University registers big growth in research - Gulf Times

MONDAY Vol. XXXVI No. 9999

February 15, 2016Jumada I 6, 1437 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals GULF TIMES

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In brief

QATAR

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INDEX

QATAR | Page 28 SPORT | 2

Arsenal blow Premier League title race open

Tunnelling work on Doha Metro project’s Green Line complete

QATAR | Event

Minister to openInterfaith DialogueHE the Minister of Justice Dr Hassan Lahdan Saqr al-Muhannadi will inaugurate the 12th Doha conference of Interfaith Dialogue on Wednesday. More than 500 scholars and experts will attend. It will be under the slogan of “Spiritual and Intellectual Safety in the Light of Religious Doctrines.” The conference will conclude on February 17. There will be four main panel discussions. They are “Religion and its role in spiritual and intellectual security”, “Destabilisation of moral and intellectual security”, “Protecting youth from intellectual and moral violation and cultural alienation”, and “Strategies for protecting spiritual and intellectual freedom and security: future expectations.”

REGION | Confl ict

Saudi intercepts Scud missile from Yemen Saudi Arabia intercepted a Scud missile fired towards the kingdom by Iran-backed rebels in Yemen, the Riyadh-led coalition fighting the insurgents has said. The off icial Saudi SPA news agency said the missile was destroyed by the kingdom’s air defences on Saturday, around 100km from its border with Yemen. Page 9

ASIA | Decision

Seoul defends pullout from industrial zoneSouth Korea yesterday defended its decision to abruptly pull out of an inter-Korean industrial zone, claiming 70% of wages for North Korean workers were for years used to fund Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile development. Seoul last Wednesday announced it would withdraw from the Kaesong industrial complex. Page 15

WORLD | Health

Broccoli compound ‘slows breast cancer’ US researchers say a compound found in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli slows growth of breast cancer cells. Oregon State University and the Oregon Health & Science University researchers suggest in a study that the compound sulforaphane has long shown evidence of value in cancer prevention.

INDIA | Arrests

Protests snowball over sedition row Protests snowballed yesterday at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), days after its student union president was arrested on charges of sedition and at least seven others detained. Page 21

Ministry destroys 2.9mn tonnes of unfi t food The Ministry of Public Health

(MPH) last year returned or de-stroyed more than 5mn tonnes

of foodstuff that did not meet Qatar standards, it was announced yesterday.

A total of 2.59bn tonnes of food items imported into the country were inspected by the ministry at various ports of entry during 2015.

While 2.2mn tonnes of the foodstuff were returned to the country of origin because they did not comply with the set standards, 2.9mn tonnes were de-

stroyed for being unfi t for human con-sumption.

As part of the ministry’s food safety campaign, 7,162 random samples were taken from the cargoes that arrived in the country and sent to the Central Food Laboratories where they were subjected to several tests that resulted in accepting 6,527 samples and reject-ing 635 samples for various microbial, chemical and physical reasons.

MPH statistics issued yesterday re-vealed that the Doha seaport with

around 901.5mn tonnes topped the other entry points in the country in food imports. Of this, 897.6mn tonnes were admitted and approved while 1.4mn tonnes were rejected and re-exported for non-compliance. In addition, 2.4mn tonnes were destroyed for non-compli-ance with the set specifi cations or being unfi t for human consumption.

Abu Samra Border Post came second with 898.36mn tonnes. After tests con-ducted on samples, 898.35mn tonnes were allowed into the country and 704

tonnes re-exported for non-compli-ance and 445.8 tonnes destroyed for not being fi t for human consumption. The air cargo terminal at Hamad In-ternational Airport came third with 738.3mn tonnes. After tests, 8.9 tonnes of these were re-exported and around 24.8 tonnes destroyed.

Al Ruwais Port, which was inaugu-rated last year, received 216.9 tonnes of imported foodstuff during November and December 2015.

The foodstuff that were re-exported

for non-compliance last year included 1,392 boxes of bread, 1,224 boxes of tomato paste, 1,872 boxes of juice, 149 boxes of pickles, 2,326 boxes of various foodstuff and 151 packages of honey. All were rejected due to non-compliance with the set health standards, such as the means of transportation, use of non-standard artifi cial ingredients, or lack of proper data. Besides, food labels that contained words such as “pork”, “wine” and other banned substances were rejected.

Among the destroyed food items were 4,700 boxes of spices, cakes, chicken, drinking water and cooking oil. In addition, several fi sh and meat cargoes were destroyed after changes in their natural physical properties were detected. Other destroyed food-stuff included juices proven to contain a percentage of alcohol.

According to market sources, the MPH inspection of imported foodstuff is considered highly effi cient and ac-curate.

University registers big growth in research QU has become one of the fastest growing institutions for research in the region with a compound annual growth rate of 36.45%, based on a 2015 comparative study, according to the off icial

By Joseph VargheseStaff Reporter

Qatar University (QU) has recorded as much as 250% growth in re-search programmes over the last

fi ve years, it was announced yesterday. The national university undertook

over 450 research projects collaborat-ing with 319 institutions around the world during this period.

“QU has taken a tremendous lead in research collaboration and output and it is evident in the recent ranking of the university from various agencies,” act-ing vice president for research Dr Dar-wish al-Emadi said.

“The university has been ranked number one in international collabo-ration in the Times Higher Education (THE) Mena Universities Ranking and number four in the Mena region for re-search,” he pointed out.

QU has become one of the fastest growing institutions for research in the region with a compound annual growth rate of 36.45%, based on a 2015 com-parative study, according to the offi cial.

Research activities of QU are focused on four major areas. “They are energy, environment and resources sustain-ability; social changes and identity; population, health and wellness; and information and communication tech-nologies. There are several research programmes in these sectors, focusing on the grand challenges of the country.”

Nayla Ahmad M al-Thani, assistant director, Offi ce of Academic Research, observed that the quality of the re-search work of QU was above the inter-national rating.

“The international average for qual-

ity of research metrics is one and QU has achieved 1.25. Our researchers’ published work has increased by ap-proximately 246.7% based on the fi eld-weighted citation impact, which is a quality metric maintaining a value of 1.17 in 2014, and 1.25 in 2015. The col-laboration in research has resulted in 3,200 co-authored publications.

“Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) is the main funding source for Qatar University. QU’s budget for cur-rent active grants and contracts was $141.5mn of which $48mn was awarded in 2015, with QNRF providing 94% of the funding,” she said.

Al-Emadi pointed out that several private organisations also supported QU by providing funding for research through diff erent ways.

“Over the past eight years, QU has received about $22.7mn from other agencies for its research activities. QU continues in its eff orts to create an enabling environment of research ex-cellence by providing full support to its research community.”

“These organisations support QU by establishing a chair at diff erent colleges of the university. They also support and sponsor many of the programmes of the university. In addition, some com-panies approach us by asking for as-sistance in tackling certain issues, they come across in their activities,” he said.

“In the course of the last eight years, around 1,200 students benefi ted from student grants, and about 800 stu-dents were supported through univer-sity, start-up, and summer grants with QU spending approximately $14mn on these grants.”

Nayla al-Thani observed that many students have been the benefi ciaries of the Undergraduate Research Experi-ence Programme (UREP) of QNRF.

A total of 1,668 undergraduate stu-dents have benefi ted from the UREP in last eight years. QU receives 55 UREP grants per year totalling approximately $1.9mn. Page 4

Dr Darwish al-Emadi announcing QU’s research achievements yesterday.

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani yesterday met with Exxon Mobil Corporation chairman Rex Tillerson. The meeting at the Emiri Diwan was attended by the delegation accompanying the chairman.

Emir meets Exxon Mobil chairman

DPAMuncih

Hopes of a successful truce and the speedy delivery of hu-manitarian aid to besieged

areas of Syria dwindled yesterday as regime forces - backed by Russian airstrikes - pushed ahead with an of-fensive against rebels in the northern province of Aleppo.

US Senator John McCain, Riyad Hijab, chief negotiator for the Syrian opposition, and deputy UN chief Jan Eliasson were among diplomats and foreign policy experts to cast serious doubt on an agreement by world pow-ers to implement a truce and deliver aid by next week.

“My scepticism rests simply on the nature of our adversaries’ ambitions,” McCain said at the Munich Security Conference, adding that President Vladimir Putin’s Syrian intervention was an attempt to re-establish Russia as a major power by exacerbating the refugee crisis in order to divide Nato and undermine the European project.

“If Russia and the Assad regime violate this agreement, what are the consequences? I don’t see any. Com-mon sense will not end the confl ict in Syria - it takes leverage,” he said.

Hijab accused Moscow and Damas-cus of pursuing a “strategy of forced displacement”, adding that neither party was invested in a truce.

The UN was still waiting for secu-rity guarantees that would allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to be-sieged areas of Syria that world pow-ers had scheduled for today.

The process is more complicated than expected, Eliasson told DPA on

the sidelines of the conference. “We need quick action from their

side,” he said, adding that aid convoys were ready to go but it was unclear when security assurances from Da-mascus would come.

Key players in the conflict were still trying to prop up hopes for a truce, with the Kremlin putting out a statement that a phone conversa-tion between Putin and US Presi-dent Barack Obama in the wake of the agreement had been “frank and constructive”.

According to the Kremlin, Putin reiterated the importance of co-or-dinating US and Russian military ef-forts in the fi ght against the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front militias, two groups which are exempted from the truce. Russia has insisted its air cam-paign only targets “terrorists.”

The truce “requires opposition groups to stop fi ghting but it allows Russia to continue bombing ‘terror-

ists,’ which it insists is everyone, even civilians”, McCain charged.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, backed by Russian airstrikes, pressed ahead yesterday with a major attack against the rebel-held towns of Anadan and Hreitan on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, according to ac-tivists.

Warplanes, believed to be Russian, unleashed a series of airstrikes yes-terday on the rebel-controlled district of al-Qatrji in the city of Aleppo, the capital of the province of the same name, the Syrian observatory for Hu-man Rights said.

Meanwhile, hostilities were con-tinuing elsewhere on the ground.

Turkish forces shelled positions held by the Kurd-led Democratic Forces of Syria (DFS), a coalition linked to the Kurdish People’s Protec-tion Units (YPG) in the northern and north-western parts of Aleppo prov-ince. Page 11

Syria truce hopes dwindle as offi cials slam Moscow

A boy looking up as he inspects the damage after airstrikes by pro-Syrian government forces in the rebel held Douma neighbourhood of Damascus yesterday.

QATAR

Gulf Times Monday, February 15, 20162

HE the Minister of State for Defence Aff airs Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah met the visiting UK Defence Procurement Minister, Philip Dunne, and his accompanying delegation in Doha yesterday. Talks during the meeting focused on military relations between Qatar and the UK and ways of enhancing them. Chief of Staff of Qatari Armed Forces HE Major-General Ghanem bin Shaheen al- Ghanem attended the meeting.

Qatar-UK defence ties reviewed

Ministry withdraws taintedstock of Advil Suspension The Ministry of Public

Health (MPH) has an-nounced the withdrawal

of batch J89260 of Advil Sus-pension 100mg/5ml, 100ml from all the private pharmacies and hospitals in the country as a precautionary measure due to an issue with the viscosity of the product.

The Pharmacy and Drug Con-trol Department at MPH has affi rmed that all the hospitals under Hamad Medical Corpora-tion and all health centres do not have this batch. All types of oth-er drugs are closely monitored through testing random samples at MPH laboratories to ensure their safety.

Further, the department af-fi rmed it has received a letter from the manufacturer of Ad-vil indicating that the com-pany has voluntarily withdrawn the aff ected stock of the drug amounting to 6,540 packages. Immediately, the department sent its inspectors to all private pharmacies and hospitals to

withdraw the remaining stock of this batch.

The department also in-structed the local agent of the company to withdraw the af-fected batch of the medicine from the pharmacies, stop its import and supply the depart-ment with a report on the with-drawn quantity.

Ooredoo upgrades Shahry Smart packs

Ooredoo has announced an upgrade of its Shahry Smart packs, by enhanc-

ing the monthly local data al-lowance, as well as international and local minute allowance at no extra charge for new and existing customers.

Ooredoo Shahry Smart cus-tomers who currently sub-scribe to the 55 pack will now receive double the data allow-ance, whilst Shahry 100 and 150 subscribers will get extra local calling minutes, for the same monthly fee.

To cater for the growing de-mand for data in Qatar Shahry 150, 250 and 450 customers will

have their data allowance boost-ed by up to 10GB per month, whilst 750 customers will be up-graded from 10GB to 50GB data at no extra cost.

Shahry Smart 250 users will also get an allowance of 100 in-ternational calling minutes to use calling 120 countries around the world.

The upgrades will be avail-able for all new and existing customers as part of Oore-doo’s new ‘Just Switched’ campaign which aims to high-light the enhanced commu-nications experience avail-able with Ooredoo, as well as a range of the customers taking

‘the switch’.“Our new super loaded

Shahry Smart plans off er great value for everyone in Qatar,” said Fatima Sultan al-Kuwari, direc-tor Community & Public Rela-tions, Ooredoo.

Shahry Smart packs off er a host of local and international minutes/SMS, data and access to the 4G+ network for super-fast mobile data speeds. Packs come in denominations of 15, 35, 55, 100, 150, 250, 450 and 750.

More information on Shahry Smart pack could be had from an Ooredoo Shop or www.ooredoo.qa

FM turns spotlight on

oppressed communities

HE the Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani

has said that the most urgent matter to discuss is the fate of millions of families and commu-nities living under oppression in the Middle East.

In a speech at a session of the 52nd Munich Security Confer-ence under the title of “Grow-ing Rifts, Power Shifts? The New Geopolitics of the Middle East”, the Foreign Minister said, con-sidering the issue from popula-tion perspective more than 6% of the world’s population is liv-ing in the Middle East. This fi g-ure includes Muslims and Chris-tians, Arabs and Kurds, adding that 57.6mn people are in need of humanitarian aid, including 17.7mn people are either inter-nally displaced or refugees fl ee-

ing confl ict and persecution. Reiterating the importance of

discussing the balance of power at a time of mounting tensions between regional actors, the Foreign Minister said under-standing the new geopolitics of the Middle East requires raising a question as to how the Mid-dle East and North Africa region changed from an era of possible political reform to an era of con-fl icts and disputes.

HE Sheikh Mohamed bin Ab-dulrahman al-Thani added that the region is already reeling from the overwhelming impact of key factors for instability, namely the siege against the Palestin-ian people, the absence of a just solution and the loss of hope for any corrective step by the inter-national community to end one of the last remaining occupa-tions in the world.

He explained that massive vi-olations of human rights, chaos, and instability have created a

favourable environment for all kinds of destructive interests.

In Syria, the regime’s un-precedented brutality and the failure of the international community to protect civil-ians from massive bombard-ment led to two issues, the fi rst of which is the militarisation of the civil revolution, and the second is mounting infl uence of foreign groups that took ad-vantage of the power vacuum and controlled lands in both Syria and Iraq, he said.

HE Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani added: “The historic coexistence of diff erent religions and ethnic groups enrich our culture and society, but the politicisation of sectarian diff erences is a recent phenomenon that has unfortu-nately been used and reproduced by regional and international powers and encouraged by the existing competition between countries”.

QNAMunich

QATAR


In brief

HE the Minister of Transport and Communications, Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti, held separate meetings with the ambassadors of France, Canada and Swaziland to Qatar, Eric Chevallier, Adrian Norfolk, and Felizwe Dlamini, in Doha yesterday. Talks dealt with bilateral relations in transport and communications sector and means of enhancing them.

Transport Minister meets ambassadors

HE the Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met Singapore’s Minister of Defence Ng Eng Hen and his Polish counterpart Witold Waszczykowski in Munich on Saturday. The meetings took place in Germany, where the off icials are participating in Munich Security Conference. Bilateral relations and issues of joint interest were discussed.

HE the Minister of Municipality and Environment, Mohamed bin Abdullah al-Rumaihi met the ambassador of France to the State of Qatar, Eric Chevallier, in Doha yesterday. Talks dealt with means of co-operation between Qatar and France in municipal and environment aff airs.

FM holds meetingsin Munich

Minister meets French envoy Expat acquitted of forgery charge

A Doha Criminal Court has acquitted a Jordanian expatriate man of the charges of counterfeiting offi cial

documents and cancelled a previous ver-dict of three years in jail and deportation.

Local Arabic daily Arrayah reported yesterday that the man was accused by the Public Prosecution of conniving with another unidentifi ed person to counter-

feit his university degree certifi cate is-sued by Jordan and submitting it to the authentication department of the Qatar Ministry of Foreign Aff airs. However, the fi le of the case did not include the coun-terfeited document. Besides, the defend-ant submitted his original certifi cate, making the court acquit him for lack of evidence.

Eight expatriates jailed for assault, disturbingpeace while intoxicated

A Doha Criminal Court has sentenced eight Nepalese men to two

months in jail for attacking others and disturbing peace while being intoxicated, lo-cal Arabic daily Arrayah re-ported yesterday.

According to testimony of the witnesses, who were the co-workers and accom-modation mates, the de-fendants were clearly intox-

icated when they attacked their victims at the gate of the housing.

The defendants also injured four of their col-leagues rendering them in-disposed for a period of less than 20 days.

The witnesses said though they asked the de-fendants to go away but they refused and fought with them.

QU research programmesfocus on four major areas

QU-CMED holds march in support of cancer patients

Qatar University (QU), has focused its re-search programmes

on four main areas, an offi -cial of the research division said yesterday.

It was announced that QU has achieved 250% growth in the research programmes over the last fi ve years by taking up more than 450 re-searches with 319 collabora-tors from around the world.

Speaking to Gulf Times, Dr Darwish al-Emadi, QU acting vice-president for research explained: “We are focusing on several re-searches which are broadly divided into four areas.

They are energy, environ-ment and resources sus-tainability; social changes and identity; population, health and wellness and in-formation and communica-tion technologies.”

“QU is instrumental in realising Qatar National Vi-sion 2030 of transforming the country into a knowl-edge-based economy. Re-search is one of the most important elements in re-alising a knowledge econ-omy. It is fundamentally important to concentrate on research to produce and disseminate knowledge,” he continued.

“Several of the research programmes in these sec-tors are focusing on the grand challenges of the

country. The university has been targeting these areas as most of them are relevant to the society and the country.”

According to Dr al-Ema-di, all the four areas of re-search comprise of several sub-themes. In the fi rst cat-egory, the major subdivi-sions are research on marine resources; water, air and food security; materials and nanotechnology and lique-fi ed natural gas and alterna-tive energy.

The research on social change and identity com-prises areas such as mod-ernisation, national identity and society; Islam and con-temporary issues and edu-cation and capacity build-ing.

The third sector focuses

on sub-themes such as pre-vention and treatment of chronic non-communicable diseases and traffi c safety.

Finally, the last topic has several research pro-grammes in the fi elds of intelligent and secure infor-mation processing; distrib-uted systems and e-services and enabling technologies.

Dr al-Emadi noted that research always takes its own time to produce de-sired outcomes. “Research takes time and needs some duration to get the desired results. Sometimes we have to research on the outcomes of a research. We would not be doing these researches if they were not relevant to the Qatari society and the coun-try in general,” he added.

Qatar University Col-lege of Medicine (QU-CMED) held a

march in support of cancer patients and with the long-term vision to establish a tradition of individual fun-draising support for cancer research in the country.

The march was held at the Corniche with over 100 community members join-ing QU and CMED mem-bers. Participants started from the Costa café at the Sheraton end of the Cor-niche where they received lavender-coloured scarves and balloons to repre-sent support for cancer

patients. The march pro-ceeded towards the Oryx statue in the middle of the Corniche and back to the starting point.

Medical student Moham-ed al-Jaber said: “Com-munity events like this one have the three-fold purpose of increasing public aware-ness, strengthening ties among college members, and raising funds for a good cause; in this case support-ing cancer patients.”

QU vice-president for Medical Education and CMED dean Dr Egon Toft said: “By participating, marchers expressed their

solidarity with cancer pa-tients and their support for cancer research. We aim to develop this into an an-nual tradition that coincides with World Cancer Day. We anticipate that with time, it will grow into a large-scale event and raise considerable funds for cancer research at the college.”

Dr Toft noted the impor-tance the college places on cancer research and high-

lighted some of its research areas. “Our cancer research aims to identify prognos-tic biomarkers and develop novel therapeutic inter-ventions for personalised medicine in addition to de-veloping new protocols and strategies that synergise with conventional cancer treatments.”

The college recently es-tablished two groups fo-cused on cancer research - one to study Cancer Bi-ology and Metastasis; the other to explore Cancer Proteomics and Systems Biology for Personalised Medicine.

By Joseph VargheseStaff reporter

Some of the participants at the march.

Justice Minister launches web portal for digital documentation

HE the Minister of Justice Dr Hassan Lahdan Saqr al-

Muhannadi inaugurated a legal web portal named ‘Sak’. The web portal is part of the fi rst phase of developing the infrastruc-ture of legal documenta-

tion in Qatar. The Minister oversaw the

fi rst electronic transaction. The portal provides 14 dif-ferent online documenta-tion services. In the near future, the ministry will add 16 diff erent real estate regis-tration services.

Commenting on the launch, the Minister said it comes in the context of the directives of HH the Emir

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to facilitate gov-ernment services for citi-zens. The web portal is part of Qatar’s e-government strategy 2020, which is im-plemented under the direc-tives of HE the Prime Minis-ter and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani.

Part of establishing the portal will be to digitise all

real estate documents. The new electronic system will adopt a one-stop shop sys-tem, where citizens can fi n-ish all the steps of register-ing a property at one place. A government employee can check the status of any re-quest made through an SMS service. He can use the por-tal to fi nd out whether there are missing papers, or if the request was rejected.

QNADoha

“We aim to develop this into an annual tradition that coincides with World Cancer Day”

QATAR5Gulf Times

Monday, February 15, 2016

HE the Advisory Council Deputy Speaker Issa bin Rabia al-Kuwari met a delegation of senior US congressional staff members yesterday. Talks during the meeting dealt with relations between Qatar and the US and ways of enhancing them in addition to issues of common interest. The meeting was attended by Advisory Council Controller Mohamed Abdullah al-Sulaiti along with Council Secretary-General HE Fahad bin Mubarak al-Khayareen.

Qatar-US relations discussed

Emir and Sheikha Jawaher to

attend QU graduation events

HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Ha-mad al-Thani will

honour Qatar University’s men’s graduation ceremo-ny of Class of 2016 on June 1, it was announced yester-day.

HH Sheikha Jawaher bint Hamad bin Suhaim al-Thani, wife of HH the Emir, will grace the women’s cer-

emony on June 2. Both cere-monies will be held at Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre.

This year, 1,800 students - 400 men and 1,400 wom-en - will be graduating with bachelors, masters, and di-plomas from all colleges of QU.

QU vice president for Student Aff airs Dr Kha-

lid al-Khanji said the ceremonies refl ect QU’s commitment to gradu-ate highly-qualifi ed students who meet the labour market’s expec-tations by empowering them with the knowledge and skills for lifelong learning to make sig-nifi cant contributions in driving the country’s de-

velopment and growth. “QU is committed to

strengthening its students’ and graduates’ Arabic and Islamic identity and values. The organisation is ensur-ing that its graduates inter-act with and are open to the world while promoting their connectedness with their cultural roots and Islamic values.”

QATAR


Evans speaks at the Waste Management and Recycling Summit.

Expert explainsimportance of‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ concept The “prevailing focus” of

the construction indus-try is to fi rst reduce the

amount of waste produced, an offi cial of Qatar Project Manage-ment (QPM) has said.

In a presentation delivered at the recently-concluded “6th Waste Management and Recy-cling Summit” in Doha, Dr Mark Evans, who is also with Qatar Rail’s PMC Major Stations De-partment as Environmental & Sustainability manager, said: “There is a need to reinforce the role of resource effi ciency in con-struction and related training, which is a relatively new addition to courses.”

He added: “The industry, overall, has a lot of gaps to bridge. Some waste is unavoidable, but there are plenty of opportunities for reuse and recycling.”

Evans said Qatar Rail is taking

the “reduce, reuse, and recycle” concept “to a higher level.”

“In what they are calling a methodology to ‘Design Out Waste’, the project managers are implementing a seven-point ‘avoid, reduce, reuse, recycle, re-cover, treat, and dispose respon-sibly’ plan,” he explained.

Evans stressed that “no amount of wishful thinking” will replace consistency in repeating the principles of the seven-point methodology.

“Toolbox sessions defi ne the operational, health, safety, and environmental policies that work-ers need to understand and learn from. People will inevitably make mistakes. But they can learn to avoid repeating them,” he noted.

He said Qatar Rail utilises all materials it can reuse at its projects and also segregates unusable waste for proper disposal or dis-

patch to recycling facilities. This also includes water usage, which is monitored closely and used only as necessary, while also ensuring that any runoff does not contaminate groundwater reserves.

Evans said reused materials, acquired from excavation and demolition and as surplus during the build, are inspected to ensure project integrity in adherence to the latest Qatar Construction Standards (QCS) code.

“Prevention of waste will lead to the best improvements in terms of environmental impact as well as cost savings across ma-terials, labour and transporta-tion, which all add to the bottom line. When you study the impact of a well-defi ned waste manage-ment plan, the benefi ts soon add up and can be a much more pow-erful motivator for developers than legislation alone,” he said.

HBKU appoints new vicepresident for Student Aff airs

CRA marks World Radio Day

Poor visibility due to fog forecast today Poor visibility is again expected in some parts of the country in the early hours today due to fog, the Qatar Met depart-ment has said.In off shore areas, strong winds and high seas are likely towards the north, accord-ing to the weather report.

The forecast for inshore areas says it will be misty to foggy in some places at first, followed by moderate tempera-tures during the day and a relatively cold night.Off shore areas are likely to see some clouds, with the wind speed reaching 22 knots to-

wards the north and the sea level rising to 7ft.Visibility, meanwhile, may drop to 1km or less at first in some areas.The minimum and maximum tempera-tures in the country today are expected to be 11C and 25C, respectively, with the forecast for Doha being 15C and 25C.

The Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) has marked World Radio Day and granted

spectrum for ‘Radio in Times of Emer-gency & Disaster.’

CRA is the fi rst telecommunications regulator in the region to assign radio spectrum frequencies for Public Pro-tection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) ap-plications.

World Radio Day marks the anniver-sary of the fi rst broadcast by the United Nations Radio in 1946, when it trans-mitted its fi rst call sign: “This is the United Nations calling the peoples of the world.”

Celebrated globally, World Radio Day seeks to raise awareness about the importance of radio, facilitate access to information through radio, and en-hance networking among broadcasters.

Radio plays a vital role in emergency situations where it is used by emer-gency and security services to com-municate in times when immediate

assistance is required. Radio is also an eff ective low-cost medium to broad-cast emergency news and updates, available everywhere and suitable to reach remote communities and vulner-able people such as the illiterate.

The Unesco theme for Word Ra-dio Day this year is “Radio in Times of Emergency and Disaster,” as radio has a strong and specifi c role in emergency communication and disaster relief.

At the International Telecommuni-cations Union’s (ITU’s) World Radio-communication Conference (WRC) in Geneva last year, the importance of bringing World Radio Day to the atten-tion of the public was highlighted.

CRA, as part of the Qatar delegation, was one of the biggest supporting or-ganisations during the WRC-15 for the adoption of a resolution to recognise the spectrum requirements for diff er-ent types of PPDR applications in line with the theme of World Radio Day 2016.

Qatar as already achieved many PPDR targets. CRA is the fi rst telecom-munications regulator in the region to assign the required radio spectrum fre-quencies for certain PPDR applications in co-ordination with the relevant gov-ernmental entities, especially the Min-istry of Interior. Qatar is also the fi rst GCC country to deploy the narrowband (Tetra Security System) and wideband (LTE Security System) PPDR applica-tions.

As Qatar’s communications regula-tor, CRA’s mandate includes the man-agement of the radio spectrum, which is carefully regulated as a scarce re-source to ensure all public and com-mercial demands, including those re-lating to PPDR, operate eff ectively.

The CRA is the communications regulator in Qatar established by virtue of Emiri Decree (42) in 2014. CRA regu-lates the communications and infor-mation technology sector, postal serv-ices, and access to digital media.

The Hamad Bin Khalifa Univer-sity (HBKU), a member of Qatar Foundation for Education Sci-

ence and Community Development, has appointed Maryam Hamad al-Mannai as its new vice president for Students Aff airs.

Previously, al-Mannai held senior positions at the Ministry of Education and Texas A&M University at Qatar (Tamuq).

“By providing students with an en-riching academic and cultural envi-ronment, in addition to a multitude of opportunities to build their leadership skills, HBKU’s Student Aff airs team aims to inspire students to be our ef-fective and ambitious ambassadors,” al-Mannai said.

“I believe our students share an ob-jective to work towards Qatar National

Vision 2030, and it is a privilege to be able to help prepare them for their professional lives as they navigate how best to use their knowledge and skills to contribute to society,” she added.

Throughout her career, al-Mannai has

shown a deep commitment to providing students with holistic education focused on the academic achievement, as well as personal growth and development.

She will be primarily responsible for student life, career development and community outreach, taking an active role in ensuring that the community is fully aware of the university’s key ini-tiatives and academic programmes.

Al-Mannai previously developed the Community Relations Programme at Tamuq and at HBKU she plans to build similar new programming to accom-modate the needs of the rapidly ex-panding student body.

She had been awarded the Distin-guished Achievement Award in Student Relations by Texas A&M University in 2010 for her eff orts in helping students fulfi l their true potential.

Barwa Bank picks winners of fi fth round of Thara’a draw Barwa Bank has announced

the names of the fi fth round of draw winners for

Thara’a, its Shariah-compliant savings account.

The bank said Ahmad Hussin Mohamed Aboshaar, Abdulrah-man Abdulsamad A A al-Mulla, Alawi Abdulkadir Aljuneid and Ameera Abdelaziz Omer Elhu-sain each won a cash prize of QR10,000.

Also, a cash prize worth QR5,000 was awarded to Ali Ghlamshah Ismaiel Ghanbar-poor, Rashid Mohamed O R al-Naimi, Suhir Yousef, Anuncia Rosario Fernandes, Aldana Ah-mad A M al-Malki, Mahmod M S Albanna and Hamad Mohamed A M al-Sabah.

The draw’s fi fth round was conducted under the supervision

of a representative of the quali-tative licence and market control department at the Ministry of Economy and Commerce.

Capping the 2015 series of draws with a dual reward for Thara’a account holders, the draw doubled up the chance for two participants to walk away with the QR1mn grand prize. The winners were Salem Said al-Merri and Alla Hail Marouf who each took home QR1mn.

Thara’a off ers account holders the chance to benefi t from cash rewards up to QR1mn, a fi rst for Islamic banks in Qatar. Based on several criteria, Thara’a account holders are eligible for a number of periodic draws for cash prizes.

Totalling QR3mn, Thara’a cash rewards are distributed on both a monthly and biannual

basis to customers holding a minimum balance of QR10,000.

On a monthly basis, there are seven winners per draw for the cash prize of QR5,000, as well as four winners per draw for the cash prize of QR10,000.

