holding companies with ties to Raul Castro’s government or military, and which between them control much of the or-ganised tourism sector.

The list goes on to list doz-ens of major hotels in Havana and several resorts, along with fi ve Caribbean marinas, ten stores in touristy Old Havana and industries serving the military.

Two rum distilleries are on the list, along with a shopping mall, a photo developer and a real estate broker.

In addition, Americans seeking to evade the general ban on travel to Cuba will only be allowed to do so on educa-tional trips organised by a US fi rm and with a guide.

In addition to staying in privately-run accommodation and thus supporting small-scale capitalism, the travel-lers will be expected to engage in authorised exchanges with Cuban people.

Trump takes advantage of Twitter’s new limit

DPALos Angeles

US President Donald Trump was among high profi le users to take

advantage of a new 280-char-acter limit on Twitter on Tues-day, after the company dou-bled the length of messages allowed on the social media messaging platform.

The previous limit of 140 characters, which had existed since Twitter was launched in 2006, had led to “cramming” in most languages, meaning users had to edit or even leave out words to make their mes-sages fi t, the company said in a blog post.

Trump, who often has post-ed messages across multiple tweets, wrote longer single-message updates from his cur-rent tour of Asia.

“Getting ready to make a major speech to the National Assembly here in South Korea, then will be headed to China where I very much look for-ward to meeting with Presi-dent Xi who is just off his great

political victory,” Trump said in his fi rst post-140-limit tweet, using 216 characters.

CNN news anchor Jake Tap-per, meanwhile, used his new-found Twitter freedom to post excerpts from books including the Bible, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and Her-man Melville’s Moby Dick.

Twitter started testing the 280-character length two months ago with a small number of people and found that while most initially em-braced longer tweets, they later returned to using fewer characters, product manager Aliza Rosen wrote in Twitter’s blog post.

“We saw when people needed to use more than 140 characters, they tweeted more easily and more often,” Rosen said.” But importantly, people tweeted below 140 most of the time and the brevity of Twitter remained.” Japanese-, Korean- and Chinese-language tweets will continue to have the 140-character limit because research found that cramming is not a problem in those lan-guages, the company said.

Canadian PM visits HanoiDPAHanoi

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remi-nisced about his past

as a backpacker and advocated stronger relations with Viet-nam during a press conference with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Hanoi yes-terday.

“It’s been a long time, too long, since a Canadian Prime Minister made an offi cial visit to Vietnam, and I’m honoured to visit your beautiful country,” said Trudeau, adding that he last visited Viet-nam in his twenties.

“I was here in 1995 on a back-packing trip with friends, and it’s wonderful to see how much has changed and how much has not changed,” he added. Phuc said the talks were “fruitful”.

“Prime Minister Trudeau and I have agreed that both sides should work closely together to implement co-operation in ar-

eas within the framework of a comprehensive partnership,” said Phuc, adding that ties could range from investment to de-fence.

Trudeau also expressed inter-est in potentially reviving the Transpacifi c Partnership trade agreement, which has an uncer-tain future following US Presi-dent Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from it.

“I, and my government, and Canadians in general, are very much open to trade, and we know that trade deals create opportu-nities for our citizens, they create jobs and economic growth that benefi ts everyone in our coun-tries.” said Trudeau.

He also said that any new trade deal would be carefully scruti-nised.

“Canada will not be rushed into a deal that is not in the best interest of Canada or Canadians,” said Trudeau, adding that he would take human rights abuses into account when evaluating trade agreements.

Northam overcame a barrage of attacks on immigration and gang crime

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA15Gulf Times


Chinese icebreaker steams for Antarctica in polar power playAFPBeijing

The Chinese icebreaker Xuelong steamed south from Shanghai yesterday

bound for Antarctica, where it will establish China’s newest base as Beijing strives to become a polar power.

China is a latecomer in the race for pole position but its in-terest in Antarctica has grown along with its economic might. The new station will be the fi fth Chinese foothold on the frozen continent, more than some na-tions which got there earlier.

China is ploughing money into polar exploration and re-search as other countries like the United States pull back under funding constraints and a glut of other global priorities.

An international treaty sus-pends all territorial claims to Antarctica, essentially setting it aside as a scientifi c preserve. That “provides a precious op-portunity to quickly develop China’s polar bases”, Qin Wei-jia, director of the China Arctic and Antarctic Administration, said at an annual meeting on the poles last month.

China has rapidly built up ac-tivities on the continent, build-

ing new bases and commission-ing polar-capable ships and aircraft. Offi cials say it intends to become a “polar power.”

“The fact that China has coined this new term and has made it an important part of their foreign policy shows the level of ambition and forward thinking that China has,” said Anne-Marie Brady, a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center. Brady’s research, published in her book China as a Polar Great Power, shows that China is al-ready the pre-eminent spender on Antarctic programmes, when its logistics, infrastructure and research funding are added to-

gether. The multilateral Antarc-tic Treaty bars mineral exploita-tion on the continent, but that may change in 2048 when rules governing the treaty change.

Some researchers worry that resource-hungry China’s inter-est in the South Pole is a thinly veiled cover to allow mapping of the continent in preparation for a future when mining and drill-ing may be allowed.

Lin Shanqing, deputy director of the State Oceanic Adminis-tration which oversees China’s polar programmes, said as much last week.

China must speed up devel-opment of “polar prospecting

and extraction equipment”, Lin said at the administration’s an-nual meeting.

The 334-person crew of the Xuelong, which means “Snow Dragon”, will establish a tem-porary 206-square-metre base on rocky Inexpressible Island, a leader of the expedition told the China Daily.

This will eventually be devel-oped into China’s fi fth base, with work expected to be completed around 2022.

China has a growing collec-tion of outposts, with its largest — the Great Wall station — able to pack in 80 researchers in the summer months. The base was

not built until 1985, more than 80 years after Argentina estab-lished Antarctica’s fi rst base, on Laurie Island in 1904.

“China will be one of the few countries with a considerable number of bases spread out over the region,” said Marc Lanteigne, a lecturer at Massey Univer-sity Albany in New Zealand. “It demonstrates China is a major player on the continent.”

The United States, in contrast, operates three permanent bases relying in part on decades-old equipment. Argentina tops the list with six permanent bases. Equally important are the expen-sive ice-breakers, whose sturdy

hulls are crucial for getting sup-plies to iced-in Antarctic out-posts. Russia has more than 40, while the US has just two, one of which is years past its prime. China has two ice-breakers in-cluding the red-hulled Xuelong and a third under construction.

For China, it is more than a strategic priority, Brady said. The projects in Antarctica are the latest to showcase and bol-ster the Communist Party’s case that it is leading the nation to “rejuvenation”.

“It’s also about stirring up pa-triotism and confi dence, which is very important to this govern-ment,” Brady said.

Trump warns N Korea of grave consequencesFog frustrates Trump’s attempt to visit DMZ; Trumps receive warm welcome in Beijing

ReutersBeijing

US President Donald Trump arrived in China yesterday seeking help to

rein in North Korea after warn-ing the North’s leader that the nuclear weapons he is developing “are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger.”

Trump used some of his toughest language yet against North Korea in a wide-ranging address in Seoul that lodged spe-cifi c accusations of chilling hu-man rights abuses. He called on countries around the world to isolate Pyongyang by denying it “any form of support, supply or acceptance.”

“Do not underestimate us and do not try us,” Trump told North Korea as he wrapped up a visit to South Korea with a speech to the National Assembly before head-ing to Beijing, where he was mak-ing his fi rst offi cial visit.

Trump painted a dystopian picture of the reclusive North, saying people were suff ering in “gulags” and some bribed gov-ernment offi cials to work as “slaves” overseas rather than live under the government at home. He off ered no evidence to sup-port those accusations.

Attack modeTrump’s return to harsh, un-

compromising language came a day after he appeared to dial back the bellicose rhetoric that had fuelled fears across east Asia of

the risk of military confl ict. On Tuesday, Trump had even of-fered a diplomatic opening to Pyongyang to “make a deal.”

He went mostly on the attack in yesterday’s speech but did promise a “path to a much better future” if North Korea stopped developing ballistic missiles and agreed to “complete, verifi able and total denuclearisation” — something Pyongyang has vowed never to do.

“We will not allow Ameri-can cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not be in-timidated,” he told South Korean lawmakers. “And we will not let the worst atrocities in history be repeated here, on this ground we fought and died to secure.”

The North defends its nu-clear weapons and missile pro-grammes as a necessary defence

against what it says are US plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such in-tention.

“The world cannot tolerate the menace of a rogue regime that threatens it with nuclear devas-tation,” Trump said, speaking as three US aircraft carrier groups sailed to the Western Pacifi c for exercises — a rare show of such US naval force in the region.

In Beijing, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping resumed their “bromance” struck in April at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, making small talk as they toured the Forbidden City – which was shut down to tourists – with their wives before taking in a Chinese opera performance.

While the sprawling palace

complex in the political and cul-tural heart of Beijing is a regular stop for visiting dignitaries, it is rare for a Chinese leader to act as a personal escort, confi rmation of the “state visit-plus” treat-ment that China had promised for Trump.

Trump has threatened action over China’s wide trade surplus with the United States and called on Beijing to do more to rein in ally and neighbour North Korea, but has expressed admiration for Xi and held off on imposing trade measures.

During his two-day visit, Trump will ask China to abide by UN resolutions and cut fi -nancial links with North Korea, a senior White House offi cial said on the plane from Seoul. He also plans to discuss with Xi the long-contentious trade imbal-

ance, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at a ceremony with US business leaders where $9bn worth of deals were signed. Trump believes any talks with North Korea would require it to reduce threats, end provocations and move toward denucleari-sation, and that no deal can be achieved without denuclearisa-tion, the offi cial added.

Formal talksTrump and Xi were scheduled

to hold formal talks today. Before leaving for Beijing, Trump cited China as one of the countries that must fully enforce international sanctions against Pyongyang and downgrade diplomatic and com-mercial ties.

“To those nations that choose to ignore this threat or, worse still, to enable it, the weight of this crisis is on your conscience,” he said. While Trump will try to convince Xi to squeeze North Korea further with steps such as limits on oil exports and fi nan-cial transactions, it is not clear if Xi, who has just consolidated his power at a Communist Party congress, will agree to do more.

China has repeatedly said its leverage over Pyongyang is exag-gerated by the West and that it is already doing all it can to enforce sanctions.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that China fully and strictly implements UN Security Council resolutions on North Korea, but will investigate if there have been any contraventions.

During his speech in Seoul, Trump directed his words at North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “The weapons that you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your re-gime in grave danger,” he said.

“Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face.” However, Trump, whose strategy has stressed sanctions and military pressure instead of diplomacy, did not spell out any new approach.

North Korea has made clear it has little interest in negotiations at least until it develops a nu-clear-tipped missile capable of hitting the US mainland, some-thing US intelligence offi cials say it may be just months away from achieving. “North Korea is a country ruled by a cult,” Trump said in a speech that was inter-rupted several times by applause and ended with a standing ova-tion. He stopped short of repeat-ing the derisive nickname “little Rocket Man” that he has used to describe the young North Korean leader.

Kim, for his part, has called Trump “mentally deranged.” The speech came after Trump’s at-tempt to make an unannounced visit to the heavily fortifi ed bor-der separating North and South Korea was aborted when dense fog prevented his helicopter from landing, offi cials said.

Festive tuneA visit to the DMZ, despite

his aides’ earlier insistence he had no plans to go there, would have had the potential to further infl ame tensions with North Ko-rea.

Trump and his wife Melania were greeted at Beijing’s airport by a military band playing a fes-tive tune and schoolchildren jumping up and down and wav-ing American and Chinese fl ags.

They descended from a red-carpeted staircase rolled up to the main door of Air Force One. That was in contrast to a 2016 visit to China by his predecessor, Barack Obama, who was forced to exit his plane from a lower door in what was seen as a snub. And while in China, Trump will not be deterred from using Twitter, his favoured form of communication, despite its be-ing banned there, according to an administration offi cial.

“The president will tweet whatever he wants,” the offi cial told reporters on Air Force One.

“I’m sure we’ve got the gear aboard this airplane to make it happen.”

US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania visit the Forbidden City yesterday with China’s President Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan in Beijing, China.

A US flag flutters in front of a portrait of the late Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong at the Tiananmen gate yesterday during the visit by President Donald Trump to Beijing, China.

New Zealand mourns after ‘First Cat’ Paddles run over by car

New Zealand was mourning the loss of the nation’s “First Cat” yesterday after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s pet puss Paddles was run over by a car in Auckland. The prime minister’s off ice con-firmed that the ginger and white rescue cat, also described by Ardern as the PM (Prime Moggy), died in an accident on Tuesday. “To anyone who has ever lost a pet, you’ll know how sad we feel,” the 37-year-old leader wrote on Fa-cebook, urging people to donate to an animal rescue charity. “Paddles was much loved, and not just by us. Thanks for every-one’s thoughts.” Paddles proved a popular mem-ber of the prime ministerial house-hold after Ardern won off ice last month, with a Twitter account set up in her name, @FirstCatofNZ, attracting more than 11,000 follow-ers. Ardern insisted that the cat ran the account herself, saying she was “polydactyl”, with extra paws that looked like thumbs, allowing her to operate a keyboard. She said the cat’s social media ac-tivities were “an enormous source of amusement”. US magazine Van-ity Fair said the tech-savvy feline was “helping establish Ardern as the latest hip, cool world leader that America wishes it had”. Twit-ter users reacted with grief to the news, with some calling for a state funeral and others saying they were so upset they would have to take the day off work.

Myanmar says UN scolding could harm dialogue on crisisReutersYangon

Myanmar warned yester-day that a scolding de-livered by the UN Se-

curity Council could “seriously harm” its talks with Bangladesh over returning home more than 600,000 people who fl ed to es-cape a Myanmar military crack-down.

In a statement on Monday, the Security Council had urged Myanmar to “ensure no further excessive use of military force” and expressed “grave concern over reports of human rights vi-olations and abuses in Rakhine state”.

Responding, Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi, whose less than two-year-old civilian administration shares power with the military, said the issues facing Myanmar and Bangladesh could only be re-solved bilaterally, a point she says was ignored in the Security Council statement.

“Furthermore, the (Security Council) Presidential Statement could potentially and seriously harm the bilateral negotia-tions between the two countries

which have been proceeding smoothly and expeditiously,” Suu Kyi’s offi ce said in a state-ment.

In contrast, Bangladesh is-sued a statement saying Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali “appreciated the recent statement of the UN Security Council” during a meeting with a new resident co-ordinator of the United Nations in Bangla-desh.

The Myanmar statement said Ali had been invited to Myan-mar on November 16 and 17, but Bangladeshi offi cials told Reu-ters that the earliest the talks were likely to take place was during the minister’s visit for a regional meeting in the My-anmar capital of Naypyidaw on November 20 and 21.

The two sides have to agree a process for repatriation of Ro-hingya, with Bangladesh reluc-tant to fall back on the drill used for the return of Rohingya refu-gees to Myanmar in the 1990s, as it wants a more lasting solu-tion.

A senior Bangladesh foreign ministry offi cial said the United Nations should be involved in the process this time.

“For years, we tried to resolve

this issue bilaterally with Myan-mar, but it was in vain,” the offi -cial told Reuters. “This problem is not going to be resolved any-time soon. The UN’s involve-ment in the process is a must.”

A sour note was struck over the talks last week, as Bang-ladesh offi cials voiced outrage over Suu Kyi’s spokesman cast-ing suspicion that Bangladesh might drag its feet over the re-patriation process in order to fi rst secure hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid money.

Speaking at a conference for Commonwealth countries’ par-liamentarians in Dhaka, Bang-ladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called for more inter-national pressure on Myanmar. “I would request all of you to discuss Rohingya issue with ut-most priority and exert pressure on the Myanmar government to stop the persecution of its citi-zens and take them back at the earliest,” she said.

US Secretary of State Rex Till-erson is due to visit Myanmar on November 15, with moves afoot in Washington to table a bill calling for sanctions on Myan-mar that specifi cally target the military and related business

interests. In a nod to China, the Myanmar statement said it ap-preciated the stand taken by some members of the Security Council who upheld the prin-ciple of non-interference in the internal aff airs of sovereign countries.

To appease council veto pow-ers Russia and China, Britain and France dropped a push for the Security Council to adopt a resolution on the situation and the 15-member body instead unanimously agreed on a formal statement.

The United Nations has de-nounced the violence during the past 10 weeks as a classic example of ethnic cleansing to drive the Rohingya Muslims out of Buddhist majority Myanmar. Rohingya refugees say the mili-tary torched their villages.

The refugees’ have given har-rowing accounts of rape and murder.

Meantime, the exodus from Rakhine continues. Several thousand Rohingya reached Bangladesh last week, many wading through shallows on the Naf river on the boundary between the two countries, and some making a short, but peril-ous sea crossing in small boats.

Sydney school crash driver ‘deeply sorry’ for tragedy

Distraught children laid floral tributes at a Sydney school yesterday after two eight-year-old boys were killed by a car that smashed into their classroom, as the driver expressed her deep sorrow over the tragedy. The incident unfolded at the Banksia Road Public School on Tuesday when the car ploughed into a wooden classroom building with 24 students inside. Two boys bore the brunt of the impact and died, while three young girls are fighting for their lives, leaving the community in shock. The 52-year-old woman driver, Maha al-Shennag, has been charged with two counts of dangerous driving causing death and with negli-gent driving. Police have indicated the crash was being treated as non-intentional. Her lawyer Nick Hanna told the Sydney Daily Telegraph she was “deeply sorry for the loss and hurt suff ered by the children, the school, the families and the community.” “Her thoughts and prayers are with all those aff ected,” he added. Al-Shennag, reportedly a wid-owed mother-of-four who was dropping off a child at the school, has had her licence suspended. She was bailed to

appear in court on November 29. The school opted to open as usual yesterday, with coun-sellors on hand to support returning children, many in tears as tributes, flowers and teddy bears were left at the school gates. “I cannot begin to compre-hend the sadness being felt by the parents and families of the two young boys who have died in the tragic ac-cident at Banksia Road Public School,” New South Wales state Education Minister Rob Stokes said. “My thoughts and prayers are with their families and the entire school com-munity.” A local shopkeeper, who did not want to be named, said she knew the dead boys. “They would come into our shop wanting lollies and playing games,” she told AFP. “It has aff ected every single person we know. As a shop owner, and customers coming in and out, everyone is talking about it, it is really, really devastating.” Ambulance workers said they arrived to “a scene of carnage” with one father describing lifting the car off a dying boy. He said another badly injured classmate, who later died, lay a few feet away. “He was saying ‘I want my mum’. She wouldn’t have got to see him before he died.”

BRITAIN


A Roman temple has been restored to its original site seven metres below the City of London, using sound, lights and misty haze to bring the ruin back to life. Built in the third century, the London Mithraeum was discovered by chance in 1954 on a World War II bomb site. It became an instant public sensation, with up to 30,000 people per day queueing to see it. The temple was disman-tled and reassembled 100 metres away from its original location so the public could see it when post-war rebuilding on the site was complete. But now the ruins have been moved back and restored, deep beneath Bloomberg’s vast new European headquarters by the Bank of England.

Campaigners fighting the £12bn redevelopment of Earl’s Court claimed a major victory yesterday after being told that two estates due to be demol-ished could return to council control. Residents on the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates, now owned by developer Capco, received a letter from Hammersmith and Fulham council leader Steve Cowan telling them that it has been in talks with Capco “to radically improve the deal” for locals. The letter added: “Capco’s latest proposal is to develop a new masterplan for the Earl’s Court scheme. If that gets planning permission, we would see the two estates return to council control.”

A top chef whose leaking bath, jacuzzi and toilet dumped water and raw sewage on his downstairs neighbours has been ordered to pay more than £15,000 in damages. Emmanuel Bonneau and his wife Monique were sued by neighbours Christopher and Julia Kidder over a decade of “intermittent leaks and seepages” from their Pimlico home. The Kidders had raw sewage flowing through their ceiling and were forced to move out of their £900,000 flat temporarily in 2010, Central London County Court heard. Kidder, 52, said he and his wife had endured a “15-year nightmare” costing almost £130,000 in legal and other bills.