Additionally, twice every year, there are four winners per draw for the cash prize of QR25,000, two winners per draw for the cash prize of QR50,000 and one winner per draw for the grand prize of QR1mn thus rewarding 102 winners in total with cash prizes up to QR3mn.

Coupled with cash prizes and a reward scheme, Thara’a is a product full of value-added benefi ts and services. Thara’a off ers account holders access to Barwa Bank’s innovative bank-ing channels with benefi ts, in-

cluding unlimited withdrawals and deposits, as well as free fund transfers across their accounts and through all Barwa Bank channels.

Customers can learn about Thara’a savings account and its benefi ts by visiting Barwa Bank’s website, www.barwabank.com, or by calling the contact centre on 800 8555.

Barwa Bank off ers an exten-sive variety of personal banking products and investments, as well as eight strategically-locat-ed branches and a broad network of more than 60 ATMs located across Qatar.

Customers can access their ac-counts from the convenience of their offi ce or home through the state-of–the-art online banking, or via the 24/7 contact centre.

One of the winners of Barwa Bank’s Thara’a prize draw.

Maryam Hamad al-Mannai

QATAR7


WCM-Q holds student recruitment event About 400 middle

and high school stu-dents and their par-

ents attended Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) annual student recruit-ment event – ‘Medicine Unlimited’.

Students and their fami-lies had the chance to tour the teaching facilities at WCM-Q, meet the faculty, and learn about career op-portunities to students who study for a degree in medicine.

Attendees were invited to take part in a series of interactive presentations led by WCM-Q faculty us-ing models to demonstrate medical concepts such as

the anatomy and function of the human heart, how to deliver emergency care and transplant surgery, among others.

Organised annually by WCM-Q’s Offi ce of Student Recruitment and Outreach, the event provides access to prospective students, their parents and school admin-istrators, to a real-life expe-rience at the medical college by interacting with its fac-ulty, researchers, students and staff .

During event, partici-pants learned more about basic sciences teaching, laboratory activities and re-search facilities at WCM-Q. Through interactive dem-

onstrations and hands-on activities, the students be-came more aware of what it takes to become a doctor and learned about the ad-mission requirements.

The participation of Ha-mad Medical Cooperation and the Sidra Medical and Research Center provided an excellent opportunity for the dissemination of basic health information.

Dr Rachid Bendriss, as-sistant dean, Student Re-cruitment, Outreach and Foundation Programmes, said: “Medicine Unlimited provides a unique oppor-tunity for high school stu-dents, families, and school professionals to learn about

our world-class medical programme and interact with our faculty, staff , re-searchers, and students. It is a wonderful event that connects our college with the community to share our programmes and invite stu-dents to consider medicine for their career track.”

Visitors were also able to learn more about WCM-Q’s award-winning Sa-htak Awalan – Your Health First campaign, which had a booth at the event off er-ing free dietary and exercise advice, health checks and the chance to take a spin on the blender bikes to make a healthy fruit smoothie using only pedal power.

A student engages in a scientific experiment.

QATAR


Commercial algae ‘plant may need 100 hectares of land’ Future commercialisation of

Qatar’s algae production may require about 100 hectares of

land, an offi cial of Qatar Univer-sity’s (QU) Centre for Sustainable Development has said.

“If we take it step by step we can increase the possibil-ity of succeeding, we are go-ing to start at a one hectare site in the very near future,” research associate Kira Schipper told Gulf Times.

She said they are proposing to in-crease the land by 10 times, a scale up for each step until it reaches 100 hectares or more.

QU currently operates an algae testing plant at its farm in Al Khor for the university’s Algal Technolo-gies Programme (ATP). It consists of open race-way ponds with paddle wheels and closed fl at panel photo bioreactors.

QU’s research team is trying to select the best algae strains out of the 200 strains being tested at the facility.

Schipper said they have to de-

termine the best place to establish and operate the commercial algae production plant.

“Considering the conditions in Qatar, we have to do it with sea water, we need to be near the in-dustries and we are going to use CO2 to grow algae so there is a lot of interest to look at where the best location is,” she said.

Schipper also sees a possibility, as well as opportunities, of Qatar exporting algae products in the future.

“We are focused on supplying it for Qatar fi rst and if we have a sur-plus we can always look to expand the market to other places, fi rst in the GCC region,” she said, adding: “If there is more demand, maybe outside of that.”

Asserting that producing animal and marine feeds are more feasible now, Schipper stressed that bio-fuel production remains “on the table.”

The fi rst phase of the algae project, funded by Qatar Airways and Qatar Science and Technology Park, mainly focused on produc-ing biofuels: bio-crude oil, biodie-sel, and a blend for the aviation industry.

By Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

Research associate Kira Schipper. PICTURES: Najeer Feroke

Integral Food Services Qatar (IFSQ) has held a walkathon to celebrate National Sport Day, seeking to raise awareness on the importance of health and fitness. This was the second consecutive walkathon organised by IFS Qatar and covered a 5km route from the Museum of Islamic Art along the Corniche, Doha.

IFS Qatar celebrates National Sport Day

A view of the algae testing facility at Al Khor.

QA Group chief, envoy visit Chinese pavilion at QDF

Chinese ambassador Li Chen and Qatar Air-ways Group chief executive Akbar al-Baker commemorated one of China’s most impor-

tant festivals, the Chinese New Year, with a visit to Qatar Duty Free’s (QDF) traditional Chinese pavil-ion recently.

This was in keeping with the spirit of celebrating the Qatar-China 2016 Year of Culture.

Hany al-Deeb, UnionPay regional country manager, joined Chen and al-Baker on a tour of the Chinese pagoda at Hamad International Airport (HIA).

The pavilion is off ering passengers discounts of up to 20%, spending rewards and an array of promotions to mark China’s Year of the Monkey. UnionPay and QDF have also collaborated to off er passengers traditional red envelope retail vouchers worth QR100 for customers who buy items valued at QR1,000 ($274) and above using a UnionPay payment card.

On the occasion, al-Baker said: “I am honoured to visit Qatar Duty Free’s Chinese pavilion with Mr Li Chen. The Chinese New Year is an impor-tant time for families to gather together and en-joy each other’s company. For many families, this means travelling to see their loved ones, enjoy the traditional New Year feasts and special holiday markets.

“For those travelling, we wanted to bring a taste of this tradition to their actual travel ex-perience by again building our version of the holiday market, with special products and promotions.”

The traditional red and gold pavilion is a cen-trepiece at HIA, positioned directly behind the Lamp Bear, serving as a festive attraction as well as a starting point for bespoke shop-ping tours designed specifi cally for Chinese passengers.

Chinese language-dedicated QDF staff , fl uent in Mandarin, Cantonese and other Chinese dia-lects, are available upon request to lead passengers around HIA showcasing their favourite brands and products.

Passengers will discover an array of specially curated products inside the Chinese pagoda, which will remain at HIA until mid-March in recognition of the Qatar-China 2016 Year of Cul-ture.

Savings of up to 20% are being off ered on QDF fragrances, cosmetics, skincare, confectionery, luxury watches, fi ne jewellery and other gift items in the Chinese pavilion. Additional Chinese New Year discounts of up to 10% are also available on brands in selected boutiques at HIA.

Rota launches Training of Trainers programme Reach out to Asia (Rota), a

member of Qatar Founda-tion for Education, Science

and Community Development (QF), has announced the launch of the second phase of its 2015-2016 Training of Trainers (ToT) programme, which will compli-ment both the Adult Arabic Lit-eracy (RAAL) and Adult English Literacy (RAEL) programmes.

The ToT programme, which runs until the end of April, is a collaboration between several QF members, including the Aca-

demic Bridge Programme and Awsaj Academy, and refl ects QF’s mission to unlock human potential in order to develop a knowledge-based economy.

Other entities involved in the training initiative include Doha Expressway, a Public Works Authority of Qatar (Ashghal) project, and Qatari Diar Vinci Construction’s (QDVC) Light Transit System (LRT).

This year, 20 volunteers will focus on RAAL to develop their Arabic communications skills,

learning about Qatari soci-ety from a historical, social, and cultural perspective, promot-ing an informed cultural respect between Qatar and other coun-tries.

Similarly, RAEL’s 170 vol-unteers will become literacy trainers, using Rota’s custom-designed English literacy cur-riculum to help workers improve their language abilities, improv-ing their life opportunities and acquisition of personal goals.

“ToT’s volunteers will be re-

sponsible for providing training to 450 low-income workers,” said Rota executive director Essa al-Mannai.

RAEL introduced in 2009 and RAAL in 2013, were created pri-marily to develop English and Arabic literacy of low-income workers in Qatar. A further ben-efi cial feature of the programme includes the opportunity for young people in Qatar to take part in experiential service-learning, thus developing their skills and knowledge as literacy trainers. A training session in progress.

French ambassador Eric Chevallier visits the algae testing facility in Al Khor.

“We did start looking just at biofuels but now we realised that animal and fi sh feeds for example are something that are much more nurtured to be realised from algae,” Schipper noted.

“In this project we found out that algae are so much more diverse, the reason why we diversifi ed our ef-

forts into more than just biofuels,” she added. “We can have diff erent kinds of products depending on the needs for the Qatar society.”

Algae can also be cultivat-ed to produce food for human consumption and health prod-ucts. However, these research projects will need additional

funding, according to Schipper. QU also has ongoing discussions

with the Ministry of Municipal-ity and Environment which, she said, is very supportive of their algae project. “They can also sup-port us to have access with diff er-ent companies and supporting our programme in that way.”

Oman may focus on domestic, not regional rail system ReutersMuscat

Oman may focus on build-ing a domestic rail net-work rather than con-

necting its railways to a regional system, because of uncertainty over when the regional project will go ahead, transport min-ister Ahmed bin Mohamed al-

Futaisi said yesterday. Oman and the fi ve other states

in the Gulf Co-operation Coun-cil (GCC) have been planning to build a railway line linking the region. Tens of billions of dol-lars would be spent on about 2,100km (1,310 miles) of track.

But technical and bureaucratic delays have pushed expected completion of the project past the original target of 2017, and

low oil prices are now dragging the fi nances of GCC govern-ments into defi cit, prompting them to slow construction plans in some areas. This has cast fur-ther doubt on the project.

Last month Etihad Rail, the state-backed fi rm building a rail-way network in the United Arab Emirates, said it had suspended the tendering process for a plan to connect track inside the UAE

with the borders of Saudi Arabia and Oman.

Futaisi told reporters yesterday that the suspension of Etihad’s plan made it diffi cult for Oman to award a contract for its own track, even though Muscat was ahead of other countries in de-signing its part of the network.

“The picture is not clear yet re-garding the regional rail project,” Futaisi said.

As a result, he added, Oman might change its focus from us-ing its railways to distribute im-ports of goods around the region via the GCC network, to facilitat-ing Oman’s seaborne exports of items such as raw materials.

“We are connecting the ports, as planned, but we might be uti-lising the railway for promising sectors such as mining,” Futaisi said.

“So instead of the initial plan of importing via Oman’s ports and then using the GCC rail project, we might start with exporting what we have in Oman.”

The GCC rail plan envisages a line running from Kuwait down the Gulf coast and through the UAE to the Omani capital of Muscat, where it would link up with a domestic line to be built to

the ports of Duqm and Salalah in southern Oman.

Futaisi said the future of the regional rail network would be discussed at the next meeting of GCC transport ministers, which might occur in October.

The UAE’s Etihad Rail said last month that it was reviewing op-tions for the timing and delivery of the next phase of its construc-tion plan, but did not elaborate.

Saudi troopdeploymentin Syria ‘upto coalition’ ReutersRiyadh

Saudi Arabia said yesterday that any move to deploy Saudi special forces into

Syria would depend on a decision by the US-led coalition fi ghting Islamic State insurgents.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday he expected both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to send special operations forces to Syria to help local opposition fi ghters in their campaign to retake the city of Raqqa, Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday confi rmed it had sent aircraft to Nato-member Turkey’s Incirlik air base for the fi ght against Is-lamic State militants.

“The kingdom’s readiness to provide special forces to any

ground operations in Syria is linked to a decision to have a ground component to this coali-tion against Daesh (Islamic State) in Syria - this US-led coalition - so the timing is not up to us,” Sau-di Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a news conference with his Swiss counterpart in Riyadh.

“With regards to timing of the mission or size of troops, this has yet to be worked out,” he added.

Major powers agreed in Mu-nich on Friday to a pause in com-bat in Syria, but Russia pressed on with bombing in support of Syrian President Bashar al-As-sad, its ally. Assad has promised to fi ght until he regains full con-trol of the country.

US President Barack Obama has ruled out sending US ground troops to Syria. But Turkey said that both Ankara and Riyadh would support a coalition ground operation.

However, the head of air de-fence forces in Iran, which along with Russia is the main supporter of Assad, said any interference without Syrian consent would fail.

“Syria is a big country... which has been fi ghting terrorists for fi ve years. Any presence there without co-ordination with that country’s government will only lead to a defeat and a fi asco,” Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili told Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

Iran “will spare no eff ort to provide Syria with advisory as-sistance in the air defence fi eld” if asked, Esmaili added.

Despite the territorial advanc-es made in recent weeks by As-sad’s forces, backed by Russian air strikes and military assistance by Iran, Jubeir said he did not be-lieve the Syrian president would survive. “Now, he asked for Rus-sia’s help and it will fail in saving Bashar al-Assad,” he said.

Relations worsened between Tehran and Riyadh over Saudi Arabia’s Jan. 2 execution of a Shia cleric. That led Iranian protesters to storm Saudi diplomatic mis-sions in Iran, after which Riyadh severed relations.

Jubeir said there was no need for mediation in the rift, citing what he described as Iran’s long pattern of interference in region-al confl icts.

Egypt to retry cop jailedover protester’s shooting AFPCairo

Egypt’s top court yester-day annulled a 15-year jail sentence for a policeman

accused of the fatal shooting of a female protester and ordered his retrial, a court offi cial said.

Shaima al-Sabbagh was struck by birdshot in January 2015 as police dispersed a small march on the eve of the fourth anniver-sary of the uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

A lower court sentenced Lieu-tenant Yassin Mohamed Hatem, 23, to 15 years in prison after convicting him of “battery that led to death”.

Hatem’s trial was a rare legal proceeding against policemen charged over protester deaths since the army’s ouster of Islam-ist president Mohamed Mursi in 2013.

Yesterday, the Court of Cas-sation annulled the lower court’s order after accepting an appeal fi led by Hatem and ordered a re-trial, a court offi cial said.

His lawyer Gamil Sayid con-fi rmed yesterday’s decision.

“It just proves that my client was innocent from the start,” Sayid said, adding that Hatem, who is currently in jail, would soon be freed.

The Court of Cassation did not immediately give its rea-son for annulling the previous judgement and a new trial date has yet to be fi xed.

Sabbagh’s death triggered outrage in Egypt and abroad. Part of the incident that led to her death was captured on fi lm,

prompting President Abdel Fat-tah al-Sisi to publicly demand that the perpetrator be brought to justice.

Sabbagh was hit on January 24, 2015 on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the anti-Mubarak uprising when police dispersed a peaceful protest that had been organised by her Socialist Popu-lar Alliance, a small leftist party.

Marchers had been carrying a wreath to a monument in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to commemorate the deaths of protesters during the 2011 revolt.

REGION/ARAB WORLD

Gulf Times Monday, February 15, 2016 9

Bahraini celebration

Local folk performers play Bahraini traditional music as they dance celebrating the 15th anniversary of National Charter Day in the Sitra Park south of Manama yesterday.

Switzerland to handle Saudi consular aff airs in Iran

Switzerland will handle Saudi

Arabia’s consular aff airs in Iran

and will facilitate Iranian pilgrims

coming to the kingdom, Saudi

Arabia’s foreign minister said

yesterday, following a diplomatic

dispute between Riyadh and

Tehran.

“Switzerland off ered to ... handle

the (consular) interests of Saudi

Arabia in Iran, and we in the king-

dom of Saudi Arabia appreciated

that and accepted,” Adel al-Jubeir

told a joint news conference with

his Swiss counterpart.

He also said, however, there was

no need for mediation in its rift

with Iran.

Two killed, 15 wounded in airstrike on Yemen workshop AFPSanaa

A Saudi-led coalition air strike on a sewing workshop killed at least two people and

wounded 15 in the rebel-held Yem-eni capital yesterday, the factory owner said.

“Two employees, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed and 15 others wounded in the overnight air raid,” Faisal al-Musaabi said.

A search was underway for anoth-er employee still buried under the rubble of the building in the east of Sanaa, he added.

The coalition has been carrying out air strikes against Iran-backed rebels across Yemen since March.

The rebels, who have control-led Sanaa since September 2014, reported a higher death toll of 11 employees killed and four others wounded in the strike on the work-shop, according to their sabanews.net website.

Meanwhile, a United Arab Emir-ates soldier was killed and another was wounded while fi ghting in Yem-en as part of the coalition, state news agency WAM reported yesterday, citing the army general command.

The coalition is fi ghting to stop the Houthis, allies of Riyadh’s main re-gional foe Iran, from taking complete control of Yemen after they seized the capital Sanaa and advanced south to-wards the port city of Aden.

WAM did not give any more details. More than 60 Saudi and Emirati

troops were killed in September 2015 when a Tochka rocket hit the al-Saf-er air base near Marib in northeast-ern Yemen.

Saudi Arabia intercepted a Scud missile fi red towards the kingdom by Houthis in Yemen, the coalition fi ghting the insurgents has said.

The offi cial Saudi SPA news agen-cy said the missile was destroyed by the kingdom’s air defences at around 2145 (1845 GMT) on Satur-day, around 100km from its border with Yemen.

Houthi rebels meanwhile said in a statement on their sabanews.net website that the missile tar-geted the Abha Regional Airport in

southern Saudi Arabia. The missile “precisely hit its tar-

get,” it said. Saturday’s incident is the third

time Saudi Arabia says it has shot down a Scud fi red from Yemen.

On Tuesday, the coalition said that a Saudi Patriot missile had downed a Scud fi red from the rebel-held Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

A Yemeni man sits amid the debris at the site of a Saudi-led coalition air strike which hit a sewing workshop, in the capital Sanaa, yesterday.

ARAB WORLD


Palestinians wait for a travel permit to cross into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip yesterday. Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing on Saturday for two days to allow Palestinians on humanitarian grounds to travel in and out of the Gaza Strip.

Hariri saysLebanon willnever be an‘Iran province’ Saad al-Hariri said yesterday

Lebanon would never be an “Iranian province” hostile

to Saudi Arabia, and attacked Shia Hezbollah’s role in the Syrian war in a speech refl ecting regional tensions.

The former prime minister was speaking in Beirut on the 11th an-niversary of the assassination of his father, Rafi k al-Hariri. It was only his third visit to the country since the Hezbollah-dominated March 8 alliance toppled his cabi-net in 2011.

Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which both have power-ful infl uence in Lebanon and sup-port rival political blocs, are con-tributing to confl icts across the Middle East, including in Syria.

“We will not allow anyone to pull Lebanon to the camp of hos-tility towards Saudi Arabia and its Arab brothers. Lebanon will not be, under any circumstances, an Iranian province. We are Arabs, and Arabs we shall remain,” said Hariri, who is backed by Saudi Arabia.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, is fi ghting alongside the Syr-

ian army in support of President Bashar al-Assad in a war against insurgents who have received backing from Saudi Arabia, Tur-key and other states.

Five Hezbollah members have been indicted by an international tribunal over the 2005 killing of Rafi k al-Hariri.

The group has denied any in-volvement in the killing, which pushed Lebanon to the brink of civil war and still stirs emotions 11 years later. The killing deepened a sectarian divide in Lebanon’s pol-itics that still aff ects it to this day.

Hariri, whose last visit to Leba-non was for the 10th anniversary, heads the March 14 political alli-ance that was forged in the after-math of his father’s assassination.

He publicly confi rmed for the fi rst time that late last year he put forward a proposal for Suleiman Franjieh, an ally of Hezbollah and friend of Assad, to fi ll the post of president that has been vacant for 21 months.

But he questioned whether his political rivals really wanted an end to the crisis that refl ects wider paralysis in Lebanese government. His initiative has not gained trac-tion. Hezbollah says it is sticking by its preferred candidate, Michel Aoun.

“We are sincere. We want a president of the republic. We want to be rid of the vacuum. We have paid the price at home and abroad,” Hariri said.

But addressing his rivals, he said: “Please go to the parliament and elect a president, unless your real candidate is the vacuum.”

Reuters Beirut

Three suspected Palestinianteenage attackers killed

Three Palestinian teen-agers were killed and a fourth critically injured

yesterday as they allegedly tried to attack Israeli security forces in the West Bank.

A veiled Palestinian, de-scribed by locals as a 14-year-old girl, was shot when she al-legedly tried to stab an Israeli border policeman at a check-point in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, police spokes-woman Luba Samri said.

Border policemen manning the checkpoint had told the girl to freeze and remove her hand from her bag. Samri said the girl then took out a knife and tried to stab the offi cer, who shot her.

An Israeli army vehicle evac-uated her to hospital in critical condition, the spokeswoman said. The Palestinian Health Ministry gave no immediate confi rmation of her age or con-dition.

It was the fourth attempted attack by teenagers reported yesterday as a months-long wave of violence between Israe-lis and Palestinians rages on.

Palestinians have launched scores of knife attacks against Israelis since early October, pro-testing perceived violations at a disputed Jerusalem holy site and the ongoing occupation.

Many of the attackers have been lone teenagers without a known connection to a militant organisation. Palestinians have blamed ongoing oppression for the uptick in violence.

Earlier yesterday, a Palestini-an minor was shot dead when he ran, knife raised in hand, toward Israeli border policemen at a checkpoint into East Jerusalem, police said.

The suspect was a 17-year-old from a village near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Earlier, Israeli soldiers shot two other Palestinian minors dead on a northern West Bank road after one opened fi re with a rifl e and the other wielded a knife, a military spokeswoman said.

Both were in a crowd of Pales-tinian protesters, hurling stones at passing Israeli motorists west of the Palestinian city of Jenin.

The Palestinian Health Min-istry said they were 15 years old.

DPATel Aviv

UAE sentencesfour to deathfor joining IS

A United Arab Emirates court sentenced four people to death in ab-

sentia yesterday for joining the Islamic State militant group, the UAE state news agency WAM reported.

They were among 11 citi-zens of the Emirates and other Arab countries on trial after some of them entered an Arab country and partici-pated in the militant group’s activities, off ered fi nances and ran a website to promote their ideas, WAM said.

The four given the death sentence were Emiratis and travelled to Syria, local newspapers added.

The UAE is concerned about Islamist movements that appeal to religious con-servatives and challenge its lack of democratic rule.

It has declared the Islamic State insurgent group a ter-rorist organisation and taken part in US-led air strikes on it in Syria.

In another case yesterday, the court sentenced three people to 10 years in prison and subsequent deportation for providing supplies, com-munications devices and chemical materials to the Iran-allied Houthi move-ment in Yemen, WAM re-ported.

Three others on trial were acquitted, said WAM, which did not specify their nation-alities.

Reuters Dubai

Five killed in bus accident

No date set for Salman’s Russia visit

Children were among at least five people killed when a bus slammed into a truck on Israel’s main highway from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv yesterday, police said.At least nine people were injured, with in critical and another in serious condition, spokeswoman Luba Samri

said. The brother of the truck driver told Israel’s Channel 2 television that they had spoken on the phone and that the driver told him he had stopped on the side of the road because his clutch was broken. The bus was travelling to the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak.

No date has been set for Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, Saudi King Salman’s visit to Russia, Saudi Arabia’s state news agency SPA reported yesterday citing a source at the foreign ministry.

Lebanon’s former prime minister Saad al-Hariri addresses his supporters during the 11th anniversary of the assassination of his father, Rafik al-Hariri, in Beirut yesterday.

Recounting Aleppo life under air strikes

US to Russia: stop raids on ‘moderate’ rebels

AFPAleppo

Syrian farmer Mahmud Turki was sitting on his couch at sunset watching

the news with his family after eating supper. Then an air strike hit his home and turned his life upside down.

His story is typical of accounts of the “hell” that is life in the war-scarred region around the northern city of Aleppo, where up to 31,000 people have fl ed as government forces press an of-fensive against rebels, according to the UN.

“The moment of the air strike... nobody can describe it,” Turki - stitches still in his head and his body covered in bruises - said from his hospital bed in neighbouring Turkey, where he was among just a few allowed across for treatment.

“I lost consciousness. The roof fell on me and on my children. I remember hearing the voice of my wife asking me if I was alive or dead,” he told AFP.

Turki, 45, was admitted to hospital in the border town of Kilis after being pulled alive by his friends from the rubble of his home in Minnigh.

Fierce fi ghting in Aleppo prov-ince - sparked by a week-long government assault backed by Russian air support - have dis-placed tens of thousands of peo-ple.

Alaa Najjar also arrived in Tur-key to be treated for a shoulder injury incurred during an aerial bombardment in Marea, also just north of Aleppo.

“It was like hell. We couldn’t stand the bombings. Even the animals couldn’t stand them,” he said, adding there were up to four air strikes a day.

“I had a kitten. When the kit-ten heard the sound of the planes, she ran directly under the bed. If animals were intimidated that much, how can human beings endure it?”

Russia launched a bombing campaign in Syria last year at the request of President Bashar al-Assad, saying it was targeting the Islamic State group and other militant organisations.

The West has accused Rus-sia of targeting more moderate factions that oppose Assad’s re-gime, and Syrian activists say the strikes have killed civilians, allegations Moscow dismisses as “absurd”.

Russian backing has helped Assad’s forces make signifi cant advances in recent months - in-cluding its latest off ensive seek-ing to encircle rebel-held areas of Aleppo and sever their supply lines to Turkey.

Rebel fi ghter Mohamed crossed the border, walking with crutches and bandages around his right leg and a fi nger.

“The situation is very bad.

People are fl eeing. The town was completely destroyed by Russian air bombardment,” the 30-year-old - whose father was killed when six Russian air strikes hit his town - said.

“We are besieged by the Rus-sians on one side, the YPG (Syr-ian Kurds) from the west and Daesh (Islamic State) from the east, and the (Syrian) regime from the other side.”

Aleppo was once Syria’s thriv-ing economic powerhouse, home to several World Heritage sites including its famed ancient souk and citadel.

But it has been ravaged by war and divided since mid-2012 be-tween government control in the west and rebel control in the east. Regime air strikes in the east, where they also use bar-rel bombs, have caused massive destruction, rendering parts of whole neighbourhoods virtually unlivable.

Rebels also fi re mostly crude and unguided missiles into the west, often killing civilians.

Fleeing Syrians have been massing for days around the Bab al-Salama border gate across from Turkey’s Oncupi-nar border point, which re-mains closed.

Turkish offi cials say the border is kept open for “emergency situ-ations,” including the evacuation of the injured like Turki and Naj-jar.

Ambulances and aid trucks are seen coming back and forth throughout the day.

Turki was taken to Turkey in an ambulance before his family who arrived three days later.

Taking AFP to their room where his daughter Raghad was sleeping and four-year-old son Mussa was with his wife, Turki said his two children had skull fractures that required surgery.

The father asked little Mus-sa, with a bandage on his head: “Who attacked us?” Mussa an-swered: “Bashar’s air strikes.”

Turki lashed out at the inter-national community for lack of action on Syria and denounced Russian President Vladimir Pu-tin over Moscow’s bombing cam-paign.

“There is no international community, no UN, no Geneva. NGOs are just a lie. The Security Council is also a lie,” he said.

He poured scorn on Putin’s claim only to be targeting Is-lamic State and other militant groups, pointing sarcastically to his children and saying: “They are Daesh members hit by Putin’s air strikes.”

“They are Daesh. The mur-derer Putin, the killer of chil-dren.”

ReutersBeirut/Rancho Mirage, California

US President Barack Obama urged Russia yes-terday to stop bombing

“moderate” rebels in Syria in support of its ally Bashar al-As-sad, a campaign seen in the West as a major obstacle to latest ef-forts to end the war.

Major powers agreed on Friday to a limited cessation of hostili-ties in Syria but the deal does not take eff ect until the end of this week and was not signed by any warring parties - the Damascus government and numerous rebel factions fi ghting it.

Russian bombing raids di-rected at rebel groups are mean-while helping the Syrian army to achieve what could be its biggest victory of the war in the battle for Aleppo, the country’s largest city and commercial centre before the confl ict.

There is little optimism that the deal reached in Munich will do much to end a war that has lasted fi ve years and cost 250,000 lives.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin and Obama had spoken by telephone and agreed to intensify co-operation to im-plement the Munich agreement.

But a Kremlin statement made clear Russia was committed to its campaign against Islamic State

and “other terrorist organisa-tions”, an indication that it would also target groups in western Syria where militants such as Al Qaeda are fi ghting Assad in close proximity to rebels deemed moderate by the West.

Russia says the “cessation” does not apply to its air strikes, which have shifted the balance of power towards Assad.

It says Islamic State and the Al Qaeda-affi liated Nusra Front are the main targets of its air cam-paign. But Western countries say Russia has in fact been mostly targeting other insurgent groups, including some they support.

The White House said Obama’s discussion with Putin stressed the need to rush humanitar-ian aid to Syria and contain air strikes.

“In particular, President Obama emphasised the impor-tance now of Russia playing a constructive role by ceasing its air campaign against moderate opposition forces in Syria,” the White House said in a statement.

Relief workers said eff orts to deliver humanitarian aid were being threatened by the latest es-calation of violence.

“We must ask again, why wait a week for this urgently needed cessation of hostilities?” said Dalia al-Awqati, Mercy Corps Director of Programs for North Syria.

The situation in Syria has been complicated by the involvement of Kurdish-backed combatants in the area north of Aleppo near the Turkish border, which has drawn a swift military response from artillery in Turkey.

The Kurdish YPG militia, helped by Russian air raids, seized an ex-military air base at Menagh last week, angering Turkey, which sees the YPG as an extension of the PKK, a Kurdish group that waged a bloody insurgent cam-paign on Turkish soil over most of the past three decades.

Turkey began shelling while demanding that the YPG militia withdraw from areas it has cap-tured from Syrian rebels in the northern Aleppo region in recent days, including the Menagh air base. The bombardment killed two YPG fi ghters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Hu-man Rights.

The Syrian Kurdish PYD party rejected Turkish demands for withdrawal, while the Syrian government said Turkish shell-ing of northern Syria amounted

to direct support for insurgent groups.

France called on Turkey to stop the shelling, but Turkey said it would continue to re-spond to Kurdish militia attacks in Syria.

Syria also said Turkish forces were believed to be among 100 gunmen that entered Syria on Saturday with a dozen pick-up trucks mounted with heavy ma-chine guns in an operation to supply rebel fi ghters.

Other fronts were also active yesterday.

Kurdish-backed forces were fi ghting with insurgent groups near Tel Rifaat in the northern Aleppo countryside, while fur-ther south, government forces renewed their shelling of rebel positions to the northwest of Aleppo city.