Finger-clinging plastic pets, a Toilet Trouble flushing game and a Star Wars Lego “astromech” robot are expected to be among the most coveted Christ-mas gifts this year, British toy retailers said The Toy Retailers’ Association also voted the Enchantimals Playhouse Panda Set and the L.O.L. Surprise Series 2 – a set of dolls in plastic spheres – into its top 12 DreamToys for Christmas. The most expensive toy in the list is FurReal Roarin’ Tyler, a life-like, interactive tiger cub retailing for £135. “This year’s DreamToys Top 12 is an exciting range of innovative toys that demonstrate the creativity of the toy industry,” said Gary Grant, chairman of the association’s Dream-Toys committee.

A cyclist whose head shattered a taxi’s wind-screen in a “horrific” crash yesterday spoke of his shock after being sued by the cab firm for up to £5,000 in damages. Sasha Evans, 28, said he was “lucky to be alive” after suff ering severe head trauma when he was thrown in the air following the collision with a Ford Galaxy at a junction in Nunhead. It was only when trying to take out a loan to cover his loss of earnings did he realise the minicab firm, The Keen Group, had made a claim against him. He claims the court summons were sent to an old address before judgement was imposed in his absence and he was ordered to pay £3,500 in damages, plus legal costs.

Roman temple restoreddeep under City of London

Developer rethinks Earls Court masterplan

Top chef ordered to pay neighbours £15,000

Roaring tiger and robot to be coveted toys: retailers

Cyclist sued for breakingcab windscreen in crash

HISTORICAL REPRIEVEVERDICT TREND LEGAL

Rail strikes causetravel disruptionGuardian News and MediaLondon

Rail passengers faced dis-ruption because of a series of strikes across fi ve train

companies.Members of the Rail, Mari-

time and Transport (RMT) union began a 48-hour strike at South Western Railway yesterday, the fi rst time the network had been hit by such action in the dispute. RMT members also struck work at Southern, where the dispute began last year, at Greater An-glia, Merseyrail and Northern, although staff at the last two will return to work today.

There was some hope for Southern passengers when driv-ers voted by a margin of 4-1 to accept a deal to end their long-running dispute over driver-op-erated trains. Members of Aslef backed the deal, which includes a 28.5% pay rise over the next fi ve years, by 731 votes to 193, a ma-jority of 79%. Turnout in the bal-lot was 87%.

Mick Whelan, the general sec-retary of Aslef, said: “Our mem-bers on Southern, after careful consideration and long and hard negotiations, have voted to ac-cept this resolution to our indus-trial dispute with the company.”

South Western, one of Brit-ain’s busiest commuter franchis-es, was yesterday running a third fewer trains owing to industrial action over the future of guards on trains.

There were picket lines at a number of stations, including Britain’s busiest station, Water-loo, in south London. The RMT described participation as “rock solid”. Commuters complained of cancellations and worse-than-normal overcrowding, while oth-ers adjusted their plans, taking diff erent routes or working from home.

The department for transport said the large majority of services were running, while the rail op-erators also sought to minimise the impact of the strike.

South Western, which faced the worst of the disruption, de-

ployed replacement buses on some routes and suggested its network was not badly aff ected. “Many passengers heeded our advice to travel earlier, and al-though services were busier than usual, everyone was delivered safely to their destinations,” a spokesman said.

Greater Anglia reported only minor disruption. Southern, which has long been beset by poor performance, had major delays on most of its routes de-spite pledging that most services would run normally.

The RMT argues that the pos-sibility of driver-only trains on South Western would discrimi-nate against older passengers and those with disabilities, with about 70% of the stations on the network unstaff ed.

South Western, like Northern and Greater Anglia, has said it has no plans to remove guards – but the RMT says the fi rms will not provide guarantees on this, while new trains entering serv-ice could be operated by a driver alone.

Dolphin dies afterbecoming beachedLondon Evening StandardLondon

A much-loved dolphin that was fi rst spotted in the Thames nine days ago has

died.The so-called ‘Thames Dol-

phin’ was found dead after be-coming beached on a foreshore of the river.

The animal, fi rst spotted on October 30, got into diffi culty near Wandsworth Bridge and was spotted struggling on land.

Michael White, a roofer who works at a building site on the Thames, said he and his col-leagues saw the mammal become stuck on Monday evening.

“We were at work just on the north side of Wandsworth Bridge and saw it beached on the bank,” he told the Standard.

“I phoned a number given for stranded animals and reported what had happened. I explained to them that it was beached in shallow water.

“But they did not do anything about it so when we came back on Tuesday morning it was dead.”

White said he “can’t know

100%” that it is the same animal spotted swimming around but believes it to be so.

His story was confi rmed by the Met’s marine team, who had pre-viously tweeted pictures of the animal.

They wrote on Tuesday: “Sad to tell you that a dead Common #Dol-phin was washed up on the fore-shore at Wandsworth yesterday.

“Our friends at @ZSLMarine will carry out tests to determine why it was in fresh water. There may be others so keep an eye out & report any sightings.”

A spokesman for the British Divers Marine Life Rescue said yes-terday they were waiting for the post mortem to be carried out before they could ascertain how it died.

“We did get a call to the Port of London Authority on Monday,” he confi rmed. “They went out in a boat to try and fi nd it but they could not fi nd it – so that may have been the same one. We do not know for sure.”

The animal had been seen near Putney Bridge, Kew and Rich-mond last week after it swam 40 miles up the Thames and was spotted again by offi cers from the Met’s marine team on Sunday.

Madame Tussauds unveils their new wax model of Prime Minister Theresa May in London yesterday.

Top cop tobe chargedover theftof sensitivedocuments

Guardian News and MediaLondon

A police chief is to be charged under the Offi cial Secrets Act after the theft

of sensitive documents from his car while he was one of Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism offi cers.

Marcus Beale, an assist-ant chief constable with West Midlands police, has been sus-pended, putting his career in jeopardy.

Documents that had been stored in a locked box were sto-len from an unmarked car Beale was using in May, as Britain faced a series of terrorist attacks and thwarted plots. Other items were also taken.

It was announced yester-day that Beale had been sum-monsed to face a charge under the 1989 Official Secrets Act of “failure to safeguard sensitive documents”.

After the theft, Beale was moved from his post oversee-ing the West Midlands coun-ter-terrorism unit, in which detectives and MI5 officers work alongside each other, to another non-terrorism-relat-ed role.

Beale would have had the highest security clearance. The West Midlands area is second only to London in its level of militant activity.

West Midlands police asked the Metropolitan police to in-vestigate whether the theft of the sensitive documents in-volved any potential criminal li-ability by Beale.

The Met investigation led to the decision that Beale should face the charge.

A new police chief has been put in charge of the West Mid-lands counter-terrorism unit.

The Met police said: “The summons relates to a Metro-politan police investigation into the alleged failure to safeguard sensitive documents after items were stolen from an unmarked police car in May.”

Further blowto premier as aid minister’s future in doubtAFPLondon

Britain’s aid minister faced the sack yesterday over unauthorised meetings in

Israel, as she became the latest Cabinet member caught up in a whirlwind of scandals rocking Prime Minister Theresa May’s government.

May summoned International Development Secretary Priti Pa-tel back from a trip to Africa to explain her talks with Israeli pol-iticians, in which she reportedly raised the possibility of Britain diverting aid to the Israeli army.

Patel had apologised on Monday for holding 12 separate meetings — including with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — during a family holiday to Israel in August, without notifying the Foreign Of-fi ce or Downing Street in advance.

After a public reprimand from the prime minister, Patel left London on Tuesday on a three-day trip to Uganda, but a govern-ment source said she was return-ing home at May’s request.

If she is sacked, Patel would become the second Cabinet min-ister in a week to leave May’s government, after Michael Fallon quit as defence secretary on No-vember 1 following allegations of sexual harassment.

Britain is facing its biggest peacetime challenge in Brexit, but May has struggled to keep her ministers in line since losing her parliamentary majority in a snap June election.

Months of public divisions over the negotiations with the EU have in recent days given way to scandals over foreign af-

fairs and sexual abuse.May’s deputy Damian Green

is being investigated for groping a journalist in 2014 — which he denies — while a similar probe is underway into the behaviour of junior trade minister Mark Gar-nier towards his secretary.

Foreign Secretary Boris John-son has meanwhile been accused of jeopardising the case of a Brit-ish woman jailed in Iran.

May put off a mooted reshuf-fl e after her election setback, but some MPs have called on her to act to assert her power over a government that looks increas-ingly adrift.

On Monday, Patel revealed details of her meetings in Israel, which included with NGOs and businesses, and said they were arranged by Lord Stuart Polak, the honorary president of lobby-ing group Conservative Friends of Israel.

But it emerged late Tuesday there had been another two un-authorised meetings in Septem-ber, with Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan in London and senior foreign ministry of-

fi cial Yuval Rotem in New York.“I don’t understand what more

she needs to do to be sacked,” one unnamed minister told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

During her meetings, Patel discussed the possibility of Brit-ish aid being used to support medical assistance for Syrian refugees arriving in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Down-ing Street said.

Reports suggest however that she did not explain to May that this involved supplying fund-ing to the Israeli army, which has facilitated the treatment of more than 3,100 wounded refugees in Israeli hospitals since 2013.

In a further development yes-terday, Israel’s Haaretz newspa-per reported that Patel visited a military fi eld hospital in the Golan Heights as a guest of the government.

Patel’s ministry declined to comment on the report.

Patel was a leading campaign-er for Britain to leave the Euro-pean Union in last year’s referen-dum, and is a prominent fi gure in May’s Cabinet.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson arrives for a meeting with US lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, yesterday.

Johnson in Washington

Smiling wax fi gure belies PM’s torment

Prime Minister Theresa May gained a wax doppelganger yesterday that projected an air of strength and permanence sorely lacking in her crisis-prone government. The wax figure of May, stepping out of Number 10 Downing Street in a red power suit and leopardskin kitten-heeled shoes, was unveiled by Madame Tussauds, a waxworks museum that is one of London’s top tour-ist attractions. The real May,

meanwhile, was battling multiple crises at once, with several of her Cabinet ministers embroiled in scandals, open strife in her party over how to deliver Brexit and persistent debate about her suitability for the job. “Whilst her policies may be questioned we can guarantee our wax figure of the prime minister is most definitely strong and stable,” said Edward Fuller, general manager of Madame Tussauds.

BRITAIN17Gulf Times


One in every200 people inUK homeless,reveals charityGuardian News and MediaLondon

More than 300,000 people in Britain – equivalent to one in every 200 – are of-

fi cially recorded as homeless or liv-ing in inadequate homes, according to fi gures released by the charity Shelter.

Using offi cial government data and freedom of information returns from local authorities, it estimates that 307,000 people are sleeping rough, or accommodated in tem-porary housing, bed and breakfast rooms, or hostels – an increase of 13,000 over the past year.

Shelter said the fi gures were an underestimate as they did not in-clude people trapped in so-called “hidden homelessness”, who have nowhere to live but are not re-corded as needing housing assist-ance, and end up “sofa surfi ng”. London, where one in every 59 people are homeless, remains Brit-ain’s homelessness centre. Of the top 50 local authority homeless-ness “hotspots”, 18 were in Greater London, with Newham, where one in 27 residents are homeless, worst hit.

However, while London’s homeless rates have remained largely stable over the past year, the fi gures show the problem is becoming worse in leafi er com-muter areas bordering the capital, such as Broxbourne, Luton, and Chelmsford.

Big regional cities have also seen substantial year-on-year increas-es in the rate of homelessness. In Manchester, one in 154 people are homeless (compared with one in 266 in 2016); in Birmingham one in 88 are homeless (119); in Bristol one in 170 are aff ected (199).

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: “It’s shocking to think that today, more than 300,000 people in Britain are waking up

homeless. Some will have spent the night shivering on a cold pavement, others crammed into a dingy hostel room with their children. And what is worse, many are simply unac-counted for.

“On a daily basis, we speak to hundreds of people and families who are desperately trying to es-cape the devastating trap of home-lessness. A trap that is tightening thanks to decades of failure to build enough aff ordable homes and the impact of welfare cuts.”

Although public perceptions of homelessness are dominated by rough sleeping, Shelter points out that the single leading cause of re-corded homelessness is the ending of a private tenancy, accounting for three in every 10 cases, and often triggered by a combination of soar-ing rents and housing benefi t cuts.

Shelter’s fi gures show that as of April this year 281,000 people were living in temporary accommoda-tion in Britain. A further 21,300 were in single homeless hostels or social services housing, while 4,500 were rough sleeping.

The government has set great store by its Homelessness Reduc-tion Act, which comes into force next year. This requires local au-thorities to actively take steps to prevent households at risk of homelessness tipping into crisis.

However, local authorities are concerned that funding for their new duties is insuffi cient, at a time when pressures caused by housing shortages, rising rents and ben-efi t cuts are increasing pressure on their housing departments.

Shelter warned earlier this year that more than a million house-holds are at risk of becoming homeless by 2020. Rising num-bers of families on low incomes are struggling to pay even the lowest available private sector rents in many areas, leading to ever higher levels of eviction and homeless-ness.

Prince Charles shakes hands with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi as Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, looks on ahead of their meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, India, yesterday.

Prince Charles hits backin lobbying claims rowLondon Evening StandardLondon

Prince Charles yesterday launched a defence of his fi nancial propriety as

he faced accusations that his private estate profi ted from an investment in an off shore com-pany run by a close friend which was involved in an industry for which the prince had lobbied.

The row over the decision by the Duchy of Cornwall — which provides a £20mn annual in-come for the heir to the throne — to buy shares in the Bermuda-registered business threatened

to overshadow his 11-day Com-monwealth tour to Asia.

According to the latest batch of leaked ‘Paradise Papers’ doc-uments the Duchy paid $113,500 (£58,000) in 2007 to buy shares in a business called Sustainable Forestry Management (SFM), set up to trade in carbon credits from “tropical and subtropical forests”.

Horsebreeder Hugh van Cut-sem, who the prince had known since the Sixties, was a director.

Shortly after the duchy bought the shares Charles re-leased a video in which he advo-cated a carbon credit market as a new way to protect rainforests.

Sources close to Prince Charles said he had no active role in Duchy investment deci-sions, stipulating only that his advisers do not invest in tobacco or petrochemical companies or fi rms that profi t from pornog-raphy.

A spokesman for Clarence House said: “The prince has never chosen to speak out on a topic simply because of a com-pany that The Duchy may have invested in.

“In the case of climate change his views are well known, in-deed he has been warning of the threat of global warming to our environment for over 30 years.

“Throughout this period he has highlighted many diff erent ways in which it might be pos-sible to slow or halt the damage that is being done.

“Carbon markets are just one example that the prince has championed since the 1990s and which he continues to pro-mote today.”

The shares were sold in 2008 for $325,000.

The furore came as Charles and Camilla touched down at New Delhi on the last leg of a tour that has taken in Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia.

Other revelations from the Paradise Papers, documents

hacked from the off shore law fi rm Appleby, show that:

* The international property empire of the Dukes of West-minster pumped dividends worth millions of pounds into companies in Bermuda and Pan-ama.

* Former Treasury minister James Sassoon, who has spoken in the Lords in defence of tax avoidance, is a benefi ciary of a Bahamas trust fund that has sheltered a family fortune since the 1950s.

It also separately emerged that the MPs’ pension fund has £6.6mn invested through an off shore unit trust in Jersey.

Pressure grows on Welsh Labour over Sargeant’s deathGuardian News and MediaLondon

Pressure is growing on the Labour government in Wales over the death of Carl

Sargeant, who apparently killed himself after being sacked as a minister amid allegations of har-assment.

The senior politician was dev-astated to lose his job and to be suspended from the Labour party, and friends have said he had not

been told the detail of the claims against him by the time of his death on Tuesday.

Sir Alistair Graham, a former chair of the committee on stand-ards in public life, called for a sen-ior lawyer to carry out a review. He said he did not believe Sargeant, a married father-of-two, had been dealt with fairly and said the deci-sion to remove him from the Cabi-net had been taken hastily.

“You don’t dismiss somebody from a position without fi rst going through due process,” he

told BBC Radio Wales.He said anyone being accused

should know the detail of allega-tions, be given time to consider them and have an opportunity to off er a defence before fi nal con-clusions were made.

The question of what, if any, formal pastoral care was off ered to Sargeant after he was sacked has also been raised.

“There is a duty of care. When serious allegations come which may go back many years then there can be a very serious shock

to people. They have to explain to their family that allegations have been made, they can feel extreme-ly vulnerable,” Graham said.

“There is a danger you get trial by media. Having a proper process gets put to one side and the pres-sure comes on the leaders of po-litical parties or the government to take immediate action. We should always remember that justice re-quires a fair process.”

The shadow minister for wom-en and equalities, Dawn Butler, said Labour’s policy was for an

accused person to be told what al-legation they faced, and she called for a full investigation.

“There needs to be an in-dependent professional body that comes out and investigates what happened in that circum-stance, because it doesn’t sound as though everything that should have happened, happened. It needs to be fully investigated and independently investigated,” she said during an interview with Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 5 Live.

“I don’t know what happened and how it transpired and how it was handled. But the Labour party’s process is that once there’s an allegation, the per-son is supposed to be told what that allegation is, because oth-erwise they’re not able to pro-duce a defence on the issue. So I’m not sure what happened, but the procedure defi nitely is (that) you’re supposed to be told what the allegation is.”

She said of Sargeant’s death: “It was just heartbreaking. Ter-

rible, terrible shock. And it’s kind of very sobering as well, because it highlights that trial by media is a dangerous route to go down, because the consequences are varied and stark, and in this case extremely tragic, and my condo-lences and love and hugs go out to his family and friends.”

Mark Tami, a friend of Sargeant and the Labour MP for his con-stituency, said the party had failed in its duty of care to Sargeant and all employers should learn lessons from the case.

Mothers cower in fearas gang storms cafeLondon Evening StandardLondon

Terrifi ed customers dived for cover after moped raid-ers stormed a cafe in one of

London’s most exclusive neigh-bourhoods.

The raiders snatched a diner’s laptop after using a hammer to smash the front window of Gail’s Bakery in Highgate, a short dis-tance from the homes of Kate Moss, Jude Law and Jamie Oliver.

Witnesses said those inside were mostly mothers who scram-bled for safety and fl ed to the lavatories, including one with her 18-month-old baby. Police said two suspects arrived on a scooter and one smashed the front win-dow of the cafe and grabbed a cus-tomer’s laptop before fl eeing.

One mother, who was sitting at the front of the bakery with a friend, said: “People started screaming and we all panicked and tried to escape under the tables. I have never been so scared in my life. For a few minutes we thought these were terrorists that were go-ing to shoot us all down.

“This is not any more about

burglary — this is pure terrorism to local communities.”

Another mother described hid-ing in the bakery’s bathroom with fi ve other people, saying: “I saw the moped approach and instinc-tively thought, ‘That doesn’t look right’. There were two of them, wearing helmets.

“They started smashing the window with hammers but it sounded like gun fi re and people just panicked. Tables were being upended.

“They struck that window with considerable force — a lot of force for a laptop. They do it to make people frightened.

“They know if they walk through the door somebody will try to stop them. These are tar-geted attacks — there should be a greater police presence on our streets.” Tom Molnar, Gail’s Bak-ery chief executive, said: “We worked to protect and comfort customers that were present and while a personal item was stolen, all left the bakery safely.”

The Met is linking the Highgate robbery at about 2.45pm on Mon-day to a series of mobile phone robberies in Jackson’s Lane fi ve minutes earlier.

Lynx on the loose blamed

for seven sheep deathsGuardian News and MediaLondon

A lynx that has been missing for a fortnight after escap-ing from a zoo enclosure

has been blamed for the killings of seven sheep close to the craggy hill she is lurking on.

Farmers’ representatives have expressed anger that Lillith the lynx remains at large and claim more needs to be done to get her back into her enclosure at the Borth Wild Animal Kingdom in north Wales.

Although Lillith was defi nitely seen close to the dead sheep, the zoo insists she is not to blame for the deaths of the animals. She has caught rats and possibly a rabbit while on the run, but is said to be looking skinny.

“If she had been eating sheep she would look like Garfi eld,” said zoo owner Dean Tweedy. “There are dogs, foxes and badg-ers around here. We don’t believe Lillith is to blame. The reports are nonsense.”

Nick Fenwick, head of policy at the Farmers’ Union of Wales, ex-pressed frustration that more had not been done to catch the lynx or warn the public and livestock owners about her.

He said the farmer, Owen Jenkins, was badly shaken when he saw the lynx close to the dead sheep. The sheep were found about 500 metres from the zoo on Wednesday last week but Jenkins had at fi rst not wanted it made public.

Fenwick said: “His sheep were in a wooded fi eld – perfect lynx territory. He went and fetched the zoo owner and when the pair came back the lynx was following about 10 metres behind them.”

The police and the Welsh gov-ernment have been informed, but he added: “People have been treating it as a joke. We had ex-pected some kind of statement to have been issued by now given possible dangers to livestock and members of the public.

“The failure to do this has led to speculation that the deaths are either not being taken seriously by

the authorities or are being kept from the public for some other reason.

“With talk of introducing lynxes to the north of England and even in Wales, this will raise many ques-tions about the damage just one of these animals can do in a few days.”

Phil Stocker, the National Sheep Association chief executive, said: “There cannot be a clearer warn-ing of the damage lynx will do if they are released into the wild.

“This incident also backs up what we are hearing from a number of sheep farmers in Scan-dinavia and other parts of Europe who tell us of high losses they’ve experienced from individual lynx that develop the behavioural characteristic of an opportunistic hunter.”

The young lynx was last seen in her enclosure on October 26. At fi rst, staff thought Lillith may have clashed with her mother, Dee, and was lying low in her enclosure.

On Sunday morning, zoo keep-ers went to check on Lillith to fi nd she had disappeared.

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and patron of national children’s mental health charity Place2Be, arrives for the annual Place2Be School Leaders Forum in London yesterday.

Charity initiative

EUROPE


Nato allies backed plans yesterday for two new military headquarters to

help protect Europe in the event of a confl ict with Russia, laying the ground for the US-led alli-ance’s biggest expansion in dec-ades.

Hoping to add to its deter-rent factor against Russia, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) defence ministers agreed to create an Atlantic command and a logistics command to help respond more quickly to threats in Europe, offi cials said.

“This is vital for our transat-lantic alliance,” Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference. “It is about how to move forces across the Atlantic and how to move forces across Europe.”

Costs will not be discussed until 2018 but the two new re-

gional bases have broad support and show Nato’s focus on its traditional task of defending its territory after out-of-area cam-paigns in the Balkans, Libya and Afghanistan in recent years.

Germany is eager to host the logistics command, diplomats said, given its strategic location straddling central Europe, al-lowing for swift movement of equipment and personnel across borders in the event of a confl ict.

Maritime nations such as Portugal, Spain, France and the United States could host the At-lantic command, diplomats said, stressing that no decision had yet been taken.

In a staggered response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, Nato has already put troops on rotation in the Baltic states and Poland, strengthened its pres-ence in the Black Sea and sought to modernise its forces.

The Kremlin, which denies harbouring any aggressive in-

tentions towards Europe, has condemned the moves as an at-tempt to encircle Russia.

Nato says that Russia’s war games in September, which massed tens of thousands of troops on the alliance’s eastern

fl ank, are another reason for it to be better prepared to deter Mos-cow.

Russia has increased its na-val patrols in the Baltic Sea, the north Atlantic and the Arctic and deployed submarines, Nato

offi cials say, although the size of its navy is smaller now than dur-ing the Cold War era.

“We want to pull Nato back to Europe, and we want to focus more on Nato’s maritime role,” Norway’s Defence Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen said.

The new Atlantic Command would survey a vast area and have the task of making sea lanes safe for US reinforcements to Europe, manned by experts in cyber warfare as well as conven-tional weapons.

The maritime area between Greenland, Iceland and Britain is a clear vulnerability for Nato in a confl ict and that needs better surveillance in peacetime, dip-lomats said.

The decision is unlikely to revive a much larger Cold War-era Atlantic Command that was disbanded in 2002, but it would mean an expansion for Nato af-ter years of cutbacks following the fall of the Soviet Union.

At the height of the Cold War,

the number of personnel man-ning Nato’s then 33 commands reached 22,000.

There are just seven such commands today, with fewer than 7,000 people.

Nato countries also agreed yesterday to provide cyber weapons to top commanders for use in military operations and missions, offi cials said, po-tentially allowing the alliance to take on computer hackers for the fi rst time.

The step follows Nato’s deci-sion last year to make cyber a domain of warfare along with land, sea and air, although until now commanders were limited to defensive tasks.

Under the agreement taken by Nato defence ministers, alliance commanders can now call on al-lies such as the US and Britain to take down a hostile server or a website, although the details have yet to be formalised.

“It may be a more proportion-ate response,” Stoltenberg said.

Nato allies agree on new military headquartersReutersBrussels

Stoltenberg: This is vital for our transatlantic alliance. It is about how to move forces across the Atlantic and how to move forces across Europe.

Protesters blocked roads and train lines across Catalonia yesterday, pro-

voking commuter anger in a strike called by a pro-independ-ence union after separatist lead-ers were detained in Madrid over their divisive secession drive.

Roads and major motorways were cut in about 60 places, causing widespread disruption in the region, which has been plunged into uncertainty over its now-deposed government’s bid to split from Spain.

But by early afternoon, the protests had eased, with only around six blockages remaining in the region, an interior minis-try offi cial said.

The independence crisis has shaken a European Union still getting to grips with Britain’s decision to leave the bloc, and raised fears of social unrest as well as prolonged disruption to the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy.

Yesterday Spain’s Constitu-tional Court struck down the declaration of independence made by Catalan lawmakers on October 27 – which led Madrid to dismiss the government and assume control of the region – declaring it “unconstitutional and void”.

Madrid is organising new re-gional elections in Catalonia for next month as it tries to stem the fallout from Spain’s deepest po-

litical crisis in decades.Huge banners were draped

across at least one tunnel in Barcelona, blocking entry, and activists also cut off main roads linking the region of 7.5mn peo-ple to France and to the Spanish capital.

At one protest in Sitges, southwest of Barcelona, dem-onstrators on a highway set up banners, deckchairs, and a table-top game of chess as long queues of motorists formed.

But despite the disruptions, the work stoppage was smaller than during a general strike on October 3 that followed Catalo-nia’s banned independence ref-erendum, in which 90% voted to break from Spain.

During that strike most shops and tourist attractions closed down in Barcelona, while they remained open yesterday, al-though the protesters blocked access to the heavily-visited Sa-grada Familia basilica.

Juan Antonio Puigserver, an interior ministry offi cial, said that participation in yesterday’s strike had been “minimal” in most sectors, except in educa-tion where it reached 31.5%.

A judge in Madrid last week ordered eight separatist politi-cians to be remanded in custody over their secession drive.

Deposed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who fl ed to Belgium where he is facing ex-tradition to Spain, on Tuesday criticised the EU for backing Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in the crisis.

“Will you accept the result of the Catalan referendum or will you continue to help Mr Rajoy in his coup d’etat?” Puigdemont said in Brussels.

Yesterday Belgian Prime Min-ister Charles Michel denied that his government was “in crisis” over Puigdemont’s presence, after Flemish separatist mem-bers of his coalition government spoke out in support of Catalan independence.

He added that Puigdemont’s presence in Belgium was a “mat-ter for the courts, not for the government” (see accompany-ing report).

Rajoy responded by tweeting: “We must respect the rule of law and therefore the independence of Belgian and Spanish judges.”

More than 2,000 businesses have moved their legal head-quarters out of the region as the turmoil drags on.

Yesterday’s walkout was called by the pro-independence CSC union but lacked support from Spain’s two largest unions.

Waving pro-independence banners and Catalan fl ags, dem-onstrators called for the release of sacked government offi cials and separatist lobbyists.

In Barcelona, several thou-sand gathered outside the Cata-lan government building, some of them holding banners read-ing: “This isn’t justice, it’s dic-tatorship.”

Isabel Nistal, 33, said that she and her husband showed up “to ask for the freedom of our gov-ernment, half of which is in pris-

on and the other half in exile”.Authorities said high-speed

train links with France were disrupted, with a Barcelona-Lyon train forced to turn back, but commuter trains were run-ning as normal by midday (1100 GMT).

New elections will be con-ducted in Catalonia on Decem-ber 21 and Rajoy called yesterday for “massive participation” in the vote.

Puigdemont has called for a united separatist front to partic-ipate, but a former government ally, the left-wing ERC party, on Tuesday ruled out running on the same ticket.

Spain’s Supreme Court in Madrid is due today to resume its hearings of six members of Catalonia’s dissolved parlia-ment, including speaker Carme Forcadell, for their role in the se-cession drive.

Travel chaos ensues as Catalans protestAFPBarcelona

Protesters play cards on top of a Catalan separatist flag while blocking the tracks inside the station of the high speed train AVE during a partial strike in Girona.

No Belgian ‘crisis’ over deposed Catalan leader: PM

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has denied that his government

was in “crisis” over the arrival of deposed Catalan separatist leader Carles

Puigdemont.

His presence in Belgium has sparked tensions between Brussels and

Madrid as well as within Michel’s coalition government, which includes

Dutch-speaking separatists.

“There is a political crisis in Spain and not in Belgium,” Michel said, ad-

dressing Belgian lawmakers for the first time since Puigdemont arrived

with four former ministers on October 30.

Michel added that the Belgian government’s “interlocutor” was the cen-

tral government in Madrid, later eliciting a welcome from Spanish Prime

Minister Mariano Rajoy.

The deposed leader’s presence is a “matter for the courts, not for the

government”, said the Belgian leader from the southern French-speaking

region of Wallonia.

“I will watch to make sure there is no interference in the independence of

the courts,” Michel said. “The Belgian government will ensure the great-

est respect of the rule of law.”

Belgian judges are reviewing a European arrest warrant filed by Spain on

charges of sedition and rebellion against the five Catalans.

The five fled to Belgium after Spain dismissed the Catalan executive and

imposed direct rule on the semi-autonomous region following the decla-

ration of independence by the parliament there last month.

As climate change-driven storms, fl oods and other disasters bring escalat-

ing fi nancial losses, how will the costs be paid? That’s a crucial question at the UN climate talks in Bonn this week.

Researchers say that losses from droughts, sea level rise and other climate-driven shocks are likely to reach hundreds of bil-lions of dollars a year by 2030 if planet-warming emissions con-tinue unabated.

Just the cost to the United States to repair the damage caused by this year’s hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria – in Tex-as, Florida, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands – is estimated to be tens of billions of dollars.

Attempts to curb planet-warming emissions are falling short and too little progress has been made in helping commu-nities and countries adapt to the changes.

That means “loss and damage is a reality now”, said Saleemul Huq, director of the Internation-al Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh.

The question of who might pay the mounting costs of disasters is a controversial one at the talks.

Developed countries – as the biggest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions – have been reluc-tant to discuss the costs, fearing that they could be held liable.

“There are currently no funds set up for loss and damage – that’s the main challenge, and what we want to see happening,” said Harjeet Singh, global lead on climate change for ActionAid In-ternational.

Plans for addressing loss and damage within the UN process are enshrined in the Warsaw In-ternational Mechanism for Loss and Damage, established in 2013.

The mechanism was created in the face of opposition from the US and some other industrialised countries that worried it could be used to make them pay for the costs of climate damage.

Four years on, though, the fl edgling mechanism has re-ceived little fi nance or resources.

Its experts are due to produce a technical paper on possible sources of fi nance by 2019, which suggests “nothing much is going to happen for the next two years”, said Singh. “We have no clarity on where money is going to come from.”

Developing countries looking for ways to address rising losses, however, say that it’s time to make the process begin to work.

Fiji’s ambassador for climate change, Nazhat Shameem Khan, told Reuters: “Having been ne-gotiated with so much diffi culty, it’s important that we ... should try to make (the Warsaw Inter-national Mechanism) work ef-fectively.”

Developed countries have looked at insurance as one way to cut the risks of extreme weather for poorer countries and distrib-ute recovery funds quickly in the aftermath of a disaster.

Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven, di-rector general with responsibil-

ity for global issues in Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development, said that climate risk insurance schemes have the advantage of off ering fast payouts which can give communities some protec-tion.

“Insurance doesn’t cover all the damage made, but it gives the country a cushion until the whole reconstruction eff ort can start,” she said. “The payout is relatively quick, and not depend-ent on donors.”

But insurance is no magic bul-let, aid agencies say.

The poorest who need it most cannot aff ord to pay for premi-ums unless they are subsidised, and insurance cannot cover the loss of something – such as a family photograph or cultural tradition – that has no economic value attached to it.

It also cannot deal with a so-called “slow onset” disaster, such as one caused by years of drought, said Timmons Rob-erts, who is researching ways to fi nance loss and damage in his

work as a professor in the Cli-mate and Development Lab in Brown University.

A range of other innovative ideas also are being explored to pay for climate-related losses, including taxes on fossil fuel companies, airlines and shipping companies.

Other options include a global carbon tax, and a tax on fi nancial transactions.

“My speculation is that loss and damage will gain some trac-tion when lawsuits really start to threaten corporations and coun-tries,” Roberts said.

With some 1,200 climate change laws now in place global-ly, the number of court cases are on the increase – with at least 10 new cases fi led every year since 2015, according to the London-based Grantham Institute on Cli-mate Change and the Environ-ment.

“The threat of a lawsuit you think would lead nations to ne-gotiate some kind of arrange-ment in exchange for protection against lawsuits,” Roberts said.

Climate-hit nations: Who will pay rising costs of disasters?By Alex Whiting, ReutersBonn

31,000 pooches take over LeipzigMore than 31,000 dogs descended on the eastern German city of Leipzig yesterday for a top international show.About 280 diff erent breeds and dog lovers from 73 nations are attending what organisers say is “a jam-packed programme” of events aimed at putting the pooches through their paces.This includes dog dancing championships, agility competitions, an international flyball tournament along with the European dog diving event in the city, which has a human population of about 560,000.“Happy and relaxed dogs, fit and healthy and embodying the very best their breeds have to off er – that’s what we can confidently predict we will see in the ring of honour,” said World Dog Show chairman Peter Friedrich.The World Dog Show has been held seven times in Germany since 1935.

Two poodles are prepared before a performance during a contest at the World Dog Show in Leipzig.

Newly-elected Sicily lawmaker held for tax fraudOne of the 70 lawmakers elected in Sunday’s regional elections in Sicily has been placed under house arrest on charges of large-scale tax fraud, the Italian financial crimes police said.Cateno De Luca, 45, is accused of engineering a fake invoices scheme with the head of a local small entrepreneurs association, Carmelo Satta, who is also on house arrest.The pair allegedly evaded €1.75mn ($2mn), the Guardia di Finanza said yesterday.De Luca, who was already a member of the regional assembly from 2006 to 2012, ran for the centrist UDC party in support of Nello Musumeci, a conservative who was elected president in Sicily with the backing of former premier Silvio Berlusconi.His opponents had labelled De Luca “unfit” for off ice due to previous brushes with the law: he is on trial for abuse of off ice and corruption in a previous mayoral role and has been fined €13,000 for misusing his regional assembly allowance.

Blast in Turkish factory kills fiveAn explosion at a textile factory in northwestern Turkey killed five people and wounded 16 others yesterday, the labour minister said, in what seemed to have been caused by a boiler, according to state media.The force of the explosion in the paint shop of the building caused the roof of the factory to collapse and left extensive damage to some nearby vehicles, footage from the scene, in the Gursu district of the northwestern Bursa province, showed.The state-run Anadolu news agency said a boiler caused the explosion, and off icials were investigating what happened.“Initial reports from the area show that five workers have lost their lives and 16 people, including citizens who were in the factory’s vicinity during the blast, were wounded,” Labour Minister Julide Sarieroglu said.She said the wounded were transferred to regional hospitals and that their conditions were not critical.“There are no risks at the moment, but it was a very big explosion that damaged the area,” Deputy Prime Minister Hakan Cavusoglu said.

Catholics told toput away phonesPeople should not be playing with their mobile phones during Mass, Pope Francis said yesterday, speaking to the faithful in St Peter’s Square.“It makes me very sad when I celebrate Mass here in the square or in [St Peter’s] Basilica and I see many mobiles raised. And it’s not only the faithful, but also many priests and bishops,” the Pope said.“Please! Mass is not a show!” he added, reminding that in Catholic Mass, the priest who celebrates “says ‘Lift up your hearts’ and does not say ‘Lift up your mobiles to take a picture’”.Speaking during his weekly audience, the Pontiff said that it was very important to “go back to basics” and rediscover the real meaning of Catholic rituals.

EUROPE19Gulf Times


At least 20 countries in the European Union will sign up to a new defence pact

next week, promoted by France and Germany, to fund and de-velop joint military hardware in a show of unity following Britain’s decision to quit the bloc.

After years of spending cut-backs in Europe and a heavy reliance on the United States through the North Atlantic Trea-ty Organisation (Nato) alliance, France and Germany hope the accord, to be signed on Novem-

ber 13 in Brussels, will tie nations into tighter defence collaboration covering troops and weapons.

The Permanent Structured Co-operation, or PESCO, could be the biggest leap in EU defence policy in decades and may go some way to matching the bloc’s economic and trade prowess with a more powerful military.

But diff erences remain be-tween Paris and Berlin over what countries legally bound by the pact should do, EU diplomats said.

The French wanted a core group of EU member govern-ments to bring money and mili-tary assets to PESCO, as well as a

willingness to intervene abroad.Germany has sought to broad-

en the pact to make it inclusive, which some experts say could make it less eff ective.

“This has to bring about a higher level of commitment if it is going to work,” said a EU offi -cial, describing PESCO as a “de-fence marriage”.

“The EU already has plenty of forums for discussion,” the offi -cial said.

So far France, Germany, Italy, Spain and around 16 other EU countries have pledged to join the pact, which could formally be launched when EU leaders meet in December.

Some other members, includ-ing Denmark, Portugal, Malta and Ireland, have yet to commit themselves publicly.

But it was clear that Britain, which intends to leave the bloc following the Brexit referendum of June 2016, would not partici-pate, offi cials said.

Britain has long sought to block EU defence co-operation, fearing that it could result in an EU army.

French diplomats said the pact would have several areas where EU governments would agree to work together and pledge funds, including EU military opera-tions, investment and acquiring

defence capabilities together as a group.

A German offi cial said the initiative won momentum from French President Emmanuel Ma-cron’s call for a European inter-vention force in September and US President Donald Trump’s insistence that Europe do more for its security.

Proposals for PESCO include work on a European medical command and a network of lo-gistic hubs in Europe, creation of a crisis response centre, and joint training of military offi cers.

A key goal is to reduce the numbers of weapons systems and prevent duplication to save mon-

ey and improve joint operations.It could also serve as an um-

brella for projects such as a Fran-co-German initiative to design a new fi ghter jet, and existing bilateral military co-operation agreements, such as the close ties between Germany and the Neth-erlands.

Eff orts under the pact will be closely co-ordinated with the US-led Nato alliance to ensure transparency and avoid any re-dundancies, the German offi cial said.

One area where Nato and EU offi cials see common ground is in the need for a military zone for free movement of troops

and equipment, loosely based on the EU’s passport-free travel “Schengen” zone.

“I welcome integration to the maximum extent practical. We obviously want to avoid duplica-tion and maximise transparency,” US Air Force General Tod Wol-ters, Nato Allied Air Commander, told Reuters.

Under the plans, Nato would focus on collective defence, while PESCO would ensure a quicker and more effi cient EU response to events like the 2014 Ebola cri-sis in Africa, the offi cial said.

“This will not happen in com-petition with Nato,” the German offi cial said.

EU to sign joint defence pactReutersBerlin/Brussels

Large cruise ships will be allowed back into the Venice lagoon, but will

be kept away from St Mark’s Square, the Italian government has announced, limiting a prac-tice seen as an eyesore and a po-tential environmental risk.

The decision was taken late on Tuesday, after more than fi ve years of debate.

The idea to restrict cruise ships in Venice was fi rst mooted in the wake of the Costa Con-cordia shipwreck, off the coast of Tuscany, in January 2012.

While cruise ships above 96,000 tonnes are currently banned from the Venice lagoon, new regulations will let them dock at the industrial port of Marghera, following a route quite distant from Venice city centre.

Mid-sized cruisers in the 55,000-96,000-tonne range will be made to follow the same route, but might be allowed to proceed from Marghera to the tourist port of Venice, provided that a connecting canal is up-graded, the transport ministry said.

Only cruise ships that are un-der the 55,000-tonne threshold will continue passing by the Giudecca Canal, which con-

nects St Mark’s Basin to Ven-ice’s tourist port, the ministry said.

The new rules should be op-erational within “about three years”, it added.

“After many months of study and very serious work, we have found a real solution,” Trans-port Minister Graziano Delrio said in a statement. “It is pos-sible to develop the port, to al-low the cruise ships in, without jeopardising Venice’s heritage.”