The Observatory also reported air strikes by jets believed to be Russian in areas east of Damas-cus, north of Homs, and in the southern province of Deraa.

Reaction from politicians in the West to the Munich deal was sceptical.

US Senator John McCain said he did not view the deal as a breakthrough. “Let’s be clear about what this agreement does. It allows Russia’s assault on Aleppo to continue for another week,” he said at security confer-ence in Munich.

“Mr Putin is not interested in being our partner. He wants to shore up the Assad regime,” Mc-Cain said.

A senior ally of German Chan-cellor Angela Merkel said Rus-sia had gained the upper hand in Syria through armed force.

Norbert Roettgen, head of the foreign aff airs committee in the German parliament, said Russia was determined to create “facts on the ground”, to bolster its ne-gotiating position.

As the fi ghting continued, the Syrian army urged citizens in Deraa province, the Ghouta area east of Damascus, and in rural districts east of Aleppo to quickly seek “reconciliation” with the government.

So-called local reconcilia-tion agreements are often seen as a means for the government to force surrender on insurgents, and have typically followed lengthy blockades of rebel areas and the civilians living there.

Saudi Arabia confi rmed it had sent aircraft to Turkey’s Incirlik air base to join the fi ght against Islamic State, but said any move to deploy Saudi special forces into Syria must await a decision by the US-led coalition combat-ing the militants.

Any ground operations in Syria will lead to “a full-fl edged, long war”, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned.

Civil defence members search for survivors after air strikes by pro-Syrian government forces in the rebel held Al-Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo yesterday.

“It was like hell. We couldn’t stand the bombings. Even the animals couldn’t stand them”

“President Obama emphasised the importance now of Russia playing a constructive role by ceasing its air campaign against moderate opposition forces in Syria”

ARAB WORLD11Gulf Times


AFRICA


Central Africans vote for peaceReutersBangui

Central Africans cast their ballots yesterday in an election meant to restore democratic rule, deter-

mined to turn the page on years of blood-shed that has killed thousands and split the impoverished nation along religious and ethnic lines.

One of the world’s most chronically un-stable countries, Central African Repub-lic was pitched into the worst crisis in its history in early 2013 when mainly Muslim Seleka fi ghters toppled President Francois Bozize.

Christian militias responded to Seleka abuses by attacking the Muslim minority community. One in fi ve Central Africans has fl ed, either internally or abroad, to es-cape the violence.

Two ex-prime ministers, Faustin-Archange Touadera and Anicet-Georges Dologuele, were contesting a presidential run-off that will determine who will be charged with the enormous challenge of restoring peace and reuniting the nation.

Touadera has portrayed himself as an anti-corruption stalwart, while Dologuele pledges to revive the economy and draw in investors hesitant until now to exploit signifi cant gold, diamond and uranium deposits.

Authorities were also trying to re-run a fi rst round of legislative polls which were cancelled over irregularities.

In Bangui’s PK5 neighbourhood, the capital’s principal Muslim enclave follow-

ing a campaign of ethnic cleansing, some voters arrived before dawn to queue at the main polling centre.

Alima Zeinabou Shaibou, 32, who like most Muslims in the southwest has been forced to leave her home, crossed the road from the mosque where she now lives with her fi ve children to be among the fi rst vot-ers.

“I want there to be a change. I want Christians and Muslims to live together as before,” she said.

The voting centre in PK5 witnessed vio-lent attacks by local militia during a De-cember constitutional referendum. And though the situation has remained largely calm during the election period, yester-day’s vote was held under heavy security.

Armed soldiers from MINUSCA, the country’s 11,000-strong UN mission, guarded polling stations while attack heli-copters circled in the skies over Bangui. Armoured vehicles from a 900-soldier French military contingent patrolled the streets.

Polls generally opened on time at 6am in Bangui, a marked improvement on a December 30 fi rst round of voting, when ballot materials arrived late or not at all in many areas.

“I have noticed less turnout today than for the fi rst round. But I’m very pleased that the second round is better organised,” said former Senegalese prime minister Souleymane Ndene Ndiaye, heading the African Union’s elections observer mis-sion.

The fi rst round turnout of nearly 80% was largely viewed as a popular rejection

of the violence, which has left the north-east under the control of Muslim rebels while Christian militias roam the south-west.

Both Dologuele, a banker, and trained mathematics professor Touadera have made the restoration of peace and security the centrepiece of their campaigns. Both candidates are Christians.

“We hope that the people will vote mas-sively for my candidacy, because it is a candidacy of unity,” Touadera told report-ers after voting. “We think they have heard the message.”

“I wish a happy Valentine’s Day to everyone,” Dologuele told journalists. “I would like Central Africans to consid-er (voting today) an act of love for their country.”

Expectations were running high in a nation where nearly every household has been aff ected by a crisis which has in some cases pitted long-standing neighbours against one another.

While the polls should reinstate democ-racy after three years of unpopular interim administrations, analysts warn the elec-tion of a new government is only the fi rst step in a long process.

Whoever wins the presidency will face the daunting tasks of extending state au-thority outside the capital, rebuilding the army, jumpstarting a moribund economy and re-establishing a semblance of secu-rity across a nation awash with guns.

“It’s cheaper to buy a grenade in Bangui than it is to buy a can of Coke. That’s how bad it is here,” said Lewis Mudge, Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch.

A UN security off icer keeps guard as people wait to cast their votes in the second round of presidential and legislative elections in the PK5 neighbourhood of Bangui.

Boko Haram fi ghters ‘trained in Somalia ’ReutersMunich

Fighters for the Nigerian Is-lamist militant group Boko Haram have been trained in

Somalia on Africa’s eastern coast before returning to West Africa, Somalia’s president told a security conference in Germany yesterday.

Somalia, plagued by political in-fi ghting, corruption and attacks by Shebaab insurgents, has recently made limited progress towards creating a functioning political system, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said.

“Without a stable Somalia, the whole region of the Horn of Africa will remain unstable and by and large, the African continent. There are proofs and evidence that (for) some time Boko Haram has been trained in Somalia and they went back to Nigeria,” he said.

“The terrorists are so linked to-gether, they are associated and so organised, (that) we the world we need to be so organised,” he said, speaking in English.

It was not clear from his com-ments whether he believed She-baab was still training Boko Haram fi ghters, who have pledged alle-giance to Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

Somalia’s Shebaab, which has

links to Al Qaeda and wants to overthrow the Somali govern-ment and impose a harsh version of Islamic law, claimed responsi-bility for a blast this month that punched a hole in the fuselage of a plane.

Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud speaks at the Munich Security Conference in Munich.

Africa’s big cities off er investors glimmer of hope in hard times ReutersJohannesburg

Africa’s biggest economies have been hammered by the collapse in commodity

prices over the past 18 months but there are still investment bright spots to be found.

In cities such as Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Kinshasa and Johannes-burg, growth remains robust and investors are prospering in the re-tail, fi nancial services, technology and construction sectors.

This means investors can now re-adjust their strategy for Africa. Instead of taking a view on the continent as a whole, or choosing one country over another, they can seize opportunities city by city.

Sub-Saharan Africa is urbaniz-

ing faster than anywhere else in the world and city dwellers have more money to spend.

“In the current economic en-vironment, investors want areas where success is proven, growth is strong and will remain strong. Big African cities give you that,” said Jacob Kholi, a partner at Abraaj, a private equity fi rm with $9bn un-der management.

“It has become even more im-portant to focus on these key cities than before,” Kholi added.

Nairobi is the most attractive destination for foreign invest-ment, according to a 2015 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, fol-lowed by Accra, with Lagos and Johannesburg equal third.

Consumption per capita in Ac-cra is 1.6 times greater than the av-erage in Ghana, 2.3 times bigger in Lagos than the average in Nigeria,

and 2.7 times larger in Nairobi than nationally in Kenya, Abraaj esti-mates.

Lagos, one of the world’s fastest growing cities and with a popula-tion of 20mn, expects economic growth of 7% this year, twice the pace of the country as a whole.

Even South Africa, which is grappling with youth unemploy-ment of over 40% and could slip into recession this year, has areas where industry is booming.

“Looking around here, you wouldn’t know things were so bad,” construction worker Sifi so Zwane told Reuters in Johannes-burg’s wealthy Sandton business district.

“Rich people will always fi nd a way to make more money,” said Zwane, with cranes fi lling the sky-line behind him and billboards ad-vertising new retailers like Krispy

Kreme doughnuts and Hennes & Mauritz.

There are similar stories else-where.

This year, Kenya is set to unveil the Two River malls in Nairobi, the continent’s largest shopping centre outside South Africa, with brands like Porsche, Hugo Boss and France’s Carrefour already booking space.

“The economy still has oppor-tunities,” said Gabriel Modest, a jeweller who says demand for the gold necklaces and bracelets he sells remains strong.

“Sometimes you have to treat yourself,” he added, ordering a bowl of muesli and yoghurt at an upmarket Nairobi coff ee shop.

In Lagos, plans are in place to develop the vast multi-billion dol-lar Eko Atlantic city, a Dubai-style gated community that will boast

chrome skyscrapers, business parks, palm trees and a marina.

By 2025, Mckinsey estimates that more than 80 cities in sub-Saharan Africa will have popula-tions of more than 1mn, account-ing for 58% of the region’s growth.

This rapid urbanisation means Africa’s big cities will need more roads, hospital and power stations, while growing numbers of new inhabitants will be buying con-sumer goods like instant noodles, washing powder and mobile phone cards.

Back in Lagos, business is still expanding for cab-owner Cyril Ugochukwu, whose earnings are running well above the target he set for his business, which has con-tracts with online fi rm Easy Taxi.

“Individuals must make trips whether times are good or bad,” he told Reuters.

Child killed in Burundi grenade attackReutersNairobi

A grenade attack on a military base in Burundi’s capital killed a child and wounded

his father and one other person, an offi cial and witnesses said yes-terday, as violence linked to the president’s disputed re-election persists.

More than 400 people have been killed since April last year when President Pierre Nkurunziza an-nounced he would run for a third term. That sparked weeks of street protests led by the opposition which said his bid was unconsti-tutional.

Witnesses and an offi cial said the attack late on Saturday had targeted the base in the Ngagara neighbourhood in Bujumbura.

“The attackers were in a car and threw two grenades at a military station which injured two people including a child and his father, both coming from a hair salon,” a Ngagara administrator said yes-terday.

“The child died after but his fa-ther is undergoing treatment,” he said.

A witness, who gave his name only as Paul, said a soldier was also wounded, but the administrator could not confi rm it.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible, but activists and authorities have in the past reported a number of apparently targeted killings.

On Friday, unidentifi ed gunmen shot dead two people in an ap-parent targeted killing the Gisozi commune in Mwaro province some 60km from Bujumbura.

According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, nearly quarter of 1mn people have fl ed the violence in Burundi, which emerged from an ethnically charged civil war ten years ago.

In December, the African Un-ion’s (AU) Peace and Security Council announced plans to de-ploy a 5,000-strong force, saying it could invoke an article of the AU’s charter that allowed it to intervene whether or not the government agreed.

Last week, the AU said it had ap-pointed fi ve heads of state to try to convince the government of Bu-rundi to accept the peacekeeping force.

Nkurunziza, whose army foiled an attempted coup in May, is stead-fastly opposed to the plan, saying its deployment would amount to an invasion.

Museveni slams ‘partisan’ ICC

Uganda’s veteran ruler Yoweri Museveni, who is standing for re-election on Thurs-day, has said he is in favour of his country

pulling out of the “partisan” International Crimi-nal Court based in The Hague.

Museveni, who came to power in 1986, made the remarks during a televised debate late on Saturday - his fi rst ever with his presidential challengers.

“The ICC is not serious, it is partisan, it is not balanced, it is not very serious,” he said, referring to The Hague based court set up in 2002 as the last resort to try war criminals and perpetrators of gen-ocide never tried at home.

The ICC has opened probes involving eight na-tions, all of them African: Kenya, Ivory Coast, Libya, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Afri-can Republic, Uganda and Mali. Many in Africa have railed against the court as being biased and targeting Africans with some leaders on the continent accus-ing it of acting as the judicial arm of foreign powers.

“For instance, there are so many leaders who should have been tried but because it (the ICC) is not serious they have not tried them. So we have lost interest in ICC,” Museveni said.

During the last African Union summit in Janu-ary in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, African leaders backed a call led by Kenya to quit the ICC.

Deby picks PM ahead of ballot AFPN’Djamena

Chad’s president has appointed a new prime minister, Albert Pahimi Padacke, national radio reported, as he looks to extend his grip

on power in the central African nation. Observers say the appointment is most likely a reward after Pahimi Padacke announced his support on Friday for Presi-dent Idriss Deby Itno, who is running for a fi fth term in April elections.

Outgoing prime minister Kalezeube Pahimi Debeu, in power since 2013 and a member of the ruling Patriot-ic Salvation Movement (MPS), resigned from the post.

The radio broadcast late on Saturday did not give any further details, but the new prime minister is leader of the National Rally of Chadian Democrats (RNDT), a political party aligned with the MPS, and came second in presidential elections in 2011.

President Deby, who has been in power for 26 years, modifi ed the constitution in 2004, scrapping its two-term limit on presidential tenure, and won the following elections by a huge majority.

Deby had seized power in 1990 after toppling Hiss-ene Habre, who is on trial at a special court in Senegal for crimes against humanity.

AMERICAS13Gulf Times


Slugfest drowns policy talk at GOP’s debate AFPWashington

The Republican presidential race veered into vicious personal attacks Saturday as White House hopefuls

brawled in their latest debate, with front-runner Donald Trump and Jeb Bush lock-ing horns in some of the campaign’s most pointed clashes to date.

The showdown, the ninth of the months-long battle for the Republican nomination, began with a respectful mo-ment of silence for iconic conservative US supreme court justice Antonin Scalia who died suddenly earlier in the day.

But with a primary just one week away in South Carolina, a state where national politics often gets dragged into the mud, the debate in Greenville quickly turned nasty and divisive, with billionaire Trump, former Florida governor Bush, and senator Ted Cruz exchanging heated verbal blows.

“You are the single biggest liar,” Trump told Cruz when the Texas senator chal-lenged him on his previous support for liberal policies.

Trump, visibly irritated, repeatedly interrupted his rivals, especially Bush, whose momentum he is seeking to blunt in a state where his dynastic family remains popular.

He went after Bush on foreign policy and immigration, and lambasted Jeb’s brother president George W Bush’s war in Iraq as “a big fat mistake”.

He even said Jeb’s mother should have

been the 2016 Bush candidate instead of her son. “Jeb is so wrong,” Trump sneered, to loud boos from the audience.

Bush parried back, hitting Trump’s sug-gestion he could work with Russia to com-bat the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq, and saying the real estate mag-nate gets his foreign policy advice from “the shows”, referring to weekly Sunday morning talk shows.

“While Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe. And I’m proud of what he did,” Bush fumed.

“The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign,” Trump shot back. “Remember that.”

It was an extraordinary back and forth on the national stage, with candidates often ignoring the moderators and going after each other in perhaps the most ag-gressive exchanges of the nine Republican debates to date.

“We’re in danger of driving this into the dirt,” one of the CBS debate moderators said at one point.

With the fi rst two nomination contests in Iowa and New Hampshire under their collective belt, the candidates vying to be their party’s standardbearer are blanket-ing the so-called Palmetto State known for its bare-knuckle politics.

Cruz won Iowa, with Trump fi nishing an embarrassing second after proclaiming for weeks he would win. But The Donald bounced back to win New Hampshire, and holds a substantial lead in South Carolina.

The state holds its Republican primary February 20, the same day Democrats vote in Nevada for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

Trump, whose insurgent campaign has turned the presidential race on its head, on Friday made legal threats against his near-est rival Cruz, who was born in Canada, claiming the latter is not a “natural born citizen” and therefore unqualifi ed to run for president.

But the most memorable clashes Satur-day were between Trump and Bush, who has stepped up his aggressive campaigning and criticism of Trump.

John Kasich, who placed an impressive second in New Hampshire, has sought to keep his head above water in the more conservative, more evangelical South Carolina.

On the debate stage he steered clear of the daggers.

“I don’t want to get into all this fi ghting tonight because people are frankly sick of the negative campaigning,” he said.

Meanwhile, campaigns and their sup-porters have saturated South Carolina’s airwaves with negative advertising, in-cluding a harsh takedown of Trump by a pro-Bush group that criticized Trump for denigrating women, associating with the Clintons and for insulting decorated war heroes.

Despite the feuding, the Republican hopefuls came together as one to oppose president Barack Obama nominating a successor to Scalia on the Supreme Court.

Rubio, seeking a breakout moment after fi zzling in New Hampshire, said Obama should not move to fi ll Scalia’s seat, noting lame duck presidents in their fi nal year in offi ce have not had a supreme court nomi-nee confi rmed for decades.

If he did, he would “ram down our throat a liberal justice, like the ones Barack

Obama has imposed on us already”, he said.

Trump said he would impose taxes on Carrier air conditioning units manufac-tured in Mexico in light of the company’s decision to move production from Indi-ana, a position in line with his strong op-position to international trade deals.

Video of the company’s announcement last week to employees went viral on the Internet, showing emotional reactions to the loss of jobs while a representative of the company explained the move was “strictly a business decision.” Carrier, a manufacturer of air conditioning units, is owned by United Technologies Corp and announced it would be moving 1,400 jobs to Monterrey, Mexico.

“I’m going to tell them, ‘Now I’m going to get consensus from Congress and we’re going to tax you,’” Trump said. “So stay where you are [in Mexico] or build in the United States.’ Because we are killing our-selves with trade pacts that are no good for us and no good for our workers.”

A central part of Trump’s campaign message has been his opposition to trade pacts that allow products manufactured overseas to be imported with limited or no tariff s. It’s a position that reverberates with middle- and low- income Americans, who have watched manufacturing jobs leave the country.

Trump cited the video of the work-ers, which has more than 2.8mn views on YouTube, at the debate.

“If you saw the people, because they have a video of the announcement that Carrier is moving to Mexico, they were laid off ,” he said. “They were crying. It was a very sad situation.”

Republican presidential candidates Ohio Governor John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson on stage at the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina. Residents of South Carolina will vote for the Republican candidate at the primary on February 20.

Republicans gear up for Supreme Court battle after Scalia’s death ReutersWashington

Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates hardened their positions

yesterday on blocking a move by President Barack Obama to re-place the late conservative justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, a lifetime appointment that would help decide some of the most divisive issues facing Americans.

The next justice would tilt the balance of the nation’s highest court, which now consists of four conservatives and four liberals. The vacancy left by the death of Scalia, 79, quickly became an is-sue in the 2016 presidential race.

“We ought to make the 2016 election a referendum on the su-preme court,” US senator and Re-publican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

The nine-justice court is set to decide its fi rst major abortion case in nearly 10 years, as well as cases on voting rights, affi rma-tive action and immigration.

Cruz said the vacancy makes November’s election even more critical, warning that a justice chosen by Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would mean the second amend-ment right to bear arms would be “written out” of the constitution and abortion on demand would become the law of the land.

He lumped Donald Trump in with the Democrats, saying that the Republican front-runner’s views were indistinguishable from theirs.

Democrat Obama said on Sat-urday that he would nominate someone to fi ll the now-empty seat, setting up a battle with the Republican-controlled Senate, which must approve any nomi-nee.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said hours after Scalia’s death was an-nounced that the high court va-cancy should not be fi lled until Obama’s successor takes offi ce next January so that voters can have a say in the selection.

His Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid, said failure by the senate to act would be a “shame-ful abdication” of the chamber’s constitutional responsibilities.

While Reid said it would be

unprecedented to have a va-cancy on the highest court for a year, Republicans said no ap-pointment should be made in the so-called lame-duck year of a presidency.

“The president can decide whatever he wants, but I’m just telling you the senate is not mov-ing forward on it until we have a new president, and I agree with that,” senator Marco Rubio, a Re-publican presidential candidate, said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Asked what litmus test he would apply to any nominee, Rubio’s criteria echoed Scalia’s “originalist” ideology that looks at the US Constitution through the lens of its framers’ 18th cen-tury intentions.

“Does the person that we are nominating have a consistent and proven record of interpret-ing the Constitution as initially meant? What do those words mean to that society at the time in which those words were writ-ten in the Constitution? That’s what I want out of a judge, out of a justice,” Rubio said.

Trump, appearing on NBC, was more direct when asked what he would want in a nominee: “Someone just like Justice Scalia.” President Barack Obama has a number of likely options as he looks for a nominee to the US Supreme Court to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Sat-urday.

If Obama’s nominee is not confi rmed by the Senate, the

White House could use the proc-ess to energise Democratic vot-ers ahead of the presidential and congressional elections in No-vember. If a Democratic nominee were to replace Scalia it would lead to a sizable shift in the ideo-logical balance of the high court, which has had a conservative majority for decades.

Here are some of the possi-bilities, including two prominent Asian-American judges:

Sri Srinivasan: Among those the administration could turn to is Sri Srinivasan, 48, who has served on the US Court of Ap-peals for the District of Columbia Circuit since May 2013. He would be the fi rst Indian-American on the court and has impeccable bi-partisan credentials.

The Senate confi rmed him on a 97-0 vote three years ago. He was a law clerk to supreme court Jus-tice Sandra Day O’Connor, now retired, a 1981 appointee of Re-publican president Ronald Rea-gan. At Srinivasan’s confi rmation hearing, Texas Republican sena-tor Ted Cruz, now a presidential candidate, described himself as a long-standing friend dating back to their time together as law clerks in the US appeals court based in Richmond, Virginia.

Cruz said Srinivasan had done a “very fi ne job” in answering the committee’s questions.

During his nomination to the appeals court, prominent Re-publicans such as former US solicitor general Ted Olson sup-

ported Srinivasan. At his 2013 investiture, leading lights of the legal establishment from both parties praised him. Fed-eral appeals court judge J Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee for whom Srinivasan was also a law clerk, called him “lightning smart”.

Jacqueline Nguyen: Other names the administration could consider include Jacqueline Nguyen, 50, a Vietnamese-American who has been a judge on the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals since May 2012.

Paul Watford: An African-American who is also a judge on the 9th US circuit court of appeals, Paul Watford is an-other possibility. He was an ap-pellate litigator at the Munger, Tolles & Olson law fi rm before Obama nominated him to the ap-peals court in 2011. Watford, 48, clerked for 9th circuit judge Alex Kozinski, a libertarian-leaning Republican, and for justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of Scal-ia’s colleagues on the Supreme Court.

He was confi rmed by a 61-34 vote, as some Republicans raised concerns about Watford’s work as a lawyer on immigration and death penalty cases.

Jane Kelly: Jane Kelly, a white woman and former public de-fender who has served on the St Louis, Missouri-based 8th US circuit court of appeals since April 2013.

Justice Antonin Scalia.

Democratcampaignsnarled byforeclosure

ReutersWashington

Democratic presidential hopefuls Bernie Sand-ers and Hillary Clinton

are fl ooding Nevada with vol-unteers ahead of this week’s key nominating contest but they face a problem - the ad-dresses, phone numbers and other personal data they need to reach many voters are out of date.

Nevada, which is more than a quarter Latino, was one of the states worst aff ected by the 2008 fi nancial meltdown, with hundreds of thousands of fam-ilies unable to pay their mort-gages and forced to move in a crisis that by some estimates hit minorities twice as hard as whites.

With the foreclosed homes often switching hands multi-ple times - from homeowner to bank to investor and back to another homeowner in just a few years - keeping up with voters who at some point lived in those homes is diffi cult.

The Nevada Democratic caucus on February 20 has emerged as an unusually im-portant test of Sanders’ and Clinton’s political strength. Clinton is under pressure to keep her wide lead among Lat-inos, while Sanders must erode it to show he has a path to the nomination that does not rely mainly on the young white vot-ers who make up the core of his support base.

“This ongoing (foreclosure) crisis makes reaching potential voters more diffi cult,” Sanders’ campaign said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters. The Clin-ton campaign said the voter lists supplied by the Demo-cratic Party needed “signifi -cantly” more work to update, forcing them to spend valuable canvassing time building up their own private data.

Las Vegas, Nevada’s big-gest city, has seen some of the country’s highest foreclosure rates since 2008, hitting No. 1 among more than 200 US metro areas from 2009 to 2011, according to RealtyTrac, a pro-vider of real estate data and analytics. Even now, the city and its surrounding area rank No 17.

Data that might have been corrected in the 2012 general election has, in many cases, already fallen out of date again because the Nevada housing market has continued to see wave after wave of foreclos-ures, the campaigns said.

The Democratic party’s voter fi le is based primarily on voter registration records across the country. But the time between when a person moves and when their voter registration fi le gets updated can vary because diff erent states and counties have dif-ferent rules about how to han-dle those changes, which are not automatic.

“Not just our modelling and turnout operation but our re-cruitment operation is based on having very clean data,” said Jorge Neri, Clinton’s Nevada organising director.

Underscoring the problem, about a fi fth of the 1mn vot-ers registered in Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, are tagged as inactive, according to Joseph Gloria, the county’s registrar of voters - meaning

their mail has been returned to the county elections offi ce as undeliverable.

Latinos make up almost 32% of Las Vegas.

Personal information on voters forms the lifeblood of modern election campaigns. It can be used for just about every aspect of a ground operation - from building the so-called turf packets that volunteers scoop up to go knock on doors, to guiding the thousands of phone calls made by volun-teers.

Campaign strategy is often based on the voter fi le, which can tell a campaign everything from where they need to turn up more supporters to what ar-eas they can consider strong-holds - or weak points.

Clinton staff ers fi rst arrived in Nevada last April, cam-paign offi cials said, targeting the state early because it has the third nominating contest in the presidential race for the Democrats.

But because so much of the fi le was out of date, the Clin-ton campaign had to work harder just to fi nd voters and make sure their information was correct. Door knocking, for example, was often much more time consuming: Peo-ple listed at certain addresses might have moved, requiring volunteers to engage with new residents from scratch and, perhaps, fi nd out where the previous occupants had gone.

That brand-new informa-tion, in turn, created more work as volunteers were forced to spend time inputting the new information into the cam-paign’s own database.

The problem complicated normal operations, Neri said. “Had we had cleaner lists, had we had not such a transient population, we would be fo-cused more on the volunteer recruitment,” he said.

The Sanders campaign is also knocking on doors and phone banking, said Joan Kato, the state director. But, she added, the campaign was using community outreach eff orts too, such as house parties and speaking to student groups, to gather data from attendees. Kato did not say how much ex-tra work the voter fi le problem had created for the campaign.

Latinos make up about 27 percent of Nevada’s popu-lation and they lean heavily Democrat, meaning they are a prize voter bloc for Clinton and Sanders.

There hasn’t been enough polling in Nevada recently to show who is ahead among Latinos. But nationally Clin-ton has the advantage: Among Latinos who describe them-selves as Democrats, 54% sup-port Clinton and 37% back Sanders, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling from October% 1 to February 12.

Latino Decisions, a polling and research fi rm, said Latinos are expected to form up to 20 of the voters in Nevada this year up from 8.4% in 2012, as tallied by Pew Research Center.

The importance of a good voter fi le can’t be underes-timated, according to Ethan Roeder, who was President Barack Obama’s data director in the 2008 and 2012 elections.

“You can run a campaign without a voter fi le. You just can’t run a successful cam-paign,” he said.

Secret Service off icer stops a woman from touching Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as she greets people after speaking at a campaign rally at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades training center in Henderson, Nevada.

Personal attacks were more the rule than the exception

Ethnic rebels’ show of force highlights peace challengeReutersLoi Tai Leng, Myanmar

Speaking to 1,000 of his sol-diers at a mountain base on Myanmar’s border with

Thailand, the leader of a power-ful ethnic armed group called on other rebels to join government-led peace talks and appealed for unity among the country’s mi-norities.

“Stop shooting and come to the negotiation table,” said Yawd Serk, who leads the 6,000-strong Shan State Army-South (SSA-S). “Whether it is trustworthy or not, we should grab the chance to talk.”

Ending decades of ethnic con-fl ict is one of the biggest chal-lenges for the incoming gov-ernment of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has made it her fi rst priority.

But although Yawd Serk signed a government-brokered ceasefi re deal last October, in a much-needed boost to the peace process of outgoing President Thein Sein, over the winter some of his troops have been fi ghting another ethnic group for con-trol of remote swathes of eastern Myanmar.

That a contingent of Yawd Serk’s soldiers could travel un-challenged some 300km north to fi ght the Ta’ang National Liberation Army near the bor-

der with China shows how little control Suu Kyi’s government will have over Myanmar’s wild hinterlands at the start of its fi ve-year term on April 1.

It also highlights the shift-ing loyalties and complexities that have made peace so elusive in the ethnic confl icts that have plagued the former Burma since World War Two.

Yawd Serk has courted inter-national businesses since sign-ing the ceasefi re and recently joined a study trip to Switzer-land. He is not willing to lay down his arms, however, or give up infl uence over a region rich in gold, timber and gemstones.

“Disarming is impossible,” said Yawd Serk, fl anked by a heavily armed security detail in-cluding a man who said he was a former member of US special forces.

The SSA-S leader was speak-ing as thousands of Shan from Myanmar and Thailand fl ooded his windswept headquarters at Loi Tai Leng, perched on a ridge a few hundred metres from the Thai border, last Sunday to mark Shan National Day.

Visitors pitched tents on the mountainside. The base’s main thoroughfare, a dirt road strad-dling Thailand and Myanmar, was lined with carnival games,

noodle stands and mobile phone booths selling Thai mobile phone SIM cards.

“We are not soldiers with guns but we help as much as we can,” said Lar Yen, 33, selling Shan souvenirs with the proceeds do-nated to the SSA-S.

One of the new cadets was Sai Sai Wan, 28, who, like many sol-diers, said he joined the group to protect Shan heritage and shared its deep distrust of the Myanmar military that ruled the country with an iron fi st for decades.

“We need to protect our peo-ple and our country. We don’t want the Burmese army control-ling our future,” he said.

He signed a fi ve-year contract in December and will be paid $11 a month for his service.

While ethnic groups carry many grievances rooted in dec-ades of discrimination by a gov-ernment and military dominated by the Bamar majority, their vested economic interests, many illicit, and human rights abuses make achieving peace a daunt-ing task.

Offi cers in Yawd Serk’s mi-litia say it has given up forced recruitment from villages and towns, though the UN Secretary General still lists the SSA-S as “persistent perpetrators” in the recruitment and use of children in its ranks.

The SSA-S emerged under Yawd Serk’s command in 1996 as a breakaway faction of a narco-army led by heroin kingpin Khun Sa, who signed a ceasefi re with the then-ruling junta.

It has been accused of con-tinued involvement in the drug trade along the borders with Thailand and China, an allega-tion its members reject.

To fund its operations, the group collects “taxes” on eve-rything from mining and log-ging operations to cars driven by residents of towns under its command.

Asked what would happen if someone refused to pay, one group member said: “You are going to have some trouble.”

Cambodian people run for fun during the Valentine’s Day in Phnom Penh yesterday. Cambodia’s government has hit out at Valentine’s Day, warning students against losing the “dignity of themselves and their families” in a note sent to schools across the country.