Cruise ship traffi c to Ven-ice has boomed in the last 15 years, along with overall tourist fl ows, creating employment but also leading many to question whether the fragile city could sustain ever-increasing tourist visitor numbers.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro hailed the latest decision and stressed the importance of the cruise

ship industry for the local econ-omy.

The Cruise Lines Interna-tional Association (CLIA), an industry group, was also satis-fi ed with the decision.

The new regulations “meet our twin goals of the long-term protection of Venice’s herit-age and an assured future for the valuable cruise economy of Venice and the Adriatic”, the CLIA said, calling for work on canal upgrades to start “as quickly as possible”.

On the other hand, anti-ship campaigners spoke of “the worst possible solution”.

Tommaso Cacciari of the No Big Ships Committee told RAI public radio that cruise ship traffi c would “even double” with the opening of Marghera port to tourist vessels.

Veniceban on large cruise ships is‘lifted’DPARome

This picture taken on June 16, 2012 shows a cruise ship in the Venice Lagoon.

France’s National Assem-bly has lifted the immu-nity from prosecution of

far-right leader Marine Le Pen for tweeting pictures of Islamic State (IS) group atrocities.

The decision was taken by a cross-party committee in charge of the internal func-tioning of the assembly, after a request from the authorities to lift Le Pen’s parliamentary im-munity over a crime that carries up to three years in prison.

The leader of the National Front (FN), who ran a failed bid for president this year, in 2015 tweeted three pictures of IS vio-lence.

One showed the body of James Foley, an American jour-nalist beheaded by the religious extremists.

The others showed a man in an orange jumpsuit being driven over by a tank and a man being burned alive in a cage.

“Daesh is this!” Le Pen wrote in a caption, using an Arabic ac-ronym for IS.

Circulating “violent mes-sages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity” and that can

be viewed by a minor, is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison and a fi ne of €75,000 in France.

Following a request from Fo-ley’s family, Le Pen eventually deleted the image of the Ameri-can, saying that she had been unaware of his identity.

In September, parliament also lifted the immunity of another FN lawmaker, Gilbert Collard, over similar tweets containing IS images.

Le Pen, a trained lawyer,

slammed the move as a “lowly, purely political decision” which violated her freedom of expres-sion.

“It’s better to be a (religious extremist) returning from Syria than an MP condemning the ignominies of IS,” she told AFP, suggesting that France was soft-er on IS members than their op-ponents.

The authorities began inves-tigating the tweets in December 2015 but were not able to press charges while Le Pen had pro-

tection from prosecution.At the time she was a member

of the European Parliament.That assembly voted in March

to lift her immunity but three months later she won it back after being elected to the French parliament for the fi rst time.

Yesterday’s decision of the 22-member Assembly com-mittee is the latest blow to the 49-year-old politician, who has appeared adrift since her defeat at the hands of Emmanuel Ma-cron in May’s presidential run-off .

After proving a formidable opponent, Le Pen lost to Macron with a lower-than-expected 33.9% to his 66.1% of the vote after fl oundering badly in a fi nal TV debate between the pair.

The FN also fared poorly in June parliamentary elections, taking just eight seats out of 577.

Tensions between rival party factions – one led by anti-im-migration hardliners, the other by anti-EU nationalists – burst into the open in September with the resignation of Le Pen’s right-hand man Florian Philip-pot.

Philippot was the architect of Le Pen’s strategy to detoxify the FN brand as well as her unpopu-lar plan to pull France out of the eurozone.

Le Pen stripped of Frenchimmunity over IS picturesAFPParis

Le Pen: tweeted three pictures of IS violence in 2015.

Ukrainian opposition lead-er Yulia Tymoshenko said yesterday that she has

faith in the United States justice system to do the right thing after last week’s indictment of Paul Manafort, the man who helped bring her arch-enemy to power.

A political survivor and the strident voice of Ukraine’s 2004/2005 “Orange Revolution”, Tymoshenko was jailed dur-ing the pro-Kremlin presidency of Viktor Yanukovych in 2011 in a case condemned by Western leaders as selective justice.

According to the indictment of Manafort, who was a con-sultant to Yanukovych’s Party of Regions before becoming Don-ald Trump’s campaign manager, Manafort used off shore accounts to secretly pay $4mn for a report on her imprisonment.

Ordered under house arrest as he awaits trial, Manafort has pleaded not guilty to a 12-count indictment on charges that in-clude money laundering and fail-ing to register as a foreign agent of Yanukovych’s government.

Money laundering allegations against Manafort are not new: Tymoshenko herself made them in a legal case she fi led in New York against Yanukovych, Man-afort and others that was dis-missed in September 2015.

“As a result of the work of Yanukovych and his circle, I ended up in prison,” the 56-year-old Tymoshenko said in an in-terview, in her fi rst public com-ments about Manafort since his indictment.

She said Yanukovych spent huge sums to blacken her name, “... without doubt this aff ected my life and that of my family and team in a certain way, and Ukraine as well”.

“That is why I believe that US justice will deal with the details, including our claims, and we will get a ruling from one of the most eff ective legal systems in the world – the US system,” she added.

Manafort joined the Trump presidential campaign in March 2016 and later became campaign manager, but he was forced to resign in August as questions emerged about his previous work for Yanukovych’s party.

Tymoshenko used her fi ery brand of oratory to try to hu-miliate Yanukovych, but the later proved her nemesis after beating her in a 2010 election for presi-dent.

She was charged with abuse of power in relation to a gas import agreement signed with Russia in 2009 as prime minister and was jailed.

She was freed from prison in February 2014 after Yanukovych fl ed into exile to Russia during the pro-Western Maidan pro-tests and she addressed crowds from a wheelchair on Kiev’s In-dependence Square because of chronic back trouble.

The crowd’s sympathy for her condition did not help her though to regain a place in the new pro-Western leadership and she lost to President Petro Poro-shenko in the 2014 election.

But the two-time prime min-ister who still sports a trademark peasant braid in her hair is now Poroshenko’s main challenger at presidential and parliamentary elections due in 2019, according to opinion polls.

Tymoshenko said Kyiv should have a new type of agreement with the International Monetary

Fund (IMF), which has propped up Ukraine’s economy with a $17.5bn aid programme condi-tional on economic reforms and tackling entrenched graft.

The IMF programme is in choppy waters: as of now Ukraine has refused to implement a sharp hike in gas prices that it had pre-viously agreed to, while the Fund is also studying whether recently passed pension changes pass muster.

“When I served as prime min-ister I co-operated with the IMF and I believe that Ukraine can have positive co-operation with the IMF,” she said, when asked whether she would do as the IMF says or abandon the programme. “But it seems to me that there needs to be a diff erent emphasis in this co-operation.”

Tymoshenko said that the pro-gramme should be focused not on what she termed a reduction in social spending, but instead on tax reform and reducing the size of Ukraine’s shadow economy.

Tymoshenko expects a fair US ruling after Manafort indictmentBy Matthias Williams, Pavel Polityuk and Alessandra Prentice, ReutersKyiv

Tymoshenko: As a result of the work of Yanukovych and his circle, I ended up in prison.

The United Nations has raised alarm that an es-calation of fi ghting in

east Ukraine could result in a deadly chlorine gas disaster.

Fighting between pro-Rus-sian separatist fi ghters and Ukrainian troops has intensifi ed near water, electricity and gas stations, threatening supplies in the Donetsk region as winter approaches.

Two water fi lter stations on

both sides of the frontline di-viding eastern Ukraine have been shelled over recent days.

“The UN is also extremely concerned about the possible release of hazardous chlorine gas stored at both fi lter sta-tions,” said the UN resident co-ordinator Neal Walker in a statement.

“If a single 900kg gas con-tainer is hit, anyone within 200m might receive fatal dose of the poisonous gas,” he warned.

Some 1.1mn Ukrainians could be deprived of clean water as a

result of the fi ghting, he said.More than 10,000 people

have been killed in the confl ict in east Ukraine that broke out in April 2014.

Ukraine and its Western allies have accused Russia of plot-ting and backing the separatists in retaliation for the February 2014 ouster of Kiev’s Kremlin-backed regime.

Moscow denies playing any role in the war and accuses the West of plotting an illegal “coup” in 2014 that saw Rus-sia lose control of its western neighbour.

UN concerned over high risk of chlorine gas disaster in UkraineAFPUnited Nations

Ex-secret police off icial jailedA senior off icial of Macedonia’s secret police was sentenced to 18 months in prison for destroying evidence that could have helped identify who was behind a wiretapping scandal that brought down a previous government.Goran Grujevski, who ran the secret police division conducting the wiretapping operations, was found guilty of destroying documents from the period when the wiretapping took place.He is awaiting extradition after his arrest in Greece last month.Macedonia was thrown into political turmoil in 2015, when opposition parties accused then-prime minister Nikola Gruevski and his counter-intelligence chief of orchestrating the wiretapping of more than 20,000 people.

Chennai gets Unesco recognition for music

French bands to tour India in Nov, Dec

14 off icers held overcash-for-jobs scam

The Telangana government has sealed the off ice of the State Wakf Board, pending an inquiry into alleged irregularities. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is likely to announce in the assembly today the nature of the probe and steps to be taken to protect the Wakf properties in the state. The revenue department late on Tuesday night sealed the off ice of the Wakf Board located in Haj House in Hyderabad, off icials said yesterday. The action came on the orders of Rao, who was unsatisfied with the answers by the board off icials about the protection of Wakf properties. At a meeting with top off icials to review the functioning of board, the chief minister enquired about Wakf lands and other properties and sought details.

A New Delhi court yesterday began the process to declare liquor baron Vijay Mallya an absconder in an alleged violation of foreign exchange rules. Public prosecutor Navin Kumar Matta told Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Sherawat that a non-bailable warrant (NBW) issued against Mallya was not executed. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) moved an application seeking to initiate proceedings to declare Mallya a proclaimed off ender in the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) case. The court listed the matter for December 18 for further hearing. The court was hearing the final arguments in the 2000 case related to alleged violation by Mallya of provisions of the erstwhile FERA in arranging funds to advertise his company’s liquor products abroad.

Telangana Wakf Boardoff ice sealed

Delhi court to declare Mallya ‘absconder’

IRREGULARITIESSCAM

Unesco has included Chennai in its list of Creative Cities for its contribution to music. Unesco Director General Irina Bokova said: “These new designations showcase an enhanced diversity in city profiles and geographical balance, with 19 cities from countries not previously represented in the network. The Unesco Creative Cities Network (UCCN) was created in 2004. It highlights its members’ creativity within seven fields: crafts and folk art, design, film, gastronomy, literature, media arts and music. “While diff ering geographically, demographically or economically, all Creative Cities commit to develop and exchange innovative best practices to promote creative industries, strengthen participation in cultural life, and integrate culture into sustainable urban development policies,” a statement on Unesco’s website said.

HONOUR MUSIC INVESTIGATION

Assam police yesterday arrested 14 off icers recruited by the Assam Public Service Commission (APSC) for their alleged involvement in a cash-for-jobs scam amid indications that another 11 off icers will be arrested soon. The 14 off icers included those from Assam Police Service (APS), Assam Civil Service (ACS) and allied services posted in various districts. They were picked up from diff erent locations early yesterday, the police said. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal commended the police for the “achievement against corruption” and said none of the off icers who had secured jobs through bribery would be spared. Our government has adopted a zero tolerance policy against corruption and the fight against corruption will continue.” The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Assam government came to power last year.

French bands Colt Silvers and Last Train will launch a multi-city India tour in November and December. The bands will perform as part of the third edition of the Bonjour India festival, which is curated and created by the French Institute in India in association with Alliance Francaise. Colt Silvers comprises vocalist Tristan, bass player Nicolas, guitarist Florian and drummer Julien. The band produces intense indie electro rock which is inspired by pop culture. Last Train is a story of four childhood friends - vocalist Jean-Noel Scherrer, guitarist Julien Peultier, drummer Antoine Baschung and bass player Timothee Gerard, who have been making music together for over a decade. They will begin the tour from Delhi on November 22, go to Chennai, Pondicherry, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Shillong, Guwahati, Kolkata and Gangtok.


INDIA20

Student heldfor murder ofschoolmatein Gurugram

Teenager who wanted exams postponed killed Ryan School student Pradhuman: CBI

AgenciesNew Delhi

Police yesterday arrested a student for allegedly slit-ting the throat of a seven-

year-old schoolmate in hopes the murder would lead to an exam be-ing postponed, federal investiga-tors said.

The 16-year-old is accused of killing Pradhuman Thakur, a Class 2 student of Ryan Interna-tional School in Gurugram, on September 8 in an attempt to de-lay an impending test and parent-teacher meeting.

Police had initially detained a bus conductor over the murder, claiming he killed the boy after the young pupil resisted a sex at-tack.

But a Central Bureau of In-vestigation spokesman said they had credible evidence against the “academically weak teenager, whose motive was to postpone the examination and a forthcom-ing parent-teacher meeting”.

“He admitted during ques-tioning that he wanted to shut the school to defer the exams and meeting,” CBI spokesman R K Gaur said.

A court in Gurugram in Hary-ana sent the Class 11 studen, who cannot be named for legal rea-sons, to three days in CBI custody.

Gaur said the bus conductor would remain in custody until cleared by a court of any wrong-doing.

Gurugram Police Commission-er Sandeep Khirwar said the CBI was doing its duty and Haryana police will co-operate with the agency.

Asked about police offi cials who allegedly forced Ashok Ku-mar to admit to the killing, he said the matter will have to be consid-ered.

CBI sources said many police offi cials, schoolteachers and stu-dents were under the agency’s scanner in the case.

The dramatic twist came after “inspection of the crime spot, scrutiny of CCTV footage, call records, statements and ques-tioning of several people” that revealed the suspect had carried a knife to the school on that day and used it to kill his junior school-mate, the CBI said.

“The weapon used in the com-mission of the crime is a knife which was recovered initially by police in Gurugram. It is now with us,” the spokesman told reporters here.

He said Pradhuman was a ran-dom target.

And after the killing, the school was shut for days.

The offi cer said the prime sus-pect was interrogated mainly on the basis of CCTV footage, which showed him coming out of the school toilet where Pradhuman’s body was found with his throat slit - a crime that generated shock and revulsion.

The father of the Class 11 student said his son was being framed.

He said his son was taken in for questioning by the CBI on Tues-day.

“The CBI told me that my son was being held because he had

murdered Pradhuman,” the father said.

“We have been co-operating with the police from day one. The CBI questioned him repeatedly and we co-operated.”

The CBI took over the case on September 22 from Haryana po-lice, nearly two weeks after Prad-human was found dead.

The teenager was produced before the Juvenile Justice Board in Gurugram that decided to treat him as minor according to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 and sent him to three days of CBI custody as requested by the agency.

The CBI wanted his custody to know about the murder weapon, the planning of the crime and the motive.

The Haryana police had ear-lier claimed that Pradhuman was killed by school bus conductor Ashok Kumar inside the toilet.

While Ashok Kumar was ar-rested and is still in custody, Prad-human’s parents and two other staff ers have maintained that the conductor was being made a scapegoat and that someone else committed the crime.

The crime made national head-lines and stoked concern among parents over safety in schools.

India’s swelling middle class has fuelled the growth of private schools in a country where pub-lic education is under immense strain.

Much prestige is placed on aca-demic achievement and children face intense pressure to score good grades.

Experts say this has aggravated stress and mental illness among teenagers.

DMK not tying upwith BJP: StalinIANSMadurai

The Dravida Munne-tra Kazhagam yesterday scotched speculation it

was getting close to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

DMK leader M K Stalin said the “dream” of some people of such a possibility cannot be re-alised and warned Prime Minis-ter Narendra Modi’s government that his party will not be cowed down by threats in its opposition to the Centre on demonetisation and other issues.

He said Modi calling on his ailing father and DMK chief M Karunanidhi in Chennai on Mon-day was a “humanitarian” gesture and nothing more than that.

Wearing a black shirt along with cadre of DMK and allies, Stalin broke his silence on the issue while speaking at the op-position-sponsored “Black Day” protests here. The DMK had called off the protests in Chennai and coastal districts because of heavy rains.

“The PM called on Kalaignar (Karunanidhi). It was a human-itarian gesture. Immediately media speculated as if some compromise has been reached. People even went to the extent of saying a political alliance has been struck (between the DMK and BJP). A humanitar-ian gesture has been twisted by some whose dream will not be allowed to be realised,” Stalin said.

The meeting between Modi and Karunanidhi triggered me-dia and political speculation that the DMK could join hands with Modi amid a political churning in Tamil Nadu after the death of J Jayalalithaa and the serious infi ghting in the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Ka-zhagam.

Stalin said the decision to junk high-value notes last year came as a bolt from the blue.

“The country secured inde-pendence at midnight and lost it too at midnight,” he said, refer-ring to Modi’s speech in the night last year announcing demoneti-sation.

Advani turns 90, greeted by leaders of all partiesIANSNew Delhi

Bharatiya Janata Party veter-an L K Advani, who turned 90 yesterday, was greeted

by leaders across the political spectrum with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying his eff orts had richly contributed to building the party.

Those who greeted the nona-genarian leader included Con-gress vice president Rahul Gan-dhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Advani, a former deputy prime minister, started his day by greet-ing 90 blind children at his resi-dence and took breakfast with them.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Home Minister Ra-jnath Singh visited Advani’s resi-dence to greet him.

“Visited residence of former Dy PM, Hon’ble Shri L K Advani ji and conveyed my best wishes on his birthday. May god bless him and I wish him good health and a very meaningful long life,” Naidu said in a series of tweets.

Former president Pranab Mukherjee also extended his “warm birthday greetings.”

“May you be blessed with good health and many more years in service to the nation,” he tweeted.

Modi conveyed his greetings in a series of tweets.

“Birthday greetings to re-spected Advani Ji. I pray that he is blessed with good health and a long life.”

Describing Advani as a political stalwart, Modi said: “He is a leader who has distinguished himself through hard work and dedication towards our nation. We BJP kar-yakartas (workers) are fortunate to always receive the guidance of Advani Ji. His eff orts have contrib-uted richly to the building of BJP.”

Lalu Prasad took a veiled dig at

Modi in his congratulatory tweet, saying Advani should not mind his disciple turning “hostile.”

“Warm Birthday greetings to Advani Ji! Never mind if any dis-ciple turns hostile. May God bless you more cheerful, healthy, long & successful life ahead!”

Parliamentary Aff airs Minis-ter Ananth Kumar and BJP gen-eral secretary Ramlal were among those who visited Advani’s resi-dence at Prithviraj Road in central Delhi to wish him.

“Wishing Sh Advani ji on his birthday. A great leader himself and a mentor to many of us. May God grant him a long and healthy life to guide the nation,” Ananth Kumar tweeted and shared a pho-tograph of him touching Advani’s feet.

“Happy Birthday, Advani ji. Have a lovely day,” Gandhi said in his tweet.

Housing and Urban Develop-ment Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said Advani had been a men-tor and a guide.

“B’day Greetings to Shri LK Advani. Wishing him long life, good health & happiness. Mentor and guide to us individually and @BJP4India collectively,” he said.

Banerjee said: “Wishing a very happy birthday to Lal Krishna Advani Ji. Health and happiness for a long life.”

BJP chief ministers including Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), and Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh) were among those who greeted Advani.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh greets senior Advani on his 90th birthday in New Delhi yesterday.

CBI off icials produce a16-year-old student of Ryan International School accused of murdering Pradhuman before the Juvenile Justice Board in Gurugram yesterday.

Kerala CMto tablesolar probereport today

IANSThiruvananthapuram

The Kerala government will table the solar judicial commission probe re-

port in the state assembly today, which could put the Congress in a tight spot as the report has criticised former chief minister Oommen Chandy’s offi ce for al-leged involvement in the scam.

Never before in the history of the state has the tabling of a judicial probe report witnessed such heightened political activ-ity. The more than 1,000-page report of Justice G Sivarajan has criticised a huge number of top political leaders, including Chandy, his cabinet colleagues, sitting legislators, Lok Sabha members, former legislators and others.

The multi-million solar en-ergy investment fraud that rocked the Chandy government in 2013 was led by Saritha Nair and her live-in partner Biju Rad-hakrishnan.

Saritha had close links with three of Chandy’s offi ce staff , who were dismissed after the case surfaced in 2013.

On October 11 this year, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took the fi ndings of the report to the cabinet.

Vijayan, known for his tough stand including against politi-cal rivals, has taken forward the report. He not only decided to accept the probe report but also revealed the actions that his gov-ernment would take by appoint-ing a high level police probe team to register cases of corruption, and also criminal cases for al-leged sexual exploitation against Chandy and the other accused, as claimed by Saritha.

After Vijayan announced these actions, Chandy and oth-ers slammed the report and pointed out that the commission has gone beyond its brief.

Chandy made a valiant at-tempt to get a copy of the report, but failed, and then the Congress Party demanded that the gov-ernment call a special session of the assembly, as all such judicial reports have to be fi rst laid on the table.

INDIA21Gulf Times


A year after cash ban, blackmoney market is still thrivingAFPNew Delhi

When India declared most bank notes unusable a year ago in an eff ort

to fl ush out tax cheats, one steel manufacturer was so spooked he resolved to do business by the book in future.

But 12 months on from the shock move, the industrialist says he has gone back to cash under the table at the insistence of his buyers - undermining government claims that the bold scheme has cleaned up India’s graft-ridden economy.

Prime Minister Narendra Mo-di’s decision last November to withdraw high-value notes was intended to root out a culture of tax evasion so widespread it had become the norm.

His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won the 2014 election on a promise to root out corruption, which had led to popular disillu-sionment with the previous gov-ernment.

But the move wrought havoc on businesses in Asia’s third-largest economy, causing growth to slump to levels not seen since Modi was elected.

Now, as businesses from street-side stalls to wholesalers rekindle their love aff air with cash, Modi is coming under pressure to explain whether the most controversial policy of his tenure was worth the economic pain.

The steel producer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said his eff orts to keep business above board backfi red when his buy-ers insisted on paying cash - and keeping their payments off the books.

“They said, ‘we have cash at home, and if you want to be paid, we can pay you in cash immedi-ately, but we cannot arrange a bank payment’,” he told AFP.

The government had hoped the surprise move, which meant high-

value notes could not be spent and instead had to be banked, would encourage a switch to trace-able digital payments in a country where just 3% had been paying taxes.

Modi personally championed credit and debit cards in the after-math of demonetisation, beaming down from billboards encouraging people to embark on a digital revo-lution.

But sales from plastic have de-clined 13% from highs in Decem-ber 2016, when new cash notes remained scarce.

Mobile banking fi gures for Au-gust, the latest data available, showed $16bn in transactions - a 20% drop compared with Novem-ber.

Sanjay Moria, a tea vendor in central Delhi, said at least half his income in the weeks after demon-etisation came through a popular payment app, but since then, dig-ital sales had plunged.

“I’ll take any form of payment, but people are mostly back to paying in cash,” he said, as offi ce workers sipped hot spiced tea from small paper cups.

Many poorer people, reliant on cash, were left scrambling to buy basic necessities as their meagre savings evaporated in an instant.

“Was it worth it? Certainly not,” said Sunil Sinha, principal econo-mist at India Ratings & Research.

“It brought huge pain and dis-ruption. People lost lives, lost their livelihoods.”

Authorities also expected that a portion of non-tax payers would fail to bank their unusable cash for fear of exposure. But in August the Reserve Bank of India announced that 99% of the devalued notes had been returned, undermining Modi’s claim that stashes of black money would be uncovered.

Now traders say they are oper-ating much as they did before the ban, with cash once again king, as fears of being stung by the taxman have faded.

Vehicles drive through heavy smog in Delhi yesterday. The Delhi administration described the city as a “gas chamber.”

Govt under fi re as Delhipollution level surgesAgenciesNew Delhi

Delhi’s government yester-day ordered schools shut for the rest of the week as

air pollution worsened and criti-cism mounted over the failure of authorities to tackle the public health crisis.

Thick smog swathed Delhi, where pollution readings in some places peaked at 500, the most severe level on the government’s air quality index that measures poisonous particles.

“The air quality in Delhi is de-teriorating. We cannot compro-mise with the health of children

at this stage,” said Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, order-ing the closure until Sunday.

The Delhi administration, which described the city as a “gas chamber”, had previously or-dered schools for young children to close only for yesterday.

The federal health ministry also advised people with breath-ing problems and children to re-main indoors.

“People should avoid morn-ing walk or any other strenuous outdoor activity that increases breathing rate,” the ministry said in a statement.

Anti-pollution measures adopted by the Delhi state gov-ernment in recent years include limiting car use and taxing trucks that pass through the city, but few have succeeded.

Prime Minister Narendra Mo-di’s government also urged Delhi

and the surrounding northern states to immediately tackle dan-gerous levels of pollution in the capital, even if that meant de-ploying helicopters to spray jets of water.

“Every possible step required to tackle the situation has been already identifi ed, and the need of the hour is to put them into action,” federal Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan wrote on Twitter, using the hashtag “#DelhiSmog”.

Vardhan also urged the sur-rounding states of Punjab, Har-yana and Uttar Pradesh to ban burning on farms, which is seen as a major contributor to the dirty air, along with high vehicle emissions and dust from con-struction sites.

The Delhi government said it had sought meetings with state ministers to discuss the burning,

provoking protest from many who saw the measure as being too little and too late.

“Nobody seems to get the gravity of the problem,” said Dr Naresh Trehan, the chairman and managing director of the Medanta Heart Institute.

Last November, the city’s worst pollution in nearly 20 years forced about a million children to miss school, while thousands of workers reported sick and people queued to buy face masks.

Residents are worried this year as well. The Indian Medical As-sociation has urged organisers to call off Delhi’s biggest race set for November 19, to protect run-ners and volunteers. If pollution increases, emergency measures, such as the suspension of con-struction activity, will kick in, the Delhi government has said.

Long-term measures, such as

improving public transport and banning the use of dirty industry fuel, are required, said Anumita Roychowdhury of New Delhi’s Centre for Science and Environ-ment.

“Without the systemic chang-es, the scope and impact of the emergency measures will be lim-ited,” she added.

The thick blanket of smog caused a major vehicle pile-up on a busy highway on the outskirts of Delhi, reports said.

High pollution levels were driving a major surge for air pu-rifi ers in New Delhi and its sub-urbs, Amazon.com Inc’s India unit said.

Air purifi er sales have surged 150%, along with a 260% in-crease in demand for face masks this year, Amazon said, adding that air purifi er sales have risen 600% in the last month.

IndiGo takes responsibility for assault on passengerAgenciesNew Delhi

IndiGo said yesterday it takes responsibility for an inci-dent in which its security

staff manhandled a passenger at New Delhi airport, a day after the event prompted the government to launch an investigation into In-dia’s biggest airline.

In a video, widely shared on social media and televised on lo-

cal news channels, at least two IndiGo staff members can be seen pinning a passenger down on the ground after an argument on the tarmac.

In a seven-page report ad-dressed to Civil Aviation Minis-ter Ashok Gajapathi Raju, IndiGo used multiple screenshots from the video to explain the reasons behind the incident and what transpired between the passenger and its employees.

“We fi nd this incident ex-

tremely regrettable and wish that we would have handled this dif-ferently,” IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh said in the letter.

“Whatever may have been the provocation, whether verbal or physical abuse, we could have tried to display more restraint,” Ghosh said while defending some of the actions of his em-ployees which he says were taken to ensure the passenger’s safety.

The video showed Rajiv Katyal Katyal, who arrived from Chen-

nai, waiting for a bus at the air-port when the incident took place.

Terming the incident as “un-acceptable”, Minister of State for Aviation Jayant Sinha said on Tuesday that the government would decide what action to take once IndiGo submits a report.

IndiGo, owned by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, fl ies about one in every two passengers in India.

It said it had apologised to the passenger on the day of the inci-

dent which occurred on October 15.

“What transpired was some-thing that is not in accordance with the laid down procedures and resulted in an incident which is a departure from IndiGo’s ethos,” Ghosh said in the report, adding that while the investiga-tion was going on the employ-ees involved were immediately sacked.

One of the employees is Montu Kalra who shot the video.

The airline said that Kalra was indeed the one who “instigated the incident and further pro-voked the customer by beginning to shoot a video on his mobile phone”.

It said Kalra was a cargo em-ployee and had no reason to ap-proach the passenger area.

According to Ghosh, Kalra, who “is claiming to be the whistle-blower, is the one you can hear shouting in the video and in-structing the other two colleagues

who were junior to him to prevent the customer from boarding the bus and holding him back at the ramp area itself”.

He said: “It is important for us to point out that Kalra was not terminated because he either shot a video or, as he is now claiming, brought this to our attention.”

The airline also clarifi ed that another of its employees Juby Thomas was the one who brought the incident to the company’s no-tice.

Man jailed for life for raping nunAFPKolkata

A Bangladeshi man who raped an elderly nun was sentenced to life in prison

by a Kolkata court yesterday, in a case that has fuelled anger at high levels of sexual violence.

The 71-year-old nun needed surgery after the attack in March 2015 when a gang of robbers broke into the convent school where she lived.

“What happened to the eld-erly nun is a blot on West Ben-gal’s legacy where Mother Teresa worked for the poor,” additional judge Kumkum Singha told a packed court in state capital Kolkata, where church offi cials and some nuns from the convent were present.

On Tuesday the court found Nazrul Islam guilty of rape and attempted murder, among other off ences.

Five others arrested, found guilty of charges unrelated to the sexual assault, were sentenced yesterday to 10 years in prison.

The nun, who moved out of

the state after the assault, trav-elled to Ranaghat and identifi ed the accused from a police line up, chief public prosecutor Tamal Mukerjee told AFP.

“She strode straight towards the accused and identifi ed him by touching his hand,” he said.

Thomas D’Souza, the Arch-bishop of Kolkata, told AFP, “The incident shook the conscience of people. It took the church a long time to recover from the ghastly incident.”

The nun, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was attacked after the robbers ran-sacked the school in Ranaghat and stole cash and other items.

Priests and schoolgirls took to the streets demanding justice.

Well-wishers closed shops, shuttered schools and held can-dlelit vigils outside the hospital where the nun underwent sur-gery for injuries suff ered during the attack.

Police came under fi re for per-ceived inaction after 10 men were detained but no arrests made, despite the faces of some at-tackers being captured on CCTV footage.

Himachal Pradesh to hold

assembly elections todayIANSShimla

Himachal Pradesh will hold crucial assembly elections today.

The elections to 68 constitu-encies will be held in a single phase in the Congress-ruled state, where the Bharatiya Ja-nata Party is determined to take power.

Offi cials said everything was in place for a smooth conduct of the polling in 7,525 booths.

A total of 5.25mn voters, in-cluding 1.9mn women and 14 transgenders, will decide the fate of 338 candidates, 19 of them women. The vote count will be held on December 18 along with that of Gujarat.

The Communist Party of In-dia (Marxist) has fi elded candi-dates in 14 seats while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which made its debut in the hill state in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, has preferred to stay away.

Political observers say the contest between the Congress and the BJP is neck and neck as there is no clear wave in favour of any party.

It is literally a do-or-die bat-tle for both chief ministerial fac-es. Both are struggling for their political survival.

One is veteran Congress lead-er and incumbent Chief Minis-ter Virbhadra Singh, 83, who is pushing hard to get to the helm for a seventh time.

The other is the BJP’s Prem Kumar Dhumal, 73, who is mak-ing a strong bid to ensure the party’s win with a record margin to silence his detractors within the party.

For almost two decades, both parties in the state have fought almost every assembly and Lok Sabha polls under their leadership.

“This time, Virbhadra Singh is fi ghting on two fronts - one is to establish his son Vikrama-ditya Singh, who is contesting his maiden assembly election, and the second is to ensure the

party’s repeat as he forced the Congress to announce him as the chief ministerial candidate despite all odds,” a political ob-server said.

For Dhumal, it’s simply the battle for “self-survival” after facing a humiliating defeat in the 2012 assembly polls. Since then, he was almost marginalised by the BJP faction led by federal Health Minister J P Nadda.

After thwarting foes within, Virbhadra Singh donned the battle gear much ahead of his arch rival Dhumal, whose name was cleared by the BJP as its chief ministerial candidate just days earlier.

Interestingly, both Virbhadra Singh and Dhumal are seeking re-election from new seats and that is not going to be easy for them.

The Congress leader is in the fray from Arki in Solan district, a BJP pocket borough that he chose himself. Dhumal is con-testing from Sujanpur, the seat he was asked to contest from.

Off icials check electronic voting machines ahead of crucial polls, in Dharamsala Himachal Pradesh.

Schools shut for rest of week; health ministry advises people, children to remain indoors

The Brazilian government will propose a watered down version of its unpopular pension reform this week because the original bill does not have enough votes to pass Congress, its deputy lower house whip said yesterday. Congressman Darcisio Perondi said a deal could be agreed today and the governing coalition will table a “more palatable” proposal tomorrow. The amendment will keep the establishment of a minimum retirement age of 65 for men and 62 for women, but other details such as required years of contributions must still be worked out, Perondi said. The average retirement age is now 55.

The Ecuadorian prosecutor’s off ice announced it will press tax fraud charges against Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht — also embroiled in a corruption scandal spanning Latin America and Africa. Odebrecht is accused of failing to declare $120mn of revenue in Ecuador between 2012 and 2016, chief prosecutor Carlos Baca said. “We have asked the justice department to set a day and time to formulate charges,” Baca said. The allegations against the company, which has yet to respond, rose following a review of an internal revenue service report filed last March. Meanwhile, 18 people in Ecuador are accused of playing a part in the ongoing Odebrecht corruption scandal.

France has sold five used Super Etendard fighter planes to Argentina, which has an outdated military fleet and is hosting large international events in coming years, the French ambassador in Buenos Aires said. The planes were negotiated during talks over the sale of four ships from French shipbuilding company Naval Group to Argentina, a discussion that Ambassador Pierre Henri Guignard said in an interview is ongoing. “We parted with five Super Etendard fighters that are a bit old but important for them,” Guignard said. He said the planes would allow Argentina to have some operating planes before the Group of 20 summit it will host at the end of next year.

Ecuador has asked Argentina to recall its ambassador to Quito after he called Ecuadorians dirty. Luis Alfredo Juez earlier told Argentinian media that he had taken a shower and changed clothes because he did not want to be told that “I’m filthy and picked up Ecuadorian habits.” The foreign ministry said that the ambassador’s comments “off end the dignity of the Ecuadorian people and contradict the respect and friendship that should govern the relations between the two countries.” Deputy Foreign Minister Rolando Suarez asked Argentinian charge d’aff aires Carlos Catella to handle the request to Buenos Aires to recall the ambassador.

The Colombian police said they had arrested the alleged killer of a black community leader campaigning to stop farmers growing coca plantations for the country’s cocaine lords. Aris Caicedo had been captured by police in neighbouring Ecuador and handed over to Colombian authorities at a bridge on the two countries’ border, a police statement said. He had been on the run since the murder of community leader Jair Cortes. Drug lords in the tense Tumaco region had threatened Cortes and other community leaders for encouraging the substitution of the illegal cultivation of coca leaves. He was shot dead in the municipality on October 17.

Ecuador accuses Odebrecht of tax fraud

France sells five used fighter planes to Argentina

Brazil ‘to dilute unpopularpension reform bill’

Ambassador’s remarksanger Ecuadorians

Police arrest alleged killerof community leader

CRIMEDEFENCEDECISION CONTROVERSY LAW AND ORDER

Bogota ‘winning fi ghtagainst child labour’

Argentina will contest USbiodiesel tariff s: Macri

Thomson Reuters Foundation Bogota

The number of children working in Colombia has fallen by nearly 300,000

in the past four years but child labour remains rife in rural areas, researchers have said.

The percentage of chil-dren aged fi ve to 17 working in the South American country dropped to 7.8% in 2016 from 10.2% in 2012 — equivalent to 291,000 children — according to a report by the National Un-ion School (ENS) research cen-tre.

While Colombia’s child labour rates have fallen, about 850,000 children still work and are not in school, either full-time or at all, said the report.

Most children are found working in the agriculture, cattle ranching and forestry sectors, as well as in hotels and restaurants, the report said.

It is still common to see chil-dren working on city streets as vendors and cleaning car wind-screens, as well as on farms.

“It’s indisputable that as long as working conditions of adults don’t improve..children will continue to be part of an alter-native generation of income for families,” the centre, based in Colombia’s city of Medellin, said in its report.

Further driving child labour rates are local cultural attitudes, under which work is seen as character building for children and as a normal part of develop-ment, the report said.

Under Colombian law, chil-dren under 15 are not allowed to work and no child can be em-ployed in a hazardous job that poses a risk to health or life.

In rural areas, child labour rates are nearly double that of urban areas, the report noted.

“This diff erence is under-standable, but not acceptable, given the lack of decent work in the countryside and access to services such as education,” the report said.

Hundreds of children in Co-lombia have also been forcibly recruited by gangs to work as couriers of drugs and arms, ac-cording to human rights groups.

ReutersUnited Nations

Argentine President Mau-ricio Macri said his gov-ernment would defi nitely

appeal to the World Trade Or-ganisation if the US commerce department followed through on threatened duties on Argentine biodiesel.

“I can assure you (US com-merce) secretary (Wilbur) Ross is doing his best to fi nd an agree-ment with the US private sector,” Macri told Reuters in an inter-view. “Still we didn’t fi nd it but I’m still optimistic.”

Macri, though, replied in the affi rmative when asked whether his government would go to the WTO to contest the duties if they were confi rmed at the prelimi-nary level of as much as 64.17%.

The US commerce depart-ment is expected to make a deci-sion setting fi nal anti-dumping duties on Argentine and Indone-sian biodiesel, which threatens to price its exports of the prima-

rily soy-based fuel out of the US market.

Argentina has been trying to settle the trade dispute by nego-tiating a minimum price for its exports, but no deal has yet been reached.

Macri, who reached out to US President Donald Trump soon after he was elected in a bid to re-kindle a relationship they formed as businessmen before entering politics, portrayed the dispute as one between private industries rather than governments.

The Argentine president, who has made signing trade deals a priority, said he was optimistic that Mercosur, the trade bloc formed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, would be able to conclude a free trade deal with the European Union by year-end despite diff erences

over beef and other agribusiness matters.

“I feel that the European Un-ion is really committed to fi nding an agreement with Mercosur,” he said, predicting that a deal could be signed at the WTO ministerial conference scheduled to happen in Buenos Aires in early Decem-ber. “They know they need some good news after Brexit.”

Macri, who is wrapping up a two-day visit to the US dur-ing which he met with execu-tives from companies including BlackRock, Amazon.com and DowDuPont Inc predicted the Argentine economy would grow “a little more than 3%” in 2017.

“Yes, I am optimistic,” he said. “Everyone says 2.8%, I say a lit-tle more than 3%.”

Macri, whose Cambiemos coalition coasted to a sweep-ing victory in mid-term elec-tions last month, acknowledged that if his forecast came true his government would likely have to make payments on debt linked to the country’s economic per-formance.

Salvador Nasralla, presidential candidate for the Alliance of opposition political parties, gestures during a march against the re-election of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Anti-Hernandez rally


LATIN AMERICA22

“I can assure you (US commerce) secretary (Wilbur) Ross is doing his best to fi nd an agreement with the US private sector”

Tech junkiesseek healingat digitaldetox clinicAFPRio de Janeiro

Like many young people, 29-year-old student LL loves his cell phone. So

much so, in fact, that his studies, his work and even his personal re-lationships have suff ered, and his phone eventually became a way to avoid people in the real world.

That was when he realised he needed help.

LL, who like other patients in-terviewed by AFP asked that their full names not be used, suff ers from a form of digital depend-ency known as “nomophobia,” a neologism derived from the term “no-mobile-phone phobia.”

It is a condition with real psy-chological, social and physical consequences and is on the rise in Brazil, home to the fourth largest number of Internet users in the world.

In September, the student started on a course of treatment in the Delete Institute, the fi rst in Brazil to off er free digital detox to online addicts.

Set up in the psychology de-partment of Rio de Janeiro’s Fed-eral University in 2013 by psy-chologist Anna Lucia King, the Delete centre has already treated 800 people suff ering various types of dependency on digital technology.

The profi les vary, from adoles-cents who spend hours playing video games on their computers, to adults who have lost a spouse over their addiction, or who were fi red from jobs for spending too much time on Facebook or WhatsApp.

Newly enrolled patients un-dergo an evaluation by a multi-disciplinary team and answer questions to establish the source of their dependency.

Afterwards, a psychologist evaluates whether there is any sort of clinical disorder present, such as anxiety, panic attacks, so-cial phobias or obsessive compul-sion disorder.