Fun run

A farmer works in a field of blossoming cabbage plants in Xuan Son village, outside Hanoi, Vietnam.

Floral delight Rescuers attempt to free Indonesian minerDPAJakarta

A rescue operation was un-der way yesterday to free a miner who has been

trapped for seven days in an un-derground gold mine on Halma-hera island in Indonesia’s North Maluku province.

Solo drill operator Mursalim Sahman, 36, is reportedly in good health despite being trapped in a mining chamber 300 metres un-derground and has maintained contact with his family using a newly installed phone line.

The Gosowong gold mine is operated by PT Nusa Halmahera Mineral, a joint venture between Australia’s Newcrest Min-ing, which controls 75% of the shares, and state-owned miner PT Aneka Tambang.

“Earlier this morning we broke through into the cham-ber where Mursalim is located after completing the boring of a 70-centimetre diameter hole approximately 38 metres deep.

This is a signifi cant milestone in developing our primary rescue option,” Newcrest managing di-rector and CEO Sandeep Biswan said in a statement released yesterday.“Before we attempt the extraction, we will need to line the bore hole so that we can safely bring Mursalim up. It is expected that lining the hole will take several days,” Biswan said.

Local news web site Viva.Coid reported that there were 50 miners who were working in the Kencana mine when it collapsed on Monday, but 49 managed to get out, while Mursalim, who is a native of Halmahera, failed to do the same as he was manning heavy machinery.

The rescue operation has been under way since then. Operation of the company’s three under-ground mines has been halted in the meantime.

The company said a “geo-technical” event of unknown cause spurred the mine collapse, which occurred at 8.30pm East-ern Indonesia Time (1130 GMT) last Monday.

Lt. Gen. Yawd Serk, chairman of the Restoration Council of Shan State gives a speech during a military parade celebrating the 69th Shan State National Day at Loi Tai Leng. Right: Soldiers from the Shan State Army-South march in formation during a military parade celebrating the 69th Shan State National Day at Loi Tai Leng, the group’s headquarters, on the Thai-Myanmar border.

Pilots’ strike leaves localpassengers stranded AgenciesBangkok

Budget airline Nok Air cancelled eight local fl ights yesterday evening

after pilots went on strike, leaving some 1,000 passengers stranded at Don Mueang air-port, Bangkok Post reported.

The airline initially gave no reason for the abrupt cancel-lation and only informed its passengers that scheduled flights were not ready to take off due to “technical prob-lems”, and that it would offer full refunds to affected cus-tomers.

Nok Air chief executive Pa-tee Sarasin later told report-ers the airline was forced to cancel the flights because more than 10 pilots staged a strike after it increased audit standards for the flight oper-ations department, bringing them into line with those of the European Aviation Safety Agency. He said some pilots did not meet the new criteria and went on strike to express their discontent.

The airline announced the cancellation of the eight flights at 3pm. All were scheduled to leave Don Mueang airport late in the af-ternoon to Chiang Mai, Khon Khaen, Hat Yai, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Surat Thani, Phitsanuloke, Phuket and Ubon Ratchathani.

“Nok Air has contacted other airlines that fly on the same routes such as Thai

Smile Airways, Thai Lion Air and Thai AirAsia, but all of them are full,” Mr Patee told Thairath TV.

“I am confident that there will be no problem with flight cancellations tomorrow” as Monday is a normal working day when the full administra-tion resources and back-up plans are in place, Patee said.

He said the damage caused by the pilot protest was un-acceptable and management would discuss what to do about it.

Don Mueang airport di-rector Petch Chancharoen said the airline had to ar-range accommodation for the stranded travellers if it could not find alternative flights for them and described the situ-ation at Don Mueang airport as of 9pm as “still chaotic”.

Many of the passengers lat-er went on to Nok Air’s Face-book page to express anger at their treatment by the airline.

They criticised the airline for the delay in alerting them to the flight cancellations. Some said they did not get any message at all.

Others attacked the strik-ing pilots, accusing them of holding the passengers hos-tage.

Facebook user Hikawari PS wrote: “Phuket-Bangkok flight at 10.45pm has been cancelled and there is no alert message. I have to work early tomorrow morning. What should I do? …. It is too late to book a bus - but travelling 12 hours by bus is terrible.”

Man kills lover, self at mall in ThailandAgenciesBangkok

A distraught man shot dead a woman thought to be his lover in a Non-

thaburi department store yes-terday, and then killed himself with the weapon, injuring a nine-year-old girl with a stray bullet as he did so.

The shooting occurred in front of iStudio store on the second fl oor of Central Plaza Rattanathibet in Muang dis-trict at about 11am and caused panic to Valentine’s Day shop-pers, Bangkok Post reported.

Pol Lt Supalak Promwong, a duty offi cer at Rattanathi-bet sub-police station, said Suchart Pheupradit, 50, shot

Pijakkana Somsakul, 44, three times in the chest with a .38 revolver.

He shot himself in the head a minute later and died at the scene. Pijakkana succumbed to the gunshot wounds while be-ing rushed to hospital.

One of the bullets hit a nine-year-old girl, Papassorn Kwaniam, in the neck. She was walking with her mother at the time. The girl is being treated at Pranangklao hospital and is reported to be safe.

Police initially assumed Su-chart had tried but failed to settle a love issue with Pija-kkana, who was a sales assist-ant at the shopping mall. Pol Lt Supalak said the gunman had a grocery shop opposite the Ministry of Commerce.

ASEAN


AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA15Gulf Times


Quake hits New Zealand,brings down coastal cliff AFPChristchurch

A 5.8-magnitude earth-quake hit the New Zealand city of Christchurch yes-

terday, seismologists said, send-ing goods fl ying off shelves.

GeoNet Science, the offi cial New Zealand earthquake moni-toring service, warned of after-shocks following the “severe in-tensity” quake.

Sirens could be heard going off

around the South Island city and at least one building was evacu-ated, according to media reports.

People posted pictures on so-cial media of a cliff face crum-bling into the sea, however emer-gency services said there were no immediate reports of any struc-tural damage to buildings.

Jenny Krex, the manager of a coff ee shop in the seaside suburb of Sumner, told the New Zealand Herald that items broke in her shop.

“Everyone got a big fright, we

had everyone running out,” she said.

“I made sure everyone was OK, it was quite a big shock. It’s crazy out here at the moment.”

The quake struck a week before the fi fth anniversary of a deadly 6.3-tremor in Christchurch, which killed 185 in one of New Zealand’s deadliest disasters.

The latest quake was measured at 5.8 by the US Geological Sur-vey at a shallow depth of about eight kilometres and centred 17 kilometres west of the city.

“This quake is too small to have caused a tsunami,” GeoNet spokeswoman Caroline Lit-tle said but added with such tremors “people and animals are alarmed, and many run out-side. Walking steadily is dif-ficult... objects fall from walls and shelves”.

New Zealand is on the bound-ary of the Australian and Pacifi c tectonic plates, which form part of the so-called “Ring of Fire”, and experiences up to 15,000 tremors a year.

Beijing pins HK riots on ‘separatists’ AFPBeijing

A senior Beijing offi cial yes-terday blamed “radical separatists” for a riot that

erupted in Hong Kong last week, the worst clashes the city has seen since mass pro-democracy protests.

In unusually blunt remarks on a local Hong Kong matter, Zhang Xiaoming, Beijing’s top representative in the semi-au-tonomous city, told reporters the violence that left dozens of police offi cers hurt also showed elements of “terror”.

“After the riot in Mong Kok, we are feeling very much shocked and saddened,” Zhang told re-porters.

“We strongly condemn those radical separatists who have be-come increasingly violent, even (carrying out) activities that showed terror tendencies,” the director of China’s Liaison Offi ce in Hong Kong said in Chinese.

The clashes erupted when protesters gathered following of-fi cial attempts to remove illegal hawkers from the busy commer-cial neighbourhood of Mong Kok

during Lunar New Year celebra-tions late Monday night.

Police fi red warning shots in the air, while demonstrators hurled bricks levered up from pavements, charged police lines with homemade shields and set rubbish on fi re.

About 100 people were in-jured, including police offi cers, journalists and protesters, and 65 were arrested in the rare outbreak of violence. Some 30 have been charged with rioting.

Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying said yesterday most of the protesters were unem-ployed and did not refl ect main-stream views.

“The majority of them are job-less. Quite many of them belong to radical political groups. Their political demands... cannot re-fl ect the majority of society,” the chief executive said.

The battles have been dubbed the “fi shball revolution” after a favourite Hong Kong street snack and refl ect underlying tensions over the erosion of the city’s tra-ditions. Demonstrators included “localist” activists who want to restrict Beijing’s infl uence on the city.

Mong Kok, on the city’s Kow-loon peninsula, was the scene of some of the worst violence during the 79-day “Occupy” pro-democ-racy street protests in late 2014.

The mass rallies seeking fully free leadership elections in the city blocked some major streets for more than two months. But the rallies failed to win conces-sions from the authorities.

Pro-democracy activist Joseph Cheng said weighing in on the protest was a tactic by Beijing to justify its hardline approach to the pro-democracy movement.

“The whole idea, of course, is to condemn the protesters in association with the pro-de-mocracy movement in the public opinion war,” the retired scholar, who has advocated direct lead-ership elections for Hong Kong, told AFP.

“Condemning the riot has the purpose of justifying the hardline (stance) of Beijing,”

He added he expected the Hong Kong authorities to con-duct a “neutral investigation” into the incident.

Hong Kong was returned by Britain to China in 1997 with its way of life protected for 50 years by a joint agreement.

But there are fears that freedoms enshrined in the agree-ment are being eroded by Chi-nese infl uence, including the recent case of fi ve Hong Kong publishers known for titles criti-cal of Beijing, four of whom it is confi rmed have been detained on the mainland.

Australian hospital will not send refugee baby to NauruAFPSydney

An Australian hospital has refused to return an asylum seeker baby

to detention in Nauru, as mo-mentum built across the coun-try yesterday against offshore Pacific camps for processing refugees.

Under the government’s tough immigration policy, asylum-seekers who try to reach Austral-ia by boat are sent to detention camps in the Pacifi c island na-tions of Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

They are blocked from be-ing resettled in Australia even if found to be refugees.

The hospital’s move came as state governments, churches and activists stepped up their eff orts to stop the return of some 267 refugees to Nauru following a High Court ruling.

Yesterday, campaigners from ActionAid, Amnesty Interna-tional, GetUp! and Greenpeace unfurled a #LetThemStay ban-ner on Sydney’s iconic harbour

calling for the asylum seekers, who are set to be deported after being brought to Australia for medical treatment, to be allowed to stay.

The #LetThemStay campaign, which has been trending on Twitter, has also seen hundreds of people maintain a vigil — now in its third day — outside the Brisbane hospital where the baby is being cared for.

The 12-month-old infant, who is called Asha and the child of Nepalese asylum seekers, was brought to the eastern city of Brisbane for treatment in late January after being scalded with hot water at the remote Nauru facility.

Following the High Court’s ruling earlier this month in fa-vour of the government’s poli-cies, Asha and 36 other babies born in Australia are among the asylum-seekers facing re-moval.

But a spokesman for Bris-bane’s Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital said Asha “will only be discharged once a suitable home environment is identifi ed”.

Their stance was supported by

Queensland state’s health min-ister Cameron Dick, who said in a statement yesterday that he “strongly support(s) doctors in our hospitals to make the right clinical decisions”.

“Doctors must expect to advo-cate for their patients,” Doctors For Refugees co-founder Richard Kidd, who has joined the vigil outside the hospital, told AFP.

“We have... overwhelming evidence over many years now that detention does terrible harm to babies and children, particu-larly their mental health but also physical health.”

Australian church leaders in early February vowed to defy the federal government, off er-ing sanctuary to the asylum-seekers.

Several state government pre-miers have said they would help settle in their communities those facing deportation if they were allowed to stay.

There have also been numer-ous community-led protests. Thirty-seven cots — one for each of the Australia-born ba-bies — were set up on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, while two cam-

paigners abseiled from a Mel-bourne bridge with a “Let Them Stay” banner.

“I think the case of the 267 people has just really spoken to the hearts of the people across Australia,” GetUp! organiser Sal-ly Rugg told AFP.

“It’s people from all walks of life. We are seeing churches and hospitals and teachers and pre-miers, it’s a whole movement.”

Canberra has long defended its policy, saying it has prevented the deaths of asylum seekers at sea and secured its borders.

But rights groups have criti-cised the measures and deten-tion conditions, while the gov-ernment-funded Human Rights Commission has found that children who lived in the Nauru centre had high levels of mental illness.

“This off shore detention poli-cy is being operated by the Aus-tralian government in secrecy and there’s a severe lack of trans-parency and that’s obviously not how people of Australia want their taxpayers’ money being spent,” Amnesty’s Ming Yu Hah told AFP.

People dance at a Colatec in Seoul.

‘Afternoon Fever’ in old-age discos

AFPSeoul

As the mercury outside plunges to minus 10 degrees on an ice-cold

Monday afternoon, the dance fl oor inside the Kukilgwan Pal-ace is packed with grey-haired Korean couples moving to the rhythms of high-volume disco.

“I come here every day of the week, except for Saturday and Sunday,” said 81-year-old Jun Il-Taek as he danced be-neath the giant disco balls and brightly-coloured string lights decorating the venue in central Seoul.

Jun was one of around 200 men and women on the fl oor — all engaged in the same, rather static, knee-bobbing dance routine, with the odd slow-mo-tion twirl to liven things up.

The sedate nature of the dancing is in stark contrast to the decibel level of the music, which slowly envelops the as-cending elevator as it approach-es the ninth-fl oor dance club.

“Nothing keeps me health-ier than dancing ... I can’t live without this place,” Jun said, deftly leading his 75-year-old female partner into a slow turn.

The army veteran is one of thousands of retired South Ko-reans hitting the dance fl oors at Colatecs -- special discos for the elderly that are fl ourishing across the country.

South Korea’s rapidly age-ing population may be a major headache for policymakers, but its members are determined

to enjoy themselves, dancing the years away at clubs where 50-year-olds are turned away for being “too young.”

Colatecs fi rst emerged in the late 1990s as dance halls for teenagers, where alcohol was banned and the only drinks on off er were sodas like Coca-Cola.

But they soon fell out of fash-ion with their young clientele which migrated to gatherings at Internet cafes and karaoke clubs.

And so the Colatecs rebrand-ed themselves for an entirely diff erent demographic.

“They became a playground for the over 60s ... and they turned out to be far more loyal customers,” said Lee Kwan-Woo, the owner of the Kukilg-wan Palace which was estab-lished in the early 2000s.

“Here, they can exercise to stay healthy, make new friends and have a little bit of excite-ment,” said the 70-year-old former nightclub singer.

South Koreans aged 65 plus make up 13% of the population, that fi gure is expected to rise to as much as 40% by 2060.

Currently, half of that de-mographic live on or below the poverty line. A meagre pension and lack of social welfare make retirement a daunting prospect.

Among those with some dis-posable income, leisure activ-ity is something of an unknown fi eld for a generation whose la-bour transformed the country from a war-ravaged backwater to Asia’s fourth-largest econo-my.

“This generation spent all

their lives working, working and working, and leisure was considered a privilege of the elite,” said Hwang Nam-Hui, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Aff airs.

“So many fi nd it hard, and even baffl ing, just to relax and enjoy themselves after retire-ment,” Hwang said.

Kukilgwan Palace owner Lee says clubs like his off er a vital opportunity to “unwind and just have fun”.

His venue attracts 800 visi-tors on a weekday and up to 1,500 at weekends. The en-trance fee is cheap at 1,000 won ($0.80). Most of the club’s income comes from food and drinks.

The physical limitations of its elderly patrons are refl ected in the noon-6pm opening hours.

“If a regular suddenly stops coming, it usually means he or she has died,” said Lee, who feels attending funerals of loyal customers is part of his job.

Many are widows or widow-ers looking for some company and mild fl irtation, and anyone under 60 is turned away as they may “annoy other patrons and spoil the mood”, Lee said.

In what remains a very Con-fucian culture, elderly South Koreans are expected to behave with moderation and dignity, and Colatecs are frowned on by those who see them as unseemly hook-up joints for pensioners.

As a result, patrons like Han Keum-Ok, a 75-year-old Kukilgwan regular for the past 10 years, keeps her hobby a se-cret.

A cliff collapses at the Whitewash Head area, in the suburb of Sumner, Christchurch.

North Korea took 70% of Kaesong labourers’ wages to spend on weapons, says Seoul ReutersSeoul

South Korea said 70% of the US dol-lars paid as wages and fees for the sus-pended Kaesong industrial project, run

jointly with the North, had been diverted for Pyongyang’s weapons programme and luxury goods for leader Kim Jong Un.

It is the fi rst formal acknowledgement by the South that the 55,000 North Korean workers at the Kaesong complex saw little of the $160 they were paid on average a month.

South Korea on Wednesday suspended the project as punishment for the North’s long-range rocket launch on February 7 say-ing it would no longer allow the funds paid to Kaesong to be used in the North’s missile and nuclear programmes.

The North conducted its fourth nuclear test last month.

The North called the South’s move to suspend operations “a declaration of war” and kicked out all South Korean workers on

Thursday and froze the assets of the South Korean fi rms.

“The wages for the North’s workers and other fees were paid in cash in US dollars to the North’s authorities and not to the work-ers,” South Korea’s Unifi cation Ministry said on Sunday. “This is believed to be channelled in the same way as other foreign currency it earned.”

The cash is then kept and managed by the ruling Workers’ Party’s Offi ce 39 and other agencies, the ministry said. The ministry said it had confi rmed the movement of the money through various sources but did not specify them.

Offi ce 39 is widely believed to exist to fi -nance the luxurious lifestyle of the North’s leader. The offi ce is also believed to be part of the North’s agencies that fund the country’s missile and nuclear programme.

The South Korean government and compa-nies had invested about 1tn won ($829mn) in Kaesong including 616bn won in cash since it opened more than a decade ago, unifi cation minister Hong Yong-pyo said on Wednesday.

Kaesong’s North Korean workers were giv-en a taste of life in the South, working for the 124 mostly small and medium sized manu-facturers that operated there, about 54km northwest of Seoul.

The minimum wage for North Korean workers was about $70 a month, although the companies paid more than double that amount after overtime and bonuses - still low compared with wages in the South.

The Kaesong project resulted from the fi rst summit meeting of the rival Koreas in 2000, where their leaders pledged reconciliation and cooperation. It was the last remain-ing symbol of that eff ort in volatile North-South relations over the years. Kaesong had been shut only once before, for fi ve months in 2013, amid heightened tensions following North Korea’s third nuclear test, although its continuing existence often seemed tenuous.

“The wages for the North’s workers were paid in cash in US dollars to the North and not to the workers”

Beijing’s explanation is probably a little too convenient

BRITAIN


EU reform talks will goto the wire: Hammond Britain’s push to win backing

from its European partners for its wish list of EU re-

forms will go “right to the wire” at a summit this week, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said yesterday.

“There isn’t a deal yet, there is a working draft, there are lots of moving parts and we have got a negotiation that will run through this week, and I have no doubt will run right to the wire,” he told BBC television yesterday.

He said progress was needed to nail down key demands in the ar-eas of competitiveness, the rela-tionship between countries in the bloc that use the euro and those

that do not, national sovereignty and access to welfare benefi ts.

British and EU negotiators have already broadly agreed much of a reform package, but tricky politi-cal issues, notably on migration, are still outstanding.

Prime Minister David Cam-eron is hoping to return from a summit of European leaders on Thursday and Friday in Brussels with a package of reforms that he can take to the British people in a referendum on whether to remain in the EU.

“Our European partners un-derstand that we have to have a robust deal in each of those areas if the British people are to vote to remain inside the European Un-ion,” Hammond told the Andrew Marr Show.

The campaign to remain in the

bloc stepped up a gear yesterday, when the boss of airline easyJet said Britain’s membership of the EU was the reason that the cost of fl ights had plummeted, while the range of destinations had soared.

“Whatever way to look at it, the EU has brought huge benefi ts for UK travellers and businesses,” Carolyn McCall wrote in the Sun-day Times.

“Staying in the EU will ensure that they, and all of us, continue to receive them.”

Campaigners to leave, however, repeated claims that EU support-ers were running a fear campaign to scare people into voting to stay.

“Those that wish to remain in the EU should make the positive case for the supranational Euro-pean project rather than frighten-

ing people,” former defence min-ister Liam Fox told the newspaper.

Meanwhile Eurosceptic Labour grandee Lord Blunkett has backed the campaign to keep Britain in the EU - warning of a “catastro-phe” in the event of a vote to leave.

The former home secretary told Sky News Britain needed to be at the heart of Europe to deal with challenges such as Islamic State terrorism, organised crime and mass migration.

Lord Blunkett is one of fi ve pre-viously eurosceptic Labour Party fi gures who have backed the case for Britain to remain in a reformed European Union, in apparent support for David Cameron’s ne-gotiations.

He said: “People who were sceptical 40 years ago may still be sceptical of the way Europe works

as a bureaucracy and I’m certainly a Eurosceptic, but recognise the catastrophe that would happen if we pulled out of Europe now.

He added: “There are millions of people we’re going to have to win over, who are not enthusi-astic, who have been sceptical... and are going to have to be won over if we don’t have an econom-ic, a social and an international crisis, because our withdrawal from Europe would bring those things.”

Lord Blunkett along with Margaret Beckett, Neil Kinnock, Jack Straw and shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn - who all campaigned against membership of the European Community in 1975 - have signed an open letter to argue the case for remaining in the EU.

Farage acceptsSalmond challenge

Nigel Farage has accepted a challenge to debate with Alex Salmond in the run

up to the in/out referendum on EU membership.

Scotland’s former fi rst minister threw down the gauntlet to the Ukip leader during an interview on the Sky News Murnaghan pro-gramme.

The SNP’s foreign aff airs spokesman said he would be “de-lighted” to take on Farage “or any comer on the anti-European side”.

He told the programme: “I don’t know if they’ve quite decided who they will be fi elding yet. They seem to have spent a lot of time fi ghting with each other.

“That’s the sort of folk they are. But yes, of course you debate all comers in a referendum campaign.

“If I may say so it has been Cameron who has been tentative and sensitive about debating with people in recent history.”

A Ukip spokesman later said Farage was “absolutely up for it” but that any debate should be broader than just a one-to-one with Salmond.

He said: “ Salmond is no long-er leader of the party, no longer leader in Scotland, no longer leader in Westminster and it should be broader than just Nigel and Salmond, because neither of them represent the whole argu-ment.”

Salmond, who stood down as fi rst minister and SNP leader after the No vote to Scottish independ-ence in 2014, also told the pro-gramme that the prime minister would have no choice but to resign in the event of a vote for Brexit.

He said: “He won’t have a choice in the matter. If he loses the referendum then he’ll be shown the door as indeed will the Chan-cellor George Osborne.

“It’s untenable to try and main-tain a position if you lose a refer-endum and, what is it they used to say in the Conservative Party a long time ago, you would have to do the honourable thing.”

Salmond has branded Cam-eron’s EU renegotiation a “sham” and accused both sides in the de-bate of scaremongering.

He said: “If we have that sort of debate over these next few weeks then I think there’s a very real chance that the anti-Europeans will win.”

Scarred byelection fl op,pollsters splitover Brexit

If you believe online polls, Brit-ain’s looming referendum on whether to quit the European

Union will be a tight race that the “out” camp could win. But if you trust telephone polls, the “in” camp should triumph by a wide margin.

The divergence has raised fresh questions about whether polling is reliable after the industry suf-fered a severe blow to its repu-tation last year when a general election resulted in a Conserva-tive victory that it totally failed to predict.

The stakes in the referendum could hardly be higher. The EU risks losing its second-biggest economy and one of its two main military powers, while the con-sequences for Britain in terms of trade, growth and infl uence in the world could be profound.

The pollsters are desperate to get it right this time.

“I don’t think the polling indus-try can aff ord to get this one wrong and I think the world will be look-ing at our performance,” said Mar-tin Boon, director of pollster ICM.

The trouble is that pollsters dis-agree on which method - phone or Internet - is producing better re-sults, and independent experts say it is impossible to know for sure.

“The honest truth is there’s an awful lot of uncertainty sur-rounding this referendum,” said academic John Curtice, Britain’s foremost expert on electoral be-haviour.

“If the online polls are correct it’s quite close, and we don’t know which set of polls is correct, if ei-ther.”

Over the past six months, the two fi rms that have been conduct-ing phone polls, ComRes and Ipsos MORI, have consistently found the option to stay in the EU was ahead by well over 10 percentage

points, and in some polls by more than 20 points.

But online polls, which are being done more frequently by YouGov, ICM and four other fi rms, have found that the two sides are neck and neck. The largest lead in an online poll was nine points for the out camp, in a YouGov poll published on February 4.

Curtice has been overseeing a “poll of polls”, a rolling average of the six most recent phone and web polls, which provides a summary of the overall referendum polling picture. http://bit.ly/1O4xUc3

Last updated on February 7 when it showed 51% in favour of remaining and 49% wishing to withdraw, the poll of polls has never shown a lead for the so-called “Brexit” option.

Pollsters pointed out that these were early days, with major uncer-tainties hanging over key aspects of the referendum.

Those include when it will take place, whether some high-profi le politicians like London mayor Boris Johnson will campaign to leave, and what fi nal deal on Brit-ain’s membership terms Prime Minister David Cameron will se-cure from Brussels.

Pollsters from both sides of the divide also said they expected there would be some convergence between the two methods as cam-paigning intensifi ed and voters became more engaged.

For now, a phone versus online debate is in full swing.

One argument put forward in favour of phone polls is that web panels tend to attract more po-litically engaged respondents, as people must voluntarily partici-pate rather than receiving unin-vited calls. This could skew on-line results towards the out camp, regarded as the more committed group.

Tom Mludzinski, director of political polling at ComRes, said it was also diffi cult for internet polls to reach elderly voters.

Anger at move to boost

Labour ruling committee

Shadow cabinet ministers could be blocked from making policy announce-

ments without permission from Labour’s ruling national execu-tive committee, the Standard revealed.

The change, proposed in leaked party documents, would drastically increase the power of Left-wingers who are increasing their hold over the NEC.

But it was condemned by top party figures who branded it an attempt to “gag” frontbench-ers and gain “politburo” control over Labour.

Other proposed changes that could tighten Jeremy Corbyn’s grip would see the NEC seize greater control over who gets top party jobs.

A senior Labour figure said: “The new politics was sup-posed to be about wider debate, not central control and trying to gag frontbenchers.

“Waiting for the politburo

to approve every utterance just takes the party further away from the electorate.”

A proposal to boost the NEC was tabled last month based on a plan drawn up by Jon Lans-man, the co-founder of the pro-Corbyn Momentum group.

It suggested scrapping an existing policy committee and giving the NEC control of “all aspects” of policy-making and for a new NEC staffing commit-tee to make “all senior appoint-ments”.

Documents seen by the Standard point to changes to the NEC’s terms of reference that do not go as far as the Lans-man plan, but do give the NEC greater influence. They state the NEC would be “responsible for the oversight of the policy of the Labour Party.”

They go on to say while front-benchers may sometimes need to take quick policy positions, “no statements will be made on such policy matters without the agreement of the Leader’s Office following consultation with the NEC.”

They also say the NEC should be “notified in advance of pro-posed appointments of all sen-ior staff, before posts are adver-tised”.

Another top Labour figure said: “This is an attempt by Corbyn and the NEC to tighten their stranglehold on Labour policy. It’s actually a sign of weakness. They’re making this proposal because their grip on policy is slipping.”

New rules were almost put to a vote at January’s meeting of the NEC, but the item was un-expectedly delayed.

When the NEC meets again in March, the changes are ex-pected to have a greater chance of passing, as a new more Left-wing Young Labour representa-tive is likely to be elected.

On Thursday shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn opened a fresh rift with Corbyn as he backed maintaining the UK’s nuclear deterrent in a speech. The party is facing a major row ahead of an expected Commons vote on whether to renew the Trident weapons system.

ReutersLondon

London Evening StandardLondon

AgenciesLondon

ReutersLondon

Cars lie partly submerged in flood-waters in Richmond, south-west London. Some areas of south-west London experienced localised flooding when the River Thames burst its banks as a result of heavy rain and high tides.

Thames flooding

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has paid tribute to “true Liberal” former MP Lord Avebury, who has died aged 87. Eric Avebury, known for campaigning for democratic and human rights, represented Orpington for eight years after winning a Commons by-election for the Liberals in 1962. He inherited the title of Baron Avebury in 1971, and was elected to remain in the Upper House when most other hereditary peers were ejected in 1999. The father-of-five, a Buddhist, had been suff ering from leukaemia and died at home in London. Farron said: “He was a true Liberal who will be remembered as much for his unyielding commitment to fighting for Liberal causes”.

A woman arrested by detectives investigating the murder of businessman Akhtar Javeed has been released on police bail pending further inquiries. The 19-year-old was detained by West Midlands Police late on Friday at an address in Leicester on suspicion of assisting an off ender. Off icers are continuing to question two men aged 18 and 26, who were arrested in Derby and Leicester, on suspicion of murdering Javeed. The father-of-four, aged 56, was shot in the neck during an attempted robbery at a drinks distribution warehouse in Digbeth, Birmingham, on February 3. Detectives have seized a silver Renault Megane as part of the inquiry.

Former TV host and radio presenter John Leslie has said he has been cleared by police over claims of sexual assault. The former Blue Peter, This Morning and Wheel of Fortune presenter was questioned in connection with an alleged sexual assault on a 22-year-old woman in Edinburgh last year. Leslie told the Sunday Mirror police had informed him three days ago he would not face action over the claims. He spoke of his relief and his anger about the impact the allegations had on his family and career. “While I am glad to be cleared, I have served a hefty punishment for a crime that never was. The damage to my parents and to me is incalculable.”

A major search operation has been launched for a junior doctor who has gone missing. Dr Rose Polge, 25, who works at Torbay Hospital in Torquay, Devon, has not been seen since Friday. Police and coastguard have been searching for Dr Polge after her car was discovered in a car park near Ansteys Cove. Martin Ringrose, interim director of human resources at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are aware that one of our junior doctors is missing. “Our thoughts are with her family and loved ones at this very distressing time. “We will do whatever we can to support the authorities investigating her disappearance and searching for her.”

Police have appealed for information after a woman was attacked and sexually assaulted as she walked home in south London. The 20-year-old was grabbed from behind as she walked down Orlando Road in Clapham after a night out with a friend. As she was walking, she became aware of someone coming up behind her. The suspect grabbed her, pushed her against a wall and sexually assaulted her. The suspect was disturbed by a passing car and ran off towards Clapham Old Town. Police say the victim was left traumatised and managed to make her way home where a relative called police.

Lord Avebury diesof cancer aged 87

Woman released on bail inbusinessman’s death probe

Charges against ex-TVhost Leslie ‘dropped’

Search on for missingjunior doctor

Sex assault on womanwalking home

OBITUARY LAW AND ORDERLEGAL PEOPLE CRIME

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond looks at his watch while appearing on BBC’s Andrew Marr Show in London yesterday.