Afterwards, they are classifi ed

into one of three possible catego-ries: conscientious user, abusive user or dependent, and off ered treatment sessions tailored to in-dividual needs and the gravity of the case.

The aim of the treatment is not to demonise technology but to al-low addicts to use it in a healthier manner.

In weekly group sessions they discuss their experiences.

They also are given exercises — like trying to read a book or watch a movie without looking at a cell-phone — and taught good practic-es — known as digital etiquette.

The goal is to help a person go from an abusive user to a con-scientious one. Some disorders may need to be treated medica-tion. As well as causing emotional problems, nomophobia can infl ict physical suff ering on an addict.

The center’s physiotherapist, Mariana King Padua, explained that prolonged use of cellphones, and the angle of the users head when staring at a handheld screen, can put so much pressure on the neck that it causes injuries.

“The neck muscles are not adapted to this kind of workload,” she said.

Heavy usage of technology does not necessarily make a per-son an addict: that only happens when their use becomes exagger-ated. “Abusive behaviour occurs when the virtual world starts to impinge on the real one, that’s when people lose control.

It’s a fi ne line,” said Eduardo Guedes, Delete’s specialised dig-ital media researcher.

The ubiquity of online tech-nology and the penetration of the internet into everyday modern life can often blind people to their own addiction. Many times, it is the people around an addict who seek help for them.

That was the case for HB, 24, whose mother brought her to the Delete Institute last August to treat her dependency on computer games. “I didn’t even notice that I had a problem,” she said. “You get used to it, it’s diffi cult to stop.”

ReutersBrussels

The European Union is set to impose an arms em-bargo on Venezuela and

will consider further sanctions in response to the political crisis in the South American country, two EU diplomats said.

The measures will bring the EU more into line with the US, which imposed sanctions ear-lier this year, and they signal a change of tone in Brussels, which had previously resisted taking a tougher approach to-wards Caracas.

“The steps were approved yes-terday, paving the way for approv-al (by the bloc’s foreign ministers)

next Monday,” an EU diplomat said, adding that the ministers’ backing was a formality.

Spain has long pushed for sanctions on those close to Pres-ident Nicolas Maduro, whom Washington accuses of install-ing a dictatorship, but the EU has been divided over whom to target, while Britain is a signifi -cant arms supplier to Venezuela.

Diplomats said the turning point for EU governments was regional elections that appeared to favour Maduro’s ruling So-cialists last month.

Polls had suggested the op-position would easily win a ma-jority but in the end it won only a handful of governorships, ac-cording to the pro-government electoral board.

However, the decisions taken by EU ambassadors at a meeting yesterday only prepare the legal basis for sanctions, without any names.

Travel bans and asset freezes would only be imposed on Vene-zuelan offi cials “should the evo-lution of the situation require it”, a second EU diplomat said.

Once approved, the arms em-bargo will be accompanied by a ban on exports of equipment that could be used for internal repression and of surveillance equipment, the diplomats said.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council is to hold an informal meeting on Monday called by the US to discuss the deepening crisis in Venezuela, diplomats said.

The council will hear from Luis Almagro, the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS) and an outspoken critic of President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

Argentinian Foreign Minis-ter Jorge Faurie confi rmed the planned council meeting to journalists in New York.

Faurie, who was accompany-ing President Mauricio Macri, said there was major health and food emergency in Venezuela that the United Nations must address.

“Venezuela at the start was a worry to us. Now it’s painful,” said Macri, who discussed the crisis with UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres at UN head-quarters.

“We need to fi nd ways to en-sure that free and transparent elections can happen in Ven-ezuela,” said Faurie. “What we have today in Venezuela is a state of non-democracy with many violations of human rights and political rights.”

Venezuelan lawmaker Freddy Guevara sought refuge at Chile’s embassy in Caracas on Saturday, a day after the pro-government Supreme Court stripped him of his immunity and said he would be prosecuted on charges pun-ishable by a decade in prison.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley has called on the council to turn its attention to Venezuela after leading a closed-door meeting of the top UN body on the crisis in May.

EU ‘set to impose’ armsembargo on Venezuela

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro attends a soccer practice with Argentina soccer legend Diego Maradona in Caracas, Venezuela.

PAKISTAN23Gulf Times


Court indicts Sharif on3 separate graft charges

The accountability court hearing corruption cases against Nawaz Sharif and

his family members has rejected an application fi led by the ousted prime minister for clubbing to-gether the three references fi led by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

After the announcement of the judgement, Sharif was called to the rostrum and the judge read out the charges against him.

The former prime minister was indicted separately in each of the three references — he pleaded “not guilty” to all the charges.

While at the rostrum, Sharif expressed his concern that since the Supreme Court had given a six-month deadline for the ref-erences to be wrapped up, decid-ing four references in this period would mean each case gets just 1.5 months.

However, the judge observed that the cases could conclude within the timeframe if heard si-multaneously.

After the indictment, the court revived summonses for the prosecution witnesses — Sidra Mansoor of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Paki-stan and Jahangir Ahmed of Fed-eral Board of Revenue — for their presence in the next hearing.

The Sharif family members left the court after the hearing was ad-journed until November 15.

The court had reserved its rul-ing on Sharif’s application on Tuesday after hearing arguments from both the defence counsel and the NAB prosecution.

Nawaz Sharif along with his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law retired Captain Mohamed Safdar appeared be-

fore the accountability court in Islamabad yesterday as hear-ing resumed into the references fi led under the directives of the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case verdict.

Speaking to reporters as he left the court, Nawaz Sharif said he already knew the Supreme Court judgement on the review peti-tions fi led against the Panama Papers case verdict would never come in his favour.

“These judges are full of grudge... their grudge and an-ger has come out in words,” he said, commenting on the strong

words used in the detailed order.“This grudge, anger and

words will become a dark chap-ter of history.”

Sharif said the judiciary had penned several dark chapters in Pakistan’s history during dicta-torial rules and the judgement on the review petition would be “written in dark letters” as well.

The court yesterday also de-cided on an application fi led by Maryam Nawaz and her husband Safdar for deletion of a charge related to the use of Calibri font.

The accountability court had on Oct 19 indicted Maryam and

Safdar in the Avenfi eld reference related to London properties. Besides other charges, the court also charged Maryam with sign-ing a document in Calibri font in February 2006 when that font did not exist.

Announcing its judgement, the court decided to delete Sec-tion 3(a) of National Account-ability Ordinance (NAO) 1999 dealing with forgery from the charges against the couple.

The charge could be reinstated in case the prosecution comes up with solid evidence against the accused related to forgery.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who was scheduled to appear before the court yester-day in connection with the refer-ence trial, fi led an application in the court to nominate a pleader.

The application fi led by Dar’s junior counsel stated that he is currently in London due to ill health and would prefer to be represented by a pleader in the court on his behalf.

Interestingly, Dar nominated Zafi r Khan as his pleader, the same person who pleaded on behalf of Nawaz Sharif while he was in Lon-don attending to his wife.

AgenciesIslamabad

Pakistani security personnel escort a vehicle carrying ousted Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif (C) as he leaves an accountability court after a personal appearance to face corruption charges in Islamabad yesterday.

Pakistani girl born in Indian jail fi nally reaches home

Clad in blue jeans and a light blue T-shirt, Hina sits quietly between her

mother, Fatima, and maternal aunt Mumtaz.

Now 11, Hina was born at an Amritsar jail in August 2006, soon after her mother, aunt and maternal grandmother, Rashida, were arrested at the Attari railway station on their way to Delhi to at-tend a family wedding on charges of possessing 400 grams of drugs.

While Rashida died of a heart attack in jail in 2008, Hina set foot on Pakistan soil for the fi rst time on Nov 2 with her mother and the aunt after they were re-leased.

“We have slept only for two hours since we got here. We’re elated to see so many people coming to meet us. It seems all of Gujranwala has come over to us,” says Mumtaz, Fatima’s younger sister.

About their May 7, 2006 or-deal, Mumtaz says they were arrested purely on suspicion be-cause the real culprit a Lahore-based fellow passenger aboard the Samjhota Express had left his luggage with them while he went to take care of immigration.

All the drugs were found in his

luggage, which he admitted to after arrest yet it were the wom-en who were jailed.

“We were worried how we’ll be treated,” recalls Fatima. “We were so depressed that we ate very little for eight days. On the ninth day, the jail superintend-ent assured us we were his re-sponsibility and that he’d take care of us.”

Four months later, Hina was born. “I was admitted to a hospital a month earlier and discharged 15 days after Hina was born.

The woman constables stay-ing with me at the hospital took great care of me there,” Fatima says, adding that she had no trouble bringing up Hina and is thankful to the jail staff for their courtesy, help and support.

The inmates’ fi rst contact with their family was a few weeks before Hina’s birth when offi cials of the Pakistan High Commission visited them for counselling.

The women were assigned a lawyer, D P Sharma, who as-sured them that he would get them out.

When the case was heard in the sessions court, the women were convicted.

Sharma then appealed in the high court, but kept charging the family back home without the

women’s knowledge.“He would tell us he was help-

ing us for God’s sake, but he’d made around Rs500,000 from our family,” muses Fatima.

“Then we found out he wasn’t sincere and we sought another lawyer. Advocate Navjot Kaur Chhaba fought our case ear-

nestly and ensured bail. She even contacted an NGO to arrange the Rs400,000 fi ne, but didn’t charge a penny herself.”

Hina was sent to school with other inmates’ children.

She studied just outside the jail premises until Grade 5.

She’s too shy to recall how she

felt upon stepping into Pakistan, but her father, Saifur Rehman, chips in: “When she came home she wouldn’t talk for some time. She was scared.”

“I feel great. I’m really happy to have come to Paki-stan,” is what she barely says now. “I went shopping with

my father yesterday.”Prodded by other family

members, Hina talks almost in a whisper about having seen her family’s pictures when they exchanged letters in jail. “In school, I learned Hindi, Pun-jabi, gidda and boli. I also made fi ve friends there whom I really miss.”

The day of return was no less than a celebration.

Fellow inmates congratulated them, jail staff wished them well, locals showered them with gifts, and Hina’s school principal and teachers saw her off at the bor-der.

All three were given new clothes.

Fatima tells me there was an ex-inmate who developed a spe-cial bond with Hina; she would call the child her granddaughter.

The feeling of stepping back into their own country was over-whelming, the women say.

There was happiness, there were tears, there was azaan, and of course, some food.

Fatima says that the Punjab Rangers cooked food for them when they crossed over the bor-der, and welcomed them warmly.

But Hina wouldn’t eat: “I in-sisted on meeting my father, brothers and sisters before eat-ing anything,” she says.

Saifur Rehman recalls the dis-tressing 11 years they had to go through.

“I had to marry off my two daughters in their mother’s ab-sence. Now, thank God, my fam-ily is complete.

But I have hardly spent any time with Hina.”

The former inmates say they were treated warmly while they were in jail.

Yet the one person they say they will be eternally grateful to is their lawyer, Advocate Navjot Chhaba.

“We will never forget what Chhaba ma’am did for us. For a whole year she struggled tire-lessly for our release. She didn’t help us because we were Pa-kistani, but on humanitarian grounds. She came to see us off at the border,” says Mumtaz.

Amid these celebratory mo-ments, there is some bitterness.

Hina’s maternal uncle, Shafi q, believes that the Pakistani side did nothing to secure his family’s release.

“No one from the government asked us what had happened. We contacted many MNAs, MPAs, even sent a message to the chief minister when he visited before the 2013 elections,” he com-plains. “But there was no help forthcoming.”

InternewsIslamabad

Pakistani national Fatima, who had been lodged in the Amritsar Central Jail with her daughter Hina and sister Mumtaaz on smuggling charges for over 10 years after being released on completion of their jail term outside Amritsar Central Jail in Amritsar on Nov 2, 2017.

Maryam angrily reacts to Panama Papers judgment

Ousted Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s daughter Maryam Na-

waz, once again, took a dig at the judiciary and the military estab-lishment following the release of the detailed judgement of the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case yesterday.

Putting to rest the assumption that she would observe restraint while commenting on key insti-tutions, Maryam took to Twitter saying: “This decision (to dis-qualify her father and open cor-ruption cases against the Sharif family) could only be under im-mense pressure otherwise such travesty of justice is unimagina-ble.”

She claimed that her name had appeared in the detailed judgment (connecting her to London’s Avenfi eld fl ats) be-cause she had been vocal in con-demning the “injustice” meted out to her family.

On the other hand, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairperson Imran Khan was of the view that the detailed judgement had es-tablished that Sharif had looted and laundered money to pur-chase fl ats in London under the name of his daughter.

Reacting to the detailed judge-ment, Maryam posted screen grabs of news clips saying: “Qa-noon aur insaf bhi sharminda hain (law and justice have been compromised)! That’s exactly how minority brings a bad name to the majority! Victim is not Nawaz Sharif but justice itself.”

She added that there were those on the wrong side of his-tory seeking short term benefi ts, they would be the “ultimate los-ers”. Scoffi ng at the inclusion of her name in the detailed judge-ment that made her out to be the owner of the Avenfi eld fl ats, Maryam said: “It’s the same Maryam who didn’t even fi g-ure in the verdict earlier. Now avenged because she questioned and spoke against injustice. (This is) vendetta.”

In another tweet, she said: “The latest decision (detailed judgement) is based more on

‘adjectives’ than law. First time witnessed seat of justice spew-ing venom.”

She adopted an aggressive posture towards the judiciary and said: “The decision against Nawaz Sharif was announced the day the judges showed their bias by declaring him the Sicil-ian mafi a and Godfather. The decision was announced the day a judge asked the person (Imran Khan) who lost election to Na-waz Sharif to fi le a non-main-tainable petition in Panama Pa-pers case.

The decision was announced the day the judges became law-yers for the petitioner.”

She regretted that the reputa-tion of the institutions had been put on stake just to seek revenge from Sharif.

Recently, her uncle Shah-baz Sharif and Pakistan Mus-lim League-Nawaz hawk Saad Rafi que had advised her to ex-ercise caution while speaking about the judiciary and the army, and warned her that a clash with national institutions would not bode well for the country or the PML-N.

In response to Maryam’s tweets the PTI chief tweeted: “Since Maryam did not have resources to purchase fl ats in 1993 it is evident Nawaz Sharif bought these fl ats with money stolen and laundered from Pa-kistan. The Supreme Court judgement states you cannot fool all the people all the time. Maryam’s benefi cial ownership of Mayfair fl ats clearly estab-lished now and after the detailed judgement, Nawaz now has a defi nitive answer to his constant cry of ‘mujhe kyun nikala’ (why was I ousted).”

InternewsLahore

Maryam Nawaz,

US still hopes to work with Pakistan, says Wells

The United States wants to work with both Pakistan and Afghanistan to ensure that neither country’s soil is used against the other country, says Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells. Ambassador Wells, who is the State Department’s point person for South Asia and also a special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said at a recent news briefing

that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson conveyed this message to Pakistani leaders when he visited Islamabad late last month. Later, while reviewing his visit to South Asia with the State Department press corps, Secretary Tillerson revealed that he also told Pakistani leaders that Washington was willing to help Pakistan lower its tensions with India.

Smog may gradually lessen in Pakistan next week

Dense smog continued to aff ect life and disrupt air, rail and road traffi c in the

plains of Punjab province of Pa-kistan yesterday amidst reports that it will gradually lessen due to rain and low temperatures in the upper parts of the country next week.

Rain would nevertheless en-hance fog that is persisting over upper Sindh, Khyber Pa-khtunkhwa and south Punjab, said the Pakistan Meteorological Department in its weather fore-cast.

Environment Secretary Saif Anjum said reduction in the in-cidence of crop residue burn-ing in Indian Punjab and slight change in the wind’s direction further reduced the intensity of smog in Lahore and its adjoining cities.

He said this after the Pun-jab chief secretary conducted a meeting on the issue, asking secretaries of all departments concerned to continue taking strict measures to minimise lo-cal contribution to smog caused by air pollution.

Chief Meteorologist Ajmal Shad said a weak westerly sys-tem was expected to give rain over the upper parts of the coun-

try and at the most in Rawalpindi division next week.

But the accompanying wind and expected low temperatures would gradually reduce smog in Punjab, further thickening fog nevertheless.

Thick smog or fog had devel-oped over Lahore and other cit-ies in Punjab, KP and Sindh’s Su-kkur areas early Monday night, immediately disrupting rail, road and air traffi c.

Lahore airport was closed down immediately after thick fog reduced visibility to zero at around 9pm.

It was opened in the morning, cancelling all incoming and out-going fl ights in the meantime.

PIA offi cials said smog or fog aff ected fl ight schedule at all air-ports in Punjab.

They said because of the weather conditions, fl ights had either to be diverted to other air-ports or rescheduled.

A fl ight from Sialkot and an-other from Faisalabad left for their foreign destinations from Lahore airport yesterday.

The passengers had to travel to Lahore by road.

Motorway remained close to all traffi c from Pindi Bhattian to Faisalabad, Khanewal to Multan and Lahore to Kot Momin due to extremely poor visibility.

Similarly, the G T Road from Peshawar to Lahore and the

National Highway from Lahore to Sadiqabad too remained fog-bound, making travel extremely diffi cult and risky, Motorway and National Highways Author-ity Spokesman Imran Shah said.

He said the authority staff had been advising motorists to drive slow and in queues to avoid ac-cidents.

Meanwhile, Shah again re-ported closure of the Motorway from Pindi Bhattian to Faisal-abad at 8pm yesterday.

It was also closed from Faisal-abad to Gojra and from Lahore to Kot Momin due to thick fog.

Pakistan railways authorities said the speed of almost all trains had to be kept considerably slow.

InternewsLahore

24 Gulf TimesThursday, November 9, 2017

PHILIPPINES

DoJ panel tells police in teen killings to produce witnessesBy Jaime PilapilManila Times

Despite the objection of lawyers from the Public Attorney’s Offi ce (PAO),

the three-man panel of the De-partment of Justice (DoJ) gave three suspects, including two policemen, linked to the deaths of two teenagers in August until Friday to produce their two wit-nesses.

Senior Asst State Prosecutor Ma Emilia Victorio instructed the lawyers of Police Offi cers Jeff rey Perez, Ricky Arquilita, and taxi driver Tomas Bagcal to produce Madeline Somilan and Solomon Rosca or submit their original sworn statements.

PAO Chief Persida Rueda Acosta objected, saying that the preliminary investiga-tion had been going on for two months and that justice was being denied the two teenagers.

“It seems that the testimonies of Soliman and Rosca are their main defence. We don’t want to deprive them of their right. So, you have until Friday to submit the original affi davits or bring them here and subscribe to their testimonies,” Victorio told the lawyers of the accused.

Dodjie Encinas, lawyer of the two police offi cers, said his cli-ents received the photocopy of the testimonies of the witnesses only last November 4 through

courier service and that they could not locate them at once since their movement was lim-ited having been detained at Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan, Taguig City.

“We are thankful to the panel for granting our request since the two witnesses could give a clearer account of what really happened. If it was not granted, our defence is still strong since they don’t have credible wit-nesses,” Encinas told The Manila

Times. The three accused were being implicated in the death of Carl Angelo Arnaiz, 19, and Rey-naldo “Kulot” de Guzman , 14. The DoJ is conducting a prelimi-nary investigation on charges for double murder, torture and planting of evidence under Re-public Act 10591 (Comprehen-sive Firearms and Ammunition Regulation Act) and

RA 9165 (Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act) fi led against them by the parents of

the victims. The accused po-lice offi cers insisted that Arnaiz was killed in a shootout when he robbed Bagcal along C-3 Road in Caloocan City sometime on Au-gust 18.

De Guzman’s bloated body with at least 28 stab wounds was found fl oating in a creek in Ga-pan, Nueva Ecija on September 5.

Arnaiz and de Guzman were neighbours in a village in Cain-ta, Rizal, a province adjacent

to Metro Manila. Encinas said Soliman and Rosca saw Arnaiz engage police in a shootout.

However, witnesses of the victims said there was no shoot-out and Arnaiz even begged for his life when he was shot by the police offi cers.

The parents of the victims at-tended the hearing on Tuesday but avoided being interviewed. The two accused police offi cers were present but Bagcal failed to attend the hearing.

Aquino charged over bloody police actionAFPManila

Former Philippine presi-dent Benigno Aquino was charged in a special court

yesterday over an anti-militant raid that left 44 police com-mandos dead, the offi ce of the government Ombudsman said yesterday.

Aquino, who ended his six-year term last year, could be jailed for up to 15 years if a spe-cial court fi nds he is guilty of illegal acts and usurpation of powers in the January 2015 bloodbath, prosecutors said.

Aquino, who was not present in court, is accused of allowing a suspended police chief to over-see the operation against a fugi-tive Malaysian militant leader. It turned into a bloody gunbattle with Muslim rebels that claimed the lives of 44 police offi cers.

While the raid apparently succeeded in its objective of killing bomb-maker Zulkifl i bin

Hir, one of the United States’ most wanted fugitives, the huge death toll shocked the nation and imperilled peace talks with Muslim rebels.

The Ombudsman, an anti-corruption prosecutor, alleged Aquino had allowed a close ally, police chief Alan Purisima to oversee the raid even though the Ombudsman had previously suspended Purisima over a sep-arate graft case.

“The President of the Repub-lic of the Philippines, while in performance of his offi cial and administrative functions, did then and there willfully, unlaw-fully and criminally persuade, induce or infl uence Alan La Ma-drid Purisima,” the charges read. Hearings in the case have not yet begun.

Aquino had previously ar-gued that he had the authority to tap Purisima as a “resource person” in the raid.

But the Ombudsman said the suspended police chief should not have had such authority. Al-

lies of Aquino’s successor, the fi rebrand Rodrigo Duterte, have sought to use the raid to attack Aquino, who has criticised Du-terte’s bloody anti-drug cam-paign which has claimed thou-

sands of lives. However, Duterte defended Aquino yesterday, say-ing that he could not be charged with usurpation because presi-dents had full authority over po-lice. “The president can always

intervene, modify or amend or change altogether,” Duterte told reporters.

“He is the head of govern-ment insofar as the police are concerned,” he added.

Benigno Aquino

Duterte to Trump: ‘Lay off ’ human rights when we meet

Palace suspends govt work in PICC complex

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said yesterday he would tell US President Donald Trump to “lay off ” if he raises the issue of human rights when they meet. Trump will be in Manila on the last leg of his 12-day Asian trip, which includes visits to Japan, South Korea, China, and Vietnam. Trump will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Danang, Vietnam, make a state visit to Hanoi and end his trip with the Association of South East Asia Nations summit in Manila. Duterte, who brooks no criticism of his human rights record and war on drugs, off ered a comment on what he would tell Trump if he raised human rights. “You want to ask a question, I’ll give you an answer. Lay off . That is not your business. That is my business. I take care of my country and I will nurture my country to health,” Duterte told reporters before leaving for Vietnam. More than 3,900 Filipinos have been killed in what the police called self-defence after armed suspects resisted arrest in Duterte’s war on drugs. Critics dispute that and say executions are taking place with zero accountability, allegations the police reject.Duterte was infuriated by expressions of concern by former President Barack Obama’s administration about extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. Human rights, rule of law and due process were among topics Trump and Duterte would likely discuss during their bilateral talks, Sung Kim, US ambassador to Manila, said last month. But Trump, who has been criticised at home for neglecting rights issues in dealings abroad, in May praised Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem”.

Malacanang has declared a suspension of work in government off ices at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Pasay City from today to November 15 because of the country’s hosting of the Asean summit. Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea signed Memorandum Circular 32 suspending work in government off ices within the PICC complex upon the recommendation of the Asean 2017 National Organizing Council- Off ice of the Director General for Operations. However, agencies that are directly involved in the delivery of basic services such as security and safety, health and emergency preparedness and the conduct of various Asean meetings and related activities will continue their operations. “To ensure uninterrupted delivery of public service on 08-12 November 2017, transactions with front line government off ices, located inside the PICC Complex, may be processed in other business and/or satellite off ices of said agencies,” the order read. — Manila Times

Sandbar plan dropped after China anger, says defence secretaryAFPManila

Philippine President Rodri-go Duterte ordered troops to scrap plans of building a

fi shermen’s shelter on a sandbar in the disputed South China Sea after Beijing complained, his de-fence chief said yesterday.

The military in August brought bamboo and palm roofi ng mate-rials to one of three sandbars that emerged near one of their garri-sons in the Spratlys archipelago in the contested sea, Defence Secretary Delfi n Lorenzana said. “We tried to put some structures (on) one of the sandbars near our island and the Chinese reacted,” Lorenzana told a regional secu-rity forum.

“And so the president came to know about this and he said: ‘Let’s pull out’.”

The apparent reversal comes at a time of improving relations between China and the Philip-pines, which until recently had bitterly contested their overlap-ping claims to the sea.

Lorenzana later told reporters that Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano advised Duterte there was an agreement between the two nations not to put up struc-tures on new South China Sea features.

“We did not occupy it but some of our fi shermen would like to establish a shelter there. They (China) saw it and they com-plained, so we had to pull out,” Lorenzana said.

China claims most of the stra-tegically vital sea, through which $5tn in annual shipping trade passes, and which is believed to

sit atop vast oil and gas depos-its. It has been turning reefs in the sea into islands, installing military aircraft and missile sys-tems on them. China’s sweeping claims overlap with those of Vi-etnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan.

The Philippines had for many years been one of the region’s strongest opponents to Chinese expansionism.

A United Nations-backed tri-bunal ruled last year that China’s territorial claims in the sea were without legal basis.

But the Philippines, under Duterte, decided not to use the verdict to pressure China, in-stead electing to build closer ties in return for billions of dollars in investments and aid. Lorenzana said the sandbar the military had planned to build the shelter on was a 500-sq-m (5,382-sq-ft) outcrop located 4.6km from Philippine-held Thitu island.

Thitu is located about 26km from one of the artifi cial Chinese islands.

Lorenzana said the sandbars were now empty and that Manila was not worried China would occupy them in turn.

Nevertheless, he said he was concerned over the potential for future confrontation as Chinese fi shing fl eets escorted by mari-time patrol vessels showed up in waters considered a traditional Filipino fi shing ground.

“We have troops there, we have ships. Their troops could confront ours. That’s the kind of encounter I’m talking about. Now if there’s a mis-encounter, misunderstanding or miscalcu-lation it could result into vio-lence,” Lorenzana said.

Duterte to raise South China Sea issue at summit

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, in an apparent policy shift, said yesterday he planned to ask China to make clear its intentions in the disputed South China Sea during Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in Vietnam.China claims almost the entire strategic waterway where $3tn worth of sea-borne goods passes every year, building and militarising artificial islands. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have conflicting claims. “So, it’s about time, either in the bilateral or in the plenary, I should be bringing this important matter to the surface,” Duterte told reporters before leaving for Vietnam.He said China had to make it clear to Southeast Asian countries its intentions in the South China Sea. “You want to control the passage or do we have the free passage?” he said, adding he would not be

confrontational. Since coming to off ice 16 months ago, the firebrand leader has been conciliatory to Beijing, despite a ruling from an international arbitration court favouring the Philippines in its territorial dispute with China.In the past, Duterte has repeatedly said he will raise the sea dispute at the proper time and avoided the issue when Manila hosted two regional meetings this year. The two countries will also negotiate a military protocol to avoid maritime “miscalculations”, Manila’s defence minister said yesterday following a brief standoff near a Philippine-occupied island in a disputed part of the South China Sea.China-Philippines relations have often been frosty over the South China Sea, but ties have warmed under Duterte, who prefers to not provoke Beijing and wants to tap it for loans and investment.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is welcomed upon his arrival at the international airport ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in the central Vietnamese city of Danang yesterday.

Duterte arrives for APEC summit

Four years later, Yolanda victims still cry for shelterBy Catherine S. ValenteManila Times

As the country commemo-rates the fourth anniver-sary of Super Typhoon

Yolanda (international name: Haiyan), Malacanang has reaf-fi rmed the government’s com-mitment to rebuild commu-nities aff ected by the disaster amid continued cries for shelter among victims.

In a news conference on Tuesday, Palace spokesman Harry Roque assured the pub-lic that President Rodrigo Du-terte would not turn his back on Yolanda victims.

He said the Duterte admin-istration had learned from past mistakes when it came to deal-ing with Yolanda’s devastation.

“We join the victims of Yolan-da in the crying the very slow rebuilding of Yolanda. And to address this, the President has asked General del Rosario and

Wendel Avisado to act as point persons in the rebuilding of the Yolanda-ravaged communities,” Roque said, referring to housing czar Eduardo del Rosario and Presidential Assistant Wendel Avisado, in-charge of Yolanda rehabilitation.

“We remain committed in this regard and we have learned from the lessons of Yolanda as far as the rebuilding of Marawi is concerned,” he added.

Duterte visited Yolanda vic-tims in Tacloban City last year and openly expressed his frus-tration over the slow-paced housing projects for the super-typhoon survivors.

The Chief Executive returned to Tacloban in January but still lamented that not all his expec-tations were met.

This year, however, Duterte will not be in the country dur-ing the Yolanda anniversary on November 8, as he is scheduled to attend the Asia Pacifi c Eco-nomic Cooperation Summit in

Vietnam. The President will also be preoccupied in the days ahead due to Manila’s hosting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit.

In November 2013, Yolanda swept across the Philippines and left a path of destruction on several islands and locations such as Leyte Island, Samar Is-land, Biliran, Negros Occiden-tal, Cebu, Capiz, Aklan, An-tique, Iloilo, Masbate, Palawan and Dinagat Islands.

Yolanda, one of the strongest typhoons to ever make landfall, pounded Tacloban City, de-stroying homes and structures and killing thousands of local residents. The rehabilitation of the aff ected communities has been slow and the past adminis-tration was widely criticized for its perceived ineffi ciency.

The House committee on housing and urban development reported on the lack of progress in housing in Yolanda-aff ected areas in September. Citing data

from the National Housing Au-thority (NHA), lawmakers said 205,128 houses were supposed to have been constructed for ty-phoon survivors. But of the fi g-ure, only 11.4% were occupied, according to the NHA itself.

Only 33% have been complet-ed, although lawmakers believe the real fi gures are much lower.

Roque said the President backs moves to hold those who caused delays in housing projects accountable for their apparent negligence.

“On Yolanda, there are very good lessons learned. The delay in the reconstruction of Yolanda devastated areas is simply unac-ceptable as far as the President is concerned,” he said.

Thousands of families af-fected by “Yolanda” will hold protests in Tacloban City and Catarman, Northern Samar.

People Surge, a non-govern-mental organisation based in Tacloban City, led a silent pro-test on November 2 along the

national highway in Tanuan, Leyte.

Five body bags were laid on the ground, representing the fi ve “false” promises made by the Duterte administration: the in-vestigation of the “gang of fi ve” referring to former President Benigno Aquino 3rd, former In-terior secretary Mar Roxas 3rd, former Social Welfare secretary Dinky Soliman, former Energy secretary Carlos Petilla and former rehabilitation czar Pan-fi lo Lacson who were accused of neglecting the typhoon victims, housing, aid to farmers, liveli-hood and the distribution of the Emergency Shelter Assistance.

“When Duterte paid a visit to Tacloban City in November 2016, he ordered the National Housing Authority to fast track the construction of permanent housing units and committed to return in December to check whether or not the NHA had met with quotas set by the ad-ministration.”

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL25


Lifeline trails restored to Nepal’s quake-hit villagesAs the dust settled from

Nepal’s massive earth-quake, a fresh humani-

tarian crisis was just beginning: supply lines to remote commu-nities had been destroyed, and villagers were starving.

Without these trails used by porters and mules to ferry in goods, more than 1mn peo-ple living in isolated villages in central Nepal were desperately short on food.

What staples did manage to creep along these damaged life-lines to local markets quickly skyrocketed in price.

“The cost of those items once they get there becomes prohibitive, especially nutritious food,” said Pippa Bradford, head of the World Food Programme in Nepal, of the areas worst-hit by the 7.8 magni-tude earthquake in April 2015.

In the months following the disaster, food supplies to these re-mote areas, already so limited be-fore that many children suff ered from stunting, all but dried up.

Mules couldn’t travel on the damaged paths, meaning all goods had to be carried precari-ously on the backs of porters. Journeys that took one or two days doubled.

“(The trail) was scary, with big crevices, and it looked like it might slip away at any mo-ment,” said Rochit Tamang, 24, a porter from the remote Ruby Valley just 30km (19 miles) east of the quake epicentre.

The WFP declared more than 1.1mn Nepalis “severely food inse-cure” – one step below famine – im-mediately following the earthquake, and supplies were shuttled in by helicopter to alleviate the crisis.

But as global disaster eff orts shifted from emergency response to reconstruction, the choppers stopped, leaving these villages in the foothills of the Himalayas to fend for themselves.

“Even if people had some money, if they don’t have a trail, they can’t access the market,” said Pushpa Shrestha, who works with WFP in Nepal.

Two years on, these vital trails are all but restored in Ne-pal’s four worst-hit districts

through a $6mn project funded by British aid.

Goods are slowly trickling back into communities. Long mule trains laden with sacks of rice, lentils and sugar snake up steep slopes to the villages, vy-ing for space with porters car-rying everything from basics to

live chicks in large whicker bas-kets on their backs.

“It was bad and not too fi t for walking before. Now it is easy to walk. There are more mules and they are able to bring more goods,” said mule owner Jitpa Tamang, who transports goods between hamlets in the Ruby

Valley in Dhading district.Food prices have stabilised as

the journey time has reduced.It’s far from perfect though,

with residents in Lapa – a vil-lage in Dhading two days walk from the road – complaining that owners of mules operate like a cartel and fi x prices.

In mountainous Nepal, home to eight of the world’s highest peaks, around 2.6mn people – 9% of the population – live in villages only accessible on foot, according to the United Nations.

The rugged terrain and extreme temperatures mean that com-munities are only able to farm the land for half the year, relying on food stocks through the winter.

In the quake-hit districts, food stocks were destroyed in the 2015 disaster and remain perilously low after two years of erratic rain, said Shrestha of WFP.

“The local crop production in places like the northern belt of Dhading is not suffi cient to en-sure food security year round, so any kind of natural disaster like drought or hailstorm they become vulnerable,” he said.

In the Lapa Valley, food prices fl uctuate throughout the year, said Bam Tamang who owns a shop in Borang village, a two-hour walk from the road.

“But it has become much better for us after the trail was rebuilt,” the shopkeeper said as the laden mules plodded past his shop.

By Annabel Symington, AFPLapa

Mules carry goods along restored trails in Dhading, some 100km northwest of Kathmandu.

Lanka cuts food taxes as inflation hits record highSri Lanka drastically cut import taxes on essential foods yesterday to curb record high inflation before its annual budget presentation, AFP reports from Colombo.Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera said he was slashing taxes immediately on six commonly consumed commodities to cut high living costs.“Tomorrow I will unveil a budget that will boost the entrepreneurial spirit of our young people,” the minister told reporters. “But we also need to address the immediate issue of food prices.”The government slashed tariff s on lentils, onions, potatoes, cooking oil, dried fish and sprats, staples of the Sri Lankan diet.According to the Colombo Consumer Price Index, inflation hit 7.8% last month, the highest since the index was launched in 2013.The government has blamed the record inflation on sharp increases in food prices. Tens of thousands of acres of rice and vegetables were wiped out by devastating floods and a severe drought earlier this year that killed hundreds in the island nation.The tax cuts will cost the state some $10mn a month, the minister said, an amount that will be compensated for in the national budget through fresh taxes or cuts in spending, he added. The move comes at a time when Sri Lanka saw a 7.4% dip in worker remittances, its main source of foreign currency, underscoring challenges for the government’s coff ers.

Tap country’s huge maritime resources, says President Hamid

Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid yesterday said there is no alternative to unlock-

ing the huge potentials of the country’s vast sea area and using the maritime resources for the nation’s further development.

He called on navy men to keep themselves ready to ensure the security of maritime boundary and resources.

President Hamid was speak-ing at a commissioning function of four warships that were for-mally handed over to the Bangla-desh Navy at Titumir Naval Base Jetty in southwestern Khulna port city.

“A vast sea area of Bangladesh is full of fi sh, mineral oil, natu-ral gas and other undiscovered valuable mineral ones. It also has huge economic potentials. So, there’s no alternative to us-ing the potentials for the de-velopment of the nation,” the president said.

He also observed that the whole world is now focusing on

marine resources as the lim-ited land resources is being used frequently everywhere.

“Bangladesh has a 710km coastal area, and about 30mn people of this area are directly and indirectly dependent on the sea for their livelihood. As over 90% of trade and business with foreign countries are being con-ducted via sea routes, ensuring

strict security measures in ma-rine areas is a must for the na-tional economic development,” the president said.

Stressing the importance of performing duties with honesty, fairness, effi ciency and main-taining discipline and profes-sionalism, Hamid asked the navy members to get always ready to ensure sovereignty of mari-

time boundary, security of ship movement at diff erent routes, and resist smugglers and pirates.

He also asked them to contin-ue their all-out eff orts to uphold the country’s image in the world arena.

Hamid, also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, said a signifi cant number of warships, maritime helicopters

and maritime patrol aircraft have been included in the fl eet of navy during the period of the current government and opened a new chapter of strengthening the power of the navy.

The president said the present government has already taken short- and long-term plans for the navy that are expected to be materialised by 2030.

By Mizan RahmanDhaka

By Kent HarringtonAtlanta

As the United States marks the fi rst anniversary of President Donald Trump’s election, the question of how Trump

won still commands attention, with Russia’s role moving increasingly to centre stage. Each new revelation in the investigation of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 campaign brings the vulnerability of the US democratic process into sharper focus.

Last week, Congress unveiled legislation that would force Facebook, Google, and other social media giants to disclose who buys online advertising, thereby closing a loophole that Russia exploited during the election. But making amends through technical fi xes and public promises to be better corporate citizens will solve only the most publicised problem.

The tougher challenge will be strengthening institutions that are vital to the functioning of democracy – specifi cally, civics education and local journalism. Until gains are made in these areas, the threat to America’s democratic process will grow, resurfacing every time the country votes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intelligence operatives chose wisely in mounting their social media attack. Facebook hosts nearly 80% of all mobile social media traffi c, while Google accounts for close to 90% of all online-search-related advertising. By inundating these two platforms with automated messages from tens of thousands of bogus user accounts, Russia was able to stoke discord along economic, racial, and political lines.

Moreover, they did it cheaply. According to one analysis, with only modest ad purchases on Facebook, Russian agents gained access to

a goldmine of online advertising data – such as Facebook’s customer targeting software – which enabled the “sharing” of Russia’s fake news hundreds of millions of times. At one point during this clandestine assault, an estimated 400,000 bots – software applications that run automated scripts – sent millions of fi ctitious political messages, which in turn generated some 20% of all Twitter traffi c during the fi nal month of the campaign.

It is bad enough that the technology world’s marquee names were not prepared to parry foreign meddling in America’s most important election. But the social media giants’ persistent denial of responsibility for the volume of distorted and false information delivered as news, even as Russia’s role has grown clearer, is more troubling.

Strip away the technobabble about better algorithms, more transparency, and commitment to truth, and Silicon Valley’s “fi xes” dodge a simple fact: its technologies are not designed to sort truth from falsehoods, check accuracy, or correct mistakes. Just the opposite: they are built to maximise clicks, shares, and “likes.”

Despite pushing to displace traditional news outlets as the world’s information platforms, social media’s moguls appear content to ignore journalism’s fundamental values, processes, and goals. It is this irresponsibility that co-sponsors of the recent advertising transparency bill are seeking to address.

Still, Russia’s success in targeting American voters with bogus news could not have succeeded were it not for the second problem: a poorly educated electorate susceptible to manipulation. The erosion of civics education in schools, the shuttering of local newspapers – and the consequent decline in the public’s understanding

of issues and the political process – conspire to create fertile ground for the sowing of disinformation.

Consider the evidence: In 2005, an American Bar Association survey found that 50% of Americans could not correctly identify the country’s three branches of government. By the time the Annenberg Centre for Public Policy asked the same question in 2015, the percentage of such respondents had grown to two thirds, and a staggering 32% could not name a single branch. This slippage is apparently age-dependent; a 2016 study of Americans with university degrees found that those over 65 years of age know far more about how their government works than those under 34.

There is a clear correlation between democratic illiteracy and a de-emphasis on civics, government, and history education in schools. In 2006, for example, a national study that tracks student performance in various subjects found that only a quarter of America’s 12th graders were profi cient in civics. A decade later, that percentage had sunk below 25%.