17Gulf TimesMonday, February 15, 2016

BRITAIN/IRELAND

‘Boarding’of hospitalpatientscriticised AgenciesEdinburgh

More than 130,000 hos-pital patients have been “boarded out”

from hospital wards in the past two years, according to figures from Scottish Labour.

The practice of moving a pa-tient from a specialist ward to a ward treating different condi-tions can result in them staying in hospital longer and increases the risk of infections spreading, researchers have said.

Freedom of information requests from Scottish La-bour found health boards have moved more than 130,000 pa-tients between wards.

The party said the number could be higher with Tayside and Grampian health boards not providing information.

Dundee University research-ers examined boarding last year and said a reduction in bed numbers and a rise in hospital admissions had led to it be-coming more common.

The Scottish Government said it is working to reduce the practice.

Scottish Labour said the fig-ures “showed the huge strain our hospitals were under” and called for more investment in social care.

The party’s public serv-ices spokeswoman Jackie Bail-lie said: “These figures point to huge levels of stress in our hospitals. We know that only a third of NHS staff believe they have the resources to do their jobs properly.

“This information sug-gests that too often there isn’t enough space for patients to be treated in the appropriate ward. That is hugely concerning.

“We know from the SNP gov-ernment’s own research treat-ing patients in the wrong ward is more likely to increase patient risk. Questions have to be asked of Shona Robison about what she is doing to deal with this.

“Scottish Labour would give our NHS established in the 1940s, the tools it needs to face the challenges of the 2040s”.

Mother faces jail for £23,000 con London Evening StandardLondon

A mother-of-two who was spared jail for swindling thousands of pounds

from Premier League stars faces a prison sentence after admit-ting a £23,000 con on a telecoms millionaire.

Claire Liddle, 40, was remand-ed in custody ahead of sentencing after a hearing at the Old Bailey.

She avoided prison two years ago for an £80,000 fraud in which Coventry City boss Tony Mowbray, Stoke City footballer Peter Odemwingie and Liverpool fullback Andre Wisdom were duped into handing over thou-sands of pounds for “life coach-ing”. Mowbray paid £30,000 for a holiday to Dubai, but turned up to fi nd he had been booked into a diff erent hotel and the bill had not been paid. A judge at Staff ord crown court passed a suspended sentence in April 2014 after Liddle vowed to pay her victims back.

But the fraudster was back in court to admit a £23,000 con on Sri Lankan-born millionaire Yo-ganathan Ratheesan, the head

of telecoms fi rm Lebara, who is worth an estimated £250mn. Liddle pleaded guilty to stealing £22,897 from him between April and June last year. “This defend-ant is in breach of a suspended sentence for a similar case involv-ing a sum of £80,000,” said pros-ecutor Michael Morris.

In her last scam Liddle off ered lifestyle coaching to six victims through her company Solutions Lifestyle.

Odemwingie was swindled out of more than £15,000, while Wis-dom paid £6,600 for a trip to Ja-maica that never materialised.

The Old Bailey heard she faces a confi scation hearing as her previ-ous victims are still trying to re-coup their lost money.

Liddle, from St Albans, broke down in tears as judge Anuja Dhir refused to release her on bail ahead of a sentencing hearing on April 15.

“A custodial sentence is inevi-table,” she told Liddle.

Bernard Eaton, defending, said Liddle was on anti-depressants and under the care of a GP who had diagnosed her as bipolar, but judge Dhir said she could “com-mit further off ences” if she was not remanded in custody.

Viola Beach band killedas car plunges off bridge AgenciesLondon

All four members of Brit-ish indie band Viola Beach and their manager

have been killed after their car plunged off a bridge in Sweden.

Their car crashed through a motorway bridge barrier at Sod-ertalje and fell more than 80ft into a canal.

Police divers recovered the bodies of singer Kris Leonard, guitarist River Reeves, bass-ist Tomas Lowe, drummer Jack Dakin and the band’s manager Craig Tarry, from the water, around 40km from Stockholm.

The Warrington group had played a gig at a Swedish music festival on Friday night.

They were due back in the UK to play in Guildford, Surrey, on Saturday night, but the venue said the gig had been cancelled due to “unforeseen circum-stances”.

Tributes have been paid on so-cial media .

British band The Enemy

wrote: “RIP Viola Beach and their manager. Such incredibly tragic and sad news. Thoughts with the friends and families of all involved x.”

The Coral’s James Skelly post-ed: “So sorry to hear about viola beach and Craig tarry’s accident so sad, their families must be devastated.”

Gemma Hepworth, a friend of Tarry, said he was a life-long Manchester City fan who “never gave up on his dream” of work-ing in the music industry.

Swedish musician Fet Poet, whose band Psykofant played at the same gig on Friday, said he was devastated when he heard they had died.

He said: “We were sitting in the dressing room, and the door opened and these four very Brit-ish lads fell in. It was like a scene from A Hard Day’s Night with The Beatles.

“They were very chirpy, and very happy and joked around ... they were fantastic people. I really enjoyed my hours with them, and I was so, so sad when I heard the news.”

His band-mate John Olsson said Tarry had not been drink-ing at the event because he was driving.

The band’s car crashed through a barrier after the bridge - at the Saltskogs junction, between the E4 and the E20 motorways - opened to let a boat pass.

The bridge has a middle sec-tion that rises upwards, leaving a gap that the car drove into.

Offi cers said a barrier, 50 me-tres before the gap, has fl ashing lights and signs warning there is a bridge opening.

Swedish police spokesman Martin Bergholm said: “For some reason, the car drove through the barriers and crashed down into the canal.”

He added: “The witnesses just saw a car beside them and kind of disappear.”

He said it is not yet known whether the men were wear-ing seatbelts, but added: “That would not have helped them.”

Police received a call at 2.30am on Saturday local time, and ar-rived at the scene fi ve minutes later.

London’shousing crisisis coming to a crunch AFPLondon

Londoners are getting des-perate over rising rents, with residents and stu-

dents taking to the streets and social media over the cramped conditions tenants are forced to accept.

With house-building lagging well behind the population in-crease in western Europe’s big-gest city, prices are soaring be-yond anything affordable.

“The situation is becom-ing untenable,” said retired teacher John Ford, 60, who joined a 2,000-strong protest this month against the govern-ment’s new housing bill, which would radically alter public housing and the rights of its tenants.

“My nephew is a young sur-geon. He cannot aff ord, on his salary, to buy a house in London. So this crisis is beginning to eat into the middle class,” he said.

Latest figures show the av-erage London house price was £514,097 in December, up 12.4% in 12 months, compared to a 6.4% increase to £188,270 across England and Wales.

The London-wide median rent is £122 a week for a room in a shared home; £276 for a one-bedroom property and £402 for a three-bedroom home.

Many “generation rent” young professionals, whose parents bought comfortable homes in their early 20s, have given up on their dream of ever affording a property in London.

Students are also feeling the crisis bite.

At University College Lon-

don, more than 150 students have gone on a rent strike. One UCL block has rooms costing as much as £262 a week.

At this month’s protest out-side Downing Street, two UCL students carried a symbolic home-made housing ladder, with all but the very top rungs knocked out.

“I don’t see any prospect of owning a home - certainly not in London,” said its co-creator, doctorate student Liam Shaw, 24.

London’s population is at a record high of 8.6mn and grow-ing at around 100,000 a year.

Some 25,994 new homes were built in London in 2015, down 9% on the previous year.

“People in the lowest-paid jobs have to live on the outskirts of London,” Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said. “We’re now hearing of junior doctors, nurses and teachers having to commute from outside.”

Commuting from outer Lon-don is not without cost in time and stress, let alone money. An annual travel pass from the city limits costs £2,364.

Part of the problem is wealthy foreign buyers snap-ping up high-end new develop-ments as a safe investment and leaving them empty while they accrue value.

“Buy-to-leave is dreadful. But the real issue is what’s be-ing built: homes designed for just that,” said Bennett.

“Let’s provide genuinely af-fordable, secure homes for people.”

Some are proposing innova-tive solutions to the situation.

Rupert Hunt, founder of fl at-share website SpareRoom.com,

is opening up his own plush home in trendy Shoreditch to lodgers paying whatever they can aff ord, in a bid to encourage others.

“Demand has increased mas-sively. It’s not unusual to see 10 or 12 people for every room es-pecially in some parts of Lon-don,” he said.

“In England there’s some-thing like 19mn spare rooms, empty rooms and if we just convinced 3% of that to take a lodger that’s the size of a small city in extra housing.”

The outrage over rising rent is fed with regular stories in local papers about tenants be-ing offered bedrooms in closets under stairs or in corners of living rooms, or matchbox-size houses selling for astronomical amounts.

A flat dubbed the “least ex-pensive” in London, measur-ing just 75 square feet, sold last month for £79,000 in Clapton in east London. Housing is a major issue in May’s London mayoral election to decide who replaces Boris Johnson.

At a debate this month, the two leading contenders, Con-servative Zac Goldsmith and Labour’s Sadiq Khan, outlined their plans. Goldsmith said transport links must be im-proved to “reflect the reality of more and more people living on the outskirts”. Khan vowed to build more “genuinely afford-able homes” and clamp down on developers selling property to foreign investors.

With the price of even the average London property go-ing up by £10,682 in December alone, there will be little time to waste.

New Year celebration

Performers wear a traditional costume to perform the “Flying Lion Dance” at an event to celebrate Chinese New Year in Trafalgar Square, London, yesterday. The celebrations yesterday marked the Chinese New Year of the Monkey, which fell on February 8, 2016.

IRA ties temper rise of Irish protest party Sinn Fein ReutersDublin

Irish protest party Sinn Fein is set to reap the rewards of op-posing austerity with a major

breakthrough at elections this month, but its push to enter gov-ernment has stumbled over an improving economy and unease about its ties to the IRA.

Party leader Gerry Adams, the face of Irish Republican Army bombing campaigns for many in Britain, confounded critics by steering his party’s support from 10% in the last parliamentary elec-tion in 2011 to an opinion poll rat-ing of 26% this time last year.

Boosted by its opposition to an unpopular EU/IMF austerity programme, Sinn Fein has said it hopes to emulate the success of

other protest parties in Greece and Portugal to enter government and reverse cuts.

But its support slipped back to an average of 18% in opinion polls this year as Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s coalition has presided over the fastest-growing economy in Europe.

Sinn Fein is still fi ghting for an unprecedented second place in an election where polls suggest no

party will have enough votes to govern alone. But rivals’ aversion to the party due to its past IRA links means it is unlikely to secure a spot in the next government coalition.

“This is going to be a great elec-tion for Sinn Fein ... but we’re a long way from the kind of scenar-ios we’ve seen in Greece and Por-tugal,” said David Farrell, professor of politics at University College Dublin, citing the party’s “toxic-

ity” to some voters and potential partners.

“But if we imagine a future elec-tion in four or fi ve years time, on this sort of trajectory, then could be talking about a Sinn Fein gov-ernment at that stage,” he added.

Sinn Fein was the political wing of the IRA, which was responsible for more than half of the 3,600 killings during three decades of violence between Irish Catholic

nationalists seeking an end to Brit-ish rule in Northern Ireland and the British Army and Protestant loyalists who defended it.

The party insists the IRA - des-ignated a terrorist group by Britain - “left the stage” in the wake of a 1998 peace deal.

It is now benefi ting from sup-port among a new generation too young to remember IRA attacks, said Sinn Fein candidate Chris An-

drews, who analysts say is a serious contender in a Dublin constituen-cy where the party had previously never stood a realistic chance of victory.

“Most of the people here can-vassing were only toddlers when the fi rst ceasefi re happened,” said Andrews. “The electorate sees that Sinn Fein is moving on and be-coming a very central part of poli-tics in Ireland.”

Divers and rescuers search in the canal under the E4 highway bridge in Sodertalje, Sweden.

EUROPE


Merkel is isolated on refugee imbroglioBy Frank Zeller, AFPBrussels

Abandoned by France, defi ed by east-ern Europe, German Chancellor An-gela Merkel cuts a lonely fi gure in her

struggle for EU “solidarity” on the refugee crisis ahead of a Brussels summit.

Merkel is battling for a deal that will see refugees more evenly spread around the European Union after Germany welcomed 1.1mn asylum seekers last year.

But instead, eastern European countries are planning new razor wire fences, and even Paris - traditionally Berlin’s closest EU ally - has shown little enthusiasm for Merkel’s welcome policy.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Saturday that the mood in France was “not favourable” to Merkel’s call for a per-manent quota system.

“Europe cannot take in all the migrants from Syria, Iraq or Africa,” Valls told German media. “It has to regain control over its bor-ders, over its migration or asylum policies.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry praised Merkel for showing “great courage in help-ing so many who need so much” amid “the gravest humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II”.

But he also told the Munich Security Con-ference that the mass infl ux spells a “near existential... threat to the politics and fabric of life in Europe”.

Another guest in Munich, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, took a far darker view, charging that “it’s quite simply stupid to open Europe’s doors wide and invite in everyone who wants to come to your coun-try”.

“European migration policy is a total fail-ure, all that is absolutely frightening,” he told the Handelsblatt daily.

A number of EU nations that were once in Russia’s Cold War orbit seem to agree.

Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia plan to meet Monday to discuss how to close down the main refugee route through the Balkans, reported Germany’s Spiegel news weekly.

“As long as there is no common Euro-pean strategy, it is legitimate that the na-tions along the Balkans route protect their borders,” Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak told the magazine.

He also opposed Merkel’s plan for an EU quota system, saying “quotas only increase the incentives for migration”.

At the other end of the route, Austria’s foreign minister warned Macedonia on Fri-day that it should be ready to close its border to migrants coming up from Greece.

Vienna also plans to impose a cap on refu-gees and may start turning them away in the coming months.

Merkel, long dubbed the “Queen of Eu-rope”, has seen poll numbers drop at home, coalition members rebel and EU allies duck away as the refugee crisis has sparked deep discord and threatened the bloc’s system of open borders.

She has pledged to reduce arrivals by more quickly turning away “economic refu-gees” and combating traffi ckers, including through a new Nato surveillance mission in the Aegean Sea.

Meanwhile, her government has urged fellow Europeans to remember their core humanitarian values.

“How can a continent of 500mn citizens see its foundations shaken... by 1.5mn or

2mn refugees?” said Defence Minister Ur-sula von der Leyen in Munich.

Merkel said Friday there was “a group of countries” that may voluntarily accept more refugees in exchange for redoubled eff orts from Turkey to tackle illegal immigration.

She did not name the members, but at a EU summit in December, Germany gathered offi cials from Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Merkel is planning to bring together what the media have dubbed a “coalition of the willing” on the margins of a two-day EU summit in Brussels starting Thursday.

She suggested its members could help Turkey’s refugee eff ort beyond the 3bn euros ($3.3bn) already committed by the EU.

Turkey, which is hosting over 2.7mn mostly Syrian refugees, has voiced deep frustration with the EU as a fresh wave of Syrian refugees mass on its border.

Angry over calls that Turkey should do more, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last week that his nation could throw out its existing refugees, threatening to fl y and bus them to Europe.

“We do not have the word ‘idiot’ written on our foreheads,” he said. “We will be pa-tient, but we will do what we have to. Don’t think that the planes and the buses are there for nothing.”

Austria to press ahead on border protection

Austria will start building new facilities to

better protect its borders, notably the one

with Italy, Chancellor Werner Faymann said

in an interview published yesterday, under-

lining eff orts to limit admissions of migrants.

Austria recently built a 3.7km fence at

its busiest border crossing with Slovenia,

Spielfeld, saying this would help manage the

flow of new arrivals onto its territory.

Asked whether Austria would take new

measures on the Italian border, including

the “Brenner” border crossing, he told the

daily Oesterreich: “It’s already February. I’m

not willing to let more time pass. It’s too late

for that.

“In March, one can expect a new wave of

migrants. So we have to build the technical

facilities now so they are ready for use when

we need them.”

Faymann said the defence and the interior

ministries would specify what the border

control system will look like.

The newspaper had reported earlier that a

fence was planned for the Brenner crossing,

but that the government first wanted to see

how eff icient the fence at the Spielfeld cross-

ing would turn out to be.

The new border management system at

Spielfeld aims to speed up applications while

making sure no asylum seekers can enter

the country without undergoing thorough

checks and registration.

Austria, which has a population of 8.4mn

and last year received 90,000 applications

for asylum, has said it will limit the number of

refugees it accepts this year to 37,500.

“We’ve set this threshhold and it remains

valid,” Faymann said, adding he had to take

responsibility for Austria even if Italy and

Germany were not pleased.

Austria told Macedonia on Friday to

be ready to “completely stop” the flow of

migrants across its southern border from

Greece, warning that Vienna would do the

same on its own frontiers within months.

Sarkozy urges party unity, lags behind JuppeReutersParis

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, struggling to put his re-election bid

back on track, yesterday urged his conservative party to rally behind a programme of curbing immigration, building more jails and cutting taxes.

Sarkozy wants his platform, which also includes overhauling labour rules and restoring checks at French borders, to set the par-ty line for the 2017 presidential elections.

But his main rivals for Novem-ber primaries that will choose

The Republicans’ (LR) candidate for the presidential elections have all said they would not be bound by it.

They snubbed his keynote speech at the end of a two-day policy meeting of top party of-fi cials, one of them saying he couldn’t be there “because it’s Valentine’s Day.”

Sarkozy said he would put the policy plan to a vote of all party members in April. “It would be unacceptable for us to be divided at a time when the (far-right) Na-tional Front is so strong,” he said. “There will be no going back.”.

While he received a standing ovation from hundreds of party offi cials, Sarkozy, who is also the

party leader, has fallen behind his main rival Alain Juppe in opinion polls.

Some 48% of right-wing vot-ers think Juppe would be LR’s best candidate in 2017, versus only 20% for Sarkozy, a BVA poll published on Saturday showed, confi rming a string of similar polls in the past weeks.

And while for long Sarkozy remained more popular with LR sympathisers, he has fallen behind there too, with 43% fa-vouring Juppe while 30% prefer Sarkozy, the poll showed.

Sarkozy, who had retired from politics after he lost in his fi rst re-election bid to the Social-ist party’s Francois Hollande in

2012, made a comeback in Sep-tember 2104 and was elected as head of the party.

While he still commands loy-alty amid party offi cials, he has in past months seen Juppe, a former prime minister in the mid-1990s, rise in opinion polls and overtake him, with the gap between them widening.

Their rivalry is set to dominate much of the party’s agenda until its members vote in the Novem-ber primaries. Both published books last month setting out their platforms - with Sarkozy yesterday reiterating that France must set tougher rules on grant-ing citizenship and reinstate bor-der checks as long as Europe’s

border-free Schengen area is not completely overhauled.

Criticism - sometimes veiled, sometimes open - among senior offi cials was rife at the two-day meeting and French media said another offi cial, Jean-Francois Cope, was set to announce he too will run in the party primaries in an evening news interview, at the same time as another channel in-terviews Sarkozy.

Asked why he would not be there to listen to Sarkozy’s policy speech, one Sarkozy challenger, Bruno Le Maire, told BFM TV on Saturday: “I want to spend Val-entine’s day with my wife and children.” Juppe also invoked “family reasons.”

French right-wing Les Republicains (LR) party president Nicolas Sarkozy (right) and delegate vice-president Laurent Wauquiez attend the LR National Council in Paris yesterday.

A man dressed as a knight presents flowers to a woman during an event marking Valentine’s Day in Moscow.

Flower power!

Most Spaniards see elections as only way to break the deadlockReutersMadrid

A majority of Spaniards believe that new national elections will have to be called given

that party leaders have been unable to agree on a viable coalition after an inconclusive poll in December, a survey showed yesterday.

The head of the Socialist party, Pedro Sanchez, is leading talks to form a government and end the almost two-month political stale-mate, but so far he has made little progress.

Sanchez said on Friday he hoped to reach an agreement over a coa-lition by the end of the month and would seek a confi dence vote in parliament in early March. Failure in the vote would give other party candidates two more months to form an alternative majority before a new election would be called.

According to the survey, by poll-ing fi rm GAD3 for the newspaper ABC, about 58% of the 800 people polled said parties would not be able to reach an agreement and new elections would be held, almost 5% more than a month ago.

Sanchez has ruled out back-ing acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s centre-right People’s Party (PP), and disagreements with anti-austerity party Podemos are mak-ing his preferred coalition of leftist parties diffi cult to attain.

Furthermore, the support of Po-demos alone for a coalition would not be enough. The Socialists would need the backing of at least three parties and the abstention of several others to achieve a majority.

Sanchez, who came second in the December election, is eager to avoid a return to the ballot box. Recent surveys show Podemos overtaking the Socialists if another election were held.

Top PP offi cial resigns aft er corruption investigation

The head of the Madrid branch of

Spain’s ruling People’s Party said yes-

terday she had resigned after police

investigated members of her off ice for

alleged illegal financing, the latest in a

string of graft scandals involving PP.

Esperanza Aguirre, a party

veteran of over thirty years, said she

was not linked personally to the brib-

ery and money laundering case, but

she assumed responsibility. She said

acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy

understood her decision.

Her resignation comes at a

delicate time for Rajoy, who has

spent almost two months in fruitless

negotiations with other parties to

form a coalition government. If no

government is formed, new elec-

tions may be called.

Rajoy lost his parliamentary

majority in an indecisive December

election, after newcomer parties

campaigned against perceived

deep-rooted corruption. Hundreds

of politicians across Spain are cur-

rently under investigation.

“Corruption is completely killing

the party,” Aguirre told a news

conference at the headquarters.

“The gravity of these reports, even

though they are not yet validated,

leads me to present my resignation.”

A Spanish judge had ordered

police searches on Thursday of the

off ices and homes of the former

head of the PP’s Madrid headquar-

ters and of a corporate executive of

Spanish builders OHL.

Last month in a separate anti-

corruption investigation, police

arrested 24 people, most linked

to the PP, in the region of Valencia

over the alleged payment of illegal

commissions in exchange for public

contracts.

Germany mulls random emissions tests on cars ReutersBerlin

Germany wants to carry out unannounced emis-sions tests on all carmak-

ers, Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said yesterday, aiming to reinstate confi dence in the industry that was shattered by the Volkswa-gen cheating scandal.

“There will be controls on vehicles in the style of doping tests (for ath-letes),” Dobrindt told the newspaper

Bild. “Unannounced and every year.” One way to carry out the random

tests would be to select models from car rental companies, the newspa-per said. Technicians who carry out the tests would be rotated to ensure transparency.

Bild said a draft proposal on the new measures would be presented to the Bundestag lower house of parliament on Thursday. It would also call on the government to present plans to encourage motor-ists to switch to electric cars.

Volkswagen, Europe’s largest

carmaker, admitted in September it had cheated US emissions tests by installing software capable of deceiving regulators in up to 11mn diesel vehicles worldwide. The ad-mission wiped billions of euros off VW’s market value.

The company has said only a small group of employees was re-sponsible for cheating on US diesel emissions tests and there was no indication board members were in-volved in what has become the big-gest business crisis in its history.

“I expect Volkswagen to fully dis-

close the procedures that led to the manipulation,” Dobrindt told Bild.

German media reported in De-cember that Germany planned to review emissions and fuel usage of Volkswagen diesel vehicles in a sec-ond testing round once the compa-ny has installed fi xes in cars caught up in a cheating scandal.

Volkswagen has set aside 6.7bn euros ($7.38bn) to help cover the costs of diesel recalls and another 2bn euros for compensation pay-ments related to its manipulations of carbon dioxide emission levels.

EUROPE19Gulf Times


Danes honour attack victims AFPCopenhagen

One year after a Danish-born gunman killed a fi lmmaker and a Jewish

security guard in twin attacks in Copenhagen, the country yester-day honoured the victims amid tight security.

On February 14, 2015, Omar El-Hussein, a 22-year-old Dane of Palestinian origin, opened fi re with an automatic weapon on a cultural centre where Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks was among those attending a conference on “art, blasphemy and freedom”.

Danish fi lmmaker Finn Nor-gaard, 55, was killed and three policemen were wounded. After managing to escape, the assailant shot a 37-year-old Jewish secu-rity guard, Dan Uzan, in front of a synagogue, also wounding two police offi cers.

El-Hussein, seemingly inspired by the attacks on French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, was killed a few hours later in a shootout

with police in the immigrant-heavy Norrebro district.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen left fl owers outside the cultural centre and the city’s main synagogue.

He then attended an event in-side parliament organised by the Finn Norgaard Association, a charity set up to support children and young people.

Uzan and Norgaard were com-memorated with a chain of 1,800 candles lit on a 3.6km route between the two locations of the attack.

Amid a massive police pres-ence, artist Vilks returned to Copenhagen on Saturday for another event on freedom of ex-pression, this time held inside parliament for security reasons.

“It’s a shame that you can’t be anywhere else. We have to be in a ‘fortress’,” he told AFP.

El-Hussein, who was released from prison weeks before the attacks after serving time for a stabbing, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group on his Facebook account on the day of the attack.

Danish intelligence agency PET has been criticised for failing to act on information from prison services that he was at risk of rad-icalisation, and former classmates have claimed they tried to warn the police as far back as 2012.

Four men held after the attacks have been charged with helping El-Hussein and will appear in court next month.

French ambassador Francois Zimeray, who had been a speaker at the free speech event that was attacked, said he had seen “a growing awareness” in Denmark “that we have entered a diff erent world where nobody, nowhere, is completely safe from terrorism.”

Danes “have become used to living with terror and don’t let it dominate” life, Magnus Ran-storp, an expert on radical Is-lamic movements at the Swedish National Defence College who helped Copenhagen city offi cials devise an anti-radicalisation plan, told AFP.

“Nearly every year” in the past decade, Danish authorities have thwarted attacks linked to the

country’s involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Ranstorp said.

Over the past year, Denmark’s already tough tone on Muslim immigration has become even tougher, partly as a result of the attacks but also due to Europe’s refugee crisis.

Denmark registered 21,000 asylum applications in 2015, making it one of the top Europe-an recipients of refugees in rela-tion to its size.

Once a champion of refugees’ rights, attitudes have gradually shifted in the country along with the rise of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party over the past 15 years.

And some observers say there had been an increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric since the at-tacks.

“Some people have used this shooting episode to bring for-ward their hate speech, it has become a little clearer than be-fore,” said Sami Kucukakin, the chairman of an umbrella group for Danish Muslim organisations. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen speaks to Bodil Uzan, mother of Dan Uzan, in Copenhagen.

Ukraine’s graft problem tests West’s patience, resolve By Dmitry Zaks, AFPKiev

Ukraine’s failure to fi ght state graft is testing the patience of its Western

allies and threatening renewed economic and political chaos in a country still healing the wounds of war.

The latest and perhaps ster-nest warning to the pro-EU team of President Petro Poroshenko came last Wednesday from IMF chief Christine Lagarde - the architect and one of the most ardent supporters of Ukraine’s huge fi nancial rescue plan.

“I am concerned about Ukraine’s slow progress in im-proving governance and fi ghting corruption,” the International Monetary Fund’s managing director said in an unusually

strongly-worded statement. “Ukraine risks a return to the

pattern of failed economic poli-cies that has plagued its recent history.”

Lagarde’s message struck at the heart of concerns of Ukrain-ians who joined three months of enthusiastic but ultimately bloody protests that brought down the ex-Soviet republic’s Russian-backed leadership in February 2014.

Polls show public frustration with Poroshenko and Prime Min-ister Arseniy Yatsenyuk mount-ing and hopes ebbing away that Ukraine was fi nally ridding itself of mind-numbing bureaucracy and bribe-taking.

That angst was encapsulated by this month’s resignation of reform-minded Aivaras Abro-mavicius as economy minister in protest at alleged infl uence-ped-

dling by one of the most senior members of the president’s inner circle.

Abromavicius said he could no longer withstand pressure from shadowy business interests that were trying to seize the cash fl ows of the vast but opaque de-fence and energy industries.

US State Department spokes-man John Kirby called Abromav-icius “one of those leaders who put Ukraine’s interests above any personal interests of his own.”

Kirby’s statement appeared to signal Washington’s worry that the new breed of Kiev leaders it had put its trust in were reverting to old habits of standing up for their respective business clans.

“The current crisis in Ukrain-ian politics is, fi rst of all, a crisis of no confi dence,” experts from the George Soros-founded Inter-national Renaissance Foundation

and 18 other Ukrainian research centres wrote in a letter to the president.

“For the consistent pursuit of reforms, there are only two ways out of this political crisis: a gov-ernment cleanup and creation of a technocratic and professional government, or early elections - probably not only parliamentary but also presidential ones.”

That prospect may have been one of the factors prompting Po-roshenko to vow in a subsequent phone conversation with Lagarde to draw up “a roadmap of top-priority reforms that will give a boost to Ukraine-IMF relations.”

The IMF chief had said bluntly that it was “hard to see how the ($40bn) IMF-supported pro-gramme can continue” with-out Ukraine making good on its promise to take radical stream-lining steps ignored in the past.

But both Yatsenyuk and Poro-shenko know they cannot survive without foreign assistance and that early legislative polls could return to power Russian-backed deputies who just might be en-ticed into warming Kiev’s frozen relations with Moscow.

Ukraine’s central bank chief further also warned that the mounting uncertainty was putting renewed pressure on the hryvnia just as it was starting to fi nd its footing from a 68% slide against the dollar since the start of 2014.

“Without IMF support, we should expect devaluation and social instability,” said Anatoliy Oktysyuk of Kiev’s International Centre for Policy Studies.

“The alternatives (to IMF sup-port) are not even currently being considered because they are all apocalyptic,” Oktysyuk said.

Yatsenyuk will have all these unsavoury prospects in mind when he accounts for his per-formance before Ukraine’s in-creasingly agitated parliament on Tuesday.

He foreshadowed his perform-ance on Thursday by promising foreign audits and new inde-pendent directors for Ukraine’s top 50 state-held fi rms.

But many lawmakers have been sharpening their knives in advance of Yatsenyuk’s appear-ance as they consider a possible vote of no confi dence in the gov-ernment.

They had already shown their resolve by blocking a consti-tutional change pushed by Po-roshenko that the West hoped would end Ukraine’s 21-month separatist confl ict by giving lim-ited special status to pro-Russian rebel-run parts of the east.

Analysts believe that deputies’ instinctive desire to keep their jobs and avoid snap elections will keep Yatsenyuk in place and lead only to a minor government shakeup aimed primarily at pre-serving the current coalition in-tact.

“If the government fails in Kiev, it will have a direct eff ect on political and economic sup-port from the West. Ukraine’s many sceptics will gain the upper hand, and its few friends will face a steep uphill struggle,” said Joerg Forbrig of the US-based German Marshall Fund policy research institute.

“Reduced assistance - wheth-er political, fi nancial, adminis-trative or military - will even-tually forfeit the modest gains Ukraine has made and expose the country’s many vulnerabilities,” Forbrig said.

Members of the Asian community take part in a parade to celebrate the Chinese New Year in Paris.