Not surprisingly, overall educational quality and access to basic civics coursework have also suff ered in recent years. In 2011, a think tank that ranks the 50 states on the rigour of their high schools’ US history courses gave 28 states failing grades. A 2016 survey of 1,000 liberal arts colleges found that only 18% required a US history or government course to earn a degree.

High school or university courses by themselves will not keep gullible voters from falling for bogus news or infl ammatory disinformation. But the viral spread of fake news stories initiated by Russian agents made one thing clear: an electorate lacking a basic civics education is more likely to fall for provocations designed to infl ame partisan tensions.

Changes in the news industry are increasing that risk. As Internet giants siphon away advertising revenue from traditional media outlets, social media have become many people’s main source of news. Traditional news organisations, especially local newspapers, are steadily disappearing, shrinking voters’ access to information that is vital to making informed political decisions.

The numbers are striking. Since 2004, 10% of all small-market newspapers have closed or merged. Of those that survive, over a third have changed ownership, concentrating the industry into fewer hands. The result has been layoff s, cost-cutting, and diminished reporting on national and local issues.

As for the media’s civic responsibility, that, too, seems to have suff ered. The managers’ manual from one investment fi rm that owns three daily and 42 weekly newspapers does not mince words: “Our customer is the advertiser,” the document states. “Readers are our customers’ customers,” so “we operate with a lean newsroom staff .”

Russia’s intervention in the 2016 US presidential election was historic, but it was also symptomatic of bigger challenges facing Americans. A population that does not fully understand its own democracy should concern not only civics teachers, but national security experts as well. The US didn’t need Putin to deliver that lesson. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,” Thomas Jeff erson warned, “it expects what never was and never will be.” – Project Syndicate

Kent Harrington, a former senior CIA analyst and Director of Public Aff airs, served as National Intelligence Offi cer for East Asia and Chief of Station in Asia.

Even though Catalonia’s bid for independence may be Spain’s worst political crisis in decades, it has been no Grexit, Brexit or even Frexit for foreign investors.

Overseas holders of Spanish stocks and bonds – and indeed owners of eurozone assets in general – have been quick to dismiss comparisons with a succession of rolling sovereign debt crises that hit the eurozone between 2010 and 2012.

Even though Spain’s wealthiest region has a bigger economy than Greece, Portugal and Finland, relatively unfazed Spanish and Catalonian assets to date shows markets are treating the crisis over Catalonia as a largely domestic issue with few if any systemic sovereign, banking or euro wide threats.

While Spain’s blue-chip IBEX equity index is about 7% off the year’s highs, it is still up more than 10% for 2017 as a whole.

The Spanish government’s 10-year borrowing costs as well as their risk premium over German equivalents are lower than where they started the year.

The euro exchange rate has barely budged.

On one level the scale of fi nancial risk more than gross domestic output of the area is of a diff erent order.

Catalonia’s debt level – at around 77bn euros – is around quarter that of Greece.

In addition, 52.5bn euros of that – just over two-thirds – is owed to Spain, a further 8.175bn euros to resident fi nancial institutions, 6.018bn euros to the rest of the world and 10.035bn euros to others, according to the data from the Spanish central bank.

The international exposure is too small to create ripples across the eurozone even in the event of a Catalonian default, and the eff ect on Spain would also be limited.

Catalonia’s total debt to the centre represents just 4.75% of the Spain’s total debt as of the end of 2016.

Independence on its own would neither lead to a sovereign default nor to an exit of an existing eurozone member, which caused consternation earlier in the decade given fears of sovereign redenomination risk, related banking stress and legal precedents that seeped across the bloc.

Economic confi dence and business risk for Spanish fi rms and households may be an issue at the margins for equity investors, but this is largely cushioned at the moment by a booming world economy and the fastest economic expansion in the eurozone in more than six years.

The chances of secession itself were always slim.One of the leading investors in Catalonian bonds

believes the region’s bid for independence was always legally doubtful.

“Greece was a very diff erent story - the very existence of Greece as part of the monetary union was called into question. In Catalonia, independence was never constitutional, there was no legal basis,” said Mark Dowding, senior portfolio manager at BlueBay Asset Management, which has been a long term investor in Catalonian debt.

If ultimately Catalonia’s independence was always unlikely, the rest was just a “storm in a teacup” for fi nancial markets, Dowding said.

‘Storm in a tea cup’:Catalonia is norepeat of euro crisis

COMMENT

GULF TIMES

“In Catalonia, independence was never constitutional, there was no legal basis”


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How Americans fell for Russian disinformation

Gulf Times Thursday, November 9, 2017 27

COMMENT

New stadiums and arenas are coming up, civic infrastructure is being upgraded manifold; hotels, railways, airports and freeways are fast transforming Qatar

By Siddhartha Upadhyay IANS

The world is changing. Sport is a strong vehicle of change. And one of the best examples of this phenomenon is Qatar,

which is on the fast track of moderni-sation and transformation ever since it clinched the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

This is the fi rst time that a mega sporting event of this proportion is being hosted in this part of the world.

Qatar has been at it for a long time.Finally, its protracted struggle bore

fruit.Any sportsperson would vouch for

this; nothing succeeds like success.Qatar has suddenly catapulted itself

in the world of sports as a shining star.That Qatar won the bid to hose 2022

FIFA World Cup, in my view, is simply historic.

The whole country is in a transformation mode.

I was in Qatar earlier this year and the change – and the pace of that change – is both bewildering and inspiring.

It’s estimated that more than $250bn will be spent to prepare for the World Cup.

New stadiums and arenas are coming up, civic infrastructure is being upgraded manifold; hotels, railways, airports and freeways are fast transforming the country.

One cannot escape the feeling that these changes are symbolic of the ambitions of a small country to make it big in the comity of nations.

Development and social justice via sports is the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well.

India has much to learn from the Qatar experience.

Just to give you an idea, there will be seven host cities – Al Daayen, Al Khor, Al Rayyan, Al Shamal, Al Wakrah, Doha and Umm Slal –where 12 new state-of-the-art stadiums will come up with capacities of at least 43,000 each.

And the unique aspect is that part of these stadiums could be dismantled after the event and transported to other less-developed countries to help set up the infrastructure for sports and encourage people at large to play.

Qatar, while creating a real estate marvel, will remain conscious of environmental consequences.

Most of the sporting infrastructure

being built is zero-carbon emitting and climate controlled.

Qatar’s success is not confi ned to just winning the bid to host the World Cup, but its commitment to modernising and upgrading its economy.

An event of this magnitude is not just about creating the necessary sporting infrastructure in a stipulated time frame, but the emphasis is also on developing and internalising an enduring sporting culture in the 2.5mn Qataris.

To be able to do that, Qatar is already hosting almost 100 events every year in various sporting disciplines.

The World Cup is not the end, but a means to an end.

Last month, Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) Chief Executive Yousuf Mohamed al-Jaida, speaking in London, elucidated

the National Vision 2030 where the investment in sports would be an integral part of a multi-faceted strategy to ensure that economic development is diverse and sustainable.

There have been wide-ranging labour reforms to make Qatar an enviable destination for foreign investment.

Under the young and dynamic leadership of Hassan al-Thawadi, Secretary General of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy of Qatar, sports is the catalyst in the region’s social and economic development.

In a recent address to the UN, Thawadi said: “Events of this stature (the World Cup) can bring billions of people together from every corner of the world. They can serve to accelerate and inspire...in a manner and at a pace

that few other initiatives can match. Sport is uniquely equipped to play a signifi cant role in attaining these goals. We are aiming for the stars, our feet are fi rmly on the ground.”

India should not just be committed to ensuring “ease of doing business” in the country, but also “ease of all segments of society to play”. Qatar’s

experience has an encouraging message for India.

Siddhartha Upadhyay is member of the Governing Body of the Sports Authority of India and Founder of STAIRS, an organisation dedicated to the uplift of sports. He can be contacted at [email protected]

Qatar experience and lessons for India

Live issues

Making your home safe for kidsBy Armin BrottTribune News Service

Dear Mr Dad: A few weeks ago, you gave some great general guidelines for childproofi ng. How about some details for

specifi c parts of the house?A: You almost beat me to the punch!

As promised, here they are.IN THE KITCHEN

Keep high chairs a few feet away from walls. Babies’ legs are plenty strong enough to push off the wall and knock over the chair. Don’t snicker – I’ve seen it happen.

Install safety locks on low cabinets and drawers. Be sure to get the kind that keep doors completely closed or that don’t let them close all the way (that keeps little fi nger from getting pinched).

Install oven locks and covers for oven and stove knobs. Train yourself to use back burners whenever possible and put pot and pan handles towards the back of the stove-top instead of letting them hang over the front where they’re attractive nuisances to little hands.

When you’re cooking, keep your baby out of the kitchen or safely confi ned in a play pen. Never, ever hold your child while you’re anywhere near an active stove. Steam, boiling water,

and bubbling pasta sauce may be cool to look at, but they can scald and burn in an instant.

Put your nice China away and start using plastic dishes and serving bowls instead. Glass and porcelain break, and those shards can show up for weeks, regardless of how well you sweep.

IN THE LIVING ROOM Put decals – at crawling-baby

height – on all sliding glass doors and low windows

Get plants off the fl oor. There are dozens of plants than can cause illness,

irritation, or worse if eaten or touched. And even if the plants aren’t toxic, do you really want your baby to eat dirt or drink water from plant trays?

Pad the corners of low tables, chairs, and fi replace hearths. And be sure your fi replace screen and tools can’t be pulled over.

Keep furniture away from windows. Babies are like cats and will climb as high up as they can. Unlike cats, they may fall through the glass.

IN THE BATHROOMS Install guards on all toilets. Use gates to keep access restricted

to adults or older children. Keep bath and shower doors

closed. Never leave water standing in the

bath, a sink, or even a bucket. Babies can drown in practically no water at all.

In the tub, use a mat or stick-on safety strips to reduce the risk of slipping.

Keep all medication and cosmetics high up or locked up.

As in the kitchen, put locks on cabinets and drawers to eliminate anything your baby can climb up on to raid the medicine cabinet.

Keep shavers and hair dryers unplugged and out of reach.

No electrical appliances near the tub.

IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM Go back to using powdered or

liquid detergent – and keep them far, far out of sight. Yes, those pre-measured packets are a lot more convenient, but they’re also colourful and small, which makes them extremely attractive to young children, who just love to put small, colourful things in their mouth. In 2015, there were more than 12,000 accidental laundry packet exposures involving children under fi ve, and that number is steadily rising. Ingestion or touching can do severe damage to a small child’s (or adult’s, for that matter) mouth, throat, and eyes.

An artist’s impression of the proposed Al Wakrah Stadium.

Khalifa International Stadium.

An artist’s impression of the proposed Thumama Stadium

Sheep can recognise human faces: scientistsReutersLondon

Sheep have been trained to recognise the faces of celebrities, including former US president Barack Obama, by University

of Cambridge scientists who hope it may help with understanding neurodegenerative diseases.

In a specially equipped pen, sheep were shown pictures of people on two computer screens, on one side would be an unknown person and on the other would be one of four celebrities.

The animal would receive a reward of food for choosing the photograph of the celebrity by breaking an infrared beam near the screen displaying it.

If they chose the wrong photograph, a buzzer would sound and they would receive no reward. The sheep eventually managed to identify the familiar face eight times out of every 10.

The group of celebrities the sheep were trained to recognise included actors Emma Watson and Jake Gyllenhaal, BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce and Obama.

“We’ve shown that sheep have advanced face-recognition abilities, comparable with those of humans and monkeys,” professor Jenny Morton, who led the study, said in a statement.

In addition to being shown images of the celebrities facing forward, scientists also tested the animals’ ability to recognise the faces in photographs taken from other angles.

The animals’ success rate fell by around 15 % when presented with the faces at a new angle, an amount researchers said was comparable to that seen when humans perform the task.

Scientists aim to use the sheep as models to understand disorders of the brain, such as Huntington’s disease, that develop over a long time and aff ect cognitive abilities.

It’s never too soon to start childproofing.

A sheep approaches a photo of Barack Obama during a Cambridge University experiment, in Cambridge yesterday.

Three-day forecast

TODAY

SATURDAY

High: 32 C

Low : 25 C

High: 32 C

Low: 24 C

Weather report

Around the region

Abu DhabiBaghdadDubaiKuwait CityManamaMuscatRiyadhTehran

Weather todaySunnyP CloudySunnyM SunnySunnySunnySunnyM Sunny

Around the world

Athens BeirutBangkok BerlinCairoCape Town ColomboDhakaHong KongIstanbulJakartaKarachiLondonManilaMoscowNew DelhiNew York ParisSao PauloSeoulSingaporeSydney Tokyo Clear

Max/min21/1123/1832/2408/0627/1623/1530/2532/2126/2317/1032/2532/1912/0731/2602/-131/1713/0311/0726/1915/0631/2520/1319/14

Weather todayM SunnySunnyP CloudyP CloudySunnyP CloudyS T StormsSunnyP CloudyP CloudyS T StormsP CloudyCloudyS T StormsP CloudySunnyP CloudyP CloudyT StormsSunnyT StormsP Cloudy

Fishermen’s forecast

OFFSHORE DOHAWind: NE-SE 03-12 KTWaves: 1-3 Feet

INSHORE DOHAWind: NW-NE 05-15 KTWaves: 1-2 Feet

High: 33 C

Low: 23 C

FRIDAY

Off shore: Fine and some clouds at places

Sunny

Sunny

Max/min31/2729/1732/2432/1932/2431/2331/1823/13

Weather tomorrowM SunnySunnyM SunnySunnyP CloudySunnySunnyP Cloudy

Max/min31/2627/1432/2331/2032/2531/2431/17

Max/min20/1323/1833/2509/0427/1623/1629/2532/2128/2416/0933/2533/2012/0930/2502/0230/1603/-313/0926/1816/0331/2621/1516/10

Weather tomorrowP CloudyM SunnyS ShowersShowersP CloudyM SunnyS T StormsSunnySunnyM SunnyS T StormsSunnyP CloudyS T StormsCloudySunnyM SunnyShowersT StormsRainT StormsM SunnyClear

21/11

QATAR


A vendor displays some of the local products. PICTURES: Nasar T K

‘Qatar Glory’ community event underway at HBKUBy Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

Around 50 local vendors from Qa-tar are taking part in ‘Qatar Glory’, a community event organised by

Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in collaboration with partner universities in Education City. The two-day event that was opened yesterday, is taking place at the HBKU Student Centre.

The items showcased at the event are owned by young, talented Qatari en-trepreneurs and students studying in Education City. There is also a competi-tion for the audience to follow HBKU on Instagram and tag them on a photo they took of the event. The top three photos will win a mini sculpture of one of the fa-mous Qatari landmarks.

“Qatar Glory event is a way for HBKU to engage the community by showcasing the spectacular work of Qatari nationals. HBKU takes great pride in celebrating Qatari culture and heritage and looks for-ward to welcoming entrepreneurs from across Qatar,” Reem al-Abduljabbar, head of student engagement, HBKU, told Gulf Times yesterday.

“The current political situation fac-ing Qatar has impacted all of us in some way or another, bringing the local com-munity much closer. Considering the current unique circumstances, we have witnessed a positive integration of our community unlike that of the past. The challenges facing our country has unifi ed both Qataris and residents, and instead of

dividing us, has brought us much closer in solidarity,” the offi cial continued.

“Built on unique partnerships with key local and international players, the uni-versity prioritises community outreach and engagement as an important element of its work. HBKU seeks to provide value to the local community and empower its

students to be the future infl uencers and leaders of the country,” she added.

The exhibits at the event range from live painting stations by renowned Qa-tari artist Fahad al-Maadheed, to food stalls and clothing booths, along with home interior items, books, and other products. There are also several “made

in Qatar” booths, diff erent local vendors that sell items ranging from jewellery, candles, perfumes, notebooks, and other products, all made in Qatar.

All the participating businesses are homegrown and rooted in Qatari herit-age. Qatar Glory provides a great avenue for local entrepreneurs to showcase their talents and innovative spirit to the pub-lic.

The event is an eff ort by HBKU to high-light the achievements of the local en-trepreneurs and small scale vendors and support them with public initiatives. The event is open to the public and will con-clude today.

Reem al-Abduljabbar

A lady displaying local products.

AZF all set to host Aspire Lake FestivalAspire Zone Foundation

(AZF) has announced that with preparations

for the Aspire Lake Festival almost complete, it is ready to welcome thousands of visi-tors to the three-day event in partnership with Katara and Ooredoo.

Taking place for the fi rst time in Qatar, the event will be held from today until Saturday, with two shows scheduled at 7.30pm and 9.30pm on each day. The visiting performers arrived in Doha a few days ago and were doing their fi nal re-hearsals yesterday, AZF said in a press statement.

AZF has allocated a large seating area to accommodate more than 1,400 spectators who have expressed interest in attending the festival on social media, making it “one of the top cultural attractions in Doha this weekend”, the statement notes.

To ensure that guests are ca-tered for, Aspire Zone has also deployed 12 food trucks in the area close to the event. Besides, there will be a fully-equipped media centre.

The music and lights show

organised for the festival will feature a number of visual performances using specially designed decorations and light eff ects set to beautiful musi-cal scores. The performers will be presenting these shows on gondolas along the lake.

Nasser Abdullah al-Hajri, director of PR and Commu-nications at AZF, said: “The festival has been carefully de-veloped in partnership with Katara and Ooredoo to high-light novel cultural and artistic elements inspired by Italian culture. It will be presented for the fi rst time in Qatar at Aspire Lake, transforming the scenery into a colourful piece of art that I believe everyone will enjoy.”

AZF stressed that it is “com-mitted to boosting the tourism and leisure sectors in Qatar by introducing new activities to attract and excite visitors”. “Due to this innovative ap-proach, Aspire Park has be-come one of the most popular destinations for both recrea-tional and sporting events,” it added.

More information about the event can be found on www.lifeinaspire.qa A rehearsal under way at Aspire Park.

12th Heya fashionexhibition drew more than 9,000

The 12th edition of Heya Arabian Fashion Exhibi-tion attracted more than

9,000 visitors over fi ve days, a 23% increase year-on-year, organisers have announced.

The event brought together fashion enthusiasts and infl u-encers, families and aspiring designers to discover more than 150 local, regional and in-ternational brands from over 15 countries.

This year saw the largest number of established and emerging Qatari designers, with 65% of exhibitors coming from Qatar. New partnerships with Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar and Qatar Business In-cubation Centre, provided vis-itors with expertise in every-thing from fashion marketing to fi nance, to how to get a fash-

ion business off the ground. In addition, adding depth to this year’s programme were the collaborations with the Italian, Germany and Mexican embas-sies to help nurture and devel-op local design talent.

Beyond the unique shopping experience, Heya’s packed schedule of 11 workshops, eight forums and 21 fashion shows drew huge crowds seek-ing knowledge, guidance and inspiration. The event dis-played the latest collection of abayas, kaftans, jalabiyas, evening gowns, veils and other accessories, including for the fi rst-time perfume and make-up.

Heya Arabian Fashion Exhi-bition was brought to visitors by Qatar Tourism Authority and delivered by partners De-sign Creationz.

A view of the crowd at Heya Arabian Fashion Exhibition.

Al-Habbal contest starts tomorrow

Stemming from its keen-ness to revive ancient traditions while em-

bedding Qatar’s rich culture within the hearts of upcom-ing generations, the Cultural Village Foundation – Katara is gearing up to kick off the third edition of Al-Habbal competi-tion tomorrow.

Al-Habbal competition mainly highlights and ad-dresses the ancient Qatari cul-tural practice of hunting birds. The two-day competition will be held at an area called, ‘Arki-yah’ related to the Qatari insti-tute ‘Hassad Qatar’, from 2pm to 5pm.

The contest is devoted to the youth of Qatar, citizens and expatriates, alike, aged

between 10 and 15. The third edition has attracted 50 par-ticipants, which were divided into 10 teams.

Al-Habbal competition tends to coincide with migra-tory birds’ arrival in Qatar, in search of warm weather. This contest plays a signifi cant role in presenting the most impor-tant elements associated with the environment and wild-life heritage to children while em-bedding this heritage in them.

Organising committee chairman Ali Youssef al-Kuwari, said: “The winner of the fi rst place will receive QR20,000, while the sec-ond place winner will receive QR15,000, and the third-place team a total of QR10,000.”

A group of teenagers receiving instructions in preparations for Al-Habbal competition.

UN clears Qatar in expatriate workers' inquiry - Gulf Times

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Transcript of UN clears Qatar in expatriate workers' inquiry - Gulf Times