New Year parade

Greece nabs three Iraqi Kurds with guns and ammunition ReutersAthens

Greek authorities arrested three Iraqi Kurds in two separate operations, on suspicion they

were trying to move a large number of guns and ammunition into Turkey, police and coast guard offi cials said yesterday.

The three men, all British passport holders aged between 30 and 40, were found to have tens of thousands of small-calibre cartridges and more than 20 pistols and rifl es in trailers close to the border with Turkey on Saturday evening.

Two of them were arrested af-ter a tip-off by the country’s secret services. They were found at a park-ing at the northern Greek port of

Alexandroupolis, in a vehicle with a trailer that contained boxes with 18 rifl es and 27,000 cartridges, the coast guard said in a statement.

Following their arrest, a third sus-pect was apprehended close to the Turkish border crossing, police and coast guard offi cials said. He was found to have 200,000 cartridges and four pistols in a trailer.

“We don’t have any evidence to

connect them with ISIS ... we have informed Europol and Interpol”, a po-lice offi cial told Reuters. The weapons were not combat rifl es but could have been used for training, the offi cial said.

Police offi cials earlier said the men were aged 22, 28 and 39 but the coast guard said that according to their passports they were 35, 36 and 40 years old.

One century after Dada, museum recreates lost work By Nathalie Olof-Ors, AFPZurich, Switzerland

A century after Dadaism was founded in Zurich, a prestigious museum in the city is hosting an

exhibit that aims to recreate one of the rebellious artistic movement’s great but unfi nished projects.

Dadaism was born in 1916 at the fa-mous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich’s old town, where artists produced work part-ly inspired by the devastation of World War I that sought to challenge pre-ex-isting notions of what constituted art.

One of its founders, Romanian-born Tristan Tzara, tried in 1921 to release a col-lection with some 200 contributions from some of Dadaism’s main contributors - a project named “Dadaglobe”, which ulti-mately faltered due to fi nancing problems.

Thanks to artistic sleuthing, much of the collection has been reassembled and put on display Zurich’s Kunsthaus museum.

Entitled “Dadaglobe Reconstructed”, it includes some 160 works by 40 artists from across the world, including noted fi gures like Max Ernst, Hans Arp and Sophie Taeubeur. All had sent contribu-tions to Tzara for the project.

The exhibit opened this month and will be on display in Zurich until May 1, before it shifts to the Museum of Mod-ern Art (MOMA) in New York.

Tzara’s Dadaglobe project was con-ceived as an anthology of the movement, which ran through the mid-1920s and used humour, wit and irony to highlight what some artists described as the social and cultural decay in Europe.

Dadaglobe gradually fell into obliv-ion, aside from passing interest from a few scholars. In 2005, however, Adrian Sudhalter, an art historian and curator

at MOMA, noticed a series of numerical markings on various pieces while par-ticipating in a Dada retrospective at the Beaubourg Museum in Paris.

“When we inspected the art work I started to see these numbers at the back of the works and asked myself, ‘what are these numbers’,” she told AFP.

Her curiosity piqued, Sudhalter headed to the archives of the Jacques Doucet li-brary in Paris, which has a signifi cant col-lection of Dada and surrealist material.

There she discovered a list which corresponded to the numbers and se-quences she found on the pieces at the retrospective.

Baffl ed at fi rst, she little by little real-ised the list was a complete inventory of Tzara’s intended Dadaglobe. She would be able to assemble “the pieces of the puzzle”.

“It was really artistic detective work,” Sudhalter told AFP. “Because of this list and because of these numbers I realised it would be possible to put (Dadaglobe) back together again.”

Tzara, who died in 1963, commis-sioned pieces from the leading lights of Dadaism, many of whom sought to poke fun or mock outright a world thrust into upheaval by World War I.

The “Reconstructed” exhibit features work by German painter and sculp-tor Max Ernst, who fought in WWI and was reportedly traumatised by the ex-perience, producing art that was partly concerned with the subject of mental illness.

Also featured are Hans Arp and So-phie Taeubeur, who were married and worked together in Zurich, turning out what were then ground-breaking multi-media projects.

Taeubeur, born in Davos, is pictured on Switzerland’s 50-franc note.

Sudhalter told AFP that in her research for the project she consulted with Michel Sanouillet, one of France’s most re-nowned experts of Dadaism, who spoke with Tzara a few years before his death.

“Tzara told (Sanouillet) that Dada-globe was one of his biggest regrets,” Sudhalter said.

“It was really artistic detective work. Because of this list and because of these numbers I realised it would be possible to put (Dadaglobe) back together again”


INDIA20

Tamil NaduRoundupBy Umaima Shafiq

Pakistani nationalrecovering after surgery atTiruchi hospital

A private hospital in Tiruchi has successfully removed a pituitary tumour from a Pakistani national using a minimum invasive technique. Dr T N Janakiraman, a skull base surgeon trained in the US, explained that Bakhtiyar Khan,30, had a tumour in the cavernous sinus, a large collection of thin-walled veins. These veins create a cavity bordered by the temporal bone of the skull and the sphenoid bone in the head. Instead of going through the standard technique of opening up the skull, Dr Janakiraman used Bakhtiyar’s nose as the entry point and completely excised the tumour through this aperture. He claimed it was a scarless and quick recovery procedure. Khan, was recommended the Tiruchi doctor by his neurosurgeon in Balochistan. He arrived in India by train with his brother through the Wagah border and reached Tiruchi on January 31. The hospital has waived his fees except the cost of medicines. Khan is recovering well and the brothers will soon return to Pakistan.

Four killed as car hitscontainer

Four people died when their car hit a container truck at Kundadam in Tirupur about 45km from the textile city of Coimbatore last week. The victims, all relatives, were returning from Coimbatore. Police suspect that the driver slept off at the wheel. In another freak accident, N Venkatesh, a bank manager aged 35, stepped on the accelerator of his car instead of the brake, and fatally hit two security guards and injured three others inside an apartment complex at Tiruvanmiyur in Chennai. The guards died on the way to hospital, while others were hospitalised. Venkatesh admitted he had lost control and was arrested. In yet another incident, Selvamani a 32-year-old businessman, who left his house in alcoholic stupor, was found dead two days later inside his car parked across the street. Police suspect that he died of carbon monoxide inhalation from the air-conditioner of the vehicle. Ironically his family remained unsuspicious as Selvamani was an alcoholic.

9 Ukrainiansheld for usingdrone camera

Nine Ukranian nationals including three women were arrested for using a drone camera to photograph the Arunachaleshwar temple in Tiruvannamalai district about 195km from Chennai last week. Acting on a tipoff from the public, police confiscated the Ukranians’ imported drone camera. The group claimed to be taking photos for their albums. However police warned them that flying unmanned objects without government permission amounted to espionage. In January this year, six engineers from Chennai were detained for similar reasons at the same temple. Last year, a French and Chinese national were booked for using drones over the Auroville religious commune in Pondicherry and at Chennai’s Marina beach respectively.

Compensationfor families ofSiachen victims

Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa announced Rs1mn each for the families of four soldiers from Tamil Nadu who lost their lives in the February 3 avalanche that hit their post at the Siachen glacier. “I was shocked to know that Havildar M Elumalai of Vellore, Havildar S Kumar and Sepoy G Ganesan of Madurai and Sepoy N Ramamurthy of Krishnagiri were buried alive. They lost their lives guarding our nation,” the chief minister said in a statement.Meanwhile the soldiers’ families are still waiting for the bodies.

Expats needn’t panic over oil crisis, says expert IANSThiruvananthapuram

The downturn in global oil industry, its deepest since the 1990s, is no cause for

panic among people from India working in the Gulf, an interna-tional migration expert said.

The crisis might, however, have some impact on those who are employed in the higher ech-

elons of the job market, S Iruda-yarajan, who heads the migration department at the Centre for De-velopment Studies here, said.

“I was in Qatar in December and I found that things are the same. There was nothing that I could attribute to oil prices dropping to rock bottom levels. I was told that the construc-tion sector also did not feel the pinch,” he said.

The price of a barrel of oil has

fallen more than 70% since June 2014, hitting the earnings of oil companies and forcing them to decommission their rigs, cut investments in exploration and production, and lay off workers.

“Kerala’s remittances mostly come from the millions of un-skilled and semi-skilled expatri-ate workers who religiously send their hard earned money back to the state,” said Irudayarajan who has been studying migration for

the past quarter of a century.His latest study shows that

90% of Kerala’s 2.3mn expatri-ate workers are in the Gulf, with the United Arab Emirates ac-counting for 38.7% of them and Saudi Arabia 25.2%.

Data bear out Irudayarajan’s stand that there is no reason to expect the downturn will have a big impact on Kerala’s expatri-ate workers and the remittances economy.

Non-resident Indian (NRI) deposits in Kerala’s banks surged to Rs1,21,619 crore in September 2015 from Rs80,809 crore in September 2013, according to the latest banking statistics.

Moreover, not all money earned overseas is being sent back home, he points out.

A large number of Kerala’s ex-patriates also park their excess funds elsewhere and they are al-ways looking to move to the US,

Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Irudayarajan said.

There is still a need, however, for the central or state govern-ments to do a study on whether there would be a direct impact on the overall migration trends, he said.

“A study would be the best thing to be done because then one knows where one stands and can work out medium- and long-term plans,” added Irudayarajan.

Delhi govtto waive off water billstill Nov 2015

Thousands pay homage to ONV By Ashraf PadannaGulf Times CorrespondentThiruvananthapuram

Thousands of people yes-terday paid their last re-spects to O N V Kurup,

one of Kerala’s most celebrated poets.

Writers, fi lmmakers and pol-iticians across party lines joined the mourners, who started ar-riving early morning at the Vic-toria Jubilee Town Hall where his body was kept.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress Party vice-president Rahul Gandhi and many others took to Twitter to condole with his family.

“ONV Kurup’s demise is a major loss to Malayalam litera-ture. His works were admired widely. May his soul rest in peace,” Modi said.

“With his demise, Malay-alam literature has lost a much loved and admired voice,” Gan-dhi tweeted.

Winner of the Jnanpith award, ONV, as he is popu-larly known, died on Saturday evening. He was 84.

“Saddened to hear of the de-mise of the great poet and man of letters ONV Kurup, who lived in Thiruvananthapuram. A great and gracious man, he will be much missed,” said Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.

The VJT Hall witnessed emotional scenes when many, including poet Vishnu Naray-anan Namboodiri, broke into tears. Many paid homage at his city residence, Indeevaram, where the body was brought at 7.15pm.

The mourners included minister V S Sivakumar, oppo-sition leader V S Achuthanan-dan, police chief T P Sen-kumar, fi lmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan and actress Manju Warrier.

“He was not just a poet. He was active in many other spheres leaving an indelible mark,” Achuthanandan said.

Kejriwal announces first anniversary ‘gift’

IANSNew Delhi

Announcing a “gift” on completing a year in of-fi ce, the Aam Aadmi Party

government in Delhi yesterday said water bills of households pending till November 2015 will be waived off partly or fully.

Addressing a gathering to mark the fi rst anniversary of the AAP government, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said numerous families that received infl ated water bills at some point had stopped paying the bills.

The scheme is a slab-wise waiver on accumulated arrears and 100% write-off of late pay-ment surcharge till November 30, 2015. The waiver will depend on the category of the housing colo-ny, based on property tax.

While the economically weak-er sections will get full waiver up to November 30, others will enjoy concessions of 25-75% de-pending on their economic cat-egory, the chief minister said.

Kejriwal said people resid-ing in A and B category colonies will enjoy concession of 25% on their pending water bills, while residents of C and D category colonies will get rebates of 50 and 75%, respectively.

Pending water bills of people living in E, F, G and H category colonies - which also include unauthorised colonies and slum clusters - will be fully waived off , he said.

Water Minister Kapil Mishra said the concession was condi-tional on the aff ected households installing functional water me-ters.

“There have been cases where people got infl ated bills. To avoid paying such bills, they stopped paying every bill, posing a huge problem for our accounts de-partment,” he said.

“It was posing an unnecessary burden on us, and we knew this amount wasn’t recoverable.”

“This waiver will help all of us start anew. And households will resume paying bills and will also go for functional metres,” Mishra said.

The Delhi Jal Board supplies potable water to over 1.9mn households in the capital.

Kejriwal also presented the ‘report card’ of the AAP govern-ment on completion of its one year in offi ce by holding a public interaction session along with his ministers where he and his cabi-net answered phone calls from people.

On one year of his government, Kejriwal said: “Today, I am here to give an account of our work in one year. As promised, we made electricity cheaper and provided 20,000 litres of water free of cost to the Delhi people.”

Kejriwal said his government was working towards making piped water available to almost all the households in the city.

“By March-end, piped wa-ter will reach 268 colonies. And by December 2017, almost every household in Delhi will get drink-ing water through pipelines.”

The chief minister said every department in the government performed with full dedication towards completing the promises.

Giving details of projects com-pleted, the chief minister said his government saved Rs3bn of pub-lic money with the timely com-pletion of three fl yovers.

In its maiden budget in 2015, the AAP government doubled

the allocation for education and raised the health budget by 45%. He said government schools will soon be at par with private in-stitutions. “We have done away with the management quota. The business should be taken out of education sector.”

“We allocated 25% of the to-tal budget to the education sec-tor. We will construct 8,000 new classrooms till July this year. We are committed towards providing quality education at our govern-ment schools,” he said.

“We will open 1,000 mohalla clinics in the city by December and by next year, we will be able to start 150 polyclinics. Today we will inaugurate 20 mohalla clin-ics at various locations in the city,” he said.

Kejriwal said the implemen-tation of the odd-even traffi c scheme was one of the bold deci-sions his government took.

The odd-even scheme was a unique experiment that allowed petrol and diesel cars with odd and even registration numbers on roads on alternate dates in a bid to reduce pollution.

“For the successful implemen-tation of the odd-even scheme, we took people together. This was our biggest achievement,” Kejriwal added.

Earlier, expressing his delight on completing one year in of-fi ce, Kejriwal said the bonding between the AAP and Delhi was “deep and everlasting”.

“Last year, on this day, Delhi fell in love with AAP. This bond-ing is deep n everlasting,” he tweeted.

On February 14, 2015, Kejriwal took oath as Delhi chief minister and exactly a year before that on February 14, 2014 he resigned as chief minister after 49 days in of-fi ce.

Bharatiya Janata Party leaders stage a protest against the Aam Aadmi Party government which completed one year in off ice yesterday, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.

Malayalam actress Manju Warrier pays tribute to ONV at the VJT Hall yesterday.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who was away in Ko-ttayam, joined the mourners later.

The funeral will be held at the Shanthi Kavadam, the electric crematorium in the city that he named, at 10am today with full state honours.

The government has de-clared a holiday for colleges in the district as a mark of respect for ONV, who retired as head of

the department of Malayalam at the University of Kerala here.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) postponed the culmination rally of Nava Kerala Yatra (journey for new Kerala) led by party strongman Pinarayi Vijayan for a day.

Vijayan also visited ONV’s residence on Saturday night and paid homage to the poet, who was a fellow traveller of the Left throughout his life.

Shah Rukh Khan’s car stoned in Ahmedabed IANSAhmedabad

Protesters yesterday stoned the car of Bollywood su-perstar Shah Rukh Khan

while he was shooting for his forthcoming fi lm Raees here. He was not in the car and was not hurt.

According to police, a small crowd shouting slogans against the actor stoned the car parked some distance from the location where the fi lm was being shot.

Raees is based on the life of an Ahmedabad-based un-derworld don of the 1980s, Abdul Lateef Shaikh, who was killed in a shootout with police.

The fi lm is being directed by Rahul Dholakia, who had earlier made the controver-

sial movie Parzania based on the 2002 Gujarat riots. Raees has Pakistani heroine Mahira Khan along with Khan.

The actor shot some scenes at the historic Sarkhej Roza mosque and dargah campus during the day. Over 200 policemen guard-ed the Roza campus.

Meanwhile, over a dozen ac-tivists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) were detained by police as they burnt an effi gy of the actor on Ashram Road.

Last week, a group of demon-strators staged a protest near

the Kutch district collec-tor’s offi ce in Bhuj de-manding a ban on Khan’s

entry into the Rann of Kutch.

The VHP has called for a boycott of the actor

to protest against his reported statement that India was intol-erant.

21Gulf TimesMonday, February 15, 2016

INDIA

India is the fastest developingamong larger economies: PM IANSNew Delhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday said India was the fastest develop-

ing country among the “larger economies of the world.”

“When most of the world powers are in doldrums, every-one is looking up to us who are developing at the fastest pace. India is the fastest growing among the larger economies,” Modi said.

He said India was the only economy which has not been aff ected by the global economic crisis.

The prime minister was ad-dressing the Swami Dayanand Saraswati Janmotsav, an event to mark the 192nd birth anniver-sary of Hindu reformer and Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayanand Saraswati in the capital.

The ‘Naya Sankalp’ event,

organised by the DAV group of educational institutions, also marked the 130th foundation ceremony of the Arya Samaj Hindu reform movement.

“Everyone is saying this... the World Bank, the IMF... The world is going through an economic crisis, but it is India alone that is progressing at a rapid pace. This is a unique sit-uation when the whole world is slipping and India is growing,” Modi said.

Calling India the “youngest nation in the world”, Modi said the power of youth will be used for the nation’s development.

“The government’s focus is on how to convert the power of the youth which can used for development of the na-tion. Therefore, we not only launched a skills development programme for the youth but also created a new ministry, with its own budget and a set of offi cers to take the programme

forward,” the prime minister said.

By 2030, when the popula-tion of many countries will grow old and when they require a workforce, India can power these nations with skilled and technically qualifi ed manpow-er, Modi said.

The prime minister also said that the central government’s policies and programmes, such as Skill India, Start up India, Stand up India, Digital India and Mudra scheme of loans, have contributed immensely to the development of the country.

“For the youngsters, we initi-ated the Start up India, Stand up India campaign. So that if some-one has an innovative idea, he can take a loan under Mudra scheme and set up his own business. Our people from backward classes, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe are among those who ben-efi ted the most from these gov-ernment schemes,” Modi said.

‘Make in India’initiative putsworkers at risk, claim activists Reuters Mumbai

Eff orts by the government to boost manufacturing and encourage startups may

put vulnerable workers at greater risk, activists say, amid pressure from investors to smooth the path of doing business.

The “Make in India” week kicked off on Saturday, aimed at luring greater investment to increase output and create more jobs in industries including elec-tronics manufacture and textiles and apparel.

A separate eff ort to boost star-tups exempts them from some inspections and taxes for at least three years.

“There’s already a lot of pres-sure to amend existing laws to make it easier to fi re workers or prevent them from unionising,” said Gayatri Singh, a co-founder of the Human Rights Law Net-work in Mumbai. “It’s dangerous to exempt businesses even more. There are large numbers of child workers and bonded labourers; without checks and balances, we won’t know what’s going on.”

India is regarded a low-cost manufacturing hub for indus-tries ranging from autos to tex-tiles. Protection for workers is lax and legislation poorly imple-mented.

Millions of workers contend with archaic labour laws and are confi ned to the so-called infor-mal sector, with poor training and few benefi ts in businesses that often fl out laws concerning safety or the employment of un-derage workers.

There are 5.7mn child workers

in the country between the ages of fi ve and 17, out of 168mn glo-bally, according to the Interna-tional Labour Organisation.

More than a quarter of them work in manufacturing, confi ned to poorly lit, barely ventilated rooms embroidering clothes, weaving carpets or making matchsticks.

Even adult workers are not protected. Almost half the world’s enslaved workers, or about 16mn, are in India, many working in poorly regulated in-dustries such as brick kilns or small textile units.

In the automotive industry, which has drawn large global brands including Honda Mo-tor and Suzuki Motor, more than 1,000 workers, most below 23 years of age, are injured seriously in the automotive hub of Gurgaon and Manesar in northern India alone every year, according to a report by non-profi t organisa-tions Agrasar and Safe in India.

“Most enterprises remain in the informal sector for fear of compliance with the laws and this is bad for labour be-cause they get no benefi ts,” said Prashant Narang, an advocate at the Centre for Civil Society in New Delhi.

“The policy should be to sim-plify labour laws and promote formalisation of the economy.”

Prime Minister Narendra Mo-di’s government has focused on eff orts to draw more foreign in-vestment and make it easier for businesses to set up shop. India ranked 130 of 189 countries on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index from last year, well behind its peers including Brazil, China and Russia.

Activists of the All India Students’ Association stage a demonstration demanding that sedition charges against JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar be dropped, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi yesterday.

Protests snowball over JNU sedition row Oppose anti-national slogans, says Rajnath Singh

AgenciesNew Delhi

Protests snowballed yes-terday at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)

in the Indian capital, days after its student union president was arrested on charges of sedition and at least seven others de-tained.

Students and teachers of the university came out in large numbers to march across the campus criticising the federal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government for what they termed infringing on the au-tonomy of the university.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the controversial protest on February 9 during which slo-gans against the government and the country were allegedly

raised may have terrorist links. “What happened at JNU was

fully supported by Lashkar chief Hafi z Saeed. I appeal to all po-litical parties that whenever such situations arise where an-ti-India slogans are raised, the entire nation must speak in one voice,” Singh said.

India holds the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba responsible for several terrorist attacks on India in-cluding the one on its fi nancial hub Mumbai in 2008 that left 166 people dead.

JNU students’ union presi-dent Kanhaiya Kumar was ar-rested on Friday after a lawmak-er of the ruling BJP complained to the police that students at a function to mark the hanging of Afzal Guru had allegedly shout-ed anti-national slogans.

Guru was hanged on Febru-ary 9, 2012, for an attack on the Indian parliament in which 14 people were killed. Civil rights

activists say Guru was not given a fair trial.

Harshit Agrawal, a student who was present on the occa-sion, said there were also some young Kashmiri men present who were not students of JNU and they were the ones who shouted the slogans.

Police are probing the case, but has sought a transfer to the Special Branch, saying that as there were charges of sedition, a terror link could emerge.

“The university had already instituted an inquiry into the incident to ascertain the facts and take necessary action and the police action was totally uncalled for,” Ajay Patnaik, a member of the JNU teachers’ association said.

“It has only aggravated the situation and it goes against the autonomy of the university,” Patnaik added.

The controversial function was held despite university au-

thorities refusing permission. Members of the Akhil

Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a students’ union af-fi liated to the BJP, have been demanding that the students indulging in anti-national ac-tivities should be punished.

Meanwhile, legal experts said the sedition charge against Ku-mar cannot stand test of the law, and expressed surprise that the government was routinely slapping the measure against whosoever raises voice against it.

The sedition charge pre-scribes a jail sentence from three years to life imprisonment for “whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaff ection towards the gov-ernment established by law in India”.

Activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan said the off ence of se-dition could be established only if there is an incitement of vio-lence or public disorder.

“Mere raising of the slogans, even against the country or against the state cannot amount to sedition, though it is objec-tionable,” he said.

Another senior advocate Ka-mini Jaiswal regretted that the government was taking a very easy way out by levelling sedi-tion charges against anybody who raises voice against it.

Describing the arrest of Ku-mar as shameful, Jaiswal said it only goes to show “how inse-cure” the present government is. “It is an outdated law and all those believing in fundamental rights should press for dropping section 124-A from the Indian Penal Code (IPC) introduced by the British to haul up those engaged in the Independence movement.”

Leading jeweller Joyalukkas has opened their showroom in New Delhi at Pusa Road. Vijender Garg, parliamentary secretary to minister for Public Works Department, government of Delhi, inaugurated the outlet in the presence of Joyalukkas executive director P D Jose and deputy general manager (retail) P D Francis.

Jeweller opens outlet in New Delhi

India’s fi rst all-woman ocean crew set for global adventure IANSVisakhapatnam

A boat or the sea doesn’t diff erentiate between a man and a woman and

there are no shortcuts to the physical and mental fi tness re-quired to sail the open seas, says Lt Commander Vartika Joshi, who is set to lead India’s fi rst all-

women crew to sail the oceans.Joshi, along with a crew of fi ve

women, will soon go globe-trot-ting. Their adventure is likely to start in 2017. The team stood out at the just-concluded Interna-tional Fleet Review (IFR) where the crew was on INSV Mhadei, a sail training boat of the Indian Navy on which they are current-ly training.

“We are training every day for

the sailing and it requires a hard level of physical activity. You have to be physically and men-tally very strong and there is no short cut to it,” Joshi said.

“It does not matter whether you are a man or a woman, you have to do what you are required to do,” said the sailor, who is a naval architect by training.

The crew is being trained by Commander Dilip Donde, the

fi rst Indian sailor to circum-navigate solo across the globe on INSV Mhadei.

Donde, in the same tone, said a sailor is a sailor, irrespective of gender. “The sea does not dif-ferentiate between a man and a woman. A sailor is a sailor.”

Asked about his advice to the team, the commander said: “Nev-er let your guard down... You have to be on your toes all the time.”

Riding the open seas in a sail-ing boat is not an easy feat to pull off .

The crew needs to be aware of every inch of the boat, which they may need to repair them-selves in case of damage. Weath-er in the open sea also remains unpredictable, and smaller boats face more challenges.

Lt Commander Joshi was con-fi dent.

“This is certainly Mission Possible. We have been taking special training on circumnavi-gation since (last) April. The course included navigation, equipment, managing a crisis or distress situation and commu-nication courses,” she explained.

The team sailed to Visakhap-atnam for the IFR from Goa, and is now on its way back to con-tinue the training.

The boat on which the jour-ney will fi nally be undertaken is at present under construction in Goa, and the crew has to famil-iarise itself with every inch of the vessel.

Apart from Joshi, the team in-cludes Lt Pratibha Jamwal and Lt P Swathi in the core group, Lt Vijaya Devi and Sub Lt Payal Gupta. A sixth member is yet to be named.

Fire engulfs event venue

A huge fire yesterday engulfed the venue of a cultural event in Mumbai that was being held at the opening of a ‘Make in India’ week launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to drum up foreign investment. Television pictures showed fire breaking out at the front of the outdoor stage during a performance

by dancers. It quickly spread, fanned by high winds, licking the sides of a scaffolding rig and lighting up the night sky. Thousands of spectators, among them dignitaries including Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, were evacuated safely, eyewitnesses told Times Now television.

22 Gulf TimesMonday, February 15, 2016

LATIN AMERICA

Argentine debt talksto continue: mediator ReutersNew York

Argentina’s ongoing sov-ereign debt settlement talks will continue de-

spite no resolution between the government and four remaining major holdout creditors, court-appointed mediator Daniel Pol-lack said in a statement.

“Claims by four other large ‘holdouts’ were not resolved last eek, but intensive dis-cussions between and among high-ranking Argentine gov-ernment offi cials, principals of those four fi rms and me have continued,” Pollack said.

“These discussions will continue,” he said, noting that two large creditors have settled their claims in principle for an aggregated amount, between them, of “well over $1bn.”

Pollack said that other inves-tors with “substantial holdings of defaulted Argentine bonds” have also come forward ex-pressing interest in settling and are working to reach an agree-ment with the government.

Two out of six leading bond-

holders, Dart Management and Montreux Partners, accepted the off er put forth by Argenti-na, court-appointed mediator Daniel Pollack said.

Argentina off ered a pot of money, $6.5bn, to settle the claims fi led against it in the US courts. The off er repre-sents a 27.5% to 30% discount for creditors who fi led claims of about $9bn. Holdouts led by Elliott Management and Aurelius Capital Management have led a more than decade-long legal fi ght in the US courts against Argentina to collect on investments in sovereign debt defaulted upon in early 2002.

On Thursday, US district judge Thomas Griesa ordered the remaining holdouts to show cause as to why he should not vacate orders restricting Argentina from servicing its restructured debts in light of the settlement off er.

Mark Brodsky, Aurelius’ chairman, said given “the choice between accepting the substantial haircut we have off ered, continuing negotia-tions, and litigating, Argentina chose to litigate.”

US recovers Hellfi remissile from Cuba Cuba said the missile arrived by mistake or mishandling on a commercial flight from Paris and was not listed on the cargo manifest

ReutersWashington/Havana

The US has recovered an inert Hellfi re air-to-ground missile that had

mistakenly ended up in Cuba, US and Cuban offi cials said.

The laser-guided AGM 114 Hellfi re mistakenly arrived in Cuba in June 2014 and was re-trieved on Saturday by US of-fi cials and representatives of Lockheed Martin Corporation, the missile’s owner, the Cuban foreign ministry said in a state-ment.

“We can say, without speak-ing to specifi cs, that the inert training missile has been re-turned with the co-operation of the Cuban government,” state department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement.

Lockheed Martin spokes-man Bill Phelps declined com-ment.

The missile had been sent to Europe for a training exercise in 2014 but somehow ended up in Cuba in an embarrassing loss of military technology, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.

“The department is restrict-ed under federal law and regu-lations from commenting on specifi c defence trade licensing cases and compliance matters, so we cannot provide further details,” Toner said.

But he said reestablished diplomatic relations between the two countries have helped the US “engage with the Cuban government on issues of mu-tual interest.”

Cuba said the missile arrived by mistake or mishandling on a commercial fl ight from Paris and was not listed on the cargo manifest, and that it was dis-covered by customs inspec-tors.

“Once the US government offi cially informed the Cu-ban government that a train-ing missile belonging to the company Lockheed Martin was mistakenly sent to our country and expressed its in-terest in recovering it, Cuba communicated the decision to hand it over and started ar-rangements for its return,” the Cuban statement said, without revealing when the US made the request.

A team of US government and Lockheed Martin experts took the missile back to the US on Saturday, Cuba said.

The laser-guided AGM 114 Hellfi re mistakenly arrived in Cuba in June 2014

Pope calls onMexico leaders,bishops to tamedrug mayhem AFPMexico City

Pope Francis admonished Mexico’s political and re-ligious leaders to take on

drug violence, calling for “true justice” and “courage” against the scourge affl icting the coun-try.

The Argentine-born pontiff used his visit to the National Palace and the capital’s cathe-dral to send tough messages to the country’s elite.

At the palace, with President Enrique Pena Nieto by his side in a patio packed with lawmakers and government offi cials, Fran-cis told them political leaders have a duty to give “true justice” and “eff ective security” to Mexi-cans.

“Experience teaches us that each time we seek the path of privileges or benefi ts for a few to the detriment of the good of all ... society becomes a fertile soil for corruption, drug trade, exclusion of diff erent cultures, violence and also human traf-fi cking, kidnapping and death,” he said.

It was the kind of message that many ordinary Mexicans, fed up with a decade of drug violence that has left more than 100,000 dead or missing, were hoping for.

Mexico was reminded of its troubles on the eve of the Pope’s arrival, when 49 inmates were killed in a prison brawl between rival groups in the north of the country.

Thousands of Catholic faith-ful who stood outside the Na-tional Palace in the historic Zo-calo square broke into cheers at the Argentine pontiff ’s words.

“Bravo! How great that he tells the government the truth,” one woman shouted.

“The Pope put the govern-ment to shame with everything that he said. Let’s see if Pena Nieto does the right thing,” said Ramiro Sosa, a 56-year-old

shopkeeper from the crime-rid-den eastern state of Veracruz.

Pena Nieto gave Francis a red-carpet welcome at the or-nate palace, making him the fi rst Pope to visit the seat of governments that were mili-tantly secular throughout the 20th century.

While Mexico is the world’s second most populous Catholic country after Brazil, diplomatic relations with the Vatican were only restored in 1992.

“It’s the fi rst time that a pon-tiff is greeted at this historic place. This refl ects the good re-lationship between the Pope and Mexico,” Pena Nieto said.

“Your presence contributes to the reaffi rmation of our col-lective vocation for peace and brotherhood, for justice and hu-man rights. The Pope’s causes are also Mexico’s causes.”

Francis then visited the capi-tal’s cathedral next door, where he called on Mexican bishops to combat drug traffi cking with “courage.”

“I urge you not to underesti-mate the moral and antisocial challenge which the drug trade represents for Mexican soci-ety as a whole, as well as for the Church,” the Pope said.

He warned that the “immen-sity and its scope which devours like a metastasis, and the grav-ity of the violence which divides with its distorted expressions, do not allow us as pastors of the Church to hide behind anodyne denunciations.”

Francis, who has been dubbed the “Pope of the poor” for his appeals for a more humble Church, told the bishop to resist acting like “princes.”

The following days will take the Pope to some of Mexico’s notoriously poor and violent re-gions.

The Pope’s trip ends on Wednesday with a major serv-ice in Ciudad Juarez, the former murder capital of the world, across the border from the US state of Texas.

People gather in support for former Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner during an anti-government festival organised by a group of artists in a public park in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The banner behind reads, “Cristina, the loyalty is forever, the posts are short-lived”.

Argentina anti-government protest

Aristide ally chosen asHaiti interim president ReutersPort-au-Prince

Haiti’s lawmakers yester-day selected an opposi-tion senator who served

as interior minister under former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide as interim president, in a move aimed at fi lling a power vacuum threatening stability in the Caribbean nation.

Senate chief Jocelerme Priv-ert, 63, was sworn in later yes-terday as the provisional presi-

dent. His main task will be to quickly organise fresh elections.

Haiti cancelled a runoff presidential election in January amid often violent protests over alleged fraud in the fi rst round and after the opposition candi-date boycotted the vote.

Privert vowed to complete the elections and hand over to an elected president by May 14. “I will engage in dialogue with all sectors to get the country out of crisis,” he said.

Former president Michel Martelly fi nished his term a

week ago with no elected suc-cessor.

Under an agreement struck before Martelly left offi ce, the interim government will have a 120 day term but should or-ganise elections by April 24, and hand power over to the winner in May.

Privert’s selection could help calm the protests led by factions of Aristide’s Lavalas movement, which believed elections organ-ised under Martelly were not free and fair.

After Aristide was forced

from power in 2004 by armed groups, Privert was jailed for two years on charges that he or-chestrated a massacre of Aris-tide’s opponents. The charges were later dropped.

Lavalas spokesman Gerald Gilles welcomed the develop-ment. “The election of Privert is a great satisfaction for us and for the democratic sector,” he said.

Another opposition party, a breakaway faction of Aristide’s movement called Platform Pitit Dessalines, was more cautious

and called for Privert to create a balanced electoral council ac-ceptable to all sides.

A major challenge for Privert will be to reach an agreement about who can participate in the election, with many opposition parties rejecting the October results that led to a two-man race between opposition can-didate Jude Celestin and ruling party favourite Jovenel Moise.

The last time there was an in-terim government in Haiti was after Aristide’s ouster and it took two years to hold elections.

Chilean “huasos” or cowboys mount wild horses during the XIV International Rodeo Festival in Aguas Frescas, some 30km south of Punta Arenas, in Patagonia in southern Chile.

Rodeo festival

The director of a prison in northeast Mexico where 49 people died in a riot this week was accused of murder and detained, along with two others, a state prosecutor said. The riot, likely the deadliest in Mexico’s history, happened in the old and crowded Topo Chico prison in Monterrey. The prison warden, Gregoria Salazar, and the deputy superintendent, Jesus Fernando Dominguez, were accused of homicide and abuse of authority and placed in preventive custody, said Roberto Flores, Nuevo Leon’s prosecutor. A prison guard, Jose Reyes Hernandez, was also detained but accused of homicide, Flores told a news conference.

Argentina’s main farm group took complaints against Monsanto Co to local regulators, accusing the company of abusing its dominant position in the market by ordering exporters to inspect soy cargoes for second-generation genetically modified seeds. Monsanto’s Intacta soybeans have a gene that allows the soybean plant to protect itself against crop-devouring worms. The Argentine Rural Society (SRA) filed the complaint before the National Commission for the Defence of Competition. The SRA argues that the company wants them to pay to plant second-generation seeds produced on the farm with Intacta technology.

The presumed mastermind behind the murder of a Mexican journalist was arrested in the eastern state of Veracruz, the state’s governor said, as Mexico struggles with a wave of attacks on reporters. Anabel Flores, who covered the police force for regional media outlets, was violently dragged from her home in Veracruz by a group of armed men earlier this week and found dead on a highway. “Josele Marquez (alias) El Chichi is implicated, among other crimes, as (the one responsible) for the assassination of journalist Anabel Flores,” Governor Javier Duarte wrote on his verified Twitter account in announcing the arrest.

A Venezuelan court has sentenced three men to 30 years in prison for the killing of a former beauty queen and her partner, prosecutors said. The court in the northern state of Carabobo convicted the men of “intentional homicide committed during a robbery” in the January 2014 attack on the couple. Monica Spear, 29, and her partner Thomas Henry Berry, 39, were returning from a trip with their daughter when their car broke down on a remote stretch of highway in north-central Venezuela. As a tow truck operator tried to help, a group of gunmen opened fire on the vehicle, killing the couple. Their daughter was wounded. Spear was Miss Venezuela in 2004.

Peru’s central bank raised the benchmark interest rate for the third straight month and warned that rising inflation expectations threatened to trigger a feed-back loop of quickening price hikes. A majority of analysts had forecast an increase of the key rate by 25 basis points to 4.25% after the annual inflation rate rose to a fresh four-year high of 4.61%. The central bank said that recent price spikes were driven by temporary supply factors but had seeped into the market’s outlook. “These increases in consumer prices have aff ected inflation expectations, placing them above the target range, which can feed back into inflation,” the central bank said

Mexico prison off icialsaccused of homicide

Farmers take Monsanto complaint to regulators

Alleged killer of journalistarrested in Veracruz

Men get 30 years for beauty queen’s murder

Peru central bank hikeskey rate, warns of inflation

LAW AND ORDER LEGALINQUIRY JUSTICE ECONOMY

PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN23Gulf Times


Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has ordered observance of policy guidelines to ensure transparency, merit and fairness in foreign appointments. According to a letter sent from the off ice of the prime minister’s secretary yesterday, the guidelines would be followed in postings in Pakistani missions and at the country’s posi-tions at international organisations and bodies. The ministry or divi-sion concerned will ensure that the selection process is transpar-ent and merit-based. The tenure for any foreign post would not be extendable, the letter said. “An of-ficer of identified services, cadres and occupational groups for any foreign post will be eligible for two tenures of foreign posting in his entire service, provided that there shall be an intervening period of at least three years between two such tenures.”

The long-awaited 6th population census is all set to be postponed again mainly because of non-availability of required number of army personnel and inability of the Centre to convince Balo-chistan over lingering controversy of counting Afghan nationals, it has been learnt. “It is matter of just off icial announcement now regarding postponement of the house listing and population cen-sus exercise by end March/ early April this year mainly because of non-availability of required number of army personnel for undertaking this exercise because of its hectic engagements in Zarb-e-Azb, operations in Karachi and other parts of the country,” off icial sources said yesterday. The last census was held in 1998.

Foreign postingson merit alone, PM Sharif orders

Populationcensus likely to be postponed

APPOINTMENTS

STATISTICS

Pakistani among scientists who detected gravitational waves

Much before her name became synonymous with Einstein and his

gravitational waves, the as-trophysicist and associate de-partment head of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr Nergis Mavalvala, was a little girl born to a Parsi family in Karachi and raised here in a joint-family set-up.

Nergis moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1984 for high-er studies after having complet-ed her schooling at the Convent

of Jesus and Mary (CJM) in Clift-on. Prior to that, she grew up in a big house near the PIDC building on Beaumont Road.

“Her grandfather, Maneck Mavalvala, a prosperous busi-nessman, lived there with his three brothers. It was more than a house. It was a big sprawling mansion with these four broth-ers, their children and grand-children.

“The compound also housed a dhobi, drivers, cooks and their families. Today, the site has been turned into a marriage hall,” reminisced Natasha Mavalvala, who is married to Nergis’s fi rst cousin.

“The family moved to Canada

in the mid-1980s and Nergis and her older sister, Mahrukh, went to college in the States. They only have extended family here in Pakistan now. The last time we met both the sisters was over two years ago when they came to Karachi to attend a cousin’s wedding,” the cousin-in-law shared.

“I am part of this family through marriage but we Parsis are a close-knit community so I remember the girls well. They were sweet, happy children but not very naughty. I would de-scribe them as quiet studious girls, who were highly accom-plished students. Both are bril-liant scientists and professors

today,” Mavalvala said.Nergis’s uncle or chacha, who

lives in Parsi Colony in Meh-moodabad, also remembered his nieces as very serious about their education.

“Nergis was also into sports. She would frequent Karachi Gymkhana for sports activities, especially swimming,” he said.

“I just received an email from my older brother and sister-in-law, her parents, about Nergis’s latest achievement. We were already so proud of her ear-lier when she was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2010, and this is even better as now she is being hailed as the pride of Pa-kistan,” the uncle said.

Meanwhile, Nergis herself shared a bit about her life here through e-mail. Her love for science developed during her school days here. She wrote: “I went to CJM, graduating in 1984. My chemistry teacher there was Ranjith Bulathsinhala.

He was also the lab instruc-tor for all science subjects and was a very infl uential person for me. He allowed me to experi-ment with reagents and explore circuits during recess or free pe-riods when I was not socialising with friends.

Another infl uential teacher in high school was my physics teacher Freddie Irani. He lives in Vancouver, Canada, now.”

InternewsKarachi

Dr Nergis Mavalvala

Pakistan rejectsIndian concerns over F-16 deal

Pakistan yesterday rejected Indian concerns over its proposed deal with the

United States to buy eight F-16 fi ghter jets, saying it was sur-prised by the reaction from New Delhi.

“We are surprised and disap-pointed at the Indian govern-ments reaction,” the Foreign Ministry said in the capital Is-lamabad. “They are the largest importer of defence equipment.”

India summoned the US am-bassador to Delhi on Saturday to convey its “disappointment and displeasure” over Washington’s plan to sell fi ghter jets to Pakistan.

“We disagree with their ra-tionale that such arms transfer help to combat terrorism,” the Indian Foreign Ministry said.

Islamabad said the deal was to enhance its capability to fi ght against Islamist militants.

“Pakistan and the United States closely co-operate in countering terrorism ... the sale is to enhance precision strike ca-pability,” the statement added.

The proposed $700mn deal would include Lockheed Martin F-16s, radar, training and logis-tics support, the US Defence Se-curity Co-operation Agency said on Friday.

The proposed deal will now go through a 30-day notifi ca-

tion period after which it will be fi nalised.

Earlier this week, the US State Department informed Con-gress that it was committed to improving Pakistan’s precision strike capability, which was seen as a veiled reference to F-16 fi ghter jets.

And on Thursday, a State De-partment spokesman, Mark Toner, said at a news briefi ng that US weapon sales to Pakistan contributed to the fi ght against terrorism and furthered Ameri-ca’s foreign policy interests.

The remarks followed a move by some US lawmakers and a campaign in the US media to stop the Obama administration from selling eight F-16 fi ghter jets to Pakistan.

Although Congress has de-layed the proposed sale, the administration still seems in-terested in pushing it through, insisting that it’s in vital US in-terests to do so.

At the State Department news briefi ng, an Indian journalist asked spokesman Mark Toner if US Secretary of State John Kerry had received a letter Republican Senator Bob Corker sent to him

on Tuesday, asking him to stop the proposed sale to Pakistan.

“As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on proposed arms sales or transfers or even our preliminary consultations with the Hill, with Capitol Hill, prior to any formal congression-al notifi cation,” Toner replied.

But he off ered to address the broader issue of US security as-sistance to Pakistan, saying: “We are committed to working with Congress to deliver security as-sistance to our partners and our allies that we believe furthers US foreign policy interests by build-ing the capacity to meet shared security challenges.”

Responding to another ques-tion about terrorists using safe havens inside Pakistan to attack US troops in Afghanistan, Toner said: “We believe US security assistance to Pakistan actually contributes to their counterter-rorism and counterinsurgency operations.”

Further explaining this point, he added that such operations “reduce the ability of militants to use Pakistani territory as a safe haven to carry out terrorist attacks and as a base of support for the insurgency in Afghani-stan.”

That’s why, he said, the United States believes “these operations are in the interests of both Paki-stan and the United States and in the interests of the region more broadly.”

AgenciesIslamabad

“We are surprised and disappointed at the Indian governments reaction. They are the largest importer of defence equipment”

Afghan civilian casualties top 11,000 to hit record in 2015

The number of civilians killed or wounded in Af-ghanistan last year was

the highest recorded since 2009, the UN said yesterday, with chil-dren paying a particularly heavy price.

There were 11,002 civil-ian casualties in 2015 including 3,545 deaths, the UN said in its annual report on Afghan civil-ians in armed confl ict, a four percent rise over the previous high in 2014.

“The harm done to civilians is totally unacceptable,” said Ni-cholas Haysom, the UN’s special representative for Afghanistan.

“We call on those infl icting this pain on the people of Af-ghanistan to take concrete ac-tion to protect civilians and put a stop to the killing and maim-ing.”

Fighting and attacks in popu-lated areas and major cities were described as the main causes of civilian deaths in 2015, under-scoring a push by Taliban mili-tants into urban centres “with a high likelihood of causing civil-ian harm”, the report stated.

The UN began compiling the annual report in 2009.

Including Taliban-claimed attacks, the United Nations As-sistance Mission in Afghanistan assigned responsibility for 62 percent of total civilian casual-ties in 2015 to anti-government elements.

But the report also noted a 28% year-on-year surge in the number of casualties caused by pro-government forces, includ-ing the Afghan army and inter-national troops.

Seventeen percent of all casu-alties in 2015 were caused by such forces, the report said. It was not possible to say which side caused the remaining 21 percent of casualties.

The report criticised Afghan forces in particular for their reli-ance on explosives in populated areas.

US and other international troops moved from a combat to a training, advisory and assistance

role in Afghanistan on January 1, 2015, leaving Afghan forces to take the lead in fi ghting the resurgent militants as they tar-geted towns and cities.

“Why did they fi re this rock-et? Why was it necessary?” the father of a man killed in shelling by the Afghan army in a village in Wardak province in Decem-ber was quoted as saying in the report.

Nine people died in that at-tack, according to the report, highlighting the dangers to ci-vilians during ground engage-ments.

“Can you imagine how diffi -cult it is when your son is lying in

his own blood and you are crying for him?” the father is quoted as saying.

The statistics in the report do not “refl ect the real horror”, Haysom told a press conference yesterday.

“The real cost... is measured in the maimed bodies of chil-dren, the communities who have to live with loss, the grief of colleagues and relatives, the families who make do without a breadwinner, the parents who grieved the lost children, the children who grieved the lost parents,” he said.

One in every four casualties in 2015 was a child, with the

report documenting a 14% in-crease in child casualties over the year.

“Tell these people not to attack children,” it quotes a 12-year-old survivor of a mortar attack that killed four others as saying. “I want to study, not to die.”

While fi ghting and impro-vised explosive devices were the top two killers of children, unexploded ordnance picked up and played with by curious and unsuspecting youngsters also claimed a heavy toll, killing 113 children — an average of two a week — and injuring 252 more in 2015.

Women also paid a heavy

price, with a 37% surge in female casualties. One in every ten cas-ualties recorded was a woman, the report said.

The document highlighted an increase in women being tar-geted for alleged moral crimes, calling the executions and lash-ings a “disturbing trend”, and saying the UN plans to release a separate report on such inci-dents soon.

Chillingly, the report docu-mented a doubling of civilian casualties due to the deliberate targeting by militants of judges, prosecutors and judicial institu-tions.

There were 188 such cases last

year, of which 46 involved fatali-ties.

The Taliban claimed 95% of such targeted attacks, the report said.

While ground engagements were the largest cause of civilian casualties, improvised explosive devices came second, the report said, adding that the use of such weaponry violated international law and could constitute war crimes.

It refl ects “a disconnect be-tween commitments made and the harsh reality on the ground”, said the director of the UN’s hu-man rights mission in Afghani-stan, Danielle Bell.

AFPKabul

A file picture taken on August 22, 2015 shows Afghan residents reacting as they search for relatives at the site of a car bomb in Kabul.

Nicholas Haysom (3rd L), the UN’s special representative for Afghanistan, speaks during a press conference in Kabul yesterday.

Afghanistan summons Pakistan envoy over governor’s kidnapping

Afghanistan yesterday summoned Pakistan’s ambassador to the for-

eign ministry in Kabul to ex-press “serious concerns” over the kidnapping of a former Afghan governor in Islamabad, the ministry said in a state-ment.

Sayed Fazlullah Wahidi, a former governor of Herat prov-ince, was snatched by uniden-tifi ed men in an upscale district of the Pakistani capital on Fri-

day, police have confi rmed. Afghanistan has fraught re-

lations with Pakistan, which it blames for sponsoring Taliban militants fi ghting an ongoing bloody insurgency.

Yesterday the foreign min-istry expressed concern to ambassador Sayed Ibrar Hus-sain and urged Islamabad to throw all its resources into fi nding Wahidi, described as one of the “big personalities” of the war-torn country.

“The Afghan government calls upon the Pakistani gov-ernment to use all tools and possibilities in identifying the

group behind the kidnapping and immediately secure the re-lease of Mr Wahidi,” the state-ment said.

Pakistan is in the grip of a homegrown Taliban insurgency but the tightly-guarded capital has a very low crime rate in gen-eral, and the F-7/2 sector where Wahidi was seized is a high secu-rity area that houses politicians, bureaucrats and expats.

A Pakistani police offi cial said yesterday that investiga-tors were treating the abduc-tion as a “high-profi le case”, but that no arrests have yet been made.

AFPKabul

A couple takes a selfie as they stand next to a heart-shaped paper flower decoration at a flower market on Valentine’s Day in Islamabad yesterday.

Valentine’s Day selfie

PHILIPPINES

Gulf TimesMonday, February 15, 201624

Aquino to raise sea row with Obama at summit By Joel M Sy EgcoManila Times

President Benigno Aquino will lead other Associa-tion of Southeast Asian

Nations (Asean) heads of state in bringing forth the issue of mari-time security, particularly the disputes at the West Philippines Sea (South China Sea), during their meeting with US President Barack Obama this week, ac-cording to a Malacanang offi cial.

Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr, in an in-terview over state-run Radyo ng Bayan, yesterday said it has been agreed during the Asean-US Summit last November that Obama shall hold a dialogue with Asean leaders on their mar-itime concerns.

“Maritime security has emerged as a vital concern to Asean. The goal of achieving

Asean economic integration through the Asean economic community, as well as the US

initiative on establishing a Trans-Pacifi c Partnership (TPP) to promote free trade in the Asia

Pacifi c region may be enhanced through more vigorous trades that, in turn, must be assured by freedom of navigation in the main navigational routes of glo-bal trade and commerce, includ-ing the South China Sea,” Co-loma added.

Quoting the Department of Foreign Aff airs, he said Aquino will attend the Asean-US Lead-ers’ Summit in Sunnylands, California, from February 15-16 “to further boost and strengthen strategic partnerships” among the countries involved.

Besides maritime security, Coloma said the summit may also tackle political and security issues, “transnational challeng-es” and the continuing threat of terrorism.

“The two-day summit will be informal so that the leaders of Asean can freely express their sentiments and concerns that are of import,” he added.

Coloma said Aquino will likely lead his Asean counterparts dur-ing the dialogue with President Obama since he has been so pas-sionate about the sea dispute with China.

“President Aquino has always represented the Philippines’ position on the importance of ensuring freedom of navigation and overfl ight, as well as adher-ence to Unclos (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) and inter-national law,” he added.

“The president has also been a leading advocate for a legally binding Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, as well as on the importance of seeking peaceful avenues for dispute resolution that underpins the Philippines’ petition before the UN Arbitral Tribunal at The Hague, a move that is being followed closely by other states with maritime entitlement claims,” Coloma said.

One Billion Rising founder Eve Ensler (front left) and Philippine actress Monique Wilson (front right) gesture the “number one” sign as they dance to take part in the “One Billion Rising” campaign in Manila yesterday. Wilson, who counts among her achievements the lead role in the West End production of the Miss Saigon musical in the early 1990s, is the global director for the campaign, which aims to end violence against women and children.

Campaign to end violence against women, children Vice president’s camp accuses Liberal Party of bribery By Reina TolentintoManila Times

The United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) has ac-cused the Liberal Party

(LP) of bribing local execu-tives with government funds to secure votes in the coming elections.

The allegation came af-ter the ruling LP’s standard-bearer Manuel “Mar” Roxas promised to allocate P100bn in funding for local govern-ment units (LGUs) if he wins the presidency, in a speech before the Liga ng Barangay sa Pilipinas Forum in Pasay City (Metro Manila).

The amount, Roxas said, will fund the Bottom Up Budgeting (BuB) programme.

“The BuB’s aim is very much diff erent from its original in-tention as the national budget is in the people’s hands. But it seems that the party is us-ing the national budget to bribe the public,” former Cainta (Rizal) Mayor and UNA spokesman Mon Ilagan said in a statement issued yesterday.

He further alleged, “The LP’s bribery using the BuB is grave. There is P24.7bn tucked in the national budget and this is the largest pork-barrel in election year history.”

Ilagan was referring to the 2016 national budget for the BuB programme, wherein LGUs and people’s organisa-tions identify local projects for funding by the national government.

The LP is led by President

Benigno Aquino, who will step down this year when he fi n-ishes his single six-year term.

Its presidential bet Roxas, a member of Aquino’s Cabinet as interior secretary, is run-ning, among others, against Vice President Jejomar Binay, who leads UNA.

“No matter how Mar and LP call it or sweeten the packag-ing, it is still legalised vote-buying because it is meant to infl uence the people’s voting preferences… the BuB can now be called ‘Bribe Ur Barangay’ because this is already their model of legal vote-buying,” Ilagan said.

He added that the admin-istration was “so desperate” it had to allegedly resort to “wholesale bribery” by using the BuB and Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Programme just to win local support.

“’Bribe Ur Barangay’ is the new localised version of pork-barrel politics. The power of the LP’s purse is energised by the administra-tion’s CCT and BUB projects. The BUB’s rationale is no longer developmental but envelopmental, no longer economics but politics,” Ila-gan said.

The CCT Programme is the government’s flagship pro-gramme that aims to reduce poverty by providing cash grants to extremely poor households so that they can meet human development goals.

Both Roxas and Binay vowed to expand the CCT Programme in earlier sorties.

Aquino: focus on sea dispute

Marcos Jr hopes next leader would give priority for renewable energy Manila TimesManila

Vice presidential can-didate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos

Jr yesterday said the next ad-ministration should speed up implementation of the coun-try’s renewable energy (RE) programme that will not only solve the power needs but also protect the environment.

The senator added that the next administration must vig-orously increase the country’s RE capacity targets to make it at least 50% by 2030.

“We need to boost our re-newable energy programme and this should be prioritised to ensure economic development while protecting our environ-ment,” he said.

According to the senator, some 70% of the nation’s elec-tricity at present is generated from fossil fuels and 90% of which are imported.

“The next administration should be aggressive in increas-ing our renewable energy pro-grammes by encouraging com-panies to build more solar, wind and hydrogen power plants,” he said.

Marcos added that the gov-ernment must give investors in

RE additional perks on their in-vestments and cut bureaucratic red tape.

It was learned that the Bu-reau of Investments (BOI) gives incentives to RE companies

that include income tax holiday for seven years and duty-free importation of renewable en-ergy machinery, among others.

These, however, those are not enough, saying more have to be

given in order to encourage RE companies in doing their busi-ness here.

“Our government needs to give support for research and investigation of possible sites for RE endeavours and pilot locations as well as give them more tax exemptions in the production aspect,” Marcos said.

“Many of them are com-plaining about the slow processing of their applications for land conversion and other environmental clearance from the national level to the local level. This should be shortened or simplifi ed,” he added.

“The government should ease the process of doing busi-ness in the country in general so that companies like those en-gaged in RE will be encouraged to invest here,” he added.

Marcos has championed RE, building the fi rst wind farms in Southeast Asia while he was governor of Ilocos Norte in 2003, making it the country’s fl agship project for renewable energy.

He authored Senate Bill 2953 or the Act creating a Hydro-gen Research and Development Centre to support and encour-age the use and development of hydrogen as an alternative source of energy.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr: backing renewable energy

Agency seeks evidence of drug

fund use for election campaignBy Joel M Sy EgcoManila Times

Despite claims that money from illegal drugs could have been used to fi nance the cam-paign of some local politicians and that

some of them are directly involved in the illicit trade, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) said there are simply no reliable data to back up these allegations.

In fact, PDEA Public Information Offi ce (PIO) chief Glen Malapad said they do not have hard evi-dence against top government offi cials who are said to be involved in the drug trade.

He, however, added that they have arrested 69 elected government offi cials who hold lower posts from January 2015 to January 2016.

“We cannot accuse anybody without evidence. We are bound to violate individual rights if we based our accusations on plain assumptions,” Malapad told Manila Times. This paper reported last week that at least one governor and a few congressmen were into the drug trade, quoting former PDEA di-rector General Dionisio Santiago.

Santiago and Sen. Grace Poe, head of the Senate committee on illegal drugs, claimed narco-politics threatens the country’s political environment.

Santiago also disclosed that he had sent a full report on the involvement of the public fi gures to Defence Secretary Voltaire Gazmin as early as 2010, before he left PDEA.

“I surmise Malacanang already has a copy of my report. It contained everything, including the who’s who in the drug industry. The highest government offi cials included in my report were a governor and some active lawmakers from Southern Tagalog and Central Luzon,” he told Manila Times.

He said he brought his report to Gazmin as he

was about to be replaced at PDEA. But Malapad said they “can only attribute the presence of narco-pol-itics in the country to the government offi cials par-ticularly barangay (village) offi cials and employees arrested by PDEA and those charged in court for drug-related off enses.”

“We have no data to gauge regarding how seri-ous is the threat of narco-politics in the country… We have no data or we did not receive any reports regarding the claims whether the drug money has reached the government or if there are national of-fi cials who are on the payroll of drug lords,” he add-ed. Poe said nobody can deny the fact that “govern-ment offi cials themselves are involved in the illegal drug trade.”

“But defi nitely, from year on end, we need to be able to expose the names of those people. And I would probably do so,” she added.

Malapad admitted that drug traffi ckers are bet-ter equipped than them and that the archipelagic nature of the Philippines makes it more diffi cult for them to run after these criminals.

“The present scenario indicates that the agency is faced by more equipped and advanced adversar-ies in terms of fi nancial, technological and logisti-cal aspects. In spite of these challenges, we are pos-itive that the drug problem can be eradicated but we cannot fi ght alone. We need co-operation among local and international drug enforcement agencies, and of course the participation and support of the stakeholders which are deemed important in de-feating the drug menace,” he pointed out.

“The archipelagic set-up of the Philippines is exploited by traffi ckers to transport illegal drugs and controlled precursors and essential chemicals into the country. The international and local air-ports, seaports, mail and parcel services and the vast expanse of coastline are being utilised as entry and exit points,” Malapad explained.

Human trafficking and the proliferation of illegal drugs in Tawi-Tawi were the main concerns addressed at the Provincial Peace and Order Council (PPOC) Consultative Meeting convened in De-cember last year, Manila Times reported. The PPOC meeting was attended by members of the Tawi-Tawi Provincial Board, Provin-cial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO), Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), and the Philippine National Police (PNP). Tawi-Tawi Gov. Nurbert Sahali commended the efforts of the different stakeholders that attended the PPOC con-sultative meeting including the civil society organisations (CSOs) for extending their support and assistance in addressing the issues and problems relating to peace, security and development confronting the province. Governor Sahali noted that Tawi-Tawi is beset with the problem of human trafficking. Over the years illegal recruiters have been using the capital town of Bongao and the southernmost municipality of Sitangkai as transhipment points to move out of the country via this “Southern Backdoor” for their illegal recruits bound for nearby Sabah, Malaysia. Sahali appealed to the national government through the representation of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) “to look at the provisions and any other resources that would enforce anti-human trafficking interventions including the capacity build-ing and equipment to address the issue.”

Crackdown on traff icking discussed CRIME

SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL25Gulf Times


Hasina urges help in digital education at primary level Bangladesh Prime Minister

Sheikh Hasina yesterday urged the affl uent section

of society, particularly former students, to help their schools to in digitalisation.

“I hope those who are rich and well established will donate something to schools of their ar-eas as gifts and this is my ardent call to the nation,” she said.

The prime minister was ad-dressing a function while in-augurating the ‘Primary Edu-cation Content; Conversion to Inter-Active Multimedia Dig-ital Version’ programme in the capital Dhaka.

Hasina said some 1,500 mul-timedia classrooms have al-ready been set up while some 5,000 laptops have also been

provided, aiming to fl ourish the operations of multimedia classrooms across Bangladesh.

“I’ll call upon all the Bang-ladeshis that they were once students in primary schools and now they’ve become es-tablished like businessmen or job holders ... why not they take up initiative to provide at least one multimedia projector or a laptop as gift to their former school,” she said.

The prime minister said it is not so tough to have at least one multimedia classroom in 63,601 primary schools across the country.

“We’ll take our steps from the government, but alongside this all should have to come up with self-initiatives.”

Noting that education is the most important tool for building a nation, Hasina said it is education which can

free a country from poverty. Mentioning that the coun-

try’s children and students are talented and meritorious, Hasina said scopes should be created for fl ourishing their tal-ents for which the government gives greater importance to technology-based education.

Cautioning guardians over exerting too much pressure on the children for their academic activities, Hasina said guardians should stop such practice.

Hasina said the lessons should be more attractive for students and schools should have such an environment so that they feel more encouraged in their academic activities.

The prime minister also vowed to make a stronger foun-dation of education for the fu-ture generation using modern technologies.

Most schools in hilly areas of

the Chittagong Hill Tracts will be turned into residential one for the convenience of students, the prime minister reiterated.

The main aim of Inter-Ac-tive Multimedia Digital Ver-sion’ programme is to prepare interactive multimedia digital education content of 17 books in Bangla, English, Mathematics, Science, Bangladesh and World Aff airs related to the curriculum of primary education framed by the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB).

The digital education content incorporated in various kinds of pictures, charts, diagrams, au-dio, video and other multimedia components and thus presenting those through animation for mak-ing the textbook contents is more attractive and easily perceivable.

Primary and Mass Education Minister Mostafi zur Rahman Fi-zar, State Minister for ICT Junaid

By Mizan RahmanDhaka

Sheikh Hasina: “We’ll take our steps from the government, but alongside this all should have to come up with self-initiatives.”

Ahmed Pakak, Brac founder and chairperson Fazle Hasan Abed and interim regional director of Save the Children, Michael

McGrath, also spoke on the oc-casion. ICT division secretary Shyam Sundor Sikder delivered the address of welcome.

Lankans wantministersto shareexecutivepower

Sri Lanka’s powerful presi-dency should be scrapped but executive power should

not be concentrated in the prime minister and instead shared among cabinet ministers, ac-cording to a report by Citizens Initiative for Constitutional Change.

The new government, formed after presidential and parlia-mentary polls that ousted the Mahinda Rajapakse regime last year, has called for public views and recommendations for the new constitution with abolish-ing the executive presidency a key, and long-standing proposal.

“The executive presidency should be abolished,” said the report, a collection of public views gathered through a na-tionwide campaign that reached thousands of people through workshops, and e-mail and letter campaigns.

“However, this shouldn’t mean that an executive prime minster should assume this position.

“While the prime minister should be the head of govern-ment, executive power should be shared among the members of the cabinet,” said the re-port, published by the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a non-governmental organisation.

“All decisions should be made by the cabinet collectively.”

The Citizens Initiative for Constitutional Change said it is a coalition of civil society organi-sations and individuals dedi-cated to ensuring that Sri Lanka “fi nally receives a constitution it deserves” in 2016.

Bangladesh’s burn institute to be named after premier

Bangladesh Health Minister Mohammad Nasim yesterday said

the government will set up a burn and plastic surgery in-stitute at Chankharpool in Dhaka which will be named after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

The prime minister will lay the foundation stone of the institute, the fi rst of its kind in Bangladesh, in the fi rst week of March, Nasim told reporters.

Besides, the minister said, a process is underway to have permission from the Bangabandhu Trust over naming the institute after Sheikh Hasina.

Offi cials of the health min-istry said the proposed project will cost the 5.22bn taka.

Once set up, the institute would be the largest of its kind not only in South Asia but also in the world, Dr Samanta Lal Sen, chief co-ordinator of the burn units across the country, said, adding that one of its main aims would be to prepare burn specialists and plastic surgeons of international standards.

He said currently there are

just 52 plastic surgeons for around 600,000 burn victims across Bangladesh.

Initially, the institute would be able to produce 10 to 12 doctors every year, with Master of Science in Plastic Surgery qualifi cation. The doctors will be posted at burn units in every district hospital.

At present, Bangladesh gets just two expert plastic sur-geons a year, Sen said, adding that the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery at the Dhaka Medical College Hospi-tal will continue to function as a burn unit after the project implementation.

Project sources said the in-stitute will also train nurses, paramedics, physiothera-pists and staff specialised in dressings.

It would have 500 beds, including 50 for the intensive care unit, 12 operating thea-tres (four each for the burn, emergency and plastic sur-gery units), and equipment such as burn tanks, added the sources.

Prof Dr Abul Kalam, di-rector of the project, said the approved money would initially be spent to build a 10-storey building in two years. Later, the building would have five more upper floors, he added.


Nepal proposes ‘wish-list’ forprime minister’s India visit

Ahead of Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli’s upcoming visit to

India, Kathmandu has fi nalised a comprehensive wishlist it wants New Delhi to fulfi l.

Projects related to infra-structure and hydel develop-ment and power transmission top Oli’s agenda for the six-day visit commencing on February 19, offi cials said.

The wish-list for Oli’s visit - his fi rst foreign tour since as-suming offi ce in October last - includes fi nalisation of two hydro-power projects of a to-tal 750 MW capacity that have been on the table for quite some time now.

The two projects together would cost about $1bn.

Nepal is estimated to have the potential to generate 42,000 MW of hydropower but today produces 800 MW - far less than the domestic demand of 1,400 MW.

The two power projects were among agenda-points that Ne-pal’s Finance Minister Bishnu Poudel had proposed to his Indian counterpart Arun Jait-ley and Indian External Aff airs Minister Sushma Swaraj during a visit to New Delhi earlier this month.

India has already promised $2bn in aid during Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi’s visit to Nepal in August 2014.

Another $1bn in assistance was pledged by India in June 2015 at the International Con-ference on Nepal’s Reconstruc-tion following the April 2015 earthquake.

Out of the $1bn, $250mn is aid and the remaining $750mn is soft loan to carry out vari-ous post-quake reconstruction works.

The other major proposals on Oli’s wish-list are comple-tion within fi ve years of the India-assisted Hulaki Road (postal road) project in Nepal’s southern Terai area; laying of cross-border power transmis-sion lines and developing a state-of-the-art hospital in Kathmandu.

Nepal and India have re-cently installed 400 kV power transmission lines and have also proposed to build six pow-

er corridors at various border points.

According to Nepal fi nance ministry offi cials, Poudel also sought Indian assistance to build one national institute of technology, establishment of eight technical schools and the setting up of an ayurveda uni-versity.

Other areas of discussion are the early implementation of the 6,720 MW Pancheshwor mul-tipurpose project, construction of a second international air-port in Nepal, and fast-track-ing of construction of the Kathmandu-Terai road besides some security issues.

Nepal relies heavily on for-eign aid and assistance from India has contributed to major infrastructure development in the Himalayan nation.

Grants from India helped to build the airport in Kathmandu, the fl ood control Koshi Barrage, Bir Hospital in Kathmandu, Trauma Centre, a number of ir-rigation projects and important highways like Tribhuvan High-way - connecting capital Kath-mandu to the Birgunj-Raxaul border with India - and Sid-dhartha Highway - connecting the Terai region in southern Ne-pal with the mountain region in northern Nepal.

IANSKathmandu

AgenciesColombo

25 injured in accident

At least 25 students of a Sri Lankan university were injured as the bus they

were travelling in collided with a container truck yesterday, police said.

The accident occurred on the Bandarawela-Haputale road in Uva province, Xinhua news agency reported. Two of the stu-dents were in critical condition.

Poor road infrastructure and reckless driving are the leading causes of accidents.

According to the WHO, road accidents are the world’s eighth leading cause of death. About 70% of the deaths from road accidents occur in developing countries.

IANSColombo

K P Sharma Oli will begin a six-day tour of India on February 19.

SC paves way for Khaleda’s trial in orphanage graft case

The Bangladesh Supreme Court (SC) yesterday upheld a High Court

order that had earlier rejected a petition fi led by BNP chair-person Khaleda Zia seeking a directive on the trial court to annul the testimony of the plaintiff in Zia Orphanage Trust fund misappropriation case against her.

A fi ve-member bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice SK Sinha passed the order.

Khaleda on September 16, 2015, fi led the appeal with the SC against the HC order.

After the SC order, law-yer of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) Khur-shid Alam Khan said there is

no more legal bar to continue the trial proceedings of Zia Orphanage Trust corrup-tion case against the BNP chairperson.

On June 29, 2015, the HC rejected the petition fi led by Khaleda for scrapping the testimony of inves-tigation offi cer (IO) and recording IO’s his fresh statement in her presence at the court.

The bench comprising Jus-tice Moinul Islam Chowd-hury and Justice J B M Hassan passed the order, saying there was nothing illegal in recording the statement of the IO in the graft case.

Khaleda can cross-examine the IO and therefore, she can fi nd out whether he has given wrong statement.

On June 15 last year, the BNP chief fi led the criminal revision

petition with the HC against the rejection of her petition by the lower court.

Earlier on May 25, a Dhaka court rejected the defence lawyer’s petition for scrap-ping the deposition given by the plaintiff of the case on six dates in absence of the accused.

On July 3, 2008, the ACC fi led the Zia Orphanage Trust graft case with Ramna police station accusing Khaleda, her eldest son Tarique Rah-man, now living in the UK after securing bail, and four others for misappropriating over 21mn taka which came as grants from a foreign bank for orphans.

On August 5, 2010, the IO submitted a charge-sheet to the court in the case against six people, including Khaleda.


Nepalese girls pose for a photo with a balloon and roses on Valentine’s Day in Kathmandu yesterday.

All set for celebration

When landmark and complex scientifi c discoveries are announced, the common folks cannot be blamed for asking how they aff ect them. The profundity can be easily missed and this is defi nitely the case when it comes to gravitational waves.

The announcement a few days ago that scientists have made the fi rst direct observations of gravitational waves, the ripples in space-time foreseen a century ago by acclaimed theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, has left the average human beings scratching their heads.

Simply put, the fi nd is a triumph for Einstein’s celebrated general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics and the basis of his 1916 prediction that the fabric of the universe is perturbed by gravitational energy.

The discovery is also a milestone for the gargantuan scientifi c apparatus – the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (Ligo) – that was the fi rst to pick up the advance of these waves, in this case created by the violent merger of two black holes 1.3bn years ago.

Since gravitational waves carry information about their source, the ability to detect the ripples will allow researchers to study distant and elusive features of the universe, as pointed out by Traci Watson in USA Today.

When X-rays were revealed by Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895 during his experiments on cathode ray tubes, few would have known that in only a few years these high-energy

electromagnetic waves would become a key component in everyday medicine from diagnosis to treatment, recalled Ian O’Neill, writing in discovery.com.

“Likewise, the fi rst experimental production of radio waves in 1887 by Heinrich Hertz confi rmed predictions by James Clerk Maxwell’s famous electromagnetic equations. Only years

later, in the 1890s, a series of demonstrations by Guglielmo Marconi, who set up radio transmitters and receivers, proved they had a practical use. Also, Schrodinger’s equations describing the unfathomable world of quantum dynamics are fi nding an application right now in the development of super-fast quantum computing.”

As explained by O’Neill, all scientifi c discoveries are profound and many eventually have everyday applications that we take for granted. “For now, the practical applications of gravitational waves may seem restricted to astrophysics and cosmology - we now have a window into a “dark universe” where no electromagnetic radiation is required.”

The space science producer has predicted that scientists and engineers will fi nd other uses for these space-time ripples besides the awesome application of probing space-time. The huge advances in optical engineering, performed by Ligo to detect these waves in the fi rst place will inevitably spawn new technologies.

As succinctly summed up by O’Neill, ultimately, the detection of gravitational waves is a triumph for humanity that will continue to teach us new things about our universe for generations to come. “This is most defi nitely a golden age for science, where historic discoveries are commonplace. These discoveries drive our culture forward, making us all richer and more aware that our universe is a beautiful and complex place. And we know we have the intellectual capability to create models of how we think the universe works and then perform experiments to prove we are right.”

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“For now, the practical applications of gravitational waves may seem restricted to astrophysics and cosmology”

No matter how committed and innovative American leadership remains, the US by itself can no longer guarantee the liberal international order

By Ana PalacioMunich

The liberal international order that has helped stabilise the world since the end of the Cold War is under strain.

A revanchist Russia, chaos in the Middle East, and simmering tensions in the South China Sea are all symptoms of a system that is beginning to fray.

The drivers of instability are many. They include a shift in economic power from the West to the East, the weakening of formal institutions, and widespread disaff ection in Western democracies. But, above all, two key developments that have been eroding the liberal international order: the US’ withdrawal from global leadership and Europe’s prolonged crisis.

Recently, there have been signs that the US is beginning to reassert itself. After six years of “leading from behind” and drawing meaningless red lines, US President Barack Obama has started to seek out innovative, fl exible arrangements – diplomatic and military – to respond to global threats.

In 2015, the Obama administration was instrumental in bringing about the Paris climate agreement and a deal to rein in Iran’s nuclear programme.

And, last week, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter unveiled a proposed military budget for 2017 that signalled plans for a muscular global stance.

The request included funding for naval operations in Asia, a restocking of the military arsenal depleted in the fi ght against the Islamic State, and a commitment to technological innovation.

The proposal’s centrepiece, however, was the quadrupling of US spending in Europe to “support our Nato allies in the face of Russia’s aggression”.

Many in Europe might regard Carter’s announcement as cause for relief. After years of handwringing over Obama’s strategic “pivot” to Asia, even as Russia was stirring up trouble in Ukraine, Europe is once again a strategic focus for the US. But the deeper message is far less encouraging. The US is acting because its European partners have not.

This divergence is troubling. American engagement is necessary to provide momentum, but it is Europe’s weight that has served as the critical mass required to move the world’s liberal order in a positive direction.

From the perspective of the European Union, the latest US security

bailout raises the possibility that after more than two decades of growing prominence, Europe will lose its agenda-setting power.

In 2011, after Nato’s operation in Libya, which fully revealed the limits of Europe’s military capacity, then-US defence secretary Robert Gates visited Brussels.

His message was stark: “If current trends in the decline of European defence capabilities are not halted and reversed, future US political leaders – those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in Nato worth the cost.”

In the years since, Russia has annexed Crimea and destabilised eastern Ukraine. Instability in the Middle East has sparked a large-scale migration crisis.

Terrorism has re-emerged as an important threat. And yet, for all the talk of streamlining and strengthening Europe’s defence capabilities, little of signifi cance has been accomplished.

America’s change in calculus is not the result of Europe getting its act together; it refl ects the recognition that the threat posed by Russia cannot be left unchecked. This point was driven home by a recent report by the Rand Corp showing how vulnerable Nato’s Baltic partners – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – would be to a Russian assault.

As persistently low energy prices put the Kremlin under increasing pressure, there is a growing risk that Russian President Vladimir Putin could fan the fl ames of nationalism by lashing out once again.

On its surface, America’s decision to confront Russia recalls previous occasions when Europe proved unable to respond to challenges in its neighbourhood – most memorably in Bosnia in the 1990s.

But the current situation is more dangerous still; it is reminiscent of the Cold War, when Europe was an object and not an actor in geopolitics. The continent risks once again becoming the chessboard on which the US and the Kremlin play for advantage.

In 2001, the US accounted for one-fi fth of the world’s economic output. Today, it accounts for less than one sixth of the global total.

No matter how committed and innovative American leadership remains, the US by itself can no longer guarantee the liberal international order. It needs allies in the eff ort, and the EU, still the world’s largest economy despite years of stagnation, would make a perfect candidate – if only it would pull itself together.

During the twentieth century, Europe was America’s partner of fi rst resort. Now, when it is needed once again, the EU is slipping toward the sidelines.

Unless its leaders change course, the painful unravelling of the liberal world order will continue. - Project Syndicate

Ana Palacio, a former Spanish foreign minister and former senior vice president of the World Bank, is a member of the Spanish Council of State, a visiting lecturer at Georgetown University, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the US.

European Union is the key to a new liberal world order

Learning life’s lessons — over and over By Gina BarrecaThe Hartford Courant/TNS

Have you arrived at the point in life where you realise that every

new lesson you learn is one you’ve learned before?

Here’s what I’ve discovered: There are no new lessons under the sun. (There are even fewer at midnight.)

I’m sure I’ve arrived at precisely this same conclusion many times before.

I’ve always known better than to repeat the mistakes I keep repeating, and yet that’s never stopped me. For example, I know better than to overeat simply because I’m appeasing my palate instead of listening to my appetite. I’ve already learned that to hit the snooze alarm “just one more time” will create a frantic morning because of the poor decision to start my day by delaying the very act of entering into it. I’ve known both of these things since, oh, 1971 and yet I’ll rediscover them, as if by magic, every six years and make their full eradication my goal.

It doesn’t happen. Yet I keep fi nding great pieces of wisdom, and on each

new occasion I greet them with a genuine “A-HA!”

We play this kind of game with ourselves in various arenas. We’re meant to follow the “trending” (a non-word I refuse to employ without quotation marks) hot-topic methods of organising our homes and offi ces. We’re meant to become minimalist and effi cient.

Yet new “life-hack” (also always in quotation marks) tips, such as never letting a piece of paper cross your desk twice or donating to charity clothes you haven’t worn in more than one year, uncannily resemble creakingly ancient methods of effi ciency.

Recent books on decluttering your home repeat, in more lyrical and Zen-infl uenced language, the essential points of articles your grandmother read in a 1952 issue of Good Housekeeping titled “Mess Causes Stress!”

But it’s the bigger issues that keep me circling in a fi xed orbit, permitting me the illusion that I’m

making progress (I’m moving, after all) while reminding me - as I start to see familiar landscapes reappear - that I’m back to where I started.

Not much has changed since I was 17. Oh, I sometimes convince myself that I’ve evolved, but that’s mostly because my faults and my hopes have been upgraded, updated and intensifi ed. They remain essentially the same as they were in high school (a fear of abandonment and a desire for approval) and the lessons I continue to search for are iterations of what I fi rst almost-but-never-quite learned decades ago.

Happiness is neither elusive nor unobtainable. I arrive at this conclusion about every two years. Apparently I can absorb lessons for brief periods without acquiring mastery over the subject matter.

Or let’s say I congratulate myself on fully grasping the hard-won concept that certain relationships are unsustainable. I do this as regularly as some people plant bulbs.

I’ve had to re-accept, at those fortunately rare times when it happens, that even long-term friendships, if undermined too often by distrust, envy or selfi shness, must be permitted to die a natural death. Somehow, however, the task always

seems new and the wound always feels fresh, as if I’d never gone through it before.

But I’ve learned that if somebody only calls to ask a favour, or to tell you that you didn’t live up to his or her expectations, or off er ungenerous judgment masquerading as advice, then it’s just fi ne to keep that individual from crossing the velvet ropes dividing the outer world from your inner life.

Finally, I need to be reminded every few weeks, if not every few days, that while we’re not responsible for what life off ers us, we are responsible for what we are willing to accept.

I first learned that lesson as a kid from reading W C Fields, who said: “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.” Even before I knew what Fields really meant, I knew the words meant something; I recognised the latent wisdom underlying the humour.

Most new wisdom is an echo of what we already know.

But you already knew that.

Gina Barreca is an English professor at the University of Connecticut, a feminist scholar who has written eight books. She can be reached through her www.ginabarreca.com

A huge triumph for science and humanity

There are no new lessons under the sun

America’s change in calculus is not the result of Europe getting its act together

COMMENT

Gulf Times Monday, February 15, 2016 27

Automation and robotisation have already revolutionised the industrial sector over the last 40 years, raising productivity but cutting down on employment

By Jean-Louis Santini AFP/Washington

Advances in artifi cial intelligence will soon lead to robots that are capable of nearly everything humans

do, threatening tens of millions of jobs in the coming 30 years.

“We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task,” said Moshe Vardi, director of the Institute for Information Technology at Rice University in Texas.

“I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?” he asked at a panel discussion on artifi cial intelligence at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Vardi said there will always be some need for human work in the future, but robot replacements could drastically change the landscape, with no profession safe, and men and women equally aff ected.

“Can the global economy adapt to greater than 50% unemployment?” he asked.

Automation and robotisation have already revolutionised the industrial sector over the last 40 years, raising productivity but cutting down on employment.

Job creation in manufacturing reached its peak in the US in 1980 and has been on the decline ever since,

accompanied by stagnating wages in the middle class, said Vardi.

Today there are more than 200,000 industrial robots in the US and their number continues to rise.

Today, research is focused on the reasoning abilities of machines, and progress in this realm over the past 20 years has been spectacular, said Vardi.

“And there is every reason to believe the progress in the next 25 years will be equally dramatic,” he said.

By his calculation, 10% of jobs related to driving in the US could disappear due to the rise of driverless cars in the coming 25 years.

According to Bart Selman, professor of computer science at Cornell University, “in the next two or three years, semi-autonomous or autonomous systems will march into our society”.

He listed self-driving cars and trucks, autonomous drones for surveillance and fully automatic trading systems, along with house robots and other kinds of “intelligence assistance” which make decisions on behalf of humans.

“We will be in sort of symbiosis with those machines and we will start to trust them and work with them,” he predicted.

“This is the concern because we don’t know the rate of growth of machine intelligence, how clever those machines will become.”

Will the machines remain understandable for the humans? Will humans will be able to control them? Will they remain a benefi t for humans, or pose harms?

These questions and more are being raised anew due to recent advances in robotic technology that allow machines to see and hear, almost like people.

Selman said investment in artifi cial intelligence in the US was by far the highest ever in 2015, since the birth of the industry some 50 years ago.

Business giants like Google,

Facebook, Microsoft and Tesla, run by billionaire Elon Musk, are at the head of the pack.

Also, the Pentagon has requested 19bn for developing intelligent weapons systems.

What is concerning about these new technologies is their ability to analyze data and execute complex tasks.

This raises concerns about whether humans might one day lose control of the artifi cial intelligence they once built, said Selman.

It’s a concern that some of the world’s great minds have raised too, including British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who warned in a BBC interview in 2014 that the consequences could be dire.

“It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate,” he said.

“Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded,” he added.

“The development of full artifi cial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

These questions have led scientists to call for the establishment of an ethical framework for the development of artifi cial intelligence, as well as safeguards for security in the years to come.

Last year Musk - the owner of SpaceX - donated $10mn to resolve such concerns, deeming artifi cial intelligence potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

For Wendel Wallach, an ethicist at Yale University, such dangers require a global response.

He also called for a presidential order declaring that lethal autonomous weapons systems are in violation of international humanitarian law.

“The basic idea is that there is a need for concerted action to keep technology a good servant and not let it become a dangerous master.”

Robots threaten millions of jobs

Live issues

People with low self-esteem can hurt others

Letters

By Judi Light Hopson, Emma H Hopson and Ted HagenTribune News Service

Have you ever been puzzled by outright rejection?

You know how this goes. You put forth your best

smile, lavish on kindness, and try to engage another person with all your heart.

But, the next day, this person is gossiping about you all over town. You’re practically on his/her hate list.

Instead of refl ecting on your potential weaknesses, accept the fact that the other person might suff er from low self-esteem.

People with low opinions of themselves sometimes clash heavily with those who feel healthy self-worth.

Low self-esteem ignites envy. When those with these issues enter your presence, they can feel awkward and out of kilter.

Envy of others is a complex issue. People who don’t feel so great about themselves don’t necessarily know they are jealous of you. They just know that you rattle their inner peace.

A teacher we’ll call Jan teaches fourth grade. Jan spent a month’s salary on much-needed new clothes for a teacher’s conference last year.

Jealous friends who also teach at

Jan’s school made her trip miserable for the three days they were at the conference.

“When I decided to ramp up my image, my cohorts didn’t like it,” says Jan.

While we all have to play diff erent games to fi t in with people, we should not have to apologise for looking or feeling our best.

If you look around you, you can probably fi gure out pretty quickly who has high self-esteem and who doesn’t. Oddly enough, it has little to do with clothes or looks. It goes deeper than that.

“I can spot a person with high self-esteem from a block away,” says a lawyer we’ll call John. “They look you in the eye and talk without weighing every word.”

John uses his awareness of self-esteem to coach individuals in how to present themselves for best outcomes.

“I had a divorce case where the man divorcing my client was lowly and meek,” says John. “He made anyone feel sorry for him. I had to tell my client the truth. I told her to act a little less sure of herself in mediation. Otherwise, she was going to come across as super confident and maybe lose in the financial picture of things.”

If you feel great about yourself, you can still have friends who have self-worth issues. Bragging on them is one way to balance the feelings. But, just being aware of how you come across can help, too.

“We can’t go through life never acting vulnerable,” says John. “I’m a

lawyer, and I go bowling with truck drivers who used to rib me about my life in the upscale world. I love these guys, but they had to learn I have my share of problems, too.”

John says we can be friends with almost anyone if we’re willing to let our guard down a little.

Dealing with people who are harsh or mean is a diff erent story. “You can’t always be friendly with people suff ering from low self-esteem,” says John. “Sometimes, you have to pull back and move on. Or, you can try boldly confronting them with humour. Every case is diff erent.”

When John’s daughter got elected cheerleader at her high school, a group of girls decided to tease her mercilessly.

“I told my daughter that if they hated her that much, she had to be doing something right,” says John. “My daughter started smiling and waving at the girls who were taunting her. She made up her mind to push back their jealousy by using humour. Now, a couple of those girls are her friends. They got ashamed of themselves and apologised.”

Judi Light Hopson is the executive director of the stress management website USA Wellness Cafe at www.usawellnesscafe.com. Emma Hopson is an author and a nurse educator. Ted Hagen is a family psychologist.

Options foremployeesDear Sir,

Many companies are busy streamlining their operations, with some even reducing their workforce, because of the economic situation brought about by low energy prices, which have aff ected many oil-producing countries like Qatar. Companies and authorities have the right to take appropriate decisions to safeguard their economical interests, true. But I feel staff reduction should be the last option of any cost-reduction process.

If at all being done, employees should be given an option to accept a revised off er or contract. Also, workers who have been let go may be given an opportunity to fi nd another job in Qatar.

These options will give all parties the fl exibility to decide their future and also will allow the state to retain

experienced staff , rather than bringing in replacements and training new hands.

Johnson Thomas (e-mail address supplied)

A majormedical threat

Dear Sir,

The Zika virus, discovered in Brazil, is a serious medical threat. The virus had migrated from Brazil to many other countries, especially in Latin America. Scientists are striving to fi nd a vaccine to contain the Zika outbreak. It is evident that deadly diseases could travel at supersonic speed around the globe.

Of roughly 400 emerging infectious diseases that have been identifi ed since 1940, more than 60% have originated from animals.

Poverty has forced people in

many developing countries to eating vermin, rodents and insects. It is a sad state of affairs but undoubtedly this will trigger the next global pandemic. The most devastating epidemics we are aware of have been incubated in chickens, ducks, pigs, horses, camels and bats. And of course, mosquitoes.

Are we about to be pulverised by an Armageddon virus? The Spanish fl u pandemic originated from a wild aquatic bird.

Professor John Oxford, from the University of London, a world authority on epidemics, warns that we must expect an animal-originated pandemic to strike the world within the next fi ve years, with potentially cataclysmic eff ects on the human race. Before it even has a name, it will have started to cut its lethal swathe through the world’s population. The World Health Organisation will be caught fl at footed.

Farouk [email protected]

Please send usyour lettersBy e-mail [email protected] 44350474Or Post Letters to the EditorGulf TimesP O Box 2888Doha, Qatar

All letters, which are subject to editing, should have the name of the writer, address and phone number. The writer’s name and address may be withheld by request.

Three-day forecast

TODAY

WEDNESDAY

High: 25 C

Low : 15 C

High: 23 C

Low : 16 C

Weather report

Around the region

Abu DhabiBaghdadDubaiKuwait CityManamaMuscatRiyadhTehran

Weather todaySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnySunnyM Sunny

Around the world

Athens BeirutBangkok BerlinCairoCape Town ColomboDhakaHong KongIstanbulJakartaKarachiLondonManilaMoscowNew DelhiNew York ParisSao PauloSeoulSingaporeSydney Tokyo Clear

Max/min22/1322/1636/2505/-129/1523/1830/2331/2016/1218/1229/2428/1407/-131/2303/0125/1102/0107/-130/2105/-632/2626/1914/14

Weather todayM SunnyP CloudySunnyShowersSunnyP CloudyS T StormsSunnyP CloudyP CloudyT StormsSunnyP CloudyP CloudySnowM SunnySnowP CloudyT StormsP CloudyT StormsS T Storms

Fishermen’s forecast

OFFSHORE DOHAWind: NW 10-18/22 KTWaves: 3-5/7 Feet

INSHORE DOHAWind: NW-NE 05-15/18 KTWaves: 1-2/3 Feet

High: 26 C

Low : 15 C

TUESDAY

Strong wind and high seas to the north

Sunny

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Max/min25/1424/1123/1525/1421/1625/1824/1115/04

Weather tomorrowP CloudySunnySunnySunnySunnyM SunnySunnySunny

Max/min25/1426/1124/1624/1422/1426/1825/09

Max/min23/1422/1635/2303/-231/1427/1831/2432/2017/1418/1131/2428/1609/0131/2203/-427/1313/0307/-228/2106/-333/2625/1709/01

Weather tomorrowP CloudySunnySunnyM CloudySunnyCloudyS T StormsSunnyP CloudyP CloudyT StormsSunnyM SunnyP CloudyRain&SnowSunnyRainSunnyT StormsSunnyS T StormsM SunnyClear

16/04

Tunnelling work on Doha Metro project’s Green Line complete Two Tunnel Boring Machines

(TBMs), deployed by Qatar Rail, successfully completed

their tunnelling on Doha Metro’s Green Line on schedule, marking a milestone in the project’s progress.

Al Rayyan and Al Gharafa TBMs went through four breakthroughs before reaching the fi nal destina-tion at Msheireb. The high-tech TBMs were two of the 21 used in the fi rst phase of the Doha Metro project which saw Qatar recognised by the Guinness World Records, for having the largest number of tunnel boring machines operating simultaneously in a single project.

Qatar Rail project director Jassim al-Ansari expressed delight that Al Rayyan and Al Gharafa TBMs have completed their section of tunnel-ling on schedule and they can now be successfully decommissioned.

“To date, roughly 30km out of 33km has been tunnelled on the Green Line, a remarkable feat con-sidering we began the Herculean task less than 18 months ago.”

The Doha Metro’s Green Line, which will take passengers from Al Riff a to Al Mansoura, had six TBMs working on tunnels over 33km in length. Al Rayyan and Al Gharafa TBMs will now be dismantled and taken to the supplier, Germany’s Herrenknecht’s local offi ce in Doha where their parts will either be recy-cled or sold off .

The remaining four TBMs are ex-pected to complete the work on the Green Line in early April this year. Leatooriya will be the next TBM to complete its mission in the last week this month, when it achieves its breakthrough at the Education City Station, followed shortly by the re-maining TBMs.

Since operations started, the TBMs have gone through a long journey which started from the Her-

renknecht warehouse in Berlin to Al Messila site in Doha where they were fi nally dismantled.

The Qatar Rail logistics team monitored the entire process upon the TBMs arrival at the Doha Port, and co-ordinated with the Doha Port Authority, Qatar Customs, Milaha, Traffi c Police, Lekhwiya and numer-ous contractors to ensure a seamless process from the ship to the site.

The Qatar Rail team works around current traffi c constraints as part of its constant eff orts to keep disrup-tions for Qatar residents to a mini-mum. In order to minimise the traf-fi c disruption, transportation of the TBMs were done between 1 and 3am. A mock trial run was done to elimi-nate obstruction in the way and at offl oading sites. Discharging and of-

fl oading plans at the port and work sites were in place before the arrival of the TBM.

The fi rst phase of the Doha Metro project is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2019 while completion of the Lusail Tram is set for 2020.

By 2030 all the three networks – Doha Metro, Lusail Tram and the long-distance rail, which will link the country with the GCC Rail net-work – are expected to be completed.

With the completion of the fi rst phase of the Doha Metro and Lusail Tram, Qatar Rail expects to ferry 600,000 passengers per day by 2021. By then, 37 metro stations are ex-pected to be complete, with an aver-age journey time of two minutes be-tween adjacent stations.

Decommissioning of a TBM at the under construction Msheireb station. Right: A TBM which completed its work is dismantled from a work site.

Another view of the TBM decommissioning process.

QATAR


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